Letters

Class reaction

Congratulations to Mike Macnair on an attempt at a balanced, rational and non-hysterical response to the European Union referendum vote (‘After an unexpected vote’, June 30).

However, one major feature he missed was the clear divide between north and south generally, or more particularly the traditional industrial proletarian areas and the more affluent south-east, based on banking, computers and internet industries. Those who have benefited from EU membership and those who have been damaged by it (or believe they have been damaged by it). Those who share the Euro vision along with all the leaders of the establishment parties and the world’s ruling class and those who have been crapped on from a great height by those self-same people.

It cannot have escaped your attention that it is the abandoned, neglected, ignored areas of Cornwall, south Wales, post-industrial Midlands, Yorkshire, Lancashire and the northern counties - markedly the coalfield areas, the steel towns, the places that once fuelled and equipped industry and manufacturing of all sorts, the coastal areas, the centres of fishing and post-fishing and related industries. Within these areas the ‘leave’ vote ranged from 55% through to the 80% in mining and steel towns and villages. These were places hit - yes - by domestic, social and industrial policy, but one which is directed and linked with wider EU visions, restrictions, controls and prohibitions.

Areas like this not only feel that they are marginalised and utterly lied to by Labour politicians, as well as the traditional Tory enemy, but have seen their way of life, culture, perception of class, worth and value smashed on the altar of globalisation. The declaration of worthlessness on skills praised for centuries; meanings of life wiped away in a generation - to be replaced, if at all, in a scrum with European migrants for service jobs and a race to the equality of the bottom of the pile. The communities in these areas have no reason whatever to trust and believe anything any of those political parties and ruling political caste tell us is good for us, or to find any security in the EU state project.

Let us be right here: little of this has anything to do with racism or xenophobia. We have all worked with European workers for generations in shipyards, mines and heavy engineering, but that was when the trade was expanding, not being buried. It’s so much easier to be generous when you have something; very difficult when everything you had has been taken away. Don’t let anyone be so stupid as to think that somehow the hard-nosed folk of Yorkshire or the Durham and Northumberland coalfields have suddenly found political inspiration in Boris or Gove, for god’s sake, or that Nigel Farage has spread fear among them and produced some irrational stampede. This vote was entirely predictable to anyone who ventured out of the home counties and north of the Watford Gap, regardless of the Tory grandees of the ‘leave’ campaign, who didn’t touch these regions. This reaction was a class reaction, for want of any other way of demonstrating our anger - and that anger, over the run-down of industry and destruction of our communities, is seething still.

The reaction of the middle class, liberal left has been hysterical: like spoiled children used to always getting their way, they cannot believe someone has said no to them - they simply can’t believe anyone could possibly, should dare to, draw a different conclusion from themselves. I’ve heard arguments from these people relating to the EU state in almost identical terms to the Trot defence of the ‘workers’ states’ somewhere along the line. This EU state has suddenly become theirs, whose ‘gains’ must be defended.

They must be confused even further by the fact that it is the same solidly working class folk of the north and valleys who are now rallying to defend Corbyn and are enthused for a radicalised Labour programme. The task now for all those petulant leftist ‘remain’ campaigners is to stop fighting last week’s battle, stop trying to scold the class and get on with the current wave of struggle, which includes defending Corbyn against the Parliamentary Labour Party coup, taking control of the Labour apparatus and exploiting all those wonderful contradictions and crises which have opened up on the back of the referendum vote.

Or did someone forget that exploiting and exposing crises and contradictions within the system was the point?

David Douglass
South Shields

Big mistakes

If George Orwell was alive to write Nineteen Eighty-Four today, he might well include a concept like Big Brother’s Big Mistakes.

Western support for the Shah of Iran, expansionist Israel and the Iraq war have produced various politicised Islams, at a state (Iran) as well as a local level (IS), that have proved troublesome for powers big and small. Last week the result of the EU referendum was described as a “democratic problem”, being a popular vote on a severe choice - ‘leave’ or ‘remain’ - that has lit the blue touchpaper for the risky fireworks of isolationism, xenophobia and racism, with the Front National in France the next emboldened candidate to shake the EU centre.

Back in Great Brexit, Theresa May is now the favourite to restore order, whom even the Daily Mail supports, and the search is on for some sort of compromise involving strong but open borders, while the Labour Party’s top dogs continue to growl at the Quiet Man of left reformism, Jeremy Corbyn.

Power may yet, with some concession to those disgruntled at globalisation, resume business as usual. Meanwhile if we’re ever going to be ‘bold’ in our politics, we have to connect with that anti-bossiness which voted against established authorities.

Mike Belbin
London

Afraid?

Are the ‘old guard’ of anti-Corbyn officials of Hammersmith Constituency Labour Party - elected before Labour membership doubled in support of Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘straight-talking’ anti-austerity and anti-war politics - afraid of being democratically held to account by party members?

The “consultation” to ascertain local Labour Party opinion before the June 28 PLP vote of ‘no confidence’ in Corbyn, which was organised by CLP chair Rowan Ree at the request of Hammersmith MP Andy Slaughter, was extended to councillors and most general committee (GC) delegates - but not to me, the local Unison delegate, and not to the CLP members, the vast majority of whom can be reached by email.

Requests to convene a GC meeting were declined on the grounds that seven days notice is required by rule. But these are special times, when the unity of the party is at stake. An email ballot of members would probably have produced the opposite result - a majority vote of confidence in Corbyn.

Today, Wednesday July 6, the disenfranchisement of the CLP membership has been taken to a new level. At 9.30 this morning I submitted the following ‘Support Corbyn’ motion to Ravenscourt BLP, my local branch, for the discussion at the branch meeting on July 14 (the second Thursday, as always), with the proviso that, if passed, it would be put to the GC on July 28 (the fourth Thursday, as always).

“1. This [Branch LP] [CLP] expresses its support for, and solidarity with, the elected leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. We regret the June 27 vote of ‘no confidence’ in him by a majority of Labour MPs.

2. We urge Labour MPs to respect the democratic mandate given to Jeremy Corbyn by the Labour Party.

3. We demand that Jeremy Corbyn must have an automatic place on the ballot paper, if a leadership challenge is made.”

By 7pm the branch meeting on July 14 had been arbitrarily cancelled, and replaced by the GC, on the grounds that school holidays start at the end of July, so July 28 “would not be accessible for delegates with children who have limited time to get away”.

That’s seven months of political turmoil with no democratic input from party members. Expect comrades to rebel.

Stan Keable
Unison delegate to Hammersmith CLP

JC’s war

Hackney Momentum met in Dalston on June 29. Even though there had been only two days’ notice, around 100 people packed out the venue. Such were the numbers that each speaker from the floor in the first session - on the current attacks on Jeremy Corbyn - was allowed just 30 seconds to elaborate their views! Every one of them was pro-Corbyn, of course.

There was some colourful language - one comrade, referring to the right, said we “need to smash those bastards”. Another said that the “onus is on them, not us, to back down”, while someone else pointed quite correctly to the current “class struggle inside the Labour Party”, which, in the words of another comrade, was being waged by the right “against the working people”. One speaker noted that some union tops had been talking about reselection of anti-Corbyn MPs and said that we should support that.

I said that Lenin was right - the Labour Party is a bourgeois workers’ party - and urged the Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Party members present to ditch the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition and join the Labour Party if they really want to support Corbyn. However, the SWP’s John Rose, who was next to speak, said that instead we should all mobilise for the July 16 demonstration against racism and austerity.

Motions of confidence in Jeremy were put forward for the forthcoming Hackney North and Hackney South Labour Party AGMs.

Simon Wells
Hackney

Resistance

In an encouraging display of resistance to those in the PLP who had signed the vote of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn, just over 200 people gathered for a meeting in Sheffield on Wednesday June 29. Called by Momentum, the meeting had been planned long in advance, but was especially well attended due to the general outrage at unfolding events in the party.

Guest speakers Pete Willsman (Labour national executive member and a leading figure in the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy) and Rhea Wolfson (of the ‘centre-left’ Grassroots Alliance electoral slate) made a number of points, which chimed well with an audience that was clearly incensed at the Labour right’s latest manoeuvres.

To applause and cheering, Willsman lambasted these “disloyal wreckers” in the party. He correctly stressed the importance of the upcoming NEC elections and winning Constituency Labour Parties to support the Grassroots Alliance: “If we lose the NEC”, he said, “Jeremy can’t do anything.” Aside from his jarring insistence on calling female comrades “ladies” (which drew heckles from the floor), Willsman’s speech was pretty much spot on in its emphasis on the importance of organisation within the Labour Party: Corbyn may have become leader, but the right were still out there and determined to reverse this at the earliest possible opportunity. If the party as a whole is not changed, then this remains a real prospect. This point seemed to be lost on some of those activists, speaking subsequently from the floor, who insisted that the rightwing coup attempt was hatched in response to the strength of Corbyn’s position and the right’s concern that he could soon become prime minister.

Rhea Wolfson picked up on the theme of fighting for positions in the party by highlighting how, at the last party conference, the left had lost its control of the conference arrangements committee to the right. While this body may sound like it merely prepares food and drinks, she said, it actually plays a crucial political role. Further, she argued that the party needed to be democratised at all levels, but did not actually mention what she thought should happen with the PLP and the maverick coup-backing MPs.

Indeed, for all the militant condemnation of the PLP that was evident in contributions from the floor, it later became clear that most of those present did not wish to call for mandatory reselection. After a declaration issued by Momentum had been read out for endorsement, a young comrade proposed an amendment favouring mandatory reselection. However, only around 30 of those present voted for it, with opponents of the amendment claiming that it was “too early” for such moves, or that we needed to emphasise “unity”. A shame.

What became clear was that the local Momentum group is not offering much of an organisational lead in channelling the opposition of rank-and-file members into Labour’s structures. Many comrades are unfamiliar both with other comrades in their locality and with the ins and outs of Labour Party meetings and rules. Encouragingly, however, Sheffield has now moved to weekly meetings in an attempt to address this weakness. A later meeting (July 5) agreed to hold a local rally in support of Corbyn on July 9 and to continue to meet in order to caucus for CLP and ward meetings.

Hopefully this can also feed into the democratisation of Momentum itself, because simply coming together periodically to nod through statements issued by an unelected national committee is not a solid basis from which to transform the Labour Party.

Ben Williams
Sheffield

Deluded

Why all this concern about the leadership debate in an avowed party of capitalism, the Labour Party?

They are not socialists, merely reformists, and seek to work within the capitalist system. Any worker thinking that they will be better off under Labour or that Labour is a socialist party is clearly deluded. We have had several Labour governments since 1924 and are no closer to socialism now than we were before. Labour governments are usually (economically) a shambles and are incompetent at administering capitalism. At the end of every term Labour are in office we are normally praying for a change of government!

So who cares if the leader is left or rightwing? The capitalist system won’t care - it will carry on as before and who is leading the Labour Party is irrelevant.

But, now that England are out of the Euros, at least the leadership drama is entertaining.

Steven Johnston
email

Dreamland

Sometimes in life there come points when ‘if you didn’t laugh then you’d have to weep’. Your article, ‘Turn the tables on the right’ (June 30), is one of those points. It is too easy to dismiss it out of hand as revolutionary nonsense from a frustrated Marxist who sees socialist salvation just around the corner. We can do a little better than that.

In 1980, following the 1979 Labour rout that elected Thatcher, Peter Hain presided over a debate entitled ‘The crisis and future of the left. The debate of the decade’. His published account contains the following words:

“Of course, all sorts of arguments will be cited in favour of far-left groups, this time, in these particular historical circumstances, facing that specific stage in capitalist development. But then they always are. Capitalism always is in, or approaching, its final crisis. Class conflict always is about to break out like wildfire the length and breadth of the country. The working class is perpetually about to leap up and overthrow the existing order ....

“One of the least appealing attributes of the far left is its self-righteousness: its claims to possess a monopoly on socialist wisdom, on morality and honesty, and, in the case of the SWP specifically, its irritating tendency to exaggerate its self-importance and the role of its activists. That sort of approach makes left unity difficult to build. It also reflects a fault of the whole of the left, inside and outside the Labour Party: namely, a desire to posture rather than grapple with reality. Thus the easy slogan, the reach-me-down cliché and the obsession with sectarian point-scoring amongst the left ...”

In the same year the party elected the hard-left Michael Foot and three years later in 1983, when there were three million unemployed and Britain’s industrial base was being decimated by the Tory rout of the working class, the party went to the people with “the longest suicide note in history” and suffered its worst ever defeat.

To the far left, Corbyn’s huge mandate from the members indicates the advent of a new kind of politics, an overthrow of the existing order by a nice man who wants to do politics differently. However, that huge mandate has not been subjected to any detailed scrutiny. More than likely its increase has been due to ‘Labour any way’ supporters - those who would vote Labour whoever was leader. If that is true then probably it is not representative of the whole country. That is the starting point of the Blairite right - they have not become infatuated with that huge mandate and they believe that Corbyn cannot win a general election when the electorate will vote for a party that they think is a more comfortable alternative. The far left will espouse principles, but the electorate will ignore them. The hard left want power only if they can have it all - ‘all or nothing’ people. The Blairites will take power if they can have something - ‘all or something’ people.

James Marshall’s solution is a purge. This is fantasy politics - ‘Noddy on the stump’. It will gain little if any support in the Constituency Labour Parties, many of whom reject Corbyn, and it will confirm the worst fears of the electorate that the party is communist - as in ‘Come back, Joseph. All is forgiven’. The country will always reject extremes like fascism and communism. Politics has to be played in real land not dreamland.

Michael Ellison
email

Chilcot concerns

Rugby Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition is pleased that the long-awaited Chilcot report has seriously challenged the decision to go to war, but, as expected, it falls short of adequately apportioning blame for what we have always seen as the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. The millions who marched in London in February 2003 knew at the time that Tony Blair was determined to go to war with or without a mandate. He had assured president Bush he would be with him “whatever”, as early as July 2002.

There are immediate concerns about the Chilcot report. It was announced in 2009, and was supposed to report within one year. For 13 years since the invasion of Iraq, the British establishment has been able to cover up the truth. In March 2003, Tony Blair ordered British forces into Iraq after telling us Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to Britain and the world. Thirteen years later, we know the full consequences of this decision: 179 British troops killed, hundreds maimed or suffering psychological trauma, over one million Iraqi dead, millions of refugees, and the rise of Islamic State in British-occupied Iraq.

The report does not say that Tony Blair lied in order to make the case for war. He still maintains he didn’t, saying today that he acted in good faith and in the best interests of the country. Chilcot suggests otherwise: there was no imminent threat from Saddam Hussain when Blair took the decision to invade and no clear evidence of WMD. We know Blair lied in the infamous ‘dodgy’ dossier published in September 2002, and in his ‘famous’ speech on March 18 2003, on the very eve of war, when he distorted the work of the United Nations weapons inspectors about WMD. Chilcot does not appear to have fully picked this up, although the report does accept that the decision to invade was based on flawed intelligence, which should have been challenged.

The invasion of Iraq has clearly not made Britain a safer place, as Tony Blair promised it would. Blair had been warned in advance by Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the then director general of MI5, that the invasion of Iraq would increase the threat to Britain from the terrorist group, al Qa’eda, and radicalise increasing numbers of British Muslims. Even David Cameron accepts that the invasion helped al Qa’eda to grow - but he said in parliament that he would not rule out invasions in the future!

The government failed to achieve its objectives - so what did the millions die for?

As far as we are concerned, the report has started to make the case for the invasion of Iraq being illegal. The necessary steps now need to be taken to prosecute those responsible. We agree wholeheartedly with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who said in parliament that those who authorised this illegal war should be brought to account. Rugby Tusc will consider what action we can take, such as starting an online petition calling for the prosecution or impeachment of Tony Blair for war crimes.

Pete McLaren
Rugby Tusc

Point by point?

Sean Thurlough says he will provide a “point by point” response (Letters, June 30) to my previous reply to him. But he then does anything but that.

Sean claims that the quote I gave from Wage labour and capital is nothing more than Marx being “ironic”. But, when placed in conjunction with Marx’s comment on the Civilising mission of capital, from The Grundrisse, it quite clearly is not. Sean relies for his claim on a paragraph where Marx states that, to say that the interests of capital and labour are the same is only to say that they are two sides of the same coin. Precisely so, and if Sean were to examine Theories of surplus value, he would see Marx’s further elaboration of this argument.

But Sean has introduced a completely extraneous argument here. The argument is whether the rise in workers’ living standards has been a result only of concessions given to workers because of the presence of the USSR, or whether it is itself a necessary corollary of the growth of capital. Marx’s comments, that labour and capital are two sides of the same coin, is a confirmation, not a rejection, of the view that the rise in living standards is a direct corollary of the expansion of capital.

But the fact that there are two completely different arguments being confused here by Sean goes to the nub of the matter, because it illustrates Marx’s point that the drive to socialism arises not from the fact that capitalism immiserates workers - nor even that it causes periodic crises - but that it brings about a transformation of the means of production; that, even as workers enjoy ever rising living standards, they become increasingly, at an individual level, further removed from the possibility of ownership of the means of production, whilst the means of production themselves even become removed from the hands of private capitalists and are transformed into socialised capital.

Sean falls into the same trap as the Lassalleans. In my response to him a series of other quotes were included to demonstrate this, but they were edited out of the published letter. But, for example, this is what Marx says against the Lassallean view presented by Sean:

“It is as if, among slaves who have at last got behind the secret of slavery and broken out in rebellion, a slave still in thrall to obsolete notions were to inscribe on the programme of the rebellion: ‘Slavery must be abolished because the feeding of slaves in the system of slavery cannot exceed a certain low maximum!’”

It is notable, therefore, that Sean actually evades dealing with the quote from TheGrundrisse, claiming that it only refers to “temporary” circumstances, whereby labour and capital are combined to provide a benefit to both. But in that case there should have been no long-term improvement in workers’ conditions, as these “temporary” improvements were subsequently reversed! But the issue in dispute is whether the increase in living standards is a consequence of capitalist development. Moreover, the quote quiet clearly is not about simply “temporary” conditions, but is about the very process of capital accumulation, and the rise of social productivity!

In that respect, I also cited the following comments by Engels:

“Thus the development of production on the basis of the capitalistic system has of itself sufficed - at least in the leading industries, for in the more unimportant branches this is far from being the case - to do away with all those minor grievances which aggravated the workman’s fate during its earlier stages.”

“The history of these unions is a long series of defeats of the working men, interrupted by a few isolated victories. All these efforts naturally cannot alter the economic law, according to which wages are determined by the relation between supply and demand in the labour market. Hence the unions remain powerless against all great forces which influence this relation. In a commercial crisis the union itself must reduce wages or dissolve wholly; and in a time of considerable increase in the demand for labour, it cannot fix the rate of wages higher than would be reached spontaneously by the competition of the capitalists among themselves.”

Sean then shows that he has completely missed the point of the argument, accusing me of being “enamoured” by the economic gains achieved by workers under capital! But, my position is the exact opposite. It is that the basis of workers constructing socialism has nothing to do with whether the current system immiserates them or makes them more affluent, nor indeed does it have anything to do with whether that system is prone to periodic crises. In relation to the former, as Marx indicates, the workers become more enslaved to capital, even as their standard of living rises sharply. In relation to the latter, as Marx points out, there are no permanent crises, and whilst the periodic crises may give workers an incentive to create socialism, they are in no way a factor that necessitates the overthrow of that system, or a means of doing so.

Quite the contrary: crises weaken the position of workers, cause increased competition between them, lead to their atomisation, demoralisation and so on. It is rather the development of capitalism - and particularly the development of socialised capital - that provides the basis for the transformation of capitalism into socialism. As Marx put it, “They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the means and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society.”

Sean fails entirely to deal with the point about the situation after the fall of the USSR. Instead he attempts to smear me by a clumsy Stalinist amalgam of trying to connect me to the Blair government. But it’s obvious that, of two ends of this particular stick, Sean once again manages to grab the wrong one. In my response, I pointed out that “Blair … was no raving leftwing militant”, and the whole point, therefore, is for Sean to explain why this rightwing government implemented those policies of trebling spending on the NHS, introducing the minimum wage, etc. Moreover, Sean failed to address the point of why this rightwing government did this at a time when the UK labour movement was weak, and 10 years after the USSR had collapsed, given that, according to Sean, it was the existence of that regime which was a major reason for concessions being given to UK workers.

The whole thrust of Marx’s argument is not some moralistic, Sismondist or Malthusian anti-capitalism, but a positive, progressive view of socialism developing within the existing system, and growing beyond it.

Arthur Bough
email

Master of time

Tony Clarke has taken on the role as master of the universe and has dictated that because for him time is purely abstract then that goes for every puny human also (Letters, June 30).

The problem with Tony’s argument (aside from the fact that he believes the true nature of time has been settled once and for all) is that it doesn’t deal with why humans have a concept of time in the first place and why time takes such a prominent role under a capitalist system. Time is not just a mental construct, but is the product of real problems and situations humans have to deal with. Time is abstract in Marx only in the theoretical sense, as in ‘Consider something theoretically or separately from (something else)’.

Adam Smith’s theory that a division of labour would be more economical was based on the idea that it would save time. If for a capitalist it takes workers longer to labour then this can mean the difference between going bust or not. The capitalist who believes time is a purely mental construct will not last very long!

Imagine a hair salon where it takes eight hours to cut an individual’s hair because the hairdressers like to chat with the clients. This means that only one cut per day per hairdresser can be achieved. The upshot of this is that either the business will not be able to cover its costs or they will have to raise the price of a haircut to around £1,000! And soon the customers will go to the barbers down the street where they take half an hour per cut.

When it comes to the economy, time is not abstract and never can be. Time has real effects. You cannot have an economic theory that ignores time: it is impossible.

Maren Clarke
email