Letters

USSR positives

I’d like to add a few words to Yassamine Mather’s report of the Critique journal’s 50th anniversary meeting (‘Fifty years of socialist theory’, July 20).

Over these five decades, Critique has published some pioneering analyses. Hillel Ticktin elaborated the most convincing analysis of the Soviet Union, describing how it emerged as a specific socio-economic formation during the first five-year plan of 1929–32. He was able to explain the dynamics of the Soviet Union far more convincingly than either the rival theories on the left or the voluminous, yet unanalytical, works of the western Sovietology school. Similarly, Mick Cox’s analysis of the cold war remains a far superior explanation of east-west relations than the hackneyed ideas of the establishment analysts.

Where I differ from Hillel is that he sees the Stalinist experience as utterly barren. It is true that the human and material costs of Stalinism were enormous, and the ideological damage it inflicted on the socialist project was and remains immeasurable. However, whilst endorsing Hillel’s analysis, I think we might be able to elaborate a rather different conclusion as to the historical role of the Soviet socio-economic formation.

One very noticeable feature of the capitalist era has been the tendency for the law of value to be distorted, as capitalism has developed. Marx wrote in Capital that capitalism bent its own laws when it suppressed competition by way of joint-stock companies and monopolies; Engels and subsequent Marxist theoreticians extended the discussion by investigating the steady increase of state intervention into the economy and then into broader aspects of society with the rise of étatisation. This tendency continued with the development of imperialism in the 20th century - particularly during the two world wars, during which the entire economy of each belligerent country was mobilised by the state - and is still continuing today. The course of development in the Soviet Union and China fits in with this global tendency towards increasing state intervention, étatisation and the ensuing distortion of the law of value.

Stalinism had arisen as the unintended result of the isolation of the Soviet republic, the rise of the Soviet party-state apparatus above the working class, the adoption of the theory of ‘socialism in one country’, and the transformation of the party-state apparatus into a nationalist proto-élite, as Stalin’s faction defeated the Left Opposition and other dissident currents. The first five-year plan was almost stumbled into - a panic response by the Stalinist leadership to the grain crisis and the slowness of industrial development, and to the need rapidly and thoroughly to modernise the country in the face of external threats. Such was the dynamic of the state-led, top-down crash industrialisation and collectivisation drives under the first five-year plan that the market relations, which had been in operation during the New Economic Policy, were abandoned and the law of value was suppressed. Without value relations and the need for production to be profitable, a tremendous social transformation could be achieved - if at great cost in terms of both human suffering and misuse and waste of material resources.

Stalinism permitted the Soviet bureaucracy to engage in a massive, state-led programme of national development, and under the initial five-year plans the state mobilised the entire resources of the Soviet Union in order to build a huge industrial sector, to collectivise agriculture, and generally to bring about urbanisation and modernisation of society, thereby establishing itself as a fully-fledged ruling elite with a firm social base within the new state sector.

This process required the suppression of the market. A similar process occurred in China after Mao’s victory in 1949. This was not the establishment of the economic basis of a socialist society, but the paralleling of the industrial revolutions that occurred in the original capitalist countries. Such a process of primary accumulation could not have been carried out under the production relations of capitalism, with their underlying criterion of profitability: it required not so much the distortion of the law of value as its actual suppression.

What existed in the Soviet Union and China was a form of non-capitalist development, transforming an under-developed country that was endowed with vast material and human resources and possessing a national leadership that was willing and able to assume total political control and to launch a programme of primary accumulation, implementing in a forceful and ruthless manner a process of modernisation of agriculture and industry and indeed of society itself, within the general context of a capitalist world and to a large degree in opposition to the leading capitalist powers.

Despite the far-reaching nature of the modernisation process that Stalin and Mao put into practice and with which their heirs continued, in hindsight it is clear that this non-capitalist form of development relatively soon reached its limits, and the ruling élites were obliged to return to a market economy in order to stay in power and continue the process of accumulation. The Soviet bureaucracy left this far too late: had it implemented market reforms in the 1960s, it may have avoided the stagnation of the 1970s and the fatal stasis of the 1980s. On the other hand, the Chinese bureaucracy, no doubt determined to avoid Moscow’s sorry fate, timed its return to the market with considerable skill and good effect.

Looking back from today, with the Soviet bloc having dissolved and its constituent parts having lurched at varying speeds and with varying degrees of success back into the capitalist world, and with China’s ruling Communist Party overseeing a remarkably successful capitalist economy, it is fair to conclude that the Stalinist socio-economic formation was not by any means an historically viable society able to reproduce itself - be it, as Stalinists claimed, socialism or, as some Marxists claimed, state capitalism or an entirely new mode of production, such as bureaucratic collectivism. Rather, Stalinism was a temporary phenomenon - a non-capitalist means of modernising a large, underdeveloped country within very specific conditions - a short-lived parallel to capitalism which at some point would be forced to return to the market, if the ruling elite was to maintain its ascendancy.

Stalinism and the Soviet socio-economic formation therefore should be seen within the general trend of capitalist development, drawing out the tendencies towards state intervention and the distortion of the law of value to the point at which society was étatised and value relations suppressed, thus resulting in a non-capitalist economy. It was, as indicated above, the product of an historical accident - the marooning of a backward society under a degenerating communist leadership, which was forced by circumstances into introducing a coercive non-market form of socio-economic modernisation, albeit an historically temporary one.

And just like the process of capitalist development in the advanced bourgeois states, this process of state-led modernisation in both the Soviet Union and China laid the material basis for a further, genuinely socialist form of development. So by way of this process of modernisation, and despite its many appalling features, the Soviet socio-economic formation did therefore play an historical role that was not entirely negative, and Hillel’s wholesale dismissal of Stalinism is perhaps rather one-sided.

Paul Flewers
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Party question

I very much liked the actual content of Paul B Smith’s letter (August 10), in which he in effect set out what a world socialist plan, democratically determined by the working class itself, might look like and how it might ensure solutions for the current climate crisis, “establishing a world of free, clean energy, water and air”.

However, I think he somewhat failed his own exam question, which was to somehow link technological solutions to the climate crisis and how to form the working class into a political party (presumably a mass Communist Party, although PBS does not state this), and then to overthrow capitalism and establish worldwide socialism.

What he writes is very much a programme for after worldwide socialism has been established. It does not address how to form the working class and working masses into a political party and movement, nor does it cover how the working masses led by such a mass Communist Party might actually carry out the socialist revolution itself.

I would accept that having some detail of how a future world socialist society might address the climate crisis in the political programme of a present-day Communist Party might help that party attract some more members, but really the basic question and challenge of our time - as PBS himself states - of how to organise the working class into a political party and a movement to overthrow capitalism is left completely unanswered. I suspect his omission of the term ‘Communist Party’ is significant.

Any present-day Communist Party needs to be quite cautious in its programme about what a socialist or communist society might look like in practice, as it will almost certainly be newer generations of working people who will actually determine and shape this - maybe generations not yet born.

In any case, as well as having a very clear ultimate objective of establishing a socialist and then communist society, a real, present-day Communist Party must have a comprehensive set of immediate aims and objectives, which are aimed at meeting the immediate needs of the working class and at the expense of the monopoly capitalist class. As the Weekly Worker has pointed out in the past, these demands should not be limited by what capitalism or the capitalists say are “realistic” or “affordable”.

By raising such demands - which can only be delivered by making deep inroads into the wealth and power of the capitalist class, challenging the very logic and priorities of capitalism - the Communist Party can make really clear links between the immediate needs of the working class and how these can ultimately be satisfied on a sustainable and stable basis: ie, through the establishment of socialism.

Of course to get from the here and now to socialism, we need a socialist revolution to place the working class in a position of state, political and economic power, and therefore to be able to massively restructure and reorganise the economy and society to meet its needs. The Communist Party programme is therefore also a strategy for bringing about socialist revolution and the establishment of socialism. But PBS has leapfrogged all these current tasks and gone straight into a proposed plan for a fully established world socialist society!

How do we achieve such a mass Communist Party and a mass movement for socialism? Well, certainly not through sniping at existing communist parties from the far-distant sidelines or personal websites, or claiming that ‘groups’ of one or two, or even 20 individuals are going to provide the essential core of any such party.

It is also not going to happen via some ‘lash-up’ of the most significant Trotskyist groups such as the Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, Counterfire, Socialist Appeal, Socialist Alternative, Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, etc (all of whom hate each other nearly as much as they hate communist and workers’ parties!), plus, naturally, the Weekly Worker group.

It seems almost too obvious for words, but if we want a mass Communist Party, then we must build and grow the Communist Party. Not everyone can or would want to actually join the Communist Party - those happy in their sects of one, two or 20 probably least of all!

However, there are already tens of thousands of people who variously call themselves communists, Marxists, socialists, leftists, anarchists, liberationists, revolutionary democrats, radical greens, etc, etc, who can and should help support the growth of a genuine Communist Party in a range of different ways. They don’t have to agree with everything it says or does, but they recognise the importance of the concept of the Communist Party and by being part of the mass movement they can influence it as well.

With regard to the mass movement, the famous quote from Karl Marx in The German ideology is helpful here: “We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.”

So we have to engage with the movement as it really is, not as we would wish it to be. We have to engage in workplaces and in working class communities as they actually are. We have to be able to communicate effectively using normal, everyday language with ordinary, normal working people, who may well be depoliticised, stressed, shattered even from work and life. As Nadezhda Krupskaya said, we have to recognise that all working people have their own hopes, fears, sufferings, hopes for happiness, and we have to be able to engage programmatically with those.

We need to organise, focus and direct all of our efforts through a Communist Party - ideally, yes, a mass Communist Party - and employing and applying the science of Marxism-Leninism. Yes, a Marxism-Leninism updated and relevant to the 21st century, but a Marxism-Leninism nonetheless. Certainly not one of the 57 bastardised versions created by anti-socialist, viciously sectarian Trotskyism, most deeply antagonistic to each other and most based on worship of some sect leader.

Both the mass Communist Party and the mass working class movement, of which it is part, will constantly interact, enrich and grow each other. They are organically part of each other. They fully respect and value each other. They work together to identify and produce the main lines of march for the working class as a whole.

Unfortunately, we do have to do all these things long before we will be in a position to actually implement PBS’s grand climate change plan in a world socialist society!

Andrew Northall
Kettering

Oil, coal and gas

Eddie Ford in his ongoing catastrophist series makes mention of the colossal clash between the National Union of Mineworkers and Margaret Thatcher (‘Land, sea and air records’, August 6). Her vision was of smashing the NUM as a strategy in the class war. But the miners were far too strong and crucial to energy, steel and much else. Worse, they were far too political, with an alternative vision for the whole of society - which didn’t ultimately include capitalism, let alone the Tories.

We had known since the birth of the industrial revolution about the harmful effects of uncontrolled emissions and we had as a union enthusiastically supported clean air zones, smokeless fuel, as well as combined heat and fuel systems since the 1950s. Clean coal technologies were being developed since the early 70s to combat acid rain and pollution. But Thatcher wanted none of that - she didn’t want clean-coal technology: she wanted to break the back of the miners’ union by cutting the industry to basically a backup technology. To do that a propaganda war on fossil fuel in general and coal in particular was launched.

She greeted the developing carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems and clean-burn power stations with contempt and pulled the plug - she didn’t want them to work. We have seen much the same reaction to CCS plans in Scotland and Humberside by Labour and the Greens just recently. They don’t want to reduce CO₂ emissions from gas any more than Thatcher wanted to from coal, because that is the main bogeyman in the play.

The plan since 1977 was to end the coal industry and move rapidly to nuclear power. The Ministers Committee on Economic Strategy confirmed in 1979: “A nuclear programme would have the advantage of removing a substantial portion of electricity generation from the dangers of disruption by industrial action by miners or transport workers.” The problem for Maggie and her drive to a nuclear Britain with all the red-ragging miners on the scrapheap was that nuclear was deeply unpopular. Following various disasters and decades of anti-nuclear campaigning, the mass of the population - even Greenpeace at that time - preferred coal to nukes. It was in order to do a greenwash job on nuclear and set the anti-coal horror story panic loose that she started banging the CO₂ catastrophe drum, in the process helping to set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and groom the UN and various international committees for the purpose. George Monbiot, the one-time born-again environmentalist saviour, is now de facto minister for the promotion of nuclear power and hater of all things fossil fuel.

The sad truth is, were the miners’ strike to be happening now, most of our skin-deep comrades on the left would not only not support us: they would, given a few weasel words about ‘just transition’, be supporting the plan to close us down - destroying the industry, our skills, our traditions, aspirations and union.

We know this because this is what has happened with the absurd plan to stop the development of oil and gas and close down the industry, throwing more than 350,000 people onto the scrapheap, where the mining communities are now. Of course, we heard the chorus of the liberal, middle class left about ‘green jobs’ which don’t exist - not only pie in the sky, but those alleged green ‘pies’ haven’t even entered the atmosphere yet (nor will they).

I simply cannot credit the demand to ‘just stop oil’. It begs the question, ‘And just do what?’ Every single aspect of our lives is punctuated, fuelled and facilitated by oil and gas (and coal, of course - just not ours). It’s not even a demand to stop using the stuff: it’s a demand that Britain stop mining it, but allowing anyone else to mine it for us to use. I’m a vegan: I not only do not buy meat, fish, dairy or animal produce; I don’t actually consume it, even if someone else does my shopping and brings it to the door. Would those who cry ‘just stop oil’ were as principled, it might make sense.

It reminds me of a crowd watching a man on a burning building and they cry, ‘Jump!’ (We don’t know how to catch you before you hit the street, but we’re sure something will turn up before you get there.)

Before my colliery (the second last in the country to close) shut down, we were selling coal to Drax at £34 per tonne. With the closure of all British mines, taking 180 million tonnes off the market, the international spot market price now trades at £150 per tonne - a 400% increase. Is the idea of Just Stop (British) Oil to take all that oil and gas off the market, so as to deliberately drive up the international price, so that the majority of people who live here can afford less and less of it and therefore buy less and less of it? Is that the idea - to price oil and gas out of the reach of working class people, impoverish our lives, restrict our freedoms, crash our living standards in a kind of puritan, anti-consumption tyranny? I can think of no other reason for the otherwise absurd demand. With ‘communists’ like you lot, who needs Tories? What do you think the workers on the rigs and their families think of ‘communist’ demands to shut them down, while the Tories throw them a lifeline? You really need to check which side of the class line you’re standing on.

If you oppose oil, gas and coal, stop using them. Don’t demand we don’t mine them, but then import them - what on earth is the sense in that? There are no ‘renewables’ without coal to make them, and oil to run them. You can stick your fingers in your ears and shout ‘la, la, la’, but it will still be a fact when you stop being silly.

Humanity adapts to the environment; we have actually massively reduced the number of deaths, injuries and destruction wrought by natural disasters over the last centuries and decades. Not because the disasters are not happening in similar numbers as they have from time to time, but because of science and technology and being prepared and forewarned.

I’m not going to argue the toss as to how much of the current climate change is natural and how much man-made. The truth is, we have to deal with it, whatever the cause.

David John Douglass
South Shields

State interests

Daniel Lazare sets out how the US state has been out to get Trump (‘Closer to the brink’, August 10). It has. But Daniel seems to think that that state simply works for the electoral benefits of the Democrats, rather than being what it is - the state of the US ruling class, working for its interests.

That in turn explains why it has been out to get Trump - pretty much for the same reasons that the British state sought to frustrate Brexit: ie, both Trump and Brexit represent the interests of a reactionary petty bourgeoisie. These are interests that are antagonistic and contradictory to those of large-scale industrial capital, and more specifically the interests of the ruling class - which is a global class, resting upon its ownership of fictitious capital (global shares, bonds, property).

So it’s impossible to fathom why, having so far attempted to get Trump, that state would, following a new Trump election victory, suddenly become a weapon in his hands, in the way he describes - the police being unleashed, and so on - unless you accept the liberal view that the state simply acts in accordance with the wishes of the government of the day! It’s far more likely that, if the state’s current attempts to stop Trump fail, more direct means would be used. The US has a long history of political assassinations, for example, or, as Liz Truss found out, the ruling class can quickly destabilise not only leftwing governments, but also rightwing, petty-bourgeois governments that threaten its interests too.

If it looked like Trump might win, the dollar would be likely to take a nosedive, and the ruling class would simply press keys on their computers - shifting their highly portable wealth (in the form of that fictitious capital) at an instant, to some other location.

If all else fails, and a Trump presidency really did threaten the interests of the global ruling class, in the way he suggests, there is still the possibility, even for the US, of taking the ‘Chile option’, with an actual coup, palace or otherwise, as against the farce of January 6.

Arthur Bough
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Free speech

Freedom of expression is a principle worth defending: its advantages far outweigh its disadvantages and it is the only reliable tool we have for discovering the truth. Since all social progress depends on spreading true opinions, and diminishing the number of false ones, freedom of expression is a fundamental part of promoting human happiness.

One group that has taken up the noble cause of freedom of expression is the Free Speech Union. The FSU was founded in 2020 by Tory columnist Toby Young. According to its website, the FSU is “a non-partisan, mass-membership public interest body that stands up for the speech rights of its members and campaigns for free speech more widely”. This is wrong; in reality the FSU makes no effort to hide its partisanship.

The FSU’s leadership consists mostly of rightwing figures: Toby Young, Nigel Biggar and Douglas Murray are three of its four directors. FSU advisors include Andrew Doyle of GB News, rightwing professors Matthew Goodwin and Eric Kaufmann, rightwing columnists Julia Hartley-Brewer and Allison Pearson, and rightwing historians Andrew Roberts and David Starkey.

Apart from its personnel, its statements on free speech make its concerns clear: “We believe that free speech is currently under assault across the Anglosphere, particularly in those areas where it matters most, such as schools, universities, the arts, the entertainment industry and the media.” The objective of the FSU is not so much to curb government authority - particularly Tory government authority - over speech: it is to curb the censoriousness of the liberal left in some institutions. Hence the FSU tells us, “If you’re no-platformed by a university - a feminist professor who challenges trans orthodoxy, for instance - we’ll encourage you to fight back and members of our advisory councils may be able to tell you what remedies are available to you.”

It is true, and lamentable, that leftwing activists often try to prevent the expression of views they dislike. But it is ridiculous to consider leftwing activists a greater threat to free speech than a Tory government which has passed strict anti-protest legislation and openly assaulted our liberties. The FSU has been absent from the fight for the freedom to protest.

Indeed, the FSU is curiously silent about several matters that should interest an organisation that “stands for freedom of speech, of conscience and of intellectual enquiry”. Julian Assange, famed for exposing US war crimes, is confined to a cell in Belmarsh prison, while the US government seeks his extradition to face espionage charges.

The FSU’s attitude represents a wider problem. The majority of people on all sides of politics do not care about free speech in principle. The most common approach is to support free speech for opinions you like, and to censor or otherwise suppress opinions you dislike. This approach is shared by most of the left and the right. Only a handful of people on both sides are dedicated to free speech in principle - that is, they believe in free speech as much for their political opponents as for themselves.

The socialist left should support the right to express opinions that it hates - not just in cases of attacks on liberties by the state, but in society generally. Free speech should be supported in most of our institutions. It is right to defend free speech because of its utility; but it is also politically wise. In capitalist society, the socialist left has no choice but to vigorously criticise the powerful: free speech is fundamental to this effort. A partisan attitude to free speech undermines both the socialist cause and the struggle for liberty in general.

Talal Hangari
email

George Shaw

I would like, if I may, to add a few points to Marie Lynam’s letter (August 10) on the passing of George Shaw (1936-2023) after an 18-year struggle with prostate cancer.

In 1965, George, when working at Vauxhall Motors Luton plant, joined the ‘Solidarity’ group, which had been founded by Chris Pallis (Maurice Brinton) and Ken Weller in the late 1950s. He remained a member of that group until the mid-1970s.

In 2004 he joined the British Marxist-Humanists affiliated to the US group News and Letters (whose conference in Chicago he attended in 2004). He contributed an important account of his time in Solidarity for the British Marxist-Humanist journal, Hobgoblin, in which he wrote:

“Solidarity played a part in supporting us in a number of strikes in Luton and particularly when we were attempting to link up shop stewards in the industry. The Oxford Shop Stewards Conference was aborted by the sectarian and vanguardist efforts of Gerry Healy’s Socialist Labour League and we walked out. The regret is that we didn’t link up effectively with the Ellesmere Port Vauxhall stewards; we could have posed GM a big problem. Solidarity really helped us to crystallise our view of the union’s role in impeding the progress of the independent shop stewards movement which was fighting speed-up (we at Vauxhall were not on piece-work incentives like Coventry and Birmingham).”

George remained an active member of the British Marxist-Humanists until 2014, when he rejected our support for Ukrainian self-determination and our hostility to political Islam. He never formally resigned, or discussed his differences with us. He continued to send us £5 a month by standing order. This was not simply an oversight - when phoned about it last year, he told us he wished to continue.

A man of contradictions, then, but one of the best.

David Black
London