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Bizarre

Jack Conrad’s response (‘The two phases of communism’, August15) to my two recent articles (Weekly Worker August 1 and August 8) that discussed Lenin’s interpretation of Marx’s 1875 Critique of the Gotha programme is truly bizarre. Most of it, apart from a standard and rather desultory personal attack, is literally a word-for-word copy of a response Jack wrote in 2010 (‘The phases of communism’ Weekly Worker September 23 2010) to an entirely different article of mine. Jack quotes only from my 2010 article and provides no evidence that he has read my more recent articles.

Now Jack’s thinking on the questions under debate may not have evolved over the last decade (and, for all I know, for much longer) but mine certainly has (although I think the bulk of my 2010 article stands the test of time). So, while readers could choose to go back to my original 2010 counter to Jack (‘Debating transition and neoliberalism’ Weekly Worker October 28 2010), to which there was never a response, I would recommend simply reading my two articles of August 2019 to gauge what I actually think now, rather than attempting to do so through Jack’s nine-year-old, out-of-focus lenses.

For the record, I wrote the academic paper, from which the two articles are drawn, some 18 months ago. It built on a talk I gave in September 2017 on Marx’s vision of communism, and a conference I participated in at Keele University on the centenary of the October Russian Revolution. The paper was not written with the CPGB’s programme in mind. That said, Jack’s misreading of the Critique is more egregious than Lenin’s and Jack compounds his confusion by also misreading Lenin. Jack conflates Marx’s “first phase of communist society” - which Marx clearly describes as being a cooperative, classless society based on the “common ownership of the means of production” that no longer produces commodities and has superseded the law of value - with the period of “revolutionary transformation” from capitalism to communism. This is not a mistake which Lenin makes.

I offered last year’s paper to the editor of Weekly Worker in lieu of a much-delayed book review. He described it as “very interesting and well researched” and asked to publish it. Obviously, the editor didn’t run that decision past Jack, who seems to have been so put out to find me expounding on these issues again in the pages of the Weekly Worker that he couldn’t recover the mental equilibrium necessary to actually read what I had written.

Secondly, as even a cursory reader of what I wrote in August (or back in 2010 for that matter) will realise, I do not conceptualise a two-phase transition to “full communism” (making three post-capitalist phases in total). That is precisely the model I am challenging. My argument is that Lenin presents an over-schematised take on the Critique, which makes too much of Marx’s discussion of the “phases” of “communist society” and that, in conceptual terms, extends the role of the state (and, by extension, the Communist Party) too far into the future.

I propose that we test what Marx actually thought by looking at what he wrote in his major scientific work Capital on a society of “freely associated producers”. There Marx reproduces in more scientific terms everything that appears in the Critique. I set out some of the evidence in my articles. If Jack Conrad were to reread these classic texts with fresh eyes, he might liberate himself to engage in some fresh thinking.

Nick Rogers
London

No concession

In your report of my debate with Moshé Machover at Communist University, you state that I “conceded” in my opening remarks that the Hebrew people in Israel could be viewed as a nation (‘Spaces for left thinking’, September 5).

I hate to disappoint you, but I made no such concession. I have always accepted that the Israeli Jews could be termed a settler nation. However, such an entity is artificial and not one which is organically formed through the accretion of time. If a nation, according to Wikipedia, is a stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, history, etc, and manifested in a common culture, then the Israeli Jews, just like the Afrikaners, can be called a nation.

What matters is not the label you attach to the Israeli Jews, but what rights flow from that designation - and on that my views have not changed. I make a very clear differentiation between the nationalism of the oppressed and the oppressor. Oppressed nations, such as the Palestinians or Kurds, have the right to self-determination: ie, the right to form a state.

Israel’s Jews have no such right. Far from having the right to self-determination, they are ‘self-determining’ others. In just the same way I questioned what, in practice, self-determination means for the American nation (itself a problematic category). American self-determination means the oppression of ‘the other’.

The right of self-determination means nothing more than the right to be free from national oppression. In what way can this be meaningfully applied to a group of people whose very raison d’être lies in the denial of the most basic freedoms to others?

I said that the Israeli nation is not, like the English nation, one formed over time with a sense of its own being. The Israeli Jews are bound together only by their common antagonism to the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab nation more generally. That is manifested in things like their being the only national grouping in which Donald Trump is more popular than unpopular. It translates into a majority of Israeli Jews supporting the physical expulsion of Israeli Palestinian citizens from Israel.

It is the fate of all settler peoples which don’t utterly vanquish the indigenous population to become part of those whom they have terrorised and oppressed. Israel’s Jews, whether they like it or not, are destined to become a non-Arab part of the Palestinians. Even in the distant future, when the Arab regimes have been overthrown and Zionism has been consigned to the dustbin of history, any attempt to reconstitute a Hebrew or Jewish people will inevitably mean the rebirth of Zionism.

In much the same way the destiny of the Irish Protestants and the South Africa whites is to become part of the Irish and South African people.

Tony Greenstein
Brighton

Xenophobia

A spate of violent and deadly attacks by poor South Africans against workers, small traders and the unemployed from African countries has once again shocked the progressive world.

Over the past couple of weeks African (and sometimes Asian) immigrants have been attacked, killed, their properties looted and burned. This is not a new phenomenon in South Africa. Ever since the attainment of formal political independence in 1994 the country has witnessed over a dozen periods of xenophobic (better still Afrophobic) violence and each time the real causes have remained unresolved. The Revolutionary Workers Group of Zimbabwe strongly condemns the manipulation of vulnerable and oppressed sectors of society by the political and business elites against immigrants for the purposes of diverting attention from the real problem and dividing the workers.

Xenophobia, just like racism, is a product of class society. The primary driver for xenophobic thoughts and actions is capitalist crisis. The South African economy has failed to resolve the primary question of employment simply because it cannot, and is under the dictates of imperialist countries. It is not accidental that worker and petty bourgeoisie immigrant elements of African descent are the ones being attacked, whilst big capitalist immigrants of mainly European origin remain untouched.

The reason for this is that, despite their precarious position, the poor in South Africa do not benefit in any way from attacking and killing their fellow African working class brothers and sisters, who have been forced by poverty and sometimes oppression to flee their countries. It is the big capitalists who are forced (not a preference) by the dynamics of the system to employ immigrant labour. Immigrants, especially the undocumented ones, are easy to exploit and use to drive down the general rate of wages. The political elites, who are at the service of foreign and local capitalists, deliberately promote the employment of immigrant labour for the same reasons. Therefore immigrants play a dual role in the capitalist economy. They are used as a source of cheap labour to drive down wages; and as scapegoats in times of capitalist crisis, when the state and business cannot lower the rate of unemployment.

South Africa, as a developed semi-colony, has more immigrants than any other African country. Its economy, which was built on cheap and unpaid native and immigrant labour, is not immune to the challenges facing the capitalist system globally, especially since the 2008 recession. As a producer of primary raw materials, South Africa has suffered from the negative impact of global market forces and has been unable to absorb new workers in permanent positions. Poor South Africans - bitter at the unfulfilled promises of political independence - are moved to believe that foreigners are the reason for their predicament and driving them away would solve the problem. The desperate economic position of poor and working class South Africans naturally provides a fertile ground for reactionary, xenophobic views and actions.

There is an astonishing (but unsurprising) rise in reactionary and sometimes proto-fascist forces globally as a result of the capitalist crisis. Reactionary figures such as Trump, Bolsonaro and Johnson seek to rally the desperate sectors of their countries to serve capital. Xenophobia, because of its structural roots in capitalist society, cannot be fought without using class methods. Statements, boycotts, retaliatory attacks and diplomatic manoeuvres cannot stop xenophobia in its tracks.

Only the South African working class, in alliance with the communities and the unemployed and poor sectors, receiving solidarity from regional and international workers and comrades, can fight xenophobia through an all-out strike, demanding secure employment for all who can work and that borders and jobs be made open to all immigrants and not just the rich ones. Working class formations must make a bold move to include in their ranks the immigrants and unemployed sectors, so as to drive a wedge between poor workers and the business and political elites. Workers and communities must organise defence militias to protect their fellow comrades.

Revolutionary Workers Group
Zimbabwe

Delusions

It seems Corbynism has secured some resonance - even a strong foothold in society prior to any actual success in forming a government. Through their union, the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa), British Airways pilots have gone on strike in pursuit of their demand for a “share” in annual profits from the airline. In addition to the company’s offer of an 11% increase in basic pay over three years, they want a share of a maximum of 9%, to be determined by the annual financial performance of the airline.

Brian Strutton, general secretary of Balpa, has said there’s an implicit criticism contained in their position in relation to British Airways management “cheapening the brand”, pointing out a short-term “squeezing of cash” from customers, alongside a “dumbing down” of commercial image - all in pursuit of “short-term profits” to the general detriment of its workforce. On top of that, Balpa have said that in their opinion this formula of variable sharing in profitability outside of (ie, “non-consolidated” with) basic pay should extend to all of BA’s “employee groups”.

Clearly those pilots are suffering from multiple delusions in any overall or sustained abilities of capitalism to be generous-minded. Whatever ingrained limitations in consciousness, however half-cocked or confused, this demand and the associated mentality from Balpa and its pilot members represents Corbynism both in essence and in real-world practice. In other words, the prospects and benefits to be delivered by that amalgamation of Keynesianism-rooted social democracy and John Lewis partnership/cooperative-style worker ‘participation’ either for better or for worse.

Taken alongside the character of Jeremy Corbyn as an individual, as well as Labour’s general performance in response to all matters Brexit - ie, endemic vacillation, combined with a complete lack of ability to break out of entirely self-imposed parliamentary/‘democratic’ prison walls, this scenario is also what the citizens of the UK can look forward to following any electoral victory by that proposed system for the “many, not the few”.

How very wrong it would be for any Marxist or communist organisation to foster illusions in dead-end, doomed and cyclical nonsense such as that Corbynist malarkey - that feeble, lame and flaccid shemozzle. But none whatsoever - nor a single Marxist - would dream, let alone dare, to do so, surely? Oh no, perish that proverbial thought!

Bruno Kretzschmar
email

Legalisation

Cambridgeshire police’s Rural Crime Action Team (RCAT) has dismantled 39 cannabis factories and seized plants worth more than £1 million this summer.

RCAT will have to continue their endless uphill struggle against the illegal production of cannabis in Cambridgeshire until national government comes to its senses and decides to legalise cannabis. Legalisation is the only way to put the organised criminal drug networks and the petty cannabis dealers and distributors out of business for good. Luxembourg has recently become the first country in Europe to legalise cannabis. The UK should follow suit as soon as possible.

A recent fact-finding trip by three MPs - one Tory, one Labour and one Liberal Democrats - to Canada, which legalised cannabis just over a year ago, concluded that cannabis should be made legal in the UK within the next five years. Legalisation and regulation of cannabis would bring with it quality control and labelling. It would put an end to the high-strength ‘skunk’, which dominates the current market.

It would also bring a £2-billion-a-year windfall to the treasury from the tax imposed on the UK’s £10-billion-a-year cannabis market. This £2 billion a year could be spent on a public health campaign particularly aimed at teenagers about dangers of regular under-age use of cannabis and other drugs.

So, I say: put the drug networks out of business - legalise cannabis now.

John Smithee
Cambridgeshire