What Revolutionary Confidence Looks Like—and Where It Comes From

A vintage 1981 interview with British Marxist Ted Grant, founding member of the Militant group in Britain and later the International Marxist Tendency—today the Revolutionary Communist International—makes for fascinating viewing. In the clip, Grant explains demands of the Militant tendency, which included a reduced (35-hour) work week with no loss of pay, raising the minimum wage to £90 per week, full employment, nationalizing the press under democratic workers’ control, and massive spending on social services.

The U.K. at this time had entered into recession and was experiencing high unemployment, inflation, and a struggling manufacturing sector. Under the benevolent rule of Margaret Thatcher, the government’s response was massive tax cuts for the rich, cutting benefits for workers and the poor, letting industries die with catastrophic results for working-class communities, and denouncing the unemployed as lazy shirkers and scroungers.

The interviewer for ITV program TV Eye, however, focused on asking Ted about a charge from political opponents that a Militant-controlled Labour government in Britain would refuse to be voted out of power. The relevant section starts at the 15:34 mark in the video above. Ted responds:

That’s entirely untrue, because on the basis of our program, we want a 35-hour [work] week, a £90 minimum wage, full employment, a massive expenditure on the social services, and so on… Who would vote against a government of that sort who would—within 10 years, on the basis of microelectronics and so on, it would be entirely possible to have a standard of living, every family, of over £200 a week and working four to five hours a week. That’s according to capitalist scientists themselves, if the resources are used.

At this moment, only 70 per cent of the productive capacity of the country is being used. Even to use 100 per cent of productive capacity could mean an extra £50-60 pounds to every family in the country. Now, if we carried out a program of that sort and at the same time nationalized the press so that everyone has access to the media in proportion to their votes in the election, there wouldn’t be any question of being voted out. If we were voted out, if the electorate were mad enough to vote us out under those conditions, we would accept it. But it’s clear that we wouldn’t be voted out…

The exchange that follows is great. The interviewer interrupts to object: “The program might not work.” Ted leans back and says with an assured smile: “Well, it would work.” This is what revolutionary confidence looks like. Here is a man so certain of his ideas, flowing from a deep understanding of theory and history, that he bats away the interviewer’s feeble dissent like nothing. He continues:

TED GRANT: There’s absolutely no reason why the program shouldn’t work. If we take over the economy, then it’s entirely possibly to plan the society. And once you take over the economy, it would be entirely possible to improve the conditions of the mass of the population to such an extent that it’s very unlikely that there would be a counter-revolution, if you like, to vote us out.

INTERVIEWER: But I’m not talking about counter-revolution. I’m talking about the ballot box, voting out a government if [the electorate] feels that it hasn’t succeeded in achieving its objectives.

TED GRANT: Then we would accept that. But we can’t see that our objectives could not be achieved.

There’s a reason for Ted’s confidence. At no point does the interviewer explain why Militant’s program might not work. Anti-communists, of course, are used to making sweeping assertions like “communism doesn’t work” without ever being challenged. That’s because their entire argument falls apart as soon as you get into specifics—and as Hegel said, the truth is always concrete.

First, the anti-communist argument simply ignores that capitalism doesn’t work for the vast majority. Was capitalism working for the British working class in 1981? Is it working for most people today, as society faces growing poverty, inequality, homelessness, war, disease, hunger, and ecological catastrophe? The richest nation in history is currently unable to fight fires in Los Angeles, its second-largest city, with hydrants running dry. Demagogic right-wing populists like Donald Trump and Pierre Poilievre come to power due to widespread hatred of the establishment, but have no actual solutions to society’s problems and will only make them worse.

Then there’s denigration of “socialist” or “communist” countries. If we’re talking about countries with nationalized planned economies, anti-communists tellingly never mention the achievements of these states. The U.S.S.R. in less than two generations, even with its degeneration under a parasitic Stalinist bureaucracy, went from a backward, largely agrarian country to a global industrial superpower that defeated Nazi Germany—which had all the resources of Europe behind it—and launched the first satellite into space. The Soviet Union had full employment, eliminated illiteracy and homelessness, raised average life expectancy, improved the status of women, and saw unprecedented economic growth.

Laying out Soviet statistics of industrial growth during the 1930s, a period when the capitalist world was suffering though the Great Depression, Leon Trotsky wrote:

Gigantic achievement in industry, enormously promising beginnings in agriculture, an extraordinary growth of the old industrial cities and a building of new ones, a rapid increase of the numbers of workers, a rise in cultural level and cultural demands – such are the indubitable results of the October Revolution, in which the prophets of the old world tried to see the grave of human civilization. With the bourgeois economists we have no longer anything to quarrel over. Socialism has demonstrated its right to victory, not on the pages of Das Kapital, but in an industrial arena comprising a sixth part of the earth’s surface – not in the language of dialectics, but in the language of steel, cement and electricity.

The TV Eye interviewer gives no indication of why Militant’s program would not work if they were to carry it out. Putting the key levers of the economy under the democratic control and management of the working class allows you to rationally plan the economy and put resources where they are needed. That’s why countries with nationalized planned economies can achieve full employment and ensure everyone has a home. Workers’ control of the economy would also allow for other reforms that would immediately benefit workers, such as raising the minimum wage.

The bourgeoisie and their mouthpieces can never admit that communist ideas tend to be quite popular when they are enacted. Bourgeois historians still falsely describe the October Revolution in Russia as a “coup” rather than what it was: a popular insurrection with massive support. They can’t explain why, if the Bolsheviks were so unpopular, they were able to win a civil war in a country of more than 125 million people while their opponents, the White Army, were backed by 21 foreign armies, including those of the richest imperialist countries.

The difference between the Bolsheviks and other parties claiming to be Marxist or communist is that they actually did what they said they were going to do. “Bolshevism is the unity of word and deed,” Victor Serge said. “Lenin’s entire merit consists in his will to carry out his programme… Land to the peasants, factories to the working class, power to those who toil. These words have often been spoken, but no one has ever thought seriously of passing from theory to practice.”

For this reason, the bourgeoisie always move heaven and earth to ensure no left-wing government can carry out its program. Hence why they tried to strangle Bolshevism in its cradle by overthrowing the Soviet government in Russia; and why they try to overthrow any left-wing government, including mild reformist ones, that might threaten imperialist interests. Even within the imperial core, they are willing to carry out such measures: from potential capital flight, as when Ontario elected an NDP government in the 1990s, to military coups, which British military officers threatened should a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn ever take power.

The positive effect that communist policies would have on the vast majority are also why the ruling class feels the need to disseminate anti-communist propaganda through all the institutions of civil society: government, media, education, religion, and so on. The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the “Crucial Communism Teaching Act”, which aims to educate students about the purported dangers of “communism”. With perfect sarcasm, journalist Caitlin Johnstone responded, “The US government believes capitalism is so self-evidently awesome that it needs to pass laws to indoctrinate children into supporting it.”

Vladimir Lenin, as usual, summed up the essence of the matter. “The Marxist doctrine,” he said, “is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression.” Marxists are revolutionary optimists because we take a long view of history and recognize that nothing is eternal: social systems, like individuals, are born, exist, and die. Marxists know the contradictions of capitalism make revolutions inevitable. Unlike every other political tendency, we have a program to overcome those contradictions and to move society forward on the basis of a rational, scientific worldview.

Ted Grant understood this, and his understanding was the source of his confidence. Today, particularly among young people, the clear ideological trend is away from capitalism. More and more people realize the profits system is incapable of solving any of our problems. While communists are filled with confidence and optimism, defenders of bourgeois oppression are gripped by pessimism and despair at the decay of their system. The future belongs to the communists.