Letters

Answer this

I’d like to ask the Weekly Worker and its readers some serious questions regarding Jeremy Corbyn. Is the cult of personality still alive and should he change his name to ‘Dear Leader’? Levels of adulation towards him are reaching those rarely found outside the DPRK.

When it comes to the age-old question, ‘Do great men make history or does history make great men?’, Marxists tend to be found in the latter camp. Are things going to change now? If Labour fails to win the general election in 2020, will he be absolved from blame, meaning it’s everyone else’s fault?

Steven Johnston
email

Challenges

At our AGM on October 4, Teesside People’s Assembly? elected a new organising committee comprising Steve Cooke, Caroline Domingo, Jo Land, Allan McLeod and David North; and we thanked James Doran, who has stepped down from the committee, for his contribution to our work.

We reflected on our achievements and challenges in the last year and discussed the role that the People’s Assembly movement can play in opposing austerity amidst a rapidly changing political environment. Our immediate actions in the next month are organising a Middlesbrough rally for the Footprints March for the NHS? (October 27) and supporting the Emergency Call 4 NHS? demo in Hartlepool (October 15).

We expressed solidarity with the We Shall Overcome? anti-austerity gigs being held locally this weekend (October 7-9) and the forthcoming Stop The Nazis In Darlington? anti-fascist action (November 5). We also agreed to discuss the potential for organising a programme of political education activities at our next meeting, which will be held on Tuesday November 1 at 7.15pm in St Mary’s Centre, Middlesbrough.

Steve Cooke
Secretary, Teesside PA

Active boycott

The blatant sectarianism in US left politics is in evidence by each tiny sect running its own presidential candidate. Although my appraisal will get assent from most readers who favour electoral propaganda blocs, please don’t count me among them, for the correct stance for the American left favours an electoral boycott.

With the two most unpopular major-party candidates in history, this is an excellent time to initiate a tactic that should be applied whenever there are no mass parties of the working class on the horizon. No unprincipled propaganda bloc is necessary. All socialists who oppose the two major candidates and, for whatever reasons, consider the minor parties a fool’s errand, should join, with their own perspective and propaganda, in calling for a spoiled ballot in the presidential election.

Besides the sectarian temptation to exploit the electoral cycle to pick up a few new members (as well as to reward select cadres with lifestyle perks), the failure of any group to call an electoral boycott - in the absence of a supportable mass opposition, based on class - expresses a concealed scepticism about the Marxist theory of party in relation to class. This theoretical scepticism surfaces in how some American Marxists view the Sanders campaign. Many Marxists, even if they refused to support Sanders, see his movement as a progressive development. (The most extensive expression of the favourable view of the movement for Sanders, while rejecting Sanders himself, is at the World Socialist Website, but it appears, among other places, in an American writer for Weekly Worker.)

These comrades think that drawing previously apolitical youth and workers into politics, even if that politics is capitalist, is a gain. They see the newly politicised as easy pickings, despite the reality that Sanders led a ‘good government’ movement that, where it hasn’t joined Clinton, has benefited mostly the rightist libertarian, Johnson. Once committed to a capitalist party, minds become more, not less, hard to change to a communist track. The capacity for parties to win loyal, mass embrace is, indeed, the basic reason that parties play such a central role in the class struggle. Rather than cheering the results when Sanders tried to persuade youth to vote Democrat rather than abstain, Marxist strategy should be based on the understanding that to abstain is always better than to vote Democrat or Republican (or, for that matter, Libertarian or Green).

Spontaneous electoral abstention helps delegitimise the capitalist state. We have mass electoral abstention to credit with the ease with which US cops have been delegitimised, one of the few truly optimistic developments in America.

Another mistaken argument against boycott says that it’s one thing to boycott a referendum like Brexit, but quite another to boycott an election, which provides the option for making a more precise statement by voting for a socialist candidate. This ignores that an effective Marxist electoral strategy isn’t oriented toward individual votes, but requires a stand that can be effectively generalised. Who but a small coterie of supporters will heed the call to vote for, say, the Socialist Party USA? I wouldn’t! I don’t want to see the Socialist Party in power or its influence increased any more than I want to see Jill Stein become a popular mass leader. A mass party that draws a class line is critically supportable because it can be tested against clear performance criteria. No-one but a true believer in the Socialist Party should want it, or the other sects, to be strengthened.

Even the sects should realise this and present an argument for abstention rather than for a candidate with neither recognised political virtue nor generalisable appeal. It would be much better if there were a mass class party, or even the near-term possibility of cohering one. A class-struggle labour party is the proper goal, but the propaganda potential of abstention shouldn’t be undervalued. Some issues, such as the ultimate futility of capitalist pseudo-democracy, can be raised more directly in support of boycott than for a candidate.

To promote the delegitimisation of the capitalist parties and the capitalist state - and to further legitimise electoral abstention itself - American Marxists should call for an active electoral boycott.

Stephen Diamond
USA

Dexit

In the Tory referendum campaign, like many republican socialists I argued for an “ever closer union” of the European working class: greater working class cooperation and integration through European trade unions and European-wide workers’ parties, along with and part of a European democratic revolution. The aim of this revolution is to create a United States of Europe, as a federal, social and secular republic by overthrowing the current neoliberal European Union.

The EU is not a United States of Europe, but it has made a European democratic revolution more possible and more necessary. The UK working class has therefore good revolutionary reasons to remain in the EU. The UK leaving the EU does not invalidate the aim of a ‘United States of Europe’. Socialists fought for this over a hundred years ago before the EU ever existed and should continue even if the EU dissolves into a European war between rising racial nationalisms.

Today the British crown’s negotiating position is being kept secret, but Theresa May, speaking at the Tory Party conference, highlighted two significant points. First, “I want to give British companies the maximum freedom to trade and operate in the single market - and let European businesses do the same.” She did not, however, support the equivalent freedom for EU workers. Playing to a racist gallery, she said: “But let me be clear: we are not leaving the European Union only to give up control of immigration again” (The Guardian October 3).

Second, she declared: “We will negotiate as one United Kingdom and we will leave the European Union as one United Kingdom. There is no opt-out from Brexit and I will never allow divisive nationalists to undermine the precious union between the four nations of our United Kingdom.” There will be no self-determination. Scotland will leave the EU, whatever the people think or want.

In these quotes are the fundamentals of the Tory Brexit, highlighting the figure of 52% voting for ‘leave’. The prime minister declared that “Brexit means Brexit”. But what does Brexit mean? There has been much speculation. A British exit is British unionism with emphasis on immigration. It is the rebirth of Gordon Brown’s ‘British jobs for British workers’. Naturally the big corporations and the City are deciding what kind of exit serves them best. So the Tory press have come up with ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ versions of Brexit to provide room for manoeuvre.

So it is incumbent on socialists and the working class movement to do the same: work out the best option and fight for it. After the referendum the working class is more divided than ever. We have to fight to unite both sides of the great divide. The working class needs its own terms to describe the same process. Instead of the Tory Brexit we should think of Democratic Exit or Dexit.

A few facts and principles are necessary. The total number of eligible voters was 46.5 million and the total votes cast were 33.5 million. The full voting was as follows: ‘leave’ 17.4 million, ‘remain’ 16.1 million and abstain 12.9 million. Hence 37.4% voted to leave, 34.6% voted to remain, and 27.7% abstained. Hence taking account of abstentions, 62% of eligible voters did not vote to leave the EU.

This is not the full story. There are valid democratic objections to Dave’s dodgy referendum. EU citizens resident in the UK from Ireland, Malta and Cyprus were allowed to vote. But Polish, Germans or Italians living here, for example, were not. This was blatant discrimination and ballot-rigging. There were also about 1.5 million 16-18-year-olds denied a vote on their future. These missing voters would likely have delivered a different outcome.

The abstentions and excluded voters cannot be ignored, but they are not the decisive factor. England voted by 53.4% to leave. Wales voted by 52.5% to leave. But Scotland voted 62% to remain. Northern Ireland is part of the Irish nation and a constituent part of the UK. People there voted 55.8% to remain. Taken as a whole, Ireland wants to remain in the EU. The UK is a multi-nation state and the right of nations to self-determination is essential to maintain national unity or allow peaceful separation. On such an important issue this principle is in play.

Democratic Exit presents a fuller and more complex picture of the popular vote. Millions abstained. Millions were excluded. A large minority voted to remain. There were different majorities in the different nations. The Tories have narrowed this in the term ‘Brexit’ to mean one majority for one Britain, and one interpretation that plays to racist sentiments. Fifty two percent voted to leave. Everything else can be ignored except the claim that this is all down to immigration.

Theresa May says the whole of the UK will have to leave the EU. But it will be business as usual for the big corporations and the City, who must keep all their EU benefits and freedoms. The whole weight of the British exit will fall on the free movement of workers. Immigration is Brexit’s Great Distraction and the racist Tory press are fanning the flames. Whilst the people are looking in that direction, the City is escaping with all the EU loot!

Democratic Exit means that England and Wales leave the EU, and Scotland and Northern Ireland remain in it. This will solve the Irish border issue and help the process of uniting Ireland. The EU borders with England and Wales will now be Ireland, Scotland and France. Trade will continue. Scotland and Northern Ireland will still be represented in the UK and EU parliaments. The Scottish and Irish people will still have their European passports and not have to pay for a new one and enjoy being able to travel and work freely in the rest of Europe.

Democratic Exit is the result each country voted for. It does not necessarily mean the end of the UK. Negotiations with the EU should be conducted with this in mind. The first ministers of Scotland and Northern Ireland and their parliaments should be fully involved in the negotiations. Until 2019 we will still be operating with the same EU laws. By then the Scottish and Northern Irish should have their own representatives in the European Council and European parliament. Democratic Exit includes an agreement for Scotland and all Ireland to remain in the EU.

The obvious objection to Dexit comes from unionists, who would see it as another step towards the break-up of the UK. Scotland had referendums in 2014 and 2016. Taken together, they mean Scotland remains in the UK and the EU. The Scottish National Party government has taken a cautious approach and not demanded a referendum on Scottish independence. Given the result of the 2014 Scottish referendum, this is the right approach. But if the British crown cannot or will not keep Scotland in the EU then the Scottish people will have to make a choice - between remaining part of Little England’s Union or remaining in the much bigger European Union.

It is clear, and confirmed by May’s speech at the Tory conference, that the British crown will never deliver a Democratic Exit. It will be ‘too difficult’, ‘too complicated’ and ‘impossible’. The Tories will put every argument and every obstacle in the way of it. So Scotland will have to clear the decks for battle. This time it will be a real fight and will require the left in England to join in and not sit on their hands like last time. All we need to do now is work out what Dexit means for England and Wales.

Steve Freeman
Left Unity and Rise

Tormentable

Norman Finkelstein at this year’s Communist University said that animals will achieve sentient equality with humans. In light of his statement, I revisited Maciej Zurowski’s Weekly Worker interview with members of the Assoziation Dämmerung (‘Animal liberation and Marxism’, January 23 2014). The article started off with a strong conjunction between what the interviewer termed variously the sentimental, misanthropic, anti-modern and moralistic type to the rather different Assoziation Dämmerung of which he appears to approve, setting this group qualitatively apart from the animal rights activists who have gone before.

The interviewees provide a good argument about why Marxists should take this question seriously. They highlight the distortion, under capitalism, of our relationship to animals and nature. They accused a CPGB delegation of being neo-Kantian and restricting the debate to reason after defining the differences with animals. They say that what we share with animals is a tormentable body which many Marxists disregard. Finally, one of the interviewees says that to avoid the trap of moralism we have to consider, for example, veganism as a part of a broader political project in understanding how society functions.

These are all good points that I agree with, but the impression formed is that, when trying to understand animals, they are taking a merely Skinnerian, behaviourist viewpoint. When they take into account a tormentable body, they do not say what is actually tormentable, or what are the mechanisms that we share with animals that lead to torment and what are the differences. They talk about a tormentable body, but in the absence of any evidence the Cartesianism formulation still stands.

In a way this is a good thing, as it is a critique of individualism, a foundation stone of enlightenment thought and coterminous with capitalism, which they acknowledged about our treatment of animals before capitalism. They reference Marx, who noted a difference in the way humans treated animals when they were serfs compared to when they were wage-labourers. But why stop at capitalism? Why not look at our treatment of animals when we became human? There are many studies of extant hunter-gatherer groups that demonstrate a reverence for animals and what nature has produced. Prior to farming we had an interdependent relationship with animals - a kinship. Although animist, our relationship with the external world was positive and has only deteriorated since the Neolithic.

It appears though that the interviewees are still on a moral crusade. Yes, we share a tormentable body, but this does not mean that, as soon as we start thinking about that aspect, including our relationship to animals, we are to become vegan. Are the interviewees going to take an abolitionist line and impose veganism or will they go down the welfare route? And we know where the welfarist line ends - the crusties and the invasion of ethically produced products that the interviewer lambasts at the beginning.

Whatever the interviewees think about meat eating, it is going to continue as long as humans inhabit this planet, and the recognition of a tormentable body is not going to change that situation. So, when the New Zealand government passed the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill last year, capitalism did not collapse. All it meant was that animals were regarded as sentient beings and their welfare has to be taken into account. This is evidence that animals do feel pain, but is also recognition that humans overcame their body, inhabited reason and reified animals. So, yes, call me a neo-Kantian.

Simon Wells
London

Low-key

Sunday’s demonstration against the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham was a much smaller affair than its equivalent in Manchester last year.

According to press reports, the organisers are claiming that more than 10,000 took part, compared with the 60,000-plus achieved in October 2015. However, I would say that 10,000 is an overestimate.

The small group of comrades I marched with had formed the impression there were a lot more people ahead of us in the march, but when we got to the destination only a few hundred were assembled around the rally stage and there can’t have been more than a few thousand in the field by the time all the marchers arrived. Whilst some may have gone directly to the nearby pubs, I don’t think they could have accommodated several thousand escapees from the rally. And the 1st of May Band, whose politically charged and entertaining live set welcomed us, were brilliant, so most people would have wanted to hang round to hear more.

Band aside, the whole thing seemed very low-key, although participants were good-natured and there were some decent speeches at the rally. The demo was co-sponsored by Midlands TUC and the People’s Assembly, but there was no national mobilisation for it, unlike last year. Unite were the only the union to put any effort into organising transport from my region, but, even with the union offering free seats to non-members, its two 49-seat vehicles from the north-east were only a third full.

A North East People’s Assembly coach from Newcastle/Durham did better, with two-thirds of its seats occupied - aided by a contingent of teaching assistants from Durham newly activated politically as a result of a current industrial dispute with Durham County Council.

Darren Swan
email

Esoteric

I have been hosting a reading group here in the north-east US and we have reviewed several of the Weekly Worker and Critique pieces authored by comrade Mike Macnair. In particular, the concept of a state order inhering in public institutions of redistribution and arbitration/conflict-resolution is developed.

My comrades and I have questions for comrade Macnair and for the wider CPGB milieu. In ‘Historical blind alleys’ (Critique Vol 39, No4, 2011), there is the view that Confucian dynastic Chinese society is a sort of ‘undead antiquity’ - a sort of Byzantium which persists to the present. The fundamental form of the dynastic regime is replica of the Qin state, and thus bound up with essentially antique social relations. Dynastic China regularly resurrects or reboots itself through the mechanism of ‘reset events’ in the form of peasant rebellions and civil war and/or foreign invasion by nomadic warrior confederations from the Jurchen/Manchu or Turkic/Mongol hinterlands.

With regard to China, Banaji discusses Naito Torajiro’s thesis that prior to the late T’ang dynasty empire, and in particular the epoch from the ‘Six Dynasties’ period to the mid-T’ang, was characterised by military-aristocratic domination of the monarch and the machinery of state. The classic image of Weber’s ‘prebendary and patrimonial’ (archaeo-) bureaucratic autocracy in China, based almost solely on the examination system, develops slowly and in tension with the existing military-aristocratic dominance in the mid-to-late T’ang, which continues to decline through the ‘Five Dynasties (and Ten Kingdoms)’ period, and reaches maturity in the Sung dynasty. What is to be made of the changing form of Chinese dynasticism?

Similarly, though differently, it seems that Hinduism can be straightforwardly seen as a degenerate relic of ‘particularist polytheism’ in antique society (whereas China retains solely the gentile ancestor-veneration and hints of the auguries analogous to antique Roman religion, with a highly ideologised and de-soteriologicised version of the ‘divine command’ of Constantinian-Theodosian Christianity). Is Hindu society similarly a form of ‘deathless antiquity’? What is to be made of the fact of the partial Islamisation of parts of South Asia?

Lastly, I see the description of Sunni Islam as being only semi-universal (due to the privileging of peninsular Arab customs of the 7th and 8th centuries), and the lack of a division between the appropriators of landed surplus/warrior class and the clerisy, the latter’s failure to develop into a discrete, independent and co-equal estate to the former (though Ottoman statehood is given as an exception). I would like to know more about this. Is (Arab and Arabised) Sunni Islam a sort of ‘premature birth’ or ‘disabled’ feudalism? A less disarticulated or contradictory counterpart to ‘blind alley’ Germanic-Arian kingdoms? Is there a source for exploring the completed ‘late feudalisation’ of the Ottoman empire, or at least its Turkicised Anatolian heartland?

Is there not a risk here of varieties of “deathless antiquity” or a sort of false-start or only partial transitions to feudalism basically resurrecting the criticised qualities of the ‘Asiatic mode of production’? Namely that it internalises an enlightenment and 19th century European conception of non-Europe as in essence static, ‘living fossil’, even in a sense lacking history? Only in the absolute extrema of the temperate latitudinal Eurasian-north African axis (geographically sheltered from steppe invaders, by distance in west-Elbian Europe, and China and sea in Japan - coincidence?) did post-classical imperial regimes, the Carolingian Frankreich-come-Roman empire reborn and the T’ang dynasty replica of Taika reform Japan, decay organically into fully-fledged feudal societies. Shades of Jared Diamond-esque physical geographic-ecological determinism here; is there something to be learned in a modern historical materialism?

As a quick aside, in a comment on Louis Proyect’s blog (https://louisproyect.org/2010/06/09/critiquing-a-critique-of-lenin), Comrade Macnair said: “Some countries can pass from the camp of the ‘underdeveloped’ and exploited to that of the ‘developed’ and potential exploiters. But they do so by geopolitics ... The idea - ‘Brennerite’ or promoted by these authors - that the domestic relations of production in different countries is decisive of which outcome occurs is illusory.”

Does Comrade Macnair still hold this view? In ‘Historical blind alleys’, note 27, he states that “the argument made by David Laibman in Deep history … for the necessity of passage through feudalism for a non-colonial (and non-Stalinist) transition from slave-owner urbanism to capitalism seems to me to be both logically valid and empirically confirmed by the ability of Japan (unlike China or Korea) to pass rapidly to full imperialist capitalism by internal revolution in the late 19th century, and of Kemalist Turkey to ‘stand off’ Entente attack in 1919-22 and develop as an independent, albeit lower-ranking, capitalist state.”

By “relations of production” in the former quote do we mean in the narrower, private-choice, site-of-production immediate relations (analogous to capitalist relations internal to the firm) often used by Marxists and especially ‘Brennerites’, but not the wider ‘public order institutions’ sense developed in ‘Historical blind alleys’, the review of Banaji’s Theory as history (Weekly Worker January 20 2011) and elsewhere?

Sorry if this is convoluted or excessively esoteric, but these are questions we are left with after reading Banaji, but also seeing comrade Macnair’s sketches toward a new historical materialism as a way past the impasse of political Marxism and its discontents.

Historical Materialist
USA