Letters

Diverse youth

The French Communist Youth would like to invite you to its congress from February 29 to March 3. We feel compelled to devote much of our work to international issues by various factors: the need for youth to understand the world it lives in, the balance of powers, the origin of conflicts and domination which nowadays mutilate the world.

The current generation no longer thinks of its intervention in the internationalist struggle in terms of the landmarks that had prevailed for decades. At the same time the youth often show great ability and awareness to act and make the world a more humane and fair one. In this situation we need new cooperation to help those acting in youth struggles throughout the world to know each other better, in their diversity.

Hugues Latron
International secretary, French Communist Youth

Against liberalism

Dave Craig’s welcome articles are a bold step towards the rediscovery of classical social democracy. He recalls Lenin’s classic defence of social democratic principles against economism in the Weekly Worker 123, whilst in 122 he provides a cogent defence of the social democratic minimum programme against those who today deny the very need for a political programme. He emphasises that social democratic politics must be a struggle against the existing constitution, for an overthrow of the existing state, if they are to be a politics worth speaking of. He brings to the fore the struggle for democracy as an essential first goal in the struggle for socialism. This is excellent!

There is a catch though. Firstly, his laudable emphasis on the struggle for democracy is somewhat marred by the fact that his conception of democracy goes no further than that of bourgeois liberalism. Secondly, he adheres to an ultimatist view of socialism, which, if taken seriously, would prevent communists from being able to advance any coherent economic programme.

If we look at the minimum democratic programme of the RDG in issue 122, all but one of the points are either already advocated by the liberal bourgeoisie in Charter 88 or are standard components of bourgeois constitutions in other countries. When Craig differs from liberal opinion, it is to incline instead towards unreconstructed bourgeois nationalism. In essence, his is no more than a demand for a parliamentary republic. This amounts to bringing the British constitution into line with those of most other European capitalist states - an understandable objective for the liberals in Charter 88, but what has it got to do with communism?

In what way is a parliamentary republic an advance for democracy, far less the working class?

Can Craig show that the political influence of the working class is stronger in European republics than in the constitutional monarchies?        

Communists will doubtless recall Lenin’s formulation in State and Revolution, written as he was abandoning social democracy, that a “democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained control of this very best shell ... it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change, either of persons, of institutions, or of parties in the bourgeois democratic republic can shake it.” Craig wants communists to tail the liberal democrats with a constitutional programme which, if it were enacted, could only stabilise and solidify the rule of capital.

Alongside his liberal constititionalism goes an economic ultimatism which rules out of court any economic or social transformation until there have been ‘national democratic’ revolutions in every country. So he says that national economic planning would represent economic retardation. Even to talk about establishing socialism on anything but a world scale would be exceptionally dangerous. So the working class is to be urged to undertake a ‘national democratic’ revolution, but it must on no account demand any social or economic gains from this revolution. To do that would be to “replace the multinational corporation with the corner shop”.   

Craig’s position echoes that of a whole generation of left intellectuals, from the editors of New Left Review to Robin Cook. In practice it means that the working class must accept an endless stream of reactionary economic policies in return for the doubtful consolations of a devolved government. Since the legitimacy of the state imposing such policies is called into question, let us re-establish its authority. Replace Mrs Windsor with an elected president! Forget unemployment, poverty, homelessness: let’s concentrate on what’s really important!

Communism, in contrast, preaches social revolution. The existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery. So our aim is not to reform the state, but to smash it. After the events of the last decade, it should be evident to all but the wilfully blind that a republic based upon ‘free and democratic elections’ is but the political reflex of wage slavery.

The logical development of the communist minimum programme must thus differ radically from that of liberalism: the premise is social revolution; the smashing of the state its guarantee.

Our starting point should be the abolition of the proletarian condition and thus of the whole contemporary class structure. Women and men should no longer be forced to sell themselves as commodities. This is the abolition of the labour market, and of the unemployment which is its precondition. But we know that there can be no abolition of unemployment with its attendant pauperism, crime and prostitution so long as investment remains a private matter. This was evident even to a liberal like Keynes who saw that the continuance of capitalism as a progressive economic system demanded the ‘euthanasia of the rentier, of the functionless investor’ (General Theory of Employment, p376, Keynes). Instead he advocated the social control of investment.

But what is the social control of investment but economic planning, the very thing that Craig and the RDG declare to be especially dangerous? It is telling evidence of the reactionary trajectory of British society that some who see themselves as socialists should have a programme well to the right of the Liberal Party of the 1930s.

We have not had a single instance of a parliamentary republic establishing socialism. The record of the Leninist party-state, degenerate as it eventually became, is literally, infinitely better.

Democracy is self-rule by the people; government, rule over the people by our betters.

To talk democratic revolution is to talk of the impossibility of government. It is to talk the general arming of the people. It is to talk the abolition of the judiciary, to talk about the supremacy of juries. It is to talk administration by the people - replacing the quangocracy with people’s juries chosen by lot. It is to talk with Morris of converting Westminster into a dung heap. It is to have the people legislate by electronic voting. It is to put a clear red sea between communism and liberalism.

Paul Cockshott
Glasgow

Workers’ theory

I can agree with most of John Sandy’s answer to Mick O’Farrell’s letter in Weekly Worker 121. However he makes the point that, “although it may inform it, revolutionary theory does not come from the experience gained by activists in the course of their everyday struggles. Revolutionary theory is elaborated by both advanced workers and by non-proletarian intellectuals who have thrown in their lot with the working class.”

Theory in any field of human endeavour must originate in the solving of previous problems, and in fact is no more than speculation based on the likely outcome of the circumstances being changed. Or perhaps our Open Polemic non-proletarian intellectuals and advanced workers have another source of material to elaborate on from somewhere on high. I would not presume to suggest that anyone could willy-nilly become a revolutionary theorist, as it takes someone who is dedicated and is prepared to devote their life to the job. Intellectuals participating in development of revolutionary theory does not guarantee the correct conclusions will be drawn. One only has to look at the variations of theory emanating from, and the consequences of, some of their works.

At the CPGB school in Spain in 1994 a rep from OP raised this same question of intellectuals and advanced workers and showed what to me was nothing more than contempt for the working class.

All human beings are capable of developing theory in all fields of human endeavour providing they have access to knowledge previously attained in the given subject. With the changes that have taken place in the education of the working class and the numbers of non-proletarian intellectuals forced into the ranks of the working class since the turn of the century, let alone since the time of Marx, there are workers who could compete more than favourably with some of our would-be revolutionary political theorists.

If these advanced workers and intellectuals our comrade talks about have indeed thrown in their lot with the working class, then Mike’s statement - “the very idea that there can exist outside the working class a theoretical centre which knows the interests of the class better than the class itself is a most dangerous concept” - must hold good and is most certainly not an Aunt Sally.

I do not believe we can await complete unity before trying to influence the development of the proposed Socialist Labour Party. Class conscious workers will, I am sure, carry on the struggle for unity in all their activities, whether they be safeguarding their health services, wages problems, local representation, etc, etc.

One most important point: after all the discussion you have to convey the theory to the class in language they can understand.

Ted Rowlands
Bishop Auckland

Remember Saklatvala

1996 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Saklatvala, who was a great revolutionary, a staunch anti-imperialist and an ardent communist. Although technically the second, he was in reality the first communist member of the British parliament and his conduct during his six years in parliament was a model of how a representative of the working class ought to represent it in a bourgeois parliament.

 Refusing to be lured by bribery or intimidated by threats, and spurning all bourgeois corruption, he continued to espouse the interests of the British proletariat at home and the subjugated people in the colonies and the cause of friendship and international solidarity between the British proletariat and the socialist Soviet Union. This earned him the well deserved fury of imperialism, but this also earned him the well-deserved respect of the proletariat and the oppressed people everywhere.

It is fitting and proper that we in Britain honour this great revolutionary. With this in mind, the Saklatvala Commemoration Committee has been formed to mark the 50th anniversary of his death. I have been instructed by the committee to write to your organisation requesting it to associate itself with the commemoration event which will take place at 6.30pm on Saturday, March 16 at the Dominion Centre, The Green, Southall. We very much hope that you will be able to mobilise for this function and render every possible assistance towards its success.

Harpal Brar
Southall