Letters

Positive impact

I write in response to Arthur Bough’s letter (June 9), responding to my intervention (Letters, June 2) in the ongoing polemic between him and Mike Macnair, which has been broadly about the nature of social democracy and its usefulness in the advancement of working class control of society.

I shall confine myself to a broad-brush response to what I see as the two main points raised in Bough’s letter (anything more would entail something longer than I imagine the Weekly Worker would be willing to print in its letters section). I shall also not engage in a point-by-point analysis of areas where I think that Bough has misunderstood my intended meaning in a letter that I wrote rapidly and in a possibly over-concise style that was at points perhaps open to misconstrual.

To take Bough’s most theoretical passage first: his last two paragraphs seem a pretty good summary of part of the argument of Capital Vol 1, as it might be wilfully misinterpreted by a bourgeois economist, so that it would support the idea that, although surplus value is extracted from workers under capitalism, this is all to the good, because economic growth through the accumulation of capital benefits everyone equally, workers and capitalists alike. However, Bough completely sidesteps the rest of the argument of Capital - ie, everything that suggests that the need for capital to accumulate (and at times not accumulate) stands in opposition to the interests of workers and leads to periodic economic crisis, unemployment, etc.

The rest of Bough’s letter seems to assume that I and Macnair are asserting that all gains within capitalism by the working class are solely the result of the existence of the USSR and its satellites (and similarly organised states) before, during and after their existence. I do not think that either I or Macnair have said this; for myself, I have certainly not intended to state or imply such a point. Obviously, gains by the working class under capitalism are multi-causal, as nearly all processes in society are. To say anything different would be to fall into an extremely mechanistic approach to human history.

Throughout the period of existence of a workers’ (revolutionary) movement of any size and level of organisation in Europe - let us say from the period leading up to the 1848 revolutions onwards - there have been periods of ebb and flow in its fortunes, both in terms of its ability to extract social democratic-type gains from the ruling class (eg, the widening of the electoral franchise, the provision of public services, various forms of social welfare, trade union rights, the allowing of openly organised, explicitly labour-movement-inspired political parties, rising living standards, free compulsory education, etc) and in terms of its ability to wrest power completely from the capitalist class for longer or shorter periods in larger or smaller geographical areas (more or less the events of 1848, 1871 and 1917). Broadly, my view is that the social democratic gains are made partly because of the threat of revolutionary action lying latent in the working class ‘behind’ social democracy.

However, the period immediately after World War II stands out as exceptional in terms of social democratic gains in the west (eg, the political decision by the ruling class to guarantee full employment, the NHS), and the big thing that is different about this period is the existence of an apparently economically and technologically thriving USSR (think the panic engendered in the west by Sputnik - my mother, as an academic librarian, was sent off to learn enough Russian to catalogue accurately the Soviet science publications that Leicester University Library had decided to start buying). This difference is reflected in Eric Hobsbawm’s use of the phrase ‘The Golden Age’ for the period, because of these gains.

Whatever we now think - or we think that workers in the west on the whole then thought - about the balance of positive and negative qualities of the USSR, the idea that its existence had no effect whatsoever on the attitude of western capital to its own labour force is laughable: the power of capital had been overthrown in a large portion of the globe, which raised the potential for the growth of the idea in western working class consciousness that the overthrow of capital was possible. Put alongside this the presence of mass communist parties in many countries in western Europe, the programmatic closeness of the Labour Party left in this country to the CPGB’s British road to socialism programme, the perceived need in the US for anti-communist witch-hunts; then the idea that western capital was not influenced in its political behaviour within it own states by the existence of the USSR seems naive. The USSR, from the point of view of western capital, represented the apogee of latent revolutionary action lying ‘behind’ the social democracy of its own working class.

One also has to think of the experiences of the first half of the 20th century. Capitalism was widely seen as leading to two world wars and the depression: socialism/communism was widely seen as offering a way out of, or guarantee of non-return of, such a period, and was widely perceived as succeeding in the USSR, at least in this limited sense. In this overall context, the political discourse of social democracy in criticising simultaneously the USSR, communism and revolutionary politics, on the one hand, and capitalism in its worst excesses, on the other, has this effect: to the ruling class it is saying, ‘If you don’t give the workers some concessions, look at what the awful results might be for you, with workers driven to desperate measures.’ To the workers it is saying, ‘If you don’t let us negotiate within capitalism for you, look at what the awful result will be if you try more extreme measures against capital.’

As a final aside, I described my correspondence with Bough thus far to a colleague who lived under Soviet communism in eastern Europe (without being a blind supporter of it, or vehemently critical either, as far as I can tell); her response was that the existence of the eastern bloc clearly had a positive impact on the fortunes of the working class elsewhere in the world.

Sean Thurlough
London

Way back when

I found nothing to disagree with as such in Camilla Power’s outline of the ‘sharing’ and ‘counter-greed’ strategies of ancient or still existing primitive communism (‘Communism in living’, June 9). The fact that all human society could have once been tribal-collectivist and ever on the lookout for individual assertions of superiority is something we might learn from.

However, Engels in The origin of the family, private property and the state does go further, adding a discussion of how things then changed - which might also be instructive - of how such ancient collectivities gave way to another kind: the private-property, hierarchical kind. In other words, how we got from there to here. We need not accept every detail in the Origin to see the wisdom of accounting for such a transition of how Eden was spoiled. This, after all, is the point of historical materialism: how we got where we are.

It may beOrganised by Big Ride For Palestine: www.redspokes.co.uk/thebigride. that the private-property ‘father-right’ societies developed as separate clans (as with Abraham in Genesis, or the Greeks) - an alternative social organisation that came to replace or conquer the more collectivist kind in an evolutionary play-off. Or that the collectivist tribes themselves were transformed, once they began to store a surplus - as the Gravettians of central Asia did by freezing meat (their social organisation incidentally being both settled and sending out bands of hunters). Of course, we know of more recent social formations, in which property was and is held in a collectivist ‘communist’ fashion, but where this doesn’t guarantee equality.

Furthermore a larger society constructed of an alliance of clans may have meant that the loyalty of members to their own particular family or ‘nation’ led to one clan gaining dominance over the others, even if within it men and women were more equal than they were later. Remember, Cleopatra became ruler of Egypt because of her membership of the right family.

Thinking of Egypt, we can also note how religious ideas might have helped in the development of class society: a ruler who asserts closeness to god - whether Abraham, Pharaoh or Louis XIV - is in a stronger position to tell others what to do.

Way back when, the evolutionary advantage of a bonding religion may have been due to how it helped convince, if not coerce, people that the settled community made life safer than the hand-to-mouth, ‘immediate meal upon return’ regime of the hunter-gatherer. Did the faith in a powerful father-god - creator, ancestor, perfect individual - outweigh the claims of collectivism? We know that the struggle continues over which of any kind of social model is best for the majority.

Mike Belbin
email

Basically true

Comrade Toby Abse oversimplifies matters by demanding that “everything” about the manufactured hysteria alleging anti-Semitism in the Labour Party should be seen “in a British perspective” - as a Blairite offensive, that has nothing to do with the pro-Israel lobby.

Yes, he is right in saying that “[John] Mann is an opportunist who cares not two hoots about Israel/Palestine, but just uses the issue for witch-hunting, from whatever angle is politically convenient”. However, as I pointed out in my article, ‘Don’t apologise - attack’ (May 19), this local anti-Corbyn offensive has merged with an international campaign launched much earlier by the Israeli propaganda machine, aiming to discredit any opposition to Israel’s Zionist colonising regime and support for Palestinian rights as ‘anti-Semitic’. Toby’s attempt to dismiss this wider international dimension is obfuscatory, reductionist and insular.

His justification of Ken Livingstone’s suspension is deplorable. It is arguable that Ken’s comments for which he was suspended may have been impolitic; they were certainly inaccurate, but they were basically true. It is a provable historical fact that the Nazi regime (though not Hitler personally) approved of Zionism before World War II. They shared the wish to prevent the assimilation of Jews, and the claim that Jewishness is not primarily a matter of religion.

Ken’s (inaccurate) claim that Hitler had supported Zionism “before he went mad” and decided to exterminate the Jews may seem to Toby as implying that in the (alleged) earlier phase Hitler “was quite a reasonable bloke”; but this presupposes that support for Zionism is necessarily reasonable - a belief not shared by Ken (or by me). Clearly, Ken was deprecating Zionism by associating it with Nazism, not exculpating Hitler by associating him with Zionism.

Moshé Machover
email

White coats

Maren Clarke claims that my attack on Marx’s theory of value is absurd (Letters, June 9). To me, what is absurd is using the labour theory of value to explain the present crisis of capitalism. That was brought on by the peaking of global oil production, leading to rising energy prices, which trigger recession and the temporary collapse of these same prices.

My criticism of the labour theory of value suggested it was a ‘time’ theory of value, which argues that the labour time spent making something determines its value. I argued that that time is a mental abstraction, and I understand that most people, including scientists, believe in the reality of time. But, whether you believe in time or not, to argue that labour time determines the value of anything is purely arbitrary and subjective.

Marx derives value from abstract labour time. But abstract labour time is a mental construct. That is the meaning of the term ‘abstract’. Real labour is concrete and the dialectical opposite to the abstract labour from which Marx derives value. To claim that something called value comes from abstract labour, which is purely mental, is a good definition of absurd.

People who believe value comes from an abstraction do not know the difference between the abstract and the concrete, or the mental and the material. They surely need a visit from the men in white coats.

Tony Clark
Labour supporter

EU evils

In framing the argument about the internationalist dimensions of the European Union, the trade union movement and the political left have discounted the problems that the EU has imposed upon the United Kingdom and on our fellow European neighbours on the continent.

Do I refer to immigration? No, I do not. I refer to the factual knowledge that the EU has deregulated labour markets, permitting the transnational capitalist class to diminish the inalienable rights of free-born individual trade union members to freely associate for the purpose of collective wage bargaining.

The EU has written hyper-competition into its institutional DNA, through the issuance of directives on the privatisation of state-owned railways, and opening up the postal services to private competition. These EU directives have been gold-plated by EU integrationist automatons in the establishment - people from privileged backgrounds who have no knowledge of the problems that their decisions have imposed upon the rank-and-file citizens and workers of the UK.

It was EU competition law that stopped the awarding of the Bombardier contract to our comrades in Derby. The EU does not protect worker rights because it was the sacrifices of the Tolpuddle Martyrs and the formation of trade unions and worker associations that increased the bargaining power of the working class in the UK.

The Greek people have been forced onto starvation rations by the greed of the EU and its controllers in the international banker cartels. The treachery seen by Jeremy Corbyn and his trade union enforcer, Len McCluskey, should not be ignored, following the ‘Workers’ independence from Europe day’ on June 23.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport union under the leadership and guidance of the sadly departed Bob Crow was not a rightwing capitalist lackey of the UK and EU elite. It was actually the representative of hardworking railway workers.

The enemy inside our ranks are the turncoats like Corbyn who come from a far more privileged background than working class council house lads like myself and the many trade union members I am proud to call my friends. In 1970 the Equal Pay Act became law and survived even the Thatcher government. It was not because of the EU and its invisible and non-existent worker protections that the equal pay principle survived. It was because of the resistance that would be organised by the trade union movement in the UK.

A ‘workers’ Europe’ is a false and forlorn objective because the international and European class elite who created the EU, and who draw 99.99% of its collective benefits, will not permit it to be transformed into an association of workers and trade unionists mutually working for their own providence.

We don’t need the banker institutions of the EU to do that; we can do it through pre-existing worker networks and through the digital transformation of communication. I am in regular contact with people from all over the world. We don’t need outdated institutions like the EU to achieve worker cooperation.

The UK should leave the EU and remove one layer of transnational capitalist class control over our pay, living conditions and inalienable rights. Then we can organise 100% against the banker-funded Tory Party, who have transformed the UK into a paradise for the global plutocrats to come and deposit their ill-gotten gains made from exploiting zero economic borders.

We can’t rely on non-elected, wholly appointed bankers, commissioners and EU court judges to protect the rights that our ancestors fought for in the trade union movement. We cannot sit back and watch the privileged controllers of the EU impose hardship, privation and starvation upon the fine Greek people. We here in the UK are being led down the road to serfdom.

Unlike the Greeks, we are not trapped in the EU, because we have an escape route and we must use that referendum ballot on June 23 to become independent - not of our fraternal comrades on the continent, but of the control that the top 1% elite of the UK and Europe have exercised over us for so long.

Jeremy Corbyn should stick to his younger days and commit the Labour Party to withdraw from the never-to-be-reformed EU, controlled by bankers and multinational corporation executives.

Tony Benn opposed the EU. Bob Crow opposed the EU. Dennis Skinner opposes the EU. Corbyn, you have to stand up for people and fight and fight and fight to defend the interests of UK workers against the corrupt bargain of the EU and the international bankers who will stop you renationalising the railways and Royal Mail, and will overrule any opposition to the multilateral contract to start privatising European public services.

If you cannot be bothered to represent genuinely working people, then please step aside and let the real representatives in the trade union movement, such as the RMT, Aslef, SLEF and the other unions and union members do it. I am an optimist with reason and caution and, to be candid, I can’t see you changing, so, to borrow from history: ‘Depart, I say depart, for all the good that you have done and never will do.’ Depart and give the Labour movement back to those who genuinely care for it.

Oliver Healey
Leicester

Three trends

As we move into the final countdown for June 23, we need to take stock of the three basic positions in the socialist movement, which are reflected in the Republican Socialist Alliance. First, there is the reformist case for ‘remain’ backed by Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour left, Left Unity and Socialist Resistance. Second, there is a revolutionary case on the EU which is expressed around ‘boycott and abstain’. Variations of this are promoted by the CPGB, Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism, and the International Socialist League. Third, we have the ultra-left case for ‘leave’, or UltraExit, supported by the Socialist Party, Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party of Britain.

Of course, these three broad trends - reformist, revolutionary and ultra left - have variations and ‘internal’ contradictions. Although millions of people will abstain or boycott the ballot, in the working class movement comrades are polarised between the reformist and ultra-left positions.

The ‘reformist-remain’ position is that the only way to fight to remain in the EU is to vote for Cameron’s anti-immigrant and pro-City of London deal. This is by far the largest and most influential in the labour movement and has created a popular front between liberal big capital, represented by Cameron’s Tories, the City and big corporations, and the organised working class in the right wing of the Labour Party, the trade union bureaucracy, and socialist reformism.

The popular front is based on the idea that all classes benefit from the EU, both capital and wage labour. It is accepted by Corbyn that the EU is not perfect, but Labour can reform it to serve the working class. In reality this promise of ‘jam tomorrow’ is empty because there is no means by which the Labour Party can delivery on their promissory note. It is a promise that the EU will carry on in the way it treated the Greek working class.

UltraExit is a mirror image of reformism. Whilst reformism says the EU can be reformed without having any plan or means of achieving it, the ultra-left claims it cannot be reformed and so have no plan either beyond its assertion. Like reformism, UltraExit denies the possibility and necessity of a European democratic revolution.

The revolutionary camp is not in good health either, because it is divided between anarchist and revolutionary democratic arguments. There are two anarchist arguments. First, some anarchists say ‘a plague on both houses’ and refuse to vote, as a moral argument. They have no perspective beyond the polling booth. Second, there are revolutionary anarchist arguments which simply think that breaking things up is revolutionary like smashing the crockery or having smaller businesses. This ‘revolutionary’ ‘mash it up’ is firmly in the UltraExit camp.

UltraExit is seriously flawed. The EU has changed, is changing and will continue to change. But the ultras claim that permanent change is and can only ever be in one direction: worse or backward. This is to deny the potential power of the working class - more than capable of extracting a few crumbs from the bosses’ table, and bringing democratic and social revolution. UltraExit denies and opposes the possibility of European revolution led by the European working class.

UltraExit claims that leaving the EU will overthrow Cameron and destroy the Tory Party. Of course, Cameron may be sacked by the Tory Party, but they will keep him if he can still deliver for the City. We should not underestimate the ability and determination of the Tory Party to keep its grip on power. Worse, it ignores the reality that if Cameron is ousted he will be replaced by Boris Johnson, not the SWP or the SP. A victory for exit, with the present balance of forces, leads to the right. Despite its own radical intentions, ultra-leftism sounds ‘revolutionary’, but delivers its voters for hedge funds, smaller businesses and rightwing politicians, and adds to the anti-immigrant mood.

UltraExit claims that the EU is worse than ‘ordinary’ capitalism. The EU attacks the working class, imposes neoliberal policies and austerity. But, unlike capitalism in the UK, this EU capitalism cannot be reformed nor overthrown by revolution. If this is true the entire world will be taken over by the EU and capitalism will remain unchanged for ever.

UltraExit is built on intellectual pessimism about the potential power of the working class. This is quite understandable, given the defeats suffered by the working class in the UK. Various socialists have lost confidence in the international working class and no longer see it as the agent of change - reform or revolution - in Europe.

There is a world of difference between saying ‘Remain by voting for Cameron’s reactionary policy’ and saying ‘Remain’, while opposing the Tory policy by not voting for it, and calling for militant class struggle opposition to Brexit, if necessary, after June 23. Whoever wins the referendum, the economic classes will have their say, whether in the form of a financial crisis, a strike of capital or workers’ general ‘strike against exit’. Given the situation of striking workers in France, there is no better time for a militant fight linking up with French workers.

Before anybody claims that workers strike action would be illegitimate by defying the democratic decision of the people, we need to remember that 2.3 million EU citizens have been excluded from the ballot. If women were not allowed to vote in this referendum would we accept it as a legitimate democratic result? Why should we accept the exclusion of EU citizens from this ballot as anything other than Tory gerrymandering?

Steve Freeman
London

Unsung hero

On July 19 1936 general Franco, with the backing of Hitler and Mussolini, led a coup against the democratically elected government of Spain. It kick-started the Spanish Civil War, which saw a turbulent conflict unfold between rightwing and leftwing ideologies. Here in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England many like-minded individuals joined the International Brigades to fight against Franco’s fascists in Spain. But so too did many Americans and one such young man from Texas would become the first African-American to lead an integrated fighting force.

Oliver Law was born on a ranch in Texas on October 23 1900. At the age of 19 he joined the United States army but, despite his impeccable record, segregation prevented Law from rising in the ranks and after six years in uniform he left for a civilian life. In 1925, like so many others of that time, he left the rural south to seek better opportunities in the industrial north. At the beginning he found work in a cement plant in Indiana before eventually settling on the Southside of Chicago, where he worked as a cab driver and then took employment as a stevedore.

Racism fuelled Law’s passion to fight for social equality, while the great depression only served to strengthen his leftwing values. He chaired the Southside chapter of the Labour Defence League in Chicago and became a frequent target of police harassment, as his activism grew. In 1930, Law was beaten and arrested with 14 other activists at an International Unemployment Day rally in Chicago. In 1935, he helped organise a large rally in protest against Mussolini’s occupation of Ethiopia and was arrested, while giving a speech to the 10,000-strong crowd.

When the Spanish Civil War flared up in 1936, Law joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and within a year he was in Spain fighting Franco’s fascists. On January 16 1937, Law, along with many other volunteers from America, arrived in Spain. On February 17 they got their first taste of action in the Jarama valley, where the task of the International Brigade was to stop the advancing might of Franco’s troops.

Although Law and his fellow brigadistas were unable to hold out against the better-equipped fascists, his display on the battle field saw him rise through the ranks of the Lincoln Brigade. Two weeks after landing in Spain, Law had been promoted to section leader and on February 27 he took part in an attack on Pingarron Hill in the Jarama Valley. Of the 500 Brigadistas that went into that battle against Franco’s troops, some 300 were killed and wounded. Two weeks after this setback, Law was promoted to commander of the machine gun company.

Heavy losses dented the International Brigades, and the Lincoln Brigade was one that suffered the most. With the high losses, Law soon rose quickly among the ranks and six months after arriving in Spain he had become commander of the Lincoln Brigade. Oliver Law became the first African-American to lead an integrated American fighting force. In the United States army, the highest rank Law could rise to was corporal due to segregation, but in Spain he was now leader, even if it was just for a short time.

In July 1937, Law led his brigade into the Battle of Brunete, where Franco had sent back-up troops to prevent an approach on Madrid. It proved a bloody battle and one in which Law would lose his life. On July 10, he assembled his troops to advance on a hill known as Mosquito Crest. Franco’s troops were there waiting with severe fire power, but Law charged forward, waving his pistol and encouraging his men to follow.

A sniper’s bullet hit him in the stomach and he fell in mid-charge. As he was being brought down from the hill on a stretcher, another bullet hit him and his life ended there in the battlefields of Spain, along with 135 other Americans that day. The 37-year-old Oliver Law was well respected and had gained trust from those who fought alongside him, and his loss was a major blow to his comrades in the Lincoln Brigade.

In the immediate years after his death, an attempt was made to make a film on the life of Oliver Law but it was blocked by the rightwing influences in the film business. Among the 3,000 volunteers from the United States that went to fight against fascism in Spain, some 80 of those were African-American. Among them was Oliver Law, an unsung hero.

Pauline Murphy
email