https://www.marxists.org/archive/hansen/1961/xx/cuba-theory.htm

http://www.pathfinderpress.com/s.nl/it.A/id.407/.f

Your paraphrase of Joe’s thought did not ring a bell with me. But that only means I am unable to find it and read it in context. It is certainly an idea that corresponds to his other writings.

I’ll just say I have one, perhaps slightly different, reaction to what he may have been getting at.

You wrote: “The concept of ‘capacity’ points to the importance of dismantling or neutralizing key institutional barriers to anti-capitalist initiatives.”

I’m not clear if you were continuing to paraphrase Joe, or adding you own thought there. However I think the concept of “capacity” may refer to something else. It may be another way of referring to the quality of the leadership involved in the process.

This may be relevant to another term Joe used that I admit, I have only recently begun to grasp fully. In assessing the leaders of the Cuban Revolution he referred to them as “revolutionists of action.” His point was clear but I also wondered, “Was that not also true of Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks? Or for that matter Marx and Engels in the revolutions of 1848?”

Implicit in Joe’s term is that any genuine revolutionist is one of action, to the degree that history allows. But finally I understood what Joe meant is that the early giants of Marxism were also revolutionists of theory in a way those who appeared since them were not. They broke new ground and developed it.

That was not true of Castro and his team, in the course of making the Cuban Revolution. Since then of course Fidel and others wrote, spoke and generalized from their experience leading and defending the Cuban Revolution for over 50 years. But that has not led to the development of theory as it did in the hands of the early giants of Marxism. Nor, I should make clear, is this any criticism of Fidel and his team. They have often made clear they stand on the shoulders of Marx and Lenin.

Returning to the term “capacity,” I think Joe may also have been pointing to something else. In his letter to Bob Chester, immediately following the exchange I quoted in my first comment, we find this:

“What is most decisive is its practice in relation to the capitalist state structure on which it rests…The social context is also of key importance — the involvement of the masses on a revolutionary scale is required, for this is what basically determines the direction of movement.”

I also recall another statement by Hansen, which I paraphrase: A workers’ government is distinguished by displaying both the capacity and the tendency to take steps toward ending capitalist rule. The concept of “capacity” points to the importance of dismantling or neutralizing key institutional barriers to anti-capitalist initiatives.

John

I have always found one of the most useful pieces in that collection, to be, “Item 5. An Exchange of Letters Between Joseph Hansen and Bob Chester.” There Joe responds directly to a series of comments and questions concerning the line of a report Hansen presented to the 1969 convention of the SWP.

In light of the Fourth Comintern Congress “Workers Government” text above, this portion of the Chester-Hansen exchange seems highly relevant to me. I think Hansen is getting at what was also key to the Comintern leaders:

Chester: “When a revolution takes place in a colonial or semi colonial country with the active participation of the masses in support of a leadership that can be either worker, peasant or middle class can we immediately designate this as a workers and peasant government?”

Hansen: “I would say, ‘No.’ I have in mind specifically the case of Nasserite Egypt.”

Chester: “What are the characteristics that make it a ‘worker and peasant’ government rather than radical bourgeois or peasant?”

Hansen: I would say that the chief characteristic is its direction of movement. This is indicated by its words (declared program) and its actions. The actions are decisive and we should discount he words if they prove not to coincide with the actions of the government. Some notable examples are available in this respect — Nasser’s socialist demagogy, for instance, in contrast to his use of state power to foster a new capitalist class; and in the case of the Cubans the opposite contrast, assurances in the first stage about maintaining property relations while their actions were to the contrary.”

If I could I would italicize, underline and make bold the first two sentences of Hansen’s final paragraph. In explaining the various forms in which a ‘workers government’ may appear, it seems the Comintern was getting at the same point:

“…the Communists state just as plainly to the working class that, without a revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie, a true workers’ government can neither be achieved nor maintained.”

Words are not irrelevant, but actions are decisive.

To Binh’s question #1, I cannot explain the apparent contradiction in Zinoviev’s position. But we should note that the leaders of the Comintern were pretty well agreed in their support of reformist governments formed by workers’ parties against the bourgeoisie. The issue is extensively discussed in Pierre Broue’s “The German Revolution.”

On question #2, note Trotsky’s discussion of the issue in “Report on the Fourth World Congress,” in First Five Years of the Communist International, vol. 2, pp. 324-6. Trotsky reports here on a decision in which Lenin participated. See also the discussion of the British Labour Party in Lenin’s “Left-Wing Communism”. This material is in the Marxists Internet Archive.

As to question #3, there were very few explicit references to Bolshevik experience in the Fourth Congress or other Comintern material in Lenin’s lifetime. I have not run across mention of the slogan, “Down with the 10 minister-capitalists.”

1. Isn’t there a contradiction between Zinoviev’s pseudonym and illusion positions, or did he change his view after the discussion at the Congress?

2. Do we have any evidence about what Lenin or Trotsky thought of this? Not that it’s a deciding factor, but I’m curious.

3. Was there any mention in the discussion of the Bolshevik slogan, “Down with the 10 capitalist ministers” that they raised in spring of 1917 to accelerate the decomposition of the Provisional Government?