Questions of Perspective¶
Core Argument¶
Questions of Perspective
This chapter confronts the relationship between objective economic crisis and subjective revolutionary consciousness in Britain. The author establishes that the economic and social premises for revolution are present: declining productive forces, permanent unemployment, and falling class incomes. Yet a revolutionary situation is defined politically, requiring a psychological break across all three classes. The proletariat must seek insurrection rather than solutions within the old order; the middle class must abandon traditional parties and turn towards revolutionary change; the ruling class must lose confidence in itself and fragment. These shifts have not occurred. The bridge from economic premises to psychological results remains uncrossed. Policy must therefore be based on the facts of today, not tomorrow, though such changes are expected within one to three years.
The chapter then addresses the uneven development of revolutionary conditions. The ripening of political conditions does not guarantee simultaneous maturation of all elements; the revolutionary party of the proletariat is typically the most retarded element. A genuinely revolutionary situation could emerge without an adequate Communist Party, as in Germany in 1923, but Britain is not in such a situation today. This retardation is not inevitable; correct Party policy can ensure growth matches the decomposition of bourgeois parties.
A central polemic emerges against the claim that Britain stands between democracy and fascism. The author argues that serious fascism follows a decisive bourgeois victory over the working class, and Britain’s great struggles lie ahead. The immediate danger is not fascism but the reformist party. The next political phase will likely be a Liberal-Labour reformist era—a British Kerensky phase—more dangerous than the distant fascist threat. The weakness of Russia’s Kerensky phase resulted from Bolshevik strength; Spain’s current Kerenskiade is stronger due to Communist weakness. The Kerensky phase uses reformist rhetoric and limited reforms while repressing the working-class left, serving the same aim as fascism. The Communist Party’s task is to fight to win the working class, thereby eliminating or reducing this reformist period.