Letters

Distinction

SPGB leader Alan Buick says my claim that the Second International drew a distinction between a lower and a higher stage of communism (or socialism) is “dubious” (Letters, December 1). That despite admitting that the affiliated parties did “not think that full, free access according to needs could be introduced immediately capitalism was abolished”.

Well, it seems to me that comrade Buick has already conceded the argument. After all, he admits that the Second International was aware that the working class could not immediately proceed to implement its full programme - ie, there would have to be a transition from working class power over capitalist relations of production to the communist mode of production.

An unwillingness to recognise the necessity of the two stages is characteristic of anarchism - the subject of numerous Marxist/social democratic polemics in the late 19th century. If anybody believed that “full, free access according to needs could be introduced immediately capitalism was abolished” it was the followers of Mikhail Bakunin.

To support his case, comrade Buick calls to the stand a certain T Oizerman, who he claims stands in the “Leninist tradition”. So who is Theodore Oizerman? He is, in fact, no Leninist, but a typical repentant Stalinite academic. Born in 1914, according to Wikipedia, he served in the Red Army during World War II and went on to become a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1983. He received various state prizes in recognition of his philosophical apologetics. Nowadays, however, Oizerman espouses a social democratic - ie, nowadays pro-capitalist - viewpoint. He condemns Lenin for leading Russia towards an oligarchy.

Anyway, Oizerman wrote the preface to a slim Progress Publishers volume featuring extracts from August Bebel’s Women and socialism under the title Society of the future (1971). And this is what comrade Buick cites to support his claim - ie, that the Second International made no distinction between a higher and a lower phase of communism/socialism.

Oizerman says: “The reader should, however, keep in mind that Bebel and the majority of social democrats in the latter half of the 19th century did not differentiate between the two stages of communist society - the lower and the higher. Speaking of socialism, Bebel refers mainly to the higher stage - to communism. That is why he maintains that in the new society class distinctions and the state will have disappeared, money and trade been abolished, the productive forces will have reached such a high level that the working day will last only three to four hours, and all peoples will live together in one fraternal family, while weapons will be exhibits in museums.”

Okay, say, “the majority of social democrats in the latter half of the 19th century did not differentiate between the two stages of communist society”. An argument, I think, which is highly problematic. But, even if we accepted it, and I don’t, that would still leave a minority of socialists. Underlining his Stalinism, Oizerman goes on to excuse Bebel for suggesting that socialism would be the result of a “more or less simultaneous triumph” in “all or most countries”. A “correct view” then. But that is supposedly before Lenin discovered the “law of uneven political and economic development”. Obvious nonsense and rubbish.

Nonetheless, a few things are already clear: “Speaking of socialism”, says Oizerman, “Bebel refers mainly to the higher stage - to communism.” Yes, mainly. Nonetheless, in 1879, Bebel writes about the transition to what he called socialism, and what we would now call the higher stage of communism. Hence we read that the “state organisation as such gradually loses its foundations” (A Bebel Women and socialism London 1988, p178).

What Bebel goes on to describe as socialism stands in huge contrast to the dire situation in the Soviet Union. Doubtless, that is why as a loyal Stalinite Oizerman felt obliged to issue a health warning to his readers.

Comrade Buick also quotes Lenin’s article, ‘Karl Marx’, written for the Granat encyclopaedia in 1913. Lenin, he says, “used the word ‘socialism’ in the same way”, writing: “... by leading to the abolition of classes, socialism will therefore lead to the abolition of the state as well”, and distinguishing it from “the period of the expropriation of the expropriators”, during which small-scale peasants producing for the market would continue to exist.

So, yes, in 1913 Lenin used the word ‘socialism’ in the same way as Bebel. Well, that is only to be expected. It is not a matter of dispute. What Lenin did in State and revolution (1917) is highlight, dramatise, the distinction between the higher and lower phases by giving them two names. Returning to Marx’s preferred usage, he wrote about the higher phase as “communism”.

We should also note the classic division of the social democratic programme into a minimum, or immediate, section and a maximum section. The most famous example is, of course, the 1891 Erfurt programme. But it became standard practice. The minimum programme is not just about demands put forward under capitalism. Eg, the armed people. It is about the demands that a socialist government - ie, the dictatorship of the proletariat - would implement in order to begin the transition to the maximum programme.

Furthermore, it is worth pointing out that in the context of the Erfurt programme Karl Kautsky published Marx’s Critique of the Gotha programme (written back in 1875). Here, Marx outlined the distinction between the higher and lower phases in no uncertain terms. Marx’s Critique appeared, along with an introduction by Engels, in Die Neue Zeit, the theoretical organ of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Vol 1, No18, 1891).

Hence, Marx’s Critique and the distinction between a lower and a higher phase was well known. Indeed, European socialism almost took it as an assumption. That is presumably why we find a then rather obscure Georgian Bolshevik, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, writing against the anarchists in 1905. He quotes Marx’s Critique and stresses that there will be an “initial stage of socialism”. Under the “initial stage” there will still be survivals of capitalism that remain to be eradicated, etc (JV Stalin Anarchism or socialism? Moscow 1950, p80).

Jack Conrad
London

Unite election

Len McCluskey has called a snap election for Unite general secretary for a second time. His deliberate timing makes it extremely difficult for anyone to get enough nominations to stand against him.

I think Jerry Hicks should stand, because If McCluskey wins he will hold office until 2022, after the next election in 2020 (if May doesn’t call a snap election next year). But by then the full force of the cuts will be implemented, the battle again austerity will be lost, demoralisation is likely to have set in and all the hopes of the vanguard of the class that the Corbyn surge represented will have gone.

McCluskey was determined to ensure that his union led no strike-struggle fightback in the Labour-controlled councils, the national health service or anywhere else. Saying he was marginally better than other union leaders does not excuse backing him in the slightest.

Corbyn as prime minister would be of little use in these circumstances and he probably wouldn’t get elected anyway. We desperately need a real focus to rally the left for the struggle for industrial action against the attacks on the working class and poor. If that happens then Corbyn is sure to be elected because elections are a reflection of the state of the class struggle. We are all casting about to find what we could do to the spark a fightback. A Jerry Hicks winning candidate could be just that we need to rally the working class and oppressed.

But isn’t there a danger he might split the vote and let the rightwing Blairite candidate, Gerard Coyne, Unite’s regional secretary for the West Midlands, win? Those arguments were used against Jerry in the last two elections for general secretary and they were rejected as conservative opposition to mobilising the rank and file of the union for the struggles against Tory austerity, which they must wage now, not wait for Corbyn in 2020. The right wing were marginalised both times and the elections were between McCluskey and Jerry Hicks. Jerry got almost 40% of the vote in 2010 and this time we are confident he will win.

Gerry Downing
Socialist Fight

New game

With all due respect to Jim Creegan, who I was in Students for a Democratic Society with at Penn State, I think he missed the most significant aspect of the 2016 presidential election in his article, ‘Revenge of white working class’ (December 1). That is the split within the ruling class between globalisation and nationalism that lies at the heart of not only the election of Trump, and the victory of Brexit, but also the recent upsurge in the anti-EU victory in Italy.

The upsurge is not about the consciousness of a ‘white’ working class in the United States. It is about the ruling class mobilisation of workers as a social force in the fight against imperialism as a policy, not a system. For decades, workers have been disregarded by the US political duopoly. But, recently, people like Rick Santorum and Donald Trump have raised their voices about the economic conditions of US workers. They do this to wage their own battle within the political arena, given the consequences of the impact of globalisation on significant sectors of capitalism. The convergence of interests of workers and capitalists would not have taken place, had there been a labour or left party that focused on workers’ struggles and united the working class in common struggle. This would also explain why the Austrian election had such a distinct result, where the right was narrowly defeated by a green. The vacuum of neoliberal politics leaves room for a stronger right in the face of an absent left. Hillary Clinton’s credentials as a militarist and globalist were impeccable and resulted in her appeal to many neocons, conservatives and American warlords. Her defeat was a victory.

The face of globalisation has scarred the American rust belt, led to mass murders in Mexico and Latin America, developed a drug cartel-based economy in significant portions of the western US, Mexico and central America, and resulted in mass migrations by farmers forced off the land. The North American Free Trade Agreement led to a popular uprising by the Zapatistas on the day it was implemented in Mexico. The uprisings in Mexico have increased, after collaboration with the drug traffickers and repression against the teachers of Oaxaca. Fue el estado. Todos somos Ayotzinapa! (‘It was the state. We are all Ayotzinapa!’) Ayotzinapa is the site where 43 student teachers were kidnapped by the police on the order of the mayor of Iguala and handed over to the drug traffickers. They remain unaccountable to this day, although in the process of the search for them other mass graves were uncovered.

While American advocacy groups focus on the issue of open borders as a moral issue and never focus on the root causes of narcotics-related violence and economic dysfunction of the Mexican and central American economies, the mass migration continues to result in new refugees, such as the women and children of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

The election results stunned the capitalists in the United States, as they were presuming a total victory by Hillary. The Democratic Party-controlled media continued to ridicule Trump and bash him for anything and everything they could. But he had raised the banner of revolution in his own way, much as Napoleon and Cromwell did in their own way. And he won. The intensity of the split within the ruling class leaves open many options, even when Trump assumes office. Re-industrialisation has been raised within the US election. And Democrats had little ammunition to fire back at it.

Imperialism is a system, though, and not a policy. This means that there is a realignment taking place internationally that will impact the future course of history. War has always been inevitable under imperialism and is so today.

The left has for the most part vacated the industrial working class and usurped positions in academia with a faux-left agenda. Tears filled their pillow in the face of Hillary’s defeat. I am not as convinced as Jim that the election has sounded the death knell of identity politics, as it is the only glue holding the Democratic Party together at this stage. This election has sounded the final act of the Clinton American melodrama, which none of us will ever miss. It is not the end of the internal divisions within the American and international ruling class. This new act promises to demonstrate profound and historical mass actions in the streets and in the political arenas of America and around the world.

At this stage the left in the US remains weak and indecisive. The Sanders leftovers are hardly the stuff of revolution. The Trumpists are fired up and ready for anything. The neocons are still reeling from the defeat. The left is watching from the sidelines. They may very well miss this round, given the influence of progressives and anarchists in what used to be referred to as the left in the US. But the clock is ticking and a new game has begun: ‘March to the sound of the guns.’ General order number 9, Napoleon’s standing order.

Martin Zehr
email

Go deep

Sometimes with ideologies the dominated are required to believe one thing, but continue to believe in a previous one, usually because they feel more comfortable in it or perceive a clash of interests. Henry VIII required his subjects to reject the pope and accept the Church of England. Many protested, as in the 1536 revolt of Yorkshire Catholics, called the Pilgrimage of Grace.

Later, it was vital that the national working class look down on exploited foreigners in the empire, but then, after World War II, the state needed more labour from abroad for rebuilding. The old attitudes were often accommodated by nationality laws and some restrictions on immigration, but ultimately acceptance of the new workforce was made compulsory. That occurred sometime in the 1980s when the offspring of migrants began to disturb the peace by their own protest in widespread rioting.

However, in the recent surprise votes of 2016 there has been another refusal of ‘new thinking’ - rejections of capital mobility, of global alliances and the use of migrants, Polish or Somali, in the labour market. Of course, these reactions, rejecting the European Union and Clintonism, are not based on a profound analysis of capitalism, but they are heartfelt protests by people who see themselves doing badly out of the regime.

The alternative is not a return to Labour nationalism - ‘British jobs for British workers’ - as if lip service to ‘patriotism’ and ‘limits on migration’ are going to tackle where the problem lies: at the level of the world economy; or, on the other hand, a liberal avowal of multiculturalism, as if the divisions of the world can be addressed by speech codes and quotas.

No, what’s needed is a serious class internationalism that strikes at the fundamental problems. Go deep: migrants no more want to be underpaid than locals want to be poor or overworked.

Mike Belbin
email

Lab rats

In last week’s article about the life, death and legacy of Fidel Castro, Paul Demarty briefly referred to those multiple attempts by the CIA to assassinate ‘el Comandante’ (‘An icon, but not a model’, December 1).

How extremely illuminating the equivalent coverage in the international mainstream/corporate media was predominantly flippant and even outright ‘jokey’ about this particular aspect of things, coming without the slightest hint of criticism or condemnation, let alone outrage, abhorrence or disgust.

Before Donald Trump crashes around trying to put into effect his particular plans and policies, it might be wise for him to bear in the forefront of his mind how the leader of a sovereign state such as Cuba or indeed any other suchlike important, highly influential or powerful person is categorised, if or when they run wildly counter to the fundamental needs of the USA. Either contrary to their essential corporate and financial requirements or even their ideological bottom lines, that is.

We could mention here not only Salvador Allende, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, but also JFK, Bobby Kennedy, plus ‘Waco nut’ David Koresh. Not only Martin Luther King jnr, but also Malcolm X and Black Panther leaders such as Fred Hampton, Mark Clark and Huey P Newton, if looked at from the other end of the socio-political spectrum.

Actually, Trump should even take a swift glance over his shoulder in the direction of Edward Snowden, private Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning and arguably even Julian Assange, in the sense that they all stepped over an absolutely different, but still ruthlessly imposed, line of what will be tolerated by the oppressive, verging upon Naziesque, nature of the American system for governance.

Not that I’m suggesting, promoting or in any manner glorifying the idea that Trump and his pro-ignorance stance, super-narcissistic delusions and dangerous oversimplifications should be disposed of via assassination. No, certainly not - in fact, quite the opposite. That kind of anarchistic nonsense is purely counterproductive and diversionary, only helping to ‘feed into the loop’ of those poisonous narratives plus perception control techniques so loved by our various power elites.

Nonetheless, maybe Trump might like to factor its very real possibility into any thoughts surrounding his health and general well-being.

After all, J Edgar Hoover may have joined Jimmy Hoffa in gangsters’ paradise, but the FBI and CIA and even proxy outfits or outsourced ‘sub-contractors’ such as Blackwater/XE Services are still fully operational; indeed, they are incomparably more high-tech and more efficiently covert these days, not to mention both far more readily and far more flexibly sanctioned by their deep state masters and mistresses.

But, now that I come to think of it, those operatives within the deep state might well end up recruiting some mad, bad and sad Islamist to carry out their dirty deed - one selected quite easily from their substantial agent provocateur-nurtured stock. In other words, get one of the daft but dangerous lot to blow themselves up in a suicide attack on a by then intolerably disruptive president Trump.

Oh yes, nice and clean and easily affordable within those pesky bureaucratic and senate committee overseen budgets, with no trail back to the Pentagon or Langley, Virginia. Moreover, with ready-made and customised scapegoats upon whom to glue the blame for the benefit of the ‘lab rats’ out there.

Bruno Kretzschmar
email

Adios, Fidel

Ignacio Ramonet’s biography of Fidel Castro, published in 2006 and based on over 100 hours of interviews, revealed how Fidel’s first political memory was not a domestic one, but rather a European one. The comandante revealed to Ramonet that his first political memory concerned the Spanish Civil War.

The Castro family cook was an illiterate Spaniard with a devotion to leftwing republicanism. The cook would buy newspapers and ask the 10-year-old Fidel to read reports to him about the conflict in his homeland between leftwing Republicans and rightwing fascists. Fidel recalled how, as the months went on, the left were being crushed by the right, but to spare the Spanish cook any distress he would leave out details in articles reporting Franco’s victory and the emergence of a rightwing Spain.

Eighty years after his first political memory Fidel has passed away and he has left a world that is now facing a similar situation that haunted global politics when he was just a 10-year-old boy. Today’s political and social world is slowly being poisoned by a creeping new form of fascism and we must consider where we - those who hold leftwing values - stand. The death of Fidel Castro, a symbol of revolution, can now also be considered symbolic of where leftwing politics finds itself.

In America, the extreme right are riding on a wave of elation since the election of Donald Trump, a man who tweeted quotes from Mussolini and favours the jailing of women who have abortions. In France, the presidential election of 2017 will see right versus far right fight it out for the top job in the Élysée Palace. In Britain, the Brexit referendum was hijacked by a surge in crude nationalism, encouraged by the thuggishly rightwing UK Independence Party. In Germany, the September regional elections saw a resurgence in extreme rightwing politics when the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany made inroads on the political landscape there. These political changes are triggering a rapid rise in rightwing populism across the globe and it is something that gives permission for fascism to flourish.

Modern-day fascism does not produce itself in the same militaristic format as it did in the 1930s, but it contains many of its old characteristics, such as its muscleman approach to dealing with issues such as immigration. The strongman persona in extreme rightwing politics appeals to some disgruntled people today, as it did in the 1930s. Hitler and Mussolini took advantage of economic instability and high unemployment to suggest those factors were the fault of the outsider and they produced a brutish solution to the problem. Some American voters chose Trump because he promised to build a wall along the Mexican border to keep out ‘rapists’ and ‘drug dealers’. Brexit was embraced by some of the electorate in Britain because Nigel Farage and Ukip peddled the notion that an exit from Europe would stop an influx of refugees. France has seen the rapid rise of the National Front, whose manifesto champions closed borders. The age-old concept of ‘them against us’ is alive and thriving in modern democracies across the world.

This year marks 80 years since general Franco led a fascist coup against the democratically elected, leftwing Republican government of Spain. What followed was a fierce civil war, which saw the inclusion of outside fighters to fight on behalf of the left. Fighters from Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England were willing to put their lives on the line to stop the spread of fascism. Resistance fighters also came from France and America to defend leftwing values.

Cuba was one of the countries that contributed the most foreign volunteers to the Republican effort in Spain. Over 1,200 volunteers went to fight fascism and 111 of them perished while doing so. The vast majority fought with the American Abraham Lincoln battalion. They had their own unit within the battalion called Centuria Antonio Guiteras, named after the Cuban revolutionary who died at the hands of rightwing dictator Fulgencio Batista’s forces the year before war broke out in Spain. Back then the world was tilting to the far right; 80 years later we find ourselves in a somewhat similar position.

The 10-year-old boy reading reports of the Spanish Civil War to his illiterate cook in 1936 would go on to become the 33-year-old man to topple the dictator Batista in 1959 - a victory for leftwing politics decades after the fascist flourish of the 1930s. Now that chapter of revolutionary resistance closes, as Fidel goes to be absolved by history.

Today, as a collective, the left is stuck in a state of stagnation. The new form of fascism dressed up as alt-right is rising rapidly. In the year we say adios to Fidel Castro and mark the 80th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War, the baton passes to this generation to carve out a new resistance against rightwing fascism. Hasta la victoria siempre!

Pauline Murphy
email

Red Wakefield

Twenty-three people attended a meeting on the politics of Antonio Gramsci, organised by Wakefield Socialist History Group on December 3 at the Red Shed in Wakefield.

Colin Waugh (Independent Working Class Education Network) argued that Gramsci’s ideas have been distorted, because of his imprisonment, by the Italian Communist Party in the aftermath of World War II and by “academics to this day”. Gramsci, Colin argued, was a Marxist revolutionary who developed a radical, ‘from below’ view of socialism.

Howard Moss (SPGB) also spoke. He said Gramsci was undoubtedly a courageous figure. However, Gramsci still had an attachment to a Leninist position. Gramsci still talked of socialism as a form of state and of socialism in terms of the leaders and the led. The SPGB was for socialism where “people act for themselves, democratically and without leaders”.

There was also music from Barnsdale Hood and a lively question/discussion session.

The Wakefield Socialist History Group is now planning an event, ‘Robert Burns and other radical poets’, on Saturday January 28 2017 at the Red Shed.

Alan Stewart
Wakefield Socialist History Group

Why so silent?

The Rugby Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition is pleased the local press have finally expressed concern about the secret plans to decimate local health services through ‘sustainability and transformation plans’, but we seriously consider this to be much too little and much too late.

Rugby Tusc has been campaigning on this issue since early August, issuing four media releases and two separate updating email reports on our difficulty in any getting any information at all from our local NHS trust. We found ourselves up against a wall of silence. Coventry and Warwickshire NHS trust keeps on telling us consultation is about to take place ‘next month’, but ‘next month’ has never happened. We have kept the media informed about this disgraceful secrecy throughout, asking them to obtain information where we have failed.

Despite our refusal to give up on the issue, only one local newspaper, back in early September, has carried any news on these secret plans to destroy local health services until today - and that was only because we suggested they could lead to the closure of Rugby St Cross hospital. Local radio, on the other hand, has interviewed us on four occasions during this period. Why did the press ignore it?

Now that local health cuts are being partially leaked, we can begin to see why health managers want to avoid consultation. It appears that George Elliot hospital, Nuneaton is to lose its accident and emergency department, maternity, children’s care and stroke care. Women are to be ‘encouraged’ to give birth at home to save money, surgery may not be allowed for smokers or overweight people, and waiting lists for many procedures and operations will grow. These changes alone will have devastating local effects for people.

We think the actual plans could be even worse because the government has ordered £30 billion NHS cuts by 2020. Nothing is safe. As we understand it, the plans will be formally released next Tuesday, December 6, just over two weeks before consultation officially ends on December 23. The Tory government has got its way - no meaningful consultation about cuts to the NHS, which will make it unrecognisable as a public service providing healthcare from the cradle to the grave, as it once did. This is unforgivable, and health campaigners will never understand why the press has stayed so silent for so long on the issue.

Pete McLaren
Rugby Tusc