The following is partly intended as a letter to the Weekly Worker
(www.cpgb.org.uk):

Congratulations on publishing a 1906 Rosa Luxemburg article under the
heading "Socialism excludes minority rule" (January 22).

Minority rule was precisely what happened after the October 1917
revolution in Russia, with "the dictatorship of the proletariat" -
rule just by the working class despite the much more numerous
peasantry, due to the rigging of the soviets to give workers more say
than peasants and the abolition of the Constituent Assembly after the
victory of the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs, a party based on the
peasantry dominated by large landowners) in elections to it. It is of
course much easier with the benefit of hindsight to say what should
have happened - the Bolsheviks should have allowed the right-wing SRs
to show themselves up in practice and launch a further revolution
later (with Trotsky's argument that the Bolsheviks would have been
massively repressed undermined by the fact that there had been two
revolutions within a year) or even better, the Bolsheviks should have
gone into the countryside before the Assembly elections to build a
united socialist party with the poor peasants.

Marxists generally stick to the mantra that only one class can be in
control of society, although some have used the term "dictatorship of
the proletariat and peasantry". Is there really any objective reason
why democtatic rule by both the working and middle classes cannot be
achieved?

Marxists need to face the fact that those who consider themselves
middle class outnumber those who consider themselves working class in
many countries in the West - certainly in the USA and possibly in
Britain too. Of course, we can argue that many such people really are
working class even if they don't know it, but arguments that public
sector workers (for example) are being exploited are tenuous to say
the least! Continuing to argue for minority rule (or even majority
rule where the majority is only say 60% or 80% of the population) is
not only undemocratic but would render Marxists irrelevant and unable
to take advantage of the massive unfolding capitalist economic crisis.
Even if a Marxist-style socialist state was established in the West,
it would provoke a massive destabilising civil war from middle class
people objecting to not having a say.

As I pointed out in a letter published in last week's paper, Barack
Obama is attempting to unite all classes (including big business of
course). The acts he has carried out within 24 hours of taking office
- passing legislation to close Guantanamo Bay within a year and
banning torture immediately, plus suspending trials of Guantanamo
"suspects" (which would be kangaroo courts with defendants given few
rights) - surely undermine the argument that he is acting (solely or
mainly) in the interests of big business!

At the time Rosa Luxemburg was writing, and at the time of the Russian
revolutions, the concept of proportional representation hadn't been
invented (or if it had, few knew about it). Now, one of the three
mainstream parties in Britain, the Liberal Democrats, advocate it -
and they surely stand a significant chance of holding the balance of
power in a hung parliament after the next general election. They even
advocate the fairest form of PR, single transferable vote, which
removes the rationale for tactical voting. The fact that the Lib Dems
rarely mention this policy nowadays is surely due to them realising
that the main beneficiaries would be socialists!

Nationalisation from above without democratic control from below would
not be true socialism, of course. PR could be combined with a form of
soviets (committees and forums open to all, that are preferably not
too hierarchical since hierarchies make it easier for non-genuine
people to rise to positions of power and stay there) operating in
workplaces and local communities. I have raised the issue of
democratisation of the banks, many of which are becoming nationalised
in desperate acts of capitalist governments faced with an escalating
(and probably terminal as far as the UK is concerned) economic crisis,
with most control in the hands of savers and borrowers (but small
businesses should have a say as well as individuals).

--
Steve Wallis (Manchester, England)
Preferred email address: revolutionarysocialiststeve@yahoo.co.uk
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