1851: the New

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lives of millions of workers.

While the "peaceful road to socialism" is a central revision of Marxism by the Stalinists there are other major revisions in the draft programme which need to be answered.

There is for example the assertion that under mass pressure a succession of increasingly left Labour governments will begin to tackle the crisis in the interests of the working class. Parallel to this, argue the Stalinists, will be a leftward shift in the trade unions.

SPINELESS Again no evidence is offered, and the draft programme studiously avoids the spineless role in practice of the Labour Party "lefts"

Instead, drawing a bogus distinc tion between the "Marxists" and "reformists" within the Labour Party 'left' but not informing us who the "Marxists" are, the CP argues, that the failure of the lefts to challenge the right wing lies in the fact that the majority of the lefts are still "reformists" while the "Marxists" are still in a minority.

But the fact of the matter is that not a single left' Labour MP has been prepared to stand up and fight the right wing policies of the Callaghan government.

All of them, including the likes of Heffer, have now accepted a coalition between Callaghan and Steel in which the Liberal Party is given greater rights to consultation on government policy than the Labour Party NEC.

For two years of wage cutting, rising unemployment, and social service cut backs, the 'lefts' have merely uttered verbal opposition, while refusing to take a stand on alternative policies in an attempt to mobilise the working class against the Callaghan-Healey leadership.

COVER UP

And the Communist Party, instead of ruthlessly exposing the cowardly bleatings of these lefts' covers up for them, attempting to create the illusion that these same 'lefts' are actually the basis of an alliance between Labour and the CP which could lead to socialism !

Marxists understand that socialism cannot come like this through a reformist party, but only through 'at the time of the Stalin-Hitler pact. voting in Parliament against the policies of the Callaghan/Steel leadership, thus ending the deal.

Under conditions where the mass of workers reject the coalition deal, the failure of the lefts' to carry out these demands will serve to discredit them in the eyes of their followers. But of course the CP is POets equipped to demand the adopt a socialist programme, since the CP itself is tied to exactly the same combination of calls for the nationalist policy of import controls and stimulus to private industry which serves the 'lefts' as a Of course, like the "left' Labourites, the CP not only restricts itself to a series of reformist demands, but even pulls back from a fight for them.. So while claiming to oppose wage controls, the Stalinists now argue that sectional disputes against Phase 2. like that of the toolmakers are harmful to the "unity" of the working class.

This argument about "unity" is a superficially attractive one which appeals to many militants who simply want to 'get everyone together' But the question remains:Unity on what basis?

"SECTIONAL"

The greatest possible unity is obviously needed for the overthrow of capitalism. But the CP's notion of unity is unity on the lowest possible level - in the case of wage control, this means in fact unity behind the TUC's bureaucraticallyimposed wage limits.

The fact is that every struggle by the working class is "sectional" in the sense that only a minority of the class is involved at any given moment. The day this ceases to be true, revolution will be on the immediate agenda !

Refusing to support sectional struggles now means that the working class is "united" - in having its wages slashed!

Anyone seriously fighting wage control must begin today by supporting those workers prepared to confront employers, government and their own union leaders to fight for wages.

PROTESTS

Instead of this, every one of the 'initiatives" taken by the CP over wage controls has been consciously restricted to empty, stage-managed protests aimed at • preserving the Stalinists' opportunist coexistence with the trade union bureaucracy, and "pressuring" them to the left.

We have not set out in this article to wade through every aspect of the "new" draft of the British road to Socialism. Much of it is simply a rehash of the 1952 original.

And for this reason also we have not gone into detailed quotes from Marx and Lenin refuting its many blatant revisions of Marxism.

In our view any class conscious CP members will move now into opposition to their leadership not through lengthy theoretical debates but on the strength of hostility to the reactionary stand in practice of the CP in today's class stuggle.

A glimpse of Derek Robinson's strikebreaking role as a 'left' face of Leyland management is worth a thousand quotations in exposing the bankruptcy of the CP's British Road to Socialism Ai Bonaparte began to finalise preparations for the military coup which was to place him in complete control of France, he carried out a series of moves to discredit and to isolate the elected Assembly. In April 1851 ne removed the existing extraparliamentary government and replaced it by the government which had resigned three months earlier. This toying around with the government was done simply to hasten the death of the Assembly.

From April to October the Assembly made feverish efforts to postpone the day of reckoning. A motion proposed by the Party of Order on July 19 to revise the constitution failed to attain the requisite 75% of the votes cast.

Attempts to effect an alliance with republicans and democrats collapsed, and this failure merely hastened the final dissolution of the Party of Order into its component parts. From August 10 to November 4 1851, the Legislative Assembly was again in recess, and once again this allowed Bonaparte to draw up his plans for the coup without any disturbance whatever.

On October 10, he announced to his ministers his decision to restore universal suffrage; on October 16, they resigned and on October 26, the Thoringy Ministry came to power.

At the opening session of the Assembly on November 4, a Bill to restore universal suffrage was introduced. On November 13, this Bill was rejected by 355 votes to 348.

With this act, the Assembly proved itself not a representative body, but the usurping parliament of a single class.

Bonaparte eagerly seized on this vote to present himself as 'defender of the people' , who would safeguard them against "demagogues on one side and monarchical hallucinations on the other" • (Speech of November 25, 1851).

BREACH

This speech, made to members of the industrial bourgeoisie, was met with cries of bravo and other stormy acclamations, and this merely confirmed the breach between the bourgeoisie within parliament and the bourgeoisie without.

The coup d'etat soon followed. In the early hours of December 2, Bonaparte's lumpen-proletarian followers the "Society of December 10" dragged the leaders of the Assembly unceremoniously from their beds.

Sections of the military occupied the main squares of Paris, and placards were put up proclaiming the dissolution of the National Assembly and the Council of State, the restoration of universal suffrage and the imposition of a state of siege in the Seine department. Thus ended the February revolution, the Legislative Assembly and the Party of order. The Second Republic was now supplanted by the Second Empire. The age of bourgeois revolution had given way to the age of capital.

PLEBISCITE

Shortly afterwards the question of the restoration of the empire was put to a plebiscite. 250,000 voted in favour. On the first anniversary of the coup, Bonaparte entered Paris as Napoleon III; his empire was to last twice as long as that of his uncle. By then the revolutions of 1848 were well and truly dead. The Chartist movement had suffered a serious setback in early 1848, while in Cologne a number of Communists were tried and sentenced to imprisonment show-trial.

The Communist League, which had split in September 1850 on the question of revolutionary pros pects, was formally wound up in November 1852. This date marks the close of the first phase of generalised international working class activity the world had seen.

Marx's analysis of the French revolution of 1848 is contained essentially in two works-the Class Struggles in France and the magnificent 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Here he develops, by means of concrete analysis, his materialist conception of history, and shows how the class struggle in France gave rise to that peculiar political formation, Bonapartism, wherein the bourgeoisie entrust political power to a power other than itself.

STALEMATE

For Marx, the Second Empire was . only possible because of a peculiar stalemate in the class sugges when the bourgeoisie found itself unable to rule in its own name just when the proletariat were too weak to overthrow them.

In this situation, when neither class could hold the historical ring, Bonapartism arose and, pretending to stand above classes, dominated French society.

This analysis of Bonapartism was later developed by Trotsky, particularly in his analyses of Hitler's rise to power, and of the degeneration of the Soviet Union.

Needless to say, Trotsky always insisted that the Bonapartism of capitalism in decay was very different from that of pre-monopoly capitalism, and • that both were qualitatively different from the bureaucratic usupration of political power in a workers' state.

NEW FORMS The 1850s and 1860s were a period of unprecedented capitalist expansion; the political energies of the working class lay dormant for some time but revived to form the First International in 1864.

The class antagonisms which Bonaparte tried to suppress resurfaced in new, more violent forms and proved to be the undoing of his rule.

Just as Bonaparte came to power with the farcical coup of 1851, so he was to fall in the farcical capitulation to Bismark in 1870.

1851 had followed the tragedy of 1848; a similar tragedy was to follow September 1870. But this time the working class were to hold power before being defeated, and were to give the world the first workers' state-the Paris Commune of 1871.

1871 is thus the direct continuation of the struggles of June 1848.

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The publication of this letter and reply has been delayed for shortage of space. However we feel that the issue of devolution is an important one, and that letters expressing serious differences should be properly dealt with. The article referred to, "No Scottish Road to Socialism" appeared in the January 19 issue of 'Socialist Leaderships north and south "English" reformist Foor.... Press'