Ultra Leftism is the essence of the fractures in the Socialist Left today
Today, nowhere is the tendency towards Ultra-Leftism more amply on display than in the treatment of China and Russia, as these states navigate through the post-Soviet era. The problem however does not only lie in the extremist, black-or-white mischaracterization of China and Russia as imperialist states by some fellow Socialists.
We also note the clamoring for one-size-fits-all formulas that call for, among other things, an abstention from bourgeois parliaments and Left fronts. Some organizations have formulated general theories for a range of other topics that are based on their narrow local experiences, which they want organizations from other countries to also blindly copy.
Therefore, it is important to recognize that Ultra Leftism is an attitude towards political issues in general. That is, it is a general tendency and not just some isolated occurrence of extreme positions on some specific international topics.
The simple truth, no matter how frequently or loudly slogans and formulas are featured in literature or speeches, is that Marxist-Leninists in each country must pursue their own course instead of copying the experience of others. They must base their practical approach from the standpoint of the unique needs of their own movement, deriving it from a comprehensive assessment of the political economy, historical context, the specific characteristics of classes in the country, the prevailing mood around national matters, and particularly, after assessing the strength of the revolutionary forces relative to the strength of their class opponents today.
That applies to decisions on what to do and when for all tactics, including the slogans to adopt, the necessary alliances that must be made, the attitude to adopt towards social or class groupings at a specific point in time, and what the strategy must be to progress to Socialism. This is quite simply the application of materialist principles in practice. It is as Karl Marx said, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.”
Ultra-Leftism leads to advocating political strategy and tactics that derive instead from idealist utopias and unchangeable formulas. This manifests in the shape of total inflexibility on political action and Socialist construction. Only a straight-line, rapid advance constitutes success for Ultra-Leftists, who abhor compromise and retreats. The inviolability of general principles and maximal demands are put above practical solutions. Yet the history of revolution has proven that it does not proceed in a linear direction, it can advance or retreat which requires the continuous adaptation of strategy, principles, and slogans.
The end-result of dogmatism within the Socialist movement is that it leads to Right-wing outcomes, that the bourgeoisie finds convenient, that may retard the revolution, or encourage revolutionaries to make dangerous mistakes. Inevitably, this tendency also transforms into sectarianism in the Socialist movement. Far from furthering a working-class alternative to capitalism, this attitude towards political questions only plays into the hands of the bourgeoisie and contributes to the isolation of Socialists. In addition, Ultra-Leftism was assuredly one of the leading factors that splintered the Communist movement in the previous century. We must avoid repeating the same mistakes today.
Therefore, while many hard, left-sounding or idealistic principles may be presented by some Socialists, there is but one rule above all others. And that is, “the success of the revolution is the highest law”, as Georgi Plekhanov once said. This means that tactics and strategy for progressing to Socialism have to be malleable, depending on the circumstances of the time, without being impeded by dogmatic doctrine.
The great leaders who brought revolution to Russia and China would not have been successful had they not resisted Ultra-Leftism on the key questions of their day. Those critical questions at that time included, among others, when to participate in parliaments and when not to, when to declare truce against class enemies in war, the place of trade unions in a revolutionary state, whether an intermediate state-capitalist stage was necessary for transitioning to Socialism, whether Socialism could be built in one country in the absence of a worldwide revolution in industrialized countries, the place of the peasants in struggle, and indeed even the correct strategy in a revolutionary war of the people. In each of these cases, there was always an extreme view based on rigid dogmatism that amplified the risk of dashing both revolutionaries and the movements on the rocks. We are in the same boat today.
The present generation of Socialists are thus obligated to resist Ultra-Leftist critiques of China and Russia, and to oppose this tendency in all other topics that it permeates into. The consequences of not doing so are severe. We especially urge against taking an economic reductionist approach in assessing their historical development. It is more appropriate to objectively evaluate the path they have followed without the blanket denunciations that are typical in the manner of Ultra-Leftism. In this contribution, we examine these core issues to support our critique of this tendency.
Against an economic reductionist approach to analyzing imperialism
A fundamental shortcoming that we see from Ultra-Leftist critical assessments of China and Russia, that are being presented today as materialist analyses utilizing Lenin’s work on imperialism, is the absence of historical and political context. This analytical gap contributes to the mischaracterization of Russia and China as imperialist belligerents by some organizations in the Socialist community. Detaching economic data from their historical-political context is a classic mistake within the Marxist intellectual sphere.
Marxism is in fact not an economic reductionist philosophy. Lenin reinforced this by remarking in the Preface of his work on imperialism that he was not able to deal with the non-economic aspects of imperialism however much they deserved to be dealt with. He made it clear that his work was confined, we quote, “strictly to an exclusively theoretical, specifically economic analysis of facts” (Lenin, Preface, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism).
It is therefore disingenuous to define a country as imperialist without historical-political context, and more so, to do that by misunderstanding the economic big picture. Moreover, even when considering the economics, imperialism is not something that becomes the state of affairs for a country after Day 1 of it exporting a bit of capital. It is a historical process that is long and complex.
Here is an example that illustrates the issue of looking at strictly economic data when categorizing a country as imperialist, or suggesting it is on track to becoming imperialist. Take the case of Russia during the New Economic Policy period. This was a state-capitalist period when capitalism was allowed in and state controls were reversed. To someone not observant of the historical-political facts, particularly, the fact that behind this capitalist development sat a revolutionary government of the workers and peasants, it would appear that Russia was a capitalist state with the potential to become an imperialist one. However, this would be a false judgement, since after the revolution, it was the political factor that was decisive in the transformation of Russia into a Socialist state, and the capitalist phase was just a piece of the transition strategy.
That is why it is extremely important as this example illustrates, to assess the political character of a state, and the historical-materialist background when making a judgement on whether a country is imperialist. We cannot rest on economic data alone, as some in the Socialist community are doing. A wholistic view must be taken on this issue.
Lenin’s analysis was conducted in a historical context when Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and the United States were colonial empires, with Russia being a weak-link. In the present day these countries, aside from Russia, have emerged from the post-colonial era not through restructuring brought about by revolutions, but through iteration of their imperialism. All other aspects of their imperialism remain in place minus the colonies, that is, the domination of exploitable countries through perpetual wars, financial leverage, resource monopolization, super-exploitation of labor, and proxy control over their governments through bribery and sheer intimidation.
The background of Russia and China today is starkly different. Both countries in contrast to the NATO-aligned capitalist group are products of their Socialist revolutions from the 20th Century and continue to carry their effects. Those who overlook this important detail while claiming to adhere to Lenin’s analysis on imperialism are in fact taking a liberty with his theory that we are not obliged to accept. That is because instead of looking at their social, political and economic set up as part of a historical process, that is “stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges” (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program), the detractors merely use a snapshot in time of these societies to make their judgement, and thus miss the forest for the trees. Therefore, the distinctive revolutionary background from which both Russia and China emerge today carries a great deal of weight in how we treat these two countries. Otherwise, the result is simplification, even if the detractor’s critique wears a cloak of complexity.
Simplification under pretext of thoroughness on the question of Russia
As we contended in the preceding section, it may be the wish of detractors to convey a thorough and complex analysis when they label Russia as an imperialist belligerent. The issue however is that this conclusion is derived not by a thorough analysis but through simplification by ignoring important details.
It is not an incidental or minor detail that the basis of the hostility of other world powers towards Russia is that it did not let the Shock Therapy privatizations go all the way so that the country could be divided up. Far from letting capitalism run loose, Russia curtailed it and reinstated many controls that allowed it to recover some semblance of economic vitality. The facts around this cannot be disputed. Russia today retains a state-capitalist economy with roughly a third of all GDP being produced by the state sector.
Moreover, after the Soviet collapse, Russia finds itself in a world that has been at the complete mercy of the capitalist NATO forces. It is surrounded on its left flank by hostile states that were once a brotherly union of Socialist states. Given this, the reaction of Russia with respect to the near-certainty of yet another NATO base being installed next to its borders in Ukraine can be understood well enough as a defensive, if pre-emptive measure. The posture of Russia has otherwise been peaceful, except when facing direct threats right on its borders. This relatively peaceful posture is wholly inconsistent with the type of behavior we have seen typically from the NATO-aligned imperialist states in preceding decades.
This is recognized and appreciated by most developing countries, from Latin America, to Asia, Africa and the Middle East. As an example, after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the President of Cuba and First Secretary of the venerated Communist Party of Cuba, Comrade Miguel Díaz-Canel expressed Cuba’s solidarity with Russia as part of a personal visit to their Duma. Therefore, the stance of anti-imperialists who similarly express solidarity with Russia in its struggle against the NATO-aligned countries lines up well with that of the Communist Party of Cuba. We hope that detractors from the Socialist Left will take a moment to reflect on the significance of this fact.
With that said, if we turn to Russia’s economics, which are a key point of contention with the detractors, who assert that instead of the historical context, it is the “burgeoning capitalism” in Russia that best explains its competition with the traditional capitalist powers, we do not see a clear-cut case here that lines up with the critical theories of those opposed to it from the Socialist community.
For instance, one of the key characteristics outlined in Lenin’s economic review of imperialism was finance capital. However, in Russia, banking is state-controlled. Lenin’s analysis on the contrary discusses financial oligopolies that are in the private sector. That should bring some pause to those who are exclusively focused on the economics.
In fact, if there are any doubts as to who actually controls finance capital, look no further than the incident of Russia’s expulsion from the SWIFT system, the vastness of the economic sanctions imposed upon the country, and the $600 billion of Russian financial assets that have been confiscated with the flick of a finger. Not understanding who controls the world financial system is a gross analytical error on the part of detractors because financial capital is a key economic feature of imperialism.
If one considers the issue of capital exports, we argue that even here, Russia’s role is relatively very minor. The World Bank’s data puts the average capital per year exported by Russia at a mere $25 billion per year between 1992 and 2021. Compare that to the collective Russia is pitted against: a gargantuan $583 billion a year with Britain, France, Germany, Japan and the United States taken together. Thus, Russia exports a mere 4% of the capital versus the states that detractors allege it is having an imperialist war with for the division of markets. Russia’s entire economy is also a mere 4.6% the size of the collective, and its GDP per Capita is less than a quarter that of any single country described above.
This data does not support the view of a state with overgrown monopoly capitalism that is waging an imperialist war. What it does demonstrate is where imperialism really sits, and that would be the collection of states that do indeed control the world financial system as well as dwarf Russia’s output. The detractors argue that this merely demonstrates Russia’s position at the bottom of an “imperialist pyramid”, but the entirety of facts within the historical context we have presented thus far do not lead us to such a conclusion. And especially so since the political policy that derives from such conclusions is quite convenient for the true great capitalist powers, as we have discussed in the first section of this contribution.
None of this is to overlook the rapacious capitalism in Russia that is plundering what was once the property of the Russian public. But it is important not to get carried away and draw bigger conclusions than the facts themselves suggest.
China’s path to acquiring the technological pre-requisites for Socialist construction
We come now to another highly controversial subject, which is the accusation by Socialists with Ultra-Leftist positions that China has transitioned into an imperialist country. We find this to be a problematic assessment that Socialists must push back against. One of their common criticisms is that China’s Communist Party has allowed capitalist relations to dominate both the base and political superstructure. We deem these views to be incorrect for the same fundamental reasons we have established at the beginning of this paper.
On numerous occasions, Lenin remarked that the practical tasks of building a Socialist society are orders of magnitude more difficult than the preceding period when the proletariat and peasants are in the process of winning power, when it is a time more suited to revolutionary slogans and phrases, or to put it less flatteringly, revolutionary-sounding phrases. But if revolutionary parties are lucky enough to win power and maintain their hold on it, they quickly find that their many idealistic dreams are shattered on the rocks of reality. That is the point when the words concessions and compromise enter their vocabulary.
The reason is that by virtue of circumstances outside of their control, for a country that is underdeveloped and backwards, acquiring the material and technical means for the construction of Socialism is a herculean task. It is impossible to independently achieve without compromises with the domestic and foreign bourgeoisie. There are thus, no “pure revolutions.” Moreover, a path towards Socialism that does not include a phased approach, particularly a state-capitalist phase, is a fantasy.
The experience revolutionary Russia went through that necessitated the New Economic Policy demonstrates this well. It is heavily implied by Lenin that many attempts were made to secure large loans from bourgeois countries for the development of heavy industry, but that they received none (Lenin, Fourth Congress of the International). It is also clear that they sought technical expertise from the bourgeoisie of the advanced countries like Germany and the United States for the creation of factories and machinery. Moreover, even mixed ownership companies were created where part of the capital belonged to domestic and foreign capitalists. All of this was to encourage economic activity that otherwise would not have been possible. These compromises among many were necessary for the survival of Russia’s revolutionary state and economy during a delicate time. The eventual path Russia was forced to choose to build heavy industry, in the absence of loans which it would have preferred to receive instead, was to subsidize heavy industry from the sale of agricultural proceeds. This was not an ideal scenario, but nevertheless, forced circumstances dictated that this was the path Russia was to follow.
Arguably, the circumstances China faced may have been even more severe. Whether it was famines, floods, a long civil war, having a huge and poor population several times bigger than Russia’s or having an economy even more skewed towards peasant agriculture than Russia, the challenges were already gigantic. Finally, perhaps the decisive factor in the path China chose may have been its unjust alienation by Khruschev’s heavy handedness, that resulted in starving China of the loans it needed for building its industry, which is precisely what Lenin states is the critical factor for the construction of heavy industry in backwards countries. We are therefore guarded against the mocking of the methods by which China has arrived at the present juncture, which is as we have repeatedly argued, not under circumstances of its own making but by circumstances transmitted from the past. The solutions the Chinese were to produce then were bound to be unique and require many compromises, given their different circumstances.
There are some who groan that China’s state-capitalist phase has gone on for far too long, because they are comparing it to the length of time it was established in the USSR. There is however no law or formula in Marxism that dictates the length of time state-capitalism needs to be in force until a country is ready to proceed towards abolition of private property altogether. This goes back to our initial comments on Ultra-Leftist dogmatism, which is the habit of judging something as good or bad based on an idealistic formula or some admired examples from the past.
In the early 1990s, which was the era that Russian Socialism was defeated and demoralization was widespread, China may well never have had any other option but to pursue pro-business reforms and opening up to allow inflows of capital. By maintaining political supremacy however, the Communist Party of China has ensured that capital flows in a controlled and directed way to advance national ambitions, even when it is private capital at work. With such a strategy, the Chinese Communist Party has miraculously provided the conditions not only for the country to acquire the technical expertise to stand up on their own as giants of innovation and development, but also maintained an iron grip on their own bourgeoisie, so that the possibility of a color revolution is entirely remote.
Naturally, reform and opening up was never going to be a utopia, it would be fraught with issues of corruption, bourgeois excesses and their emergence as a political threat, and the rise of bourgeois ideology or fascination with their lifestyles. Moreover, China has become the greatest threat to the US-NATO allied countries, as defined in their own words, and is swiftly and surely being sized up for war. Once again, just as with Russia, it is one country pitted against a whole group of advanced countries. We have high confidence however, that China will stand tall against each of these threats.
This political-historical perspective that describes the motion of Chinese society and classes that is generating the material basis for a Socialist society does not seem to be of any consequence to those who make Ultra-Leftist critiques of China. Such detractors are only concerned with an economic snapshot in a point in time.
Regarding the economic data, we caution that it is so vast that it would be presumptuous for a Socialist organization no matter their level of prestige in the international movement to claim that they fully understand the economy of China based on a review of just a few patches of its data. Nevertheless, we submit a few arguments for consideration to challenge the narrative that depends on the economics to conclude that China is an imperialist power.
For instance, we believe that a common criticism that is derived from a rule of thumb about the Chinese economy, particularly, that 60-70% of Chinese GDP (or the economy) is attributed to the private sector whereas only 30-40% is attributed to the state-sector, is actually based on a misunderstanding of what it represents. Many cite this rule-of-thumb as evidence that capitalist relations dominate in China. What is being overlooked in regards to this figure particularly is that this share of the private sector is inclusive of micro, small and medium enterprises, which are in fact the dominant form of enterprise in China by an overwhelming margin. According to some Chinese reports, 98.5% of all enterprises in China are micro or small enterprises, which would imply that most workers work for such small enterprises. For those not familiar with these terms, an example of a micro enterprise is a fruit vendor in an open market who might operate on a cart with the help of a beast of burden. In other words, it is not the bourgeoisie this figure for the private sector describes, but the laboring masses. It is these segments the Chinese Communist Party refers to in its congress document for delivering measures for relief and improvement.
We observe on the contrary that the strategic, commanding heights of the economy continue to be in state hands. Moreover, it is these strategic state-owned firms that lead the way in the development projects being undertaken abroad. We also note that banking and finance remain in state hands, and that government control over lending is in fact among the levers by which the state exerts control over the private sector. All urban land in China is in fact owned by the state, and all rural and suburban land is owned by rural collectives.
Surprisingly, we have also seen some Ultra-Leftist critiques that take a negative view of China’s “hunger for resources and fuel” to power its development. It is unclear how the authors of such assessments believe growth can be fueled today, but it seems they regard trade and transactions in general to be problematic if they are not with other Socialist countries. Needless to say, this is a recipe for failure for any country no matter their mode of production.
We can continue to endlessly review economic data; however, our impression is that the critiques of China’s economic development that purport to use Lenin’s framework are in fact expanding the definition of imperialism to accommodate their dogmatic prejudices.
Conclusion
In summary, in our view, China and Russia are in fact more closely aligned with the causes that Socialists hold dear, that includes their support for Cuba and Palestine. Their track record has been to seek and promote peace, development and trade, which are being obstructed not by them but by the belligerent Western imperialist states. Their political economies and revolutionary heritage also distinguish them considerably. We must accordingly differentiate them from the imperialist states and not equate them with each other.
China and Russia are the only viable counterweight to the US-NATO alliance available to us today. It would thus be our folly to allow Ultra-Leftist attitudes to permeate into our intellectual and political space that engender needless conflict instead of solidarity. Anti-imperialism and the struggle for Socialism require that we combine our efforts to push back against this damaging tendency.
