22.02.1996

Libertarians?

Communist press

Whatever happened to the Revolutionary Communist Party? Remember them, the organisers of the successful anti-internment marches and the partly successful Anti-Militarism Campaign.

Well, they’re still around but their only visible presence seems to be the occasional conference and the insistent sellers of its monthly magazine, Living Marxism. So what has it got to say for itself this month: genetic engineering, mad cows, ‘new’ Labour, sex tourism and the state.

All the articles are well written and provocative, but all, in my opinion, with a distinctly libertarian as opposed to class edge. Nevertheless, so long as the editors still use the term ‘Marxism’ and the organisation still uses the label ‘communist’, what the journal has to say is the business of all communists.

Mick Hume in February’s editorial tells us: “The widespread anti-politics feeling now goes much deeper than simple hostility to the incompetence of Major or the opportunism of Blair. It is underpinned by a broader loss of belief in the idea that any political movement, or any collective of people, could act to alter things for the better.” He continues: “Coming to terms with the sea-change that is occurring in political life has important consequences for our own actions and arguments. It means that, if we want to have something relevant to say today, we have to evolve our politics in a new direction.” Starting to get the drift?

Plenty of talk of changing one’s ideas but no mention as yet of classes and their economic relations to each other. It is as if the RCP has had a gut-full of crude economic determinism and has swung over completely to the pole of classless individualism.

Hume continues: “The job in hand is to look at things afresh, in order to identify what are the most powerful contemporary ideological barriers to the spread of revolutionary ideas at the end of the century.” His conclusion is:

“That is the project which Living Marxism has been engaged in over the past couple of years ... If it is to be an appropriate tool for countering conservatism in our times, the politics of Living Marxism will often have to be developed around the apparently non-political issues which exercise such influence on the here and now.”

We could be reading an issue of Marxism Today. And we know where that ended up.

Julian Jake