The need for a general theory of the basis of reformism within working class parties was first raised by the betrayal of virtually every European Social Democratic party in supporting the imperialist slaughter of the First World War. Reformism in Britain had been analysed by Marx and Engels as being based on the economic supremacy of that country, but after their deaths no attempt to generalise their findings to other countries had been made.
It was only after 1914 that Lenin systematically showed that the main social basis of social democratic retormism arose from the imperialist stage of capitalism. Despite its bloody convulsions, imperialism could under certain conditions temporarily soften the impact on the working class of the economic contradictions of capitalism. It created within the working class a privileged section, allowed bourgeois democracy to be maintained, and established conditions in which a fetishism of Parliament and legalism developed. Lenin explained:
*Peaceful" decades have not passed without leaving their mark. They have of necessity given rise to opportunism in all countries, and made it preva lent among Parliamentarian, trade union, journalistic and other "leaders"." (1)
LOT TO LOSE He also noted that the bureaucrats had a tremendous amount to lose through any clash with the bourgeoisie for instance:
*Otto Braun, member of the Central Committee [of the German Social Democrats], made reference to the 20 million marks invested in legal papers, and their 11,000 employees. The tens of thousands of leaders, officials and privileged workers have disorganised the millions-strong army of the proletariat.' (2)
While these bureaucrats and the aristocracy of labour' were not numerically large in relation to the working class, they were nevertheless able to play a decisive role because of their position within the organisations of the labour movement. When the reformist Kautsky attempted to ridicule Lenin's position, claiming that it was absurd to say that 'an order given by a handful of parliamentarians is sufficient to make four million class conscious workers turn right about face' enin pointed out:
'As is the case with any organisation, the united will of this mass organisation [the German Social Democratic Party] was expressed only through its united political centre, the "handful" who have betrayed socialism. It was this handful who were asked to express their opinion; it was this handful who were called upon to vote; they were in a position to vote; they were in a position to write articles, cio. ne masses were not consulted. Not only were they not permitted to vote, but they were disunited and coerced "by orders" not from a handful of parliamentarians but from the military authorities.
"It called upon the "masses" one by one, confronted the individual with the ultimatum: either ioin the army, as your leaders advise you to, or be shot. The masses could not act in an organised fashion because their previously created organisation, an organisation embodied in a "handful", had betrayed them. It takes time to create a new organisation, as well as a determination to consign the old, rotten and obsolete orramsauon to une scrap nicab. EARLY DAYS....the 1906 Conference of the Labour Party in the Niemorial Hall, Farringdon Street, London. But it was the basic political ideas of these 'founding fathers of British social democracy which created....
Lenin explained that this was quite wrong. The class nature of a party had to be defined not by who supported it, or were members of it, but by what programme, what real social interests, it defended-and not by its programme on a piece of paper, but by its real social role. As Lenin replied:
*Comrade MacLaine has been guilty of a slight inaccuracy with which it is impossible to agree. He cals the Labour rary the porcal expression or une trade union movement. I have read the same expression of opinion in the organ of the British Socialist Party. It is not true. Indeed the concept "political organisation of the trade union movement" or the "political expression" of this movement is mistaken.
Of course for the most part the Labour Party consists or workers, but it does not tonow trom tni: logically that every workers party which consists of workers is a "political workers' party"; that depends on who leads it, on the content of its activities, and of its tactics. From this point of view, which is the a political workers party but a thoroughly bourgeois party. (4)
When Lenin and Trotsky defined the Social Democratic parties, including the Labour Party, as bourgeois labour parties, they meant by this that these parties defended in the last analysis the interests of capitalism. These parties would prefer anything at all, including even fascism, to the overthrow of capitalism. As Trotsky pointed out:
*There is no class contradiction between the social democracy and fascism. Both fascism and social demo cracy are bourgeois parties. (5) Events in Britain and Portugal in the last months have sharpened the controversy on And, for example, in the case of Britain he noted that:
If Conmunism should become a decisive force, threatening the General Council of the TUC with the loss of positions, honours and income, Messrs. Citrine and Co. would undoubtedlv enter into a blod with Mosley and Co. against the Communists.' (6)
It is from the fact that Social Democratic parties, including the Labour Party, are analysed by Marxists as bourgeois parties-which in the final analysis will side even with fascism rather than have a victorious working class revolution -unal various untra-lett organisations nave described Socialist Parties as 'social fascist'. This was the case both with the policy of the Conmunist Parties as a whole in 1929-34, and with some of the ultra-left groups in Portugal today.
Unfortunately for this line of argument, the fact that social democracy, fascism, Tories, etc. are all bourgeois does not mean that they are all the same. While fascist parties aim to smash all traces even of bourgeois democracy, social democracy 'clings to Parliamentarism with all its feeble power, for all the sources of its influence and welfare are bound up with this artificial machine.' (7) From the general truth concerning the same class nature of Tories, fascists and social democracy, it is not possible to derive the conclusion that in each specific situation they play the same role either for the ruling class or for the working class-above all because Social Democratic parties are parties of the working class. Speaking of Germany, Trotsky said:
"In the face of a proletarian uprising, there is no gainsaying it, there will be no difference between Bruening [a German Tory), Severing, Leipart [Social Democratic leaders] and Hitler... But that doesn't at au mean unal sruening severna seart anu are always and under all conditions belong to the same camp. Just now their interests diverge. At the given moment the question that is posed betore the social democracy is not so much one of defending the foundations of capitalist society against proletarian revolution as of defending the semi-parliamentary system against fascism.' (8)
As regards tactics, the conclusions are obvious:
'When one of my enemies sets before me small daily doses of poison and the second, on the other TIrst knock ue revover our or me and orm second enemy, for this gives me an opportunity to get rid of my first enemy. (9)
What is more, while Social Democratic parties always defend the historic interests of capitalism, they can come into very violent conflict with outright capitalist reaction. Thus, in Russia:
In October 1917, they [the reformists] were fighting hand in hand with the Kornilovists [extreme reactionaries] against the Bolsheviks. • [but] in August 1917, the Russian Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries together with the Bolsheviks repuised General nommuoy- AND me IS. months of 1917, when the reformists were still strong, they spouted, just like Citrine and Co., about the impossibility of their making an alliance with the dictatorship either of the right or left.' (10)
CRUCIAL DIFFERENCE The real crucial difference between Social Democratic parties and other bourgeois parties is the fact that they are bourgeois parties of the working class and not parties of the bourgeoisie. In Lenin's words, they are 'bourgeois labour parties, which means that these parties can come into conflict not merely with outright capitalist reaction but even with the day-to-day immediate needs of capitalism. In certair cases, Trotsky explained:
'In order not to lose their influence over the workers, reformists are compelled, against the inner most desires of their own leaders, to support the partial movements of the exploited against the exploiters." (11)
Trotsky noted that in Belgium in the mid*To save itself from.ruin, the Social Democracy needs a certain movement of the workers. It must frighten the bourgeoisie to make it more agreeable. It is certainly mortally afraid that this movement might go over its head. But with the absolute insig miticance one comtem me weakness or me revolutionary groups, and under the fresh impressior of the German experience, the Social Democracy expects immediate danger from the right and not from the left.' (12)
Under circumstances where- despite its reformism-social democracy clashed with the immediate interests of the bourgeoisie, Trotsky considered:
*It is necessary to catch the squirming reformists at their own words and to impel the reformist masses to une road or accon-beat the enemy wie nis own
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the revolutionary left about the nature of Social Democratic parties like the Portu- guese Socialist Party and the British Labour Party. In this article, the first of a nuin- ber which Red Weekly will be publishing on this problem, ALAN JONES looks at the views of Lenin and Trotsky on social democracy.