Not just in some countries, not just in backward countries, not just with inadequate leaderships, but “the first form of government that can be expected to appear as the result of a successful anticapitalist revolution.” Period.
This is the conclusion that we had reached by 1978, as a result of thinking about and generalizing the lessons from workers and farmers governments established since World War II—lessons that the party had begun to draw in the world report presented for the Political Committee by Joe and adopted at our 1969 convention. [See The Workers and Farmers Government, by Joseph Hansen, an Education for Socialists publication, 1974, pp 20-30.]
Resolution of dual power
Second, a workers and farmers government comes out of a mass struggle for power which resolves a situation of dual power in favor of the workers and farmers. The armed might of the old ruling classes is dispersed, and another power based on the toilers replaces it. Only with the resolution of dual power do you have “a successful anticapitalist revolution.”
Third, a workers and farmers government can only come into being through a revolutionary upheaval, a real people’s revolution. It cannot come about in some “cold” way. It cannot simply be imposed by a bureaucracy, by a military caste, or by an existing government. It cannot be voted in by elections, although elections to councils of the toilers or to a constituent assembly may take place along the road of such a revolutionary struggle, or some time following its triumph.
It takes a revolution to bring a workers and farmers government into existence. It takes mass mobilizations. Guerrilla warfare can play a major role in such a revolutionary upheaval. But the masses of toilers themselves must be mobilized sufficiently to crush enough of the resistance of the old ruling classes and their state machinery to resolve the question of dual power. Only then can the workers and peasants actually begin governing.
If the workers and farmers government is led in a revolutionary manner and meets the challenges posed by the relationship of class forces and material conditions it faces—as is happening in Grenada and Nicaragua today—then it is the key instrument by means of which the toilers can expropriate the exploiters, establish state property, and begin planning the economy—that is, consolidate what we call a workers state.
Independent of the bourgeoisie
Fourth, a workers and farmers government is independent of the bourgeoisie, but at the same time still stands on capitalist economic relations. That’s what it inherits, and that’s what it stands on to begin with and, to one degree or another, for some time afterwards.
A revolutionary government can’t simply decree the disappearance of capital. It can try, but it won’t work and will create needless chaos. The key, as Joe used to say, is the tendency and direction—the motion by the workers and farmers government toward leading the masses to destroy capitalism and institute a planned economy. As the workers and farmers government leads this process forward, its own base shifts from the capitalist economic relations it inherited to new economic forms and institutions that come out of the expropriation of the exploiters.
Joe wrote about this in a letter to Bob Chester in 1975, commenting on an initial draft of Bob’s Workers and Farmers Governments Since the Second World War: This letter summarizes the experiences of Michel Pablo in Algeria.
Joe wrote that a workers and farmers government begins “on the basis of the capitalist economy and even part of the capitalist state structure”—this is what all revolutions inherit to one degree or another and cannot get rid of over night. Smashing the state is not the same as vaporizing it. If there were no bridges, no transitions, no dialectics, then life would be simpler. There would be no algebra to learn, only a little arithmetic. But life is not that simple, especially in the course of revolutions.
Anyway, let’s get back to the letter to Bob Chester. Joe indicated “the role that can be played by a workers and farmers government—beginning on the basis of the capitalist economy and even part of the capitalist state structure, destroying and replacing the capitalist state structure, establishing a monopoly of foreign trade, expropriating the key industries, introducing a planned economy, etc., and finally ending up as a regime (good or bad)”—depending on the capacity of the leadership—“standing on a workers state.” That’s the role that a workers and farmers government can play.