Date: Thu, 7 Nov 96 08:21:23 GMT
From: Adam Rose <adam-AT-pmel.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: Peasants + Workers



Louis P writes:
> 
> On Wed, 30 Oct 1996, Louis R Godena wrote:
> 
> > 
> > today:  the Party failed most of all because it failed to become a force in
> > the countryside,   concentrating instead on the workers in heavy industry in
> > the urban centers of the northern states and in Mexico City itself.    After
> > the wholesale terror directed at Communist farmworker organizers in the
> > South in the 1930,  relatively little in the way of resources was allocated
> > to the rural areas,   a grievous mistake according to Concha.     For her,
> 
> Louis P.: One of these days this list should really take up this question
> in the depth it deserves. As I read about China in the Morris Meisner
> book, it hits me on almost every page how China was a nation of
> *peasants*. Anybody who was interested in liberating China from
> imperialism had to look to the peasantry, not the working-class. Even if
> the Shanghai Rebellion had the "correct" line, there is a real question of
> how far it would have gone without peasant support.

Peasant support and peasant leadership are two different things.
No Revolution in China, even today, can be successful without peasant
support.

In 1940, it is correct to say that the revolution was based on the
peasantry. It is totally incorrect to say that it was led by the
peasantry. It was led by a band of middle class intellectuals, acting
in what they thought was the interests of the nation.

Could the working class have played such a role ? My answer is yes,
and my evidence is the events of 1927 and 1929.

> Somewhere down the
> road the whole question of "proletarian" revolution in places like China,
> Vietnam, Peru and Cuba will have to be thought through. As I have already
> pointed out, the Cuban revolution was not made by the urban working class.
> Why? The unionized sector was actually quite comfortable with life under
> Batista. It's wages were rising and work was plentiful in Havana. A
> revolutionary party that has a strict orientation to this strata won't go
> very far. Isn't this the story of Latin American CP's and Trotskyist
> groups as well? Now I know there are exceptions like the Bolivian and
> Chilean miners, as well as the autoworkers of Argentina, but vast sections
> of Latin America remain mostly peasant. Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia,
> etc. Where does Marxism, the science of proletarian revolution, fit in?
> Now don't anybody give me any dogmatic bullshit, ya' hear. Put your
> thinking caps on.
> 

I think you are on very very weak ground with Brazil. The biggest general
strike ever in working class history, bigger than May 68 in France, happenned
in 1988 in Brazil. The arguments about combined and uneven development seem to
me to apply quite literally in the case of Brazil : Car workers have very 
similar working conditions to car workers in the "advanced" capitalist countries.
Meanwhile there is a large urban mass of urban poor in the cities, some of
whom are workers in small companies and some of whom are taxi drivers, street
children, etc and of course peasants in the countryside.

The argument about the working class leading the revolution was never about
absolute numbers, it was about "social weight" , the importance these workers
have economically and therefore politically, their concentration into huge
workplaces, their potential ability to solve the "national" problems.



I also think the inability of many CP's to relate to the peasantry in countries
like Cuba, Nicaragua, and, from what Louis G says, Mexico,  stems directly from
their move away from revolutionary politics towards accomodation with their own
bourgeoisie. What does an alliance with the peasantry mean, concretely ? It means
supporting, becoming part of, trying to lead if possible, land seizures and debt
cancellations. This entails a direct assualt on notions of private property,
which cannot be done if you're in the pocket of your local bourgeoisie.
[ The events in Cuba in the 30's for instance indicate that the working class
could potentially have played this role. ]

Interestingly, this is partly what Gramsci was trying to get at when he 
argued for things like "a war of position" , the party as a "modern Prince",
etc . Decoded, this meant first and foremost a revolutionary alliance with
the peasantry. This attitude to the peasantry distinguished him from both the
ultra left sectarian Bordiga and the Reformists in the leadership of the PSI.
Italy in 1919 wasn't so different from Brazil today : advanced industry in the
North, the most backward agriculture in the South.

Adam.


Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK


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