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Taxing Nudity: Discriminatory Taxes, Secondary Effects, and Tiers of Scrutiny—part 2 in a series

Serial-blogging my recent article in the Journal of Free Speech Law

SASHA VOLOKH | 

REASON MAGAZINE

10.16.2023 8

Previous, I blogged the abstract and introduction of my new article, Taxing Nudity: Discriminatory Taxes, Secondary Effects, and Tiers of Scrutiny, which has just been published in the Journal of Free Speech Law. It's based on my work with the Georgia Association of Club Executives v. Riley case, where we challenged a Georgia tax on adult entertainment establishments on First Amendment/free speech grounds.

In this post, I'll give you Part I, "Erotic-Expression Taxes vs. Nudity Taxes", which canvasses the different kinds of taxes in different states. (The article obviously has a lot of footnotes — go to the article itself if you want to see those.)

* * *

I. Erotic-Expression Taxes vs. Nudity Taxes

A. Erotic-Expression Taxes

Several states have adopted taxes targeting adult entertainment businesses. In Georgia, for instance, the Safe Harbor/Rachel's Law Act imposes a tax, equal to $5000 or 1% of gross revenue, whichever is greater, on every "adult entertainment establishment." The covered entities include, among other categories:

any place of business or commercial establishment where alcoholic beverages of any kind are sold, possessed, or consumed wherein . . . [t]he entertainment or activity therein consists of nude or substantially nude persons dancing with or without music or engaged in movements of a sexual nature or movements simulating sexual intercourse, oral copulation, sodomy, or masturbation.

The money collected goes into the Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Children Fund, the purpose of which is to provide (among other things) "care, rehabilitative services, residential housing, health services, and social services, including establishing safe houses, to sexually exploited children."

Note a few features of this statute, which are found in some other states' statutes as well. The set of covered businesses is defined in some way that includes nudity (or substantial nudity). The set of covered businesses is further limited to those that serve or allow the consumption of alcohol. And the money collected is to be used to fund (among other things) programs related to sex crimes.

Here are a few other examples:In Texas, the Sexually Oriented Business Fee Act imposes a $5 per-customer fee on each "sexually oriented business"—an entity defined as "a nightclub, bar, restaurant, or similar commercial enterprise that: (A) provides for an audience . . . live nude entertainment or live nude performances; and (B) authorizes on-premises consumption of alcoholic beverages." "The first $25 million collected is to be credited to the sexual assault program fund, and the balance is to be used to provide health benefits coverage premium payment assistance to low-income persons." (This law was upheld by the Texas Supreme Court.)
Between 2018 and 2021, Tennessee imposed a tax on every "[a]dult performance business," defined as "an adult cabaret or other adult-oriented establishment" that "[p]rovides live nude entertainment or live nude performances" and "[p]ermits the consumption of" alcohol. For the terms "adult cabaret" and "adult-oriented establishment," the statute incorporated definitions from two other sections: "adult-oriented establishment" included places with "shows . . . [or] performances that contain acts or depictions of specified sexual activities," and "adult cabaret" included places with "entertainment of an erotic nature." The tax was equal to $2 per customer; the revenues went into the general fund, but, according to the statute, the intent of the legislature was that an equal amount be "allocated to programs for victims of sex trafficking."

I'll refer to such taxes by the general label of "erotic-expression taxes." The ones listed above target not just nudity, and not just eroticism, but particular performative expression—whether referred to generally as "entertainment" or more specifically as "dancing," and possibly also incorporating particular erotic content, for instance "specified sexual activities" or "movements of a sexual nature."

Such statutes require analysis under the First Amendment: nude dancing communicates an erotic message, and is thus expressive conduct. Indeed, when a Supreme Court plurality in Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc. upheld a requirement that dancers wear pasties and G-strings, it didn't rely on any theory that nude dancing was non-communicative. Rather, it wrote that such a requirement "does not deprive the dance of whatever erotic message it conveys; it simply makes the message slightly less graphic."

One may argue that nude dancing and similar activities are non-expressive or valueless and are therefore not a matter for the First Amendment, but that view would require a major change in doctrine. That these activities have been characterized as being "within the outer perimeters of the First Amendment," or "within the outer ambit of the First Amendment's protection," is irrelevant: whether outer or inner, the First Amendment still applies. In fact, as I argue below, these taxes not only require First Amendment analysis but also turn out to be unconstitutional: because they turn on what sort of content is presented, they're content-discriminatory and should therefore be analyzed under strict scrutiny—a standard that they fail.


B. Nudity Taxes

Other states have what I'll call "nudity taxes"—the focus is still nudity and/or eroticism, but not necessarily particular expressive activity that conveys an erotic message.For instance, Utah's Sexually Explicit Business and Escort Service Tax "imposes a 10 percent gross receipts tax on businesses whose employees or independent contractors (1) perform services while nude or partially nude for 30 days or more per year, or (2) provide companionship to another individual in exchange for compensation. The revenue generated by the Tax helps fund treatment programs for convicted sex offenders and investigations of internet crimes against children." (This law was upheld by the Utah Supreme Court.)

Illinois' Live Adult Entertainment Facility Surcharge Act imposes a fee, equal to either $3 per customer or a lump-sum amount, on every "[l]ive adult entertainment facility," defined as "a striptease club or other business that serves or permits the consumption of alcohol on its premises, and . . . offers or provides activities . . . that involve nude or partially denuded individuals that, when considered as a whole, appeal primarily to an interest in nudity or sex." Most of the money (except for 2%, which pays for the cost of administering and enforcing the Act) is paid into a "Sexual Assault Services and Prevention Fund."

The distinction between erotic-expression taxes and nudity taxes, while important, isn't necessarily very sharp. The Utah statute seems to fall more on the nudity side, because the nude services covered by the statute include not just dancing but also non-expressive activities like waitressing or massage.

One could say the same of the Illinois statute; activities could "appeal primarily to an interest in nudity or sex" without being expressive. But it's a tougher case: the inclusion of "entertainment" within the defined term, and the listing of "a striptease club" as one of the covered categories, could support an inference, based on standard methods of statutory interpretation, that the definition is meant to primarily cover expressive performances. Moreover, for both of these statutes, we need to look at the government's practice of enforcement to see whether it primarily targets expressive businesses.

Still, for purposes of this Article, the theoretical difference between a tax that targets erotic expression and a tax that targets nudity is significant. The Supreme Court has said that nudity—unlike nude dancing—isn't inherently expressive. A properly phrased and evenhandedly enforced nudity tax would therefore be analyzed under intermediate scrutiny. I argue that such taxes are likely unconstitutional even under this lower standard, but at least on its face the standard seems easier to meet.

C. Tax Exemptions

There are also taxes on erotic dancing that that are embedded within tax exemptions. That is, there's some general tax; there's an exemption from that tax for performances; but the exemption doesn't cover erotic dancing. So erotic dancing, unlike other performances, ends up being covered by the general tax.

For instance, the City of Chicago and Cook County had tax ordinances that taxed amusements, which they amended to provide exemptions for "live theatrical, live musical or other live cultural performances" taking place in small venues. But that category of "live . . . performances" was defined to specifically exclude "performances conducted at adult entertainment cabarets," and such cabarets were defined in terms of whether topless dancers "[d]isplay or simulate the display of 'specified anatomical areas'" or "[e]ngage in, or engage in simulation of, 'specified sexual activities.'" The state of New York, similarly, taxed "place[s] of amusement," exempted "dramatic or musical arts performances," but did not include exotic dancing at an adult "juice bar" in the exemption.

These tax exemptions stand on a different footing than the taxes discussed above, because tax exemptions are subject to a different First Amendment regime than taxes. Even when a tax exemption is content-based, the Supreme Court has conceptualized tax exemptions as subsidies, and "the government can make content-based distinctions when it subsidizes speech."

Perhaps this distinction between discriminatory taxes and discriminatory tax exemptions doesn't make sense, but it's longstanding blackletter law. Perhaps it ought to be questioned, but that's beyond the scope of this Article. So I'll just note that these content-discriminatory tax exemptions exist and have been assumed to be constitutional. If tax exemptions were judged on the same basis as actual taxes, they would be subject to all the arguments I make in the rest of this Article; but I won't mention them any further.

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Israel-Hamas War: World leaders change tune on Palestine as death toll rises in Gaza

2 min read 16 Oct 2023

MINT

Devesh Kumar

Israel-Hamas war news: As a huge humanitarian crisis looms in the region, world leaders are reconsidering their positions and even Israel's strongest ally United States (US) is asking the Benjamin Netanyahu-led Israeli government to be cautious

A view shows houses and buildings destroyed in Israeli strikes, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip (REUTERS)

Israel-Hamas War: The world is closely following the developments in the middle east where Israel is preparing to launch a ground offensive against Hamas targets in Gaza. As a huge humanitarian crisis looms in the region, world leaders are reconsidering their positions and even Israel's strongest ally United States (US) is asking the Benjamin Netanyahu-led Israeli government to be cautious.

US President Joe Biden stressed on the need to eliminate Hamas from Gaza but also spoke about a “path to a Palestinian state." The American President also warned against Israeli re-occupation of Gaza and said such a move would be a “big mistake."

The cautious tone from the US President comes amid the deployment of US warships in the region, positioned along the Gaza border. The US military is engaging in drills with the Israeli military on a broad campaign to dismantle Hamas.

The change in tone is also visible in the European world which was earlier unanimous in its support of Israel against the brutal attack by terrorist group Hamas. As Israel Defence Forces (IDF) began their onslaught against Hamas and the death toll started rising in Gaza, the European Union “called for the protection of civilians and restraint, the release of hostages, for allowing access to food, water, and medicines to Gaza in line with international humanitarian law."

Where do Russia and China stand in the conflict?

Russia and China have been sitting on the fence from the beginning of tension in the region and have repeatedly called for a ceasefire. As per the international observers, Russia doesn't want to take clear sides in the conflict due to its own geopolitical calculations, while China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi called Israel's actions “beyond the scope of self-defense."

Also Read: Palestine in focus? Putin to meet Xi Jinping in China amid Hamas-Israel conflict

As per experts, the US-led Western world is also keeping an eye on how long they can support Israel amid the Russia-Ukraine war.

Despite some risks, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is clearly standing with Israel in its war against Hamas and even compared the terrorist group with Russia. “The only difference is that there is a terrorist organization that attacked Israel and here is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine. The intentions declared are different, but the essence is the same," Volodymyr Zelenskyy told NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly as per Aljazeera.

State Capitalism in Russia—a theory that has stood the test of facts

Tony Cliff’s book State Capitalism in Russia is set to be republished. Sarah Bates examines the theory and explains why it remains a vital work—despite the passing of the Stalinist regimes

The Prague spring in Czechoslovakia, 1968 revolted against Stalin’s state capitalist agenda.

Tuesday 16 August 2022

Issue 2818

Many regular Socialist Worker readers will rightly associate the theory of state capitalism with debates about the nature of Stalinist Russia. It was, after all, an attempt to explain how the degeneration of the 1917 Russian revolution created a society that had more in common with Western capitalism than it did with genuine socialism.

Tony Cliff, the founder of the Socialist Workers Party tradition, developed the theory in the 1940s. At the time, revolutionary socialists were at loggerheads over whether or not Russia was a new form of society.

Using Marx’s analysis of capitalism, and the most detailed research available on Russia, Cliff argued that it was not. However, his theory state capitalism was always more than a way of understanding what forces drove the economies of Russia and Eastern Europe.

It explained the Marxist critique of capitalism and helped resurrect the genuine tradition of socialism from below. And, its application was not restricted to Russia, its satellite states, China and Cuba and so on.

It was also relevant to the West, where many on the left argued that socialism could come through parliament and state ownership of the means of production. In short, it was applicable in all cases where it was thought socialism could be implemented “from above”.

Arguments of that nature are still very much with us today. That’s why it’s a good thing that Cliff’s book, State Capitalism in Russia is now being republished.

Cliff started with an analysis of what happened to the Russian Revolution. When workers took power there in 1917 it sent shock waves around the world.

For the first time ordinary people were in the driving seat, taking over their workplaces and creating Soviets where collectively they made the decisions about how society would run.

An entire empire was now in the hands of revolutionaries. But the Bolshevik party leaders of the revolution were internationalists before all else.

The old Russian empire was a “prison house of nations”, they said. Those states within it that wanted to break away were free to do so.

And, they were clear that the revolution would have to spread to more economically advanced countries to survive. But in the 1920s, as civil war and foreign invasions ravaged the fledgling state, workers’ power and the ideals that flowed from it, would fade.

The Russian Revolution was worth it—it gives hope of a better future

Many of the most committed workers perished on the frontlines fighting imperialists and counter-revolutionaries. The factories, which had been the heart of the revolution, were decimated by war and famine.

The soviets, once alive with fierce debate, became moribund rubber stamps for officialdom. A growing bureaucracy emerged to take the place of workers’ control, and it was from this layer that Joseph Stalin drew his power. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin and his supporters set about killing and repressing the original revolutionary leaders to sure up power for themselves.

In 1928, Stalin set out to transform Russia’s economy using a “Five-Year Plan”—a rapid process of industrialisation he hoped would allow Russia to compete with Western economies and their war machines.

It was to swallow up more than a fifth of Russia’s entire national income and only increased in later plans. This followed his decree that early revolutionary internationalism was to be abandoned and replaced with the new doctrine of “socialism in one country”.

That meant industrialisation was to take place in Russia in isolation from the rest of the world. This could only be done by extracting huge surpluses from the peasantry—and by forcing peasants off the land and into the factories.

Stalin’s bureaucracy played the role of the capitalist ruling class, and pitted itself against workers and all their revolutionary achievements. In this dynamic, the elite did not own the means of production, the state did. But then comes the question, who owns the state? The answer, of course, is the ruling class.

So the state, rather than private capitalists, accumulated capital and competed for dominance on the global markets. But, unlike Western capitalism, it did so without internal competition.

Nowhere was the struggle with the West as evident as it was in the accumulation of military hardware. To match the West for every tank, gun and missile, production was ramped up massively and workers were given targets to double or triple production over the course of the five years.

By 1938, some 29 percent of total construction was munitions. Cliff argued, “The armament industry occupies a decisive place in Russia’s economic system.”

During this time, working hours went up, pay went down and conditions became increasingly punishing. A government-issued decree on 1 August 1940 said that during harvest, agricultural work should “begin at five or six in the morning and end at sunset.”

But there was already far worse going on than simply long hours. By 1931 there were nearly two million people in forced labour camps. The one-time leader of the Yugoslav Communist Party, Anton Ciliga, was held in Russian concentration camps for many years. He estimated that the number of prisoners at the height of the purges of the 1930s reached about ten million.

With camps, severe rations and a police state to ensure “order”, Stalin drove a bulldozer through everything won in the revolutionary period. Starvation ran rampant, and people were forced to live in squalor. “The accumulation of wealth on the one hand means the accumulation of poverty on the other,” wrote Cliff.

Yet while the majority of people suffered, a layer of state bureaucrats were living in luxurious conditions. Russian income tax data shows that people received an annual salary of anything from just 1,800 roubles to a whopping 300,000 roubles. It was a society of “privilege and pariahs”.

“A senior government official, a director or a successful author, has a house in Moscow, a summer house in the Crimea, one or two cars, a number of servants, and so on, as a matter of course,” said Cliff. “Even during the [Second World] war, when in the face of the emergency, all efforts were made to get the maximum production out of the workers, there existed extreme differences in the conditions of different classes.”

Cliff argues that through these methods Russia became a “modern industrial economy concentrated in the hands of the state, under the direction of a ruthless bureaucracy.”

“Much more blood flowed during the primitive accumulation in Russia than in Britain,” he wrote. “Stalin accomplished in a few hundred days what Britain took a few hundred years to do.”

This could only be achieved if the Russian ruling class used the bulk of the surplus they extracted from workers to further build up industry. This was exactly the same process that Karl Marx had outlined in his book Capital.

There he showed that competition between capitalists to sell commodities led to each undertaking “accumulation for the sake of accumulation”. This had a double significance. It would lead to a new period of massive economic crises, but also it meant building up a working class capable of overthrowing the ruling class.

Why the Soviet Union fell 30 years ago

No secret police force or gulag prison could indefinitely pacify that working class. In State Capitalism in Russia, Cliff set out Marx’s theory of capitalist crisis, and showed how it applied to the “socialist” states.

He argued that state capitalism would eventually crack under the weight of an economic crisis. And its roots would be similar to those of the crises of Western capitalism.

So, when the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989, taking all the other Stalinist states with it, Cliff was not surprised. Nor was he when it became clear that in countries, including East Germany, workers had played the decisive role in overthrowing the regimes.

The resilience of Cliff’s theory meant the Socialist Workers Party he helped lead was, unlike most of the left, far from demoralised by the events. Instead they were seen as a vindication of Marx’s theory of capitalist crisis—and the ideas of socialism from below.

The lessons of Russia’s descent from revolutionary workers’ state to failed state capitalism may seem somewhat obscure after Stalinism’s demise. But the horrors committed in the name of socialism have an enduring and still damaging legacy.

As Alex Callinicos writes in the new introduction to State Capitalism in Russia, “Cliff’s book was decisive in showing how it is possible to continue being a Marxist despite the horrors of Stalinism.”State Capitalism in Russia by Tony Cliff, with a new introduction by Alex Callinicos, £10 available at Bookmarks the socialist bookshop.

China’s champions of state capitalism

Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China (Pic: Wikicommons/ Dong Fang)

Tuesday 29 June 2021

Issue 2761
Alex Callinicos

Zheng Zeguang, the Chinese ambassador to Britain, recently tweeted a picture of him visiting Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate, London. This was to celebrate the centenary of the foundation of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

From any standpoint the CPC’s is an extraordinary story. Starting as a handful of persecuted radical intellectuals meeting in semi-colonial Shanghai, to becoming the ruler of the second biggest economy in the world.

The politics of the CPC’s triumph are relatively clear. Within a few years of its formation, the party was at the centre of a huge and militant workers’ movement sparked by a police massacre in Shanghai. It was allied to the mainstream nationalist movement the Guomindang, led by Chiang Kai-shek. But in 1927 Chiang turned on the CPC and slaughtered its activists.

Driven from the cities, the CPC re-emerged eventually in the mid-1930s as a rural guerrilla force led by Mao Zedong. Mao skilfully exploited the disastrous Japanese attempt to conquer China from 1937 onwards to force Chiang increasingly onto the defensive. Mao manoeuvred between the efforts to control him by the two emerging superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States. Sometimes he leaned towards one, and sometimes towards the other.

Imperialist

In October 1949 the CPC took power and proclaimed the People’s Republic of China. Mao declared, “The Chinese people have stood up!” But his prime objective was to free China from the imperialist powers that had dominated and partitioned it in the 19th century. This meant, above all, achieving economic self-sufficiency—not workers’ self-emancipation.

Tony Cliff wrote in 1957 that “the thread running through the entire economic and political development of Mao’s China is the effort of an elite to goad the people into building a magnificent economic-military machine on a backward, narrow agricultural foundation.”

As Isabella Weber puts it in her important new book How China Escaped Shock Therapy, “The Mao era price system functioned as a central mechanism to squeeze resources for urban industrialization out of the countryside.

“Agricultural purchase prices were kept below their value, peasants working the same hours as urban workers achieved a lower material living standard.” Despite many upheavals, this drive to build state capitalism laid the basis of a modern industrial economy by the time of Mao’s death in 1976.

But China remained a very poor country—with no significant increase in its share of global output since the revolution.

Mao’s eventual successor Deng Xiaoping decided both to encourage peasant production by relying more on market mechanisms and to open up to global capitalism.

1949 — Mao & the Chinese revolution

Two crucial decisions took place under Deng. First, as Weber shows, the regime did not give way to the siren song of neoliberal economists. It did not embrace “shock therapy”—switching overnight to an entirely unregulated system of market prices. This reflected the determination of the CPC leadership to retain overall political and economic control.

Secondly, the regime allowed Western transnational corporations to use China as a low-cost platform for producing goods for the world market. It was this move that eventually led to China becoming the world’s largest manufacturing and exporting economy.

But—to the fury of Western politicians—the CPC is still in control. Under president Xi Jinping, the regime has become ideologically shriller, geopolitically more assertive, and domestically more authoritarian than Deng thought prudent. The party-state bureaucracy continues to dominate the economy. It does this directly through state owned enterprises and indirectly via influence on nominally private corporations.

China’s capitalists are among the richest and most powerful in the world, but they are still tied to the CPC by multiple visible and concealed links. And China is ever more clearly the US’s greatest rival. This is why president Joe Biden says the US must win the 21st century from Xi’s “autocracy”.

But Wall St doesn’t seem to mind the CPC’s continued hegemony. The big US banks are pouring into China to reach its vast pool of savings.

The love affair between Chinese “communism” and Western capitalism isn’t over yet.

THE ORIGINAL STATE CAPITALIST THEORY/THEORISTS

Marxists.org

https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1950/08/state-capitalism.htm

State Capitalism and World Revolution - Marxists Internet Ar... 

CLR James and Raya Dunayevskaya (Johnson-Forest Tendency), 1950. State Capitalism and World Revolution. Source: State Capitalism and World Revolution, ...

Marxists.org

https://www.marxists.org/archive/dunayevskaya/works/1941/ussr-capitalist.htm

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a Capitalist Soci... 

... Johnson-Forest Tendency.” For an account of what led to the breakup of the ... State Capitalism or Bureaucratic State Socialism? Comrade [Max] Shachtman[6] ...

Cosmonautmag.com

https://cosmonautmag.com/2022/08/revolutions-are-made-they-dont-just-happen-a-look-into-the-problems-of-the-johnson-forest-tendency

A Look into the Problems of the Johnson-Forest Tendency 

Aug 25, 2022 ... CLR James, Raya Dunyevskaya, and Grace Lee State Capitalism and World Revolution State capitalism and world revolution – CLR James.pdf (libcom.

Libcom.org

https://libcom.org/article/what-was-ussr-part-i-trotsky-and-state-capitalism

What was the USSR? Part I: Trotsky and state capitalism - Li... 

Apr 9, 2005 ... Since the Johnson-Forest Tendency quickly broke from Trotskyism by ... In PDF format. Animal Farm. Understanding left cults (SWP, SP, Spiked ...

The Left Opposition—Bolsheviks who defied Stalinism

100 years ago the Left Opposition began organising in Russia. Simon Basketter writes on the importance of this group who fought for international revolution and workers’ democracy

Bolsheviks in the Left Opposition in 1927

By Simon Basketter
Monday 09 October 2023

 SOCIALIST WORKER

Issue 2876

They “incarnated an epoch,” wrote Victor Serge of the ­revolutionary and working class militants of the Left Opposition in his novel Midnight in the Century.

They fought for “a renewal of the ideology, morals and institutions of ­socialism” against the murderous authoritarianism of Stalinism.

The struggle began when in 1923 Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote a secret letter to his fellow Russian Communist Party leaders. It detailed how the revolution was going astray by clamping down on those groups who were encouraging striking workers. And he criticised the economic policies that had led to the strikes in the first place.

On 15 October an open letter appeared. Forty six important figures in the Communist Party declared that the country was ­threatened with economic ruin.

They also protested that the party’s organising centre chose conference delegates, meaning conferences “are becoming to an ever greater extent the executive assemblies of this hierarchy”.

They went on, “The regime is the dictatorship of a faction within the party.”

In the group were economist Yevgeni Preobrazhensky, industrial organiser Georgy Piatakov, party journalist Lev Sosnovsky, military hero Ivan Smirnov—and Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, who had led the storming of the Winter Palace.

Others included commander of the Moscow garrison Nicolay Muralov, Yevgenia Bosch—a founder of the Ukrainian Bolsheviks—and former members of other banned factions.

Trotsky did not sign, partially to avoid being accused of ­dividing the party.

In 1917 the revolution got rid of the old rulers—and put workers and peasants in control. So what had gone wrong?

Soviets, or workers’ councils, had initially taken power. But the decimation of the working class during the fight against counter-revolution and foreign invasion in the years 1918-21 hollowed them out.

By the 12th party congress in April 1923 the majority of delegates—55 percent—were full time party workers, for the first time. The state was staffed by thousands of bureaucrats from the old Tsarist regime—and a layer of new functionaries. At first this bureaucracy balanced between competing interests within Russian society, such as workers and peasants.

Russia had some of the ­features which Lenin had described in 1921 as a ­“bureaucratically deformed workers’ and peasants’ state”. That apparatus began to develop its own interests.

After the ravages of the civil war, the New Economic Policy (NEP) tried to reconcile peasants to the regime and encourage economic development. It gave limited freedom to private commodity production.

State-owned industries were to operate as just one element in an economy governed by the needs of peasant ­production and market forces. It was a retreat.

This led not to an increase of democracy but an erosion of it. In 1921 the party had printed a quarter of a million copies of the Programme of the Workers’ Opposition. Two members of the opposition were elected to the Central Committee.

But the response to the ­letters from the opposition was systematic denigration.

The majority of the Komsomol—youth wing of the Communists—Central Committee were dismissed after some defended Trotsky.

To justify such procedures, the ruling faction invented a cult of “Leninism”. It even tried to elevate Lenin to a divine status by mummifying his dead body. It reduced theory to an adjunct of its own ambitions.

Civil war, counter-revolution and famine stretched the link between the Communists and the working class to breaking point.

The Left Opposition adhered to the revolutionary socialist tradition to try to keep that connection. It argued the revolution could only progress if the state increased the economic weight of towns against country, and of industry against agriculture.

This demanded planning of industry and taxing wealthy peasants. This had to be accompanied by increased workers’ democracy.

These two policies could maintain Russia as a beacon for revolution, but ­socialism would only succeed if the ­revolution spread abroad.

Yet the ­peasants, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the party bureaucracy all benefited from the NEP years. This created the space for a right opposition, led by Nikolai Bukharin. It accommodated to peasant demands and the market.

In a crucial break, it ­abandoned the link with ­international revolution and argued that socialism in one country was possible.

The Left Opposition ­mistakenly saw this group as the main threat to the revolution. They underestimated the bureaucracy’s growing strength as an independent force.

Joseph Stalin led the faction based upon the bureaucracy.

This was confirmed at a meeting prior to the 13th party congress, in May 1924, when Lenin’s testament was read to the Central Committee and other senior delegates.

It called for Stalin’s removal as general secretary. Stalin offered to resign. But Zinoviev and Kamenev persuaded the ­meeting to disregard Lenin’s advice.

They said that whatever offence Stalin was guilty of, he had made up for. The congress turned into a chorus of ­denunciation against Trotsky.

The question of revolution abroad was key. US ­revolutionary James P Cannon described how Stalin’s rise meant the Communist Parties went from “agencies of revolution into border guards of the Soviet Union and pressure groups in the service of its foreign policy”.

In China, for example, Stalin insisted on an alliance with the nationalists, leading to the massacre of thousands of Communists as revolution failed in 1927. Despite this it strengthened Stalin’s hold on power, seeming to prove that other revolutions were impossible. Economic crisis produced splits between the different forces that had defeated the initial opposition. Zinoviev and Kamenev had joined the group including Trotsky against Stalin in 1926.

This United Opposition again advanced a ­programme for revolutionary internationalism, more rapid industrial development, defence of workers’ rights, and a return to democratic decision-making.

The Stalinist bureaucracy now savagely repressed open demonstrations, and raided the Opposition’s secret print shop. Most members of the United Opposition were arrested and sent into internal exile.

Nadezhda Joffe was 21 when she joined the opposition. Her father, a close ally of Trotsky, took his own life in protest against Stalinism. His funeral saw some 10,000 protest.

She wrote, “We did approximately what revolutionaries did in the Tsarist underground. We organised groups of sympathisers at the factories and in the schools. We issued leaflets.” That work had an effect.

As historian Michal Reiman explained, “Stalin could not ignore the fact that the Left Opposition still remained a potential nest of serious ­resistance. Opposition leaflets were distributed widely, and members of the opposition had penetrated the workers’ ranks, helping to organise their social struggle.”

Yet pressures to give in were immense. Soon Zinoviev and most of his followers recanted in order to obtain their freedom and their old positions. Those who did not retreat were transferred to the deadly Siberian camps.

In 1928, after defeating the Left Opposition, the ­bureaucracy became a ruling class. It established vicious mechanisms of exploitation to accumulate capital and industrialise at the expense of the workers and peasantry.

The Stalinists re-established a form of class society, with all its brutality and irrationality.

At the height of the Show Trials one oppositionist, Gevorkian, spoke to a ­meeting in the Vorkuta slave labour camp. “The Stalinist ­adventurers have completed their counter-revolutionary coup d’etat,” he said. “Not twilight shadows but those of the deep black night envelop our country. No compromise is possible with the Stalinist traitors.”

So began a 132-day hunger strike that forced camp officials and their superiors to give in to some strikers’ demands.

In 1938 the Trotskyists of Vorkuta were marched out in batches, adults and children over the age of 12, into the surrounding arctic wasteland—and killed. Joseph Berger, who was in the camp, wrote, “Some struggled, shouted slogans and fought the guards to the last.”

As one group of about a hundred was led out to be shot, “the condemned sang the ‘Internationale’ joined by the voices of hundreds of prisoners remaining in camp”.

The counter-revolution won. But the Left Opposition had kept the idea of socialism from below alive.

Read more

The Birth of Stalinism by Michal Reiman .£19.99 and reviewed by Chris Harman at tinyurl.com/HarmanReiman

Trotsky: 1923-1927 Fighting the Rising Stalinist Bureaucracy by Tony Cliff £6.99 or at tinyurl.com/CliffTrotsky3

The Platform of the 46 in The Interregnum 1923-1924 by EH Carr and tinyurl.com/Platform46

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Rotherwas exhibition recreates munitions factory clothing

IMAGE SOURCE,ROTHERWAS TOGETHER

Local historians said the women wore blue, red and green overalls, as well as the expected drabber tones

By Susie Rack

BBC News, West Midlands

Clothing worn by munition factory workers more than a century ago has been recreated for an exhibition.

Factory Fashion, at Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre, reveals the kind of protective overalls worn by women at Rotherwas munitions factory.

The collection was opened by the Mayor of Hereford, who spoke of her own great-aunt's links to the site.

"We know now that these overalls weren't going to protect them from the chemicals," Jacqui Carwardine said.

"But they would have protected their clothes."

IMAGE SOURCE,HEREFORDSHIRE HISTORY

Image caption,

About 4,000 women worked in Rotherwas Munitions factory

Rotherwas munitions factory was one of Europe's biggest explosive filling sites during World War One, where 6,000 worked packing shells for allied troops.

It is now known that toxic chemicals from trinitrotoluene (TNT) turned worker's hair and skin a lurid shade of yellow that led to the nickname Canary Girls.

There was also risk of deadly liver disease toxic jaundice, which led to factories stepping up health and safety measures, including the provision of protective clothing.

The mayor's great aunt was one of 4,000 female workers at the Hereford factory.

"For some, it's where a family member worked during either the first or the second world wars, for others, it's the place where they made the bombs or where the women had yellow hair," she said.

"This exhibition brings history to life."

Rotherwas Together community history group recreated the overalls from an original pattern published in the Ross Gazette in 1917.

IMAGE SOURCE,ROTHERWAS TOGETHER

Image caption,

Pictured L to R: Angie Gibbs, Chair of Rotherwas Together, Sue Knox, Heritage Consultant, Jacqui Carwardine, Mayor of Hereford, Elizabeth Semper, Archivist, Angela Williams, Rotherwas Together and historian Pete Redding

We think of the overalls as being in dark colours such as khaki and grey but articles and paintings from the time show that the women wore many shades of blue, red and green," said Elizabeth Semper, the archivist who curated the exhibition.

Funded by a grant from Hereford City Council, the collection also features pamphlets issued by the Ministry of Munitions and original badges and buttons from overalls.

IMAGE SOURCE,ROTHERWAS TOGETHER

Image caption,

The exhibition will be on display until March

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