Workers' Liberty

By Max Shachtman

The 1917 revolution was one of the greatest democratic moments in history.

Appendices to the Workers' Liberty pamphlet, with texts by James P Cannon, Max Shachtman, V I Lenin, and Hal Draper on socialism, democracy, and the Russian Revolution of 1917; and articles by John Bl

Debate between then Labour Party leader Michael Foot, and John O'Mahony, in 1982 on socialism and democracy, with a 1994 introduction.

By James P Cannon. This is an extract from Cannon's reply to a criticism of his court evidence in 1941.

Comrade Munis [1] is dissatisfied with our assertions at the trial that “we submit to the majority”.

By James P Cannon, from Socialism on Trial, 1941. This is an extract from Cannon's evidence in the court where, during World War 2, he and other American Trotskyists and trade unionists were put on trial and jailed for hindering the US war effort.

By John O'Mahony
(Socialist Organiser, 5 January 1989)

By John Bloxam and John O'Mahony

"After the rising of the 17th of June [the East Berlin workers uprising of 1953] the Secretary of the Writers Union had leaflets handed out in the Stalinallee in which it can be read that the people had forfeited the confidence of the government, and could only win it back by redoubled efforts. Would it not be simpler if the government dissolved the people and elected another?"

Lenin called for the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as a great expansion of democracy.

Note, March 2007:
Michael Foot, then leader of the Labour Party, wrote the articles reproduced here on democracy, revolution, socialism, and Stalinism in the Observer. John O'Mahony wrote the reply in Socialist Organiser.

Why parliament? Can those old arthritic limbs still move as the nation needs?

Part 1.
Off and on during these past two and a half years since Labour's electoral defeat of May 1979, Goldsmith's famous lines have floated incongruously through my mind:

Chapter 4: Superstition or struggle?

The workers against Stalinism

The search for the original sin of Bolshevism has exercised tired and demoralised socialists for at least 50 years. Like characters in an ancient Greek drama, they seek the explanation for the Stalinist plague in some violated taboo.

Chapter 3: The scarecrow of Stalinism

Can the tiger be skinned claw by claw?

In part 2 of his written oration on parliamentary democracy and those whom he denounces as its enemies (Observer, January 17 1982), Michael Foot attempts to answer the challenge he had posed to himself in part one.

Chapter 2: The appeal to history

Foot's safe good causes

Foot invokes the saints of British radicalism (even the suffragettes - who were, technically, small-scale terrorists and mostly not at all radical except on votes for women). He justifies their extraparliamentary actions and claims their tradition for himself.

Chapter 1: Is direct action against an elected capitalist government undemocratic?

Marxists are democrats

The cry "For Parliamentary Democracy: the Trotskyists are the enemy of democracy" is - perhaps predictably - the political standard under which Labour's right and soft left are trying to rally forces for a counter-offensive against the serious left.