The Long Retreat, Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left,
Boris Kagarlitsky, Pluto Press 2024
Boris Kagarlitsky is the most well-known dissident socialist in Russia today. He has often been a political prisoner, most recently for opposing the Russian war against Ukraine. Despite repression, he is the author of many books giving his socialist analysis of Russia and world events. Boris looks to the Marxist tradition and has been influenced by Trotsky and Max Weber. He has been associated with various labor and socialist groups in Russia.
Kagarlitsky argues that neoliberalism changed the nature of the working class across the world and has set back the Left. (56)(79) Marxism was an expression of the rise of a more homogeneous industrial working class in the 1800s. Since the early 1900s the industrial portion of the working class has declined as a percentage of the working class as a whole. It has also become more fragmented with different identities and interests. (143) This leads Boris to oppose identity politics which he fears will divide the population and make it more difficult to fight capitalism. (153)
He also believes that to survive, capitalism must bring in elements of socialism. Neoliberalism has destabilized capitalism (65) and this too creates the need for aspects of socialism just as a matter of meeting social needs and survival. He has an interesting critique of Universal Basic Income as an expression of neoliberalism. He says it reinforces commodification. (83–84) For the author, the basis of socialism is social ownership of the economy and de-commodification. He argues that the socialist transformation,
“will be successful precisely to the degree to which they solve not only the tasks of constructing a new society, but also the tasks of preserving and stabilizing society as such.” (36)
Reform or Revolution?
These are contradictory tasks. Revolution seeks to overthrow the old order while reform seeks to shore it up. Kagarlitsky seems to want to do both at once which lends his analysis to reformism. Revolutionaries seek to destroy the old order while defending the needs of the working class in the process. They are opposed to “stabilizing society as such”. If the author is taking the revolutionary position, he does not make that clear.
Kagarlitsky affirms his flirtation with reformism by misinterpreting Rosa Luxemburg. He says that Luxemburg was for “transforming the state into an instrument for asserting the will of the majority.. so that the state machine itself was being transformed into an arena of struggle between various class forces.”(187)
In fact, Luxemburg sharply differentiated reform and revolution in Reform or Revolution and in her practice. She did not believe the capitalist state could assert the will of the majority. Instead, it would have to be smashed as Lenin called for in State and Revolution.
The author also sees worker’s coops as part of the solution and favors markets under socialism. (206) (216)
This book presents an interesting analysis of the Left internationally. The author discusses the coming together of Western capitalism and the system in the Eastern bloc. (55) He sees the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a way to prevent social revolution. (118) He notes that war creates “the need for a new organization of the economy” (126).Kagarlitsky also makes the controversial claim that neo-liberalism makes Fascism less likely.(133)
Class Reductionism
He admires and looks to Lenin but disagrees with some of the fundamentals of Leninism for the current period. He has no clear strategy for building a socialist movement that can overthrow capitalism but does make many suggestions mainly of a negative character while the positive ones are quite vague.
The author ends up in the camp of class reductionism. (113) (163) He calls for a heavy prioritization of the most crucial demands that affect the most people rather than the demands of the specially oppressed. He acknowledges the existence of oppression but fears that organizing against it as a central task will take energy away from class-wide or population-wide demands. Though he looks to Lenin as a political leader and tactician he implicitly disagrees with Lenin’s strategy in What Is To Be Done:
“Working-class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence and abuse no matter what class is affected — -…”
Kagarlitsky’s rejection of the Leninist strategy of fighting oppression is as wrong today as it would have been in Lenin’s time. Lenin understood that the only way to overcome divisions in the working class is for the less oppressed to fight for the more oppressed. Specially oppressed groups can only see the need to unite with the whole working-class movement if that movement also fights for the demands of the specially oppressed. Less oppressed workers can never fully break with capitalist ideology if they continue to support capitalist oppression of the most oppressed.
The Working-Class ?
The author rejects this strategy in part because he does not see the working class as the necessary agent of social revolution. This book barely mentions the working-class or even class division. He looks for an illusive new agency of transformation but never finds it.
Because he doesn’t see the working class as the agent of socialist revolution, Kagarlitsky differs from Lenin on the need for a revolutionary party. For Lenin, the working class was divided ideologically. In order to convince the working class to take power and overthrow capitalism, the most revolutionary workers had to unite in an organization. This party would intervene in struggles to influence the rest of the class. Kagarlitsky sees this formulation as outmoded and inherently elitist. (57) (137) He does not give another alternative.
He doesn’t define the sector that can lead a socialist transformation nor does he define what type of organization is needed for that transformation.
Support the Freedom Convoy?
The author’s other main argument is that the Left must relate to expressions of discontent that appear to be expressed in right wing forms. He specifically focuses on the Freedom Convoy in Canada which opposed compulsory vaccination against Covid. This movement was funded by and expressed nationalist rightwing politics. He justifies this by quoting Lenin that social change is messy:
To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie with all its prejudices, without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppression by the landowners, the church, and the monarchy, against national oppression, etc. — to imagine all this is to repudiate social revolution. So one army lines up in one place and says, ‘We are for socialism’, and another, somewhere else and says, ‘We are for imperialism’, and that will be a social revolution! Only those who hold such a ridiculously pedantic view could vilify the Irish rebellion by calling it a ‘putsch’.
Whoever expects a ‘pure’ social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip-service to revolution without understanding what revolution is
Kagarlitsky doesn’t seem to differentiate between generally progressive movements that may also express reactionary ideas and those that are fundamentally reactionary such as the Freedom Convoy.
Kagarlitsky is thus inconsistent but in a conservative direction. He downplays Black Nationalism, Feminism, pro-Trans movements etc. as expressions of identity politics which divide people. The author is even very skeptical of the movement for clean energy and against the climate crisis. (71) He thinks that the Left should stay away from these divisive issues but he wants the Left to relate to other divisive issues that are not progressive in their fundamental trajectory.
The Russian Revolution
The author’s overall perspective is that successful world socialist revolution is necessary but achieving it will take several tries. He sees the Russian Revolution of 1917 as one of those tries, even though it was ultimately bureaucratized. He also believes that capitalism is compelled to adopt aspects of socialism in order to maintain itself.
Following somewhat from Trotsky, Kagarlitsky does not draw a sharp distinction between “really existing socialism” and the socialism/communism that Marx promoted. The author does not believe that the Russian Revolution was overthrown by a counter-revolution led by Stalin which resulted in state capitalism still using socialist phrases. In fact, he believes that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was a dictatorship of the Bolshevik Party rather than a workers’ democracy. (18) He sees a continuity between Lenin and Stalin rather than a fundamental break. He sees bureaucratization as inevitable. (29)(31)
Kagarlitsky’s proposals to the Left come from a pessimistic assessment.:
“the left movement has ended up at the lowest point in its entire history. If is not true on the organizational plane then it is certainly the case at the ideological and moral level.”( Xii. )
He contradicts himself on the same page when he says “public dissatisfaction with capitalism around the planet reached an unprecedented scale.”
In fact, the dissatisfaction with capitalism has resulted in an upsurge in interest in socialism. The problem is that socialist organization lags behind that interest.
This book presents interesting insights but has no clear strategy for socialist transformation and comes down on the wrong side of some key questions for Marxists.
