Letters

Holy writ

Comrade Bruce Wallace’s letter (March 6) is an excellent illustration of the pitfall of reading Marx uncritically and quoting him as holy writ.

In my article, ‘Saving labour or capital?’ (October 6 2011), I showed that raising the productivity of labour may be achieved by technological changes that decrease the organic composition of capital rather than increase it. Arguing condescendingly against my article, comrade Wallace admits that “it is theoretically possible that an increase in the amount of labour per unit can be more than offset by using much cheaper raw materials”, but asserts that this is “not [possible] in the real world by any manner of means, as Karl Marx pointed out.” And here he invokes Marx:

“If, for example, productivity in spinning increased tenfold … why should not one negro produce 10 times as much cotton as 10 did previously? In other words, why should the value ratio not remain the same? … To this it is quite easy to answer that some kinds of raw material, such as wool, silk, leather, are produced by animal organic processes, while cotton, linen, etc, are produced by vegetable organic processes, and capitalist production has not yet succeeded and never will succeed in mastering these processes in the same way it has mastered purely mechanical or inorganic chemical processes … As far as coal and metal (wood) are concerned, they become much cheaper with the advance of production; this will, however, become more difficult, as mines are exhausted, etc.” Marx then concludes: “This rubbish is herewith disposed of” (Theories of surplus value Vol 3).

So, this settles it: “Moshé, a reader in mathematical logic, erroneously revives the old ’rubbish’ disposed of’ by Marx over 150 years ago.” Except that if you look at that quote critically rather than religiously, you begin to have some doubts. For a start, one should never say ’never’. Even before the advent of genetic engineering, capitalist production has been able to master organic processes to a greater degree than Marx apparently anticipated. For example, a ton of raw cotton is much cheaper today in real value terms (the total number of worker-hours needed to produce it) than 150 years ago. Besides, natural fibres have to a considerable extent been replaced by cheaper synthetic ones. The same applies to wood and leather. Some coal mines have been exhausted, but a ton of coal today is still much cheaper (in real value terms) than in Marx’s time. And in any case coal has largely been replaced by cheaper oil, which will in turn most probably be replaced by other sources of energy. Marx’s “easy answer” is refuted by the real world.

Also, as I pointed out in my article, increased productivity may sometimes be achieved by introducing cheaper capital goods other than raw materials, leading to reduction in the organic composition of capital. As it happens, a real-world illustration is provided in an article by Jack Conrad (‘Before this there was that’, March 8) published in the same issue of Weekly Worker as comrade Wallace’s letter. Jack mentions the recent revolution in typesetting: hot- metal linotypes and monotypes were replaced by cheaper phototypesetting machines, which have in turn been replaced by much cheaper personal computers.

Finally, note that increased productivity in the production of PCs will lead to reduction in their value, and hence will decrease the organic composition of capital in the printing industry and every other industry where PCs are used as capital goods - in fact, in the entire economy.

Moshe Machover
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Washed hands

It’s been apparent for some considerable time that the CPGB has washed its hands of the Scottish question, with nary an article in the Weekly Worker for months nor any debate at Communist University 2013. But suddenly, like the proverbial bus, not one but two articles back to back, saying the same things, and even inclusion in John Bridge’s political report podcast.

So what has provoked this rash of interest? Perhaps the Radical Independence movement and, specifically, long-term CPGB debating comrade Steve Freeman’s contribution to the RI conference at the end of last year? No, that’s all been ignored, as far as I can see. Surely, a critique of the Jimmy Reid Foundation’s Commonweal project? Nope. Well, how about an engagement with Bella Caledonia, National Collective or the myriad other blogs flourishing in Scotland right now?

No, I’m afraid not. What’s finally provoked reaction is David Bowie’s remark, spoken by a model, at the Brit Awards (‘Cyberspace oddity’, February 27). But even that couldn’t be reported correctly. It wasn’t five words, only four - there was no ‘please’. This is indicative of the lazy Daily Mail-tailing nature of this entire intervention - banging on about nasty cybernats, when there was a huge range of opinion expressed about Bowie’s plea (or was it demand?), much of it extremely funny.

The same uncritical acceptance as fact of Osborne’s or Barroso’s anti- indy campaign salvos offers nothing to the debate, but comrade Sarah McDonald’s assertion that Scotland could be reduced to the status of a third-world country is a ludicrous howler that not even the most fanatical of unionists, like George Galloway, have dared suggest (‘Pox on both houses’, February 20).

Another woeful level of reportage comes in the statement that the PCS union was widely expected to come out for independence. No, this was entirely based on a ‘dirty tricks’ front- page article in the Glasgow Herald quoting an unnamed source the day before the union announcement. What they and the rest of the unionist mainstream media were afraid of having to report is that not one single PCS branch came out in support of the ‘no’ campaign. The PCS is the only trade union to conduct a democratic ballot of its members in Scotland on the referendum.

Two of the three recent CPGB interventions end with a call for a federal republic as a solution to the national question in Scotland. This at least should merit being taken seriously. One should be able to look at this proposal in depth, particularly in regard to the obvious potential stumbling block of the size of England in comparison with the

other countries. I indeed attempted this when engaging in debate with pro-independence comrades, but was told by comrade Mark Fischer that it was no more than a slogan. A search for any analysis by the CPGB on this vital question will be futile.

Comrades, if you cannot even take your own slogans seriously, it is little wonder that the left in Scotland has washed its hands of you. Unfortunately, your call for the working class to recognise the importance of constitutional concerns is exposed as hypocrisy.

Tam Dean Burn
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Class disdain

Ben Lewis, in his response (Letters, March 6) to my letter defending Peter Taaffe (February 27), does very little to clarify the points and injects plenty of confusion into the discussion. The key point at issue here is whether Lenin’s claim in What is to be done? - that “the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness … socialist consciousness is introduced into the proletarian struggle from without” - was an instance of polemical excess or an important and fundamental principle of Leninism. Lewis appears to be arguing the latter. However, even the Lenin quote from 1907, cited by both Lih and Lewis, indicates the former, as does the fact that Lenin did not subsequently use the same formulation.

Lewis ends his letter with the astounding claim that “the Trotsky of 1940 offers a retrospective account that - not least thanks to Lars’s work - has been shown to be simply incompatible with those of the time”. I can only say that Lewis must have read a different Lars T Lih from me. In Lenin rediscovered Lih deals with Trotsky’s recollection in a footnote to page 27:

“In 1907, he responded to the Menshevik use of this comment: ‘The sense of these words is clear: WITBD was a polemical correction of ‘economism’ and to consider its content outside this task of the book is incorrect’ ... Lenin’s actual words thus provide no justification for Trotsky’s later statement that ‘the author of What is to be done? himself subsequently acknowledged the biased nature and therewith the erroneousness of his theory’ … Note also that Lenin made his ‘bend the stick’ comment in 1903, at a time when all his fellow Iskra editors still defended WITBD. If the … comment meant a renunciation of WITBD, then Lenin had renounced it before the party split of 1904. Authors who cite the ‘bend the stick’ comment usually mean it to support the claim that Lenin veered to the other extreme only in 1905.”

While this may be a valid counter to Cliff’s portrayal of Lenin as a serial stick bender (for Cliff this was actually something to be emulated), Lih appears to miss Trotsky’s point altogether. Trotsky was not arguing that Lenin had renounced What is to be done? as such - only the particular formulations regurgitated by Stalin in August 1905. A reading of the full quote from Trotsky, included in my letter, makes this clear. Lih is indeed correct that Trotsky and Martov and most of those who found themselves in opposition to Lenin at the 1903 congress shared Lenin’s opposition to the economists and were in fundamental agreement with the criticisms of them in the book. However, this hardly proves Trotsky’s account to be incorrect.

To recognise that one particular formulation of Lenin’s was flawed is hardly to portray Lenin as holding workers in disdain, as Lewis suggests. It is a distortion to suggest that Taaffe, Trotsky or even Cliff has attempted to do anything of the sort. Lenin’s polemical excesses from 1902 are perfectly understandable, given the context. There was even a certain historical truth to the formulation, in that Marxism came to the Russian workers’ movement from without, via a section of the intelligentsia. In a society where 60% of the population of St Petersburg were illiterate, when there was widespread censorship of the press and literature, at a time when the working class had yet to move decisively as a class into political action against autocracy, then Lenin’s mistake is perfectly understandable.

However, to repeat today, with almost universal literacy and the works of Marx, Lenin and others freely available on the internet, that the working class is “only capable of trade union consciousness” without the intervention of the intelligentsia from without, really is to hold the working class in disdain.

Carl Simmons
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Fourth degree

Toby Abse (Letters, March 6) makes many correct points in attacking the outfit that still calls itself the Fourth International, but hits the wrong target. Not his fault.

The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI, associated with the World Socialist Web Site) does not hold the views that he attacks. It has been working under the name of the International Committee since 1953, when it parted company with the International Secretariat of Pablo and Mandel, which itself later became known as the United Secretariat (USFI) when it merged with the US Socialist Workers Party in 1963. This should be the real target for Toby to attack.

The USFI used to be led by an international executive committee. Now, for whatever reason, clearly indifferent to the confusion they are causing, they have started issuing statements in the name of an International Committee of the Fourth International. This includes the notorious one in International Viewpoint on Ukraine. They can hardly claim to be ignorant of the existence of the real ICFI and World Socialist Web Site, in view of a long history of differences, unless they are truly lost in a fog of their own creation. The latter explanation is just possible, since as a tendency they have meandered all over the place, adapting to various non- working class forces, and long ago lost whatever tenuous connection they once had with Trotskyism. I don’t know whether they are dishonestly flying the wrong flag or have simply forgotten where they came from as a tendency.

I know the Weekly Worker’s editors take a relaxed view of what appears in the letters column, but they should really not have let this confusion be reproduced without correction. The Weekly Worker frequently holds these people (USFI) up as examples of “Trotskyism” in order to create an amalgam to discredit the whole tradition. Please take the trouble to see what the World Socialist Web Site is saying about the Ukraine crisis - and much else that you might actually agree with.

Mike Martin
Sheffield

Opposed

Toby Abse is wrong when he asserts: “However, the position of the Fourth International stands out like a sore thumb” (Letters, March 6).

There are many Trotskyist organisations that claim adherence to the Fourth International. The Socialist Fight group, of which I am a member, is part of the Liaison Committee of the Fourth International and has a position diametrically opposed to the Mandelites on Ukraine.

Laurence Humphries
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Please explain

Phil Kent states that Marx didn’t advocate open borders because at the time he wrote border controls didn’t exist (Letters, March 6). So no-one can definitively assert what he would have said then! I still await anyone quoting anything Trotsky or Lenin said in support of open borders after 1905 - when Phil says the British state brought in the Aliens Act, the first attempt to control immigration. I doubt very much the Bolsheviks advocated or practised open borders in 1917 or later, when engaged in a civil war in defence of the revolution - do correct me if I’m wrong here.

Phil moves on from workers being able to move anywhere in the world without any controls to defending the movement of anyone starving - quite another matter. I’d rather Phil (or anyone, actually) deal with the questions I raised in my letter of February 27. To repeat - do indigenous peoples have any rights or privileges they can expect to exercise in their own country over and above those entering from outside? I’d point out to Phil that people in this country are starving - look at the 300% increase in food banks.

Are the native Americans, the aborigines, the Palestinians all wrong to complain about being invaded, taken over and deprived of ‘their’ land, ‘their’ resources? Should they have welcomed without question all who arrived to settle, regardless of the culture and values they brought with them that were totally antagonistic to the indigenous people already there?

Alan Johnstone (another whose letter I enjoyed, even if I disagreed with some points) tells us of how, over 15 years Lithuanians in Lanarkshire were unionised (Letters, February 27). Could they have done so if other nationalities also settled in even larger numbers, undercutting the Lithuanians?

How is it one nationality settles in one area (and in London it is Latin cleaners unionising and organising in SOAS) to the apparent exclusion of other ethnicities/nationalities? Is it because they get a toehold by undercutting the rate for the job, working hard, then bringing more of their own community over - to the delight of the exploiting boss, but edging out indigenous workers and other foreign workers? How does that promote unity of all workers? Can Alan tell us what local unemployment was like whilst the Lithuanians were getting themselves established before they joined unions in their own defence, and why it was Lithuanians dominating that area of work and not a much wider mix of workers?

Why should indigenous people in any country sit back and watch outsiders arrive and take the jobs and, in so doing, ensure it is their own community that take over? Is it acceptable to socialists that many foreign workers coming here readily line up with the employers and Tories by denigrating the British unemployed as lazy and workshy?

Can I have replies to the questions I raise and not bland, utopian assertions? For those who didn’t read my last letter, I finished off by stating that if communism/socialism was a world system in place now, millions of people wouldn’t need to move elsewhere, as basic human needs would be met.

Dave Vincent
Manchester

Swing to right

Phil Kent, a long-time CPGB supporter, raises some valid points about Dave Vincent’s opposition to open borders.

However, as Phil admits, mass immigration from eastern Europe to the UK since 2004 has led to a fall in the wages of all workers. At the same time, it has been well reported in the capitalist press that the Labour cabinet in 2004 welcomed mass immigration from eastern Europe for two reasons. The first, as mentioned above, was to lower wages. The second was to dramatically reduce union power. This from a ‘Labour’ government.

It is OK Phil calling on the trade unions to organise migrant workers, but this is clearly not happening. Perhaps Phil could call on Len McCluskey’s Unite to use the £1.5 million cut in its affiliation fees to Labour to take on an extra 50 full- time organisers? Perhaps Phil could also call on Paul Kenny’s GMB to do the same?

In the market town in which I live, the population has increased by 10,000 through mass immigration from eastern Europe. The farmers and factory human-resource officers love this inexhaustible supply of cheap labour. Thirty years ago an unskilled school-leaver could always get a job on the production line of one of the local food processing factories. In 2014, to do the same, one has to go through one of the numerous employment agencies, which have grown like weeds in a garden. The result is that unskilled school-leavers languish on the dole and are at the mercy of their parole officers - sorry, personal advisers - at the job centre, who use every trick in the book, and more, to deprive jobseekers of their benefits through what are known as sanctions.

All mass immigration from eastern Europe has done is to shift UK politics to the right. Clear evidence for this will be shown on May 22, when the UK Independence Party come top of the poll in the European elections.

John Smithee
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Living dead

If we say, as Dave Vincent appears to do, that we are happy for capital/ goods/services (and whatever else we want to include in the agglomeration of non-human elements in the global economy) to be able to move more freely over political frontiers than people can, are we not saying in effect that we are happy for things to have more legal rights than people?

I wonder whether, if there had been more controls over the movement of people than over the movement of capital, etc, in Marx’s day, he would have cited it as an instance of the opposition of dead/congealed labour to living labour under bourgeois property rights and therefore as an instance of alienation and of fetishism of the commodity - ie, the misattribution to things of social characteristics that ought to belong to people.

Tim Reid
London

Party guy

I was a bit perplexed to read comrade Matthew Hale’s reply to me (Letters, February 27). Rather than present an honest account of the unity talks that the International Socialist Network is engaged in, he instead opted to parody my argument.

Does he honestly believe that building a reformist organisation will in any way be fit for purpose? In reply to his question, though, it is true I believe Left Unity should be transformed into a Communist Party. Why? Because it is the only way of advancing the cause of working class liberation.

In the history of the working class and socialist movement, attempts to build parties that want to tinker with the present set-up have all failed. The only party capable of setting about the necessary course is a Communist Party.

Bob Dunne
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What about me?

I was quite surprised to see included in the front cover of the 1,000th issue of the Weekly Worker an image of Trotsky, of all people, but not Lenin, and a banner calling on workers to join the Fourth (Trotskyist) International.

You describe yourselves in favour of a mass Communist Party which will unite communists, revolutionary socialists and advanced working class militants, yet you increasingly explicitly reject the communist tradition and actively exclude the very idea of such unity including comrades and militants from the communist tradition.

That tradition includes a positive appreciation of the role of Lenin, who elaborated and developed Marxism into a revolutionary theory in the age of imperialism, and of the Soviet Union, which as a land without capitalists was a country trying to build a society without exploitation, discrimination, deprivation and instability. It made mistakes and suffered lapses but its motives always remained commendable.

One might have thought the Communist Party to which you aspire, which would include tendencies and even factions, would have room for people who hold differing views on the achievements of the Great October Socialist Revolution in creating a new society and a new civilisation, and even on the role of people like Trotsky. But no. Your summarised programmatic statement dogmatically declares that the Soviet Union was “the opposite of democracy”.

You thereby reject Soviet reality and Lenin, who, with absolute clarity, argued that “proletarian democracy has brought a development and expansion of democracy unprecedented in the world, for the vast majority of the people, for the exploited and working people. Soviet power is a million times more democratic than even the most democratic bourgeois republic.”

We can debate the Soviet Union, Stalin, Trotsky, the purges, etc, endlessly if that would be helpful and productive, but my main point is that differences of view on such matters are legitimate and honest, and can and should be able to coexist in a genuine Communist Party.

I would happen to agree with most of your programme and your Communist Platform, with the obvious exceptions of your references to Stalin and the Soviet Union, and I am very clear that socialism means political and economic power in the hands of the working class and therefore an “unprecedented” expansion of real democracy. However, I would find myself excluded from your ‘project’ because I have differing views on Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and the Soviet Union.

By explicitly rejecting the totality of the communist tradition, you not only remove the right to call yourselves communist, but you also destroy any prospect of the mass Communist Party you claim to want. You cannot have a Communist Party without communists.

Andrew Northall
Kettering

Infiltrators

Mark Fischer, at the end of his review of Undercover: the true story of Britain’s secret police, says: “After all, if groups as essentially harmless as the likes of London Greenpeace, the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army or Earth First can wobble the world view of some undercover coppers, think of the damage that Marxism’s inspiring vision of the future can do - when we Marxists clean up our act” (‘How to guard against state agents’, January 16).

I beg to differ that these organisations are “essentially harmless”. London Greenpeace

produced a leaflet against McDonald’s, who sued two of their members for libel, launching the infamous ‘McLibel’ trial, which was a massive own goal in terms of McDonald’s reputation. What is important about that case is (as revealed in Undercover) the fact that a special demonstration squad infiltrator helped write the leaflet!

The book doesn’t mention Panther, initially just a newspaper produced by black and Asian members of the Militant Tendency, but later a group with its own autonomous structures. When Panther split there were almost certainly state infiltrators on both sides of that struggle. It even led to the farce of two different newspapers, both called Panther, being sold on a later anti-racist demonstration in London. Both splinters folded shortly afterwards, and to this day the Socialist Party (as Militant has become) is almost entirely white as a consequence. The state is not stupid - a large organisation of socialist and anti-racist black youths (as opposed to a black nationalist grouping, who play into the hands of big business by aiding its strategy of divide and rule) would be an enormous threat.

The biggest flaw in Undercover is that it suggests there is a very low level of infiltration. Once, when I spoke to Annie Machon, co-author with David Shayler of Spies, lies and whistleblowers: MI5, MI6 and the Shayler affair, she revealed that there were 50 MI5 infiltrators within the Militant Tendency at its height.

The more activists know about the powers the state has to monitor us and try to subvert our organisations, the easier we can defeat them.

Steve Wallis
Manchester

Quran question

I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Copestake’s article on the sentencing of Jordan Horner (‘Asbo mania threat’, February 20). While I found areas of agreement, as a new reader of the Weekly Worker I was left with questions that I hope Michael will take the time to respond to.

The suggestion made is that part of the problem with Horner’s reactionary politics is his desire for a sharia state. I have to disagree. The problem isn’t the sharia, but Horner’s conception of it. In an age far different to that of the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) it would be a huge error to interpret the Quran from a literal reading. Imperative is the context.

Islam under the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was progressive and feminist: women were allowed to own property and equal rights granted to all ‘races’. Ultimately, however, sharia can never be imposed, but has to be accepted. When the prophet (pbuh) first embarked on calling people to Islam, he was victimised. It was only years later that people willingly accepted. Even then, sharia was not imposed upon non-Muslims and, as far as I understand Quranic scripture, the sharia can only emerge with the return of prophet Isa/Jesus (pbuh).

Without democracy there cannot be Islam. For example, imams - often mistakenly portrayed as leaders - are elected from the community. People’s ‘rank’ in society does not matter - we are all equal before Allah.

My question though to Michael: in any future society, is it not plausible that Muslims - or followers of other religions - are able to practise their own religion free from others’ interference within reason? The reason I ask is that you appear to have suggested - and I’m more than happy to be corrected - that an atheist understanding of communism trumps all.

Secularism is fine, but it need not mean ‘non-religious’.

Mohammad Ashraf
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