The Intelligentsia and the October Revolution

David Mandel

This is a revised and somewhat expanded version of an article that first appeared in Critique, no. 14, 1981, pp. 68-87. Much of it is based on research published in my The Petrograd Workers and the Fall of the Old Regime and The Petrograd Workers and the Soviet Seizure of Power, Macmillan Press, London, 1983 and 1986, which will be shortly republished in a new edition in the HM Book Series. This version was first published in Revista de literatura e cultura russa, v. 8, n. 9 (2017), of the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil

Tereshchenko, a sugar magnate and the Minister for External Affairs in the last coalition Provisional Government, was not merely engaging in small talk, when he asked the sailor escorting him to jail after the storming of the Winter Palace on the night of October 24-25: “How will you manage without the intelligentsia ?”[1] That question, in fact, pointed to a critical aspect of the revolutions of 1917 - the alienation between the working class and the intelligentsia, and in particular that part of the intelligentsia that was referred to, and that referred to itself, as “democratic” or “socialist.”[2] Historians have paid relatively little attention to this important aspect of the revolution, perhaps because of the prominence ofintelligenty at the highest level of the Bolshevik party, in its Central Committee. But, at all levels below that, members of the intelligentsia were scarce indeed: the Bolshevik party in 1917 was overwhelmingly proletarian, both in its social composition and in its political orientation.

But the alienation of the left intelligentsia from the workers’ movement could, in fact, trace its roots back to the Revolution of 1905, if not earlier. It was briefly reversed by the February Revolution, which, for a short period, created an atmosphere of national unity. But the mutual estrangement reappeared before long, and with a vengeance, reaching a culmination in the October Revolution, which workers overwhelming supported, but towards which the intelligentsia, including its left-wing elements, was deeply hostile.

In popular contemporary parlance, intelligent was someone who earned his or her living (or who could look forward to doing so - students) in an occupation that required a diploma of at least secondary-level education. For example, when in April 1917, the senior personnel of the Petrograd Post Office decided to form their own union in reaction to the egalitarian aspirations of the existing Union of Post and Telegraph Employees, they called themselves “The Provisional Organising Bureau ofIntelligentnykh Employees of the Petrograd Central Post Office and Branches” and stressed their “education, upon which you have expended at least a quarter of your lives,” in contrast to members of the existing union, “who cannot even spell their names properly.”[3] V.M. Levin, a Left Socialist Revolutionary (SR) member of the Central Council of Factory Committees of Petrograd, wrote in December 1917 that “People who have had the good fortune to receive a scientific education are abandoning the people... And among the latter instinctively grows a hatred for the educated, for the intelligentsia.”[4]

But besides that popular, sociological definition, the term also carried certain moral and political connotation: the intelligentsia were people preoccupied with the “accursed questions,” with Russia’s fate. The sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, Kerensky’s personal secretary in 1917, referred to the intelligentsia as “the carriers of intellect and conscience.”[5] And although most were liberals, or even further to the right, and identified with the interests and world view of the propertied classes (“census society”), the termintelligentsia nevertheless had a certain connotation of service to the toiling people.

Historically, that connotation had a certain basis in reality. Over the latter half of the nineteenth century, a significant part of the politically active intelligentsia had actively opposed the autocracy and, though only a minority of the educated population, that group had set the tone for the entire social group. The main political task it set for itself was to bridge the gulf separating it from the still dormant people, whom it wanted to arouse to oppose the autocracy. And the intelligentsia as a whole did welcome the February Revolution.   

But a closer examination of the period prior to 1917 reveals a more complex picture. For, following the Revolution of 1905, a shift to the right took place among the intelligentsia,[6] a shift that was most marked among the hitherto socialist intelligentsia. A much-discussed sign of this shift was the publication in 1909 of theVekhy collection of articles by a group of intellectuals, some of whom had been Marxists, critical of materialism and radicality of the Russian intelligentsia. In his study of the Socialist Revolutionary party, Russia’s peasant party, historian O. Radkey wrote of

a metamorphosis of... the populist intelligentsia from insurrectionaries in 1905 to jaded democrats in the period between the revolutions and then to fervent patriots, partisans of the Entente, and devotees of the cult of the state in the coming war... They clung to the old S.R. label even though the old faith was gone, aside from the residue of interest in political liberation... [7]

The same “flight of the intelligentsia” was observed in the social-democratic parties.[8] L.H. Haimson observed that the private correspondence of the Menshevik leaders in 1909-1911

…is replete with despondent statements... about the wholesale withdrawal from political and social concerns that seemed to have accompanied the radical intelligentsia’s recoil from the underground struggle. Most party members, these letters suggest, had in fact withdrawn from party activities and were wholly absorbed in the prosaic if arduous struggle to resume a normal, day-to-day existence. [9]

In the Bolshevik wing of Russian social democracy, which came to dominate the workers’ movement in the immediate pre-war years of renewed labour upsurge, following the defeat of the Revolution of 1905, was subject to the same phenomenon. Workers’ memoirs document their sense of betrayal by the Bolshevik intelligentsia. A. S. Shliapnikov, a metalworker and prominent party leader, wrote of an “'ebb” that had begun in 1906-1907 and left so few intellectuals among Petersburg Bolsheviks that there were barely enough “literary forces” to meet the needs of the Bolshevik fraction in the State Duma and the party’s daily newspapers: “In place of the raznochintsy-intelligenty[10], of the young students, a  worker-intelligentsia appeared with calloused hands, a highly developed intellect, and continuous links with the workers.”[11]

Kiril Orlov (Ivan Egorov), another Petersburg metalworker and member of the Bolshevik Petersburg Committee during the war, recalled :

During the war there was absolutely no party intelligentsia among the entire membership of the Petersburg Committee. It lived a totally separate existence somewhere in the city, nestled around Maxim Gorky. But neither the proletariat nor its districts knew or had any information about it. We felt that we, the proletarians, were alone. There was not even anyone to write a small pamphlet or an appeal. They all sat with their arms folded, grieved, and ran from illegal work like the devil flees from incense. The workers were left to their own resources. [12]

The sense of betrayal was even stronger in the provinces, where the intelligentsia was much less numerous. A. Martsionovskii, a Bolshevik carpenter, recalled:  

In a whole series of cities where I participated in illegal activity, almost everywhere the party committee consisted exclusively of workers. The intelligentsia was absent, with the exception of those who came on tour for two or three days. In the most difficult years of reaction, the workers practically remained without leaders from among the intelligentsia. They [intelligenty] said that they were tired, that young people were coming to take their place. But in the meanwhile, the youth got carried away withartsybashevshchina[13]. Some sought new gods, others went abroad and the rest led lives of philistines. But that was the period following the destruction of our organisation. Somewhat later, the intellectuals decided it was not good to be revolutionaries and set actively to a new current of liquidators.[14] At the start of the imperialist war, they stood for the defence of the country and denied their fundamental slogans, taking with them many workers who had not yet had time to think matters through... We, the underground workers, had to conduct our activity without the intelligentsia, except for a few individuals. However, after the February Revolution, they turned up, beat their breasts and shouted “We are revolutionaries,” etc. But, in fact, none of them had conducted revolutionary work, and we had not seen them in the underground.[15]

As Martsionovskii indicated, a certain rapprochement between workers and the former left intelligentsia took place following the February revolution, during the latter’s “honeymoon period” of national unity. Once the revolution in the capital had become a fait accompli, the propertied classes, hitherto profoundly fearful of popular revolution, rallied to it. That shift greatly facilitated the revolution’s victory in the rest of the country and at the front.[16] But the rosy atmosphere of February proved short-lived. Before long, already in April, the polarization that opposed the popular classes to the propertied classes was once again making itself felt.

Among workers, more slowly among soldiers, and finally in the villages, the conviction grew that the propertied classes were opposed to the democratic and anti-war goals of the revolution, that they were, in fact, determined to crush the revolution with a military dictatorship. This conviction led to growing popular support for the demand to transfer political power to the soviet of workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ deputies, that is, to a government that would exclude any influence of the propertied classes on policy, a position advocated by the Bolshevik party. By the fall of 1917, all the soviets in urban centres of any significance, and increasingly the soldiers at the front, were demanding an end to the governmental coalition with political representatives of the propertied classes and the transfer of power to the soviets. At the Second All-Russian Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviets in October 25-27 1917 that established a soviet government, 390 of the 650 delegates were Bolsheviks and another 90 were Left SRs, who soon joined the Bolsheviks in a coalition government. An All-Russian Congress of Peasant Deputies in 10-25 November also voted to support the Soviet government.

 It was on this background of deepening class polarization that the former rift between the workers and the intelligentsia reappeared At a conference on adult education a few days before the October insurrection, prominent Bolshevik intellectual A.V. Lunacharskii (later People’s Commissar of Education in the first Soviet government), reported on the state of worker-intelligentsia cooperation in the area of culture. He noted the great thirst for knowledge among workers that was going unsatisfied because “at present, one observes that the proletariat itself is isolated from the intelligentsia... thanks to the fact that the proletariat has crossed over to the banner of the extreme left wing of democracy, while the intelligentsia found itself on the right.” These words provoked protests among the representatives of the intelligentsia who were present. But Lunacharskii insisted that “the proletariat is not to blame, but rather the intelligentsia, which has a strongly negative attitude toward the political tasks the proletariat has put forth.” [17]

Revealing in this respect is the end-of-the-year survey of Russian journalism for 1917, of “that collective physiognomy that until recently reflected the soul of our so-called intelligentsia, our spiritual aristocracy. It was written by V.P. Polonskii, a left Menshevik historian and literary critic, himself highly critical of “Bolshevik craziness” (sumasbrodstvo) and of the Soviet regime:

One would be hard pressed to find another group of people, aside from the intelligentsia, in whose thinking and moods the revolution has wreaked more cruel havoc.

I have before me a pile of newspapers, magazines, brochures. Amidst the current material, one most often encounters the old, most sensitive theme in our intelligentsia’s consciousness – the theme of “the intelligentsia and the people.”

And as one reads, a picture emerges that is most unexpected. Until recently, the predominant type of intelligent wasthe intelligent-narodnik [populist], the well-wisher, kindly and sympathetically sighing over the lot of our “younger brother.” But, alas, this type is now an anachronism. In his place has appeared the malevolentintelligent, hostile to themuzhik, to the worker, to the entire benighted, toiling mass.

The contemporary ones are no longer striving, as before, to fill in some sort of abyss separating them from the muzhik. On the contrary, they want to demarcate themselves from themuzhik with a clear and impassable line...

Such is the emerging, portentous confusion. It manifests itself with great clarity in the literature. In a great number of articles devoted to the theme of the people and the intelligentsia, the people is treated as a benighted, brutalized, grasping, unbridled mass, a rabble. And its present leaders – as demagogues, worthless nullities, émigrés, careerists, who have adopted the motto of the bourgeoisie of old France: Après nous, le déluge...

If you will recall what yesterday’s sympathizers and advocates of the people have written of late about “mob rule,” the extremely alarming fact of our present existence will appear indisputable: the intelligentsia has completed its departure from the people. The intelligenty had just enough powder left to bid good night to the “one who suffers all in the name of Christ, whose severe eyes do not weep, whose hurting mouth does not complain.”

And that one, the eternal sufferer, had only to rise to his feet, to mightily straighten his shoulders and take a deep breath for the intelligentsia to feel disillusioned.

And it is not the excesses of the October Days, nor the craziness of Bolshevism that are the reason for this. The departure of the intelligentsia, the transformation of the “populists” into “evil-wishers,” began long ago, almost on the day after the [February] revolution…

Writers and poets, essayists and artists (not all, of course, but many, many) have turned their backs on the people. “You have stood up on your feet too soon. You are a rank barbarian. Your path is not ours....[18]

A parallel process of estrangement took place within the socialist parties themselves. Radkey writes that when the SR Party finally split in September 1917 into left and right wings (the right continuing to support the coalition government with the liberals, representatives of the propertied classes), 

…nearly all the sailors and a large majority of the workers and army went with the L[eft] SRs, most of the intelligenty and white collar workers stayed where they were, and the peasantry divided into two camps, the larger loyal to the [Right] SR but the lesser one already sizable and steadily growing... From every quarter came complaints of a dearth of intellectuals which seriously impeded the activity of the new party. Sukhanov termed it the party of the rural plebs and ranked it even lower on the cultural scale than the Bolsheviks, the party of the urban plebs.[19]

At the Second Petrograd Conference of the Bolshevik Party in July 1917, the local Bolshevik leader V. Volodarskii complained of the “wholesale desertion of the intelligentsia”: 

The intelligentsia, in accordance with its social background, has crossed over to the defencists [supporters of the coalition government] and does not want to carry the revolution further. It does not come to us, and it has everywhere adopted the position of resisting the revolutionary steps of the workers. [20]

A few weeks later, at the Sixth Party Congress, Volodarskii stated the following in his report on the Petrograd Bolshevik organisation :

Work is being conducted by local forces from among the worker masses. There are very few intelligentnye forces. All organisational work is being conducted by the workers themselves. The members of the Central Committee took little part in our organisational work. Lenin and Zinoviev very rarely, as they were preoccupied with other work. Our organisation has grown from below.[21]

In the provinces, the absence of intelligentsy was even more marked. The Bolshevik Central Committee was being bombarded with urgent requests from the provinces to send “literary forces,”, “at least oneintelligent.” But the Central Committee’ secretary, Ya. M. Sverdlov, almost invariably replied that no one could be spared, and that the situation in the capital was hardly better.[22]

As a result, workers came increasingly to identify the Bolsheviks with workers and the Mensheviks and (right) SRs with intellectuals. For example, in June 1917, a Menshevik journalist visited a tea-packing plant in Moscow. Moscow’s workers lagged behind Petrgorad politically, and all the members of the factory committee were still Mensheviks, except for one. When the latter was asked by the journalist why not a Menshevik like the others, he replied that, although he belonged to no party, he voted for the Bolsheviks because “on their list there are workers. The Mensheviks are all gospoda [gentlemen] - doctors, lawyers, etc.” He added that the Bolsheviks stood for soviet power and workers’ control.[23] Speaking on October 14 at the soviet of Orekhovo-Zuevsk, a textile town not far from Moscow, Baryshnikov, a local Bolshevik worker, explained:

Due to the fact that the ideology and politics of the working class call for a radical reformation of the present system, the relations the so-called intelligentsia, the SRs and Mensheviks, to the workers have become very strained. And, therefore,already there exist no ties between us, and in the eyes of the working class they have once and for all defined themselves as servants of bourgeois society.[24]

As the workers’ position moved to the left and they abandoned their previous support for a political coalition with representatives of “census society,” worker conferences became increasingly plebeian affairs. Typical was this report on a conference of railway workers in November 1917: “Almost complete absence of intelligentsia. Even the praesidium almost completely consists of ‘rank-and-file’.” [25] This conference was called by the workers of the railway depots and workshops of Moscow and Petrograd in opposition to the All-Russian Railway Union, which had opposed the October insurrection and the Soviet government. That union included all railway employees, including white-collar and managerial personnel. The All-Russian union was at this time led by Menshevik-Internationalists opposed the October insurrection. By contrast, two thirds of the delegates to the conference of depot and workshop workers were Bolsheviks, the rest being Left SRs. There were only a few Menshevik-Internationalists.

It was in the aftermath of the July Days that the workers were forced to directly confront the implications of their growing isolation from the intelligentsia. On July 3 and 4 Petrograd’s industrial workers, along with some military units from the local garrison, marched to the Tauride Palace in a peaceful demonstration to pressure the Central Executive Committee (CEC) of Soviets, whose majority at the time was composed of Mensheviks and SRs, to end the governmental coalition with representatives of the propertied classes and to take power on its own, that is, to form a soviet government, one in which only the workers, soldiers and peasants would be represented. But the unthinkable happened: not only did these Mensheviks and SRs refuse to heed the will of the workers, they actually stood by while the government, in which their party leaders were participating, unleashed a wave of repressions against workers, Bolsheviks, and other left socialists who opposed to the coalition government. The Minister of Internal Affairs directly responsible for this policy was none other than the Menshevik leader, I. G. Tsereteli.

Until that moment, the radicalized workers had been thinking in terms of a peaceful transfer of power to the soviets. That was possible since the soviets enjoyed the allegiance of the soldiers. But the refusal of the leaders of the CEC of Soviets to take power and their willingness to adopt repressive measures against workers profoundly altered the situation. Among other things, this forced the workers to face the prospect of taking power by armed insurrection. It also meant the new government would not enjoy the support even of the left intelligentsia, whose knowledge and skills were so needed for managing the economic and state machinery of the country.

This prospect very much worried workers. This emerged clearly at the Conference of Factory Committees of Petrograd on August 10-12, 1917. The general consensus at the conference was that industry was fast heading toward collapse, aided by the sabotage of the industrialists, who were counting on mass unemployment to undermine the workers’ movement, and by the Provisional government, which, under pressure from the industrialists, refused to adopt regulatory measures to arrest the deepening economic dislocation. The delegates were becoming aware of the likely prospect that they would be forced to assume responsibility for the economy, something they had not imagined at the moment of the February Revolution, which they had viewed in purely liberal-democratic, not socialist, terms.

One of the delegates to the conference summed up the situation: “We have to exert all our energy in this struggle [to prepare our own economic apparatus for the moment of collapse of the capitalist economy]. Especially as class contradictions are more and more revealed, and the intelligentsia leaves us, we have to rely only on ourselves and take all our organisations into our workers’ hands.” [26]  The delegates were painfully aware of the tremendous difficulty of the task. “Through all the reports,” observed one of them, “like a red thread, runs the cry of a lack of [educated] people.”[27] “Tsarism did everything to leave us unprepared,” lamented another delegate, “and naturally, everywhere, in both political and economic organs, we lack [educated] people.”[28]

How were they to proceed in such circumstances? Sedov, a Menshevik delegate, argued that there could be no question of the workers taking power on their own:

We are alone. We have few workers capable of understanding state affairs and of controlling. It is necessary to organise courses in government affairs and in control of production. If we take power, the masses will crucify us. The bourgeoisie is organised and has at its disposal a mass of experienced people. But we do not, and we will, therefore, not be in a position to hold power. [29]

But the overwhelming majority of the delegates to the conference disagreed. Their position was expressed by a delegate from the Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Factory :

The bourgeoisie knows its interest better than the petty bourgeois parties [Mensheviks and SRs]. The bourgeoisie completely understands the situation and has expressed itself very clearly in the words of Riabushinskii[30], who said that they will wait until hunger seizes us by the throat and destroys all that we have won. But while they are grabbing for our throats, we will fight and we won’t retreat from the struggle.[31]

Over and over again, delegates urged each other to abandon the workers’ old habit of relying on the intelligentsia.

The working class has always been isolated. It always has to conduct its policy alone. But in a revolution, the working class is the vanguard. It must lead the other classes, including the peasantry. It all depends on the activity of workers in the various organisations, commissions, etc., where we must constitute a majority of workers. Against the approaching hunger, we must put forward the activity of the masses. We must throw off the Slavic spirit of laziness and together cut a path through the forest that will lead the working class to socialism. [32]

When someone suggested that the number of working groups be limited, due to the complexity of the issues to be discussed and the shortage of “active forces”, S.P. Voskov, a carpenter from the Sestroretsk Rifle Factory, retorted :

The absence of intelligenty in no way impedes the work of the sections. It is high time the workers renounce the bad habit of constantly looking over their shoulder at theintelligenty. All the participants at this conference must join some section and work there independently.[33]

In fact, these workers’ worst fears did materialise in October. The Mensheviks and SRs walked out of the Congress of Soviets that elected a Soviet government, the very principle of which – a government responsible to the soviets - they rejected. Middle and senior level technical and administrative personnel of state and banking institutions, as well as doctors and teachers went on strike.[34] In the factories, the higher technical and administrative personnel also refused to recognise the new government or to cooperate with workers’ control.[35] The depth of left intelligentsia’s hostility to the October insurrection and to the Soviet government – which had no counterpart even among the most conservative workers – is forcefully expressed in the following resolution adopted by the Executive Bureau of the Socialist Group of Engineers in late October 1917:

A band of utopians and demogogues, exploiting the fatigue of the workers and soldiers, exploiting utopian appeals to social revolution, through deliberate deceit and slander of the Provincial Government, has attracted to its side the benighted masses, and, in opposition to the will the vast part of the Russian people, on the eve of the Constituent Assembly, they have seized power in the capitals and in certain cities of Russia. With the aid of arrests, violence against the free word and press, with the aid of terror, a band of usurpers is trying to maintain itself in power. The Bureau of the Socialist Group of Engineers, decisively protesting against this takeover, against the arrest of Kerenskii, against murders, violence, against the closing of newspapers, against persecutions and terror, declares that the acts of these usurpers have nothing in common with socialist ideals and that they destroy the freedom won by the people... True socialists cannot give the slightest support either to the usurpers of power or to those who will not decisively and firmly break with them. [36]

But the lower white-collar and manual workers of government and financial institution refused to take part in the strikes and condemned the higher-level employees for doing so. After the October Revolution, the Soviet government dissolved the Petrograd Duma (municipal assembly), when it refused to recognise the new regime. It held new elections, that were boycotted by all the parties except for the Bolsheviks and Left SRs. When the new Duma met, its head, M.I.  Kalinin, reported that the Duma’s “intelligentnye employees were clearly disrespectful when... [I] tried to talk with them, and they stated their intention of resisting. But the municipal workers and lower white-collars employees were happy about the transfer of power to the workers.”[37]

Alexander Blok was one of the rare major literary figures of the older generation who embraced the October Revolution. Writing in the winter months following the October Revolution, he portrayed the state of mind of the left intelligentsia in the following words:

“Russia is perishing,” “Russia is no more,” “Eternal memory to Russia” – that is what I hear on all sides...

What were you thinking? That the revolution is an idyll ? That creativity does not destroy anything in its path ? That the people is a good little girl?...

And the best people say: “We are disappointed in our people”… and they see nothing around themselves but boorishness and bestiality (but man is right here, besides them); the best people even say: “There hasn’t even been any revolution”; those who were obsessed with hatred of “tsarism” are ready to fling themselves back into its arms, just to be able to forget what is now happening; yesterday’s “defeatists”[38] are now crying about “German oppression[39]”; yesterday's “internationalists” weep for “Holy Russia”;  born atheists are ready to light votive candles, praying for victory over the internal and external foes…

So it turns out you were chopping away at the very branch on which you were sitting? A pitiable situation: with voluptuous malice you stuck firewood, shavings, dry logs into a pile of timber damp from the snow and rain; and when the flame suddenly erupted and flared up to the sky (like a banner), you run around and crying: “Oh, ah, we’re on fire !” [40]

Workers did not take the final step of seizing power in October with a light heart. In fact, most, while desperately desiring soviet power, hesitated and temporised before the “action” (vystuplenie). The insurrection was the action of the decisive minority of workers, those in an or close to the Bolshevik party. (In the capital alone, the party had 30,000 workers in its ranks.) When they forced the issue, the overwhelming majority of the rest rallied to their support. Yet even then, the workers were worried about their political isolation. In the days following the insurrection, there was broad worker support, including within the ranks of the Bolshevik party, for the formation of a “homogeneous socialist government,” that is, a coalition of all socialist parties, from left to right.

But the negotiations to form such a government, undertaken under the auspices of the Railway Workers’ Union, then headed by Menshevik-Internationalists (leftwing Mensheviks), failed, because the moderate Mensheviks and SRs, and those to the right of them, refused to participate in a government responsible uniquely, or mainly, to the soviets. Such a government would have a majority of Bolsheviks, as they had been the majority at the recent Congress of Soviets. Behind this refusal was the conviction of the moderate socialists that the revolution would be doomed without the support of the bourgeoisie. Related to this was the fear that a government led by Bolsheviks, whose base was in the working class, would undertake “socialist experiments”.  

After the talks broke down precisely over the issue of responsibility to the soviets, the Left SRs decided to take part in the Soviet government in coalition with the Bolsheviks. Their newspaper opined that “even had we achieved such a ‘homogeneous government,’ it would have, in fact, been a coalition with the most radical part of the bourgeoisie.”[41]  But the Menshevik-Internationalists, the Menshevik party’s left wing that soon took over the party’s leadership, refused to follow the Left SRs. In an article entitled “2 x 2 = 5”, the Menshevik-Internationalist economist V.L. Bazarov expressed his irritation at what he regarded at the workers’ confusion: they were calling for the formation of an all-socialist coalition but they wanted that coalition to be responsible to the soviets.

…Resolutions are being passed that demand at once a homogeneous democratic government based upon an agreement of all the socialist parties and [at the same time] recognition of the current [overwhelmingly Bolshevik] TsIK [the Central Executive Committee of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, elected at the recent Soviet Congress] as the organ to which the government should be responsible... But at present a purely soviet government can only be Bolshevik. And with each day it becomes clearer that the Bolsheviks cannot govern: decrees are issued like hotcakes and they cannot be put into practice... Thus, even if what the Bolsheviks say is true, that the socialist parties do not have any masses behind them but are purely intellectual... even then, large concessions would be necessary. The proletariat cannot rule without the intelligentsia... The TsIK has to be only one of the institutions to which the government is responsible.[42]

The Menshevik-Internationalists shared the Bolsheviks’ view of the bourgeoisie as fundamentally counter-revolutionary. But they also shared the conviction with the right wing of their own party that economically backward, overwhelming peasant Russia lacked the social and political conditions for socialism. And so, while the more right-wing Mensheviks, together with the SRs, continued to call for a coalition with representatives of the bourgeoisie, the Menshevik-Internationalists stressed the necessity of retaining the support at least of society’s “middle strata,” the petty bourgeoisie and first and foremost of the intelligentsia. The problem was, however, that the latter had overwhelmingly taken the side of the bourgeoisie. As a result, the left Mensheviks were condemned to remain passive onlookers to the unfolding revolution.

As for the workers themselves, once it became clear to them that the real issue was soviet power or renewed coalition with the bourgeoisie, in one or another form, they gave their support to the soviet government, even before the Left SRs decided to join. At a meeting on October 29, during the talks on the formation of an all-socialist coalition government, a general assembly of workers of the Admiralteiskii Shipyards appealed to all workers,

regardless of your party hue, to exert pressure on your political centres to achieve an immediate accord of all socialist parties, from Bolsheviks to Popular Socialists inclusive, and to form a socialist cabinet responsible to the Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies on the following platform: Immediate proposal of democratic peace. Immediate transfer of land to the hands of the peasant committees. Workers’ control of production. Convocation of the Constituent Assembly at the assigned date. [43]

This was an example of what Bazarov saw as the workers’ political confusion: they wanted a government coalition of all socialist parties but also wanted that government to be responsible to the soviets. But a week later, after the collapse of the negotiations, with the Bolsheviks remaining alone in the government, those same workers now decided

to speak out for full and undivided soviet power and against coalition with parties of defencist conciliators. We have sacrificed much for the revolution and we are prepared, if it is necessary, for new sacrifices, but we will not give up power to those from whom it was taken in a bloody battle. [44]

When the Left SRs decided to enter the government, having concluded that “even if we had obtained such a ‘homogeneous government.’ it would have been in fact a coalition with the most radical part of the bourgeoisie,”[45] workers breathed a collective sigh of relief: unity had been achieved at least “from below”, among thenizy, the Left SRs being mainly a peasant party. An assembly of workers at the Putilov factory declared on that occasion:

We, workers, greet, as one person, this unification that we have long desired and we send all our warm greetings to our comrades who are working on the platform of the Second All-Russian Congress of Toiling People of the poorest peasantry, workers, and soldiers. [46]

The October Revolution, having officially consecrated the already existing, profound polarization of Russian society, found the bulk of the intelligentsia on the side of the propertied classes,[47] with what remained of the left intelligentsia suspended somewhere between the two. Workers responded to the perceived betrayal with bitterness. As the Left SR Levin wrote,

At the moment when the old bourgeois chains of state are being smashed by the people, the intelligentsia is deserting the people. Those who had the good fortune to receive a scientific education are abandoning the people, who bore them on their exhausted and lacerated shoulders. And as if that were not enough, in leaving, they mock their helplessness, their illiteracy, their inability painlessly to carry out great transformations, to attain great achievements. And this last is especially bitter to the people. And among the latter, instinctively grows a hatred for the “educated,” for the intelligentsia. [48]

The Menshevik-Internationalist paper Novaia zhizn’ published the following report from Moscow in December 1917:

If the external traces of the insurrection are few, the internal division within the population is deep indeed. When they buried the Red Guard and Bolshevik soldiers [following the victory of the insurrection after several days of serious fighting], as I was told, one could not find a single intelligent or university or high-school student in the extraordinarily grandiose procession. And during the funeral of the Junkers [Officer school cadets who had fought on the side of the Provisional Government], there was not a single worker, soldier or plebeian in the crowd. The composition of the demonstration in honour of the Constituent Assembly was similar – the five soldiers following behind the banner of the SRs Military Organisation only underlined the absence of the garrison.

Now the abyss separating the two camps has grown particularly deep, thanks to the general strike of municipal employees: teachers of municipal schools, higher personnel of the hospitals, senior tram employees, etc. This strike places the work of the Bolshevik municipal government before extreme difficulties, but even more it exacerbates the hatred in the nizy of the population for all the intelligentsia and the bourgeoisie. I myself saw a [tram] conductor force a high school student out of his car: ‘They teach you alright, but it seems they don’t want to teach our children!’

The strike of the schools and the hospitals is seen by the urban nizy as a struggle of the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia against the popular masses. [49]

In trying to understand the position of the intelligentsia, one must first ask if the workers’ perception of “betrayal” had any justification. After all, viewed from one angle, it was the workers who parted ways with the intelligentsia by opting to break with the propertied classes, abandoning the national, all-class alliance that had been formed in February.

 The reasons for the workers’ subsequent radicalization can briefly be summed up as follows: on the basis of their experience, the workers reached the conclusion that the propertied classes were opposed to the popular goals of the February revolution: a rapidly concluded democratic peace, land reform, the eight-hour workday, convocation of a constituent assembly to establish a democratic republic. But not only did the propertied classes block the realization of these goals (which were purely democratic and in no way socialist), they were intent on crushing the popular classes militarily. This was amply demonstrated by the Kadet party’s barely concealed support for General Kornilov’s uprising at the end of August as well as by the industrialists’ implacable opposition to state measures to prevent the fast-approaching economic collapse.

To workers, the October insurrection and the establishment of Soviet power meant the exclusion of the propertied classes from influence over government policy. October was first and foremost an act of defence of the February Revolution, its actual achievements and its promises, in face of the active hostility of the propertied classes. Why some workers did see in October the potential for a socialist transformation, that was by no means their main goal in October.

When seen in this light, the workers’ sense of the betrayal on the part of the intelligentsia becomes comprehensible. As the Menshevik-Internationalist paper (which was hostile to the October Revolution) wrote: “Now each worker could ask the striking doctors and teachers: ‘You never struck to protest the regime under the Tsar or under Guchkov.[50] Why do you strike now, when power is in the hands of the people we recognise as our leaders?’”[51] Even left Mensheviks like Iu. O. Martov, whose dedication to the workers’ cause could not be doubted, felt like washing his hands of everything rather than doing “what seems to be our duty - to stand by the working class even when it is wrong... It is tragic. For after all, the entire proletariat stands behind Lenin and expects the overturn to result in social emancipation - realising all the while that it has challenged all the antiproletarian forces.”[52]

Why then did the socialist intelligentsia “run away,” as workers perceived it ? Writing of the populists, historian Radkey offers the following explanation:

In the trough of the revolution (many) had gone into public service or social work as civil servants in zemstvos and municipalities, as functionaries in the cooperative societies, where the daily routine and outlook induced were alike deadening to the revolutionary split. Others had entered the professions. All were getting older. [53]

But it seems rather unlikely that so profound a social transformation as the economic integration of the intelligentsia into the existing order could have taken place in the space of a decade. Besides, one has to wonder how the socialist intellectuals earned their living before the defeat of the 1905 revolution, since they could not all have been professional party activists or hungry students. And if the generation of 1905 was getting older, what of the students of 1917, most of whom were also hostile to the October Revolution. The Menshevik A.N. Potresov, who was on the extreme right wing of his party, observed in May 1918: “'In February [1917] we saw the common joy of the students and petty bourgeois. In October, students and bourgeois have become synonymous.” [54]

A more reasonable explanation of the “flight of the intelligentsia” should be sought in the class polarisation of Russian society that fully emerged  in the course of the Revolution of 1905, when the bourgeoisie, frightened by the workers’ militancy in promoting their social demands, notably the eight-hour workday, and enticed by very limited political concessions offered by a shaken autocracy, turned against the workers’ and peasant movements, notably by organizing in the fall of 1905, together with the state, a mass lockout of Petrograd’s workers, who were striking for  the eight-hour workday. [55] When the workers’ movement recovered in 1912-14 from the defeat of that revolution, their strikes typically put forth at once both political demands addressed to the autocracy and economic demands for the industrialists. And on their part, the industrialists collaborated closely with the Tsarist police to put down workers’ political as well as economic actions and to repress their activists.[56]

It was during this pre-war period that the Bolsheviks became the hegemonic political force among the workers. What distinguished the Bolshevik wing of social democracy from the Menshevik was its evaluation of the bourgeoisie, including its left, liberal wing, as fundamentally opposed to a democratic revolution. The Mensheviks, on their part, considered that the bourgeoisie’s leadership in that revolution was absolutely critical. The peasants, whom Lenin proposed as allies for the workers, were, in the Mensheviks’ view, incapable of providing national political leadership. If that role did not fall to the bourgeoisie, then it would of necessity fall to the workers. But the workers at the head of a revolutionary government would inevitably adopt measures that undermined bourgeois property rights. They would make “socialist experiments” that would prove disastrous in backward Russian conditions, leading inevitably to defeat of the revolution. And so, Mensheviks in the pre-war years called in vain on the workers to restrain their “strike passion”: they did not want to frighten the liberals, who were growing increasingly alienated from the rotten autocratic regime, away from revolution.

As we have seen, the left intelligentsia embraced the position of the Mensheviks and SRs, not that of the Bolsheviks and workers. They argued that a worker-led revolution in a backward peasant country would inevitably be crushed. The following episode, recounted in the memoir of a Petrograd metalworker, illustrates the division between the workers and left intellectuals.  

I. Gordkienko, a metalworker and Bolshevik, along with two of his comrades, who, like himself, were originally from Nizhnyi Novgorod, Maksim Gorky’s home town, decided to pay their zemlyak (fellow countryman) a visit: “Can it be that A. M. Gorky has completely moved away from us?” they asked themselves. In 1918 Gorky was an editor of the Menshevik-Internationalist paperNovaia zhizn’, which was harshly critical of the new Soviet regime, attacking especially its ineptitude, a result, in the paper’s view, of it having pushed away the intelligentsia. What particularly angered workers was that, while the papers’ editors criticized the government, they stood aside and refused to participate in it to make things better. For example, at a conference of Petrograd’s factory committees in February 1918, one of the delegates spoke bitterly of the “sabotaging intelligentsia of Gorky'sNovaia zhizn’, who are busy criticising the Bolshevik government while they themselves do nothing to lighten the tasks of this government.”[57]

 At Gorky’s home, the conversation soon turned to politics:

Aleksei Maksimovich, lost in thought, spoke: “It’s hard for you boys, very hard.”

“And you, Aleksei Maksimovich, you’re not making it any easier,” I replied.

“Not only doesn’t he help. He is even making it harder for us,” said Ivan Chugurin.

“Ekh, boys, boys, you are such fine lads. I feel sorry for you. Listen in this sea, no, in this ocean of petty bourgeois, peasant elemental forces, you are only a speck of sand. How many of you solid Bolsheviks are there? A handful. In life, you are like a drop of oil in the ocean, a thin, thin ribbon. The slightest wind, and it will snap.”

“You speak in vain, Aleksei Maksimovich. Come to us, to the Vyborg District. Take a look around. Where there were 600 Bolsheviks, there are thousands now.”

“Thousands, but raw, unshod, and in other cities even these are lacking.”

“The same is taking place, Aleksei Maksimovich, in the other cities and villages. Everywhere the class struggle is intensifying.”

“That's why I love you, for your strong faith. But that’s also why I fear for you. You will perish, and then everything will be thrown back hundreds of years. It’s terrible to contemplate.”

A couple of weeks later, the three returned and found N.N. Sukhanov and D.A. Desnitskii at Gorky’s apartment. They too were left-Menshevik intellectuals and editors of  Novaya zhizn’.

Again, Aleksei Maksimovich spoke of to the petty bourgeois sea. He lamented that there were so few of us old underground Bolsheviks, that the party was so young and inexperienced... Sukhanov and Lopata affirmed that only a madman could talk of a proletarian revolution in so backward a country as Russia. We protested determinedly. We said that behind the facade of all-Russian democracy,[58] they were defending the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie...

In the course of the conversation, Aleksei Maksimovich walked over to the window that overlooked the street. He then quickly walked over to me, seized me by the sleeve and pulled me toward the window. “Take a look,” he said in an angry and injured voice. What I saw was really disgraceful. Near a bed of flowers, on the freshly cut green lawn, a group of soldiers was sitting. They were eating herring and throwing the garbage onto the flower bed.

“And it’s the same thing at the People’s House[59]: the floors are waxed, spittoons have been placed in every comer and next to the columns. But just look at what they do there,” angrily said Maria Fedorovna, [Gorky’s wife] who managed the People’s House.

“And with this crowd, the Bolsheviks intend to make a socialist revolution,” spitefully said Lopata. “You have to teach, educate the people, and then make a revolution.”

And who is going to teach and educate them? The bourgeoisie?” one of us asked.

“And how would you go about doing it?” inquired Aleksei Maksimovich, now smiling.

“We would like to do it differently,” I replied. “First overthrow the bourgeoisie, then educate the people. We’ll build schools, clubs, people's houses...”

“But that’s not realizable,” declared Lopata.

“For you, it isn’t; for us it is,” I answered.

“Well, maybe they will, the devils, eh?” said Aleksei Maksimovich.

“We definitely will achieve it,” one of us replied, “and it will be all the worse for you.”.

“Oho! You’re threatening. How will it be worse for us?” asked Aleksei Maksimovich, laughing.

“In this way: with or without you, we will do what we have to do under the leadership of Ilyich [Lenin], and then they will ask you where you were and what you were doing when we were having such a hard time.” [60]

Lenin gave a strikingly similar account of a conversation in the summer of 1917 with a well-to-do lawyer.

This lawyer was once a revolutionary, a member of the Social- Democratic, and even Bolshevik, Party. Now he is all fright, all anger at the rampaging and uncompromising workers: “Okay, I understand the inevitability of a social revolution; but here, given the decline in the level of the workers as a result of the war[61]... that isn’t a revolution, it’s an abyss.”

He would be prepared to recognise the social revolution, if history led up to it as peacefully, calmly, smoothly and accurately as a German express train enters a station. A very proper conductor opens the door of the car and proclaims: “Station “Social Revolution”. Alle aussteigen [Everyone out]!” In such a case, why not shift from the position of an engineer working for the Tit Tityches[62] to that of an engineer working for workers’ organisations…

This man has seen strikes. He knows what a storm of passions the most ordinary strike arouses, even in the most peaceful times. He, of course, understands how many millions of times more powerful this storm must be when the class struggle has raised up the entire toiling people of a huge country, when war and exploitation have brought millions of people almost to despair, people whom the landowners have tortured, whom the capitalists and Tsarist bureaucrats have plundered and oppressed for decades. He understands all this “theoretically”; he recognises all this only with his lips; he is simply frightened by the “extraordinarily complex situation.” [63]

N. Sukhanov offered a similar explanation for the position of the left Mensheviks:

We stood against the coalition and the bourgeoisie and alongside the Bolsheviks. We did not merge with them because some aspects of positive Bolshevik creativity, as well as their propaganda methods revealed the future odious face of Bolshevism to us. It was an unbridled, anarchistic, petty-bourgeois elemental force [stikhiya], that was eliminated by Bolshevism only when it again had no masses behind it.[64]

Fear of the stikhia, the peasantry first of all, was an important aspect of Menshevism that helps to explain the party’s rejection of the October Revolution and its insistence on a coalition with the liberals, and failing that, with “the rest of democracy,” notably the intelligentsia.

But the left intelligentsia’s concern about the insufficiently developed political culture and consciousness of the poplar masses no doubt had a basis, one has to wonder how their decision to stand aside from the struggle could be justified, since the revolution was going ahead in any case. In the conditions of profound polarisation between the classes, the alternative to the Soviet government defended by the intelligentsia, left intelligentsia included, was never clear, and least of all to workers. But in fact, there was no alternative, except defeat of the revolution. As a Bolshevik worker told a conference of worker and Red-army delegates in May 1918, “We are accused of sowing civil war. But there is here a big mistake, if not a lie… Class interests are not created by us. They are a question that exists in life, a fact, before which all must bow.”[65]  That is why, despite the terrible deprivations and excesses of the civil war, the workers and peasants, some more actively, others passively, continued to support the Soviet regime.

Gorky’s concern about the uncultured, politically unenlightened masses was no doubt sincere. But the revolution was proceeding with or without the intelligentsia. On the face of it, it made more sense to take active part in it in order to ease its path and to try to limit its excesses. Some intellectuals, of course did make that choice. A certain Brik, a cultural figure in Petrograd, wrote this to Novaia zhizn’ in early December 1917 :

To my surprise, I find myself on the Bolshevik electoral list to the municipal duma. I am not a Bolshevik and am against their cultural policy. But I cannot let matters slide. It would be a disaster if the workers were left to themselves to set policy. Therefore, I will work - but under no (external) discipline. Those who refuse to work and wait for the counterrevolution to restore culture are blind. [66]

In December, a new Union of Internationalist Teachers was formed, after some of the teachers decided to secede from the All-Russian Union of Teachers over the issue of the teachers’ strike. The new organization declared that it was “impermissible that schools should be used as a political weapon,” and they called upon the teachers to cooperate with the regime to create a new socialist school. [67]

V.B. Stankevich, a Popular Socialist (right populist) and military commissar under the Provisional Governement, took a similar position in a letter to his “political friends,” written in February or March 1918:

By now, we have to see that the elemental forces of the people are on the side of the new government. There are two paths before us: to continue the irreconcilable struggle for power or to adopt the peaceful, constructive work of a loyal opposition…

Can the former ruling parties [in the Provisional Government] say that they are now so experienced that they can manage the tasks of running the country, which have become harder, not easier? Why, in essence, there is not a single programme that we can oppose to that of the Bolsheviks. And a fight without a programme is in no way better than an adventure of Mexican generals. But even if there were the possibility of creating a programme, we have to see that we lack the forces to carry it out. Why, to overthrow Bolshevism, not formally but in reality, the united forces of all – from the social revolutionaries to the extreme right - would be needed. And even then, the Bolsheviks would turn out to be stronger…

There remains one path: the path of a united popular front, united national work, common creation… So what will be tomorrow? Continuation of the aimless, meaningless and, in essence, adventuristic attempt to wrest power? Or working together with the people, feasible efforts to help it deal with the difficulties that stand before Russia, united in peaceful struggle for eternal political principles, for truly democratic foundations of government of the country![68]

The point is that the position adopted by the majority of the intelligentsia did not seem to follow from the reasons that they offered for it. And that leads one to ask if there were not other reasons. It seems that, when it came down to it, most of the socialist intelligentsia turned out to be only “the most radical part of the bourgeoisie,” as the Left SR paper concluded. As long as the task of the revolution had been to overthrow the semifeudal autocracy, to establish a liberal democracy, they could support and even spur on the popular movement. But when it emerged - and it began to emerge already in the course of the Revolution of 1905 -  that in Russian conditions, the revolution would transform itself into a struggle against the bourgeoisie itself and so against the social order of the bourgeoisie, the left intelligentsia began to feel the ground tremble under its feet.

They felt their position in society threatened. And despite everything, they enjoyed certain privileges, at least in terms of prestige and status, sometimes also income and professional autonomy. These privileges, and a genuine mistrust and fear of the “unbridled”, “uncultured” masses, bound them to the existing social (capitalist), if not political, order.

In retrospect, of course, one is tempted to argue that the left intelligentsia was right. After all, one of Lenin’s major themes in his last years was the urgent need to raise the cultural level of the people. That level, especially the level of political culture among the peasantry, which constituted the great mass of the population, was a major factor in the rise to power of the bureaucracy under the leadership of Stalin. But one has to ask if the intelligentsia, by the hostile position it adopted toward the October Revolution, did not itself contribute to this outcome. 

[1]          Cited in S.P. Melgunov,The Bolshevik Seizure of Power, (ABC-CAO : 1972), p. 90.

[2]          In contrast to the “bourgeois intelligentsia,” people like P.V. Miliukov, professor of history and leader of the Kadet Party, a liberal party that became hegemonic among the propertied classes (“census society”) in 1917, the “democratic intelligentsia” were sympathisers of the popular classes (workers and peasants) and supporters of the various socialist parties. In the contemporary terminology of the Russian Left, they were part of “revolutionary democracy,” along with the workers and peasants.

[3]          K. Bazilevich, Professional'noe dvizhenie rabotnikov sviazi (Moscow : 1927), 33.

[4]Znamia truda, Dec. 17, 1917.

[5]Volia naroda, Nov. 6, 1917. Sorokin was Kerenskii's personal secretary, later to become one of the deans of American academic sociology.

[6]    M. Shatz and J Zimmerman, ed.s,Vekhy, Routeledge, N.Y. , 1994.

[7]          O. Radkey,The Sickle under the Hammer, Columbia University Press, N.Y.,  1963, pp. 469-70. See alsoZnamia truda, (November 15, 1917), on the populist intelligentsia’s support for the Russia’s participation in the world war.

[8]    L.M. Kleinbort,Ocherki rabochei intelligentsii, Petrograd, 1923, pp. 176-177.

[9]          L.H. Haimson, “The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905-1917,” in M. Cherniavsky,The Structure of Russian History, N. Y., Random House, 1970), p. 346.

[10]Raznochintsy - from the non-aristocratic classes.

[11]         A. S. Shliapnikov,Kanun semnadisatovo goda, Moscow-Petrograd, 1923, p. 99.

[12] K. Orlov,Zhizn’ rabochego revoliutsionnera. Ot 1905 k 1917 g., Leningrad, 1925, p. 29.

[13] M.P. Artsybaev, a popular writer of the period, who writings were considered pornographic.

[14] Social-democrats who, following the defeat of the Revolution of 1905, argued for the abandonment of illegal political organization and activity.

[15] A. Martsionovskii,Zapiski revoliutsionnera-bol'shevika, (Saratov, 1923), 89. This was Martsionovskii's perception of the situation. In fact, in the capitals at least, students played a not insignificant role in 1912-14, especially in the early stages (see for example, E.E. Kruze's articlein Istoria rabochikh leningrada, vol. I, (Leningrad : 1972, 419). But that role was not even remotely comparable to their role in 1905 or in the liberation movement that had preceded it. But as far as the intelligentsia as a whole is concerned, Martsionovskii's picture is essentially accurate.

[16]  V.B. Stankevich, a Popular Socialist (moderate left), wrote of the propertied classes in this period: “Officially, they celebrated, blessed the revolution, shouted “hurray” for the fighters for freedom, decorated themselves with ribbons and marched around sporting red banners. Everyone said “we”, “our” revolution, “our” victory, “our” freedom. But in their hearts, in intimate conversation, they were horrified, they shuddered and felt themselves captives of a hostile elemental milieu that was travelling along an unknown path.” V.B. Stankevich,Vospominaniya 1914-1919, L., 1926., p. 33.

[17]Novaia zhizn', Oct. 18, 1917.

[18]         Op.cit., Jan. 4, 1918..

[19]         Radkey, op.cit., 159.

[20]Vtoraia i tret'ia obshchegorodskie konferentsii bol'shevikov v iule i sentiabre 1917g., (Moscow-Leningrad : 1927), p. 28.

[21]Shestoi vserossiiskii s'ezd RSDRP(b). Protokoly, Moscow, 1958, p. 45.

[22]         SeePerepiska sekretariata TseKa RSDRP(b) s metsnymy organizatsiamy, mart-oktiabr' 1917 Moscow, 1957, passim.

[23]Rabochaia gazeta, June 20, 1917.

[24]Nakanune Oktiabr'skovo vooruzhennovo vosstania v Petrograde, Moscow : 1957, p. 152.

[25]Znamia truda, November 17, 1917.

[26]        Oktiabr’skaia revoliutsia i fabzavkomy, Moscow , 1927, vol I, p.189.

[27]         Op. cit, p. 188.

[28]         Ibid.

[29]         Op. cit.,  208

[30]  P.P. Riabushinskii was a major banker and industrialist, considered to be on the left wing of his class. But in a speech in August 1917 before representatives of the business class, he bitterly attacked the soviets, declaring the that “long bony hand of hunger” would probably have to grasp those false friends of the people, “those members of various committees and soviets,” in order for them to come to their senses. (Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Rossii nakanune Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi sotialisticheskoi revoliutsii, vol. 1, M. 1957, pp. 200-201.) In left and workers’ circles generally, this was received as an open admission that the industrialists were indeed conducting a creeping, hidden lockout, closing down the factories and creating mass unemployment in order to then crush a weakened workers’ movement militarily. Riabushinksii, as a result, became the personification of thekapitalist-lokautchik in left and worker circles.

[31]Oktiabr’skaia revoliutsia i fabzavkomy, vol. 1, p. 208.

[32]         Op. cit., p. 206.

[33]         Op. cit. p. 167.

[34]Novaia zhizn', Nov. 13, Dec. 8, 22 and 30, 1917.

[35]Zaniatia pervoi moskovskoi oblastnoi konferentsii, (Moscow : 1918), 47-48, cited in N. Lampert,The Technical Intelligentsia in the Soviet Union 1926-1935, PhD thesis, C.R.E.E.S., University of Birmingham, U.K. : 1976, 19.

[36]         A.L. Popov,Oktiabr'skii perevorot, (Petrograd : 1919), 364.

[37]Novaia zhizn’, December 5, 1917. See alsoOktiabr'skoe vooruzhennoe vosstanie v Petrograde, (Moscow : 1957), 368, 514-75 ; and C. Volin, “Deiatel' nost' men'shevikov v profsoiuzakh pri sovetskoi vlasti,” Inter-University Project on the History of Menshevism, paper No. 13, October 1962, p. 28.

[38]  Those who called for Russia’s defeat in the war as a spur to revolution.

[39]  Reference to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 1918 that ceded large parts of the former Russian empire  to the Germans in return for ending the war with Russia.

[40]Znamia truda, January 18, 1918. V.V. Veresaev’s little-known, but beautifully written, novel,V tupike, about the civil war in Crimea (first published in 1924) offers a strikingly similar portrayal of the political outlook of the left intelligentsia.

[41]Znamia truda, November, 8, 1917.

[42]Novaia zhizn', November 4, 1917.

[43]         Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Sankt-Peterburga, opis' 9, fond 2, delo 11, list 45.

[44]         Ibid.

[45]Znamia truda, November, 8, 1917.

[46]         Op. cit., Nov.8, 1917.

[47]         Pitirim Sorokin's definition in November 1917 of the “creative forces” of society – which he opposed to “pseudo-democracy” -  is telling: “Onto the stage now must come, on the one hand, the intelligentsia, the carrier of intellect and conscience, and on the other, the authentic democracy, the cooperative movement, the Russia of the dumas and zemstvos, and the conscious (!) village. Their time has come,”(Volia naroda, November 6, 1917). All organizations he listed were dominated by moderate socialists and Kadets and lacked any mass political support. Conspicuous by their absence in Sorokin’ list are the workers and soldiers, and, of course, all the “unconscious” village, the peasants who supported the Left SRs and the Bolsheviks and who had refused to wait in vain for the Provisional Government to adopt land reform.

[48]Znamia truda, Dec. 17, 1917.

[49]Novaia zhizn’, Dec. 12, 1917.

[50]  N.I. Guchkov, major Russian industrialist and Chairman of the Fourth State Duma.

[51]Novaia zhizn'. December 6. 1917. Actually. this was not quite accurate. in 1905, the intelligentsia, organised in the Union of Unions, did participate in the strike movement in the fall. But that was the first and last time. They gave no active support to the colossal strike movements of 1912-1914 and 1915-1916.

[52]         L.H. Haimson,The Mensheviks, (Chicago : 1975). 102-103. The Mensheviks, as a party, reoriented themselves following the German revolution in November 1918 and adopted a position of loyal opposition to the Soviet government.

[53]         Radkey. op. cit., 469-470.

[54]Znamia bor’by, May 21, 1918.

[55]         Ia. A. Shuster,Peterburgski rabochie v 1905-1907 gg., (Leningrad : 1976), 166-168.

[56]         “The Workers’ Movement after Lena,” in L. H. Haimson,Russia’s Revolutionary Experience, N.Y., Columbia University Press, 2005, pp. 109-229.

[57]Novaia zhizn’, Jan. 27, 1918

[58] The Menshevik-Internationalist position was that the political basis of the government had to be broadened to include all of “democracy.” That term was always vague but it meant  the middle strata of society, and in particular the intelligentsia.

[59]   An institution where popular meeting and cultural events were held.

[60]         I. Gordienko,Iz boevogo proshlovo, (Moscow : 1957), 98-101.

[61]  Reference to the influx of peasants into the expanding arms factories.

[62]  Tit Titych was a despotic rich merchant in N. Ostrovsky’s playShouldering Another's Troubles.

[63]         V.I. Lenin,Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., (Moscow, 1962), vol. 34, 321-322..

[64]         Sukhanov, op. cit., vol. 6, 192.

[65]Pervaya konferentsiya rabochikh I krasngvardveiskikh deputatov 1-go gorodksovo raiona, Petrgorad, 1918, p. 248.

[66]Novaia zhizn', Dec. 5, 1917.

[67]         Op. cit., Dec. 6, 9, 13, 1917. Veresaev’s novel, mentioned in footnote 42, presents examples of that position, as well as of the other, adopted by most of the left intelligentsia.

[68] I.V. Orlov, “Dva puti pered nimi,”Istoricheskii arkhiv, 1997, no. 4, pp. 77-80.

Interview of Panagiotis Sotiris by Thomas E. Goes.

Originally published in http://www.zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/ein-post-nationales-volk-schaffen/

From the 'nation that was' to the 'people to come’

1.       How would you describe the political situation in Greece today?

The political situation is determined by the rhythm of the imposition of the austerity policies and neoliberal reforms imposed by the EU, the IMF and the ECB, under the terms of the Third Memorandum. In fact, as part of the constant evaluation processes, which are part of the Memoranda, the SYRIZA - ANEL government has just signed what equals another Memorandum, accepting huge budget surpluses along with extra cuts on pensions and extra taxation in beginning 2019. At the same time 14 regional Airports have just been privatised and sold to a consortium led by FRAPORT and the government is planning the privatisation of large number of public thermoelectric stations.

The main opposition party, the centre-right New Democracy, which leads the polls, is calling for even more aggressive neoliberal policies, and all systemic political forces accept the inevitability of the austerity packages. The Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn still has a significant presence, despite the trial of its leadership that is underway and is attempting to make a return to the streets with attacks etc. On the left of the political spectrum, the Communist Party (KKE) combines anticapitalist rhetoric with sectarianism and an insistence that no immediate gains are possible and a rejection of any ‘transition’ demands such as exit from the Eurozone. Apart from that, the Greek Left is marked by the difficulties of cooperation and coordination of the forces the anti-EU Left (Popular Unity and ANTARSYA).

The social situation in Greece is very difficult because of the prolonged austerity policies and an economic depression without precedent. Wages are very low, especially for young people, the official unemployment rate is still over 21%, most new posts are part-time and precarious, there is a mass flight of highly qualified degree-holders abroad. A sense that there is no future prevails leading to a mixture of fear and atomised despair instead of the sense that change is possible that prevailed until 2015. The capitulation of the government of Alexis Tsipras during the summer of 2015 despite the tremendous show of determination from the part of the subaltern classes in the referendum has enhanced a feeling of helplessness and of the impossibility of change. This can account for the absence until now of social explosions despite the severity and harshness of the measures. It is only on particular concrete and localised battles and in practices of solidarity towards refugees that you still see some of the dynamics of the previous period.

At the same time, the elements of a deep political crisis and a potential crisis of hegemony are still here. The dominant classes are in no position to offer a positive narrative towards the subaltern classes and there is a constant erosion of any sense of democratic procedure. However, without a reconstitution of the possibility of an alternative it would be difficult to see social explosions or mass movements fuelled by the belief in the possibility of change.

2.       What are the reasons for this development?

The reasons for this development have to do with the inability of the Greek Left to actually have a strategy of ruptures that could stand up to the pressure by the EU, the IMF and the Troika. It was obvious that there was no progressive solution inside the Eurozone and the EU treaties, because they represented exactly the condition of reduced sovereignty and embedded neoliberalism that led to the Memoranda. After the 2010-12 movement sequence, which at certain points came close to having an almost insurrectionary character, especially during the so-called “Movement of the Squares”, most people placed their hopes upon a political change that would bring along a change in policies.

SYRIZA represented to the eyes of many people the way towards a political solution, since the ‘normal’ process of movements inducing pressure upon governments to change policies out of fear of political cost was no longer functioning in Greece. However, the deeply rooted Europeanism of SYRIZA and the belief (which also represented the dominant thinking of the bourgeois forces) that an exit from the Eurozone and the EU would be a disaster led to the capitulation of the summer of 2015 and the signing of the Third Memorandum. The fact that the government that supposedly represented the possibility of a rupture with austerity and represented the hope of change capitulated, enhanced the feeling that there is no alternative to austerity and led to disillusionment, despair, increased insecurity and a turn away from collective struggles.

The crisis of the Left became crisis of the movement. This unpreparedness for the level and intensity of the confrontation was not limited to SYRIZA but was a symptom of the entire Greek Left. Even the forces that had an anti-EU position failed to have a concrete plan for the exit process along with the necessary transition program. Moreover, despite the turn of large segments of the subaltern strata towards the Left, this remained within the limits of electoral representation. There was no effort to work upon the tectonic shifts in political representation in order to work towards a new ‘historical bloc’ in Greek society, as the combination of an alliance of the subaltern classes, an alternative narrative for society and the elaboration of new forms of organising new potential (counter)hegemonic apparatuses, based upon the collective experience and ingenuity emerging in the struggles. 

In Europe today we are experiencing the crisis of the European integration process which coincides, and is related dialectically to, with the global economic crisis and the fact that a new regime of accumulation that would guarantee long term profitability has not emerged yet, with the crisis of neoliberalism as a hegemonic project and with the crisis of a certain form of internationalisation of capital. 

The crisis of European Integration is evident in the very fact of Brexit – when the 5^th economy of the world decides to exit the supposedly most advanced example of economic integration, obviously things are not really functioning – and also in the inability to answer the dynamics of the crisis, since the particular brand of European austerity only made things worse. Moreover, the systemic social violence unleashed upon peripheral societies by means of the austerity packages exemplifies the problems with European integration.

All these have also taken the form of a deep political crisis running through most European societies. There is a growing sense of distance between the political elites and European societies exemplified in widespread distrust for politicians and the feeling that the ‘revolving doors’ between political and business leave no room for actual social needs. This also takes the need for a renewed demand for democracy and popular sovereignty, a demand that so far mainly the Far Right has attempted to hijack by mixing it with its own racist, reactionary, xenophobic agenda.

I think that the Left should base its policies upon the main contradictions of this process. At the level of the economy it is obvious that today European integration and especially the monetary, financial and institutional architecture of the Eurozone and the various austerity mechanisms inscribed in European Treaties are eroding any sense of a ‘European social model’ and have been inducing austerity policies and neoliberal reforms. A rupture with austerity, as the dominant strategy of capital in Europe, means a rupture with the Eurozone and the framework of the EU treaties. There is no room for alternatives within the current architecture of the EU.

On the political level the crucial contradiction is the actual erosion of any pretension of democracy with the reduced sovereignty condition of the EU. In this sense, reclaiming popular sovereignty not in the nationalist sense of ‘national strength’ but in the progressive sense of reclaiming the collective democratic potential for self-determination is an urgent priority with regard to the crisis of legitimacy of the current forms of governance in Europe both at the national and the EU level.

Ideologically, this requires an intervention of the Left in the open terrain of the struggle to redefine the people. In the current context of the conflict between the attempt to incorporate traditional invocations of the people in the European context, with all the references to Europe as our common home, and the Far Right’s attempt to reclaim the people but in reactionary, nationalist and racist terms, the Left should attempt to reconstruct an emancipatory conception of the people as the unity of all those that share the same demands, struggles and hopes for a better life, regardless of ethnic origin, race, nationhood, or religion, a unity in struggle against the forces of capital.

4. On the German Left it is not very common and popular to talk about “the people”, much less to see it as something that has to be part of its strategy. For example, popular classes – in German Volksklassen – isn’t a notion that is used. Partly this is due to our history. Moreover, for larger sections of the radical left “the people” is an issue of the right. What would you answer to these comrades?

It is true that in the German context the connotation of the word ‘people’ and its derivatives are usually associated with the Far-Right and even Nazism. This is due to the fact that in German people and nation are treated as similar concepts (something made evident by the fact that the German word ‘Volk’ can be translated as either people or nation).

However, I do not think it is only a question of ‘translation’. This highlights an actual tension running through the notion of the people. On the one hand, we have indeed the identification of the people and the nation, in the sense of an ‘imagined community’ of supposedly common history and identity that enables the full establishment of bourgeois hegemony, legitimises class exploitation and oppression (since we are all part of the ‘people) and can fuel nationalism and racism.

On the other hand, we can have a different notion of the people, a notion that distinguishes and opposes the people to the nation. In such a perspective, the people has nothing to do with common ‘history’ or ethnicity, but with a common condition of subalternity, resistance and struggle in contemporary societies. In such a perspective, the people have nothing to do with nationalism or with the abstract identification of the ‘sovereign people’ offered by constitutional texts; rather it refers to the potential unity of all those segments of society that, one way or the other, depend upon selling their labour power in order to survive, the potential alliance of the subaltern classes.

This is also a post-national and post-colonial conception of the people, since it is based upon a common condition of exploitation, oppression and struggle, regardless of race, religion or ethnicity. It is the potential ‘collective will’ of all those that live at a specific geographical space, share the same condition and the same desire for a better life and want to struggle together, against all those that exploit and oppress them. In this sense, immigrants and refugees are part of this potential people, in contrast to capitalists, bankers and rentiers. We can say that we talking about a ‘people to come’ instead of a ‘nation that was’. We are not talking a supposedly common past, but about a common present and future. 

I am not saying that this is an easy task, since it requires a collective effort to build common struggles, to create common spaces of struggle, to fully acknowledge, accept and face the trauma of racism and colonialism, to see the histories, cultures and identities of migrants and refugees as contributions to the formation of a new popular culture, based upon solidarity and common struggle but also upon the struggle against all forms of racism. The crucial aspect will be exactly a new ‘narrative’ for our societies, against the embedded neoliberalism of the EU, a renewed socialist project based upon the collective elaboration, experimentation and ingenuity of social movements in struggle.

In such a perspective, this reference to the people as part of a strategy for a new historic bloc (the articulation of a broad alliance of the subaltern, a program of deep transformations and new forms of organisation and collective intellectuality), is rooted in a Marxist class perspective and represents an intensification of class antagonism, both social and political. This perspective is opposed to what we can describe as ‘left populism’ which is based upon a conception of the people as a discursive construction and as a result of forms of political communication.

Theoretically, it is opposed because I insist of a class perspective, namely the people as class alliance related to the dynamics and contradictions of capitalist accumulation. Politically, it is opposed because I think that ‘left populism’ treats the question of organisation in terms of ‘electoral machines’; whereas I insist on the need for a united front based which could bring together different currents, movements, forms of representation but also help the emergence of new forms of collective critical political intellectuality as Gramsci has suggested, in an attempt to create the ‘Modern Prince’ of our times.

5.Could you deepen a little bit more, how "creating a people" is related to class struggle and class alliances? Some people would argue that there is no need for a collective subject called "the people", as wage earners are the majority of the population. Instead of "creating a people in struggle" the would argue for a broad mobilisation of the working class.

When I refer to “creating a people” I am referring to a complex process of articulating not just a social alliance but what we might call, using Gramscian terms, a potential historic bloc, that is the historical dynamic of a potential working class hegemony, in the sense of not only a broad social alliance of the subaltern classes, but also of a transitional program that could offer an alternative non capitalist narrative and political organisational forms of an expansive, participatory democracy from below that is the ‘superstructural’ form adequate to such a programme of profound social transformation and a new socialist perspective.

Although, I agree that in contemporary advanced capitalist social formations the vast majority of the subaltern classes can be defined in terms of wage earning, yet at the same time I think that simply calling them all “working class” is not very accurate. In this sense, we must still think in terms of a broad social alliance that comprises the working class, large segments of the traditional and new petty bourgeois social strata, state employees, youths, intellectuals etc. Poulantzas uses this reference to the people in the sense of a broad alliance under the hegemony of the working class and of course we can also think, in its own particular socio-historical context, the way Mao thought of the workers-peasants’ alliance in the Chinese revolution.

However, the people is not just a synonym for a social alliance. In my use of it, it refers to a particular political condition of radicalisation, politicisation, mass mobilisation, and confrontation with the forces of capital, national and international, and in this sense it requires also the emergence of a collective political subject, a left radical social and political front that could play the role of the “Modern Prince” in the formation and creation of such a people.

However, this emphasis on the political aspects of the construction of the people does not mean a detachment from class analysis. I strongly disagree with the tendency to treat the people as mainly a discursive construction or simply as the result of rhetorical or ideological interpellation, tendency one might see in thinkers but also political currents (the leadership of Podemos being the first to come to mind) influenced by the work of Laclau. Such an approach underestimates the importance of actual social and historical processes and conditions that create such a condition of social alliance inside the people. In contrast, I insist that processes such as increased exploitation, precariousness, job flexibility, privatisation of basic social infrastructure, indebtedness, all contribute to a common social condition, create common grievances and create the terrain for common struggles and demands for democracy and social justice. It is here in the common condition of exploitation, oppression, resistance and struggle that I see the potential for the emergence of the people.

6. Let us come back to the task of “defending popular sovereignty”. Isn't this a nationalist trap? For example, Marine Le Pen also claims to defend the people of Europe against the EU and - importantly - the German government. What would a strategy look like that doesn't fall into the trap of developing a nationalistic discourse? Or to put it differently: What is the difference between the right and the left defending sovereignty?

I would like to be very clear. In contemporary societies, in particular European societies we can no longer identify the people with the nation conceived as common ethnicity, history and culture. We must accept the reality of mass migration and of refugee waves, face the fact that the contemporary working class (and the other subaltern classes and social groups) is multinational, and of course deal with the real trauma of colonialism, not only as the dark side of recent European history but also, and mainly, as the persistence of colonialism inside modern European societies. Nationalism and racism (the distinction is not so easy nowadays), when reproduced inside the subaltern classes, lead to divisions and antagonisms that only help the forces of capital and their hegemony and domination.

That is why need a definition and conception of the people that is post-national and post-colonial. For me it is the unity of all those that live, work and struggle here (“here” meaning a particular European society), regardless of their origin, ethnicity, religion, gender etc. This requires extended forms that enable this unity (struggles for full political rights, opening up of trade unions and political organisation to migrants and refugees), but also an acceptance from the part of the movements of the ‘national’ population that migrants and refugees have their own right to their own histories, representations and forms of identification and, therefore, it is not a question of “assimilation” and “integration”. Moreover, one might say that the ‘national’ population must learn by means of this process of the actual histories of colonial domination and exploitation, in many instances occulted or distorted in official European histories.

Rather, we are talking about the construction of new complex forms of popular identities, based upon common conditions and struggles, that make use of these different elements, representations, imaginaries and histories as part a collective process of creating new forms of the “popular”, interlinked with processes of social transformation and a renewed socialist perspective. It is exactly this anti-nationalist and anti-colonial element that draws a line of demarcation and confrontation with the xenophobic Right and Far-Right.

Consequently, what I am referring to as “popular sovereignty” refers neither to the traditional ‘constitutional’ definition, not to a nationalist rhetoric. I am referring to the potential formation of a popular “collective will” namely a collective project of the subaltern classes, regardless of origin, ethnicity, religion, to become the leading forces of society against the forces of capital and in the aim of profound social transformation and experimentation with post-capitalist social forms. 

7. So what are the tasks for the European left today?

I think that the left in Europe must acknowledge and understand its deep strategic crisis and engage in a process of recomposition of all the elements that redefine the very essence of the Left. In a certain sense, what is needed is a ‘Constituent Process’ for the Left as a force of emancipation and transformation. This process requires

• An attempt to recompose and reconfigure the social movements and in general the organisation of the subaltern classes. Work within established trade union etc structures is indispensable, yet it is not enough. New forms or precariousness, mobility and flexible labour, especially for the younger segments of the labour force, require new forms of organising, new more inclusive structures, new forms of intervention that combine the work inside the workplace with solidarity and ‘external’ campaigns.  New challenges such as working with refugees and migrants require new forms of solidarity movements. The situation of youth, the ‘weak link’ and the target of all the violence of unemployment and capitalist restructuring requires new forms of youth movements. Moreover, all these require a new democracy of struggle, active participation by members and new forms of coordinating struggles. The Left should see this as an urgent aspect of the process of recomposition instead of just trying to be the left wing of existing trade union bureaucracies.
• An attempt to rethink strategy. Until now strategy for most currents of the Left meant thinking either in abstract terms about socialism or in tactical terms about a potential anti-neoliberal or anti-austerity government. This meant that real questions of strategy such as the relation between a transitional programme and socialist perspective or between participation in government and mobilisation from below were never discussed. When the Left actually confronted the question of power the results have been disastrous, as exemplified by the capitulation of SYRIZA. A rethinking of strategy must move, in my opinion, in two main directions. One has to do with the question of the programme. A transitional programme should not be only a set of grievances and demands, it must be an alternative, yet coherent narrative for societies and in Europe in should have the rupture with the Eurozone and the EU as the starting point of a programme based upon nationalisations, new forms of participatory democratic planning, workers’ control and self-management. The other question has to do with the question of power. The Left should have no illusions regarding governmental power, even if in conditions of acute political crisis there might be a possibility for the Left to achieve governmental power. However, from it is necessary to think this questions in terms of a ‘permanent dual power strategy’ which means the full development of popular struggles and forms and organising from below to counter the capitalist strategies and priorities inscribed in the very materiality of state apparatuses.
• An attempt to rethink the centrality of the united front. Taking into consideration the relative fragmentation of the forces of the radical Left in Europe the notion of a front acquires an urgency. However, we must avoid the tried and tested idea of the simple ‘anti-austerity front’ or even worse, as the case of the Italian Left in the 2000s exemplifies, of the front against a common enemy. We need fronts around common strategies which means around the main points of a transitional programme and clear positions on strategic issues. That is why today Europeanism is an important dividing line in the Left, because it represents the possibility of capitulation to the dominant capitalist strategy, as the case of Greece illustrates. We also need fronts that are not simple electoral campaigns but are actual democratic political processes, that enable members and militants to engage in the debates, that enable learning from the collective ingenuity and experimentation coming from struggles, movements and solidarity practices, that are, to borrow an expression from Gramsci, laboratories of new collective militant intellectualities. 

8. With regard to these considerations - what tasks do you see for the German Left today

It is not easy to indicate tasks to comrades from other countries. However, I think that it would be important if the German Left took a position against the current institutional, monetary and financial architecture of the EU and in particular of the Eurozone. It is important to explain to the broad masses of the working class and the other subaltern social groups that the Eurozone has not contributed to the prosperity of workers in Germany but only to the profit of German corporations. To remind us all that the price paid for the avoidance of the more ‘catastrophic’ aspects of the crisis has been austerity, extreme flexibilisation of labour relations, mini-jobs and intensified exploitation and to insist that in a next phase of the crisis (and the EU is more than crisis-prone) working class people will be the target of the attack.

In the sense, it is important to insist that the ‘German’ working class has much more in common with the new wave of migrants and refugees but also with the working people of the European South than with German corporations and their political representatives. I understand than in the current conjuncture this is not an easy task, however it is necessary. Simply criticising austerity and calling for “another EU” is not a solution and, in the end, enhances Europeanism and the hegemony of the bourgeoisie.

It is not possible to ‘reform’ the EU and recent developments offer the necessary proof.  Such a rupture with the dominant bourgeois strategy also calls for the elaboration of an alternative production model, a new project for society, beyond the simple anti-austerity demand of redistribution and increased social spending. Of course, I am not underestimating the importance and urgency of such demands; what I am stressing is that by themselves they do not offer a radical alternative to the existing social configuration, only a more progressive and just version of it. This cannot counter bourgeois hegemony. In contrast, a broader alternative narrative based on the rupture with the European project (in the sense that the EU and the Eurozone must be dismantled), nationalisations, new forms of workers’ control and a return to much more socially and ecologically sustainable productive practices instead of the competitiveness/export model, could be starting points. Along with the emphasis on the unity of working people beyond national, ethic, religious divisions.

Sara Salem recently joined the Historical Materialism editorial board and is a Research and Teaching Fellow at the University of Warwick in the UK. Sara’s research looks at questions of political economy, feminist and gender studies, postcolonialism, history, and Marxism in the particular context of the Middle East. She has recently published journal articles in the European Journal of Women’s Studies, Hypatia, the Review of African Political Economy, and Middle East Topics and Arguments. 

Frantz Fanon remains one of the most important writers on postcolonial issues in the world today. Although he died quite young, his many books and essays are a reminder of his immense intelligence, passion, and foresight. He was born in Martinique in 1925, and after studying in France and receiving a doctorate in psychiatry, moved to Algeria. These three geographical locations were to have an immense effect on the way he understood the world and the power structures that define it. His experiences with racism in France in particular left a strong mark, and it was then that he began to develop the ideas that would define Black Skin, White Masks. It was in Algeria, however, that Fanon both developed his most famous text on postcolonialism,The Wretched of the Earth, and where he became involved in the national fight for liberation from French colonialism.

In his excellent biography of Fanon, David Macey wrote:

Fanon was angry. His readers should still be angry too. Angry that the wretched of the earth are still with us. Anger does not in itself produce political programs for change, but it is perhaps the most basic political emotion. Without it, there is no hope (Macey 2000, 503).

In this piece, I want to first discuss the politics around teaching Fanon in today’s postcolonial world, and in particular in a post-Brexit Britain. What is it about Fanon that captures the hearts and minds of so many students, particularly students of colour? I then want to discuss the continuing debate around Fanon’s relationship to Marxism, looking at some of the ways in which Fanon’s work provides a refreshing lens on capitalism in the postcolonial world. 

Teaching Fanon

I started university teaching in the UK just a few months after the outcome of the Brexit vote, which meant that it was something students wanted to discuss often and that was connected to multiple topics in multiple classes. There is little doubt that Brexit brought to the surface many tensions that have undercut discussions around race, class, gender and nation. For many it came as a rude awakening; for others, it was far from surprising. Discussing Brexit in class, over coffee, and in reading groups, it became clear that many students were searching for ways of understanding what was happening. It turns out that, more than anyone else, Frantz Fanon seemed to provide the type of analysis they needed to make sense of the seemingly senseless.

I have been pleasantly surprised at how often Fanon comes up in the classroom. Given how little exposure most British students have to Fanon in general, I wasn’t expecting him to be a recurring presence in classes. Aside from my own inclination to use Fanon extensively, I found many students to be excited discussing his work and inspired by the new horizons it opened up. In particular, his work on double consciousness, liberation and racism in Western societies make him especially relatable to students of colour living in the current post-Brexit moment.

Fanon’s thinking is wide-ranging and touches on many topics, but there is a thread that ties it all together, and that is a focus on the colonial and postcolonial condition. This is precisely where I have found it most useful to teach Fanon: at the intersections of colonial rule, decolonisation, and postcolonial futures. In particular, I have found Fanon’s approach to Marxism an excellent lens through which to teach on the economic and political problems facing newly-independent nations. In a sense, he has been an excellent corrective to Marxist work that can often be Eurocentric and that often does not appeal to students whose everyday lives are very much racialized and tied to the global colour line. Class as an all-encompassing category simply does not grasp the reality of their worlds. Yet at the same time, given the power of the contemporary neoliberal phase of late capitalism, they can very much feel the effects of neoliberal restructuring in the UK. Class matters—but so does race, gender, sexuality, and a host of other categories.

One of the more memorable discussions I had was during a reading group meeting[1] where we discussed the antagonisms between the British ‘white working class’ and the rest of the working class who were Black, Asian and Eastern European. Precisely where one would expect to find solidarity, we instead find the same level of racism and sexism as in the rest of society. Numerous pieces have touched on the problems with romanticising the white working class and excusing their racism by arguing that they have been the most affected by neoliberal policies in the US, UK and Europe.[2]

However, in our discussion we approached the question from a Fanonian perspective, which allowed for a more nuanced understanding of how Eurocentrism has positioned white workers in an antagonistic relationship vis-à-vis non-white workers, and that this was a conscious historical development that ultimately benefitted capital. Understanding it, however, through an economistic class lens would not have revealed the racialisation involved in this divide and rule tactic that ultimately led to the Brexit vote turning out the way it did. Pushing this further, we also discussed how Fanon’s move to see Eurocentrism globally means locating Western workers at the international level, and how workers in Western nations were able to gain significantly in the 1950s and 1960s precisely because workers in the Third World were instead more intensely exploited.

Perhaps what seemed to draw so many students to Fanon was his insistence on always centring power. Power is everywhere; it is not an accident nor a coincidence. Some nations are powerful, others aren’t; some men are powerful, others are not. This happens historically and is far from natural. It is around this subject that the most interesting discussions happen. Discussions about how we got to where we are today—and how others were unable to get here. About what we mean by progress, and why we need to progress at all. About who we blame and who we hold accountable—and who slips out of the picture as a consequence. This focus on power was also extremely multifocal: power was exercised through politics and economics; but also through culture and values as well as through the psyche.

This also spoke to many students, who are trapped today between discussions around identity politics that can sometimes see identity simplistically and not pay enough attention to the structural on the one hand, and debates around structures such as capitalism that do not pay attention to identities such as race, gender and sexuality on the other. Fanon in many ways transcended this so-called divide, and I often wonder if this was because of his training as a psychoanalyst whose work has always traced the effects of colonialism on the psyche of oppressor and oppressed. This is what many students in post-Brexit Britain are dealing with today: double consciousness, daily racial and sexual forms of repression and oppression, and a worsening economic context that sets impossible standards. How this impacts the psyche of people of colour growing up today is an under-studied aspect of the racial impact of Brexit and Britain’s colonial history in general.

This focus on race, consciousness, colonialism, and power is precisely what makes his work on postcolonialism especially attractive to students living in a postcolonial world that seems to be in a constant state of crisis. Fanon’s position on power and the postcolony is neatly encapsulated in a question that he once asked: do African leaders have the right to govern their countries badly? For many students this was a strange question: it was a given that some countries are governed badly and others are governed well and it just so happened that the division between the two was a racial one. This is an assumption that has come out quite clearly in my teaching on both international development as well as Middle East politics: that there continues to be a global divide between countries that know how to run themselves and countries that seem to be in a total shambles, constantly in a state of war or poverty.

It is no surprise to find these assumptions everywhere: we see it day in and day out in the media, and it is often reproduced by both well-meaning, well-intentioned people. But Fanon pushes us to focus less on these differences and more on what caused them. Why is there poverty in some places and not others? Why are regions conflict-prone? Why do some people live well while others don’t? These are, incidentally, some of the same questions Marxists have asked for well over a century.

Fanon’s question about whether African leaders have the right to govern themselves is the question at the heart of postcolonial studies; at the heart of any class on the postcolonial world: who has the power to define, to act, and to simply be. It is by asking Fanon’s question today that we can return to Stuart Hall’s question why now? Because we see a continuity, and that is precisely why Fanon still matters. African leaders did not have that right when Fanon asked the question; they do not have that right today. The ‘post’ in postcolonial has not meant independence in the fullest sense of the word.

Marxists have rightly pointed to capitalism as an answer to the questions of global inequality. Fanon has, in turn, rightly noted that capitalism is never just about economics: it is a fully racialized project and that is why the line between those who have and those who do not have is often a racial line—for Fanon it is race, not class, which divides the zone of being and the zone of non-being. You can be poor and white and remain in the zone of being, where you have the automatic right to life; you can be rich and black and be in the zone of non-being—at the top of it, but in the zone nonetheless. This provocative challenge to economistic Marxism is what I move to next.

Elena Louisa Lange is a Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the University of Zurich, a philosopher and specialist on Japan. She has published in the Historical Materialism journal on 'Failed abstraction – The Problem of Uno Kōzō's Reading of Marx’s Theory of the Value Form' (2014, 22.1, 3-33) and is currently working on her monograph (to be published for the HM Book Series)Value without Fetish - Uno Kōzō's Theory of 'Pure Capitalism' in Light of Marx's Critique of Political Economy. This interview was updated for the HM website but conducted by Vincent Chanson and Frédéric Monferrand and originally published in French inPeriode.

VC & FM: “Japanese” Marxism is not well-known in the French-speaking [or English-speaking] worlds. Except for a study by Jacques Bidet, 'Kozo Uno et son école. Une théorie pure du capitalisme' in Dictionnaire Marx Contemporain, a special issue of Actuel Marx (Le marxisme au Japon, n°2, mai 2000) [see also 'Kôzo Uno and His School : A Pure Theory of Capitalism by Jacques Bidet in Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism (Edited by Jacques Bidet and Stathis Kouvelakis, 2009, Haymarket) and a few other texts, this tradition is missing in contemporary French Marxist debates. Could you briefly introduce its main currents and protagonists?

EL: Generally speaking, there has hardly been an intellectual in post-war Japan who has not at one point 'flirted' with Marxism. Influence of the re-shaping of the Marxist tradition after the war was so great in Japan that even conservative intellectuals knew they had to namedrop Marx to be taken seriously in public debates. Needless to say, Marx's and Marxist theories were suppressed in the early stages of the Japanese Marxist reception, the Meiji (1868-1912), the Taishō (1912-1926) and, mostly, in the early Shōwa period (1926-1945). When in the early Meiji period, the period of «Westernization » a massive and concentrated reception of Western philosophy took place (which mostly consisted in huge translation projects for which the imperial government installed a special ministry), it was of course, roughly speaking, only 'bourgeois philosophy', that is, German Idealism, British rationalism and empiricism and French philosophy of life (Bergson) that was supported by the government.

Yet, as a matter of fact, The Communist Manifesto was translated into Japanese as early as 1904 by Kōtoku Shūsui who was a political activist. But the early Meiji socialist movement was constantly persecuted. Also the 1920s saw a rise in publications dealing with Marxian theory, especially of the first volume ofCapital which was first translated in 1920, followed by volumes II and III in 1924. But generally a wider response was only possible after Japan was besieged by the US army – who, ironically, at first openly supported Marx studies at schools and universities. But 'Marx' was not an exclusively academic topic. Public debates have contributed to the Marxian impact in post-War Japanese society. Those debates, often roundtable-discussion style and taking place in Japanese newspapers like the Asahi Shinbun, which is probably comparable toLe Monde, have for very long been a lively part of the Japanese intellectual tradition. Generally a heavy and concentrated reception of even methodologically elaborate Marxology, especially in the Critique of Political Economy after the war, took place with the same vigour which had been given to the reception of Hegel and maybe Darwin in the late 19th century.

When talking about Marxist currents in Japan, one would of course have to mention the role of the Japanese Communist Party, its members, the dissidents, and the fights, like the famous debate on Japanese capitalism in the 1930s. But I will leave this out, since as far as I know Jacques Bidet has already introduced the main gist of the debate to the French speaking audience. Instead, I would like to pinpoint « heterodox » Marxist streams, if only to shortly introduce them. The most influential Marxist/Marxian currents were probably literary, philosophical, and cultural Marxism, with political-economic Marxism being the most academic. Well known-figures of the literary stream, especially the proletarian literary movement of the 1920s-1930s, cover writers as Nakano Shigeharu (1902-79), but also Yoshimoto Takaaki (1924-2012) who is the father of the famous writer Banana Yoshimoto, a popular figure of the left-wing student movement in 1968 and a literary Marxist.

As for philosophical Marxism, it is very difficult to pick only one or two names, but probably Hiromatsu Wataru (1933-1994) - Japan's best kept Marxist secret (since no texts are available in Western languages to date) - must be named. He was especially keen on the idea of reification and explored the term in all thinkable epistemological dimensions. Also Umemoto Katsumi (1912-1974) was a philosophical Marxist whose main reference texts were the Theses on Feuerbach andThe German Ideology. He was an important figure in the « Debate on Subjectivity » in 1946-48 that dealt with the question of the individual in historical materialism, often however a very limited discussion, and heavily influenced by Heideggerian-existentialist undertones. It should here be pointed out that often the language in which debates on Marx took place among philosophical Marxists were completely held in an existentialist idiom. Sartre was a superstar in Japan, and even people who were critical of him, talked very often of « being » and « nothingness ».

 In cultural Marxism, Tosaka Jun (1900-1945) must be named. Tosaka is a figure too important to be mentioned only in passing, so forgive my short account. A student of right-wing idealist philosopher Nishida Kitarō, he became very critical of idealism, and very quickly turned to materialism as a philosophical project. He founded the « Research Group on Materialism » (yuibutsu ron kenkyūkai) in 1932 where not only philosophical questions, but mostly problems of high actuality were discussed: the rise of fascism, the role of the media, ideology. He was of course arrested and died in prison in 1945. In my opinion, he was one of the few who took the 11th Thesis on Feuerbach seriously, and he was the only outspoken critic of Japanese society in a time when this was virtually impossible. Other « cultural » critics include the highly influential Maruyama Masao (1914-1996) – who however wasn't a Marxist. But his line of thought, which included psychoanalytical approaches towards a critique of society, is from its language often reminiscent of the Frankfurt School – without, of course, any acquaintance of it.

As for the Critique of Political Economy, the range of Marxist economists spreads from critics of poverty and capital accumulation in a general fashion to experts on Marxian value-form theory in the more specific sense. Needless to say, Uno Kōzō (1897-1977) was primarily a scholar in the last sense with profound knowledge of Marx's economy-theoretical work. During his lifetime, Uno had debates with many leftist contemporaries, and his collected works contain a lot of essays entitled « Answering to Prof. X's criticism », where « Prof. X » often was a rival – like Kuruma Samezō (1893-1932) – but also even his own students and fellow researchers, like, for example, Furihata Setsuo (1930-2009). Today, Uno is still considered a point of reference for many critical economists, and very often critically discussed. Professor Ōtani Teinosuke (born in 1934) who is professor emeritus of economy at Hōsei University in Tōkyō today proceeds the philological criticism that Uno's rival Kuruma Samezō started, and still holds frequent workshops on Marx's Capital or theGrundrisse.

VC & FM: From the early 1920’s, some intellectuals, as Kazuo Fukumoto for example, introduced some aspects of Marxist theory in Japan - more specifically some typical “Western Marxism” problematics like “alienation”, “reification”, etc. Do you consider these notions to be central in the Japanese debate? How would you organise thematically the relationship between Western Marxism, in its most Hegelian forms (Lukàcs, Korsch, the Frankfurt School), and “Japanese” Marxism?

EL: Generally, the fetish and value- problem along with an analysis of its reified forms have not been spectacularly featured in Japanese Marxism in general. To be sure, Georg Lukàcs' History and Class Consciousness had been partly translated as early as 1927. It just had not left such a terrible impact on the reception of the problem of reification. However, there are exceptions. As mentioned earlier, Hiromatsu Wataru has excessively dealt with the notion of reification. For him, there is a radical break between the early “Hegelian” term of alienation in Marx's early works, and the mature works with its notion of reification as treated in the theorem of theFetish Character of the Commodities in Capital vol. 1. But the latter one was incomplete in Hiromatsu's view, since the intra-subjective position was not entirely explored. Next to “Verdinglichung” (“reification”), he problematized “Versachlichung” (“objectification”), a more complete and thoroughgoing process in the act of exchange of commodities, and also between people.

Hiromatsu was however one of the few who clearly problematised value as fetish, and the forms in which social relations are consolidated as relations between things. You see, if the problem had been taken up, it was only considered in philosophical Marxism, not in economic-theoretical Marxism. But even with the philosophers, a materialist conception was often marred by the phenomenologist and existentialist – and often even idealist-Fichtean – idiom. This development may however change with the newly awakened broad interest in value theory, which as a matter of fact, cannot be silent about the fetish problem.

A newly published substantial work by the young researcher Sasaki Ryūji on Marx's Theory of Reification. Thinking Material as the Critique of Capitalism (2011) is hopefully a step in the direction of changing the neglected discussion in Japan. But it must be admitted that the discussion would have to recapitulate the long tradition that had already taken place in the West, for example in the Frankfurt School. Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse have not been taken too seriously as Marxist critics who intensely theorised the fetish problem. In Japan their texts were at best read as cultural hermeneutics (Benjamin) or sociology (Adorno, Marcuse). The reception of the Frankfurt school and its critical impact had accordingly not been overwhelming. For example, Alfred Sohn-Rethel's idea of “real abstraction”, however central to recent approaches in value-form theory, has to my knowledge not been discussed at all in Japan.

One could open a whole new chapter in the Marxian tradition if one were to theorize it in the Japanese context. This is all the stranger since, as mentioned above, Hegel was the main character taught in Japanese philosophy departments since the 19^th century. It however occurred only to very few Japanese intellectuals that there may be a “Hegelian Marxism”, the philosophers Mita Sekisuke (1906-1975) and Funayama Shin'ichi (1907-1994) with his emphasis on “anthropological materialism” being exceptions. But the rule of thumb is that Marxist economists in Japan shied away from theorising reification. It is interesting to see in this context that Mita Sekisuke was also a radical critic of Uno Kōzō. 

VC & FM: Uno Kōzō is one of the best-known “Japanese” Marxism figures in France. Could you give us a synthetic presentation of his theoretical work? One of the specificities of the Uno School is the elaboration of a “pure” theory of Capital. This “transcendental” goal seems quite counter-intuitive and speculative. Could you state its epistemological stakes?

EL: Uno's idea behind developing a “pure theory” of economy, as elaborated on in his seminal work Keizai genron (1950-2/ 1964), is much simpler than it would seem: to understand the structure of a “commodity society”, one would need to abstain from empirical and historical reflections in order to form a theory that can be valid beyond its application to capitalist society alone. It was Uno's goal to understand capitalism, but understanding bourgeois society in his view would provide the key to understanding pre- and post-bourgeois societies. To be a working theory of capitalism, however, Uno was determined to leave historical data, as well as data, tables, questionnaires, etc. out. In my view, the most strikingdifference betweenKeizai Genron and Marx'sCapital, apart from its method, that I would like briefly to refer to later on, is that Marx'sCapital is, first and foremost, A CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.

But Uno did not write a Critique of Political Economy. Uno instead took Marx's criticism of Smith, of Ricardo, of Say, of Quesnay, and so on, for established facts. This is why Uno managed to re-write all three volumes ofCapital within a slim 227 pages (at least in the 1964 edition). This is quite a remarkable achievement. But Uno also heavily intervened into the architecture ofCapital. The Commodity, Money, and Capital that form the first three sections ofKeizai Genron, are regarded as “circulation-forms”. TheDoctrine of Circulation (ryūtsūron) therefore is posited at the beginning of Uno's investigation. Needless to say that Marx starts withThe Production Process of Capital. It is within theProduction Process of Capital that Marx analyses the commodity and money that seems to be a pure means of circulation. Marx's purpose was to show what wasnot obvious, namely, that money is a social relation grounded in the organisation of (abstract-human) labour in capitalist societies. Uno, in contrast, has a rather 'functional' understanding of money, money as a means of circulation. All in all, it must be said that Uno's analysis of the commodity, money and capitalin abstraction from the labour process is peculiar.

In my opinion, the least interesting, but probably best known fact about Uno Kōzō is his three-stages- approach (sandankairon) to political economy: where the first stage would be pure theory, the second an analysis of historical stages of capitalism (merchant, industrial and finance capital), and the third stage would have to explore the actual and “real” political events. I don't think this approach is particularly significant for Uno, because he had neither developed stage two nor three, although he had often conceptualised these methodically. Uno had, in my opinion, wisely abstained from the stages theory, which was so characteristic of traditional Marxists like Lenin or Luxemburg, and a certain fashion in 1950s Japan for the conceptualisation of Japanese capitalism.

Instead, Uno had fully concentrated his endeavours to understand capitalist socialisation within the framework of “pure theory” alone. He stripped down political economy to three fundamental laws: the law of value, the law of population, and the law of the equalisation of the profit rate. Undeterred by questions of fetishism, real abstraction, “objective forms of thought” and other concepts that have a great fascination for more recent Marxologists (including myself), he went the way of the rigid economist and explored capitalism as a process where rather everything happens for a reason. He was not interested in trying to find out why in capitalist societies, “alles mit rechten Dingen zugeht und doch nicht mit rechten Dingen” (Adorno) - everything happens properly, and therefore improperly.[1]

VC & FM: What are, according to you, the limits of Uno Kōzō approach? Do you consider Value-Form Theory-oriented readings of Marx to be a possible alternative to Uno's approach on a methodological, critical and political level?

EL: The limits of Uno's approach, I would see precisely in his dismissal of the “impure” elements of capitalism as a historical form. This not only refers to “primitive accumulation” - in fact, Uno speaks very much about primitive accumulation - but rather questions of the autonomisation of the law of value, of the value form as a historically conditioned fetish, and the complex of real abstraction. In other words, what is missing in Uno is an extended discussion of thequalitative dimension of value. The law of value cannot be explained on the ground of economic data. That would beg the question. The task of political economy would be to explainwhy labour in capitalist societiesnecessarily takes on the form of value. Reflections of this kind are in my view indispensable for understanding capitalist economy. Analysing the capitalist mode of production therefore cannot and should not be “pure”.

For example, in my research project, among other things, I am trying to find out if Uno's view of money and value – you can say, neither a monetary, nor a pre-monetary theory of value, but rather a 'functional-relational' theory – owes to Uno's disregard for the problem of fetishisation and reification. The dismissal of the labour theory of value – or rather, its misunderstanding in the Japanese reception – is very telling here. Uno criticized Marx for developing the labour theory of value within the “sphere of circulation” - in the chapter on The Commodity in vol. 1 of Capital, when it should have been in the sphere of production. This misunderstanding of Marx in my view perpetuated an ever more growing suspicion against Marx's fundamental theorem, so that we have the peculiar case in Japan that even Marxist economists disavow the labour theory of value as “substantialist”, completely ignoring its critical impetus. It is no wonder that marginal utility theory has again become popular, and along with it, purely quantitative economic research that has given up on criticising theform which labour takes (as, for example, can be seen in the ex-Marxian economist Michio Morishima and his “Theory of Economic Growth”). Wages are again seen as an equivalent for a certain amount of labour, so that, at best, pay increases are discussed, not the wage system as such. Of course, this is a phenomenon to be found in almost all late-industrialist countries.

In May 2017, I gave a talk in Tôkyô at the University of Economics - in front of a lot of Unoists, as well as former students of Uno, all self-proclaimed ‘Marxists’. Yet I was stunned how in fact their line of thought is much closer to mainstream economics than Marx. If I were cynical, I’d say, “with Marxists like that, you don’t need marginalists.” But, thankfully, not all Japanese Marxists are secret supporters of Menger.

The “new readings” of value form theory have thankfully helped to reintroduce the theoretical relation between value, money, capital, and labour. They often go beyond Marx, which I think is needed and welcome. At the same time, I feel they sometimes undercut Marx's critical impetus, often losing sight of the political and concrete everyday struggle. However important I think it is to go beyond Marx, one should keep in mind the maximal gesture that is intrinsic to his project: abolishing the capitalist mode of production and its “objective thought-forms”. Start at your work place.

[1] Theodor W. Adorno, « Introduction », inDe Vienne à Francfort, Bruxelles, Éditions Complexes, 1979, p.26

George Souvlis interviewed Sara Farris, a longstanding contributor and member of the Historical Materialism editorial board, and of itsMarxist Feminist stream. Sara Farris is Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of London and the author of In the Name of Women’s Rights. The Rise of Femonationalism (2017, Duke University Press), as well as many journal articles on Marxism, political theory, migration. The interview was originally published on 13 July 2017 in Salvage. 

George Souvlis: Would you like to introduce yourself by describing the formative experiences (academic and political) that strongly influenced you?

Sara Farris: I grew up in a little town of 12,000 people in Sardinia (Italy). I was politicized there and it was definitely in this period – between age 12 and 18 – that I had some of the most formative political and academic experiences of my life. I come from a working class family; like many of their generation, my parents invested strongly in education in order to secure the social mobility of their daughters. I also grew up in a family in which discussions about politics – or I should rather say – my father’s monologues about political events both national and international, were routine at the dinner table. My father was some kind of a socialist, who strongly believed in social justice though he was very skeptical about the possibility that the workers, as he knew them, would be able to bring about any type of social change.

In any case, I guess I am trying to say that my family’s environment certainly exposed me to the importance of education and the ideas of the left. I then attended a classical lyceum in my home town. It is here that I was first politicized and that I also discovered my interest for sociology. When I was 14 I was approached by a friend –a sort of Marxist-friendly anarchist – who asked me to join a political group he and some other people were forming in order to shake up the tedious cultural life of our town and to demand more investment in culture by the mayor. It was a very weird group made up mostly of Trotskyists and anarchists (of course, we had lots of fights over Kronstadt!), as well as young people who did not identify with any particular political tradition but were attracted by the discourse of the far-left. The Trotskyists of the group belonged to the 4th International at that time; they organized the most theoretical discussions on the political conjuncture inviting especially the youngest of us to read Marx and Lenin. I was fascinated particularly by them, as they seemed to me to provide the most coherent answers to the issues we were discussing; but I was also somehow allergic to what I perceived as a certain communitarianism and sectarianism on their part.

A few years later, when I enrolled at the University La Sapienza in Rome, I became a member of Communist Refoundation first (Rifondazione Comunista) and the section of the 4th International afterwards. I found the Trotskyist comrades in Rome to be much more open than those in my hometown and I agreed with their politics, particularly with their strong emphasis on the importance of feminism. During these years in Rome I was also fascinated by the multiculturalism of the city and I became very interested in migrants’ struggles and migrant women’s specific position in the so-called destination countries. I think this combination of factors shaped the type of Marxist anti-racist feminism that probably best describes my approach.

GS: Let’s discuss Max Weber, whose work is the topic of your first monograph, Max Weber’s Theory of Personality. Weber is one of the first observers to recognize that the structural change of modern mass politics threatened the basic tenets of nineteenth-century liberal parliamentarianism. The emergence of mass parties in the first two decades of 20th century challenged radically notions and practices of the political status quo of the period. One of Weber’s risky intellectual answers to this ongoing crisis was the theory of charismatic-plebiscitary democracy. Do you think that we could draw elective or direct affinities between this conceptualization and Carl Schmitt’s theory of plebiscitary legitimacy of the President of the Reich? Could we say that Weber prepared – along with other disillusioned liberals – the intellectual background for the rise of authoritarian theories like that of Carl Schmitt?

SF: The question of the affinity between Weber and Schmitt on charismatic-plebiscitary democracy is one of the most debated ones, from Mommsen (who was among the first to propose it) to Habermas and others. Mommsen did not argue that the two thinkers’ political and theoretical positions were compatible in general – as they were in fact very different on most accounts – but rather that their ideas converged in one particular case: that is, Weber’s idea regarding the necessity for a plebiscitary-charismatic democracy in the wake of the German Revolution, and Schmitt’s opposition to parliamentary democracy in the last years of the Weimar Republic.

To be sure, Weber’s political thought and positions consistently oscillated between liberalism and more authoritarian tendencies. On the one hand, he advocated for an “agreement” between the liberal forces of Germany and the labour aristocracy within the Social Democratic party in order to consolidate the country’s transition to capitalism and “modernization”. On the other hand, Weber was a strong admirer of Bismarck and believed that politics needs strong charismatic leaders. And we should remember that for Weber, the charismatic leader is not someone who uses their appeal to seek consensus, but rather someone whose power is already legitimate in itself because of the charismatic gift he (because it is a man Weber implicitly think about) possesses.

There is something very aristocratic about Weber’s notion of charismatic power. The suggestion that there is an affinity between Weber and Schmitt, between the champion of German liberal democracy at the turn of the Twentieth century (that is, Weber) and the enemy of liberalism on the eve of Nazism (that is, Schmitt) is thus I think still very interesting and insightful not least because it reminds us fundamentally of the historical/theoretical links liberalism and authoritarianism.

GS: In one of your articles you use the debate between Marx and Bauer on the Jewish Question in order to shed light on the French law on conspicuous religious symbols. How can this past discussion help us to grasp better our current reality? Do you see any analogies between the two debates? In this article, you also criticise the universal values of Enlightenment that inform to a certain extent the French legal system. How you do you think we can demonstrate – in this context and regarding this debate – the antinomies of modernity without resorting to a postmodern cultural relativism?

SF: The point I try to make in that article is that the debate on whether Jews should be accorded full political rights in 1840s Prussia presents some striking similarities with the debate on Muslims’ integration into French society today. More precisely, my point is that the French state’s demand that religious minorities (and let’s be frank, Muslims in particular) respect the principle of secularism in the public space is reminiscent of Bruno Bauer’s position on the Jewish Question. Bruno Bauer believed that the Jews deserved to be granted political rights only if they stopped being Jews and embraced Enlightenment thought. In other words, he conceived of political emancipation as a kind of award that individuals receive only if they renounce their own religious identity and embrace the identity that the secular state deems as appropriate. Likewise, the French state demands that Muslims get rid of their religious/cultural practices if they want to show willingness to integrate into French society.

The notion of secularism that is put forward by both Bauer and the French state is one that individualizes secularism, that conceives of it almost as a trait of one’s personality rather than as an institutional issue. In other words, while I do agree that public spaces should not privilege one religion over another – so for instance, class-rooms should not have crucifixes hanging on walls, as happens in Italy – I disagree that individuals should not be allowed to express their religious beliefs in public spaces. This is only one very narrow and problematic version of secularism. But above all, the position according to which the people who belong to a religious and stigmatized minority should deny their religion in order to demonstrate that they deserve the status of citizens is profoundly racist. Just like Bauer was fundamentally an anti-Semite hiding behind the idea of secular Enlightenments, so the French state is reinforcing Islamophobia in the name of laïcité.

By pointing to some analogies between the discussion on Jews’ emancipation in Germany in the first half of the nineteenth century and the discussion on Muslims’ integration in France today I also want to argue that Muslims play the role of todays’ Jews. After the Holocaust we have been accustomed to the idea that the atrocities committed against the Jews have no comparison. But what we should remember is that there is a long history of anti-Jewish racism in Europe which has taken different forms and which has preceded the tragedy of the Holocaust. We should be aware of that history precisely in order to avoid repeating it, not only against the Jews but against any other group of people. My second point in that article is that Marx’s position on the Jewish Question was much more aware than some contemporary Marxists of the dangers of questioning religious minorities’ right to their freedom of expression, and here I think specifically of some French Marxists or Left-wing representatives. During the discussions that led to the ban of the veil in public schools, some of them agreed that Muslim women should not wear it in public spaces and invoked notions of secularism, atheism and women’s rights to justify their position. There is absolutely nothing Marxist in that. When Bruno Bauer blamed the Jews for remaining Jews and thus being undeserving of political rights, Marx told him that political rights can very well co-exist with religious identities. The problem for Marx instead was the bourgeois state itself and its claim of representing a space of universal inclusion while in reality it was only the expression of the exclusion and inequalities of civil society.

GS: Considering the recent developments with the bomb attacks in France, Brussels and the UK, and the emergence of the panic/racist rhetoric and state of emergency policies in these and other countries, what do you think should be the basic rhetorical axes of a counter-hegemonic critique towards their ideological appropriation by the far-right? 

SF: I think it is essential to make very, very clear that these attacks have nothing to do with Islam. The young terrorists who committed these atrocities were born and raised in France or Belgium, or the UK, some of them apparently smoked and drank and did not even attend the Mosque. Most of them were known to the police for petty crimes and some of them apparently found meaning in ISIS ideas while in jail, where they met already radicalized Islamists who introduced them to the abhorrent Daesh dystopia. This reminds me of the French movie A Prophet, in which a young man of Algerian descent, illiterate and with no religious beliefs, is sent to prison for a petty crime. It is in prison that he learns how to kill people and the ‘art’ of drug-dealing. The movie of course is about the violence and ineffectiveness of the so-called correction and punitive system, and also about its racism, given that the large majority of prisoners we see portrayed are of immigrant descent.

But I think the prison in the movie can also be understood as a metaphor for a French or Belgian banlieu, where the second and third generations of migrants from the ex-French colonies have being ghettoized, made to feel different, unwelcome, or jobless and constantly targeted by the racism and Islamophobia of the state and the police – as plenty of studies demonstrate. Within these environments, these social prisons, young people particularly if they are unemployed and without a clear prospect for the future, can develop a great sense of alienation and some of them may feel attracted by the easy Manichaeism of extremist Islamism and its promise of revenge.

The second thing to remember time and time again is that Muslims are the first victims of so-called Islamist terrorism. More than one-third of the people killed by the truck driver in Nice in July 2016 were Muslims, without mentioning the fact that the large majority of victims of ISIS in Syria and Iraq are Muslims. The Left needs to recall this simple and atrocious fact each time the right instrumentalises terrorism to instigate Islamophobia.

But the French Left in particular should also be confronted very seriously with its responsibilities in exacerbating the Islamophobic climate that in France is already intolerable. And here I think of Mélenchon, for instance, who criticized the NPA’s veiled candidate in 2010, Ilham Moussaid, for not taking her headscarf off; more recently, in the case of the outrageous behavior of the police who forced a Muslim woman to undress on a beach in Nice, he took the side of the police. He claims to take these positions in the name of women’s rights and in the name of laïcité. But the reality is that these positions do in fact deny the right Muslim women have to put on whatever clothes they want. They interpret secularism through the lenses of a form of republican rigorism that is fundamentally intolerant of difference and exclusionary towards those who do not embody the French (i.e., white, Christian, etc.,) ideal of the citizen. This republican consensus against the headscarf in France, from right to left, is shameful and irresponsible vis-à-vis the multiplication of terrorist attacks involving young French men and women self-identifing as Muslims.

Of course we need to condemn in the strongest possible terms any form of terrorism, there is no question about it, and in fact I feel there shouldn’t even be the need to say it, if it weren’t for the fact that we live in very crazy times hegemonized by the racist discourse of the right. But above all, we need to say that our politics against terrorism is diametrically opposed to that of the right-wing and is, in fact, more effective because the right has nothing to say about how to solve the problem. The only thing it proposes is to close the borders, stop immigration and intensify Islamophobic measures. But how stupid is that when terrorists are in fact not migrants but French or Belgian, or British citizens? And how irresponsible is that when it is precisely Islamophobia that is creating a climate in which terrorism thrives?

I do think that the fight against Islamophobia and racism is the defining political issue of the future for the Left. We have seen how the capitulation of the European social democracy before anti-immigration discourses in the last fifteen years has not brought more votes to the Left. On the contrary, it has helped the far-right to grow and consolidate its powerbase, at least until recently.

GS:In one volume that you edited along with others you wrote a piece focusing on the theoretical insights of Althusser and Tronti regarding the Marxist question of the relationship between politics and economy. During the last year the global financial crisis gave the opportunity to left-wing forces to come close to winning elections or even – in the case of Syriza – to take office – though withοut really managing to produce any serious cracks in the system. Do you think that a possible explanation of these defeats might be an implicit “politicism” that have been adopted by the parties of the European Left? 

SF: In that article I define ‘politicism’ as the idea that the state is autonomous from economic determinants and that the party is autonomous from its class basis. On the one hand, it is the idea that the state follows its own logic and its own rhythm, and is not simply the “committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” – as Marx famously wrote in the Manifesto of the Communist Party. This conception of the state and politics as autonomous from the economic level led Tronti to argue that the party representing the working classes needs to take state power into its hands in order to change the system of economic exploitation itself. On the other hand, Tronti explicitly argued that the party of workers (and clearly he meant the PCI) had to be autonomous from its class basis at the moments in which the political logic of state power demanded that. Here lies an important paradox: on the one hand, by declaring politics and economics as autonomous one from the other, you are claiming that one cannot determine the other; but on the other hand, you are proposing a determinist argument – and therefore denying the autonomy of the political itself – the moment in which you argue that a change in the political realm will automatically determine a change in the social-economic realm. In this sense ‘politicism’ is the mirror image of economic determinism. And both of these perspective are unable to grasp the complexities of the relationships between the state and capitalist interests, or the economic sphere more generally.

The ‘politicist’ perspective was put forward by Tronti in the 1970s during the years of the historical compromise (compromesso storico) in order to support the participation of the Italian Communist Party in government. Tronti criticized the Marxist tradition for lacking a coherent and systematic theory of the state, but what he proposes instead is the old social-democratic trope. That is, the idea that the party representing the interests of the workers needs to take state power to promote the implementation of socialist policies, before communism can finally take over.

The contemporary cases you cite are certainly examples of ‘politicism’ in the sense that these are parties, or political formations that, in various and different ways put forward a social-democratic agenda and overall approach to politics and their working class bases. None of them aims to smash the state, as it were.

However, I don’t think we can talk about defeats pure and simple here. Syriza won the elections, even though it completely betrayed the hopes to end austerity. More recently La France Insoumise obtained 20% of the vote in the first round of the French presidential elections, and in Britain Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour has increased Labour’s number of seats and share of vote in unprecedented ways. Of course, these parties and the contexts in which they operate are very different and we cannot abstract from those national differences. What I am trying to say is that the social-democratic Left running for state power in order to change the rules of the economy from above, seems to be actually registering significant advances in electoral terms when it runs on an explicit socialist, anti-austerity programme. The retreat to ‘politicism’, or the idea that the party can forget its working class basis in the name of ‘electability’ and for the sake of staying in government, on the other hand, as in the case of Syriza, will most likely lead to electoral defeat – beside producing demobilization and demoralization.

GS: You edited along with others an issue of the Historical Materialism journal (24.2, 2016) that is focused on recent theoretical developments within the Marxist-Feminist tradition. In theintroduction that you wrote you endorse Social-Reproduction feminism. Would you be able to explain the origins of this theoretical trend and what it implies? In what ways can it help us to understand the complexity of gender oppression in this historical conjuncture?

SF: Social-reproduction feminism refers to that strand of theories developed by Marxist-feminists in the 1960s and 1970s seeking to understand the role of domestic labour and reproductive tasks within the household for capital accumulation. Social Reproduction Feminism asks: how is the reproduction of labour power and life that usually takes place within households connected to capital accumulation? And why is it women who are mostly the ones performing social reproduction? Is there a link between the feminization of social reproduction and gender oppression under capitalism? By focusing on the largely gendered nature of social-reproductive labour Social Reproduction Feminism also aims to analyse one of the weaknesses of Marxist feminism, that is, its tendency to frame class exploitation and gendered oppression as separate one from the other. The challenge for Social Reproduction Feminism instead is to understand gendered oppression neither in isolation from class exploitation, nor from race, sexuality and other constitutive social relations. This is not an easy task, as our very modes of thinking about the social are fragmented, or intersectional, as it were. That is why, I think, intersectionality has become such an important paradigm for feminism. It is because it conceives of different experiences of oppression and exploitation as coming from different and separate systems and tries to recombine the fragments of oppression without denying their singularity. I think Social Reproduction Feminism seeks to include and to go beyond intersectionality by saying both that we need to understand capitalism as the very specific socio-economic system in which those forms of oppression are generated and nourished, and that there are not ‘separate’ systems of oppression or exploitation under capitalism that can be understood in isolation one from the other.

Social Reproduction Feminism also represents a critique of those Marxist positions that maintain that capitalism is indifferent to the gender or race of those it exploits as long as profit and accumulation are guaranteed. This is a very limited and problematic way of looking at how capitalism functions, but also at what capitalism is. As we write in our introduction, exploitation and dispossession exist concretely “only in and through generalised, systematic and differentiated control and degradation of human life itself. And control and degradation are secured concretely in and through the negotiation of race, gender, sexuality, and other interwoven social relations.” These are the relations that ensure that labour arrives at capital’s doorstep ready to be further dehumanized and exploited.

GS: In your latest book you analyze the instrumentalisation of feminist ideas by the contemporary far-right and mainstream “liberal” parties by means of the term of “femonationalism”. Could you explain what this means and how a critical examination of this phenomenon can be useful?

SF: Femonationalism is the term I have introduced to describe both the exploitation of feminist ideas by nationalist right-wing parties within Islamophobic campaigns, and the endorsement by some feminists and femocrats of anti-Islam agendas in the name of women’s rights. In the book I analyse how and why parties such as the Northern League in Italy, the National Front in France and the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands have shown “concern” for Muslim women by describing them as “victims to be rescued”, all the while stigmatising Muslim and other non-western male immigrants as women’s worst enemies. I wrote this book mostly because I wanted to introduce a political-economic perspective into the scholarly and activists’ debate on the new faces of Islamophobia. The convergence between some feminists and nationalists on anti-Islam agendas of course has been noticed and analysed by several scholars, but I think most of them – at least in the European context – have not paid sufficient attention to the broad material interests and economic calculations behind such a convergence.

What I note in the book is that we should pay attention to the gendered double-standard that is applied to migrant men and women (Muslim and non-Muslim alike) in the mainstream media and that we need to decipher its economic rationality alongside its ‘culturalist’ expressions. Muslim men as well as immigrant men from the Global South are usually described not only as potential rapists and women’s oppressors, but also as “jobs’ stealers”. They are the unredeemable bad guys in all senses. On the other hand Muslim and non-western migrant women are portrayed as victims of patriarchal and backward cultures, but also as those who can be assimilated to western values (because, qua women, they don’t really have a mind of their own) and who can positively contribute to western economies by working in the understaffed social reproductive sector (i.e, social care and childcare primarily) for very low wages. They are the redeemable others.

I think this dichotomous gendered representation, or gendered double-standard, which the mainstream media as well as right-wingers use to refer to migrant populations, is central for revealing the political economic rationality of femonationalism. In other words, one of the claims of my book is that the “rescue” offers, which right wing-nationalists send to Muslim women (but also to non-western migrant women more generally), are linked to the hugely important role these women play in the social reproductive economy. But they are also linked to these political parties’ desire to keep the social care and childcare sectors exactly as they are: that is, as racialised, feminized, super-exploitative, low-status and low-paid sectors of the labour market.

On the other hand, the book looks closely at the feminists and femocrats who support anti-Islam politics in the name of women’s rights, and what they propose to Muslim women in particular in their race to rescue them from the “bad” Muslim guys.

What I notice here is that, first, these feminists cover the whole political spectrum; it is not just right-wing feminists (or self-proclaimed feminists like Ayan Hirsi Ali in the Netherlands or Souad Sbai in Italy) who have endorsed anti-Islam discourses and policies such as veil bans, but also left-leaning feminists like Giuliana Sgrena in Italy, or Najat Vallaud-Belkacem in France. Second, I emphasise the deep contradictions of this anti-Islam feminist front. On the one hand, these feminists and femocrats call Islam a misogynist religion and treat Muslim women who wear the veil as sort of self-enslaved individuals who do not understand what freedom and emancipation really are about. On the other hand, these same feminists fail to mention that many Muslim migrant women today in Europe are obliged to undergo integration programmes – sometimes implemented by femocrats themselves – that push them towards the social reproductive sectors to become cleaners, social carers and childminders. But in what sense is this emancipation for women? Weren’t these exactly the activities and jobs against which the feminist movement fought in its battle to denounce gender roles and the lack of economic recognition of social reproduction?

Already published in "Materialismo Storico. Rivista di filosofia, storia e scienze umane", Nr. 1/2017, L'egemonia dopo Gramsci: una riconsiderazione, edited by Fabio Frosini, pp. 115-163, licence Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Anti-imperialism has a history that has been in large part repressed, if not buried, amongst many currents of criticial thought and much of the radical Left. The struggles for decolonisation after the Second World War are, of course, remembered, but, too often, it is forgotten that the international communist movement created anti-colonial and anti-imperialist organisations on a transnational scale. Such was the case of the League Against Imperialism. In this interview by Selim Nadi, first published in French in the online journal Périodehttp://revueperiode.net/willi-munzenberg-la-ligue-contre-limperialisme-et-le-comintern-entretien-avec-fredrik-petersson/, Fredrik Petersson discusses the foundation of the LAI by the Comintern. He depicts a colonial question that was resolutely understood as a transversal question by communists. He highlights also the necessity for a mediation between the headquarters of world communism (Moscow) and the nationalist forces in each country that were its allies, all of which is helpful in developing the concept, which is still neglected, of the ‘anti-imperialist united front’.

In your academic work, you are mainly interested in the League Against Imperialism (LAI) – founded in 1928 in Brussels. Why focus on anti-imperialism during the inter-war period (and not only during the decolonisation process after World War II)?

First of all, the founding congress of the League against Imperialism took place 10-14 February 1927. Now, with that sorted out, yes, one of my central items of research has been on the history and transnational networks of the LAI. I did my doctoral thesis on the LAI from the perspective that wanted to examine the twofold purpose: first, why the LAI was established in 1927; and second, the internal aspect of the organisation, something that required doing extensive empirical research in several archives in Moscow, Berlin, Amsterdam, London, and Stockholm, if I wanted to put the pieces together in a proper way. However, and after I got the thesis published the same year in 2013 as two volumes, I think the question of interwar anti-imperialism involves so many aspects that tells us about how the world was reconstituted after the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. It is commonly accepted that the world was decolonised after the Second World War, yet my argument is that, in order for us to understand how this even was possible, we have to take into consideration the development of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements as politically conscious entities between the wars. It was in the purest sense a time of learning, a time of accumulating experiences, and a time of creating relations and connections that either lasted or changed in the interwar years. Hence, it is about reading the history of decolonisation backwards, dating from, for example the “Afro-Asian conference” in Bandung 1955, and of connecting it to an organisation such as the LAI.

30 years after the founding of the LAI, during the Bandung Conference (1955), Sukarno said that if the founding congress of the LAI was held in Belgium in was not “by choice, but by necessity”, could you please explain this point?

Well, this is kind of a political statement on behalf of Achmed Sukarno where he more or less defined the historical progression of twentieth century anti-colonialism, and how the movement both relied on and was dependent on establishing connections and relations. But what Sukarno even more wanted to show with his observation was probably the following: in the interwar period, it was next-to-impossible to convene a similar congress or conference as the one held in Bandung 1955. Thus, by holding the “First International Congress against Colonialism and Imperialism” in Brussels, it was not only held there “by necessity”, but it was intended to function as a demonstration against colonialism and imperialism in one of the “hearts of imperialism”, and it could also gain attention amongst colonial emigrants living in Western Europe. However, what comes across as rather evident by reading the sources is that the formal organisers of the congress (the LAI’s forerunner: the League against Colonial Oppression, established in Berlin 10 February 1926) and its secretary, the Hungarian communist Laszlo Dobos, had promised the Foreign Secretary in Belgium, the well-renowned socialist Emile Vandervelde, that under no circumstances was the congress to deliver any critique of Belgian colonialism and the atrocities taking place in Congo. Even more, Dobos had to provide Vandervelde with extensive list of names of individuals planning to attend the congress. Hence, this pretty much outlines the historical experience of the Brussels Congress of not having been “by choice, but by necessity” as Sukarno later stated in his opening address. 

Could you develop the main differences between the founding Congress of the LAI in Brussels in 1928, and the Baku Congress (1920)?

The central difference is how it was organised and under what kind of auspices and with what intentions. If we think about the Baku congress in 1920, it had been preceded by intense discussions between Lenin and the Indian nationalist revolutionary Manabendra Nath Roy on the colonial question at the Second International Comintern Congress in Moscow. Even more, the Baku congress was held for the primary reason of getting Far Eastern anti-colonial activists to support the recently established Bolshevik regime in Soviet Russia, or as the then Comintern chairman, the Russian communist Grigori Zinoviev, explained it: it was to win them fully over to communism. However, there is another dimension to the Baku congress, and it is that it offered Asian activists with an opportunity to meet and discuss with each other the situations in their home countries. While some, so to speak, drifted towards communism as a source that would support their struggle, other continued to forge the nationalist struggle along other principles shaped by socialism and liberalism. Thus, if we can compare Baku with Brussels, the later essentially continued the agenda of the former by highlighting how colonialism and imperialism continued to shape the world after 1919. One important difference between these two events was the more international scope of the Brussels congress, meaning, while Baku focused primarily on Asia and the Far East, the Brussels congress had an international outlook that tried to depict a global system of colonialism and imperialism. What unites the two of them is that they were both organised and sanctioned by the Communist International and its headquarters in Moscow.  

To what extent was the LAI a response to Woodrow Wilson’s principle of national self-determination?

I think this is a central question that pretty much outlines and explains how the LAI came into fruition, at least, in the initial phase of 1927. As Woodrow Wilson introduced the famous Fourteen Points in January 1918, which included the relevance and importance of paying attention to the principle of national self-determination, in fact, this was replaced by the liberal internationalism on display at Versailles, and as consequence of this, this somewhat downgraded the capacity of the colonial world to become independent once the war was over. If we look again at the Brussels congress, its official credo and public slogan was to advocate “National Freedom – Social Equality”, and a majority of the speeches delivered at the congress addressed the call for national independence and the right to self-determination. In general, the propaganda of the LAI frequently called for a critical scrutiny of the fallacy of the League of Nations of putting into practice what it once had set out to do, that is, the equal treatment of all peoples and races through the principle of national self-determination. I think this was one of most potent and viable political messages of the LAI, and therefore, it can be seen as adversary and subversive contingent to the League of Nations. 

Who was Willy Münzenberg (1889 – 1940)? What role did he play in the LAI?

Willi Münzenberg was pivotal for the LAI. Being a German communist and member of the German Reichstag, Münzenberg has been recognised as the leading entrepreneurial force in the development of communist propaganda in Europe and beyond between the wars. What has to be emphasised is that Münzenberg came from a pacifist and socialist background; however, after meeting Lenin in Zimmerwald in 1915, this was the beginning of his journey to communism. After having been an organisational force in coordinating the work among socialist and communist youth during the Great War, in 1919, Münzenberg was central in the establishment of the Youth Communist International (KIM). Later in 1921, Lenin appointed Münzenberg to establish the embryo of International Workers’ Aid, an international proletarian mass organisation that lasted until 1935 when it was quietly dissolved on the direct instructions of Comintern headquarters in Moscow. While this is a general description of Münzenberg’s political career, I consider Arthur Koestler’s foreword in Babette Gross book Willi Münzenberg. A politische Biographie (1967) still as one of the most accurate descriptions of the man: he was “a political realist” that should be seen as a propagandist and activist, neither as a politician nor theoretician. Then we have his so-called mysterious death in 1940, where his body was found in the outskirts of the French town Montaigne. There has been debate as to whether it was suicide or murder that caused Münzenberg’s death. Yet this discussion will continue without any real or credible empirical evidence. If we return then to his pivotal role in the establishment of the LAI, by this I mean that, without his energy and vision to organise “an international congress against colonialism and imperialism”, as he declared in a personal letter to Zinoviev in August 1925, there would not have been a project of trying to mobilise the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movement in Europe and the USA like that of the LAI. Second - and I keep returning to the Brussels congress, but still, it represents a central moment for interwar anti-colonialism - it was an idea that Münzenberg developed after being introduced to it by a couple of Chinese trade unionists in Berlin in connection with the “Hands off China” campaign in 1925. Yet what Münzenberg managed to do was to transform the idea into something viable and concrete. This did not, however, come without a price tag. Münzenberg had to either negotiate or rely on the consent of the Comintern before being able to proceed with the political project of the Brussels congress. And, indeed, the idea of establishing the LAI was not Münzenberg’s; it was on the recommendation of Manabendra Nath Roy in 1926. However, without the success of the Brussels congress, there would have never been any need for the establishment of the LAI. But both Münzenberg and the Comintern seemed unprepared as to how to approach and build on the success of the Brussels congress, which in the longer perspective implied that the idea of the LAI and its practical outcome started from the wrong foot from the beginning.  Actually, together with some colleagues, I ma planning to write a personal biography of Münzenberg, with emphasis not on his political persona but rather trying to going beyond this perspective, and instead, try to discuss Münzenberg as a person and how different spatialities, opportunities and moments shaped his life. I mean, he still continues to haunt me in a funny way, and you just have to take into account the traces the man has left in numerous archives across the world. The story of Münzenberg has for sure not been fully told yet, I argue.   

In your forthcoming book in the Historical Materialism Book Series, you write that the Brussels Congress and, later, the establishment of the LAI, had been the results of meticulous planning and construction rather than “by necessity”, in a “cleverly-disguised interplay between Münzenberg, the IAH [Internationale Arbeiterhilfe] and the Comintern”. Could you please develop the role played by the IAH and by the Comintern? What were the relations between the LAI and the Comintern?

Yes, that is correct; I am working on my book at the moment, which will focus more on the transnational character of the LAI, but also, the transnationalism of anti-colonialism between the wars. This November, I will return to Moscow and do additional research in the Russian State Archive for Social and Political History, which houses the papers of the Communist International. And this leads me again to the intertwined relationship between the LAI and the Comintern, or to be more precise, the constant and regular contacts that flowed between the LAI’s international headquarters in Berlin – the International Secretariat – and Comintern headquarters in Moscow. I mean, from the very onset, and even prior to the establishment of the LAI in 1927, various institutions and individuals at Comintern headquarters stipulated during the preparations for the Brussels congress in 1926, that the sole reason for establishing an international organisation against colonialism and imperialism was “to act as an intermediary between the Comintern and nationalist organisations in the colonies”. Further, the LAI’s International Secretariat in Berlin functioned as a hub for the organisation, meaning that it received instructions from Comintern headquarters, which in return were dispatched to the LAI’s national sections or affiliated members. In return, when the International Secretariat received information or intelligence from the sections, it was dutifully dispatched back to Moscow. In conclusion, every important decision pertaining to budget or personnel questions was taken in Moscow. This also involved the writing of political material such as congress resolutions, manifestos, pamphlets or material for the official publications of the LAI.    

What where the kind of contacts the LAI had with European radical left movements?

In 1927, the contacts were strong and many. However, this depends on how you define “radical left movements” in Europe”. If we exclude the communist aspect here, I would say that contacts with radical trade unions, pacifist circles, socialists or anarchists were large from a quantitative perspective. However, once talk of the LAI as a new actor on the political stage began to emerge in 1927, and particularly as the organisation raised the question of being an ardent opponent against colonialism and imperialism, various circles in the European socialist movement approached the LAI with suspicion. For example, the leader of the Labour and Socialist International, the Swiss socialist Friedrich Adler, instigated a thorough investigation on the historical and political ties of the LAI, which in October 1927, drew the conclusion that the LAI had intimate ties to the Comintern and the international communist movement. As a consequence of this, any party affiliated to the Labour and Socialist International was prohibited of becoming member to the LAI. In a longer-term perspective, the communist connotations of the LAI severely restricted access to radical leftist movements that were not communist in nature and scope. What I am really talking about here is a kind of historical narrative that began with success but ended in seclusion and isolation the longer we stretch out the history of the LAI. 

Did the LAI lead to any theoretical innovations concerning colonialism and/or racism?

No, I do not believe that. Yet what the LAI amounted to do was to function as nostalgic point of reference for the decolonisation movements that emerged in the postwar period. I have stated that the LAI should be seen as “a concerted source of inspiration” in the context of postwar decolonisation of the world, something that reached its culmination at the “Afro-Asian Conference” in Bandung in 1955. Moreover, what the LAI accomplished to do was in raising awareness in the so-called “imperialist centres” on the situation in the colonies. This was done through various campaigns, letter writing campaigns and so forth. Hence, what we are addressing here is the transnational scope of anti-colonialism between the wars, and how this was further developed after the Second World War in the postwar period.

In an article published in 1960 in Les Temps Modernes on Sultan Galiev, Maxime Rodinson wrote that the “Afro-Asian bloc” that followed the Bandung Conference was a kind of “Colonial International”, would you agree with this?

No, I would not agree with that. I think that you should rather see the LAI as an effort that tried to coordinate a range of nationalist organisations and movements that all were seeking to highlight their own political and cultural agenda. In fact, the Comintern feared the idea of the LAI becoming an anti-imperialist “International” capable of standing on its own. It was all about control over an agenda and political idea that had managed to create a buzz, and therefore, once the LAI was dissolved in 1937, several individuals that previously had held some role in the organisation, for example the British socialist and pacifist Reginald Orlando Bridgeman (who acted as International Secretary of the LAI from 1933 to 1937), quickly acted and formed new anti-colonial organisations or associations. In Bridgeman’s case, he formed the “Colonial Information Bureau” in 1937, which cooperated closely with the British “Centre against Imperialism”, where the former should be seen as more “socialist” while the later was “communist”. Hence, we are talking of transformations and transferences of ideas and practices here. 

How would you describe the legacy of the LAI?

I think I have summed up that answer already, however, I would like to add that the LAI introduced a new form of activism in a world that had faced the horrors of global war (the Great War, 1914-18), and it aided in making anti-colonialism into a politically conscious movement from the perspective that it provided with contacts, relations and networks for anti-colonial activists that travelled the world between the wars. Later, a person such as India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who had been active in the first years of the LAI, could draw on this experience. In conclusion, I think that the LAI broke new political ground for anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism, however, due to the intimate relation to the Comintern and how the organisation developed itself in the 1930s, much of its history was seen as a failure, and therefore reduced to the dustbin of history. Yet, and which I hoped to do with my research, is in showing that there exists so many dynamic perspectives and relations that up until now have been forgotten and hidden.

Fredrik Petersson is Lecturer in General History at Åbo Akademi University since 2014. He received his PhD from Åbo Akademi University in 2013; his dissertation was titled‘We Are Neither Visionaries Nor Utopian Dreamers’. Willi Münzenberg, the League Against Imperialism, and the Comintern, 1925-1933 (published as vol. I-II, Lewiston: Queenston Press, 2013). Petersson is currently working on two projects: “The Elephant and the Porcelain Shop”. Transnational Anti-Colonialism and the League against Imperialism, 1927 - 1937 (forthcoming 2017) ; and the research project “Hidden Narratives and Forgotten Stories. The Colonial World in the Nordic World”. He has published several articles on anti-imperialism, international communism and radicalism.

For those interested in engaging with the history of the Russian Revolution in the hope of more effectively challenging capitalism, a tension between the universal and the particular looms large. The difficulty that inevitably arises is how to disentangle what was historically specific about Russia 1917 and Bolshevism from what might reflect a more generalised tendency. To quote award-winning author China Miéville’s recent October: The Story of the Russian Revolution (Verso): ‘This was Russia’s revolution, certainly, but it belonged and belongs to others, too. It could be ours. If its sentences are still unfinished, it is up to us to finish them.’

In this spirit, Miéville recently sat down to discuss the Russian Revolution and its relevance for today with Eric Blanc, a historical sociologist and author of the forthcoming monograph Anti-Colonial Marxism: Oppression and Revolution in the Tsarist Borderlands (Brill Publishers, Historical Materialism Book Series).

Blanc: One of the key aspects of 1917 was the abrupt way history and mass consciousness changed course – the metaphor that I’ve come across most in the memoir literature is revolution as a whirlwind. In October you argue that one of Lenin’s most important characteristics was an ability to orient to these rapid changes and political contingencies. How do you see different actors in 1917 confronting these whirlwind conditions? And what from these approaches might still be relevant? I was struck for instance by the recent editorial in Salvage,a journal in which you are an editor, which stated after the recent surge of Corbyn: ‘what we had not allowed for was how fast things can change.'

Miéville: Formally, I’ve always known well that things can change giddyingly quickly, on a dime, which is one of the reasons I’ve never been tempted to surrender to any sort of ‘New Times’ lugubriousness according to which fundamental change can never happen. But, as you note, on a certain level I clearly haven’t always metabolised that formal awareness.

For me, Corbyn wasn’t a complete bolt from the void: I thought he was going to do better than a lot of people said. But I’m not going to bullshit: the scale of it stunned me. I’ve never been so delighted to be wrong. We’re now, roughly, in what I thought my best case scenario would be in four years or so, if Corbyn played it well. It’s not that I believed this impossible, but we got there much more quickly than I’d thought.

It is a good, humbling reminder of what formally we all know. And – I don’t think it is tendentious to make the connection – if there’s one lesson that keeps coming up about 1917 it is this, of how quickly things can change. It’s delightful to be reminded of that – it is more pleasant and useful, to nearly quote The State and Revolution, to go through the experience of abrupt change than to read or write about it.

In terms of 1917 itself, with exceptions, I do often get the impression that one of the things that distinguished the Menshevik intellectuals, including very brilliant people, was a tendency to treat their theoretical models somewhat as procrustean beds into which to wrestle what was in front of them, rather than starting analysis from the complexity of reality.

At his best, I think this was one of things that distinguished Trotsky and, in a perhaps less theoretically succulent kind of way, but with incredible speed, was quite remarkable about Lenin. Everybody commented on Lenin’s antenna for these minute shifts. This didn’t mean he was never wrong – he was wrong many times: in July, on Kornilov, arguably about aspects of October. But not just his sense of these shifts, but his willingness to completely change his line was, I think, highly unusual. You could say that, in a certain admirable way, he was totally unsentimental about his own positions.

Blanc: I really liked the vignettes in the book in which you feel almost sympathetic for the Bolsheviks who have to deal with having a leader like that in their organisation.

Miéville: It’s remarkable: while Lenin is in hiding in the Fall of 1917 his comrades are invoking his almost Biblical wrath for the utter sin of printing what he had written two weeks earlier. There’s not too many of us who, if you did that, you could be wildly misrepresenting us. But in his case, it was hugely misleading.

Blanc: It is also worth thinking about the extent to which this was made possible by the existence of a Bolshevik Party. Lenin is not just reading newspapers, but is in a position as an organiser in which he’s able to get the reports from the ground from his comrades, who themselves are independently intervening and trying to come to an assessment of what’s going on. That usually gets missed – otherwise it’s just Lenin the Genius. And, in some ways, you could say that is what breaks down later, after 1917, when that dynamic between the middle cadre and top leadership falls apart, including with Lenin.

Miéville: You certainly get the sense in 1917 that Lenin is paying very, very close attention to the reports and positions of the middle layer, even when he doesn’t like what he’s hearing. This was one of the things that was so useful about the memoir of Eduard Dune, Notes of a Red Guard, where you get a sense of that layer of committed cadre who are intervening politically, in very sensitive ways, debating, learning, and so on. I think you’re right about that being a key source of these antennae. All of which said, there was still something quite remarkable about Lenin himself. Others who also had access to these networks didn’t respond in the same ways, for example.

Blanc: One of the most promising developments in the last few years has been the resurgence of socialist politics among young people, which has largely taken the form of a growth in left social democracy as expressed (in different ways) by the rise of Corbyn in the U.K. and Bernie Sanders in the U.S. On the one hand, it is exciting, inspiring, and poses huge openings for radical politics. At the same time, it also means that a sober balance sheet of the historical role of social democrats may be more critical than ever.

In Russia 1917, the real debate throughout the year is between radicals and (for lack of a better term) moderate socialists – Mensheviks and SRs in central Russia. Many of the latter end up joining the government in May and rapidly abandon much of their own programme and goals; people today often forget how militant the platform of these parties was early in the year. You particularly highlight in October the historic default of the left Mensheviks led by Martov, above all when they walk out of the Second Soviet Congress in October. Do you think moderate socialists could have played a different role in 1917? And might we expect social democrats today to act differently than their counterparts a century ago?

Miéville: As you say, the adjective ‘moderate’ is actually quite misleading and unhelpful here, in some ways, as it lumps together a wide range of different tendencies, many of whom were quite radical. So I think the term always has to be put in scare quotes.

On the simple question of 'could it have been other?', it feels to me not hugely controversial that the answer is Yes. Not least because many of those involved regretted very much that it wasn’t. Left Menshevik Sukhanov, to his dying day, I think, regretted the walkout at the Second Soviet Congress. He called it his ‘greatest and most indelible crime’ that he didn’t break with Martov and stay in the hall.

And it sometimes doesn’t get stressed enough that a few hours earlier that evening it had been agreed upon (including by Trotsky) that there should be a general socialist government, a non-Bolshevik-exclusive socialist government. This is amazing, a huge deal. The eyewitness reporters were aware of that. That to me is an anguishing moment because it could have been a very different dynamic. Even if the right socialists were going to walk out anyway, there were plenty of non-rightist non-Bolsheviks the presence of whom could have substantially changed the inflection and methodology of the Soviet government.

Blanc: Along these lines, it’s worth noting that things played out differently in other parts of the Russian empire. In Finland, for example, most of the socialist leaders who had been waffling throughout 1917 end up siding with the revolution in January 1918 when the moment comes. I just found a really poignant letter of a middle-of-the-road Finnish socialist leader writing to his daughter right after Finland’s January insurrection, explaining that even though he had been opposed to a violent revolution, he felt it was his duty not to abandon the party and the workers after the uprising was decided on.

Miéville: Absolutely. It brings out the extent to which it could have been different. I think it would be completely utopian and ridiculous to say that therefore everything would have been okay, but I do think it could have potentially had a real impact. Having a comradely, but critical and rigorous, alternative voice within the revolution.

As far the current moment, I do think there’s an unhelpful tendency among some on the far left to by default describe anybody with whom you disagree as a renegade orcapitulator or whatever. And some of them may be, sure, but not all. If you’re a social democrat because you believe that any attempt to overthrow capitalism in a revolutionary form is to be fundamentally opposed, then I’m never going to be your close comrade. If you are a social democrat, because much as you love the idea of overthrowing capitalism you don’t really see it as on the agenda for the moment, that’s a different story, and you may very well be a more serious activist than a lot of putative revolutionaries. And what about when the sense of the possible changes, and something more radicalis abruptly on your agenda?

So I think it’s misleading to generalise about social democrats or left social democrats (and even liberals – I always quote Richard’s Seymour’s observation that, politically, there’s a stark opposition between a liberalism of fidelity to liberal ideals versus that which is faithful to the liberal state). You’re not going to know who your friends, comrades, and enemies are until the horizon of radical change draws closer, is more visible.

Blanc: I agree with what you’ve laid out, but the flip side of this is the incredible pressure that bears down on all socialists from above by the ruling class. For example, in April 1917, precisely because the Provisional Government would not have survived without socialists coming in, there was a structural imperative to integrate certain moderate socialists. So, it’s not just the politics of an individual, but also the necessity to bring in and lean on forces with some credibility in the working class in the hopes of propping up the system. And we see this also in other parts of the empire and throughout the post-war revolutionary wave in Europe.

Miéville: You’re right: I’m using ideas (always protean and elastic) here and ‘belief’ as somewhat of a shorthand. We’re really talking about people as political functions. I suppose if you’re an activist willing under certain circumstances to enter a bureaucratic state apparatus under capitalism, then the issue becomes: What is your relationship to rupture? There’s no question that there is a very strong tendential logic within social democracy, including its left wing, towards the battening down of any such rupture. But I don’t think it is inevitable in all cases. Once the horizons of possibility open, even some inside that machine may discover (possibly even to their own and our surprise) fidelity to a project of emancipation.

There is a rather showboating alternative to such an approach, a kind of swaggering strategy of tension. If you think about a crude opposition between such an ultra-left strategy of tension, and a reformist social-democratic strategy of amelioration within the system, I wonder sometimes if the dream of some ‘dialectical sublation’ of the two is not actually possible. Maybe the best you can do is superpositionally oscillate between them, to various degrees at various times.

Blanc: Maybe the point is to keep that tension in mind…

Miéville: Right. And that a healthy movement for rupture has to include representatives of both these trends.

Blanc: In Salvage, you have grappled quite a bit with themes of hope and despair. The journal has advocated 'austere revolutionary pessimism’; one of its taglines is 'hope is precious; it must be rationed.' This raises many questions for me, perhaps because most of my research is on revolutionaries in the Second International. And a lot of their political success – and political message – was arguably rooted in an extremely hopeful approach. Often these currents today get dismissed as believing fatalistically in progress or being overly-optimistic in the final victory of socialism. But I think the rational core of what they were doing was projecting hope as a political intervention into the class struggle, to give workers confidence in themselves and their ability to win. In that sense, hope becomes to a certain extent a self-fulfilling prophecy – if workers think they can win, they’re more likely to fight, thereby making victory more likely.

Within Russia one of the major differences between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks was precisely this question: the Mensheviks constantly accused Lenin and his comrades of having an overly-hopeful confidence in the working class. So how do you look at the politics of hope and despair in 1917? And what aspects of these distinct approaches might be relevant for today, precisely when there’s a semi-resurgence in hope regarding Corbyn in particular?

Miéville: Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya – ‘Teffi’ – teased Lenin by saying that if Lenin met Zinoviev and Kamenev and five horses were present, he’d say ‘There were eight of us.’ Anyone who reads that who’s been politically active and seen the Left’s constant tendency to big everything up will smile. Plus ça change.

There is a simple and obvious level at which hope is necessary: If you don’t believe there is any possibility of fundamental change, there’s no point in struggling for it. That’s one way hope is key to a transformational project.

But there is a banalised version of hope, which is very often (this is a point Terry Eagleton makes in his recent book) indistinguishable from optimism. Optimism is a very different thing. If you start from a default position of optimism, there’s no logic to that. It is essentially a faith position (and, I’d add, an unconvincing one, evincing for me a disavowed despair, more often than not). If optimism and pessimism are to mean anything, they need to be results of analysis of concrete conditions. One might be pessimistic in one situation, optimistic in another.

You brought up the political use of hope: and not just that baseline Grundnorm hope, in the sense in which I’ve said I’ve of course no problem. But a kind of necessary performativity of hope, let alone as a starting point, is another story: the idea that we have to performoptimism, what’s more (and often rather frantically), because that’s how to inspire the working class and stoke its agency, and so on. My difficulties with this approach are several. One being that it is, at least potentially, intellectually and politically dishonest, because the injunction outweighs your actual, concrete analysis. (This, of course, happens all the time: we can all think of hacks swearing blind that some tactic will succeed, leaving us convinced not only that this is untrue, but that they know it.) In addition, for an approach intending to keeping people active, I don’t think we’ve thought nearly enough about its costs. Anecdotally, in my own political experience I have seen more people lost to what I think of as vacuous optimism than to pessimism: people who get burnt out after being told one time too many that one more big push will change things, that there’s everything to play for, that there are immense opportunities in any and all, as opposed tosome, situations, and who get made, what’s more, to feel guilty, who are politically shamed, for feeling that the situation is, in fact, very difficult. Not to mention the shame when thingsdon’t go well, after having been told that if they just keep at it they will. Because what can it be but their failure?

Good things happen, of course, but when they do it doesn’t vindicate that kind of banalised optimism. To repeat, I am, for example, utterly delighted about the speed of the Corbyn phenomenon. There were a few people who did concretely sense something of what was happening, and all respect to them. But this political turn doesn’t vindicate the others who’ve been moralising with their rah-rah for the last thirty years. That’s just a stopped clock being occasionally right.

For such reasons, I haven’t tended to use the word ‘hope’ much recently: not because I don’t feel it in that deep, honourable sense that we talked about – Eagleton’s invaluable ‘hope without optimism’ – but because by default, certainly on the British Left, ‘hope’ had been so hegemonised by the other kind that I found it almost impossible to hear it. I am very glad to say that post-Corbyn, I find that shifting, in society and in myself. I am now, concretely, considerably more hopeful – even optimistic – than I recently have been. Which isn’t to say that I don’t think realism about the scale of what faces us, even now, even after Corbyn – perhaps especially – isn’t absolutely crucial. Not least because I think it is going to cost us fewer activists, and, for many people, it will be just as motivating as any banal optimism.

Blanc: The Bolsheviks, and revolutionaries in the Second International generally, were genuinely hopeful and optimistic, they really believed it.

Miéville: I have no issue, of course, when particular analysis leads to the sense that a particular situation is positive – with good-faith, concrete optimism, you might say. I may or may not agree, but that’s a reasonable debate among comrades. But regarding the ‘hopefulness’ of the Bolsheviks and their political success, I’m courteously sceptical of any implication that this is necessarily causation, rather than a particular correlation. Perhaps the success was is so much a function of wider politics and tendencies that the relative weight of Bolshevik ‘optimism or pessimism’ is infinitesimal in compared within the sweep of history. (There were of course Bolshevik pessimists, and that did not necessarily mean opponents of taking power. There’s nothing particularly unusual about people fighting for what they believe to be right, necessary and possible, but not strongly confident that they’ll succeed.) Perhaps this a question for further good faith discussion.

Blanc: A major legacy of the Russian Revolution was that it sparked a new international orientation around Marxist party building, an approach that came to be known as Leninism. Ever since, there has been an ongoing debate over the nature of the historic Bolshevik Party and what from its experience is generalisable. One of the things that I really appreciated about your book is that you describe the complications, tensions, and mistakes of the Bolshevik Party, as well as its political strengths and its importance in making October possible. What do you think the relevance of this party building legacy is for today?

Miéville: Assuming the important caveat that it would be absurd to simply replicate particular old structures because they seemed to have worked for the Bolsheviks (which kitsch has been a problem on the Left), I don’t have a problem with the party as a form for a political project; I’m not a horizontalist. One of the fundamental things about Leninism that I still find very powerful is considering it as a theory of consciousness, the way consciousness works in people, and the way it changes.

Blanc: And the unevenness of consciousness in particular…

Miéville: Including within the party, and including within the leadership, to be clear. Sometimes there are anarchist (or spuriously democratic right-wing) attacks that notions of the party form – let alone of some ‘vanguard’– are elitist, scornful of working-class people.

Many of these are bad faith attacks, but for the more serious my response is: I believe that people change their minds. I myself have done it many times, including while I was in a political party. So, the question is: How does political subjectivity change? The unevenness you talked about shifts over time. It seems to me that the party – as long as it’s not a shibboleth, hypostatised – is a not-bad-at-all way of relating, with a political project, to those simple facts that consciousness exists, that it changes, and that it is uneven.

Blanc: In Trotsky’s history of the revolution he says that despite all of its serious weaknesses, the Bolshevik Party was a 'quite adequate instrument of revolution’.

Miéville: Right, the party is a tool and I try not to be sentimental about it. It’s also important to stress the party not as a top-down issuer of instructions, but, oftentimes, as a brake, a restraint. I find it very striking and moving the extent to which key moments during high political dramas (not just the Russian Revolution) are not some ‘vanguard’ telling people what to do, but are often about saying 'stop', urging restraint, trying to control a completely understandable but violent class rage, class revenge.

Attacks from the right have been unending. But it is also the case that the Left has not always been its own best friend on this issue, because its relationship to the party as a project can be hypostatised, sentimental, kitsch.

Blanc: In that sense, one of things that really comes across when you seriously delve into the history is the degree to which the Bolsheviks changed over many years, the extent to which they made mistakes, and relatedly the number of open political questions that remain today for socialists. Marxists don’t generally deny these points, yet the actual histories we write tend to be somewhat uncritical and so the lessons we draw from this experience can sometimes be a bit cookie-cutter…

Miéville: I get frustrated with the inability of many on the Left, including the Bolsheviks, to acknowledge an error. That’s why I tease Lenin in the book a bit about his response to the Kornilov events, because that is as close as I’ve ever seen him get to acknowledging a mistake. And even then, when he describes the ‘downright unbelievably sharp turn’ in events, it’s almost as if it’s reality that’s made the mistake. I think we have to get over this allergy for admitting when we make mistakes, in activity, analysis or both. It’s still really common.

Blanc: Reading October, I was really impressed by the amount of research that went into this and the seriousness with which you took up the historiographical side of the project. My guess is that a lot of readers newer to this history might overlook this dimension of the book. In researching for and writing October, were there ways in which you came to look at the Russian Revolution differently than when you began?

Miéville: I’m grateful to you for saying that: a lot of it is down to you and the other specialist scholars who were so generous working with me on the first draft. Though a new reader was always foremost in my head, it was also really important to me that specialists would at least nod approvingly and say, ‘Whether or not I agree with him, he’s done his homework.'

Before I started doing my reading, I wasn’t new to the topic, but I didn’t have a detailed knowledge. On a grand-sweep level I don’t think there was anything that radically altered my position. What the research did was strengthen certain intuitions or passing awarenesses that I had, bringing out the extent of them. For example, it is one of these things that one says on the Left: ‘there was a lot of internal dissent in the Bolsheviks’. We say it almost in passing as a way to prove it was not a monolithic party.

Blanc: Marxists tend to say that – and then often go on to argue that Lenin was right on almost everything.

Miéville: Exactly, we want it both ways. For me, the sheer scale of that internal debate was really striking, the way it was kind of a constant pulse in the party. Similarly, I was swept up with the sense that while October itself was not historically inevitable, no, but everyone was clear that something was going to happen. The country was chaotically, rushing pell-mell towards something – a sense, almost, of apocalypse. And the extent of that ineluctability was very strong. These were fleshings out, extrapolations of vague awarenesses on my part.

At a granular level, by contrast, there were some real revelations for me. For example, I don’t always take a full ‘Lih-ean’ line on everything, I think there’s more of a break between Old Bolshevism and new Leninism than he sometimes implies. That said, Lars Lih’s work is quite indispensable, and regarding his position on Lenin’s ‘Letters from Afar’, before he returned to Russia, I was just completely convinced. The line that one often reads (including, for example, from Trotsky) that the ‘Letters from Afar’ were so shocking that his comrades censored them, aghast at his radical political positions, Lih simply disproves, as far as I’m concerned.

One last issue I came away with was not exactly a change in opinion, but a revelation of quite what an extraordinary group the Mezhraionka was. Like a lot of people I had earlier come across them as a small radical group associated with Trotsky. But reading about them in more depth I grasped something of their astonishing independence of thought, their politics, their disproportionate number of truly fascinating, scintillating intellects.

Blanc: And they play a major role in both the February and October revolutions.

Miéville: I find them utterly fascinating. I think there is a great book to be written – not by me, sadly – on the Mezhraionka.

Blanc: By way of conclusion, could you talk a bit about how you envisioned the political contribution of the book? What have the responses to it been so far and what might this indicate about the current state of engagement with the Russian Revolution?

Miéville: I’m increasingly pulled by the idea that globally, we’re in a moment of sclerotic decadence of capitalism, with all the associated excrescences. I feel that it may not be mere epiphenomenon to have a sense that we are particularly surrounded by a sea of bullshit and bad faith, right now. An interesting effect for me is thatgood faith becomes increasingly important; I set a lot of store by the ability to have an honourable debate with those I disagree with. And I don’t mean just on the left. I really welcomeserious liberal and even right-wing discussions of these topics: what I can’t bear are the kind of waffly liberal nostrums about 'revolutions eating their children', or ‘lovely idea but it could never work.' Analysis by aphorism.

Mostly reviews have been positive, including those beyond the left. That’s meant a lot. I was particularly glad of and grateful for the review by historian Sheila Fitzpatrick, who comes from a very different political place from me and views the revolution in a different way. She did a literature round-up, and she was very serious, thoughtful, scholarly and generous about October. Not least because hers was the first book I ever read about the revolution, decades ago, I found that affecting. The older I get, the more I try to read with a heuristic of generosity, to see what I can get from books – I was grateful to haveOctober read in such a way.

There’ve been other surprises. Among the outré, the book made the business magazineForbes Summer Reading List of 2017, which described it as a story of when ‘a group of disrupters changed a centuries-old institution’ – you know, Tsarist Russia.

The first purpose of the book is to tell the story for readers who don’t necessarily know anything about the Russian Revolution, who want to know what happened when, the stakes, the rhythms, the events. This is not a history of the Russian Revolution for leftists, but for everyone; it is, though, a history of the Russian Revolution for everyone by a leftist.

So one political contribution it might make, if any, is simply to interest people in the story. To say: We need to talk about the Russian Revolution. It’s a thing. Honestly I’m a little blue about the extent to which it isn’t yet a thing, on the whole. I’ve been happy about the responses to this book, but I think there’s less conversation about 1917 than I’d hoped, in the centenary year.

There was a moment when the way to undermine 1917 was to denounce it. Now I suspect we’re at a point when the best way to undermine it is to just not talk about it. If the book provokes a bit more of a discussion about this world-historical, epochal year that inflects liberty, and dignity, and all of those other things, then I’m very glad.

Blanc: This might just be optimism speaking, but my hope is that the current radicalisation of young people might relatively soon lead to a more widespread re-engagement with 1917. Maybe the centenary just came a year or two early?

Miéville: The good news is that there is certainly some curiosity – as, in part, evidenced by some of those unlikely reviews, by the fact that the book seems to have piqued interest more widely than I’d expected. The best news is that there is an un-defensiveness on the Left now. I think people who’ve been thinking and writing about this for many years have moved beyond that understandable default position of mere defence attorney. More people with fidelity to the revolution are thoughtfully, and in a more open way than I’ve seen at other times, talking about some of the problems, for example, internal to the Bolshevik Party rather than just the external problems, crucial as those were. That’s healthy.

So perhaps overall there is not quite as much discussion as I would have hoped about the revolution, but what discussion there is on the left and beyond seems on the whole less rote, less poisonous, even, than I might have feared.

[Miéville and Blanc would like to thank Tithi Bhattacharya for having set this discussion into motion.]

Mario Kessler

This text first appeared in a supplemental issue of Sozialismusdedicated to Theodor Bergmann, and was translated for Historical Materialism by Loren Balhorn

The older he grew, the harder it was to believe that death would ever catch up with him. Theodor ‘Theo’ Bergmann, an accomplished agronomist and historian of the German labour movement later in life, continued to write books and give lectures across the country well after his 100^th birthday. He remained vital and filled with ideas until the very end, laughing off anyone who inquired about his physical condition. His most recent book,Der chinesische Weg. Versuch, eine ferne Entwicklung zu verstehen, was published by the Hamburg-based publishing house VSA only several months ago. It would be his last: Theodor Bergmann died in his home in Stuttgart, Germany on 12 June 2017 at 101 years of age, following a brief illness. With his death, we have lost the last participant and eyewitness to the German labour movement of the Weimar era.

His was a 20^th century life in every sense: born in Berlin on 7 March 1916 to the rather large family of Reform rabbi Julius Jehuda Bergmann and his wife Hedwig née Rosenzweig, Theodor Bergmann entered the Communist movement in 1927 at the age of 11. He first joined the Communist Party, or KPD’s youth organisation, the Jungspartakusbund, but declined to join the party itself, instead decamping to the anti-Stalinist KPD-Opposition (KPO) around Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer together with his brothers Alfred and Josef. His other siblings Arthur, Ernst, Felix, Rose, and Lotte remained loyal to the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Theodor worked with a young Richard Löwenthal, eight years his senior, in the KPO youth organisation – the two would remain trusted discussion partners, despite disagreeing on many questions, for decades.

Bergmann collected valuable experiences during his time in the proletarian sports organisations, the KPO youth organisation, and by volunteering in the Junius-Verlag publishing company, which sympathised with the small party. Here, he discussed with much older comrades like Brandler, Thalheimer, Paul Frölich, Jacob Walcher, Heinz (Moses) Grzyb, Franz Černý, Robert Siewert, Eugen Podrabsky, as well as M. N. Roy, Eduard Fuchs and Felix Weil (who discretely funded the KPO) about the growing Nazi threat, as well as the consolidation of Stalin’s rule in the Soviet Union – two novel problems confronting socialists at the time.

Theodor remained true to this political commitment for his entire life. He strove for a world in which freedom and social justice coexisted. To him, this was socialism – the simplest of ideas that nevertheless proved so incredibly difficult to realise, as he knew all too well.

He felt the consequences of his political activity early on: by 1929, he was expelled from his school, the Mommsen-Gymnasium, for a critical article in a left-wing student paper called the Schulkampf. Luckily, he was accepted to the Köllnische Gymnasium in the same year, where he encountered many working-class classmates, and skipped twoforms. His teachers Siegfried Kawerau, Fritz Ausländer, Hermann Borchardt and Arthur Rosenberg also made an early impression on him. Arthur Rosenberg was particularly influential, and would remain a model historian in Theodor’s eyes for the rest of his life. These teachers taught him that the fight to defend Weimar democracy and the struggle against social injustice must be brought together. He developed a keen sense for anti-Semitic and other racist prejudices early on, regardless of how cleverly disguised they might be. This red thread motivated both his involvement in anti-Nazi demonstrations in the 1930s as well as his participation, often as a speaker, in mobilising against the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in 2017. As recently as April of this year, he spoke at the inauguration of a so-calledStolperstein for anti-fascist resistance fighter Julius Vohl. On 29 April 2017, he addressed a group of students at the Friedrich-Spree-Gesamtschule in Paderbon, reporting on his life between political persecution and self-determination. He began this public appearance, which would ultimately be his last, with the words: ‘The struggle for a better world is more relevant than ever.’

Theodor Bergmann knew the meaning of persecution – as well as solidarity – from his own life. He was driven into exile on 7 March 1933, his 17^th birthday, five days after graduating as the best in his class. His dream to study biology would prove unfulfillable. Instead, he spent more than a decade in exile – first in Palestine, then Czechoslovakia, and finally Sweden. Upon reaching Palestine, Bergmann enjoyed one advantage: as the son of a Rabbi, he already spoke modern Hebrew quite well. He spent two years working on the Geva kibbutz in the Jezreel Valley, where he first discovered his interest in agriculture and agronomy. Nevertheless, he left Palestine in early 1936, citing the Arab-Jewish conflict that increasingly dominated the country. He refused to shoot at Arabs in the emerging civil war and, more than anything, saw his duties in Europe. Convinced that Hitler could not last forever, he wanted to do his part to bring about the Nazi leader’s fall.

He went to Czechoslovakia to what was then known as Tetschen-Liebward, on the German border, home of the Agricultural Department of the German Technical University where he studied agronomy in the evenings, while working in agriculture during the day. Most importantly, he managed to establish contact in the border region with his comrades from the KPO who were conducting underground work in Germany under conditions of extreme illegality.

Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland placed Theodor Bergmann’s life in grave danger, and he narrowly avoided the Nazis’ claws twice. An attempt to continue his studies in Norway failed, and he ultimately went to Sweden, although he was unable to continue his academic career here either. He found employment on a farm west of Stockholm, where he learned to milk cows and operate farming equipment.

His brother Alfred would prove less fortunate, deported to Germany (and thus condemned to death) by the Swiss authorities in 1940. Countless other relatives would also fall victim to the Nazi killing machine. This wound remained unhealed for the rest of Theodor’s life and that of his family. He resolved that Jews should never again be left defenceless against such murderous barbarity – incidentally, the same conviction that would later motivate his brother Ernst to help develop the first Israeli atomic bomb.

Together with his brother Josef, who had also fled to Sweden, Theodor published a hectographed newspaper, the KPO-Briefe, later known asRevolutionäre/Politische Briefe, together with his brother Josef who had also fled. Additionally, he worked in a local committee of German trade unionists. At war’s end, he attempted to return to Germany, although he knew he would be returning to a country which had just undergone the planned execution of millions of Jews and non-Jews. He always said and wrote, however, that German fascism first had to destroy the labour movement before it began its horrendous ‘work’ of eliminating the Jews.

After working in the Swedish mining industry for six months, Bergmann returned to West Germany in April 1946. British authorities had delay his re-entry, and he was only permitted back into the country after his friend Wolf Nelki and Labour politician Fenner Brockway intervened. Stalinist East Germany was not an alternative to Theodor. Instead (and even more astoundingly), he illegally met with many of his former KPO comrades in the Soviet occupation zone, which soon earned him a warrant for his arrest he was keen to avoid. In political life, he found his home in the Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik; in private, in fellow KPO member Gretel Steinhilber (1908–1994).

The Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik drew on both on the traditions of the ‘old’ KPO, as well as other Weimar-era dissident Communist groups. This mission would prove impossible over the long term. The task was daunting from the beginning: lacking any conceivable financial support, Theodor Bergmann began publishing the Arbeiterpolitik in 1948 with his brother Josef, and remained its editor until 1952, when internal conflicts led him to quit the organisation. Initially, his wife Gretel sustained the childless couple financially through her work as a stenotypist and secretary. Important political support came from his Danish comrades Morgens and Ester Boserup.

Gretel and Theodor Bergmann first travelled to Yugoslavia in 1949, viewing its form of independent socialism as a hopeful development that could perhaps offer a path towards overcoming Stalinism internationally. Nevertheless, he rejected Wolfgang Leonhard’s offer to join his independent workers’ party, the ‘Titoist’ Unabhängige ArbeiterparteiDeutschlands (UAPD), in 1951. Theo was not interested in subjecting his political work to the whims of other Communist Parties, anti-Stalinist or not. Nor did his sympathy for Yugoslavia’s path stop him from supporting Milovan Djilas’s criticisms of Tito or protesting his harsh treatment at the hands of the Yugoslav authorities.

The Bergmanns would remain friends with Wolfgang’s mother Susanne for decades, standing by her together with Hedwig Eichner (Gretel’s sister), Fritz Lamm, and Hermann and Gerda Weber, especially as she began to feel the negative health effects of her years in Soviet internment in old age.

In his autobiography, Im Jahrhundert der Katastrophen. Autobiographie eines kritischen Kommunisten, first published in 2000 and expanded to mark his 100th birthday, Bergmann describes in short, dispassionate sentences his difficult transition from an agricultural labourer in exile to a Professor of Comparative International Agricultural Policy at the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim. West German post-war society had little room for independent Marxists of his type.

Theo Bergmann completed his interrupted studies of agricultural sciences in 1947 in Bonn. While working as an unskilled worker in a metal factory, then in the Hanover Chamber of Agriculture, and later as a project leader in Turkey, he completed his doctoral degree in 1955 and, in 1968, his Habilitation practically ‘in passing’ in 1968. His dissertation addressedWandlungen der landwirtschaftlichen Betriebsstruktur in Schweden, while hisHabilitation thesis, begun in 1965, addressedFunktionen und Wirkungsgrenzen von Produktionsgenossenschaften in Entwicklungsländern. Both before and after hisHabilitation, he published a series of books on topics like trade union work in the countryside and, most notably, agricultural policies in South Asia and comparative studies of various development models. He wrote his most important book on the topic,The Development Models of India, the Soviet Union, and China, in English.

His countless agricultural and sociological studies on Israel, particularly the Kibbutzim, demonstrated his connection to the country that provided Jews with state protection, developed democratic structures, and yet still adhered to policies that Theo often criticised harshly, while also analysing them at a level of sophistication rarely encountered in Germany. He wrote an essay for the Gewerkschaftlichen Monatshefte in 1967 immediately after the Six Days War defending Israel’s right to self-defence, including a preventative first strike if necessary. Chairperson of the West German trade union federation (DGB) Ludwig Rosenberg distributed 2,000 copies of the article in pamphlet form. This position brought Theodor into conflict with many other contemporary leftists, including Wolfgang Abendroth. He was and would remain, however, an opponent of every form of nationalism (including Israeli), and would recognise the devastating consequences of violent land-grabbing in the West Bank by militant settlers early on.

Theodor’s incredible work ethic, strictly observed discipline, and irrepressible optimism that accompanied him to the very end allowed him to outmanoeuvre his reactionary ‘colleagues’ who sought to prevent this Marxist from enjoying a successful academic career. His over sixty books as author and editor and hundreds of articles (not to mention the hundreds more which appeared in Arbeiterpolitik) speak to his boundless creativity and imaginativeness. He shared his wealth of knowledge with others modestly, never arrogantly. He was also a veritable socialist global citizen: writing and translating in five languages, reading half a dozen more. He travelled to China at his own expense 14 times, most recently at age 97. He visited Israel even more often, celebrating his 100^th birthday there. Oftentimes conducting projects for the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organisation, he visited Indian, Pakistan and many other countries several times in order to ‘understand developments’. Theodor Bergmann was a visiting professor at the University of New England in Armidale (Victoria, Australia) in 1971–2, and later held guest lectures in Göttingen for years. Some of the contacts he developed here would last a lifetime. On the whole, Bergmann was a loyal correspondent, who regularly expressed concern for the wellbeing of his many friends around the world, and often helped out in times of need.

He would not become a Professor of Comparative International Agricultural Policy at Stuttgart-Hohenheim until 1973. He selflessly helped students during the so-called ‘Berufsverbot’ period, even when he disagreed with their political views. His loyal students included Helmut Arnold, Joachim Herbeld, and Karl Burgmaier, who stood by his side until the end.

Even today, students and doctoral candidates report of his willingness to help others, his vast expert knowledge, his almost unbelievably extensive humanist education (which he hardly ever mentioned), but also the demanding expectations he placed on them – although he demanded even more from himself. He accrued further international prominence through his editorship of the European Society for Agricultural Sociology’s publication, Sociologia ruralis. He held one of the main keynotes at the 1976 World Congress of Agricultural Sociology in Torun, Poland.

Following retirement, the history and politics of the labour movement would increasingly become his main field of research. His history of the KPO, Gegen den Strom, was first published in 1987 and has been reprinted in various updated editions since. Today, it is regarded as one of, if not the definitive history of that organisation, and an English translation is planned for the Historical Materialism Book Series. He neglected to limit himself to this topic, however, and also published scientific works on the history of the Comintern, the Spanish Civil War, and the Arab-Israeli conflict to name just a few, and continued to conduct archival research both domestically and abroad almost up to his 100^th birthday. Together with his colleague and friend Gert Schäfer, Bergmann initiated multiple international conferences on the history and current problems of the labour and trade union movement. It began with meetings on Karl Marx and August Thalheimer in 1983 and 1984 in and around Stuttgart, and ended in 2004 with a conference of the Rosa Luxemburg Society in Guangzhou, China. Between these were various prominently attended conferences on Trotsky, Bukharin, Lenin, the Russian Revolution, Friedrich Engels, and more. All of these conferences were documented in collected volumes which Bergmann edited anonymously behind the scenes. He was also a co-editor of the magazineSozialismus for many years, and wrote his last essay for them as a 100-year old man.

As far as politics and trade union work in particular was concerned, Theodor was no mere observer. He participated in the DGB’s 1949 founding congress as an interpreter, and was a member of the union Gartenbau, Land- und Forstwirtschaft as well as, most recently, the Initiative Gewerkschaftslinke. In 1967, he wrote the ‘Aktionsprogramm der sozialistischen Opposition’ together with Wolfgang Abendroth, Gerhard Gleissberg, and Frank Deppe. This document called for launching an independent left-socialist party, and sought to challenge the SPD ‘after Godesberg’ but also positioned itself as a clear alternative to the Communist parties of Soviet or Chinese coinage. The initiative also pushed the leaders of the East German state to establish their own, acceptable counterpart in West Germany, the German Communist Party or DKP. Bergmann later served as a liaison lecture for the Social Democratic Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Hohenheim, but never joined the party itself. His particular, radical socialist critique of Stalinism combined with cautious hope for internal reforms of Soviet Communism placed him on the same side as figures like Wolfgang Abendroth and Ossip Flechtheim, although he was equally supportive of Western European dissident Communists like Franz Marek, Ralph Miliband, or Rossana Rossanda, who he viewed as his intellectual co-thinkers.

His internationalist convictions also pushed him to get involved in trade union solidarity with Cuba. One of his biggest engagements, however, was his push to invite visiting Chinese scholars to Hohenheim, even though he had retired in 1981. His view of the Chinese state, often viewed as overly optimistic by friends and comrades, cannot be separated from his harsh criticisms of the repression of protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989. He maintained countless contacts in that country, as well: one of his most important relationships was with the political writer who had come to China early in life, (and had, according to Theo, ‘the beautiful Chinese name’) Israel Epstein.

In doing so, Bergmann sought to continue that which began in 1968: the selfless, but never uncritical support for Communist as well as non-Communist dissidents, who had left the so-called socialist camp and found themselves in the West – sometimes against their own will. These ties led to solid friendships with individuals like Eduard Goldstücker and Zdeněk Mlynář. Theodor was also friends with members of the Khrushchev and Bukharin families in Moscow. Another noteworthy friend was the painter Robert Liebknecht, son of Karl Liebknecht, to whom he owed much of his extensive artistic knowledge. Theodor spoke at his funeral in January 1995.

Theodor lost his wife Gretel, whom he had cared for in their home until the end, to a long, difficult illness on 17 February 1994. This was the greatest loss of his life. He remained in close contact with his siblings in Israel and their families in Israel, as well as with his relatives in the Czech Republic and Gretel’s relatives, who were an important part of his own family as well.

Theodor Bergmann saw himself as a critical Communist. It is thus little surprise that his books were declared contraband in East Germany. However, this never stopped him from supporting many ‘liquidated’ East German scholars who had once denounced him as a ‘revisionist’ and a ‘renegade’ after the end of the Eastern Bloc. He joined the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), even led its Baden-Württemberg state chapter for a period, and remained active in the party’s educational work until the end of his life.

He stayed in touch with old KPO comrades and other left-wing socialists throughout his life. Theodor learned just as much from politically astute workers like Paul Böttcher, Waldemar Bolze, Eugen Ochs, Eugen Podrabsky, Robert Siewert and Alfred Schmidt – persecuted by both Nazism and Stalinism – as he did from his more academically inclined comrades. He was also tied through friendship to former KPO politician and later victim of Stalin, Kurt Müller. That said, young people also sought his advice. One particular student who picked Bergmann’s brain for every last detail of the Weimar labour movement was Rudi Dutschke, whose funeral Theodor and Gretel attended in 1980.

His apartment was always open to knowledge-hungry visitors. His favourite audience, however, were schoolchildren. He was often invited to speak at schools, and his incredibly dangerous life, as well as important learning experiences, proved deeply compelling to the younger generations. I can remember my students’ jaws dropping when a 100-years old Theodor, after holding a lecture without more than several notes, said to the audience: ‘I hope I didn’t exhaust anyone.’ On 23 June 2016, he spoke at Potsdam’s Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung about the Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik in post-war Germany: ‘Independent paths for the independent Marxist left were blocked, and they lacked the strength to remove these obstacles.’ Nevertheless, he always remained committed to swimming ‘against the current’. He himself was that which he often praised other critical Marxists for: a ‘Communist heretic’. A documentary film about his life appeared on his 90^th birthday. Its title,Dann fangen wir von vorne an [‘Then we start from the beginning’], referenced a quote by Friedrich Engels in which he encourages socialists to never resign in the face of defeat.

Multiple commemorative volumes, most recently on the occasion of his 100^th birthday, have been published to honour Theodor Bergmann’s life and accomplishments. Shortly before his centenary, the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim established a colloquium in honour of their oldest faculty member. A special experience was his opening speech before the German premier of Raoul Peck’s film,Der junge Karl Marx, which he held on 2 March 2017 in the Kamino cinema in Reutlingen.

Twenty years ago, Theodor’s friend Nathan Steinberger remarked: ‘Theo won’t live to 90. Theo will live to 100.’ And so he did, and even had one more productive year after that.

As unbelievable as it may seem, his last years witnessed further qualitative and quantitative growth in Bergmann’s publishing career. Since 2009, he published: Internationalisten an den antifaschistischen Fronten: Spanien–China–Vietnam (2009);Internationalismus im 21.Jahrhundert (2009);Weggefährten. Gesprächspartner–Lehrer–Freunde–Helfer eines kritischen Kommunisten (2010);Der einhundertjährige Krieg um Israel. Eine internationalistische Position zum Nahostkonflikt (2011);Strukturprobleme der kommunistischen Bewegung (2012);Kritische Kommunisten im Widerstand (2013);Sozialisten–Zionisten–Kommunisten. Die Familie Bergmann-Rosenzweig – eine kämpferische Generation im 20. Jahrhundert (2014);Der chinesische Weg. Versuch, eine ferne Entwicklung zu verstehen (2017). It is the duty of younger generations to tap into and make use of this rich legacy.

Theodor Bergmann never believed in life after death. Nevertheless, as theologian Helmut Gollwizer once said, this atheist and his faith in a humane, socialist society brought him much closer to this belief than many who call themselves Christians. In the spirit of Isaac Deutscher, a figure Bergmann deeply respected, Theo saw himself as a ‘non-Jewish Jew’. Nevertheless, he continued to follow secular Jewish and Israeli culture in particular throughout his life.

His exceptional diligence, prudence and the systematic way in which he organised his life motivated some, while intimidating others. When he reached 90 years of age, I asked him: ‘Theo, you’ve already accomplished enough to fill ten lifetimes. What will you do when you get old?’ He responded: ‘There’s always enough to do. I don’t have time to get old.’ He would maintain this attitude for the rest of his life.

I visited him on 10 June at his home in Stuttgart, where he lay terminally ill, accompanied by his family and close friends, including his assistant Margerete Weiler and Ms. Mila, his outstanding nurse. Theo gathered his last ounces of strength in order to spend one last hour with me. When bidding each other goodbye, we both raised our fists in the traditional salute of the International Brigades and said, almost simultaneously, ‘La lutte continue’. I would be his last visitor. He lost consciousness the next morning and only came back sporadically, falling asleep peacefully in his own home.

Despite sometimes appearing outwardly stern, Theodor Bergmann was a warm, loving personality, to whom every shred of vanity or pettiness was absolutely foreign. He was fundamentally and deeply honest, consistent and decisive in both thought and action, while still expressing sympathy and understanding for human weakness. Not everyone can, nor must struggle all the time, and the weak are not always deserving of criticism – but always of solidarity. Here, Bergmann followed the words of Bertolt Brecht:

'The weak do not fight. The stronger fight for perhaps an hour. Those who are stronger fight for many years. But the strongest fight their entire lives. These are indispensable.'

Theodor Bergmann never saw himself as indispensable. But, in fact, that is what he was.

This piece was originally written for the special issue 150 of the Spanish journal Viento Sur, "1917-2017 Rethinking Revolution" dedicated to political strategy and anti-capitalist alternatives.

Josep Maria Antentas teaches Sociology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). He has published in English and Spanish several articles on the Spanish regime crisis, 15M movement, Podemos and political strategy. He has also worked on Daniel Bensaïd's oeuvre and was a contributor to the special symposium on Bensaïd in Historical Materialism 24.4.

1. Movement-party. After decades of crisis of left-wing political forces and of activist refuge in social movements, the current rebirth of the political-electoral combat and the building of new political tools is happening together with the need to rethink and renew the very notion of party. As a result of a long decline of the political left since the late 1970s, the (uneven) crisis of the parties has been a crisis of content (programme), form (organisation), and practice. In short, a crisis of project, sense and strategy. Indeed, the resurgence of the eternal "party question" conceals a broader discussion of political strategy, the nature of political struggle itself, and the relationship between the political and the social.

The notion of movement-party sums up well the vocation to undertake a movement-inspired renewal of the party, as a certain analogy of the concept of social movement unionism. Used in academic circles by Kitschelt^[1] to refer to the anti-authoritarian and green parties that emerged in the 1980s in several European countries, the term can be reformulated in a broader sense. Applied to the debate in Podemos, it shows a pretension of political-symbolic continuity between 15M and Podemos in a scenario of crisis of legitimation of the whole political system of the Spanish State that puts forward the need to develop, in Gramscian terms, a counter-hegemonic project and not merely an alternative political voice.

In this context, a movement-party takes on several simultaneous meanings: party as a movement (movement features),in movement (action-oriented and in continuous transformation),part of the movement (part of social struggles), anddebtor of the movement (that is inspired by a foundational political-social event, 15M).Movement debtocracy means a party indebted to the movement (and the event), fidelity to which implies thinking beyond the same and its own limits to reveal all of its possibilities - excluding both its sanctification and its crude instrumentation for electoral purposes.

Although social movements (in fact, social organisations) reproduce many of the problems that are commonly associated with parties, the call for a movement-party is an attempt to go beyond conventional party politics and, at the same time, to follow in the tracks of a political tradition of, if we adapt Draper’s classic formula, change from below.^[2]

2.Strategist-party. A party oriented towards a policy of emancipation must be conceived as astrategist-party, using Daniel Bensaïd’s term.^[3] A movement-strategist-party. Addressing reality strategically is a precondition for victory, although there is no guarantee of it. Planning a strategy does not mean that it is correct. Or that it is useful for advancing the cause of emancipation. Or that its implementation is tactically correct. Or having a correlation of forces that leads to victory. But thinking strategically is the first step. "There is no victory without strategy," notes Bensaïd.^[4]

A strategic view of the world is, therefore, a helpful starting point, even though it does not ensure the destination will be reached. This is done on the basis of working hypotheses, as provisional road-maps for political action that will need to be contrasted and to pass the test of a never conclusive practice. In the era of the GPS (Global Positioning System), we therefore need to recognise that when it comes to political strategy, we are still navigating with an astrolabe. The politics of the astrolabe assumes that a political struggle does not work with imaginary certainties or inconsistent improvisations. It is based on rigorous and flexible approaches to a changing reality that is too complex to be understood perfectly. The uncertainty of the result of the action itself is an intrinsic part of any strategic approach. "In the revolutionary struggle there are no guarantees in advance" Trotsky warned in 1934 discussing the situation worldwide.^[5]

The culmination of all strategic thinking is to develop what I have called strategic imagination, echoing Wright Mills’ well-known concept of ‘sociological imagination’.^[6] Defined as ‘the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society’, sociological imagination requires open-mindedness with regard to society. Strategic imagination needs a similar mentality. It means thinking strategically from a self-reflective and permanently innovative point of view, and having an indomitable and insatiable will to search for new possibilities to transform the world. In that sense, all strategy for revolution also has to be a revolution in strategy. The space-time perspective, that is to say, having both the historical and geographical scope to draw lessons from failed and successful past and contemporary experiences, is always a fundamental basis for strategic learning – a basis for the expansion of the imagination's frontiers. Therefore, short and long term, and concrete experience and comparative knowledge, are all intertwined.

3. Integral strategy. A political force must operate in all dimensions of social life. Changing the world needs ‘daily work in all fields’ to borrow an expression from Lenin.^[7] It works its way into every last nook and cranny. No aspect can be neglected. Neither political, nor economic, nor ideological. All the details matter. All flanks are important in order to avoid strategic blind spots that may conceal unforeseen vulnerabilities and hinder the capacity to react.

Phil Hedges on Linebaugh's May Day Essays and the UCL rent strikes

Phil Hedges is a trade union organiser and an alumnus of the International Labour and Trade Union Studies Masters (MA ILTUS) at Ruskin College, Oxford. This essay is dedicated to the 2014-16 MA ILTUS cohort.

In March 2016, the Marxist historian Peter Linebaugh released an anthology of essays highlighting the history and importance of May Day. The Incomplete, True, Authentic and Wonderful History of May Day compiled work from 1986 to 2015 and coincided with the 130^th anniversary of the Haymarket bombing.

These essays “most[ly] written the night or week before” 1^st May[1] cover a broad range of topics and eras. Although Haymarket and Merry Mount are pivotal to many,[2] May Day is not constrained by these two events. Linebaugh’s May Day is an anti-capitalist festival[3]  that incorporates but transcends these narratives.

Linebaugh’s biography and work suggests that piecing together theory is appropriate when attempting to understand this anthology. The historian was an early member of the Midnight Notes collective founded in 1979. Influenced by E.P. Thompson, Italian Operaist Marxists and Wages for House Work theorists, Midnight Notes was conceived as a “bridge between the workers movements of the past ... and the new social movements”.[4] Linebaugh described Midnight Notes as “an anti-capitalist collective that was also struggling to express itself during those leaden times;”[5] so leaden that the collectives fluid membership sometimes remained anonymous to avoid repression.[6]

As his doctoral student, Linebaugh was sufficiently close to E.P. Thompson to introduce the reprint of William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary, in which he mentions living with his mentor.[7] The elder historian was comfortable explicitly presenting his thoughts on the theory of class determination[8] and Linebaugh himself presents political theory – for example, inStop Thief! The Commons, Enclosures and Resistance regarding the nature of commoning.[9] Whilst Midnight Notes and Linebaugh’s bibliography is beyond the scope of this paper, this contextualises a vision of Linebaugh as a historian comfortable with theory.

This paper seeks to outline the boundaries of Linebaugh’s May Day, and in doing so, assemble a “theory of May Day”. This paper then concludes with a brief examination of a May Day essay. In doing so, this paper begins to explore two questions:

• - Can a “theory of May Day”, as understood by Linebaugh and demonstrated by his essays, be outlined?
• - Can his May Day essays be replicated?
•  

After examining several of the key essays in the anthology, section 2 outlines what May Day means to Linebaugh, attempting to define the characteristics of a May Day essay and what the historian is attempting to achieve. Section 3 draws two key themes from the anthology and attempts to outline them as coherent theories. Section 4 is an examination of the essay May Day with Heart, attempting to understand and draw stylistic guidelines from this complex text. The conclusion – section 5 – examines an attempt to write a May Day essay themed around housing struggles and rent strikes based on the framework outlined in this paper.[10]

While an exploration of the role of radical festivals is beyond the scope of this paper, my own experience underpins interest in this project. Labour Day in Queensland, Australia is the 1^st Monday in May and celebrates the 8 Hour Day[11] - a goal shared by the murdered McCormick strikers in Chicago, May Day 1886.[12] This was a key demand of the strikes that formed the Great Upheaval[13] of that “revolutionary year”[14] and embodied:

an assertion that the worker was a human being whose life should not be consumed in toil and an attack on the deliberate policy of keeping hours long and unemployment high to get the most work for the least wages.[15]

This demand went global; whilst fallacy to assume present-day Queenslanders are aware of Haymarket, there is a historic link.

In 2011, I took part in the parade through Brisbane; thousands participated in this show of strength and celebration of trade unionism and it was a social occasion that led to friendships with young activists. Returning to the UK, an attempt to celebrate May Day whilst organising with a union was largely abortive. Whilst historical festivals such as the Durham Miners Gala are successful in increasing attendance and inspiring a form of “emotional regeneration”[16] for mining communities, May Day appears in decline.

Yet where it is celebrated, it remains a powerful celebration of radicalism – which is perhaps in part why the Liberal National Party government in Queensland moved Labour Day to October. “The Newman government had no regard for Labour Day’s special place in Queensland’s history” breaking the link with the first march that took place during the Shearers strike of 1891.[17] To prove the point, the triumphant Labour state government reversed the decision, and Queensland saw record turn outs for the 2016 parade which Queensland Council of Unions General Secretary Ros McLennan labelled a warning to a right wing federal government .[18] In 2017, such warnings, the solidarity shared and the friendships made will be needed more than ever, and the researcher is sympathetic to the notion that scholarship developing interest in May Day provides soil to help them grow.

Methodology

The Incomplete, True, Authentic and Wonderful History of May Day collates 11 essays written as self-contained texts across 19 years. As such, there are inconsistencies between them; arguably they were not planned as a coherent body of work and the topics covered are vast. Linebaugh himself appears to acknowledge this in interviews and discussions. The title essay is typically discussed as a proxy for the larger anthology, which is impossible to sound bite.[19] In doing so, other key elements are weaved to the narrative such as the role of Mexican immigrants in bringing May Day back to America[20] and Linebaugh touches on other theories such as X² when directly asked.[21] This dynamic is also apparent in some reviews of the anthology[22] and the anthology blurb.

This paper principally examines 5 essays from the collection, selected because they cover material that appear in these discussions – the introduction essay The May Day Punch That Wasn’t, the titular essay, X²: May Day in Light of Waco and LA, May Day with Heart,and Ypsilanti Vampire May Day. A reading of these essays is accompanied by insights gleamed from a range of videos and podcasts recorded of Linebaugh in 2016. Where these contradict the texts, the text is prioritised, given the tendency to abridge the anthology’s contents and the greater care undertaken in crafting a written argument.

Since it was not possible to interview Linebaugh, this paper presents an interpretative approach[23] to understanding the May Day essays rather than a definitive reading. Linebaugh himself may contest the findings or offer insight that is missing from the sources accessed, whilst another researcher may draw different conclusions, stressing different elements of the texts and bridging contradictions in other ways.

Defining May Day

Linebaugh describes the May Day essays as “occasional”,[24] meaning that they relate directly to a specific occasion. But while the Haymarket bombing and its aftermath form the foundational events for the modern international holiday, Haymarket does not appear in every essay in the anthology (for example, it is absent fromSwan Honk May Day). If an “occasional” May Day essay is not automatically the origin story of the modern festival, what are its characteristics? Linebaugh’s definition is articulated inThe May Day Punch That Wasn’t:

May Day is about affirmation, the love of life, and the start of spring, so it has to be about the beginning of the end of the capitalist system of exploitation, oppression, misery, toil, and moil. Besides full affirmation May Day requires denunciation: the denunciation of capitalism, of patriarchy, of white supremacy, of war.[25]

In interviews, a fuller description is provided, with the book’s title structuring the discussions. This format is replicated below to highlight some key characteristics of a May Day essay. The history of May Day is incomplete in that it there are many more May Day stories to tell and the revolutionary promise is yet to be fulfilled; it is authentic because the essays are written to help activism; it is true because, although based on secondary sources, the essays present historical fact; and it is wonderful history because May Day has promises to provide romantic fulfilment and social justice. 

The incomplete history of May Day

May Day is doubly incomplete; the anthology can not include every May Day story, and the anti-capitalist promise of May Day is not yet fulfilled. This provides the rationale for activist-scholars to produce further May Day essays; it is their role to widen the scope of the events covered and to agitate and educate for social change.

Addressing Historical Materialism Toronto, Linebaugh acknowledges that the Canadian experiences of May Day are missing from the volume,[26] an admission followed by an audience member highlighting Turkey’s “Bloody May Day” of 1977.[27] The historian’s confession that there are narratives untold within the anthology thus directly prompts the retelling of another May Day story.

Linebaugh repeatedly asserts that May Day is incomplete “because we haven’t finished our work”.[28] Whilst the motivation for each essay is linked to contemporary events, by 2016, the historian is inspired by the Sanders campaign; although the Democrat candidate is deemed insufficiently radical, his suggestions on regulating Wall Street have created possibilities for further discussions. May Day becomes a day to debate what socialism, anarchism and communism might look like and to redesign government institutions (and the USA in general) outside of capitalism.[29]

The authentic history of May Day

The Haymarket story is authentic because it is sustained outside of the academy - “It’s not part of institutions, of universities”.[30] Instead it was Spanish speaking (ibid) and working class radical communities that nurtured the historical memory of May 1886.[31]

Authenticity also stems from activism - the essays are written as part of a larger campaign, however lose, to revive May Day. Linebaugh’s engagement with activism is clear from his views regarding E.P. Thompson. Thompson’s “history was always about the present,” and TheMaking of the English Working Class was written because Thompson wanted a revolutionary working class to be made in the 1960’s. Given that Thompsonnever articulated this to the best of Linebaugh’s knowledge, this assertion is more revealing about his vision of radical history than that of Thompson’s. Having helped raise concerns about attacks on civil liberties inThe Magna Carta Manifesto, perhaps  Linebaugh’s ultimate goal is to write history that helps to build a revolutionary global class.[32]

Linebaugh’s personal May Day activism included a tumultuous picnic at Rochester[33] and a pilgrimage to Quincy,[34] the sight of the Merry Mount May Pole. Some of the essays “lived” as pamphlets passed out on the street, and the historian is clear that while the job of the author is over with publishing the pamphlet, the job of the activist is not, declaring that “you readers must make it live.”[35] This is authenticity as a pseudo-evangelical calling to remind the public of its history,[36] and there is legitimacy implied by the sacrifices in doing so. These early May Day parties cost Linebaugh a job and resulted in the expulsion of the anarchist grad student “Freight train”.[37]

Attendees at the April 2016 Gathering recorded for PM Press provide anecdotes of May Day activism. Echoing an earlier action from the mid-1980s,[38] Linebaugh was involved in taking a May pole to the bank of Boston. This was assembled at lunchtime in small plaza, and activists danced around it and put on pro-Zapatista skit in front of a bank in order to disrupt work. In Jamaica Plains, Boston, residents celebrate a spring festival which often coincides with May Day. Anonymous activists displayed sheets of plywood for attendees to read that displayed most of the text of the original May Day essay. The following year panels appeared that included stories from other cultures.[39]

The true history of May Day

For Linebaugh, that the stories contained in the essays are historical fact[40] constitutes thetrue May Day. The author is not primarily a historian of Haymarket and the essays were often quickly drafted in the run up to May Day.[41] Therefore the material used to compile them is drawn from secondary sources such as the work of James Green.

Regarding the controversy surrounding the identity of the Haymarket bomber, Linebaugh admits to not studying the original German sources, resulting in disagreements with Timothy Messer-Kruse who believes him to be “ignorant” in his assertion the bomb was thrown by a police provocateur.[42] Whilst a discussion of radical historiography is beyond the scope of this paper, it is notable the May Day essay exists outside of the historian’s academic speciality and arguably a fulfilment of Howard Zinn’s assertion that radical scholarship should transcend these narrow boundaries.[43] This raises questions of how “amateur” radical historians relate to those who are recognised as being more academically specialist in a subject, particularly regarding politically polarised controversies.

The wonderful May Day

The wonderful May Day is the celebration of fertility and class resistance. Linebaugh notes that “wonderful” relates to “... tremendous things [that] happen when we act as a class in a righteous cause,”[44] referring to the capacity for social change that comes from working people combining to realise their power. The fertility aspect is hinted at when the historian professes that something wonderful will result from dancing around the May pole.[45] This refers of course to finding a romantic partner.

Critically reading the outline sketched by Linebaugh raises questions that are beyond the scope of this paper – for example, is reviving May Day an appropriate tactic to help develop radicalism? Focusing momentarily on Haymarket, a radical politics of mourning could motivate those remembering the original Martyrs but to the question “What complex historical valences transformed the deaths of Michael Brown, or Emmett Till, or Mohamed Bouazizi into catalysts of ruptural mourning when countless other deaths were not?”[46] can now be added the question – “Can these same feelings of ruptural mourning be revived over a century later?” Regardless, this is one critical interpretation of the task that Linebaugh has set.

The theory of May Day

This section outlines two theories articulated in Linebaugh’s anthology. Three essays are examined: the green and red May Day are articulated in the titular essay (1986) and Ypsilanti Vampire May Day (2012), whilst the theory of X² is proposed in 1993’sX²: May Day in Light of Waco and LA and returned to inYpsilanti... The two earlier essays were printed as pamphlets, the first by the Midnight Notes Collective as a revised version ofThe Silent Speak pamphlet (1985); the second was given out randomly “on street corners and at sporting events”.[47]Ypsilanti... was published by Jeff Clark as part of Occupy Ypsi Press[48] and appeared on the Counterpunch website.[49]

These theories are vaguely sketched by Linebaugh; moreover, both have changed in key ways between their initial publication and their revisiting in Ypsilanti... two decades later. Regardless, they arguably retain potential as frameworks for making illuminating comparisons between seemingly disparate events. The green and red May Day allows the activist-scholar to understand the relationship between the pagan festival and modern workers demonstrations in a broad sense that allows for the interjection of topical events. X² seeks to make explicit the hidden relationship between expropriation and exploitation, which are key to capitalism and oppositional to May Day. This section concludes by sketching a model linking both theories together.

Green and red May Day

May Day can be divided into green and red elements.[50] This section seeks to understand what each element represents. It begins by outlining the green May Day as part of an ancient egalitarian celebration of spring before moving to examine the red May Day, whose meaning shifts in the decades between the two essays from remembering the victims of capital to celebrating those who would oppose it in the social sphere.

The green.

The green element refers to the ancient custom of celebrating May Day as the onset of spring:

Green is a relationship to the earth and what grows there... Green designates life with only necessary labour ... Green is natural appropriation ... husbandry and nurturance ... useful activity [and] ... creation of desire ... [51]

Linebaugh provides a brief international overview of the festival, acknowledging that “the origin of May Day is to be found in the Woodland Epoch of history ... [where] people honoured the woods in many ways.”[52] The origin of May as the namesake of the mother of Greek Gods is outlined and highlighting celebrations of fertility, Linebaugh reminds the reader of the rhyme (also reproduced on the reverse cover of the pamphlet):[53] “Hooray! Hooray! The First of May! Outdoor fucking begins today!”[54] On 1^st May, “many maids went into the woods and came back different than they went out.”[55]

Merry Mount is used to contrast the utopian, “paradise” of Thomas Morton’s North America[56] with that of the Puritans, for whom Morton’s abundance offended a life of scarcity.[57] Morton[58] and his detractors are quoted,[59] highlighting the celebration of ample natural resources and the free abandon of the May Day festivities. This, coupled with Merry Mount’s egalitarian notions, led to its destruction.[60] For Linebaugh, like Hawthorne, Merry Mount is a key event in American history – a “road not taken”[61] - and like Haymarket, one returned to throughout the anthology.

A crucial thread of the Green May Day is a rejection of work. Linebaugh highlights that the Native Americans encountered by Smith in 1606 worked a 4 hour week;[62] shifting to the persecution of pagans, May Day’s saints are highlighted. Adopted as part of the Roman Empire’s strategy of syncretism, the unproductive James and Philip are celebrated as “unwilling slaves to empire.” May Day “was not a time to work”,[63] setting it at odds with early capitalists and the sanctity of labour.[64] This led to oppression – which in turn spawned resistance to the “regimen of monotonous work”.[65]

The green thread of May Day is demonstrated as “a celebration of all that is free, green and life giving”[66] - themes not extinguished by the onset of capitalism, despite Linebaugh’s self-contradictory assertion.[67] As well as festivities extending in to the industrial revolution,[68] a poem written in 1980, demands “for land that’s green and life that’s saved, and less and less of the earth that’s paved.”[69] In the same year, workers in Mozambique “lamented the absence of beer” and witches rampaged across Hamburg.[70] Moreover, since the earth is being destroyed and it is capital that is responsible for “desertification” and “treating the Pacific Ocean as if it were a sewer,”[71] May Day has to be a green festival.

Since drafting The Incomplete...., Linebaugh likely collated contemporary case studies. For example, although James Matthews saw the defacing of the Winston Churchill statue on May Day in 2000 as a chance to “express a challenge to an icon of the British establishment”[72] in the name of free speech and human rights, this impulsive, passionate act was carried out in the heat of the moment[73] – perhaps “being spring time, there were sexual and generational as well as political energies coursing wildly about”[74]

Photos of the defacement show a Mohawk - made of green grass.  

The red

The statue “was made to look as though blood was dripping from its mouth[75]”. The red May Day is “the relationship to other people and the blood spilt there among,”[76] and Churchill was not opposed to spilling blood. Alongside a chequered war record, he sent troops against strikers in Tonypandy in 1910 and the docks in 1911 and did not censure police violence against suffragettes.[77] This is the red thread:

death with surplus labour ... social appropriation ... proletarianization and prostitution ... useless toil [and] ... class struggle.[78]

If May Day is theorised as a duality, its nature here is contradictory. In the titular essay, it is an antagonistic relationship. This red is not aspirational but oppositional; it is the denial of the green, which represents radical values. It is a reminder of the barbarism of the current social relation and in memory of those who have fallen victim to it. These red flags of May Day are carried in memorial in keeping with the origin of May Day celebrations to remember the Haymarket Martyrs. 

However, returning to theme 26 years later, it is clear that:

Red demonstrations sought to turn May Day into a revolution that had the abolition of the class system as its aim.[79]

By Ypsilanti... the red and green work in tandem 'in opposition to avarice and privatization.” Here Green represents largely similar territory, with Red representing the “public sphere ... formed in relation to the institutions of the state”[80] The same red flags are now flown to demand class justice. The red ofThe Incomplete... is pessimistic, highlighting the brutality of capital and the suppression of the Commons. The red ofYpsilanti... is optimistic, a vision of egalitarian social relationships and those who strive for it. In interviews, the red May Day is a story of class struggle,[81] with a focus on the 8 Hour Day and Haymarket.[82]

Interpretation

The difference in interpretation can be demonstrated by the story of Merry Mount. In the titular essay, Merry Mount is part of the green thread; by Ypsilanti..., it is part of the red, with the behaviour of humans most prominent over natural abundance (although Linebaugh cannot help but return to his earlier metaphor, noting that “America’s first Red May Day [came] to a bloody end”).[83] The red Merry Mount does not cover new territory; it comfortably fits within the broader green interpretation outlined above, but latterly becomes a distinct red strand within it. By 2016, Merry Mount again becomes the representation of the green May Day,[84] suggesting that it is thefocus given to the event within the narrative that enables it to move between both elements.

Linking the green and the red

Aware that he is addressing an anarchist academic of Haymarket – and of his own short comings as a historian of the events – while addressing Historical Materialism, Linebaugh attempts to outline his own contribution to the Haymarket story via the anthology’s cover art.[85] This shows five women in cutting corn using sickles that ensured the labourer cut higher up the stalk, leaving some of the crop for gleaners as welfare demanded. This is the green theme, stressing sustainability.

This can be linked to the red theme through the destructive industrialisation of agriculture. It was the McCormick iron workers of Chicago who built the mechanical reapers that replaced the manual work depicted in the painting. The same iron workers were pivotal in the events of May 1886.Therefore the painting offers a connection between the green and red of May Day, linking the demise of ecologically aware farming to class struggle.  

Coevality

Linebaugh returns to the green and the red when discussing Bastille Day 2016, demonstrating the adaptability of the framework to events beyond the anthology. This discussion also provides further theoretical detail. The green is expanded to include human lungs; the steam engine leads to reliance on fossil fuels with the associated breathing problems. The red includes strikes, food riots, soldiering and development of alternatives to capitalism.[86]

Linebaugh describes a “coevality between 1790 and present”.[87] Coeval is a geological term meaning ‘of the same age or origin; contemporary’, which is why in Toronto, Linebaugh makes the same argument but uses the term “comptemporanity”.[88] Regardless, Linebaugh asserts that the strategies of the counter-revolution of 1790’s are apparent in 2016. These include incarceration, “commercial warfare” and racism (embodied by the prison, the factory and the plantation),[89] as well as fossil fuels, the privatisation of land, the rise of nation-states and the birth of what he dubs the “terrorist states” of the UK and USA.[90]

The red struggle is equally coeval;[91] as the factory survives in modified and diversified forms, so does worker resistance. Whilst problematic in that it obscures crucial differences, this concept reveals some structural commonalities between say, a sit down striker in 1934 and an absentee call centre worker in 2016.

X²

Linebaugh introduces the theory of X² in the 1993 essayX²: May Day in Light of Waco and LA and reprises it in Ypsilanti... although the themes outlined are referenced throughout the anthology. X stands for three things – the unknown, expropriation and exploitation.

Unknown

X is the unknown quantity in algebra and the unknown quality in politics. It is the X in Malcolm X, for whom it was a reminder of “the theft of land and identity”. There was a “secret” to accumulation of wealth, which Linebaugh claims, to Marx was something unknown - unknown in this context meaning obscured.[92] More prosaically, inspiration for the X² also came from fashion - from “kids [who] were wearing caps that had an X on them.”[93]

Linebaugh speaks of American’s “living in a fog of manufactured ignorance”.[94] Although never explicitly linked to X², interviews highlight attempts to hide the meaning of May Day by presidents Cleveland and Eisenhower.[95] Until revealed to him by a student, May Day was reduced to a militaristic holiday celebrated by Communist states,[96] its American origins another unknown obscuring acts of expropriation and exploitation.

Expropriation

This is “the taking away of what’s ours, such as the rain forest, or the land”.[97] It is the process of “taking you away from your means of subsistence,”[98] “away from the means of life, taken away from the earth”.[99] For Linebaugh, expropriation means “The theft of our commons and common goods.”[100] Returning momentarily to the green May Day ofYpsilanti..., expropriation is the theft of the Commons that 'tend to be invisible until taken away.”[101] It is an unknown because the act of theft is hidden – “the ruling class pretends it doesn’t happen”[102] in order to minimise resistance.

The archetypal expropriation was the Enclosure Acts; these took away the right to the English commons and were part of “that series of concrete universals ... that [have] defined the crime of modernism.” This dynamic is always “imminent with the possibility of reoccurrence”[103] reappearing as foreclosures during the 2008 financial crisis.[104] For E.P. Thompson, enclosure was “class robbery,”[105] achieved according to Marx by “letters of blood and fire” - or their late modern equivalents:

drones, structural adjustment programs, invasions, civil wars, sectarian violence, “ethnic” violence, and school-closings, factory-closings, foreclosures and enclosures – and the subsequent cuts to our social wages and institutions[106]

Exploitation

This is coercion by capital into unpaid or under-paid work. For Linebaugh, exploitation is “the source of profit, interest, and rent” which is why the capitalist pretends it does not exist. It is an unknown, often even to those being exploited.[107]

This concept is ill-defined; after its introduction, it is rarely defined again outside of being one half of the equation. In interviews, exploitation is described as “oppression by making others work without giving them the value of their product”[108] and “being forced to labour by those who have the means and materials of work.”[109] In reference to Henry VIII breaking the London Guilds, exploitation is presented as jobs being “dissed (sic) as the monarchy imported capital”;[110] Lombard bankers and French merchants were used to “under-cut wages, lengthen hours and break the guilds”.[111] Referring to students inYpsilanti..., Linebaugh notes that “higher education fees and the massive student debt they incur constitute exploitation”,[112] where debt can be understood as a promise of labour power owed. A fuller explanation is absent and inYpsilanti..., Linebaugh provides no definition at all.

X²

In X²expropriation and exploitation are required to grasp the meaning of May Day which stands in opposition to both – to be understood, they need to become known and cease being an X of unknown quantities. It is up to the activist-scholar to reveal it.  Here, X² is X as an inseparable pair.[113] Writing two decades later, X² is X squared: “expropriation compoundsexploitation”, explicitly mirroring David Harvey’s “exploitation by dispossession”.[114] Harvey’s term is a rebranding of Marx’s primitive/original accumulation to take in to account that these processes are ongoing. Special attention is paid to the credit system and finance capital “as major levers of preditation, fraud and thievery” legitimised by the state’s “monopoly on violence and definitions of legality”.[115] This dynamic mirrors the traditional English verse:

The law locks up the man or woman, who steals the goose from off the common, but lets the greater villain loose, who steals the common from the goose.[116]

Harvey expands on the list of strategies for late-capitalist primitive accumulation, for example via intellectual property rights.[117] The X² relationship is demonstrated by the Evil May Day of 1517. Expropriation of the commons through enclosure led to judicial terror and dislocation. For those who fled to London, the welfare system run by Guilds was undermined by Henry VIII through his support of Italian bankers and French merchants. Having already lost the safety net of traditional rights to the commons, workers suffered exploitation in terms of support and the quality of employment. This led to May Day riots and further repression: “the dreaded thanatocracy”.[118]

Mapping the Theories

Fig. 1 – Mapping both theories

Although both theories appear in Ypsilanti..., Linebaugh does not directly link the green and red May Day with X². Despite this, there is sufficient overlap to map simplified versions of both May Day theories as a single body (Fig. 1). In this model, the green story is one of life before and including expropriation: the abundance of Merry Mount cut short by the Puritans, of life up to the enclosure of the natural commons. This green story reveals the unknown X of expropriation. The red story is of life after expropriation, of exploitation and attempts to resist it, and reveals the unknown X of exploitation. It is the story of Haymarket and strikes for the 8 hour day where coeval institutions can be seen as competing against coeval tactics of resistance.

May Day with heart

Having defined Linebaugh’s May Day and outlined a theoretical framework, this section focuses on the May Day with Heart essay published by Counterpunch.[119] It is a hallucinogenic rendition of the Haymarket story, which in keeping with theIncomplete May Day that seeks to promote radical social change, was drafted in solidarity with 1.5 million “immigrant worker[s]”[120] protesting repressive legislation on 1^st May 2006.[121]

May Day... is also a response to the publication of James Green’sDeath in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labour Movement and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America[122] - an event arguably more significant in shaping the text. Green is referenced reverently and the essay climaxes with a call to “... take heart with Death in the Haymarket in hand!”[123] Perhaps its oblique form is inspired by a desire to do more than abridge Green’s work, given the text also shows similarities withThe Globalization Of Memory: The Enduring Memory Of Chicago's Haymarket Martyrs Around The World.[124] Green guides the “amateur” historian of the True May Day.

By 2016, Linebaugh’s interpretation of the immigrant marches of 10 years earlier reverses this significance. Latino communities mobilised in spring 2006[125] in response to proposed legislation designed to convert living undocumented within the USA from a civil to criminal offense[126] with May Day a day of action across 40 states.[127] The “Day Without an Immigrant” – which was yet to take place at the time of writingMay Day... – is a redemptive event, reflecting theAuthentic May Day: “May Day is brought back to the United States by those who have remembered it.”[128] In North America, it was Mexico alone who celebrated May Day; 1^st May is the Day of the Martyrs of Chicago.[129] The yearly immigrant rights demonstrations that take place in many US cities are for Linebaugh a reminder of this May Day tradition[130] that he would no doubt consider Wonderful and it is telling that in the era of Trump, these marches are referenced in a call for a May Day 2017 General Strike.[131]

May Day... contains the same themes of exploitation and expropriation that run throughout the anthology, but whilst most texts in the collection feature a broad cast and shifting geography,May Day... is, subjectively, particularly dream-like. Because of this extremity, this essay foregrounds techniques that may be absent or muted elsewhere. Because of this - the later significance of May Day 2006 for Linebaugh  - and because the events of Chicago in 1886 signify the birth of the modern May Day, this section examines this essay in detail. It begins by asking what a retelling of the May Day story “with heart” means (an obscure term when compared, for example, with the methodology and aims expressed in 2010’sObama May Day[132]) before discussing some of the stylistic elements of the paper – the deliberately confusing mix of actors and geography; the use of the historian as a tool to bring the reader back to the present; the inclusion of supernatural imagery; the deliberate use of anachronistic similes and juxtapositions; and the use of contemporary verse. This section concludes with a suggested list of guidelines for writing a May Day essay in this mould.         

History with heart

Linebaugh provides a typically succinct definition of radical history: “Until the lions have their own historians, histories of the hunt will glorify the hunter.”[133] His history is that of the lions but beyond this, what it means to write a history “with heart” is never explicit.

It is UEL professor[134] and Midnight Notes associate[135] Massimo De Angelis, who likes the mushroom because “it may cause dreams,” that suggests that writing “with heart” is crucial.[136] Consulting the Oxford English Dictionary, a tool Linebaugh would approve of,[137] reveals:

With heart: with great sincerity, earnestness or devotion.[138]

May Day... does not seemingly lack sincerity. More enlightening is the “heart” as “the seat of courage”[139] which can be contrasted to the “loss of heart” that afflicted the labour movement after May 1886.[140] Perhaps revisiting the story of the Haymarket martyrs is a cure for its disappearance.

Equally instructive is the reminder that the heart is “halfway between the gut and the head”[141] This heart is “the seat of emotions generally; the emotional nature, as distinguished from the intellectual nature placed in thehead ”;[142] this is “heart” articulated as Jose Marti’s “political principle”,[143] the capacity to feel a unifying emotional pain. As “the seat of love or affection”[144] Linebaugh asks if this same “heart” can be big enough for class solidarity.[145] Alongside courage, history “with heart” is therefore the history of collective suffering and attempts at collective compassion.

Linebaugh demands the reader “study the record” of May Day, acknowledging the etymology of the word ‘record’ is to pass again through the heart; thus history must “pass through our heart again”. Assuming the historian has not been sampling De Angellis’ mushrooms, this then is a story of Haymarket written by this emotional heart, more dream-like than the traditional narrative of the rational brain but not overcome by the “grief we feel in the gut”.[146]

Actors

Counterpunch are the self-styled “fearless voice of the American left since 1993” that “tells the facts [and] names the names.”[147] Linebaugh’s visible involvement dates from 2001.[148] Arguably his audience are those engaged on the left, perhaps with an academic or activist history enabling them to understand many of the references within the essay.

This does not explain the obtuse presentation of actors within the essay who rarely appear often, are described with little context, and often disappear again quickly. In an essay about Haymarket, defendants Louis Lingg, Michael Schwab and Oscar Neebe appear in just one paragraph.[149] August Spies appears the most on only 5 occasions. George Engell does not appear at all. The reader is bombarded with names, some of which are wilfully obscured. Albert – or is it Lucy? - Parsons is introduced by family name.[150] James Green is also referred to as Jim Green.[151] Oscar Neebe is never granted his full name.

The reader is not meant to be able to follow actors through the narrative; rather, they flash as brief dream-like images. For the researcher, this effect subjectively recalls Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude,[152] where the reader is disorientated by many of the characters sharing names and personalities across generations; only for Linebaugh the effect is achieved not through recycling names until the reader can no longer maintain focus, but by overwhelming the reader with different ones. His actors are given minimal background and are almost interchangeable, flashing past in an instant as “our head spins and spins in the dizzy search for cause and effect”[153] The narrative is carried by outside contemporary commentators such as William Morris and Jose Marti, and the historian James Green.

Geography

Geography is employed in a similar fashion, bombarding the reader with places as well as names. This is clearest near the start and end of May Day... Page 71 includes overt and implied references to 6 distinct locations within a single paragraph, linking Witwatersrand in South Africa with race riots in Seattle against labour imported from China; the Paris Commune appears alongside an Africa divided by imperialists and Jose Marti, who, as outlined on the previous page, resides in New York. Samuel Gompers has no location and founded the AFL everywhere and nowhere in the USA, which is where Geronimo resides. Where Gottlieb Daimler perfected his engine andDas Kapital was published in English, the reader is none the wiser. Page 80 takes the reader to Abu Ghraib, Iraq; Argentina; Columbia; Cuba; France; Germany; Italy; Mexico; Milan, Italy; Petrograd, Russia; Spain; USA in general and Chicago, New York and Washington, DC in particular. Many locations are referenced only once or intermittently. Those that reappear are home to key actors: Chicago, William Morris’ England, Jose Marti’s New York, the undefined USA of the multitude of actors paraded before the reader. The result is, again, dream-like disorientation, particularly in the introduction and conclusion to the historical narrative.

Historian Voices

Authors referenced in the text are used to bring the narrative back to the present or as figures in an undefined past. James Green is principally used to bridge the past and the present. Green is always referred to in the present tense, in contrast to the historical narrative, which is largely written in the past tense. Linebaugh introduces Green in a paragraph where in order to start the exploration of May Day, he suggests “we take down the classics from the shelf”;[154] of the historians listed, it is only Green that appears throughout.

Green is a reminder the historian is writing history, bringing the reader back into the present by interjecting a deliberately artificial break within the narrative. In doing so, the reader’s focus is both on the present and on the past. When Linebaugh suggests that “Green tells the story with verse and drama,”[155] the reader jumps from 1886 to 2006 and back in the same paragraph, contracting 120 years twice in an instant.

Nelson Algren, by comparison, is mentioned in the past tense but has no defined time of his own. At this point in the narrative, the year is 1887 but Algren sits outside of this. Referring to “fifty years of industrial violence” Linebaugh notes that “these [years] laid the ‘bone deep grudges’ that Nelson Algren wrote about.” But he fails to outline when he wrote about them. The tense puts his writing in the past, but it cannot have been in 1887 if he was writing of events that occurred fifty years later. Algren instead floats in a vague past, some when between 1937 and 2006; because the quote could come from any point in this period, he exists and does not exist at every point between those years.  Linebaugh underlines this by directly following with a quote from Green, firmly anchored in the present.[156]

The Uruguayan historian Eduardo Galeano is similarly utilised. After appearing initially in the present tense,[157] Galeano appears in the past tense throughout the rest of the text and like Algren, is never given a time period of his own. Through direct juxtaposition, he is implied as a contemporary of Jose Marti, writing in 1887;[158] Linebaugh pairs a quote from each with no explanation despite Galeano being born in 1940.[159] Likewise no context is given regarding his trip to Chicago. When did Galeano explore Haymarket? The same paragraph records dates from 1889 to 1970.[160]

The past tense places Galeano in history; the lack of an anchoring date places him every when and no when. This is deliberate. While it is possible to argue that the tenses stem from Green being alive[161] and Algren dead,[162] Galeano, spoken of primarily in the past tense, did not die until 2015.[163] Linebaugh’s use of Galeano and Algren purposely renders them as supernatural figures, floating undefined and outside of the narrative.

Supernatural elements

There are further overt supernatural images within the essay. Biblical references throughout the text accentuate the martyrdom of those executed and actors are predictably ascribed these metaphorical roles – as Linebaugh does Lucy Parsons, who was “the Mary Magdalene... of the suffering proletariat.”[164] Albert Parsons is quoted as reciting a verse from James, who Linebaugh teasingly suggests is Jesus’ brother. In doing so, Parsons is aping the role of an apostle, one step removed from the son of God.[165] That these roles are allotted due to family name is obvious; that Emma Lazarus is quoted – Lazarus being raised from the dead in the Gospel of John  – is also not coincidental.[166]

De Angelis is transfigured into a hobgoblin[167] due to his preference for an alternative translation of the Communist Manifesto where it is a hobgoblin rather than a spectre haunting Europe. This then becomes his nickname. This strange and playful image transforms from a moniker into a more literal, supernatural being by the end of the essay, where the hobgoblin reappears without a reminder of whom it represents.

More innovative is the reference to a 1938 May Day march:

In May Day of that year a march on the South Side of Chicago was led by a float featuring a hooded man. In one direction of time, August Spies; in another direction of time, Abu Ghraib.[168]

 A prophetic power is ascribed to the image, although a conscious foreshadowing by parade goers is not suggested. Rather juxtaposition prompts it in the readers mind. Linebaugh is careful to place a historian’s observation within history by not bringing the reader back to the present through an overt use of the present tense.

Condensing time and space

Alongside the historian’s voice, Linebaugh condenses time and space through two techniques – deliberate anachronisms and the juxtaposition of events that occur in separate temporalities. Anachronistic references bridge the period depicted in the historical narrative and the period of the reference. The May Day march in 1938[169]  is an example of this; as well as ascribing prophetic powers, the use of a contemporary reference alongside two historical images with little explanation condenses the geographical and temporal distance for the reader; within two lines the reader is in Chicago in 1938 watching the parade, the same city in 1887 watching Spies execution and Iraq in the (then) present.

Likewise the comparison between Haymarket and Guernica:

Haymarket in Chicago in May 1886 was like Guernica in Spain in 1937 when the Condor Legion wiped it out by bombing: this is to say it was a busy, crowded market, ideal for terrorism.[170]

The reader is in both times and locations simultaneously, with perhaps a mental image of Haymarket as rendered by Picasso. This comparison is loaded with meaning; the Condor Legion were Nazis and although the death toll is disputed, 250 is the generally accepted figure[171]  – outstripping that of Haymarket. Although arguably accurate in the terms referenced, the level of carnage invoked by this simile is disproportionate and ahistorically links the police terror – who "provoked the violence to stop the strike movement for the eight hour day” – with fascism.[172]

A third example of deliberate anachronism is the use of contemporary activists, who inherit the ambitions of the past:   

Spies said, “The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today”. We are finding voice. Cindy Sheehan gives us voice. “Si se puede” gives us voice[173]

Sheehan is a contemporary anti-war activist;[174] “si se puede” is closely linked with the United Farm Workers[175] and by extension, the immigrant rights movement. Through juxtaposition and tenses, within two lines the reader is brought from 1886 to the present. Through the voice motif inheritance is implied, placing anti-war activists and the Latino/a workers within the Haymarket lineage. One voice is extinguished, but others appear to carry on to inspire the historian and the reader who, as the undefined “we”, “are finding voice”.

The juxtapositioning that is used throughout to join events that occurred in different times and locations, on occasion reaches the extremes:

Paublo Neruda, Josie Marti, even Walt Whitman had a big, hemispheric conception of America ... united by the German geographer Humboldt’s Afro-America[176]

Presenting this in one sentence with little supporting information hides that they did not do so together. Neruda died in 1973, perhaps murdered by Pinochet.[177] Jose Marti died in 1895[178] fighting for Cuban independence; arguably a contemporary of Whitman, who died in 1892,[179] both were dead before Neruda was born and likely knew Alexander Von Humboldt[180] only by his writing. The historian does not lie here; rather to collapse time and space, his sentence construction omits the facts that prevent the image of the four men in dialogue.

Poetry

E.P. Thompson maintained a life-long interest in poetry and often framed his studies with contemporary verse, such as The Making of the English Working Class which is framed by Blake.[181] Underscoring Thompson’s influence on Linebaugh,May Day... includes three sections of verse, the clearest in demonstrating this influence being from William Morris.[182] Morris was the subject of a biography by Thompson; Linebaugh in turn wrote the foreword for the PM Press reissue.[183]

This overview suggests a framework for writing an essay in the model of May Day... Given the subjective assessment that the text represents a stylistic extremity within the anthology, it is unlikely that future essays should employ all of these techniques.

• - The essay must be sincere. It must be a story of bravery, collective suffering and solidarity. Its dream-like format should be the voice of the emotional heart, not the rational head or the sorrow-filled gut.
•  
• - The essay should be wide ranging in terms of actors and geographical references, and these should be deliberately under-developed in order to cause disorientation. Contemporary and historical observers should carry the narrative forward.
•  
• - The voices of select authors should condense time; the use of tenses when employing these voices should bridge the present and the historical period to cause disorientation.
•  
• - Supernatural elements should interject in minor ways – such as through actors’ adoption of biblical roles; the use of tenses to place select authors “outside time”; through simile/metaphorical descriptions; the juxtaposition of anachronistic observations with historical events in order to suggest clairvoyance.
•  
• - Anachronism should be employed throughout – to disorientate through the condensation of time; to provide emotive and powerful comparators; to imply inheritance of the historical actor’s struggle.
•  
• - Juxtaposition of actors who were not contemporaries should be employed to collapse time and geography and cause disorientation.
•  
• - Contemporary verse should be quoted in line with the influence of E.P. Thompson. 

Conclusion

Having examined a selection of Linebaugh’s May Day essays, this paper concludes by asking “can this May Day essay be replicated?” To do so, and in-line with the rationale of seeking to write an accessible paper that linked disparate events, a Rent Strike May Day (RSMD) essay has been written using the findings of this paper as a framework. This is available at http://ruskin.academia.edu/PhilHedges. This section refers directly to this text and these notes should be read in conjunction with it. It mirrors the structure of the paper by applying the insights uncovered to the RSMD essay. It begins by sketching how the essay reflects the model of May Day asincomplete, authentic, true andwonderful before moving on to look at how the politics of Linebaugh’s May Day is incorporated. It concludes by providing examples of the implementation of the techniques uncovered inMay Day With Heart. In doing so, it successfully demonstrates that the model of a May Day essay uncovered herein can be replicated.

Defining May Day

The incomplete May Day: RSMD embodies this by moving away from the two foundational narratives to tell other May Day stories, highlighting the incompleteness of Linebaugh’s anthology and also partly mitigating this. The unfulfilled promise of the anti-capitalist May Day is also acknowledged:

That’s partly why his May Day book is incomplete – the other reason of course being that although Neoliberalism has been looking a little creaky of late, it’s not yet had that final shove.

The authentic May Day: The authenticity of the essay is underpinned by the author’s positionality of being engaged in housing activism via a co-operative. Through circulating RSMD there is a goal to aid housing activism through contributing to the awareness of the current wave of rent strikes. In some small way, the RSMD will be a tool to support these actions.

The true May Day: The narratives are based on historical research. These stories are written from outside of my academic discipline (Labour Studies) and based on a limited number of secondary sources, which (breaking from Linebaugh’s model), have been referenced throughout RSMD to evidence this. The UCL rent strike material reworks research prepared for a previous paper into an accessible format and is consistent with this approach.

The wonderful May Day: The themes of fertility – although acknowledged with a call to “... sneak off hand-in-hand into the woods ...” - are absent from the narrative. The promise is fulfilled instead by demonstrating what can be achieved through organising for change. The positive conclusion to the UCL narrative – e.g. the win at Campbell House West Halls of residence - further underpins this.

The theory of May Day

Red: The red May Day dovetails with the essays focus on housing given its link to exploitation. Whilst the X² model is explicitly absent from RSMD, high rents are framed as exploitation in both red narratives:

They knew that cuts to rates and increases to rent meant that they were being exploited - they were subsidising the firms in the Borough whilst rewarding financiers who had outlaid for long mortgages to build council houses. 

[Poor conditions and high rent] ...was exploitation - and on May Day, we follow Peter Linebaugh’s lead and mark it.

Both red narratives are positive interpretations of the red May Day in that they focus on resistance to exploitation rather than the crushing of radicalism.

Green: The green May Day is more problematic. Expropriation of land in the UK that forces renting or the purchase of houses is classically thought of in terms of the Enclosure Acts. A decision was made in RSMD to avoid a more distant historical comparator. Instead the act of expropriation is a Compulsory Purchase Order, which:

meant forced relocation, what David Harvey called “accumulation by dispossession” – a rebranding of Marx’s Primitive Accumulation to reflect that the dynamic of theft, violence and enclosure are inherent to capitalist profit making and not simply a phase in its early development. These acts of expropriation are the opposite of the green May Day, and we remember Dotty - the last of the former residents to leave – and her courage and resistance.

This meant that the narrative moved away from rent strikes into squatting, diluting the overall theme of the essay but facilitating a contemporary narrative based around housing. The green theme was additionally referenced more subtly throughout, such as “some tradesmen laboured to build barricades for free rather than engage in alienating employment,” echoing where the “Green designates life with only necessary labour ... [and] useful activity.”[184] Of course, the attempt to stop the M11 was motivated by ecological concerns and forms a green theme in itself.

Coveality: This is deliberately underplayed within RSMD because coveality between all three narratives is absent. Despite this, it can be understood that there are coeval intuitions and resistance between paired narratives. The institution of landlordism links the two red narratives as does the tactic of withholding rent, despite over 5 decades between them. The St Pancras rent strike and Claremont Road are both linked by the institutions of the police (and bailiffs), who work to suppress acts of resistance thirty years apart.

May Day with heart

Actors: The actors within the narratives are given little back story and are deliberately fleetingly referenced. Focusing on the St Pancras strike narrative, key actors such as Counsellor Prior, Don Cook are referenced only 3 and 4 times respectively despite their key roles. In doing so they become archetypes – the stubborn Conservative Counsellor and the principled rent striker.

Geography: The deliberately bewildering global overviews offered by Linebaugh are replicated in the UCL narrative:

tens of thousands protested in support of Aboriginal communities; Nimpagaritse fled rather than rubber-stamp an unconstitutional candidacy for president and tenants at the Hawkridge Halls of residence had been withholding rent payment for 23 days.

This refers to protests in Australia and New Zealand against funding cuts to remote communities[185], a judge fleeing from Burundi[186] and rent strikes in London.[187] In one sentence, the reader is simultaneously witnessing events in three continents - an effect amplified by the deliberate withholding of key information outlining that the events took place in different locations, condensing the physical distance between events thousands of miles apart. Beyond this, the geographical spread demonstrated inA May Day With Heart is largely downplayed in RSMD, which focuses on North and East London.

Voices: In RSMD, Peter Linebaugh takes on the role assigned to James Green. Linebaugh is referred to in the present tense, and occasionally as “Pete” as Green is “Jim”. Linebaugh exists in the “now” whilst the other key historians within the essay - such as Dave Burns - exist in the past tense, their era unspecified within the text. Burns exists in an unspecified past, some when between the events he describes in the 1960’s and the near present.

Supernatural elements: The hydra is borrowed as a metaphor from Linebaugh and Rediker’sThe Many Headed Hydra[188] and used in a similar way as the vampire/blood sucker in Ypsilanti Vampire May Day to frame the arguments within the essay. The many heads of the hydra dovetails with theincomplete May Day and the many untold May Day stories.

Condensing time: Juxtaposing historical events from different temporalities whilst withholding the dates events took place enabled the 1913 funeral of Emily Wilding Davidson[189]  to seemingly occur during the protests at UCL open days in 2015:

Reports focused on 3rd July, when 300 protesters gathered on Mallet Street, ten minutes walk away from St Georges Church where suffragettes held a funeral for Emily Wilding Davidson.

Quotes: Reflecting the reduced importance of poetry during the eras that the narratives took place, RSMD quotes song lyrics rather than contemporary poetry. Quotes were chosen to reflect the themes of the narrative, even when to do so is to run counter to the theme of the song. Cathy’s Clown is about rejection but juxtaposed with the St Pancras narrative, lyrics about self respect in a romantic context are repurposed to explore self respect in a social justice context.

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[1] Linebaugh 2016, p.9.

[2] For example Linebaugh 2016, pp.15-17; Linebaugh 2016, pp.19-21.

[3] Linebaugh 2016, pp.8-9

[4] Caffentzis, 2013, pp.2-3.

[5] Linebaugh 2016, p.9.

[6] Lindeschmit, 2015.

[7] Linebaugh, 2014, pp.126-127.

[8] Kaye, 1995, pp.165-220.

[9] For example Linebaugh 2014, pp.13-16.

[10] The rationale underpinning this paper is two-fold; the model of the May Day essay offers the activist-scholar a technique to insightfully link together historical events. It also dovetails with a personal experience of May Day that suggests that the festival is of value in itself. This paper is the second in a year-long project to examine rent strikes, aiming to compare the rent strikes that took place in 2015/16 at London universities with historical strikes. Theoretically key to this undertaking is implementing a framework that enables the study of temporally and spatially disparate events. In his May Day anthology, Linebaugh appears to provide such a framework. Additionally these May Day essays were written to support on-going activism and are presented in a format that encourages engagement. “This is a scholarly historian who wants to be read, and who makes himself available to readers, at home in the academy and on the barricades;” (Cahill 2016) this mirrors my own commitment to engaged research.

[11] Queensland Unions 2015.

[12] Linebaugh 2016, p.74.

[13] Green 2006, p.145.

[14] Brecher 2014, p.40.

[15] Brecher 2014, p.58.

[16] Stephenson & Wray, 2005.

[17] Queensland Unions, 2015.

[18] McKinnell 2016; AAP, 2016.

[19] For example Flanders 2016.

[20] For example PM Press, 2016.

[21] For example Democracy Now!, 2016.

[22] For example Doyle, 2016; Wildermuth, 2016.

[23]  Bryman 2012, p.28.

[24] Linebaugh, 2016, pp.9.

[25] Linebaugh 2016, pp.8-9.

[26] Taghbon 2016b.

[27] Taghbon,2016d

[28] Taghbon 2016d.

[29] Lamberton 2016.

[30] Democracy Now! 2016.

[31] Taghbon 2016b.

[32] Taghbon 2016b.

[33] Linebaugh 2016, p.3.

[34] Linebaugh 2016, p.8.

[35] PM Press 2016.

[36] Lamberson 2016.

[37] Linebaugh 2016, p.5-6; Taghbon 2016c.

[38] Linebaugh 1986.

[39] PM Press 2016.

[40] PM Press 2016; Taghbon 2016b; Democracy Now! 2016.

[41] Linebaugh 2016, p.9; Taghbon, 2016c.

[42] Taghbon 2016b.

[43] Zinn 1997, p.504.

[44] PM Press 2016.

[45] Democracy Now! 2016.

[46] Langstaff 2016, p.352.

[47] Linebaugh 2016, p.9.

[48] Maynard 2012.

[49] Linebaugh 2012.

[50]  Linesbaugh 2016, p.11.

[51] Linebaugh 2016, p.11.

[52] Linebaugh 2016, p.12.

[53] May Day Rooms 2014.

[54] Linebaugh 2016, p.137.

[55] Flanders 2016.

[56] Linebaugh 2016, p.15.

[57] Linebaugh 2016, p.139.

[58] Linebaugh 2016, p.15.

[59] Linebaugh 2016, p.139.

[60] Linebaugh 2016, pp.16-17; Linebaugh 2016, p.139.

[61] Linebaugh 2016, p.86.

[62] Linebaugh 2016,p.12.

[63] Linebaugh 2016, p.14; Linebaugh 2016, p.139.

[64] Linebaugh 2016, p.17.

[65] Linebaugh 2016, pp.14-15.

[66] Linebaugh 2016, pp.138-139.

[67] Democracy Now! 2016.

[68] Linebaugh 2016, p.18.

[69] Linebaugh 2016, p.25.

[70] Linebaugh 2016, p.24.

[71] Flanders 2016.

[72] BBC 2000.

[73] Gillian 2000.

[74] (Linebaugh 2016, p.3.

[75] BBC 2000; Gillian 2000.

[76] Linebaugh 2016, p.11.

[77] Heffer 2015.

[78] Linebaugh 2016, p.11.

[79]  Linebaugh 2016, p.141.

[80]  Linebaugh 2016, p.141.

[81] PM Press 2016; Taghbon 2016c.

[82] Lamerson 2016; Taghbon 2016c; Democracy Now! 2016.

[83] Linebaugh 2016, p.139.

[84] Democracy Now! 2016; Flanders 2016; Taghbon 2016c; Lamberson 2016; PM Press 2016.

[85] Taghbon 2016c.

[86] Lindenschmit, 2016.

[87] Lindenschmit, 2016.

[88] Taghbon 2016b.

[89] Lindenschmit 2016,

[90] Taghbon 2016b.

[91] Lindenschmit 2016.

[92] Linebaugh 2016, p29.

[93] Democracy Now! 2016.

[94] Al Jazeera 2016.

[95] Taghbon 2016c.

[96] Lamberson 2016.

[97] Linebaugh 2016, p.29.

[98] Lamberson 2016.

[99] Democracy Now! 2016.

[100] Linebaugh 2016, p.152.

[101] Linebaugh 2016, p.141.

[102] Linebaugh 2016, p.29.

[103] Linebaugh 2014, p.142.

[104] Linebaugh 2016, p.152.

[105] Linebaugh 2014, p.145.

[106] Linebaugh 2016, p.151.

[107] (Linebaugh, 2016, p.29)

[108] (Lamberson, 2016)

[109] (Democracy Now, 2016)

[110] (Linebaugh, 2016, p.33)

[111] (ibid, p.32)

[112] (ibid, p.152)

[113] Linebaugh 2016, p.30.

[114] Linebaugh 2016, p.151.

[115] Harvey, 2004, p.74.

[116] Linebaugh 2014, p.1.

[117] Harvey 2004, pp.74-76.

[118] Linebaugh 2016, pp.32-33.

[119] Counterpunch 2006.

[120] Linebaugh 2016, p.68.

[121] Democracy Now! 2006.

[122] Linebaugh 2016, p.69.

[123] Linebaugh 2016, p.81.

[124] Green, 2005.

[125] Brecher 2014, pp.330-335.

[126] Brecher 2014, p.330.

[127] Brecher 2014, p.333.

[128] Lamberson 2016.

[129] Linebaugh 2016, p.18.

[130] PM Press 2016.

[131] Sawant 2017.

[132] Linebaugh 2016, pp.84-85.

[133] Linebaugh 2016, p81.

[134] UEL 2015.

[135] Lindenschmit 2015.

[136] Linebaugh 2016, p68.

[137] Linebaugh 2016, p.157.

[138] Simpson & Weiner 1989, p.62.

[139] Simpson & Weiner 1989, p.61.

[140] Linesbaugh 2016, p.69.

[141] Linebaugh 2016, p.81.

[142] Simpson & Weiner 1989, p.61.

[143] (Linebaugh, 2016, p.70)

[144] (Simpson & Weiner,1989, p.61)

[145] (2016, p.80)

[146] (ibid, p.69)

[147] (Counterpunch, 2016a)

[148] (Counterpunch, 2016b)

[149] Linebaugh 2016, p.75.

[150] Linebaugh 2016, p.73.

[151] Linebaugh 2016, p.72.

[152] Marquez 1978, p.7.

[153] Linebaugh 2016, p81.

[154] Linebaugh 2016, p.69.

[155] Linebaugh 2016, p75.

[156] Linebaugh 2016, p76.

[157] Linebaugh 2016, p.69.

[158] Linebaugh 2016, p.79.

[159] Gott 2015.

[160] Linebaugh 2016, p.81.

[161] Marquard 2016.

[162] New York Times 1981.

[163] Gott 2015.

[164] Linebaugh 2016, p.76.

[165] Linebaugh 2016, p.73.

[166] Linebaugh 2016, p.76.

[167] Linebaugh 2016, p.68.

[168] Linebaugh 2016, p.81.

[169] Linebaugh 2016, p.81.

[170] Linebaugh 2016, p.74.

[171] Briggs 2007.

[172] Linebaugh 2016, p.74.

[173] Linebaugh 2016, p.75.

[174] Norton, 2016.

[175] United Farm Workers unknown.

[176] Linebaugh 2016, p.79.

[177] Associated Press 2015.

[178] Editors The 2016.

[179] New York Times 1892.

[180] Kellner 2007.

[181] Haye 1995, p.171.

[182] Linebaugh 2016, pp.77-78.

[183] Linebaugh 2012, pp108-134.

[184] (Linebaugh, 2016, p.11)

[185] Davidson 2015.

[186] France-Presse 2015.

[187] Marshall 2015a.

[188] Linebaugh & Rediker 2000.

[189] Rosenberg 2015, p.135.

by Jim Kincaid

This piece was originally published at https://readingsofcapital.com/.

In the eco-socialist movement there have been frequent complaints that Marx’s value theory, with its central emphasis on labour-time, is fatally flawed and irrelevant. It seems to discount the exploitation of nature in the pursuit of profit. Students of Marx have responded by tracing the close attention which Marx and Engels gave to ecological research and debate in their period.  Crucially, it has been argued that it is precisely its central focus on labour productivity which enables Marx’s value theory to generate a unique and powerful account of the environmental destructiveness of capital.

Here, two writers associated with the New York journal Monthly Review have produced an outstanding body of work. John Bellamy Foster’s brilliant book,Marx’s Ecology (2000) is now an established classic, and Paul Burkett’sMarx and Nature (1999) not far behind as a standard reference. Since then, both writers have produced further influential work in eco-Marxism, most recently the jointly authoredMarx and the Earth, which has just come out in paperback. What they have emphasised above all is Marx’s thesis that capitalism tends to use natural resources without concern for sustainability.  He uses the termStoffwechsel ­ for the metabolic exchange of matter and energy between humans and nature, and notes, for example, how capitalist industrialisation,

produces conditions that provoke an irreparable rift [Riss] in the interdependent process of social metabolism, a metabolism prescribed by the natural laws of life itself. The result of this is a squandering of the vitality of the soil. (Capital Vol. 3, p.949).

Recently however, the Monthly Review account of the ecological dimension in Marx has been challenged by a new kid on the block.  Jason Moore’sCapitalism and the Web of Life (2015), [Web] accuses theMonthly Review team of failing to develop a properly dialectical account of Marx’s ecology.  They remain mired in Cartesian dualism. They counterpose two separate and opposed entities: Society vs. Nature. Thus their focus is too confined to a one-way account of the damage which capitalism is currently inflicting on the environment.

Moore is not denying that we are currently heading towards environmental disaster and epochal change.  But he argues that the stark Monthly Review conclusion – abolition of capitalism or planetary destruction – can lead to fatalism rather than creative political responses. Moore writes that:A dual systems approach to metabolism gives us only one flavor of crisis —the apocalypse (Web p.8o). But the combination of economic and environmental crisis which we face may take many forms in the coming period, and all sorts of technological and political action will be needed in response.

Much of Moore’s book is an exploration of the historical background to the present situation.  From its inception in the long 16th century, capitalism has been hit by successive waves of crisis as it came up against limits in the availability of necessary means of production such as raw materials, energy, and land.  Moore traces major turning points over the past 500 years as capitalism has reacted to resource limits by expanding geographically and technically to absorb new and cheap supplies of necessary means of production and labour. What is distinctive in this approach is Moore’s enormous stress on appropriation as opposed toexploitation.  In discussing the historical evolution of capitalism, he talks, for example, about islands of exploitation in oceans of appropriation.

As originators and guardians of the reigning paradigm in eco-Marxism, the Monthly Review writers have responded aggressively to Moore’s accusation that their work is not dialectical. According to Foster, for example, Jason Moore,

abandons value theory … andhas joined the long line of scholars who have set out to update or deepen Marxism in various ways, but have ended up by abandoning Marxism’s revolutionary essence and adapting to capitalist ideologies’.  Seeinterview.

My own view is that, despite many criticisms which can be made of Moore’s work, he has identified some dimensions of Marx’s value theory, which have not had the attention they deserve, not just by eco-Marxists, but more generally across the spectrum of mainstream Marxist political economy. He is asking us to look again at a fundamental question: the relationship between use-value and value in the productive process – and how they intersect when labour productivity rises.  His thinking, for example, has implications for current debates about trends in profitability.

What is striking in the dispute between Moore and the Monthly Review writers is that both sides start out from the same reading of Marx’s value theory. They both strongly defend its central emphasis on socially necessary labour, against the view, widely shared among radical critics, that Marxist doctrine is complicit in a devaluation of nature.

Competition forces capitalists to reduce prices by increasing labour productivity.  This is achieved mainly by mechanisation and by advances in the organization of production.  As Marx pointed out, an increase in productivity will generally require an input of larger quantities of means of production, such as e.g. raw materials and energy.  To sustain the rate of profit these should be obtained as cheaply as possible.

From this starting point, Moore develops a less orthodox line of argument: that the advance of labour productivity can take place without a hit to profits if capital can tap into what he calls a rising “ecological surplus” of Cheap Nature – especially in the form of low cost energy, land, and raw materials.  Also labour-power, kept cheap because its reproduction is not paid for by capital – but secured, for example, by enslavement or domestic labour.

But where capital appropriates means of production cheaply and without paying the full costs of their reproduction, it tends to exhaust its own social-ecological conditions. Moore thus posits a general tendency for the ecological surplus to fall, and for cheap nature to become less cheap. Hence recurrent crises as capital runs up against limits in available resources. If the ecological surplus falls – as Moore argues is happening in the current period – then inputs into production rise in price. Capital must absorb an increasing share of the costs of reproduction.  As costs rise, productivity and profits are threatened with stagnation. Thus Moore traces linkages between environmental devastation and the current economic crisis.

Let’s look more closely at the theoretical underpinning of these conclusions. Central to value theory is that the pressures of competition require firms to lower prices – and the major way in which this is done is by increasing productivity.  At the centre of Marx’s law of value is labour productivity.

Marx’s basic propositions about productivity are formulated as follows:

• a working day of a given length always creates the same amount of value, no matter how the productivity of labour may vary ­(Capital 1, p.656). If productivity rises, more commodities are produced in a given time period, but the average value of each commodity – and therefore its selling price – will fall correspondingly.
• However, as productivity rises there tends to be an increase in the rate of surplus-value. As Marx puts it,

an increase in the productivity of labour causes a fall in the value of labour-power and a consequent rise in surplus-value…the value of labour-power is determined  by the value of the means of subsistence habitually required of the average worker (Capital Vol. 1, pp.655-7).

There are some complications here: Marx accepts that more value can be produced in a given time period if there is an intensification of labour (working harder) or an increase in the skill level of workers. But these qualifications can be initially set aside in order to clarify the fundamental issue.  The source of surplus-value is unpaid labour-time.  An increase in productivity does not increase the total value produced in a given time, but it does increase the rate of surplus-value.

But does it also increase the rate of profit?  Here the key issue is that a rise in productivity, for example via mechanisation, tends to increase the amount of constant capital which capitalists need to use in order to stay competitive.  A rise in the ratio of constant capital to labour will tend to reduce the rate of profit. More capital has been advanced relative to the unpaid labour which is the basis of profit.

As productivity advances there is likely to be a rise in the mass of means of production (machinery, raw materials, energy etc.) required in production.  As Marx notes,

the consequence of …the  application of machinery is that more raw material is worked up in the same time, and therefore a greater mass of raw material and auxiliary substances enters into the labour process…  [An increase in]the mass of machinery, beasts of burden, mineral manures, drain-pipes, etc. is a condition of the increasing productivity of labour… [For example]the mass of raw material, instruments of labour, etc. that a certain quantity of spinning labour consumes productively today is many hundred times greater than at the beginning of the 18th century. (Capital Vol. 1, p.774).

A rise in the ratio of constant to variable capital threatens to lower the rate of profit. A given rate of surplus-value has then to be divided by a larger amount of capital advanced when calculating the rate of profit.

But there is a counteracting tendency.  If the advance in productivity is general, then it will apply in the sector of the economy which produces means of production.  The value of a given unit of constant capital will be reduced. This fall in the cost of producing the means of production required will thus limit, or even reverse, the decline in the rate of profit as more constant capital is used.

Thus Marx emphases that as labour productivity rises, this also lowers the value and therefore the price of the constant capital required for production.  The result is what Marx calls a cheapening of the elements of constant capital.  The value of means of production rises, as productivity advances, but at a lower rate than the mass of means of production being used.

For example, the quantity of cotton that a single European spinning operative works up in a modern factory has grown to a most colossal extent in comparison with that which a European spinner used to process with the spinning wheel. But the value of the cotton processed has not grown in the same proportion as its mass.

 It is the same with machines and other fixed capital. In other words, the same development that raises the mass of constant capital in comparison with variable reduces the value of its elements, as a result of the higher productivity of labour, and hence prevents the value of the constant capital, even though this grows steadily, from growing in the same degree as its material volume, i.e. the material volume of the means of production that are set in motion by the same amount of labour-power… In certain cases, the mass of the constant capital elements may increase while their total value remains the same or even falls. (Capital Vol. 3, p.342).

Thus, in summary, as productivity rises, there is likely to be an increase in the mass of means of production in use.  But the value – and thus the price – of those means of production will tend not to rise to a corresponding extent. A general rise in productivity will also reduce thecost of means of production and so slow down the fall in the rate of profit.

In clarifying this analysis, Marx introduces an important distinction: between the technical composition of capital and the organic composition of capital.

There are two ways of looking at the capital / labour ratio.  As a relation between two values – constant and variable capital. Or as a ratio between a mass of physical means of production and a mass of labour-power.

The organic composition of capital is determined by the ratio of the value of the means of production, as compared with wages. I.e. the value ratio between constant capital and variable capital

 Thetechnical composition of capital refers to material use-values- here capital is divided into means of production and living labour-power. Marx writes that:

the technical composition is determined by the relation between the mass of the means of production employed on the one hand, and the mass of labour necessary for their employment on the other. (Capital Vol. 1, p.762) [i]

It is here that Moore’s account moves in a distinctive direction.  Mechanisation and improved organization of production are not the only ways in which cheaper means of production may be secured.  If means of production can be appropriated – at low cost, or, better still, at zero cost – then the hit to profits because of rising organic composition of capital can be reduced or nullified.  This is Moore’s central argument, one which is directly founded on Marx’s value theory.  By seeking geographical or technological frontiers where the four Cheaps (raw materials, food, land and labour) can be appropriated, capital can raise productivity while protecting the rate of profit.  Recurrently in the history of capital, the appropriation of new forms of cheap inputs has,

allowed capital to advance labour productivity while reducing (or checking) the tendentially rising value composition of production. The technical composition of production—the mass of machinery and raw materials relative to labour-power— could rise without undermining the rate of profit. Capitalism, we have seen, is a frontier process (Web, p.107).

Cheap Nature, as an accumulation strategy, works by reducing the value composition—but increasing the technical composition—of capital as a whole; by opening new opportunities for the investment; and, in its qualitative dimension, by allowing technologies and new kinds of nature to transform extant structures of capital accumulation and world power.In all this, commodity frontiers– frontiers of appropriation – are central. (Web, p.53).

Here Moore is challenging the analysis in Burkett’s Marx and Nature. Although Burkett – like Moore – starts out from the basics of value theory, his treatment of the mass and value of constant capital employed in production remains at a rather elementary level. I can find no reference to the organic composition of capital in either of Burkett two ecological books.  There are many general comments on profit as driving the system. But no discussion of the counter-tendencies which operate to limit or reverse the downward pressure on the rate of profit as productivity rises. No attention is given to the increase in the capital/labour ratio, which Marx callsthe technical composition of capital.

The monopoly capitalist tradition of Monthly Review is flawed precisely in its relative lack of interest in competition and price movements, and in Marx’s account of the determinants of rates of profit.  The monopoly capitalist thesis is that, because of the concentration of capital, companies are now able to evade competition by cartels, and determine prices by fiat.

There is one moment in Burkett’s Nature book where he does discuss one of the examples of appropriation which preoccupy Moore.  Burkett has a section discussing ‘child rearing labour’ and the ‘natural force of household labour power’. He writes that,

The exploitable [sic] labour power associated with domestic activities is freely appropriated by capital. It is a use value, not a value.

Burkett then notes that the appropriation by capital of this use value has implications for surplus-value.

Capital’s free appropriation of the domestic enhancement of labour power increases the rate of surplus value in so far as domestic activities lower the value of labour power (by raising the productivity of wage-labour or reducing workers’ commodified causation requirements).  (Marx and Nature, p.105).

So appropriation of unpaid domestic labour by capital does not increase the total value produced, but does increase the rate of surplus-value.  Capital gets its labour cheaper, and retains more of the value produced.

What Moore is proposing is a generalisation of this account of domestic labour – extending it to capital’s appropriation of natural resources.

But is it right to assimilate domestic labour, as Moore does, into a wider category of work/energy?  This leads him to talk, for example, about how natural resources are kept cheap because they ‘do unpaid work for capital’. However, Moore is clear that this kind of ‘work’ has nothing in common with the abstract labour which creates value.  ‘Work’ here is a use-value concept – but one which follows capital in treating use-value abstractly.  The objective here is to trace capital’s abstractification of nature and its consequences.

Meticulous research by Burkett and Foster has clarified the engagement of Marx and Engels with the thermodynamic and energetics debates of their period. In their Marx and the Earth book, they trace how Marx used energy concepts to think through the use-value dimension of the labour process.  There is, of course, no suggestion that the creation of value and surplus-value in the labour process is in any way determined by concrete labour. But the creation of value is also a physical metabolic process which can be studied in terms of amounts and transfers of abstract energy.  In words which resonate with Moore’s work/energy concept, Burkett and Foster summarise Marx’s thinking about this as follows:

In energy terms, ‘What the free worker sells is always nothing more than a specific, particular measure of force-expenditure’; but ‘labour capacity as a totality is greater than every particular expenditure’ (Grundrisse p.464). ‘In this exchange, then, the worker … sells himself as an effect’,and ‘is absorbed into the body of capital as a cause, as activity’ (Grundrisse p.674). The result is an energy subsidy for the capitalist who appropriates and sells the commodities produced during the portion of the workday over and above that required to produce the means of subsistence represented by the wage (Marx and the Earth, p.145).

There certainly are some major criticisms to be made of Moore’s work and I’ll look at these in a future post. Some valuable commentaries on Moore’s work have already been published. [ii].  Some valid objections have come from theMonthly Review camp. For example, Foster is right to say (in theClimate and Capitalism blog cited above) that Moore neglects the question of rent.  There is too little in hisWeb book about how private property control gets established over raw material and energy sources. The theme of enclosure, so strongly emphasised in Marx’s account of primitive accumulation, is under-weight in Moore.  Often industrial capitals find that the so-called Cheap inputs are not actually so cheap  – after rent is extracted by the monopoly owners of oil wells and mineral resources.

The strength of Moore’s book is the way it traces, from the long 16th century onwards, how the abstract logics of labour productivity are implemented and play outconcretely – as crises of resource limits are encountered and overcome by the violence of capital, science, and state power. His focus on appropriation may at time be over-pitched, but Moore consistently directs much needed attention onthe necessary conditions for the operation of the law of value.  How the economic and technical requirements that make possible exploitation and value creation are established and maintained.

An addendum on profit.

Marx used the term circulating capital to refer to raw material and energy inputs.  Moore’s  focus on these highlights the neglect of circulating capital in current Marxist debates about trends in profits. For example, profit rates are generally calculated solely on a denominator offixed capital (machinery etc.).  This fact is rarely even mentioned in current work using National Accounts data.  An exception is Andrew Kliman who mentions casually in hisFailure of Capitalist Production book (pp.80-82) that:  ‘My rate of profit measures … exclude circulating capital … expenditures for inventories of raw materials and the like – because information on the turnover of circulating capital is not available’.  One of many instances in which the easily available National Accounts data are used and their limitations ignored.  Company account based data is more difficult to obtain and use, but can be a more accurate corrective to national account based data.

[i] For a lucid  account of the TCC/OCC distinction, see: Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho 2010,Marx’s Capital, Ch. 8.

[ii] See, for example, an excellentcritique of Moore by the radical geographer Sara Nelson, on theAntipode website February 2016.  Benjamin Kunkel has produced an outstanding account of debates around the anthropocene / capitalocene concepts – and the disagreements between Moore and theMonthly Review team.  SeeLondon Review of Books 2 March 2017.