The Chinese Revolution After The Sixth Congress, 5. Appendix – A Remarkable Document - Part 3 of 10

Marx's analysis does not say that the peasantry/petty-bourgeoisie cannot carry through revolutions, particularly where its solidified under a Bonapartist leader, or military junta. It says it cannot form the ruling class. Having carried through such a revolution/Peasant War, the state must represent the interests of capital or labour, must become some form of capitalist or workers' state, albeit with whatever deformations.

Alternatively, if, as with Pol Pot, in Cambodia, the aftermath of NATO intervention in Libya in 2011, or as with the Taliban in Afghanistan, prior to 2001, and after 2021, it tries to turn the clock back from capitalist development, to some form of agrarian society, or small commodity producing economy, everything that goes with it is restored such as landlordism, warlordism and so on, the disintegration of the nation state, leading to a failed state and collapse.

China, too, was in danger of suffering that fate, under Mao and the Cultural Revolution, and Great Leap Forward, which cost the lives of millions from starvation, until it was reversed, but, at which point, the course was set by the state to represent the interests of capital, symbolised in the policies of Deng Xiaoping.

“Let us recall that immediately after the May Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, which entrusted the leadership of the agrarian revolution to the Left Guomindang, the latter began to exterminate the workers and peasants. The position of the ECCI became completely untenable. At all costs, there had to be, and that without delay, “left” actions in China to refute the “calumny” of the Opposition, that is, its irreproachable prognosis. That is why the Chinese Central Committee, which found itself between the hammer and the anvil, was obliged, in August 1927, to turn the proletarian policy topsy-turvy all over again.” (p 212-3)

The revolution, to be progressive, could only be one led by a revolutionary, industrial proletariat, drawing the poor peasants and urban petty-bourgeois behind it. That was what the Bolsheviks did in 1917, and why The Theses On The National and Colonial Questions, as cited by Trotsky, emphasises that its only those revolutionary forces, organised, not only to fight against landlordism, imperialism etc., but also against their own bourgeois-democracy that can be supported. Its why Marxists should not support the guerrilla wars of, say, the Viet Cong, the ANC, FARC, PIRA, and so on, even if we would, simultaneously, oppose the old landlord/feudal regime, imperialism and so on. Opposing one does not at all imply supporting the other, on the basis of some kind of moralistic lesser-evilism, or “my enemy's enemy is my friend”, campism, as Trotsky explains in “Learn To Think". We are not bourgeois democrats, nor nationalists, our goal is international socialism not bourgeois nationalism.

Indeed, for that reason, even less can we accept the idea that imperialism defends the interests of workers or oppressed peoples, as social-imperialists like the AWL, and the USC would have us believe! As Trotsky points out in Lenin and Imperialist War.

“If revolutionary and progressive movements beyond the boundaries of ones own country could be supported by supporting ones own imperialist bourgeoisie then the policy of social patriotism was in principle correct. There was no reason, then, for the founding of the Third International.”

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Wage-labour and Capital, Section II - Part 2 of 6

“Let us suppose that there are 100 bales of cotton on the market and at the same time purchasers for 1,000 bales of cotton. In this case, therefore, the demand is 10 times as great as the supply. Competition will be very strong among the buyers, each of whom desires to get one, and if possible, all of the whole hundred bales for himself. This example is no arbitrary assumption. We have experienced periods of cotton crop failure, in the history of the trade, when a few capitalists in alliance have tried to buy not one hundred bales, but all the cotton stocks of the world. Hence, In the example mentioned, one buyer will seek to drive the others from the field by offering a relatively higher price per bale of cotton. The cotton sellers, who perceive that the troops of the enemy army are engaged in the most violent struggle among themselves, and the same of all their hundred bales is absolutely certain, will take good care not to fall out among themselves and depress the price of cotton at the moment their adversaries are competing with one another to force it up. Thus, peace suddenly descends on the army of sellers. They stand facing the buyers as one man, fold their arms philosophically and there would be no bounds to their demands were it not that the offers of even the most persistent and eager buyers have very definite limits.” (p 23)

One limit has been mentioned, which is the effect on the rate of profit. As Marx sets out, in Capital III, Chapter 6, and elsewhere, the increase in the price of cotton affects the price of yarn, but does not change the amount of surplus value produced, in yarn production. So, the rate of profit would fall, meaning that capital could be better used elsewhere. In Chapter 6, the other limitation is also mentioned. That is that the resulting increase in the price of yarn would reduce demand for it, possibly to a level where production becomes unviable. Consumers of cotton yarn may switch to wool, or some other material, so that yarn producers would, therefore, switch to these other inputs.

“It is well known that the reverse case, with reverse result, occurs more frequently. Considerable surplus of supply over demand; desperate competition among the sellers, lack of buyers; disposal of goods at ridiculously low prices.” (p 23)

But, Marx notes that the terms high or low prices are themselves relative. High or low compared to what?

“And if the price is determined by the relation between supply and demand, what determines the relation of supply and demand? (p 23-4)

The same applies to profit. What determines that a given rate of profit is high or low? It requires some presumption of what is a normal rate of profit, in which case, what determines the normal profit? Why should it be, say, 20%, and not 10% or 30%? It is certainly the case, as Marx describes, in Capital III, that, if firms see that, in their current line of business, they can only make, on average, 10% profit, whereas, in some other line of business, the rate of profit, on average, is 30%, capital will, gradually, move to the latter, and away from the former. As a result, supply, in the latter will rise, prices and the rate of profit will fall, whilst supply, in the former, will fall, and prices and the rate of profit will rise.

This very process results in an average rate of profit, in this case, of 20%, and is the process by which prices of production are determined as cost of production plus average profit. But, this still does not explain why this average is 20%, rather than 10% or 30%. Orthodox economics would explain it by saying that firms take their cost of production and add a percentage of mark-up, as profit. This is, superficially, what does happen. The result is then the selling price. What they can add as mark-up, this subjectivist theory would argue, is determined by what consumers are themselves prepared to pay. In this subjectivist theory, prices, and consequently profits, are determined by demand, by what the consumer is prepared to pay. But, then, we are back to the original question of what determines what the consumer is prepared to pay? It does no good to say its whether the consumer thinks the price is high or low, because high or low compared to what?

And, if the consumer thinks the price of yarn is too high, and so refuses to buy yarn, this sudden glut of yarn would lead to yarn producers slashing prices to clear their stocks, but, what then? If the price that consumers think is reasonable is below the cost of production, yarn producers will simply stop producing yarn. They do not produce it for some altruistic reason, or to satisfy the needs of consumers, but, only, to make profit.

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Why US Military Aid To Ukraine Will Make No Real Change

The US, desperate to provide even more military aid to its proxy, the Zionist state in Israel, to continue its genocide against Palestinians, has also, now, voted through a package of military aid to Ukraine that reactionary Republicans had been holding up, as they sought to tie it to closing the US border with Mexico. The US is not going to do the latter, because, faced with growing labour shortages, as the economy continues on a tear, it needs millions of migrant workers to stop US wages rising at an even faster pace than they are, squeezing US profit margins, and causing interest rates to rise further. The aid, amounting to $61 billion, will make no real difference to the proxy war being fought out on Ukraine's soil.

The reason for that is quite simple.  It is, now, Ukraine that is put in the position of being on the offensive, against a well entrenched Russian military. To overcome such defence, Ukraine needs at least a 4:1 advantage, and simply does not have it. It does not have it in military equipment, including munitions, and more importantly, it does not have it in soldiers, especially as, now, young Ukrainian workers are seeing what the war is about, and large numbers are seeking to escape, as Zelensky's corrupt regime tries to draft more of them into its imperialist war, on behalf of US imperialism.

The reason that the additional aid will make no significant difference is because the whole narrative of the war, presented by NATO, and by Zelensky, from the start, was false. The narrative was that Russia intended to annex the whole of Ukraine, as a taster, before, attacking other former parts of the USSR, in the Baltics, Poland and so on. Such a narrative was insane to begin with, and that was shown by the contradictions that emerged within it, not long after the war began.

We were told that Putin was driven by some kind of, Hilteresque megalomania, to want to restore the old USSR. Itself, such subjectivist explanations for war, which Paul Mason has promoted, in recent years, are highly suspect, and explain nothing. Marxists know that wars are motivated by underlying material interests, in short, economic interests, not the whims of individuals. Hitler did not seek to conquer Europe, because he was a megalomaniac, but, because Europe needed a large, single European market, to compete with US imperialism, and German imperialism, as the most powerful in Europe, sought to bring it about under its domination. It was simply a continuation of that from WWI.

Putin's war in Ukraine is, similarly, not driven by some kind of megalomania, or ethnic imperative, but by an understandable concern not to allow NATO imperialism to continue to expand up to Russia's borders, and from where it would continue to chip away at the various Russian Republics, stirring up ethnic tensions, as, for example, the US did by supporting the KLA to incite ethnic violence against Kosovan Serbs, so as to, at least, keep Russia busy fighting these insurgencies, if not to see its territory continually broken apart. As a former KGB operative, Putin knew that Russia could not hope to invade and annex the whole of Ukraine. It would have required vast amounts of resources and military manpower, for little real long-term advantage. Even if it could be done, it would have been impossible to hold on to, and would have economically destroyed Russia. NATO, also, no doubt, understood this, despite their narrative that this was Putin's plan.

They may have hoped to have goaded Putin into it, just as Blairite, former NATO Secretary-General, George Robertson admits, they goaded him into the invasion itself. More likely, they simply needed that narrative to get Ukrainian citizens to buy the argument, and put their lives on the line, for a war they could never actually win, as well as to sell workers, in other NATO countries, on the idea of providing vast amounts of money to finance such a war, at a time when they were being told they had to accept austerity, and pay cuts!

The reality was that Putin never had any intention of trying to invade the whole of Ukraine, or trying to annex it, any more than NATO intended to invade and occupy the whole of Serbia in order to separate off Kosovo from it. In fact, it would have been far easier for NATO to have invaded the whole of Serbia and occupied it than it would for Russia to invade and occupy the whole of Ukraine.

Having established the narrative that Russia intended to invade and annex the whole of Ukraine, a narrative that many on the Left, including those, like Eddie Ford of the CPGB, that do not support NATO, also bought,  the failure of Russia to do so means that it can be presented as a defeat for Russia, and only a matter of time before its sent packing. But, Russia never mobilised anything like the military forces and materiel required to invade, let alone occupy long-term, the whole of Ukraine. It put less forces in the field than Ukraine had mobilised, whereas military doctrine required it to have at least four times as many! Russia clearly intended only to invade and annex Eastern Ukraine, where the ethnic Russians form a majority, and that is what it has done, just as, in 2014, it annexed majority Russian Crimea.

Yes, of course, Russia attacked Kyiv and so on, but, when NATO sought to annex Kosovo, it also attacked Belgrade. In modern war, its necessary to destroy, or at least seriously degrade, command and control systems, and these are often centred on the political and administrative centres, as well as other transport and communications systems, such as energy supplies, airports and so on. As I wrote at the time, Russia, in its invasion of Eastern Ukraine, adopted the NATO play-book used in Kosovo etc. When Russia rolled its tanks into South Ossetia, in 2008, to similarly put an end to ethnic cleansing and genocide by the NATO backed Georgian government, it also rolled its tanks into the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, as it destroyed Georgian command and control. NATO and Georgia said it was going to annex the whole of Georgia, and, indeed, it easily could have done so, by that point. But, it didn't, pulling its military back into South Ossetia, once those objectives had been met. It did a similar thing in Abkhazia.

Russia could never have invaded or annexed the whole of Ukraine, by contrast. It is a vast country, and provided with huge resources from NATO. NATO may, indeed, have wanted to try to goad it into trying, so as to ruin Russia, itself, but there was no chance of it doing so. On the contrary, Russia can simply sit back in its bulwarks, now established, in Eastern Ukraine, drawing the Ukrainians on to its guns, and cutting them down likes poppies in the field, to coin a phrase. Young Ukrainian workers are simply the meat in a meat grinder perpetuated by NATO, and their Zelensky puppet, to keep Russia busy, but the cost of that, for NATO, is that it is now sucked into another forever war that is costing it far more financially to continue the military supplies than it is costing Russia, as the defender of territory, and which, with its backing from China, it is well placed to continue to do.

NATO may have fallen for its own propaganda about Russia seeking to invade the whole of Ukraine, in which case, the additional military aid would make a difference, but, given that the propaganda was itself nonsense to begin with it won't. The fact that it was simply propaganda can be seen from the contradiction inherent within it. On the one hand, it said, “Russia intends to invade the whole of Ukraine.” However, keen to emphasise its failure, and the supposed weakness of Putin, it pointed to the retreat from Kyiv, and so on. Yet, even as it was emphasising this military weakness of Russia, it continued to put out a parallel narrative that this weak Russian state, with its incompetent military brass, was, any day, also going to be posing a threat to the Baltics, Poland and Central and Eastern Europe!!!

Last year, we were told that all of the Leopard II tanks, and so on, provided by NATO to Ukraine, were going to finally see off the Russians. But, of course, as I had said at the time, it was never going to happen. Had the Russians have continued to try to invade the rest of Ukraine, as the NATO propaganda claimed they were going to do, then, yes, those tanks and other equipment would have made a difference, in the same way that such equipment made a difference in fighting against the initial Russian advance into Eastern Ukraine, and caused the Russians to lose large numbers of troops and equipment. But, so long as Russia stayed put and defended, having dug into defensive positions that was never going to be the case.

Tanks are great if they are taking part in tank battles against other tanks that are attacking your territory. You have defenders' advantage. However, if Ukraine, now, wants to take back Eastern Ukraine, it has to be the attacker. In the last year, as I had predicted, all of those hyped up NATO provided tanks proved useless, as they rolled on to Russian defensive positions, where they could be decimated by land mines, stuck in tank traps, as well as picked off by artillery, not to mention infantry using simple RPG's, drones and shoulder launched missiles that cost a fraction of a tank. The same is true of NATO provided jets. In short, this is lots of money, provided by taxpayers in NATO countries, that is basically going to finance war production in war production factories, and it is money that is going down a big hole simply to keep young Ukrainian workers – and young Russian workers on the other side – fighting in a war that is in none of their interests.

The Chinese Revolution After The Sixth Congress, 5. Appendix – A Remarkable Document - Part 2 of 10

The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, acting under the guidance and leadership of Stalin/Bukharin, and the ECCI, had drawn the following conclusion.

“Wherever this is objectively possible, we must immediately prepare and organize armed insurrections.” (p 212)

In other words, a swing from the opportunist policy, of the previous period, where, in conditions of rising revolutionary activity, the workers and peasants were told to support the bourgeoisie and KMT, not to set up soviets etc., to, now, in a counter-revolutionary period, an adventurist policy of organising armed insurrections!

The Kiangsu Committee document sets out the material conditions in which the policy was advanced. They note that

“the workers of Hunan, after the cruel defeat, are abandoning the leadership of the Party, that we are not confronted with an objectively revolutionary situation ... but in spite of this ... the Central Committee says plainly that the general situation, from the economic, political and social [precisely! – L.T.] point of view is favourable to the insurrection.” (p 212)

And, it also notes the consequence of loss of support from workers, and increased social weight of the peasantry, in the party, which was also to play a crucial role in the development of the Chinese Party, and the class nature of the revolution it accomplished in 1949.

“Since it is already no longer possible to launch revolts in the cities, the armed struggle must be transferred to the villages. That is where the centres of the uprising must be, while the town must be an auxiliary force.” (p 212)

This was not just a significant factor in determining the class nature of the 1949 Chinese Revolution, but was also significant for the class nature of revolutions elsewhere. In the rest of Asia, be it Korea or Vietnam, or else in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the dominant social force was that of the peasant and petty-bourgeois masses, often supported by, or even acting as agents of, external powers (most clearly observable in relation to Bangladesh whose “national revolution” was simply the product of Indian militarism, much as the 2011 “Libyan National Revolution” was purely the product of NATO militarism, and the successive Afghan revolutions have been purely the product of Russian militarism, followed by NATO militarism).

The dominant force in these “revolutions” was not the industrial proletariat. Where, a revolutionary proletarian movement existed, it was either subordinated to these bourgeois, and reactionary petty-bourgeois, nationalist movements, or else, as in Vietnam, was physically liquidated by the Stalinists and nationalists.

This was in contrast to the Theses On The National and Colonial Questions, which, as Trotsky emphasised, said,

“the need for a determined struggle against attempts to give a communist colouring to bourgeois-democratic liberation trends in the backward countries; the Communist International should support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only on condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not only in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special tasks, i.e., those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations.”

And, which also notes,

“the need constantly to explain and expose among the broadest working masses of all countries, and particularly of the backward countries, the deception systematically practised by the imperialist powers, which, under the guise of politically independent states, set up states that are wholly dependent upon them economically, financially and militarily. Under present-day international conditions there is no salvation for dependent and weak nations except in a union of Soviet republics.”

The same was true in Cuba, and Latin America, but was also seen in Africa, including South Africa. The ANC, despite the existence of a developed capitalist economy, and sizeable industrial proletariat, concentrated in and around cities, engaged in the same kind of guerrilla warfare seen elsewhere.

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Forward To Part 3

London Marathon Prevents Londoners Going About Their Lives

Londoners were prevented from going freely about their business on Sunday, as roads were closed, when 50,000 runners in the London Marathon occupied some of the roads for several hours. Christians seeking to cross the road to get to their local church, people wanting to get to their local pub, and others were told that it was unreasonable for them to be able to simply disregard the barriers, and to simply try to walk through the 50,000 runners. That was particularly the case given that some of those trying to do so so, were also known to be hostile to the event itself.

This restriction on Londoners freedom came just a day after police had also told a Jewish man, Gideon Falter, of the pro-Zionist, Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, who similarly wanted to walk through a large demonstration protesting against the Zionist genocide going on in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. In an edited video released by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, who just happened to also have someone there to witness, the confrontation between Mr. Falter and the police, he was seen being told not to do so, before being arrested. What the video omitted, but was shown in a further video, released to Sky News, was that before that, the police offered to escort him by a different route across to the synagogue, he said he wanted to get to, but that he refused. As he said, why should he have to do that, and similarly, why should not people be free to walk across the path of people running the London Marathon?

Why would anyone think that someone trying to do that, having brought someone along to film them doing so, was simply trying to be provocative? God forbid such a thought. In fact, I am all in favour of having such events policed and marshalled by their organisers. I doubt that had Mr. Falter simply wanted to merge into the demonstration, and make his way across it to the other side, he would have had any problem. There were after all many other “visibly Jewish” people taking part in the demonstration against Zionist atrocities, and one more would have attracted no attention.

What would have attracted attention, of course, would be if someone was protesting against the march itself, was shouting anti-Palestinian or pro-Zionist remarks, defending the genocide being committed against Palestinians. What that would have provoked is not a response against someone for being Jewish, but as with someone protesting against the Marathon, by trying to march through it, of simply being a bit of a dick. In the case of someone vociferously protesting in favour of the Zionist genocide against Palestinians, or seeking to deny its existence, rather like Nazi Holocaust deniers, it would not be surprising if the response to that was itself rather forceful.

Wage-labour and Capital, Section II - Part 1 of 6

Wages are the price of labour-power. Labour-power is a commodity, just like cotton or shoes. Its price is determined as for any other commodity. Prices differ from, but are ultimately determined by values, and values are determined by the labour-time required for production.

“By what is the price of a commodity determined?

By competition between buyers and sellers, by the relation of inquiry to delivery, of demand to the supply. Competition, by which the price of a commodity is determined is three- sided” (p 22)

Sellers all want to sell, and so compete against each other for sales, and they do this by lowering their prices. There is a limit to how low those prices can go, because, below a certain price, the costs of production are not met, and so losses are made. Capital is only advanced to make profit. Marx discussed this at length in his discussion of differential value, in Theories of Surplus Value.

If prices fall, some firms may find that they make losses. They would go out of business and supply would fall. The fall in supply would cause prices to rise. However, it may be that this reduction in supply could be made up by other, more efficient, firms, in which case, the market value of those commodities falls. It might even be the case that the firms, now able to expand to fill the gap in supply, enjoy economies of scale, reducing the market value of the commodity further. On the other hand, it may not be possible to expand supply to fill the gap, other than at a greater cost (diminishing returns), so that the market value rises. It may not rise to its previous level, however. The price would fall, but not to its previous market clearing level.

I have described various scenarios for this in the series of posts on The Poverty of Philosophy.

“But, competition also takes place among the buyers, which in its turn causes the commodities offered to rise in price.” (p 22)

If you need food, you must compete with other consumers for the available supply, which pushes the price up.

“Finally, competition occurs between buyers and sellers, the former desire to buy as cheaply as possible, the latter to sell as dearly as possible. The result of this competition between buyers and sellers will depend upon how the two above-mentioned sides of the competition are related, that is, whether the competition is stronger in the army of buyers or in the army of sellers.” (p 22)

In other words, is the unity of sellers greater than that of buyers, or is the competition of sellers, with each other, to sell, greater than the competition between buyers to buy. Is aggregate supply greater than, or less than aggregate demand. As Marx sets out, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 17, especially in periods of already high levels of demand, i.e. economic booms, consumers may be more inclined to hold on to the general commodity – money – rather than convert it again into other commodities. In the terms of orthodox economics, their marginal propensity to consume may fall, and their propensity to save rise. This is why, Marx says, Say's Law is false, and a generalised overproduction of commodities may arise.

By contrast, the demand for commodities may exceed the supply. Again, this may be the case for individual commodities. Demand is monetary demand, and so may be derived not only from revenues, but also from the mobilisation of money reserves and savings. During lockdowns, households, partly from having their range of spending restricted, so that incomes went to pay down debt and increase savings, and partly because central banks printed money tokens, which were handed to households, had currency available to spend, when lockdowns ended. The surge in prices was explained, partly, by this excess of aggregate demand over aggregate supply, because the latter could not respond quickly to meet the demand, and, partly, by an inflation caused by the excess printing of money tokens/devaluation of the standard of prices.

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Forward To Part 2

The Chinese Revolution After The Sixth Congress, 5. Appendix – A Remarkable Document - Part 1 of 10

5. Appendix – A Remarkable Document

Theoretical science can make predictions about the nature of reality that may not be immediately verifiable by empirical observation. For example, it predicts the existence of chemical elements whose actual existence has not been observed. It predicted the existence of planets, in the solar system, which, at the time, had not been observed, and so on.

Of course, theoretical science, itself, is based upon past and current observation of that real world, and analysis of it, without which the theories themselves could not be formulated. Without chemistry analysing the atomic composition of known elements, it could not have developed the laws that enabled it to draw up The Periodic Table, and, thereby, to identify the gaps within it, indicating the existence of elements which, currently, have not been, physically observed. Without studying existing planets, and planetary movement, science could not have developed the theory of gravity, and so could not have, likewise, identified the existence of other planets, not then observed.

The reason this document, produced by the Kiangsu District Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on May 7, 1928, is remarkable is that those that produced it were adherents of the ideas and theories of Stalin/Bukharin, and not Trotsky, whose ideas and statements they, almost certainly, did not know. Yet, what is contained in this document is an observation of the real world as they experienced it, and this observation confirms the theory, not of Stalin/Bukharin, but that of Trotsky and the Opposition. Its for that reason that it can be said that its authors were unaware of the statements of the Opposition, because, if they were, they would not have produced a document so in conformity with them, as they knew, by this time, what costs, in the regime of Stalinism, they would incur for doing so.

“This resolution, as has already been said, constitutes a truly remarkable document, in spite of the errors in principle and the political misunderstandings it contains. The essence of the resolution amounts to a deadly condemnation not only of the decisions of the Ninth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, but in general, of the whole leadership of the Comintern in the questions of the Chinese revolution. Naturally, in conformity with the whole régime existing in the Comintern, the criticism directed against the Executive Committee of the CI bears a camouflaged and conventionally diplomatic character. The immediate point of the resolution is directed against the Central Committee itself as against a responsible ministry under an irresponsible monarch who, as is known, “can do no wrong”.” (p 211)

That was typical of the bureaucratic degeneration of the International, and its component parties. Gone was open political debate and self-criticism, as each individual sought to protect themselves, and everything was couched in vague terms, able to be used to justify future events as conforming to the infallibility of the leaders.

““After the August 7 (1927) conference,” the Kiangsu Committee relates, “the Central Committee formulated a judgement on the situation which was tantamount to saying that even though the revolution had suffered a triple defeat, it is nevertheless going through a rising phase.”

This appreciation is entirely in conformity with the caricature which Bukharin makes of the theory of the permanent revolution, a caricature which he applied first to Russia, then to Europe and finally to Asia. The actual events of the struggle, that is, the three defeats, are one thing and the permanent “rise” is another.” (p 211-2)

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