Letters

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I was glad to see a bit of coverage in the Weekly Worker for the People’s Assembly movement. Peter Manson raised the important question for the aftermath of the No More Austerity march: ‘Where next for the People’s Assembly?’ (June 19).

In particular, he asks it of two leading members of Counterfire - I suspect this is by way of an invitation to debate. Since I’m not a member of that organisation, I can only comment on its perspectives as an outsider. I suspect, like many of the signatories to the PA, their members are of the view that events external to the movement we can build today will be decisive in the PA’s strategy - such as the outcome of the independence referendum, the general election, and so on.

Certainly, this appears to be the view of leading members of the Communist Party of Britain, as evidenced by their general secretary’s recent Morning Star articles on the Labour Party. The Greens want to position themselves as a repository for disillusioned Labour votes, but have activists who are just as sincere in wanting to build the PA.

So I found comrade Manson’s left/right positioning a little confusing: of the supporters he lists as being “well to the right” of a “shopping list” of demands that anyone “to the left of the Tories” would agree to, I imagine all bar Rowan Williams would publicly advocate such reforms.

Most of the parliamentary Labour Party would not (yet?) publicly support demands for energy company renationalisation, a statutory living wage, etc - but nothing I’ve heard or read from War on Want’s John Hilary, the Green MP Caroline Lucas or TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady suggests that they are out of step with the People’s Assembly’s adopted policy direction. The consciousness of people employed by NGOs, parliament, the peak organisation of the trades union movement, will be shaped by their material conditions - but can we doubt their sincerity?

So I don’t think it is accurate to categorise the People’s Assembly as less politically advanced than Left Unity - or other parties which are supportive of the PA.

James Doran
Darlington

Left cosy

With various left unity (no capitals) initiatives, there has been a tendency to unite around a vague idea of what it means to be ‘left’ - and to not want people to rock the unity boat. Left Unity (with capitals) could provide an opportunity to do things differently, to get to grips in an honest way with real differences on the left, while developing unity in action on democratically agreed points.

Or it could go down the road of effectively discouraging debate that threatens its cosy ‘We’re all good lefties together’ image.

Alan Theasby
Middlesbrough

In one pile

In response to Ian Donovan’s ‘Dog-whistling’ there are issues that Ian did not understand (Letters, June 19). So he has invented a few arguments of his own to knock down. Let us begin with the proposition that a ‘yes’ vote in the Scottish referendum will be “part of a ‘struggle for democracy’”. This is correct. So Ian wants to skirt around it rather than confront it.

The struggle to extend democracy in Scotland has been going on at least since 1979. Over 30 years of campaigning reached its high point in 1998 with the creation of the first Scottish parliament since it was abolished by the Act of Union in 1707. In 1998 the CPGB was calling for a “parliament with full powers”. The struggle for more democracy did not end in 1998 and will not end in 2014, whatever the outcome.

If the referendum does not yet achieve “full powers”, it is certainly more powers for the parliament and people than Blair’s settlement of 1998. As for the word “struggle”, the referendum is simply the latest focus for agitation, propaganda, street canvassing, petitions and demonstrations, etc. In Scotland political activists are struggling, even if where Ian is in London there is no struggle.

The unionist camp is for no change, so it says ‘no’ on the ballot paper. The unionist parties are trying to cover their obvious conservatism by promising in the event of a ‘no’ majority they will introduce as little change as possible. But once they have won, their incentive to deliver will diminish close to zero.

This would not bother Sandy McBurney, for whom democracy is irrelevant, because capitalism is capitalism. Changes in political institutions and constitutional laws make no difference. Lenin would have condemned such ‘economism’ as the failure to recognise or understand the importance of democratic political struggle. Ian is not much better at recognising a “struggle for democracy” or its class significance.

Hence Ian says: “Communists seek to overthrow both bourgeoisies, not rearrange their relations with each other”. This leads to ultra-left conclusions - stand aside or abstain from the political ‘rearrangement’ of the national question. In fact this is upside-down. It is the bourgeoisies that seek to “rearrange their relations with each other”, and communists see in this the opportunity to overthrow them.

Ian seems concerned that communists and republican socialists won’t accept the result if there is a ‘no’ vote, and therefore won’t meekly give up the struggle for a Scottish republic. He assures us that the British ruling class will accept a ‘yes’ vote because “an unwanted result would have a political cost that intelligent ruling class strategists would no doubt consider much too high”.

Ian says my “references to the ‘darker side of the struggle for democracy’, however, are a sign that he [ie, me] is preparing to refuse to accept the results of the referendum if the Scottish people vote not to separate”. The word “accept” is ambiguous. Of course I “accept” the outcome is what it is.

But do I think a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote is the final result. Of course not. This is a referendum rigged up by Cameron and Salmon and does not have a republican option. So naturally I would not accept the result is the democratic solution to the national question. Win or lose, the struggle for republican democracy will continue. Ian is right to think he does not ‘trust’ the republicans. But he naively trusts the ‘common-sense intelligence’ of the “ruling class strategists”.

Ian says: “For someone to imply that only a ‘yes’ vote is democratic is an attack on the free exercise of that democratic right by the people of Scotland”. I never said the ‘yes’ vote was “democratic”; I said it was a vote “for more democracy”. I could have said a ‘no’ vote is a vote against more democracy. Sandy McBurney thinks that Cameron’s ‘no’ vote goes in a different pile to his. He imagines that they will put his own in a separate pile of ‘revolutionary proletarian internationalist ‘no’ votes’. Sorry to disillusion Sandy, but his vote will be in the pile headed up by Cameron.

The last point concerns Ian’s failure to understand the point about anti-English racism in the referendum period. I make no claim about how the situation may change after the result. I hope to comment on the ‘dark side’ of the ruling class on another occasion, when all Ian sees is their sweetness and light, in which “a refusal to accept the result of the referendum by the British state is not very likely”. I don’t know whether the word “accept” includes sabotage, blackmail and other dirty tricks.

Steve Freeman
LU Scottish Republic Yes Tendency

Hoi polloi

The letters page of the Weekly Worker never ceases to amaze, given the breath-taking range of ideas and erudition often on display. Last week, Tony Roberts informed us that the “Vicar of Rome does not really believe in god’s existence” (June 19).

I am shocked by this revelation, but also overcome with envy. Despite repeated requests to the Vatican, His Holiness has never seen fit to grant me an audience. Yet comrade Roberts has not only managed to meet the pontiff, but has also had privileged access to his innermost thoughts. I wonder what the pope sees in comrade Roberts that I so obviously lack.

Is he aware, for example, of comrade Roberts’ destructive appetites? I fear not. Roberts tells us in his letter that “people who believe in god should be forewarned that all religious buildings after the revolution will be bulldozed and replaced with hospitals and decent housing for the working class”. One wonders what other interesting ideas he might have for “after the revolution”. Why stop at bulldozers? Perhaps he would like to rip out all the pictures in the National Gallery with any religious content and with them build an impressive bonfire in Trafalgar Square. No doubt a small army of zealots could be employed, equipped with Stanley knives, to cut out of every book all references to religious matters, and so on.

I suspect that these destructive appetites have much to do with a brutalist and flattened concept of a socialist future. Fortunately, the political emancipation of the working class itself filters out the likes of comrade Roberts. Far from destroying things, socialism is about taking things over. We want working people to occupy the great halls and mansions, and gasp, ‘Blimey, all this is ours now!’ We want the working class to sit in sumptuous marble halls, under glittering chandeliers, quaffing champagne and listening to Bach cantatas. We want the sons and daughters of the working class to flood the top universities and learn, for example, the difference between Ionic, Doric and Corinthian columns rather than the ‘vocational training’ and NVQs that are reserved for them now. We want the class to know that rich and beautiful things are also for them. Indeed that all of it - the whole shebang of culture and civilisation - belongs to them.

Fundamental to the bourgeois outlook is the belief that the upper classes are a cut above the hoi polloi and that the privileges they enjoy need not be shared with the masses because it would be wasted on them. Nothing demoralises the bourgeoisie more than seeing working people brush aside such pretensions and make high culture their own. That is when they know they have had it as a class.

So, comrade Roberts, please, put that sledgehammer away.

Susil Gupta
email

Totalitarianism

Tony Roberts writes that “... people who believe in god should be forewarned that all religious buildings after the revolution will be bulldozed” (Letters, June 12). This is the voice of totalitarianism speaking.

When Marxists gain control of the left and get into power, they start their war against religious people. Religious people believe that humanity is being manipulated by the devil and his demons and so the religious element naturally regard Marxists as the agents of Satan and teach that communism must be from the devil, when in fact it is humanity’s natural state.

This is one example of how Marxism, a fundamentally flawed doctrine, has undermined the struggle for socialism and will continue to so until the left wakes up. I want a socialist revolution, not a Marxist one.

Tony Clark
email

Rate of profit

Arthur Bough argues that the tendency to decline doesn’t apply to the true (annual) profit rate, concluding: “The only way the law could cause permanent stagnation would be if capital, and its harnessing of science and technology to its needs, absolutely ran out of innovations, by which new use-values could be turned into commodities, providing capital with new lines of production, into which the released capital, accumulated surplus value and relative surplus population could be employed” (‘False premises, false conclusions’, June 19). The claim and conclusion are inconsistent with the labour theory of value; they also foster reformism.

The inconsistency can be seen by means of a thought experiment, where constant capital completely replaces variable capital. Regardless of whether you accept the empirical possibility, it simplifies the logic: in a labour-free market economy, there can be no exploitation, no surplus value and, ultimately, no production.

The thought experiment is a logical exercise, but it isn’t merely that. Perhaps a century hence (according to the experts), if humanity lasts long enough, artificial intelligence will be the human intellect’s superior. Artificial intelligence - whose foreseeability also shows how wrong Arthur Bough is in his impressionistic denial that the organic composition of capital rises - will one day run production. The thought experiment can be concretised by imagining a society where capital is privately, owned but entirely run by artificial intelligence. In such a society, constant capital has completely replaced variable capital, so that no surplus value exists, and since constant capital only realises its own value, increase in exchange value is impossible. Will these private enterprises, in an economy of commodity and capital producers without a labour market, be able to continuously expand production, limited only by capitalist ingenuity - which, under these circumstances, will be vast? The Marxian answer is no.

If capitalists don’t exploit labour, they find (in the general case) no advantage to risking their capital in production. They can at best compete for a redivision of the spoils, and there is no general advantage in entering such a competition, which would become merely a form of gambling with negative expected gain. The moral of the tendency of the rate of profit to decline is that commodity production becomes grossly inefficient as the economy develops and, as societal necessities, the realisation of existing values comes to dominate over the extraction of surplus value.

Arthur Bough’s exegesis is reformist in implication, because, if capitalism can develop the forces of production to an unlimited extent, the most reasonable conclusion is that major social conflict can be avoided by letting the economy develop under capitalism until conditions are so ripe that society passes painlessly into socialism.

Stephen Diamond
email

Animal piss

Without wishing to appear rude, I must confess to almost pissing myself with laughter when reading Jon Hochschartner’s letter that sought to develop a Marxist animalism (June 19).

Marxism and animalism cannot be married. Working animals do not produce value, nor surplus value, and have no desire to be emancipated from their lives of drudgery. Maybe we should be nicer to them, though.

The source of all value is human labour. Animals add nothing, but like all the other tools, they can transfer part of their own value (the original cost of the beast) on to the production of a new commodity only in the context of utilisation by man.

It’s best to regard working animals as akin to machinery when assessing them from a Marxist standpoint. Their ‘work’ only has an ostensible aura of value-creation to the extent it is utilised by mankind. Hence it is blatantly obvious that if there was no mankind nothing an animal does would have economic value.

Therefore, the possible increase in wealth from the utilisation of animals can only be understood in the sense of it increasing the productivity of human labour. Thus human labour historically became more productive with the use of animals - for example, with its time-saving properties.

So scratch beneath the surface: the root of the wealth remains human labour. To see an animal as a source is to fetishise a thing and mystify the real process. Animalism is no more rational than a chef who is completely absorbed in commodity fetishism and consequently might falsely attribute the source of the value of his fried fish to his brand-new spatula rather than his own work.

Barry Curtis
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Windbags

Last week I had an exchange on Facebook with Louis Proyect, who has reviewed Richard Seymour’s new book, Against austerity.

Of the author himself he had said over on Counterpunch: “At the risk of inflating the young man’s ego, I regard him as the most compelling prose stylist on the left since Alexander Cockburn in his heyday and Christopher Hitchens before he turned into Mr Hyde. Also, unlike most people who write for leftwing publishing houses, Seymour has a brash but self-effacing manner that is as refreshing as a cold beer on a sweltering summer night.”

So he didn’t like my own review very much (‘Against bad things’, June 12), and quoted this passage from it: “We need an approach that takes ideology seriously, and registers the ways in which slow, long-term ideological struggle shape the terrain and situates people with respect to emerging battles. This has perhaps been the most serious dereliction so far, and partially accounts for the short-termism - the constant over-optimism over the latest flashpoint of struggle, followed by demoralisation, in which only the most hardened activists remain - that leaves us flailing every time.”

Proyect’s comment was: “What a load of self-important windbags!” - meaning us at the Weekly Worker. Unfortunately he didn’t realise that I had actually been quoting Richard Seymour’s own words from the last page of Against austerity.

“I have read and understood Richard’s book,” Proyect insisted afterwards - but within an hour he had deleted the comment.

Daniel Harvey
Kent