The RCIT analysis of the pro-Thaksin
government overthrown by the Thai military invests bourgeois democracy with real democracy it never had
and this is methodologically of one piece with their previous errors.
The RCIT (Revolutionary Communist
Internationalist Tendency) never tires of displaying their semi-Cliffite
understanding of the actual democratic content of bourgeois
parliamentary democracy. Everywhere they invest elected governments with
a democratic legitimacy. It is no accident that they have never been
able to bring themselves to criticize the Workers Power (L5I) position
of support for Yeltsin in 1991. In Yeltsin they saw the promise of
greater democratic rights and opportunities for self organization of the
working class, completely misunderstanding the true obtaining situation
as a contest between two capitalist restorationist forces for the
leadership of the counter-revolution against all survivals of the
October revolution.
More recently we have seen the RCIT
invest the Mursi government of Egypt with a similar democratic
legitimacy based on a popular vote. That this election was a set up and
that the real power was the deep state that has ruled Egypt at all times
since 1952 makes no impression on our Viennese semi-Cliffites. The
reassertion of direct control by the Egyptian Army high command (SCAF)
was for the RCIT a military coup of the character of the Greek Colonels
of 1967 or the Pinochet coup of 1973. The RCIT initially called for a
Untied Front with the Muslim Brotherhood in defense of the Mursi
government. Shortening their jib after this gaffe, they still continued
to call for the restoration of the Mursi government claiming it was
democratically elected and called for a united front to accomplish this
restoration, and failing that called for a constituent assembly to
assemble democratic forces to fight the “coup.”
The May 20th coup by the
commanders of the Thai army is indeed a military coup by any classical
criteria. Nevertheless, we are not champions of the kind of “democratic
elections” that bring pro-Thaksin Pheu Thai party politicians to power,
anymore than elections that lead to Democratic Party governments. It
is not permissible for socialists to call upon the workers to shed
their own blood for the defense or the restoration of any of these
“democratically elected” governments! You cannot pass
off any such call as a Leninist United Front tactic. This has nothing to
do with Lenin and everything to do with Menshevism, Kautskyism and even
Stalinism. We reject the agency of alien class forces and institutions
as the necessary precondition for entry of the masses onto the
revolutionary road.
It is non-dialectical and it is schematic
in the extreme to keep repeating this idea that the workers movement
must pass through a stage of bourgeois parlimentarism when concrete
conditions show that the bourgeoisie has no especial confidence in or
patience for bourgeois parlimentarism. Not only will they not fight for
it themselves, but in the general world crisis of capitalism they find
“democracy” unnecessarily expensive and dispense with it at their
earliest opportunity. Trotsky in 1938 thought bourgeois democracy might prove too expensive even for the bourgeoisie of the U.S.A.
In the concrete circumstance of the masses own discontent with the
Thaksin dynasty to call for the restoration of the status-quo ante is to
pronounce a retreat in a revolutionary advance.
To make this criticism does not mean we
reject correct slogans which are easy enough to raise. In this case
where a real military coup d’état has taken place it is correct to
organize a revolutionary constituent assembly for the defense and
extension of real democratic rights and based in the real organizations
of the working class and the peasant masses.
The coup shows that bourgeois democracy
demobilizes the workers while the ruling class factions do deals over
their heads. The interests of workers are to fight for workers democracy
by mobilizing for a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly (RCA) and
Workers and Peasant Government.
Still we wonder why the RCIT raises a
special slogan for the establishment of a republic? What would the class
character of such a republic be? And what does the establishment of a
republic have to do with the permanent revolution the world has seen
many dictatorships that have been republics. The whole history of the
west is littered with them. Connelly’s program for a workers republic in
Ireland and the Socialist Republics of the USSR were qualitatively
different than any republic established by capitalists. The five
republics of French history have solved none of the problems of
humankind’s future existence. So this is not an idle question for us. We
wonder while reading the RCIT’s program how many stages the workers
must endure before they can establish their own state.
In place of this call for an abstract
republic we suggest that what is needed right now are military blocs
with anti-coup d’état forces to defeat the coup. We say this with the
understanding that it is only the socialist revolution that will
suppress the power not only of the army command but of those who
organized the coup and for whom the army works at all times. Until
bourgeois power is suppressed by socialist revolution another military
coup is always possible as demonstrated in the modern history of
Thailand. What are required above all are the organization of worker and
peasant councils and militia and a convening of their delegates in a
Revolutionary Constituent Assembly and an indefinite general strike to
pull the economic rug out from under the military coup.
- Defeat the reactionary coup d’état! Prepare for mass demonstrations and an indefinite general strike!
- Organize workers and peasants councils.
- Form up soldiers councils elect your own officers and abolish the authority of the army command and the constitutional court!
- For a Revolutionary Constitutional Assembly controlled by armed, mass organizations of the workers and peasants!
- Repudiate the reactionary constitution! Publish all secret treaties. The Thaksin government has a worldwide reputation for corruption; open the government’s books.
- For the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a workers’ and peasants’ republic!
- Expropriate big business and nationalize the banks! Place large industrial and service enterprises under workers’ control! Nationalize the media under workers’ control!
- Expropriate the big landowners and distribute the land to the poor peasants!
- Unconditional support for the right of national self-determination for the Muslim people of Patani in the south of Thailand
- For a Workers’ and Peasants’ Government!
- For a Federation of Socialist Republics in South-East Asia!
- For a World Party of Socialism!
Statement of the LCC 052214
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