Socialists And Left Government

Breaking the hold of the right-wing parties over Irish politics would be a huge step forward. However, a left government would come under immense pressure, not just from the wealthy and their media, but also from within the rotten state machine.

If the Irish state is so rotten, does sitting on top of the rotten machine change the machine? Of course not. We have to be far more ambitious. We can do better than just electing left parties, only to see them become one with the machinery of the very state we have to overthrow.

As we’ve seen, the Irish Labour Party promised change again and again before capitulating to the right. The Green Party have done the same - promised change - and then betrayed people once in government. But it’s not just about personal weakness - it’s about the very structures of the Irish state machine.

The rich are connected to the machinery of state by a thousand controlling threads. You can bet they’ll pull on those strings when a left government is elected. We have never had a left government in Ireland, but there’s a huge body of international experience of left government to learn from. In Ireland a genuinely left government holds huge appeal because it’s never been tried. But what are the lessons of other countries where they’ve already been through the experience of a left government?  

“Hope is coming” read the banners in Athens at Syriza rallies in the days before their election. On the crest of a massive wave of working class expectation, the Greek radical left alliance - Syriza - took 149 seats in the Greek parliament.  For the first time in more than 40 years, neither the Tory New Democracy Party nor the Labour-style PASOK, the two parties that had dominated Greek politics since the fall of a military junta in 1974, would be in power.

They had been beaten by a party that had, until recently, been on the fringes of politics.

But confusion was soon added to the joy and celebration on the international left as Syriza announced a coalition Government with the racist Independent Greeks. People tried to make sense of a coalition between a radical left that inspired so much hope and a nasty UKIP-style racist party that opposed immigration, gay rights, was pro-public order, and whose leader Kammenos was a former Minister for Defence with links to the higher ranks of the Army.

The sweet promises Syriza made before the election were already beginning to taste sour.  

The first way in which most working class imagine an alternative to capitalist government is through the prism of parliament. People think electing different people will change the machine they are elected to run. It’s a good thing for working class people to want a government of socialists as against a government of bankers. The positive side of the growth of radical left parties like Syriza is that they represented a rejection of austerity, and workers’ growing self-confidence.

If you’re pessimistic, you never imagine there’s any alternative to rule by the parties of the landlords and bankers. There’s a certain optimism in thinking a left government can introduce socialist measures through the existing state. It’s wrong; but it shows growth.

That’s why analysis of Syriza has to start from an immense excitement about the rise of the social movement that gave birth to that political expression, but that’s not excitement about leaders like Tsipras. You have to call things as they are, and you can’t be scientific about why Syriza failed if you’re afraid to tell the cold hard truth.

After 5 years in power, they handed the reigns of government back to the Tories in New Democracy. The whole Syriza experiment had been a spectacular failure. For union leaders like Jack O’Connor, the problem wasn’t their capitulation to capitalism, but the fact that they went too far. New Democracy was able to use demoralisation in the wake of the Syriza defeat to unleash a new wave of attacks on the working class.  

The Syriza election campaign had shifted massively to the right to the point where they were indistinguishable from New Democracy. It was the old electoral argument - that moving to the right would capture centre votes – instead, the left became demoralised and lost its working-class voter base.

Syriza gave the bankers €9 billion from 2016 to 2019 out of surpluses they’d taken out of the social welfare budget. This was a far cry from the radical 2014 Thessaloniki programme - which promised social transformation. But the Syriza leaders believed that you could transform Greece while running that “committee of the rich” we call the state.

Crushing austerity had destroyed the lives of Greek workers in the wake of the 2008 crash - this led to the collapse of the political system. Syriza grew from the margins to a potential governmental power. The Greek people had suffered a decade of austerity with 3 bailout packages, the last of which was implemented by Syriza.

The left government voted for all of the Troika’s ‘memorandums’ and introduced anti-worker laws, including new restrictions on the right of workers to strike. A primary budget surplus was agreed with the Troika - they signed up to decades of austerity up to the year 2060. They had promised so much, but ended their term in office with 30% of people living in poverty.  

Voter turn-out fell to its lowest since 1974 as people turned away from politics in disgust, betrayal leading to deep bitterness. The fallout from the Syriza betrayal led to a fall in votes for the whole left. The whole fiasco came down to reformist politics - they’d gone into discussions with the EU proposing “austerity lite” - but the EU tasted blood and demanded more. Syriza imposed a €13 billion austerity package and strengthened the state machine to deal with resistance - they built up the riot cops.

But how can someone go from promising 21st Century Socialism to imposing austerity with a cops baton in the space of a few years? It comes down to politics. The people running Syriza believed you could make a “slow march” through capitalist institutions and use them to the benefit of the people. As often happens to people with utopian ideas - when the utopia fails they fall into despair and shift to the right.

Syriza had no plan to deal with the Greek shipping magnates and bankers who were moving money out to sabotage the economy. They had no plan to deal with the bureaucrats in the EU. They had no plan other than “unite with us and elect us and everything will be OK!” When reformists call for left unity - you have to ask “for what purpose and under whose political banner are we uniting?” Unity to fight is welcome - unity as a means to divert the fight into political dead ends isn’t.  

Syriza weren’t the first to pursue this strategy, and they won’t be the last.

There have been a whole series of left governments: and the debate as to what extent socialists can utilise the state has been a dividing line in the socialist movement for more than a century. From the participation of French socialist Millerand in a cabinet with General Galliffet (who was responsible for the mass murder of workers after the 1871 Paris Commune) up to the Syriza failure, debates have ensued as to the nature of the State, and the extent, if any, to which it can be used by the working-class movement.

The German socialist Rosa Luxemburg had famously argued with the reformist socialist Edward Bernstein. She pointed out that the reformist road and the revolutionary road to socialism weren’t two paths to the same goal. One led to socialism, the other back to capitalism.

“The present State is, first of all, an organisation of the ruling class,” she said, “Fourier’s scheme of changing, by means of a system of phalansteries [community-based living], the water of all the seas into tasty lemonade was surely a fantastic idea. But Bernstein, proposing to change the sea of capitalist bitterness into a sea of socialist sweetness, by progressively pouring into it bottles of social reformist lemonade, presents an idea that is merely more insipid but no less fantastic.”

These theoretical debates were to get a test in the laboratory of history.  

The women carried signs calling for “Bread and Herring!” The Russian February Revolution broke out on February 23rd 2017.  The Tsar had abdicated by March 3rd. In his place was formed a Provisional Government which consisted of members of the capitalist parties and was led by aristocrat Prince Lvov. Even the rotten “Council of the United Nobility” rallied to the Provisional Government - they understood that to turn back the tide of revolution would necessitate wearing a democratic mask.

The Government gave an amnesty to all those who had participated in previous rebellions and terror attacks, abolished class restrictions and hereditary titles and declared freedom of the press. It seemed Russia was free. The Provisional Government had to share power with the workers’ mass assemblies or ‘Soviets’. This uneasy tension, or ‘Dual Power’ situation, couldn’t last forever. Class society can’t tolerate two sets of political masters.

The next few months would be a struggle between the Provisional Government and the workers’ assemblies - Dual Power could only be resolved with one overthrowing the other. Either the old state machine would crush the soviet assemblies, or the soviets would break the state and take power.

A battle was also taking place within the workers’ councils themselves too - between those who wanted to render the soviets subordinate to the Provisional Government and those, like Lenin and the revolutionary Bolsheviks, who wanted all power transferred to the workers’ councils. 

This Government of landowners and capitalists started with one socialist on board, the lawyer Kerensky.  As the class struggle escalated in the weeks and months following February, the Provisional Government took on a more and more left colouration. On April 18th the government sent a note to the Allied Governments, promising to continue the war to ‘its glorious conclusion’.

But the world war was one of the reasons for the people’s uprising. On April 20th and 21st massive angry demonstrations of workers and soldiers poured onto the streets. The Provisional Government accepted the resignation of Foreign Minister Milyukov and War Minister Guchkov, and made a proposal to the Petrograd soviet to form a “coalition government”.

As a result of negotiations, on May 5th agreement was reached and 6 socialist ministers joined the cabinet. While right-wing General Kornilov brought his cannons onto the streets, the ensuing protest movement saw the government forced to appoint a socialist Minister of Labour and a reformist Menshevik Minister of Posts.

This participation by socialists in the Provisional Government didn’t change the class aims of the government or the nature of the Russian state. The government was there to maintain wealth, protect private property, to continue the war and to re-establish “discipline” in the armed forces. The reformists were empowering the forces that wanted to settle the Dual Power equation in the interests of the landowners and capitalists.  

The reformists didn’t move left under the pressure of revolutionary protests - they moved to the right.

The Bolsheviks joined protests under the banner “Down with the ten capitalist Ministers”. If they could get more of the reformists into power they could expose their failings. They wanted a fully left composition to the government to expose its failures. Lenin had returned from exile in April 1917 and won the Bolsheviks to the idea of power going to the workers’ circles. It took him a serious battle within the Bolshevik Party to win them to fighting the Provisional Government.

He had to campaign among the party rank-and-file, who were closer to the most militant workers. Lenin realised that the majority of workers were not yet convinced of the slogan “all power to the soviets.” It would take a few months of struggle and “patiently explaining”. They adopted slogans that put pressure on the Provisional Government to adopt a more left stance.

But the Bolsheviks wanted to break faith in the Provisional Government, to expose it. By the Summer the regime was falling apart: economic collapse, encouraged by greedy bosses who wanted to punish their rebellious workforces, was biting hard. There was a growing peasant revolt outside the cities. Lenin called for the profits of the millionaires to be published, and for the arrest of fifty to one hundred of them. Of course the government wasn’t willing to take such action.  

At the Soviet Congress, one in seven delegates was a Bolshevik by mid-Summer. They were coalescing with the most militant workers.  On the streets the reformists admitted the masses were “thick with Bolsheviks”. At the end of June the machine-gun regiment and a significant minority of workers were sick of the reformists who were leading the Soviets, and called for an assault on the Provisional Government. A minority of the most militant workers and soldiers already wanted a second revolution.

The Bolsheviks knew that a premature explosion could wreck the whole revolution. The government could deal with a minority uprising and drown it in blood. They almost got their opportunity in July 1917. The question was - how to avoid walking into a trap. Tensions were mounting, with wages falling behind massive inflation in prices. The Bolsheviks sensed the dramatic rise in the temperature of the masses.

Combativity and class consciousness don’t always rise all at the same time - it’s not like the whole working class gets in an elevator and rises simultaneously. Some people are ready to tear the head off the government while others are attending their first protest. It’s chaotic. Without a guiding organisation, the whole thing could become a train wreck.  

Lenin told the most angry workers to wait for the “reserve battalions” of the class to come over to their side, and, for now,  to restrain their legitimate anger. The machine-gun regiment would wait no longer, and went onto the streets. The rank-and-file Bolsheviks went with the masses. Crowds of thousands gathered at the Bolshevik HQ where Lenin and others tried to pour cold water on the extreme demands from the crowds. 80,000 workers from the massive Putilov works marched to the soviet for answers.

The next day on July 4th the Bolshevik military committee joined the protests to protect them from the counter revolution. Government troops fired on the protests to provoke workers and soldiers. A worker held one of the Mensheviks up against a wall and shouted, “Take power when it’s given to you, you bastard!”

But the reformists that led the soviets had no intention of removing the Provisional Government. The workers had marched under the slogan “all power to the soviets” and yet the soviets didn’t want power. Workers left demoralised and confused. 500,000 had taken to the streets - armed - and if given the order they could have temporarily seized power in St Petersburg - but they would not have held it very long.

They were racing too far ahead of the rest of the working class and peasants. The Bolsheviks made the right call - they joined the protest to preserve their reputation - they stood with the workers, but they argued for calm and restraint.  

The Provisional Government smashed up the Bolshevik HQ and locked up the machine-gun regiment. Trotsky was thrown into jail, and Lenin went into hiding. More power was handed over to the Provisional Government’s leader Kerensky. He wanted to balance between the conflicting classes and use the Dual Power stalemate to install himself as a Napoleon figure.

But General Kornilov wanted to play dictator too and was busy organising for his coup. He wanted to “hang every single Soviet delegate from the end of a rope!” Kerensky was terrified that Kornilov might do away with him as well as destroying the soviets, and began to panic. He dismissed the General from the armed forces. News came in that Kornilov was marching on St Petersburg with his so-called “savage division”.  

The Mensheviks were terrified and needed a re-connection with the masses in order to mobilise the defence of the city. They had to call on the Bolsheviks, who were quick to jump to the call to defend the city. They stood alongside supporters of their recent jailors to stop the coup. This ‘united front’ with the Mensheviks not only strengthened the Bolsheviks and won over masses of workers to their party, but also exposed the weakness of the Menshevik compromisers in the soviet and the “socialists” in the Provisional Government. 

As Leon Trotsky explained, “We rest our guns on Kerensky’s shoulder to take aim at Kornilov and then we will deal with Kerensky”.  Kornilov’s coup evaporated as revolutionary soldiers won over his troops. The working class had been given a shock that woke people to the threat posed by the right.  

The workers now saw that the slander against the Bolsheviks in July was preparation for the August coup. The working class swung over to Lenin’s party. In the St Petersburg soviet the workers elected 519 Bolsheviks to 414 compromisers. By working with the Mensheviks the Bolsheviks had exposed them and destroyed their hold over the class. In the factory committees, which were even closer to the rank-and-file workers, almost all positions went to Bolsheviks. But the Bolsheviks still weren’t the majority in all the Soviets nationwide.

At this point Lenin proposed a fully left government to the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks promised to respect a left government, and to support it, but from the opposition benches. They didn’t want to sow illusions in the state machine or blind people to the necessity of Dual Power being resolved by soviet power. They wouldn’t run the state machinery themselves, or take ministerial positions, but they would support any positive moves such a government made.

Lenin had some conditions for such support - the government would have to keep the workers armed to defend against counter revolution, and the government would be based on the mass assemblies of workers, soldiers and peasants. Lenin promised the Bolsheviks wouldn’t overthrow such a government as long as it acted in workers’ interests.

The Bolsheviks were saying to workers who weren’t yet convinced of socialist revolution: “Hey look we’ll try it your way, we’ll support a left government, we don’t think it will work but we’ll support your desire for such a government!” It would help open people’s eyes. The Mensheviks rejected Lenin’s offer, thereby exposing their own attachment to the right. Lenin had successfully navigated engaging with workers’ illusions in left government while exposing that left government.   

By October the class struggle in Russia was at boiling point - the workers were starving, the soldiers were sick of the continuing bloodshed of the war, the peasants were burning down the houses of landlords - if the second revolution didn’t move forward in a planned fashion, the soldiers and workers would have revolted alone.

But just like in July 1917 - the whole thing would have been a train wreck. Accounts of the Russian Revolution often ignore the roll of the mass revolt in framing the October revolution - it’s easier to present it as a minority coup rather than the culmination of months of massive protests, mutinies and strikes. Once the majority of votes in the soviet assemblies were going to the Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries, the time was ripe for a transfer of power to the working class.

The October revolution saw the Bolsheviks lead the workers circles in overthrowing the Provisional Government from the left. The dilemma of Dual Power was resolved. The working class had replaced the old repressive state machinery with their own assemblies. This would turn out to be the only occasion where the revolutionary forces got it right. The subsequent isolation of the revolution led to the strangling of the great revolutionary hopes of the workers of 1917.

But the October Revolution still stands as a great contrast to a century or more of reformist betrayal and disappointment.  

The call for a “Workers Government” first arose during the German Revolution. In Saxony and Thuringia the reformist Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the revolutionaries combined had enough votes to form a government, but the SPD preferred government with the right wingers. The revolutionaries called for a “Workers Government” to expose the SPD’s attachment to the right wing establishment.

In March 1923 the SPD, sensing the growing radical mood, formed a left government without the right. The revolutionaries supported the government and voted for it - but from the outside. They didn’t discredit themselves by running state machinery that their revolution would have to overthrow. It would just confuse workers. In return for their vote the revolutionaries demanded that the workers were armed. But there were ingredients missing.

No one called for the setting up of a counter power – they never called for mass assemblies of workers to form. In Russia one of Lenin’s conditions to a potential left government was that they would be answerable to the assemblies. German workers were confused by the call for the “Workers Government” - the revolutionaries never once emphasised the need for a workers government and workers councils.

Those councils could defend the left government from an attack by the counter revolution, but would go beyond the left government once workers had broken their ties with the SPD. Once the revolutionaries had won the majority they would need to overthrow the left government from the left.  

They had played it right by voting for the left government from the outside. It was only the experience of such a government that would expose the weakness of the reformists. They were also correct to support such a government from the opposition benches so as not to be tied into managing capitalism. But they never argued for the need for workers to rely on people power, and their own councils, to resist the terrorism of the bosses. 

The revolutionaries were too focused on maintaining a united front with the reformists in the government - and not preparing for the moment when the struggle of workers needed to move beyond it.  

In revolutionary Hungary in 1919 the revolutionaries unconsciously sabotaged the revolution by joining with the Social Democrats in a single coalition Government. The Government relied on the old officers to run the army, and gave the peasants an excuse to turn against them by nationalising the big landlords’ estates - which gave the peasants nothing in return. The Social Democrats used unity to dissolve the organisation of the revolutionaries.

The workers’ councils were demobilised. In a situation of Dual Power how can revolutionaries sit on top of the rival state machines? You have to choose - the old state or the new counter state. The government collapsed after 133 days when the Social Democrats quit.

The result was a victory for a vicious counter revolution under the command of Admiral Horthy, who began a reign of terror which saw tens of thousands of workers murdered. The revolutionaries had allowed themselves to be tricked by the promise of a shortcut to socialism and in return were put up against a wall and shot. As the French revolutionary Saint-Just once said: “Those who half make a revolution may as well dig their own graves!” 

The Communist International or “Comintern” debated the question of a “workers’ government” in 1922. The debate was very confusing - for some, “workers’ government” was a coded way of saying a socialist government of workers’ circles, while for others it meant a coalition of the left running the capitalist state. The final document they produced was a complete muddle - it insinuated that joining a government under capitalism could be a transition to socialism.

This ignored the key question of dual power and the role the reformists would play in the coalition government. No amount of pressure from the streets could transform the reformists in a coalition into revolutionary socialists - as if by magic! Such a miraculous act - turning reformist water into strong revolutionary wine - has never occurred in a century of reformists taking power under capitalism.  

The Russian revolutionary leader Zinoviev didn’t help the debate either. He even praised the Mensheviks of 1917 and said the Bolsheviks had been too hard on them! Two of the Bolshevik leaders - Zinoviev and Kamenev, had opposed the October Revolution and preferred coalition with the reformists. He said:

“Plekhanov said that the Mensheviks during the period from February to October 1917 were half-Bolsheviks. We denied that. We said they were not Bolsheviks at all, not even a quarter. We spoke in these terms because we were locked in fierce struggle with them and we perceived their betrayal of the proletariat. But objectively, Plekhanov was right. Objectively, the Menshevik government was most suitable to ruin capitalism’s game, to make their situation impossible. Locked in struggle against the Mensheviks, our comrades could not perceive this at that time.” 

How was a Menshevik government supposed to “ruin capitalism’s game” exactly? The reformist Mensheviks had rejected Lenin’s offer of a fully left government anyway. They also walked out of the soviet after the second revolution in October - rejecting the working class seizure of power. They had no interest in working with revolutionaries unless the revolutionaries capitulated fully to the Mensheviks. Zinoviev was introducing a gross distortion of Russian history into an already-confused debate.

If Zinoviev had had his way in 1917 the result wouldn’t have been a reformist government - but the overthrow of the Provisional Government by the right-wing Generals. The working class would have been decapitated by a counter revolution and the working class would have been left without clear leadership.

The dual power dilemma would have been solved in the interests of the rich, and with the assistance of the reformists. As British socialist Chris Harman notes: “Even a ‘pure workers government’ made up entirely of the traditional parties of the working class will still be in de facto coalition with the bourgeoisie through the state.”  

The Comintern document of 1922 was written before we’d had the experience of dozens of Labour Party style left governments across the world, and was a poor guide to revolutionaries of that time - not to mention, now, in the 21st century. The argument that running the capitalist state alongside reformists could be a path to revolution is still advocated by far left groups today – it was a strong strand of defence of the Greek Syriza government.

The argument goes – we don’t have a revolutionary situation so we should go in with the reformists and then our protection against being swallowed by the state is to create a revolution. But if you are strong enough to create a revolution then why confuse things by running the state? And if you’re not then you’ll just be swallowed up by the state. And the reformists in such a government are always going to sabotage advancing the struggle of working people.  

By the mid 1930s a series of French governments had slashed the incomes of public sector workers and peasants through the pursuit of deflationary policies. People were driven into extreme poverty, and the whole country was on the brink of civil war. There were protests by every class in society. The far right wanted to emulate Hitler’s accession to power in neighbouring Germany, and street fighting ensued after an attempt by the far right to enter the French parliament.

The left was frozen and didn’t know how to respond - the Socialist Party (a Labour-type party) was far too timid, and the Communists were under the malign influence of Stalin. At this point Stalin was pursuing the nonsense idea that the main enemies of revolutionaries were the reformists in the Socialist Party. Instead of exposing the reformists by calling united working class action, the Communists were to stand on the sidelines denouncing everyone. Their support collapsed as workers grew frustrated with lack of action. In February 1934 demonstrations by the far right grew alarmingly.

The CGT union called a general strike while the Socialist Party, separately, called for a workers’ demonstration.  

The Communist Party called a protest, but decided to march separately from the others. They were right in their view that the leaders of the reformist parties and unions were traitors - but they were allowing that to divert them from the task of winning over their supporters. Many tens of thousands of workers were following the reformists, and isolating the revolutionary workers from their workmates wasn’t a way to win people over.

When the massive crowds from the various protests came together, the rank-and-file workers started shouting “Unity! Unity!” The grassroots workers linked arms. These mass protests stopped the rise of the far right and led to an electoral agreement between the various strands of the left. It was one thing to call for unity on the streets, but now that was being translated into unity in the political sphere.

People often think this is a matter of direct translation - but while unity with reformist parties and unions can help to increase numbers on the streets, it can also be used to chain radical workers to a political project that leads to reformist dead ends. Leon Trotsky once said that politics was more like algebra than arithmetic - adding 2 plus 2 gives you 4 but adding 2 plus minus 2 gives you a big fat zero. 

The Communists went further than proposing a ‘United Front’ (the unity of all working class groups) and called for a ‘Popular Front’ with the ruling class ‘Radical Party’. This was tying workers to a section of the French bosses. The Stalinists were swinging from a strategy of isolation to a strategy of working with almost anyone. In May 1936 this ‘Popular Front’ got a massive vote.

The Communist Party went from 10 to 76 seats while the mainstream socialists were the majority in the French Parliament for the first time. The Socialist Party leader Leon Blum was able to form a government with 18 Socialists, 13 Radicals and with the Communist Party voting for the government but not joining it. The Communist Party was mistaken in supporting the capitalist Radical Party but appeared radical because they still rejected actually joining the government.

But they used their radical reputation to destroy the mass movement that emerged. The election of the government led to an explosion of working class militancy. There were massive demonstrations on the streets, and a massive strike wave spread across France. Workers thought if “their” people were in power that their demands would be met.   

On May 26th workers began taking over the factories. Thousands of workplaces were occupied by workers who thought their government was in power. The terrified rich knew they had to hand over concessions to the working class, and they signed new labour laws agreeing to workers’ delegates in the factories. Workers wanted more - the working class was beginning to feel its confidence rise - maybe they could run society in their own interests?

The Communist Party was terrified and began to calm down the strikes. Their leader Thorez said “It is necessary to know how to end a strike.” The situation wasn’t ripe for an immediate revolution like the October revolution in Russia, but instead of just ending the strike wave, the Communists could have called for the establishment of workers’ mass assemblies in the workplaces and linked the workplaces together in a national network of circles.

They could have escalated the class struggle on demands that were important to all workers - for example working hours or wages. This would have created a situation of Dual Power and pointed forward to an eventual challenge to the state machine by the working class. Instead, workers were demoralised. 

The Communist Party put maintaining their alliance with the upper-class Radicals ahead of the interests of the working class. They were taking orders from Stalin in Russia who changed his mind about the reformists being the “main enemy” and in the interests of defending Russia wanted Communist Parties to ally with “progressive” upper-class parties to battle fascism.

But the best way to fight fascism was through massive working class protests and strikes - methods the ruling-class parties would oppose because they threatened their factories. By uniting the class struggle with the fight against fascism, the revolutionaries could have empowered the working class to challenge all factions of the rich.

Over a million people marched in July 1936 to celebrate the government, but the radical left put nothing forward except the call for continued “unity” with the upper-class Radicals. A test soon came with the eruption of the Spanish Civil War. The Radical Party blocked sending arms to help the Spanish workers. As soon as the strike wave died down, the Radicals then felt emboldened enough to demand deflationary policies. Left wing leader Leon Blum, after a short spell of reflationary measures, gave in as the capitalist class took money out of France in order to strangle the left.

Meanwhile the police, becoming more emboldened, opened fire on anti-fascist protests, killing many workers. Russian socialist Leon Trotsky had warned French workers that:

“The greatest danger in France lies in the fact that the revolutionary energy of the masses will be dissipated in spurts, in isolated explosions like Toulon, Brest and Limoges, and give way to apathy. Only conscious traitors or hopeless muddle-heads are capable of thinking that in the present situation it is possible to hold the masses immobilized up to the moment when they will be blessed from above by the government of the People’s Front. Strikes, protests, street clashes, direct uprisings are absolutely inevitable in the present situation. The task of the proletarian party consists not in checking and paralysing these movements but in unifying them and investing them with the greatest possible force.”

No one did. That was the tragedy of the situation.

The working class were willing to fight, but no one was willing to lead the fight. Leon Blum resigned in July 1937 and a series of Radical Party governments ruled France with some participation by the reformist Socialists. The State saw its chance and moved against the workers with police invading the occupied factories.

Renault workers were forced out of their factory by cops who made them give a fascist salute. Workers were assaulted by the police. Thousands of sackings followed as the confidence of workers rapidly dropped and the bosses gained the upper hand. The Radical Party dominated parliament, then “rewarded” the Communist Party for their loyalty and banned them. The potential for revolution was lost. 

Red flags dominated the Catalan skyline. George Orwell wrote in November 1936 from Barcelona:

“It was the first time I had ever been in the town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically any building of size had been seized by the workers.”

A dictator called Primo de Rivera ruled Spain during the 1920s but his regime collapsed after the global economic crisis hit in 1930. A ruling-class government came to power, but they took union leader Caballero on board as the Minister of Labour. But talk of small reforms was too much to stomach for the Spanish ruling class, and they began holding far-right rallies following the example of Mussolini and Hitler.

The right looked likely to form a government, and a workers’ alliance of unions and the left was formed to oppose this growing threat, but when the right took office only the miners of the Asturias region went on strike. The anarchist syndicalists abstained from the struggle for fear of “politicians”. The reformist Socialist Party and the main trade unions restricted struggle to a single token strike in Madrid. A weak left just emboldened the right to take action. The ruling class would smash the working class if they could. 

The government broke the miners using General Franco. This didn’t solve the crisis, and protests grew. Even though Caballero and other trade unionists were thrown in jail, the deteriorating economic situation saw the right-wing government collapse after two black years.

In 1936 another election was called which saw a ‘Popular Front’ win. It was an alliance of the reformists, Communists and some Republican ruling-class parties. They were going to run the Spanish state machine. As in France there was an explosion of workers’ struggles. But the Spanish state machine was never going to allow workers to take actions that would push back Franco and possibly threaten that state with revolution from below.

Union leader Caballero claimed he had been won to revolution while in prison and was labelled the “Spanish Lenin”. The ruling class were bitterly hostile to this new government. Growing workers’ militancy led to support growing among the rich for the “Falange” - an outright fascist organisation. In July the Generals made their move – they tried to seize control of cities right across Spain and the colony of Morocco.

If it was left to the Popular Front Government the fascist Generals would have won straight away - they were terrified - but it was massive strikes and protests by workers that initially scuppered the Generals’ plans. 

In cities where the reformist politicians dominated, they just accepted the word of the rebellious right-wing officers. The army just waited until armed workers were calmed down by their leaders, and then moved to shoot anyone who stood in the way of the coup. The reformists were a useful cover.

General Franco’s forces took over half the country, but workers held out in places where the rank and file were strong. In those areas power was in the hands of workers’ organisations. But there was no national network of workers’ circles as existed in Russia in 1917 - and there was no organisation with roots in the working class that could argue for the pursuit of an effective strategy against the highly co-ordinated and highly centralised actions of the fascists.

The anarcho-syndicalists argued against any linking up of the workers councils as undermining the “spontaneity of the masses”. In Catalonia the left linked up, not as delegates from workers’ circles, but as representatives of political parties. Caballero and the rest of the left - without a strategy of linking up workers’ circles to form a counter state - instead joined with the remnants of the capitalist state. Those who ran the Spanish state were more terrified of workers taking over their factories than they were afraid of the fascists.

Remember 2 plus 2 equals 4, but 2 plus minus 2 gives you nothing. The left were foolishly acting as a cover for the state machinery. 

The Stalinists promoted the same line as the reformists - collaboration with the capitalist Republicans against the fascists. They would help them run the capitalist state, and that state would fight Franco. The Communist Party even told others on the left to stop talking about revolution. It might upset the Republicans.

Although the bulk of the capitalist and landlord class supported Franco, the Republican state was still a faction of the same ruling class. The left failed to recognise this. A class conflict raged within the Republican side of the war.

On Tuesday May 4th 1937 workers in Barcelona erected barricades in response to attacks by the Stalinist Chief of Police. An eyewitness report by Lois Orr described the scene:

“Tuesday morning the armed workers dominated the greatest part of Barcelona.”

The workers were defeated by their own left organisations - the government was a coalition of capitalist Republicans, Stalinists, reformist Socialists and even anarcho-syndicalists. Even the far left POUM joined the government for a while, and gave a far left face to the machinery of state.

The POUM called on workers to “leave the streets” and “return to work”. The rank-and-file workers had the correct instincts, but they didn’t have a leadership that could focus those instincts. The result was confusion and demoralisation. Those leading the Republican side were destroying the only force that could really stop Franco - an empowered working class. 

“The only thing that can be said is that the masses who sought at all times to blast their way to the correct road found it beyond their strength to produce, in the very fire of battle, a new leadership corresponding to the demands of the revolution,” wrote Trotsky.

Union leader Caballero had become Prime Minister in 1936. The slogan of the government pandered to the ruling class elements on their side: “First win the war - then talk about revolution”. Even the left socialists and anarchists bought this line - that they should hold onto the gains they’d already made, but put the social revolt on pause and concentrate on the war.

Maintaining the capitalist state machine meant maintaining respect for private property - and pushing back workers’ confidence to go further - thereby undermining the only force that could really put an end to Franco. The reformists argued that any resistance by workers to their disarming would amount to a second civil war.

The working class would have fought Franco to the bitter end, but the upper-class politicians were as afraid of the revolt from below as they were of the right-wing Generals. They collapsed in the face of Franco’s forces while demoralised workers fought bravely - but in an unco-ordinated fashion. When Franco and the fascists won, half a million workers were executed. 

“Two irreconcilable programs thus confronted each other on the territory of republican Spain. On the one hand, the program of saving at any cost private property from the proletariat, and saving as far as possible democracy from Franco; on the other hand, the program of abolishing private property through the conquest of power by the proletariat.” explained Trotsky.

The Republican parties were more worried about their factories and businesses than they were worried about Franco. For the workers, the conquest of the factories and workplaces could have been part of strengthening the fight against Franco. The left made the mistake of not linking up the workers’ circles, centralising the national fight against the fascists - but on the basis of workers’ democracy. Class struggle could have appealed to peasants in the areas governed by Franco to rise up against the reimposition of the landlords.

The anarchists didn’t understand the difference between a workers’ state and the repressive capitalist state machinery. They had a position that amounted to a historical condemnation of all states as an imposition on the individual. They rejected the opportunity of challenging the Republican state when it was possible to do so - but if you fail to challenge the existing state power, then you are endorsing those who have power. 

When Franco’s forces were breathing down their necks, some of the anarchists joined the Republican government - becoming a fifth wheel of the capitalist state machine. They didn’t understand the difference between a state composed of workers’ assemblies and a state that was a weapon for the rich. So they joined the weapon state of the rich thinking it would defend them from Franco. It wouldn’t.

The revolutionaries could have supported anything positive the Republican Government did - but from the outside. They could have fought alongside workers of every persuasion on the streets and in the factories while exposing the weakness of the reformist leaders. They could have pushed forward the social revolution - as an integral aspect of workers’ ability to control the economy - while undermining the economic power of the ruling class, which was an essential complement to fighting the fascists militarily.

But no left organisation existed with the politics or size to argue for such a strategy. Even the far left POUM vacillated between a revolutionary strategy and supporting the state. Another revolution became a graveyard for tens of thousands of workers. Those dead generations cry out for a generation who will get it right. 

“To-day the most comprehensive system of social security ever introduced into any country would start in Britain. The four Acts—National Insurance, Industrial Injuries, National Assistance, and National Health Service—represented the main body of the army of social security. … We cannot create a scheme which gives the nation a whole more than they put into it, and it is always the general level of production that settles our standard of material well-being. Only higher output can give us more of the things we all need.”

Clement Attlee, the leader of the British Labour Party, announced the new welfare state in Britain.

The Attlee Government is still used as a reference point for many on the radical left - proof that massive reforms such as the NHS, or welfare for the unemployed, can be won under capitalism. Ken Loach’s film “The Spirit of ‘45” is one example. Unfortunately many of those who praise the Attlee government divorce it from the very specific circumstances of its birth. Context matters. The Second World War had shattered Europe. Millions lay dead. Workers were tired of the old way of life. 

In 1945 millions of workers voted Labour. They were rejecting the terrible experience of Tory rule and the mass unemployment of the 1930s. Workers and demobilised soldiers felt that things just couldn’t go on in the old way anymore - they wanted radical change. This resulted in a massive Labour majority of 146 seats.

Labour’s slogan had been “no return to the 1930s!” Under massive pressure to deliver, Attlee’s government did carry out radical reforms. In the six years from 1945 to 1951 unemployment in Britain never passed a quarter of a million.

The Attlee government also established the welfare state. In those years, despite the economic difficulties immediately after the war, they built 200,000 council houses. The National Health Service was established, and was completely free. In 1945, Labour’s election manifesto ‘Let Us Face the Future’ had stated: “The Labour Party is a socialist party and proud of it … its ultimate aim is the establishment of the socialist commonwealth of Great Britain.”

Labour promised a ‘mixed economy’ and Nye Bevan talked about the nationalisation of the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy. In reality 20% of industry was nationalised – the railways, mines, gas and electricity. 80% of the British economy would remain in the hands of capitalists - who made sure they let their feelings be known through their control of the economy and the major media outlets.

This Labour government was still a capitalist government. The particular industries they nationalised were on the verge of grinding to a halt, and nationalisation saved them from collapse. 

They were saving British capitalism, not overthrowing it. Their definition of socialism was to nationalise a few industries - but not to have an empowered working class taking over the running of society for itself. In the nationalised industries many of the same managers remained in place, and the hierarchy remained the same.

In 1947, when an economic crisis hit, the government immediately stopped their reforms. In 1948 Labour Chancellor Sir Stafford Cripps introduced an austerity budget. He told workers, “There is only a certain sized cake. If a lot of people want a larger slice they can only get it by taking it from others.” British capitalists would get a dig-out while workers were to pay the cost. The Tories’ spokesman on finance welcomed the Labour policy change, and said Cripps’s 1948 budget marked “the end of an era of socialist policy and socialist propaganda”.

They re-imposed dental and prescription charges in 1951.When workers fought back Labour turned to the armed forces to put them down. Between 1945 and 1951 the Cabinet ordered troops across workers’ picket lines 18 times. Attlee used troops against dockers, defeating the strike which led to 900 workers kicked out of work. By 1951 Britain was still a profoundly unequal society, in which 1% of the population still owned 50% of all private capital. 

The Labour leadership also remained happy to believe in the concept of Empire. Attlee himself, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, and Herbert Morrison were all stirred by the sentiment of the “jolly old Empire.” They promised British foreign policy wouldn’t change under Labour. They maintained a huge level of arms spending and promised a “special” relationship with the USA. The Labour Party Foreign Secretary

Ernest Bevin created NATO - an anti-Communist alliance of the Western capitalist nations. Most chillingly, Labour helped to crush revolts in Greece, Malaya and Vietnam. They partitioned India - poisoning the chalice of independence to stir up inter-communal violence. The result of their policy in India was rivers of blood. Estimates for the deaths from partition range from 200,000 up to 2 million lives lost.

The British state was a monstrous machine built to commit acts of violence on an international scale - all in the interests of the British capitalists. Labour were sitting on top of the bloody machine. They didn’t change it one bit. That was the secret of the betrayal of the Labour Party and every reformist party - the state remains the same under every government. But the change workers need requires challenging that machine, not becoming part of it. 

The context of this reforming Labour government was the “long boom”, with full employment that started in 1939 with the outbreak of the war, and which continued for over 30 years. This boom was the context for widespread support across the entire ruling class for reforms. That and the threat of working class revolution - the First World War had led to a wave of revolutions from Ireland to Russia.

There was consensus in the ruling class for more control over the economy, and for reforms to buy workers’ compliance. Attlee’s government should be seen as continuing the war-time consensus in favour of state-run capitalism and the mixed economy. Even the Tory Lord Hailsham understood that post-war dissatisfaction could lead to revolt. ”If you do not give the people social reform”, he said in the House of Commons, “they are going to give you social revolution”.

The reforms were based on the recommendations of the 1942 Beveridge Report, named after its author, the Liberal civil servant Sir William Beveridge. So there was widespread ruling class support for a reforming government that would dissipate working class anger. The key factor in terms of British capitalism delivering those reforms was the post-war boom. Once the post-war boom collapsed, the ruling class moved to Thatcherite policies that prefigured neoliberalism.

The Attlee government hadn’t challenged British capitalism - it saved it. The British ruling class would spend the decades following the 1970s economic crisis clawing back the small gains workers had made in the post-war era. 

The Chilean army moved with great speed. By 8am on the morning of September 11th 1973 they had seized ports, bombed radio stations and taken most of Chile into their hands. By 2.30pm, after aerial bombardment by both jets and a helicopter gunship, the Presidential Palace fell, and left-wing President, Salvador Allende, was dead. In the aftermath of the coup General Pinochet began a reign of right-wing terror which decapitated the Chilean working-class movement.

Thousands were shot, tortured, raped and exiled. Women were sexually abused with dogs. The Chilean ruling class, with the backing of the US, took terrible revenge on the working class of Chile. The crime? Electing a left government and having the audacity to raise their expectations. 30,000 were killed and 130,000 jailed in disgusting conditions. 40,000 people were herded into the national stadium.

Henry Kissinger coldly remarked, displaying the cruel anti-democratic instincts of the US ruling class: “No country should be allowed go Communist due to the stupidity of its own people.” The US was claiming the right to overthrow elected governments of the left when it saw fit. While Chilean workers were being tortured and murdered, the coup was being cheered on in corporate boardrooms across the United States. 

Salvador Allende and the Popular Unity coalition of the left had been elected in 1970. In Chile and around the world, there were those on the left that proclaimed revolution was a thing of the past. There was now a new “Chilean road to socialism”. It was claimed that it was now possible to take over the existing state machinery and use it in the interests of the masses of people.

Allende was going to show us a “new” way to achieve change. But every time some reformist promises a new road to socialism, it turns out to be the same old road to capitalism. At first things improved for the majority of poor Chileans. Every child got milk. Land belonging to the richest 600 people was handed over to 100,000 landless peasants. Workers’ hopes were raised. Allende’s strategy of ‘peaceful’ gradual change meant appeasing, not only the poor, but also the capitalists and their armed forces. He maintained the level of arms spending.

He made sure to keep the ruling class Generals happy. He also made sure his reforms were no real harm to the interests of Chilean capitalists. “Enterprises where private ownership of the means of production will remain in force,” the government said, “in terms of numbers they will remain the majority”. Overall it was planned to nationalise only 150 out of the 3,500 Chilean firms. Allende was walking a tightrope between conflicting class interests. 

After a year in power, everything seemed to be going well for the Popular Unity coalition which Allende headed. Their votes increased. But at a certain point the increasing confidence of the working class saw an escalation of demands for greater reforms. These demands were becoming incompatible with balancing workers’ interests with those of the capitalist class. Allende was going to have to choose. Further reform would only be possible by encroaching on private wealth.

The class struggle escalated as workers saw the situation as: “Our government is in power so we should push for more!” Allende pleaded with workers to behave, asking them to “limit wage claims” and criticising those who occupied a US bank. He resisted a strike by copper workers and he warned militants they must end their “illegal seizures of land and property”.

The ruling class sensed his weakness. The more the militancy of workers increased, the greater the pleas from Allende for restraint. Soon the pleas turned to threats. The rich understood this and increased their pressure on Allende to act against the working class.

Rich housewives marched on the streets - with their paid servants banging pots and pans for them. Owners of industry locked their factories and kicked workers out. Through blackmail and sabotage the ruling class fought to get their way. The government took the line that the most militant workers were as bad as the far right. The workers’ militancy was “provoking” the response of the right. So Allende assumed it wasn’t his weakness but the workers strength that was the problem. So he set out to make the workers as weak as he was. 

“There is an extreme right that traffics in arms and is aiming at civil war, but there are also “ultra” groups that call themselves “left” who are following the same course, playing the role of partner in a mad waltz with their political opposites.” This was the Chilean Communist Party.

They advocated the use of force against the far left in defence of the Chilean state. The Communists authorised the Grupo Movil of the Carabineros (police) to use force to break up protests called by workers and students. In the city of Concepcion the Grupo Movil cost the life of a 17 year-old student, and left 40 wounded. They rounded up and arrested activists from far left groups. They sent paratroopers into poor suburbs.

These same paratroopers, sympathisers of the far right, were well aware they were practicing for the day they would take on Allende himself. He wound the rope around his own neck. He pulled the blindfold over his eyes. When workers started to demand arms to defend their factories against the growing threat from the right, Allende was quick to turn on them:

“There will be no armed forces here other than those stipulated by the constitution, that is to say, the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. I shall eliminate any others if they appear.” Allende wrongly believed that the state machine was answerable to him - he ignored the agency of the Generals and police chiefs. The more he ordered the machine to put down workers, the more those who ran the state machine prepared to stab him in the back. 

In March 1973 Allende still received high votes, but a massive copper strike from April to July saw the government declare that the copper workers were not part of the working class, calling them ‘fascists’ and ‘traitors’ - despite knowing that these workers had voted 70% for the Popular Unity coalition. But no one to the left of Allende bothered to support the miners. Even the far left group MIR stupidly condemned the miners for “economism”.

The Communist Party demanded loyalty to Allende and the state. There was an attempt at a putsch by the army in June, but Allende fell back on support from the “loyal” elements of the army command. He invited the Christian Democrats to join his Government but they had no interest in propping up a weak Government of the left that was clearly in an ever-weakening position.

In Santiago and in workers’ districts mass assemblies of workers were beginning to develop. They were called the Cordones. The role of these was described by the Peruvian revolutionary exiled in Chile, Hugo Blanco: 

“Cordon is the term used to refer to the concentration of factories along certain avenues in Santiago … The working class is organised into unions on a factory basis, and these unions are grouped into federations of the various industrial branches … As in every pre-revolutionary process, the masses are beginning to create new organisations that are more responsive to their struggle, though for the moment they are not abandoning the old ones. The cordones are a partial innovation in the sense that they continue to make use of the unions, but they are linked by zone, by cordon, rather than by industrial branch. At first the top leadership of the CUT refused to recognise the cordones, and the CP called them illegal bodies. Today this is no longer tenable, and the reformists now reluctantly recognise them in view of the fact that their own rank and file has refused to heed their effort to ignore the cordones.”

The Cordones were Union based but offered the potential for a counter power to the capitalist state - a counter power that could mobilise workers to resist the coming coup by Pinochet. But the Communist Party condemned the Cordones as “illegal” organisations. The workers were instinctively reaching towards the formation of a counter state - but no one would help them bring those instincts to consciousness and help organise on the basis of a clear strategy to defend Allende’s government from a coup, but also go beyond Allende and the weapon state of the rich. 

All the elements for a workers’ revolution were growing in embryo, but most workers looked to Allende to solve the crisis for them. He rewarded their loyalty with the baton and the police cell. He empowered the rich and demoralised the workers. A real revolutionary party, uniting the key militants in the working class, could have worked alongside workers who were still Popular Unity supporters, in order to pull them over to the idea of all power going to expanded Cordones.

Allende paved the road to the coup with his defence of the existing state machine, his compromises with the right and his attacks on any attempt by the workers to escalate the class struggle or to arm themselves for defence. When rank-and-file sailors revolted against the command, Allende stood by as their Officers threw them into prisons.

The army rank and file had no confidence to resist the command without wider support. By August 1973 Allende was bringing the army command into his government. These sharks smelled blood.

The coup in September could only have been stopped by a united resistance - but Allende had spent months undermining workers’ resistance. Pinochet turned Chile into a giant prison camp and brought in Chicago school economists to test out economic policies that were forerunners of those implemented by Thatcher and later known as “neoliberalism”. 

“50% of production has been extracted from the capitalist economy through taxation. If we can increase this (share) to 60, 70, 80 percent, then the welfare state will have become a form of socialism.” Tage Erlander was boasting that Sweden was on a slow but steady path to socialism. They were going to reform the capitalist beast and one day reveal the socialist beauty hidden within.

The Social Democrats had been in power in Sweden as often as Fianna Fail were here in Ireland. Often this left vote is put down to some natural propensity of the Swedish people, but in reality it’s about the specific nature of the Swedish economy and the class struggle of Sweden’s working class. Sweden industrialised very late, and faced huge poverty in the 1800s, but exports of iron ore and wood started to expand the Swedish economy.

The economic expansion was cut short in 1929 as the world faced economic crisis - this led to massive struggles by workers, and in response the ruling class formed a “partnership” with the Trade Unions. The ruling class bought the workers off with small reforms, but gained an element of control through the partnership structures.

It was a way of containing the militancy of rank and file Swedish workers. Proximity to the Russian Revolution was a source of fear for the Swedish rich. They, above all else, wanted to avoid a similar explosion of popular anger in Sweden. 

It was mass strikes by workers that had stopped the invasion of Norway in 1905, and there was a massive general strike in 1909 involving 300,000 workers. There were protests in solidarity with the 1917 revolution in Russia. Strikes and protests continued during the Great Depression, as Madeleine Johansson explains: #

”In 1931, there was a wave of strikes in the shipyards and on the rivers. In the village of Ådalen, strike breakers were brought in and there was a mass mobilisation of workers and the local community. The army blocked the road to the scabs’ camp and, when the workers’ march continued towards its destination, the soldiers opened fire on the protesters. They shot dead five people and injured dozens of others. The incident caused uproar amongst the working class all across the country despite the mainstream media’s attempt to blame ‘communist radicals’ for the violence.”

The partnership agreements between the Union leaders and the Social Democratic government included restrictions on strike action. What was presented as an encroachment by workers into government was really an encroachment of government control into the working class movement. 

Just as with the Attlee government the post-war boom coupled with the threat of post-war militancy led to concessions to the workers. Sweden had remained neutral during the Second World War and had benefited from iron ore and arms sales - this put them in a very favourable situation.

The ruling class benefited from global rebuilding without having to spend on rebuilding themselves. They could use the growing economy to buy off workers, and secure social peace. The Social Democrats were elected to government continuously from 1936 to 1976. Those years coincide with the so-called “Golden Age” of capitalism - the massive post-war boom.

When that boom collapsed in the 1970s the Swedish ruling class, like the ruling classes elsewhere, decided to go on the attack. There were growing strikes and protests in the 1970s as workers fought to defend the welfare state. Sweden became a high-tax economy, with a huge share coming from workers. Finance and the banks were deregulated, leading to a financial crash in the 1990s. The ruling class were able to use the financial crash to cut 90,000 public sector jobs. 

There was only really a window after the Second World War, where, in the context of a global post-war boom, major concessions were granted to Swedish workers. Sweden had benefited from its natural resources and location - selling iron ore to both sides in the war while maintaining a stance of neutrality. Swedish workers won a decent health care system, creches and a society with far less inequality than countries like Ireland. But over the last 30 years the tax burden has been shifted onto the backs of the working class, and there has been a continued assault on the welfare state.

Once the system began to enter a crisis of profitability – a crisis which introduced the so-called neoliberal age - the pairing of profits and welfare provision became incompatible. The Swedish ruling class moved to increase profits by pushing more and more of the societal burden on to the backs of workers. Without the post-war boom you cannot recreate the Swedish model or the Attlee Government.

Those kinds of reforms are not compatible with a low-profit capitalist economy. The history of Swedish left government has been a history of containing the revolt of Swedish workers and blocking the path to revolution - that is the path to permanent changes. 

On the 6th of October 2008 Geir H. Haarde, the Prime Minister of Iceland, addressed the people to explain the state of the banks. All three of the country‘s major banks had collapsed and were taken over by the state. From the 11th of October people gathered in front of the Icelandic Parliament every Saturday and held growing meetings, rallies and demonstrations. People called it the ‘kitchenware revolution’ because of the noise the protesters made by banging pots and pans. On the 20th of January 2009, the protests intensified.

People protesting in front of the parliament building were attacked by riot police armed with pepper spray and batons. The protests continued the next day, as government buildings were surrounded by protesters making noise and throwing eggs and other food. On the 22nd of January the police used tear gas against the protests. The protest movement created a political crisis and provoked the calling of new elections.

The Left-Green Movement and the Social Democratic Alliance formed a new government on the 1st of February 2009. The banking crisis had led to the election of an Icelandic left government. The world would look on with interest to see how they dealt with the banking crisis. 

There was immense excitement in Iceland and internationally as Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir became the first lesbian Head of State. The coalition government was not backed by a majority in parliament, but had massive support in the protest movement and among the workers. The left-wing Cabinet consisted of four Left Green ministers and four Social Democratic Alliance ministers.

At first they moved to enact measures that were popular in the protest movement. The government reorganised the Central Bank of Iceland, put a temporary restriction on auctions due to foreclosures, and introduced an ethics code for the government. No evictions and a promised end to corruption? A good start! Taking its cue from the nation-wide protests and lobbying efforts by civil organisations, the new governing parties decided that Iceland’s citizens should be involved in creating a new constitution, and started to debate a Bill on 4th November 2009.

People were even asked to unite in grassroots-based think-tanks that met across the country. They jailed about 20 of the leading bankers - but many of the bankers managed to get short sentences like Sigurdur Einarsson, the former chairman of the board of Kaupthing Bank, who was sentenced to 4 years, but served 1. The Kaupthing collapse cost $83 billion alone. People felt the government were listening to their demands. But the Icelandic ruling class had cleverly contained the popular revolt, and now it was directed along safe channels. 

The next election produced a majority Social Democrat and Green Left Government. The radical left took over the Ministry of Finance. The left government found themselves defending the presence of the International Monetary Fund in Iceland - claiming that the IMF had done deals with the prior governments and that they had to go along with it.

The IMF wanted the government to respect the “Icesave Agreement” (which meant paying back the debts of the banks) and the radical left Minister of Finance tried to persuade the nation that for the sake of the economy they had to accept this agreement. The rich were putting pressure on the government to respond to their interests now. The Icelandic population rejected this in repeated referenda, but the government kept on trying to find ways to honour the agreements made with the banks. Iceland nationalised the banks, but then privatised them again, and most of the creditors sold their stakes to foreign hedge funds.

The economic crisis was still biting ordinary people. Some 80% of households were swamped in housing loan debts. Real incomes dropped. The devaluation policies of the government were a backdoor form of austerity. The government agreed to pay back Dutch and British bankers, and when the people rejected it, they went ahead and did a deal anyway. 

Measured in dollars the fall in income was 42.7% from 2007 to 2013. The government had first tried IMF austerity, but when the people kicked up a fuss they resorted to devaluation of the economy. This created galloping inflation and a collapse in the income of workers. Devaluation was used to drop wages faster than prices, and rip people off, with a loss of over a third of their incomes.

The participation of the radical left in government led to a demoralisation of their supporters, and a return of the right to government in 2013. The parties that had caused the crisis in the first place were voted back in. The culmination of the massive protest movement was the rise of the radical left government - but their focus on saving the capitalist economy saw a drop in the protest level, and the integration of the radical left politicians into the capitalist state. The result was that Iceland’s version of Fianna Fail got back into power.

There was no “Icelandic Revolution.”

Soon mainstream economists were arguing for Iceland to deregulate the economy and let the banks back off the hook. The cycle of protest had begun with the prospect of rebellion by the Icelandic people - the ruling class had allowed the left into government to curb the protests, restore the economy and then discarded the left when the job was done. As long as the rich control the economy and the deep state they can always temporarily retreat from parliament - they know where their real power lies. 

The history of left government shows how left government is contradictory, as it can both raise workers’ confidence, and also at the same time obscure the path ahead. As socialist Chris Harman put it: “Hence the all-important paradox: the advent of a left government will only strengthen the workers’ movement inasmuch as the class, or at least its vanguard, do not have illusions in this government”.

Whenever the workers have put their faith in a left government, they have lost. The path to socialism involves dismantling the state of the wealthy and replacing it with structures that have grown through the development of the movement from below. Every government under capitalism is a coalition with the capitalists - because they control the state machine.

Even a government fully composed of left-wing TDs is still a coalition with the capitalists through the state machinery. Every time the working class movement has aimed at capturing capitalist state power, it has been diverted from its course, or at worst, as in Chile, decapitated.

Only in Russia in 1917 did they successfully develop the counter power of workers’ mass assemblies, the soviets, and use them to replace the state. Reformists will often berate revolutionaries for their “utopianism” - but looking at the history of left governments it’s clear that they are either fools or traitors if they think that we should follow that path time and time again.

The problem is that most workers have illusions in left governments - especially in Ireland - where we’ve never had one. But there’s a difference between relating to illusions in order to undermine them, and just pandering to them. You relate to workers’ illusions so you get a hearing to shatter them. Mirages are not a path to real change. We’ve a duty to tell people when they are chasing nothing but a damaging dream. 

Socialists need to engage with workers’ expectations and current level of class consciousness while at the same time explaining in popular language the stunted nature of democracy under capitalism, and the necessity for a new truly democratic socialist system.

In the past socialists, like the Russian Bolsheviks, have dealt with left governments through the tactic of “external support”. That means we would never run the oppressive state machinery, but we would explain to workers that we are willing to support a left government as long as it acts in workers’ interests - but from the opposition benches.

Remember Lenin proposed this to the Mensheviks? Even in the context of the armed Russian Revolution, with mass soviet assemblies, he was against joining the Mensheviks in government and running the state. Why? Because it would have blinded workers to the task of resolving the “Dual Power” dilemma by seizing power themselves. In the end the Mensheviks refused his offer.

Lenin never ever insinuated he would join their government - he only promised to “support” it. Socialists could support a left government as long as it acted in workers’ interests. Workers would have to be free to mobilise their power to fight off the offensives of the bosses, but also to fight the left government when it began to represent the interests of the rich.

You can see the value of Lenin’s formulations even in 21st Century Ireland - to support a left government, but from the opposition benches. That way, you can say to workers who have illusions in the Sinn Féin leaders:

“Of course we’d always vote for Mary Lou McDonald for Taoiseach and keep out the right! But we socialists don’t think the Irish state is democratic: it’s rotten - it’s completely corrupt - and we want to overturn it and build a real democracy where the people get a say. We’re not in this for mercs and percs - we’re in this for the working class people of Ireland! Maybe you don’t yet agree with all of that, and you want to try a left government. We’ll be the first to fight hard to help you get a left government. We’ll stand with you, but all the while trying to convince you to organise on the streets to go further than this rotten state.”  

The radical left can’t be so afraid of difficult arguments that they sleepwalk into running Irish capitalism as partners of a nationalist party. All you’d be doing is putting a leash around your own neck and handing the other end of it to the likes of Denis O’Brien.

The Irish state was established by a counter revolution, and only revolution can change that. The history of the working class over the last century has seen a long line of parties promise that they’ll run capitalism differently - next time, next time, next time. “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” as Macbeth once said.  

But it never ever works. They don’t run capitalism. Capitalism runs them: from the Social Democrats in Sweden to the Syriza government in Greece. We owe it to all the long-dead generations of workers who saw left governments rise and fall - and to our future generations - to learn the lessons of history. When we take power it will be for real and we will put the leash around the necks of the billionaires.