Letters

Broad front now

Kevin Bean’s review of the last year of labour unrest reaches gloomy conclusions about the current situation (‘A year of strikes’ June 22). His appraisal of the politics of various groups ends with the assertion that the choice exists of either building broad fronts or re-establishing a mass Communist Party.

Rather than seeing an opportunity to intervene now, in the midst of ongoing strikes and the consequent dissatisfaction with Labour’s response to the cost-of-living crisis, the choice for the left is situated after a general election, which is expected to take place in over a year!

The comrade paints the Enough is Enough campaign as a move to curb radicalism by the labour lieutenants of capital. Yes, one motive for launching it will have been the sectional material interest of the trade union bureaucracy. But, since it is possible for workers from below to replace general secretaries and other elected officials above them, the bureaucracy can be pulled towards the collective interest of the membership and away from the total domination of employers or the capitalist state. At the start of the strike wave, there was little certainty that public opinion would come down in favour of any of the groups of workers taking action - and there was certainly no prospect of the rightwing Labour leadership making the case against real-terms pay cuts.

So Enough Is Enough was something of a public relations exercise to overcome defeatism and connect individual disputes with the cost-of-living crisis, giving a broader political context to the austere conditions. Thus it was also about proving to the rightwing Labour leadership that embarking on a wholesale purge of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs would be a high-risk move.

The number of supporters and the geographical spread of rallies all pointed to the potential for a new party to be formed to, at the very least, defend the SCG MPs - and potentially pose a long-term external political challenge to the Starmer project of making Labour safe for capital again.

The Starmerites know that the general secretaries won’t break from the party while Labour is in opposition, but they cannot be certain of what trade unionists might do independently of their leaders. Anti-union laws strengthen the labour bureaucracy industrially, but not politically. There is nothing to prevent class-conscious workers from going rogue and taking a form of wildcat strike action as voters - presently the main beneficiary in England for such protest voting is likely to be the Greens.

This is why comrade Bean is wrong to say that Hannah Sell and her Socialist Party in England and Wales “cannot quite understand” the situation. Whatever criticisms we might have of the Socialist Party or the policy content of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition’s election campaigns, they have stuck with the principles of standing workers’ candidates in elections and seeking a coalition of socialist groups to that end, consistently endorsing Socialist Workers Party and Communist Party of Britain members when they have stood as candidates. Of course, they have attempted to win the unions to their position, but they don’t tail Labourism to the extent of giving up on independent challenges to the rightwing Labour leadership if union conferences don’t swing behind Tusc.

If a new coalition of left groups promoting a ‘workers’ list’ were to back the re-election of Labour left MPs (either as Labour candidates or as independents), but avoid making endorsements in marginal seats, then both the Labour left and left-of-Labour voting blocs could be given coherence as a coalition of anti-Tory, anti-Starmer tactical voters. In recommending that class-conscious workers hold their noses and vote for Labour in key marginals, credible charges of being ‘Tory enablers’ could not be laid against the left, and the foundations could be laid for the formation of a new mass workers’ party in the course of the next parliament.

There is no certainty that this process will result in an electoral party in which Marxists would be free to advocate the adoption of a revolutionary programme. But we can be certain that the next smear campaign directed at the left will be that it is radicals and revolutionaries who stand in the way of strikes being settled and reforms being implemented.

The method of re-establishing a mass Communist Party through debates between small groups is necessary, but not sufficient. The choice now is in fact ‘What kind of broad front will allow the left to establish a mass party?’

Ansell Eade
Lincolnshire

Bad medicine

Ian Spencer’s excellent article covers the ground pretty well (‘Road leading nowhere’, July 6). As we know, the National Health Service is going down the pan - with conscious direction from the Tories and no little help from the last Labour government.

The NHS is a much loved institution, as politicians are well aware, and so the rundown has been a long-drawn-out affair - though one that is accelerating. One of the first signs led to the resignation of Harold Wilson and Nye Bevan from the Labour cabinet of 1951 - over charges for spectacles, dentures and prescriptions. I note now, when I collect my prescription medication (which is free because I’m old), that younger folk have to pay £9.50 per item. But even us old folk have to pay for dentures and spectacles and they are very expensive.

Comrade Spencer points out the failure of the NHS to look after dementia sufferers, since this is, allegedly, not a medical condition and so the sufferers can be treated in care. This means that they enter Margaret Thatcher’s world of ‘couldn’t care less in the community’.

I discussed with an old friend of mine who has voted Conservative all his voting life (he’s still a friend) about whether he would be prepared to pay a national insurance payment for dementia sufferers. Those with dementia would get the care they need and those without would just pay. He agreed that paying and not needing the care was the best option. This, I think, applies to the whole of healthcare.

Spencer points out the even worse (at the moment) situation in the US, when he says: “The USA spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world, but achieves worse health outcomes for the working class than many poorer countries.” This reminds me of an article I read in Jacobin on US hospices.

The article is entitled ‘Profit-obsessed private equity is now dominating the US hospice system’ (May 25), which the writer, Lily Meyersohn, explores. She opens: “The US hospice system is supposed to provide compassionate end-of-life care. But private equity firms have swallowed up the industry: seven out of 10 hospice agencies are now for-profit, putting profit maximisation over patient wellbeing.”

She goes into the history of hospices in the US and points out: “As of 2020, over 72% of hospices are for-profit and approximately 24% are non-profit. Less than three percent are publicly owned.” The march of finance capital goes everywhere even, in this case, into what may seem strange places.

She further tells us: “For now, the fixed payment system means that privately owned hospice providers are more inclined to take on both ineligible patients, who clearly have more than six months to live, and healthier patients, who require less expensive care. People with dementia, for instance, may have few acute medical needs and live for more than six months, giving providers more time to collect their daily reimbursement and allowing providers to goose their profit margins.”

Money comes from Medicare and Medicaid (ie, the taxpayer), of course, and “By contrast, cancer patients or patients with heart conditions who are being released from the hospital typically have shorter life expectancies and require more skilled nursing care. Refused by privately owned providers, they frequently wind up in non-profit hospices. Those providers may struggle to provide for panels comprised of sicker patients, while privately owned companies thrive off relatively healthier, longer-living patients.”

This looks a bit like the situation in the UK that Spencer describes - though, as might be expected, the US is a bit further ahead than the UK (for now). It is as clear a picture of finance capital parasitism as one could wish, and another reason for getting rid of it.

Jim Nelson
email

Pathetic

I note that, in his latest letter (July 6), Steve Cousins has abandoned any attempt to defend his previous arguments in relation to inflation, and settled for his usual method of simply hurling unsubstantiated, vague and mindless abuse at his opponents.

Cousins says there is lots of manufacturing taking place outside the “imperialist” core. True, but, if we take China, the modern “workshop of the world”, 52% of its economy is in services, as against 40% in manufacturing. For India, the figures are 62% service industry and 23% manufacturing. If we take a more recently industrialising economy, Vietnam, the figures are 51% services as against 33% manufacturing. What Cousins fails to realise is that, even in the developed “imperialist core”, there is also still lots of manufacturing going on, just as, when largely agricultural economies became industrial economies in the 19th century, that did not involve a reduction in agricultural output, but a rise in agricultural productivity! It’s precisely what Marx describes in The Grundrisse as the “civilising mission of capital”:

“On the other side, the production of relative surplus value - ie, production of surplus value based on the increase and development of the productive forces - requires the production of new consumption; requires that the consuming circle within circulation expands, as did the productive circle previously. Firstly, quantitative expansion of existing consumption; secondly: creation of new needs by propagating existing ones in a wide circle; thirdly: production of new needs and discovery and creation of new use values. In other words, so that the surplus labour gained does not remain a merely quantitative surplus, but rather constantly increases the circle of qualitative differences within labour (hence of surplus labour) makes it more diverse, more internally differentiated. For example, if, through a doubling of productive force, a capital of 50 can now do what a capital of 100 did before, so that a capital of 50 and the necessary labour corresponding to it become free, then, for the capital and labour which have been set free, a new, qualitatively different branch of production must be created, which satisfies and brings forth a new need” (chapter 8).

And, in its development, Marx notes that this does not simply mean an expansion of manufactured products, but also of culture and services: “... production of this being as the most total and universal possible social product, for, in order to take gratification in a many-sided way, he must be capable of many pleasures [genussfähig], hence cultured to a high degree - is likewise a condition of production founded on capital” (ibid).

How this or anything I have said even remotely suggests it requires “privatisation” I don’t know, but it’s the kind of bogeyman that Stalinists, like Cousins, have always used as part of amalgams in place of facts or rational argument against opponents. Throw in vague comments about me supposedly distorting Marx’s concept (how, of course, is not stated), for my own “servile ends” (which ends is again not stated other than being obviously “servile”) and me also, painting a rosy picture of the gig economy, precarity, etc (where, when, how, of course, is not stated), as further bogeys, and you have the total picture of Steve Cousins’ Stalinist approach to analysis and debate.

As I said before, it’s so pathetic, it’s really not worthy of response.

Arthur Bough
email

Nasty ink blot

Robert Gildea’s Backbone of the nation: mining communities and the Great Strike of 1984-85, which is about to be published, is a truly remarkable book - a unique insight into how the great mass of participants in the epic struggle of 1984-85 saw the strike at the time and how they now see it.

One would have thought that, coming up to the 40th anniversary, everything which could be said on the strike has now been said. Mostly, authoritative books (or those that claim to be), like the rash of TV documentaries recently, are deeply disappointing. They retell the tale according to well laid-down myths and half truths wheeled out during the strike, and rarely seek to ask the folk involved or challenge the standard storyline.

This book represents the triumph of evidence - for the first time an oral history delivered straight from the mouths and memories of those who fought their corner so bravely. Here we have a roll call of the most extraordinary people from Scotland, Durham, Yorkshire, Nottingham, Leicester, Wales, London and the USA. It is this and the story of the miners’ history, communities and perceptions - our ethnicity - which is almost as told from the inside out.

You would have difficulty finding fault with this book, because it tells how these people - 140 of them - in their own way saw the movement they were involved in. One could argue whether individuals among them should have felt the way they did or perceived what was happening the way they did, but not that this is how they did actually see it. In this sense I think it is a faithful cross-section of thoughts at the time and since.

Robert Gildea does, of course, offer the framework of, and some background to, situations and people. I’m proud to say he uses much of my evidence throughout his book. Most of it is gleaned from my histology, Stardust and coaldust, rather than direct answers to questions he set. I make that point because the summary of my indulgences are his and not boastful responses from me (you know how shy and retiring I am!).

But I think the section on my former wife, Maureen, is a little misleading. Probably due to her own modesty and failing memory these days, her key role in helping found the first Women Against Pit Closures group in 1983 at Hatfield, and at starting the women’s flying pickets, gets understated.

The author depends upon the contributors to recall their own roles fully and accurately and I think overwhelmingly this is achieved. One of Maureen’s outstanding achievements was in confronting mass assemblies of miners - many of them young, single lads - about their attitudes to the women in the community and movement. When first the wild and rebellious young lads of the pits burst loose from the mines and into the sunshine, boundaries were overrun. So it was that mass demonstrations of miners passing through big cities would cat-call en masse any young lasses nearby - “Get ya tits out for the lads” being a favourite. Some of the chants were thoroughly sexist, such as “Maggie Thatcher’s got one. Ian MacGregor is one”. Maureen demanded on public platforms that they respect not only their own wives and daughters, but other peoples who they didn’t know. It got some embarrassed giggles at first and some shamed faces, but, by god, it eventually stopped.

A strength of the book is in not trying to come to any definitive conclusion. Where two or more points of contention exist, they are all presented by the folk who hold them. So it seems the Welsh miners still believe they were let down by Yorkshire when they sent out pickets in 1983 and this resulted in them voting against action in 1984. This wasn’t true, but the book sets out the facts, as seen by miners in both Yorkshire and Wales.

One thing which may put people off the book is the recommendation on the back cover by … Paul Mason. Of all people to have recommended it! Mason stands just a few steps behind Keith Joseph. In a fit of pique following the overwhelming rejection of the European Union by the mining communities, he declared that industrial communities across Britain who voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU are full of racists and bigots. He called on Labour to embark on a ‘Stop Brexit’ tour of Britain by organising conventions of “progressive people”. He went further in inventing the story that miners sat denouncing migrants as cockroaches - he will never be forgiven for it in coal communities. So perhaps this is the only nasty ink blot on an otherwise incredible book.

I have no doubt that this work will be referenced again and again as an authority on the true feelings in the communities and the rank and file in general. It is highly recommended.

David John Douglass
South Shields

First person!

In his concluding remarks to my letter of June 15, comrade Andrew Northall repeats the mistake that Karl Marx and the Marxist movement has made for well over 100 years (Letters, July 6). This 19th century German/French mistake has placed Marxism in opposition to British democratic socialism for over a century. So what is this mistake?

The mistake consists in misrepresenting the meaning of the word ‘dictatorship’ and confusing it with the idea of state coercion. The terms, ‘dictatorship’ and ‘state coercion’ do not mean the same thing, as Marx and his supporters would have us believe. The result is that Marx has misled the communist movement for over 100 years. As far as I know, I may be the first person to point this out.

By misrepresenting the term ‘dictatorship’, Marx placed the communist movement and ‘socialism’ in the camp of a leftwing version of totalitarianism, even before the latter term arrived in the political lexicon. In other words, in the period after the Communist manifesto, the Marxist version of socialism, with its 19th century German/French roots, placed Marxism in opposition to democratic socialism. So it is odd when comrade Andrew says he supports democratic socialism, while defending dictatorship as principle rather than as a temporary emergency measure (in the sense of the Roman Republic before Caesar).

If Marxism was democratic socialism, individual communists like Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin would not have been shot on trumped-up charges for disagreeing with the leadership of the party in the Stalin period, or as rivals for political power. Nor would Trotsky have been murdered in Mexico. If Marxism was democratic socialism, Enver Hoxha would not have had a pregnant party member shot for opposing him. These were crimes against democratic socialism, which some crude and ignorant elements in the communist movement applaud.

Part of the reason why these crimes were made possible was due to Marx being influenced in a negative direction by Blanqui in the period after the Communist manifesto - the seminal work of 19th century communism - which nowhere mentions the term, ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. By abandoning the political standpoint of the Communist manifesto, and opportunistically adapting himself to Blanqui, in a modified form, Marx unintentionally did a lot of damage to the communist movement.

The result is that good and well-intentioned comrades like Andrew continue to defend Marx’s mistake in confusing dictatorship with the need for state coercion. Plekhanov, Kautsky, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Mao made the mistake which Andrew is making. The truth is that, while all states are instruments of coercion, not all states are dictatorships. In his reply to me comrade Andrew implies that the working class need dictatorship to suppress counterrevolution. But, generally speaking, what the working class need to suppress the backward elements is state coercion when necessary, based on democratic socialism.

Even at the highest level of Marxism after Marx, we not only see a confusion between dictatorship and the need for state coercion: we also see a confusion between the term ‘dictatorship’ and democracy - a confusion clearly expressed in Lenin’s terminology about the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry”. This absurdity assumes that a state or individual can be a democratic and a dictator at the same time. How is it possible for a state, or indeed an individual, to be democratic and a dictator at the same time? This is the political absurdity which Marx led communism into, when he abandoned the political standpoint of the Communist manifesto to adapt himself to Blanqui.

Comrade Andrew Northall’s mistake is not a personal mistake, but rather reflects that of Marxism. Lenin understood the meaning of the term, ‘dictatorship’, but he still incorrectly used it to describe working class rule. Comrade Andrew’s argument that “... dictatorship, or rule by the majority class, is of qualitatively different nature than previous rules by minority classes” begs the question: why do Marxists insist on calling working class rule a ‘dictatorship’? One of the reasons why Mao launched the Cultural Revolution back in 1966 was that he believed the dictatorship of the proletariat had become the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Surprise, surprise!

Dictatorship, regardless of class content, is basically a return to feudal forms of rule. Marx was completely wrong to adopt Blanqui’s terminology in referring to working class or socialist rule as a dictatorship - a term which refers to lawless government (in other words, gangster rule). So who should we blame for introducing gangster rule into communism? Trotskyists may want to blame Stalin, but they are missing the point. Ultimately, the blame lay with Blanqui and Marx.

Tony Clark
For Democratic Socialism

Not impressed

Labour has done a number of U-turns of late. Its plan to invest £28 billion a year to boost the green economy has been pushed back to 2027. Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said Labour needed to avoid the “risk of being reckless”.

Childcare reforms have also been watered down. Again it was said that Labour needs to be “fiscally responsible”. It is claimed also that Labour will jettison a proposed £3 billion tech tax. This follows intensive lobbying by Silicon Valley firms.

This appears to have left voters less than impressed. Few people seem to know what Labour stands for - apart from political cowardice and fence-sitting. Plus, whilst the Tories are immensely unpopular, Labour’s lead in the opinion polls is actually down three points and it now stands at 14 percentage points.

It is clearer, now more than ever, that, if Labour is to hold onto its lead and get into government, it needs to offer the electorate bold, radical policies.

Alan Stewart
Wakefield

Fred’s friends

Can you help to find friends of Fred Carpenter, who died in May? We are planning a celebration of Fred’s life in early September, but we do not have access to his address book.

If you would like to attend and have not yet told me your name and email address, please send both to gaby.a.rubin@gmail.com. If you know of others who were Fred’s friends/comrades, please be so kind as to give them this information also.

Gaby Rubin
email