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Today, hundreds of thousands of people will march against the far right in cities across France, after President Emmanuel Macron reacted to far-right parties gains in the June 9 European elections by dissolving the French parliament and calling snap elections for June 30 and July 7. There is mounting concern among workers and youth over the growth of the neofascist National Rally (RN).

Immediately after the election was announced, Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the France Unbowed (LFI) party, announced the creation of a New Popular Front. This is a political trap for those seeking to halt the rise of the far right and police-state militarism. It aims to block a struggle for socialism by subordinating workers to a debilitating alliance with parties of capitalist government like the bourgeois Socialist Party (PS), the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) and the Greens. These corrupt parties can only lead their followers to disaster.

Speaking of his alliance with the PS and PCF, Mlenchon said on June 10:

We spoke today to confront the countrys historic situation after the results of the European elections and the dissolution of the National Assembly. We call for the constitution of a new popular front gathering in an unprecedented form all the humanist, trade union, nongovernmental and citizens left forces.

For the first time since the fall of the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime in 1944, the far right is poised to form a government in France. It is moving ever closer to power, moreover, as the NATO powers back genocide in Gaza and unleash their first war against Russia since the Nazi war of annihilation against the Soviet Union.

Macron has called these elections with the first round just before and the second round just after the July 4 snap elections in Britain, and before a July 9 NATO war summit in Washington. This summit will discuss plans by Macron and other officials to escalate the NATO war with Russia in Ukraine. These plans are opposed by 70 percent of the population in France and 80 percent in Germany. Macron aims to use the snap elections to prepare the ruling establishment to wage war on working class opposition at home so it can wage imperialist war abroad.

Mlenchon pledges that his Popular Front coalition will now advance a program that makes a clean break, listing measures to be taken during the first 100 days of the Popular Front government. He adds, Our goal is to govern to respond to democratic, ecological and social emergencies and for peace.

But Mlenchons Popular Front is not a force for peace and democracy. Its perspective is a government standing on capitalist property relations, defending the interests of French imperialism. It ties workers and youth to the pro-austerity PS, which supports war with Russia under the guise of aid to Ukraine, and whose record of back-channel ties to the far right dates to its foundation in 1971 by the former Nazi-collaborationist Franois Mitterrand.

The term Popular Front is associated with the worst betrayals of the working class. In the 1930s, it supported Stalinist slanders against Trotsky in the Moscow Trials and blocked a struggle of the working class for power and for socialism during the 1936 French general strike. The liberal and social-democratic parliamentarians of the French Popular Front ultimately in their majority voted dictatorial powers to Vichy leader Philippe Ptain in 1940.

The first challenge in fighting the resurgence of the far right is to explain how it came to pass. How is it that, in what was long considered one of Europes most left-wing countries, in which a mass movement of armed resistance to Vichy developed in the working class, that the political heirs of Vichy are poised to take power?

It is not that mass fascist paramilitary organizations like the Nazi Brown Shirts or the French Milice have emerged. But unlike fascist leaders of Hitlers era, who had to fight mass communist parties in the working class, the far right today does not need such militias to grow. It gains strength firstly from the imperialist bourgeoisies relentless pursuit of war, austerity, and social inequality, to which the neofascists give the most determined expression.

Moreover, the neofascists feed off the bitterness and confusion produced among workers and middle-class people by decades of betrayals by social democracy, Stalinism and descendants of renegades from Trotskyism.

Mlenchons claim that his Popular Fronts policies are new is perhaps his greatest lie of all: It is repeating what Mlenchon has done for a half-century.

He began in Pierre Lamberts Organisation communiste internationaliste (OCI) as the OCI broke with the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), the leadership of the world Trotskyist movement. The OCI rejected Trotskyism to instead support the Union of the Left between the PCF and the PS. Mlenchon himself joined the PS in 1976.

After Mitterrand took power in 1981 and swiftly abandoned his election promises and instead imposed austerity, Mlenchon became a senator. He worked closely with Mitterrand as the PS government joined the US-led war in Iraq in 1990-1991 and helped form the pro-business European Union. After Mitterrand died, Mlenchon was a PS minister in the 1997-2002 pro-austerity Plural Left government.

In the 21st century, after the disintegration of the PCFs mass working class base amid the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union, he became a leading promoter of the populist theories of middle-class anti-Marxists. In his 2014 The Era of the People, he wrote that the people takes the place that the revolutionary working class once occupied in the politics of the left. Calling to get beyond socialism, he advocated a peoples revolution, stressing it is not the old socialist revolution.

These anti-worker, anti-socialist and anti-Trotskyist arguments must be rejected. Threats of war and neofascist rule irrefutably show that capitalism is in a mortal crisis. The way forward is for the European and international working class to revive its connections to the heritage of the October Revolution. Workers must take control of world economy and industry from the war-mad capitalist aristocracy before it mounts a military escalation that could trigger a nuclear conflagration.

The far rights rise indicates not the impossibility, but the urgency of the struggle for socialism. Trotsky made this point about the danger of the growth of support for fascism in the mass peasantry of France in the 1930s.

In Whither France, as he fought to found the Fourth International against the Popular Front between Stalinists, social democrats and liberals, he wrote:

It is false, thrice false, to affirm that the present petty bourgeoisie is not going to the working-class parties because it fears extreme measures. Quite the contrary. The lower petty bourgeoisie, its great masses, only see in the working-class parties parliamentary machines. They do not believe in their strength, nor in their capacity to struggle, nor in their readiness this time to conduct the struggle to the end.

Todays rising far-right vote, mainly among rural workers and workers in areas deindustrialized by successive PS governments, does not mean these workers oppose class struggle. Many have joined explosive movements like the 2018-2019 yellow vest protests against social inequality. However, they can only be won from the far right based on a determined, Trotskyist struggle against NATO, Macron and the corrupt bureaucracies of todays Popular Front.

The Parti de lgalit socialiste (PES), the French section of the ICFI, advocates the broadest protests and strikes against fascism and imperialist war. Military escalation and austerity will bring Macron and NATO into collision with the workers in France and internationally. But to prosecute this struggle, it is necessary to build rank-and-file organizations of struggle in the working class, opposing fascism and war in an international movement for socialism.

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After Macron's snap election call, which way forward against neofascism and war? - WSWS

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) is standing candidates in the British general election to build a socialist anti-war movement, based on the working class.

Millions of workers and young people in the UK hate the Conservatives and Labour for their backing and arming of the Israeli state as it commits genocide, killing more than 38,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and they want an alternative.

What is not as well understood is that Britain, the United States, and other imperialist powers are taking actions in Ukraine that could result in a nuclear catastrophe threatening to destroy all life on earth. The global capitalist system, whose insoluble global crisis is the underlying cause of genocide and war, is descending into barbarism.

The SEP is using this election to break the conspiracy of silence maintained by the capitalist media, the major parties, the trade unions and what passes for the left over the acute dangers facing the working class. We intend to build a socialist alternative.

Mass opposition to Israels genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza must become the spearhead of a political struggle against the broader war aims of the UK, the United States and the other NATO imperialist powers. Their support for Israels mass murder and ethnic cleansing is bound up with plans for a new military carve-up of the world and its resources, centred on advanced preparations for war with Russia, Iran, and China.

Building a new anti-war movement demands an irrevocable break with the Labour Party.

Sir Keir Starmer wants to form a government that continues the Conservative Partys support for the Gaza genocide and the UKs leading role in the US-led war with Russia. Labour backs sending NATO troops to Ukraine and missile strikes on Russian soil with NATO-supplied weapons that could drag the UK, Europe and the world into war. It is committed to strengthening Britains nuclear weapons programme, backed by Starmers pledge that he will use them.

War on this scale demands an escalation of the savage austerity that has already left young people and working-class families struggling to survive. The ruling class is demanding an end to the peace dividend, which means a final death blow must be delivered to the National Health Service, social care, and all essential services to pay for war.

This is accompanied by a whipping up of nationalism and anti-immigrant xenophobia over the need for strong borders that is fuelling the rise of the far-right. A combined frontal assault on democratic rights has already begun with the campaign to criminalise protests over Gaza using lying accusations of antisemitism.

That is why the SEP is standing its Assistant National Secretary Tom Scripps against Starmer in Holborn and St Pancras. A vote for Starmer and Labour is a vote for austerity, repression, genocide and war! A vote for Scripps and the SEP is a vote for equality, peace and socialism!

In Scotland, Darren Paxton is standing in Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called the snap general election to create the political framework for a new stage in a European-wide war that demands a major confrontation with the working class and young people.

Mass demonstrations against the horrific crimes being carried out in Gaza by Netanyahus far-right government, backed by Britain, the US, and other major powers, have mobilised millions. The ruling class fears an even larger eruption of opposition as the Israeli government expands its military campaign and as the full consequences of the NATO war with Russia become clear.

Sunak declared the main issue determining the election must be national security, citing the need to combat an axis of authoritarian states like Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. He claimed these global tensions were being exploited by extremists who seek to undermine our values, before denouncing anti-genocide protests as antisemitic.

These statements make clear that the task of the next government will be to drive forward the war plans of British imperialism over any resistance mounted by workers and students. This is confirmed by the announcement of a snap general election in France, where President Emmanuel Macron has responded to the rise of the far-right by seeking to create some form of national unity government to wage the war on Russia for which he has become the main advocate.

In the Middle East, as the death toll mounts in Gaza, Israeli aggression against Hezbollah in Lebanon is being ramped up and missile and drone strikes have been exchanged between Israel and Iran.

In Ukraine, agreeing to Kiev striking Russian territory with NATO-supplied long-range missiles accompanies plans to send soldiers from NATO countries to fight on the frontline and imposing conscription to supply fresh cannon fodder. NATO has established military corridors in Europe to allow for the rapid deployment to the east of hundreds of thousands of troops.

There is nothing remotely progressive about the Special Military Operation launched by President Vladimir Putin in the interests of the Russian capitalist oligarchs who rose to power on the basis of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the privatisation and plundering of the state assets nationalised in the aftermath of the 1917 October Revolution. Based on its bankrupt Great Russian nationalist perspective, the Putin government is driven to ever more reckless and provocative military escalations of its own, including threats to use nuclear weapons.

But opposition to Russias invasion must not translate into support for NATO imperialism, which deliberately created the conditions for the Kremlins reactionary responsethrough the constant eastward expansion of the military alliance towards Russia since 1990 and then the seizing of political control of Ukraine through the pro-western coup engineered in 2014.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, portrayed as a champion of democracy, is as much a right-wing stooge of the imperialist powers as Netanyahu. He heads a regime of virulent nationalists and outright fascists, which ruthlessly suppresses strikes, free speech and political opposition to the war as it rounds up its citizens and sends them to die.

Amid mounting opposition to the war and resistance to the draft, the Zelensky government has arrested our comrade, the Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk, on fraudulent charges of serving the interests of Russia. Bogdan is an intransigent opponent of the capitalist Putin regime and its invasion of Ukraine, fighting for the unity of Ukrainian and Russian workers and youth against war.

His fate mirrors that of Julian Assange, detained and imprisoned for 14 years by the UK and facing extradition to the US and a possible 175-year sentence for exposing war crimes.

By waging war against Russia, and ultimately Iran and China, NATO hopes to collapse their governments and implement regime change that gives them direct control of essential natural resources. This reckless escalation risks nuclear war, but the imperialist powers are willing to take this risk because they see no other way out of the desperate situation they facedrained of all legitimacy and ruling over impoverished and restive populations.

The ruling elites in the UK and internationally calculate that war abroad will create conditions for the suppression of democratic rights in the name of war-time national unity. This includes plans to ban strikes and protests that reflect fear of a broader movement in the working class, which will be forced to pay for the war with their lives and the destruction of social programmes.

Starmer and other Labour leaders are hated for backing mass murder and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, based on their sickening invocation of Israels right to self-defence. But Starmers party of Zionism is also the party of NATO. And what is being concealed from the public gaze is the active and advanced preparation for a Labour government to drag Britain into a war that would see the atrocities of Gaza multiplied a thousand-fold.

Starmer responded to Sunaks snap general election statement with his own call to place Britain on a war-footing. The post-war era is over, he declared. This Labour Party is totally committed to the security of our nation. To our armed forces. And, importantly, to our nuclear deterrent.

He boasted that Labour will build four new nuclear submarines and promised world leaders from the US, Europe and the Middle East his government would always meet our international obligations.

This is why Washington and other imperialist capitals, the British Armed Forces and the City of London stand behind a Labour government. Starmers first act as prime minister would be to attend a NATO summit in Washington D.C. on July 9 to discuss waging war against Russia.

The Socialist Equality Party rejects the lie that a vote for Labour is for a lesser evil than the Tories. They represent a single party of war, with Labour boasting of having a better policy to crack down on migration and promising to form the most business friendly government in history.

Starmers pitch to the ruling class is that he can rely on his allies in the trade union bureaucracy to police and betray the working class and impose the dictates of the major corporations and banks. He can cite as proof the role played by the union bureaucracy in sabotaging the 2022-23 strike wave that at one point encompassed two million workers.

The SEP rejects calls to sink political differences to bring about one big Gaza protest vote. The promise by the Stop the War Coalition and various pseudo-left groups of No Ceasefire, No Vote means supporting some protest candidates while calling for a vote for Labour everywhere else. It ends with the formation of a government that will continue backing Israel and waging NATOs wars. The Labour lefts such as John McDonnell and Diane Abbott are all dutifully campaigning for such a government.

Jeremy Corbyn is standing as an independent in Islington North, but only because he was booted out of the Labour Party. Even now he makes no direct criticism of its support for mass murder and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, NATOs war against Russia in Ukraine or anything else. He has carefully crafted his campaign so as not to clash with Labour except within the boundaries of Islington North, and has made no call for anyone else to leave the party and build a new one.

The only reason Starmer is poised to enter 10 Downing Street is that Corbyn and his backers, elected by a landslide to lead the Labour Party in 2015, faced down demands from workers and youth to drive out the Blairites. Corbyn capitulated on all fundamental issues, including NATO membership and nuclear weapons, and then politely handed the party over to Starmer. The refusal to fight the lie of left antisemitism laid the basis for mass expulsions and now the grotesque depiction of Gaza protests, also attended by hundreds of Jews, as hate marches.

George Galloways Workers Party of Britain offers no alternative. Advanced as a return to traditional Labour values, its nationalist and pro-capitalist programme includes a clampdown on migration targeting refugees, and has become a political home to Asian businessmen, opportunist officials of the Labour, Tory, Liberal Democrats, and worse.

In Scotland, the ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, but unconditionally supports NATO and the war against Russia in Ukraine. Outside of their divisive proposal for an independent capitalist Scotland, the SNP is virtually indistinguishable from Starmers Labour Party of war.

The Socialist Equality Party states plainly to workers, especially the young generation: The building of a new and genuinely socialist leadership must begin now. We advance the socialist and internationalist programme on which this new leadership must be built.

The SEP is the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), the world party of socialist revolution, founded by Leon Trotsky in a fight against the Stalinist bureaucracy and its crimes.

The danger of a new world war arises out of the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist systembetween the development of a global economy and its division into antagonistic nation states, in which the private ownership of the means of production is rooted. This is what drives the US, Britain and other imperialist powers as they seek unchallenged domination of the world.

The international working class is the only social force that can stop this global eruption of war. In its June 2 statement, Stop the US-NATO escalation toward nuclear war! Unite the international working class against imperialist war and genocide! the ICFI explains:

The same contradictions driving imperialism to the brink of nuclear war provide the objective basis for social revolution. The international working class is a massive social force, whose interests collide with capitalist exploitation and imperialist barbarism There is only one way that the spiral toward disaster can be avoided, and that is through the intervention of the working class to force an end to this war.

The SEP fights for the formation of a mass movement against genocide and war based on these four essential principles:

1. A movement against genocide and war must be based in the working class. It is the working class that will fight and die in war, and it is the working class that will be forced to pay for it. The same capitalist crisis that produces war also produces the basis for ending war, in the form of growing struggles against inequality, poverty and the attack on wages, jobs, healthcare, education and all the social rights of the working class.

2. It must be completely independent of and hostile to all political parties and organisations of the capitalist class, the Labour Party above all.

3. It must be international, uniting workers in every country and on every continent on the basis of their common class interests. The escalating global war, like World War I and World War II, arises out of the contradictions of the world capitalist system. A new global conflagration can only be averted through the mobilisation of the world working class, which produces all of societys wealth and therefore has the social and economic power to oppose the conspiracies of the capitalist ruling elites.

4. It must be anti-capitalist and socialist, since there can be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and the economic system that is the fundamental cause of war.

To mobilise the immense social power of the working class against the capitalist class and its representatives means overcoming the gap between the advanced stage of the global crisis and the present level of mass political consciousness. This is only possible through the building of a Marxist-Trotskyist leadership and the revolutionary renewal of the international workers movement based on socialist policies.

The SEP is dedicated to this historic task. We fight alongside our sister parties for the unity of workers in Russia, Ukraine, and all of the former Soviet Union with their brothers and sisters in Europe, Asia, and America against war and for socialism. We appeal to all workers and youth to join the SEP and take their place in this struggle.

Promoted by Stuart Nolan, Box 338, 254 Pentonville Road, London, N1 9JY, on behalf of Tom Scripps, Box 338, 254 Pentonville Road, London, N1 9JY

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No to Gaza genocide and NATO war against Russia! Fight for a socialist alternative to Starmer's Labour Party! Build a ... - WSWS

Growing numbers of workers and young people in Australia and the broader region are joining the campaign to free imprisoned Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk.

Arrested on April 25 on bogus charges of treason and frame-up allegations of aiding Russia, Bogdan is in reality a courageous fighter for the interests of the working class. That includes opposing the US-NATO war against Russia from the standpoint of uniting Ukrainian and Russian workers against all the governments involved.

We urge all readers to support the campaign and demand Bogdans immediate release.

****

Scott, a New Zealand teacher living in Japan

Free Bogdan Syrotiuk! Ukraine has blocked access to the WSWS, a telling move by the fascist Zelensky regime that has fabricated high treason charges against Bogdan to silence opposition to their war. As the capitalist ruling class continues to use the working class as their pawns in war and in pursuit of corporate profits, the threat of nuclear war continues to grow. We must continue fighting against the capitalist ruling class and fighting for the immediate release of Bogdan.

Igor, a youth worker and actor from Melbourne

A student from Monash University in Melbourne

The arrest and detention of Bogdan Syrotiuk by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) starkly illustrate the fascist tendencies entrenched in the Zelensky regime. This blatant frame-up, rife with lies and political absurdities, aims to suppress and criminalise genuine socialist opposition. Bogdan Syrotiuk, a committed leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists (YGBL), is being falsely accused of high treasona charge devoid of any factual basis and rooted solely in his Marxist principles and opposition to the imperialist war in Ukraine.

The SBUs accusations, built on dubious documents, attempt to paint the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) as instruments of Russian propaganda. This narrative is not only false but strategically constructed to delegitimise the socialist critique of both Ukrainian and Russian capitalist regimes. The ICFIs stance against the US-NATO provocations and the Putin regimes invasion of Ukraine stems from a profound understanding of the global capitalist crisis and the reactionary nature of nationalist wars. Only by fostering socialist revolution and the unity of the working class across national borders can we turn our backs on the state of endless war that serves bourgeois interests.

Historically, the bourgeois state has always employed repressive measures to silence revolutionary voices. The SBU's actions echo the suppression of previous socialist movements through brutal state repression. The arrest of Bogdan Syrotiuk marks a continuation of this reactionary tradition, aiming to dismantle any organized resistance to capitalist exploitation and war. The ICFI and WSWS, challenging the dominant Western narrative, have become prime targets for a capitalist class increasingly desperate to maintain its grip on power amidst growing economic and geopolitical crises.

In this context, the working class must rally to defend Bogdan Syrotiuk and all those who resist imperialist wars and capitalist oppression, regardless of whether these forces of oppression originate from Western or Russian bourgeois interests. The struggle for his release is intrinsically linked to the broader fight for socialism and the liberation of humanity from the chains of exploitation. It is imperative to mobilise global solidarity to expose and resist these fascistic tactics, ensuring the voices of the oppressed are not silenced.

The defence of democratic rights and the fight for socialism are connected, and the case of Bogdan Syrotiuk underscores the urgent need for revolutionary internationalism in the face of escalating imperialist barbarism. As Rosa Luxemburg famously stated, humanity faces a stark choice: Socialism or barbarism.

Jenny, a retired worker in Sydney

I condemn the arrest of Bogdan Syrotiuk who, prior to his arrest, exercised his democratic right to alert the Ukrainian and Russian working class that their allegiance lay with their class brothers and sisters, not the warmongering oligarchs of their respective countries. He must immediately be released and restored to his family and friends.

The program of uniting the international working class against imperialist war and for the overthrow of capitalism terrifies the leaders of Ukraine and Russia because it is their working-class men and women that they are mercilessly sending into battle against each other. What would Putin and Zelensky do if their soldiers downed arms? They are so sensitive to political currents which are increasingly anti-war, that Bogdan, aligned with the Fourth international founded by Leon Trotsky who led the momentous Russian Revolution of 1917, had to be silenced. They silenced him by locking him up, proving, contrary to the bugles of imperialism which claim Ukraine is fighting this war in the name of democracy, there is no democracy in Ukraine. Fascism is alive and well in the Zelensky regime.

Bogdan is a courageous and principled young man who consciously advocated socialist internationalism. He worked to clarify the Ukrainian war and other critical geopolitical issues to the Ukrainian and Russian workers. He did this in the middle of a vicious and ongoing trench and bombing war resembling a WWI hellscape. With serious health issues, it is imperative he be released from that Ukrainian prison post-haste! I encourage everyone to join the #FreeBogdan campaign.

Linda, a Sydney artist

The accusation by the Ukrainian government that Bogdan Syrotiuk and the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) are working for Putin is patently absurd given the WSWS's well-documented and vehement opposition to both Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The WSWS, affiliated with the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), has consistently denounced the Russian military intervention, condemning it as a reactionary move that exacerbates the plight of the working class.

WSWS has repeatedly highlighted the reactionary nature of Putins regime, critiquing it for safeguarding the interests of the Russian oligarchy at the expense of the working class. This principled stance is in direct contradiction to the claims made by the Ukrainian government, which attempts to portray Syrotiuk and the WSWS as Kremlin propagandists, a narrative that collapses under the weight of the WSWS's clear and unwavering opposition to Russian nationalism and imperialism.

Moreover, the Ukrainian governments recent updates to its exemptions from the European Convention on Human Rights, justified by the ongoing war, further underscore the authoritarian context in which these accusations are made. These exemptions, which erode basic democratic rights, reflect a broader strategy to suppress dissent and opposition, making the persecution of Syrotiuk part of a larger pattern of repressive measures aimed at silencing socialist and anti-war voices.

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Statements from Japan and Australia demand freedom for Bogdan Syrotiuk - WSWS

Youve just published a book about Karl Kautsky. Im a historian of the socialist movement in Germany, and I can say that until recently, Kautsky was almost completely forgotten. He was remembered, if at all, as a target of polemics by Lenin and Trotsky. Yet there has been a minor Kautsky revival in the United States. The Kautsky debate began about five years ago with an article in Jacobin magazine. What do you think drew people to Kautsky around 201819, more or less a century after he betrayed socialism in the First World War?

The resurrection of Kautsky is a very interesting phenomenon. When Kautsky died in 1938, he had been largely disavowed by the revolutionary Left. Yet moderate leftists had no use for him either. After World War II, as social democracy abandoned socialism as even a long-term goal, they dispensed with Kautskys theoretical formulas. In fact, Kautskys reputation fell so far in the decades after his death that many people, as the joke went, thought his first name was Renegade, since they only knew him from Lenins pamphlet.

In a deeper sense, though, Kautsky never quite went away. Those who advocated a reformist or democratic socialism often returned to his ideas, even if credit to Kautsky went unacknowledged. For example, in the 1970s, a number of western European Communist Parties dropped their allegiance to Marxism-Leninism and the USSR, developing the ideas of Eurocommunism. Eurocommunists advocated a democratic road to socialism that bore a great deal of similarity to Kautskys ideas on parliament and the state. The Eurocommunists claimed not Kautsky but Antonio Gramsci as a source of inspiration for their reformism. This was mistaken, since Gramsci was a stalwart revolutionary who never advocated gradualism. The reason that Kautsky was not given credit is simple: for parties that were still nominally communist, Gramsci was a more acceptable figure than Kautsky. Basically, whenever anyone seeks a theoretical rationale for democratic socialism, Kautsky eventually comes up.

The United States represents an interesting example. In 2016, the Bernie Sanders campaign popularized all sorts of vague ideas about democratic socialism. At the same time, many debates surrounding Sanders were reflected in Jacobin magazine, which acted as an unofficial campaign organ. You also saw the growth of the moribund Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which went from roughly 5,000 members in 2016 to more than 25,000 by 2018, standing at roughly 78,000 today. Many of those joining DSA were politically new and trying to figure out what they meant by socialism.

For the more intellectual types in DSA and Jacobin, Kautsky appeared very attractive. While you can find people with similar politics to Kautsky in the ranks of Communist Parties, such as Earl Browder or Palmiro Togliatti, they are all tainted with the brush of Stalinism to one degree or another, and no one could accuse Kautsky of that. Thats the first point. Second, Kautsky has an impressive rsum as an orthodox Marxist, at least on paperfar more than DSAs founder, Michael Harrington, for example. Kautskys theoretical authority could be used in DSA to justify democratic socialist politics. Interestingly, the debates surrounding Kautsky are not only about him but also about using a Marxist veneer to justify supporting the Democratic Party and American imperialism.

I knew the basics of Kautskys life when I wrote that article. When I researched this book, I didnt discover anything earth shattering that changed my view of the man. But one thing that did surprise me was Kautskys awareness of the SPDs bureaucratization. He had seen from early on that the party apparatus was growing more bureaucratic and conservative. If you read some of his letters to Victor Adler, he could even be very perceptive about the SPDs accommodation with the German state.

But he really had no concrete strategy to deal with it. Kautsky never believed that the party would give up its revolutionary program. When he pondered if social democracy would end up going from an underground movement to new oppressors (like Christianity), he discounted the possibility out of hand. He thought that the growth of the party and expansion of the productive forces would prevent that. He embraced a sort of linear idiocya mechanical and evolutionary notion that history would just take care of things. Even after 1914, when it was clear that the SPD could no longer be characterized as revolutionary, Kautsky kept up the illusion until the end.

Kautsky viewed social revolution as objective and inevitable. In other words, socialists just needed to patiently wait for it rather than actively organize. He had no program for fighting the party bureaucracy that involved creating a faction or a party with its own revolutionary program. Opposing bureaucracy in theory without a material force to smash it just leads to capitulation. Rosa Luxemburg herself only realized that very late in her struggles with the SPD, whereas Kautsky never understood this necessity at all.

Its true that in 19056, during debates on the mass strike, Kautsky was at his most radical. He supported the mass strike and said that Germany was approaching Russian conditions. This debate found Kautsky allied with Luxemburg and opposed to more conservative figures in the party and the unions who recoiled from the mass strike.

For the revisionists, it may have looked like Kautsky was a revolutionary, but this was deceptive. Kautsky was always very talented at saying the right slogans even if his practice was found wanting. During these debates, the SPD passed several left-sounding resolutions favoring the mass strikebut with so many stipulations that they were made a dead letter. Kautsky briefly bemoaned this as a symptom of bureaucratization, but mostly took these resolutions as a genuine sign that the SPD was committed to mass strikes and revolution. So he did not become a full-blown revolutionary in 1905, and let himself be reassured by paper resolutions from the party apparatus.

This idea that we just need to vote harder for democratic socialists (or Democrats, in Blancs case), and that we can have socialism once we achieve 50 percent plus one, is not borne out by history. I think both Kautsky and Blanc make a fetish of elections and bourgeois democracy. For one, they overestimate the democratic character of bourgeois democracy and its toleration of socialist organizations. For example, the United States has a violent labor history of ruthlessly crushing strikes and unions. Leftist organizations have been the targets of repression in the Haymarket affair, multiple red scares, and Cointelpro. This is not even talking about the dozens of examples of the United States invading or using the CIA to stop even moderate social democracy abroad. Only someone who gets their view of the American government from a high school civics textbook could possibly think that this is a democratic country.

It is true that in normal times, there is generally not majority support in the working class for revolutionary alternatives. But there have been revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situations in Germany 1919, Spain 1936, France 1968, Portugal 1974, and others. None of those instances led to a successful revolution for a variety of reasons, but we would be hard pressed to say revolutionary politics was marginal in those instances.

Lenins continuing relevance covers the whole gamut of revolutionary politics and strategy. Among his great insights are his understanding of the state and how to defeat it. One of Lenins great insights in State and Revolution is that the state is an instrument of class oppression that cannot be captured by the working class and instead must be smashed. This has been borne out by every revolution in history, whether the Paris Commune or the Russian Revolution. It is not the ballot box but armed force that is required to break the back of the ruling class.

As a negative example, we can look at Salvador Allende and Chile in the 1970s to see what happens to those who attempt to reach socialism by voting for it. Allende was elected, but he was constrained by the rules of the existing state structure and did everything possible to appease the bourgeoisie. In 1973, the Chilean army showed how much respect it had for democratic niceties by overthrowing Allende in a bloody military coup. Ultimately, the advocates of the peaceful road to socialism kept the working class disarmed and thus ensured their defeat.

To begin, Lih has done some valuable work on Lenin. For one, he does challenge a great deal of anticommunist stereotypes that Lenin was some sort of elitist totalitarian. The Lenin that emerges from Lih is a Marxist who believes in the self-emancipation of the working class. Moreover, Lih correctly highlights Lenins debt to Kautsky. And if this was all Lih did, then there really wouldnt be any reason to object to his ideas.

However, Lih goes much further and states that there were few, if any, breaks in Lenins political ideas. This means that he sees Lenin as largely Kautskyian. As a result, the distinctiveness of Leninism is erased. So instead of reading Lenin, we could just return to Kautsky. Yet Lih cannot see how Lenin broke with Kautsky on a host of issues. For example, Lenins conception of the vanguard party may have used Kautskys formulations, but it developed a unique revolutionary practice, foreign to the SPDs parliamentarism. In the end, Lenin and the Bolsheviks showed in practice that they were revolutionaries, while Kautskyian social democracy was not.

In 1917, there were figures in the Bolshevik Party such as Lev Kamenev and Joseph Stalin who were associated with Kautskys stagism (in which democratic revolution is a prelude to socialist revolution). Lenins April Theses broke radically with Kautskyism by calling for soviet power and socialist revolution. In many respects, Lenin had come around to the essentials of the theory of permanent revolution championed by Trotsky. This was recognized as a break with Kautskyism by many social democrats such as Plekhanov and Bogdanovand they knew their Kautsky very well! So, far from Kautsky being the architect of the October Revolution, it was the reverse. If Lenin and the Bolsheviks had followed Kautsky, they would have gone down to certain defeat.

I honestly dont think it is possible, even if there is a will (and Im not convinced on that score), for deeply engrained reformism and class collaborationism to be suddenly transformed into class struggle and revolution. The simple fact of the matter is, if you spend years training someone to play basketball, you cant abruptly throw them in a baseball uniform and expect them to play well. I think all this neo-Kautskyian talk about a break is empty because there is no will to do so. If someone has no problem supporting Bernie Sanders, AOC, and other Democrats for the time being, then they are not revolutionary Marxists but servants of the class enemy. The break with the bourgeois parties by Marxists either happens now or it does not happen at all.

In todays debates, I think Kautsky serves as a role model for those advocating reformist socialism and support for the Democratic Party. In other words, Kautsky stands for a perspective diametrically opposed to anti-imperialism, internationalism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and communism. Those championing Kautsky advocate a long game of working in bourgeois parties and parliaments before, somehow, voting their way to socialism. It will end in either co-option or defeat, but never in socialism. The Kautskyian perspective is one that should be forcefully rejected by every Marxist as fundamentally reformist, nationalist, and anticommunist.

If we are serious about the history of the Second International and Marxism, then it is important for radicals to read and understand Kautsky. It was not without reason that Kautsky was considered a major authority on socialism a century ago. I think reading his popularization of social democracy in the Erfurt Program is a worthwhile exercise. As a historian, I find many of Kautskys historical works, such as Democracy and Republicanism and The Foundations of Christianity, to be very valuable.

That said, Kautsky mostly serves as a negative example for communists today. Despite his rhetorical radicalism, Kautsky shrank from socialist revolution at the critical hour. His ideas of a democratic and parliamentary road did not show a peaceful and easier path to socialism. Rather, Kautskys ideas have been proven tragically wrong every time theyve been tried. They dont lead to socialism, but to catastrophe and defeat always and everywhere. Thats reason enough to reject Kautsky root and branch.

Instead, we should return to the revolutionary tradition of Lenin, Luxemburg, and Trotsky. Their work not only offers the most comprehensive criticism of Kautsky on all fronts but also possesses the necessary road map for victory. If we are serious about fighting capitalism, then it is necessary to return to revolutionary communism. Let us leave Kautsky dead and buried where he belongs.

Douglas Greene, The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky: The Renegades Revenge (New York: Routledge, 2024), 224 pages, hardcover, $170, appearing June 6.

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Why Kautsky Was Wrong (and Why You Should Care) - Left Voice

The campaign to free Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk, an opponent of NATOs proxy war, from imprisonment by the fascistic Ukrainian regime is gaining international support.

Syrotiuk was jailed over a month ago on bogus charges of high treason based on the thought crime of expressing his opposition to the Ukraine-Russia war and contributing articles to the World Socialist Web Site.

Syrotiuk is threatened with life in prison. As a socialist internationalist and Trotskyist, Syrotiuk, who founded and leads the Young Guard of Bolshevik Leninists (YGBL) in Ukraine and Russia, has fought for the unification of the Russian and Ukrainian working class in opposition to the war and the capitalist governments of Zelensky in Kiev and Putin in Moscow.

In the US, journalist Katie Halper, who co-hosts the popular podcast Useful Idiots, posted the statement by the WSWS demanding freedom for Bogdan Syrotiuk. Her tweet was shared by journalist Rania Khalek from BT Newsroom.

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Journalists Kit Klarenberg and Alex Rubinstein discussed the case of Bogdan Syrotiuk on their podcast.

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US high school student and member of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), Landon Gourov, issued a video statement, appealing to high school youth throughout the world to join the fight to free Bogdan. He said,

Bogdan is just 25 years old, only a few years older than myself. The trampling of democratic rights knows no ages, it seeks to purge opposition from the working class and the youth. Bogdans case is about the defense of democratic rights and opposition to war. Not taking up the defense of Bogdan would effectively mean to not wage a struggle against war and for democratic rights. What would this mean for the youth?

One thing must be absolutely clear, the same imperialist governments that arm and fund Israel in its genocide are the same governments which are also arming and funding Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. ...President Biden has made clear that the potential use of nuclear weapons will not deter him or the US government from attaining its goals with Russia. Moreover, a war with Russia would require an even more massive military armament from the United States than which already exists. The United States would seek to forcibly recruit soldiers from the youth through a military draft. Just as is now the case in Ukraine, students and youth would be forcibly removed from their homes in order to fight a war that is not in their interests, but in the interests of the imperialist powers, who are eager and bloodthirsty to offset their economic decline through the redivision of the world and its resources amongst themselves. If the defense of Bogdan is not taken up, it would have far-reaching implications. Not only would an innocent youth be condemned to life in prison, effectively on a death sentence. It would also set a precedent for the violent crackdown on anti-war and left-wing youth in the US and internationally. I therefore call upon high school youth in the US and internationally to take up the defense of Bogdan! Join the IYSSE in fighting for his release from prison!

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Over the past week, the campaign to free Bogdan has also been finding a growing response in Ukraine, Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia. The Marxist Tendency in Ukraine has called for the release of Bogdan Syrotiuk. However, for politically factional reasons, the organization chose not to properly identify Syrotiuks afiliation with the International Committee of the Fourth International.

In Russia, a group called Working Class posted a statement from the WSWS calling for the release of Bogdan Syrotiuk on its social media page. The WSWS has also received submissions from individuals in Russia and Ukraine in support of the campaign, with one stating, Free the political prisoners. Latif from Uzbekistan wrote, Freedom of speech, release him! Ksenia from Serbia wrote, Freedom for Bogdan! Support from Serbia!

Adrian from the UK said, Socialism is freedom from the shackles of imperialism for the working class. We must speak out and support all peace activists. Terry, also from the UK, commented, The false imprisonment of Bogdan is a total indictment of the lack of freedom of speech and basic democratic rights in Ukraine.

Michael in Australia wrote: The persecution of Bogdan, along with Julian Assange, David McBride, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, lay bare the plans of Capitalist classes, and their political representatives for war. Going hand in hand with preparations for war are the crackdowns on democratic rights; and suppression of any anti-war sentiment. Bogdan, and any persecuted whistleblowers must be immediately released and allowed to live freely, wherever they wish in the world.

In Sri Lanka, several prominent artists, academics and journalists have issued statements of support.

Kuruupu from Sri Lanka wrote to the WSWS, Arresting Bogdan Syrotiuk and charging him with high treason shows the hatred of the Ukranian government towards the democratic rights, and the socialist perspective. It also shows the hypocrisy of imperialist states who claim they are fighting to safeguard the democracy. The contradictions of world capitalist order are tensed to such a degree, that they are ready to risk and stepping towards a devastating nuclear war. They can no longer allow socialists and internationalists to express their opinion to a broader public and [are] determined to hunt them. This arrest is a direct challenge and a threat to international working class and the working class should take immediate steps to take class actions against it.

An Indian supporter of the WSWS and victimized auto parts worker, Balakrishnan, has also denounced the arrest of Syrotiuk. He told the WSWS, I strongly condemn the arrest of comrade Bogdan by the pro-imperialist and fascistic Zelensky regime and demand his immediate release.

Balakrishnan was formerly employed at a Motherson Automotive Technologies and Engineering (MATE) plant in the Sriperumbudur and Oragadam industrial belt, which is located on the outskirts of Chennai, the capital of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Balakrishnan and 38 other Motherson workers who had been in the forefront of organizing a 140-day strike for wage hikes and better working conditions were arbitrarily dismissed from their jobs in 2020. He is now working hard at a building site for a living, earning just 850 rupees ($10.2) per day, on which he has to feed four children. He said,

Workers and youth in India are increasingly aware that the US-NATO imperialist powers are carrying out a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

He continued, I am really inspired by the principled and courageous stand taken by comrade Bogdan. In calling for class solidarity of Russian and Ukrainian workers he and his comrades oppose reactionary national chauvinistic wars being waged by the ruling elites in both Russia and Ukraine.

Pointing to the connection between the US backed Israeli genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza and the increasing attacks on anti war protesters specifically targeting US students, Balakrishnan said, The only progressive solution to the growing threat of a catastrophic nuclear World War III is the fight for world socialist revolution. The Hindu chauvinistic Modi government has rallied behind the US imperialism in its war drive against China and in Israeli genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza.

The fate of workers in India, he concluded, is closely linked with the workers in imperialist countries as well as in other countries in the struggle for world socialism.

To get involved in the fight to free Bogdan Syrotiuk, sign and spread the petition, post a statement and make a financial contribution here.

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Campaign to free anti-war Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk is gaining international support - WSWS