Letters

Interested

I read the report on Communist University with interest and was pleased to see the questions raised by myself and others in Mike Macnair’s session on Marxist unity given a mention (‘Past, present and future’, August 31). I think these are very important points to consider when thinking about how to advance the project of Marxist unity, so I write here to open up these points for others in an around the CPGB, who may be interested to discuss them. I would definitely be interested to hear the thoughts of others on this.

Mike made a clear case, as always, for the centrality of the project for unity amongst the Marxist left. It was in his concluding remarks though that I think exists the space for meaningful, critical discussion, and that relates to the question of how we best advance the project of Marxist unity - Mike’s final points indicated that continuing with the approach of consistent ideological polemic against the rest of the left was the best strategy for the CPGB in this period.

The questions raised by myself and others related to how we can measure the success of this approach over this period? Do we have any specific examples of its success for the CPGB that we can use as a guide? If we can see no meaningful success in it as yet - specifically in terms of advancing the project of Marxist unity within the UK - then what is it that is required to make this approach successful? Is it the external development of objective circumstances that will give this approach traction? Or do we look at ways to develop the application of this approach and if so what might that look like?

The problem with the idea that the approach is correct in its application, and that what is instead required is for objective circumstances to ripen, is that this is also what almost every other group on the left would say about their own approaches too: ie, the strategy and approach is correct and what is required is to consistently work towards it until the time is ripe and then we will see its success. Of course, this is certainly true in some sense: the development of material conditions will quite clearly give particular approaches more or less traction in certain periods and neither is the strategy of a communist party able to see any meaningful advance outside of the development of material conditions. However, it is a weaker polemical position to suggest to other leftwing groups that the limited advance or the failure of their approaches over time requires reflection and development - whilst not then demanding the same of ourselves.

This also fits in with a more passive position. Mike indicated we might consider some success of this ideological polemic approach in the International Socialist Network split from the Socialist Workers Party, which was clearly informed by engagement with critical discussion in the Weekly Worker around democratic centralism and the history of Bolshevik organisation - but, whilst the CPGB had hopes for this group, Mike observed, they disappointingly dissolved into movementism. As another contributor raised though, this idea of having ‘hope’ in the things we see developing on the left, only to then see our hopes unfulfilled - this suggests a kind of passivity and a distance from these developments.

My own thoughts would be that the approach of ideological polemic is absolutely fundamental to advancing Marxist unity - without this forming a core, the idea of unity easily becomes one of fudges and the illusion that if we all just got on and stopped focusing on our differences then we could come together as a whole. What, I think, there is space to explore though is the forms, methods and spheres in which ideological polemic takes shape - and further what the particular conditions are that make ideological polemic gain traction and to consider then what we can do to further those conditions.

If these questions are of interest to any other readers, then I would be very interested to hear people’s thoughts and engage in some discussion around it here in the letters pages.

Caitriona Rylance
Bolton

Trotsky quoting

Eddie Ford in his article, ‘Old enemies, new friends’ (September 7), is quite right about the motivation for Biden’s visit to Vietnam, but Ian Cowie gives us more details in his Sunday Times piece on September 10, ‘Good morning, Vietnam’: “Vietnam’s competitive advantage is plain to see. It has factory wages that are less than half those of China …” Paul Demarty’s piece, ‘Mr Griffiths goes to China’ (September 7) misses a crucial part of the visit to China of Communist Party of Britain general secretary Robert Griffiths. It was illegal to force workers to do more than a 44-hour week, Griffiths assured us. But then there was the case of Jack Ma, China’s richest billionaire as was, who publicly boasted that his workforce had a ‘9-9-6’ week: that is, from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week - an illegal 72-hour week, which is the norm in most of the workplaces in China.

However, while Ma’s illegal 72-hour working week is treated with kid gloves, a courier for Ma’s Alibaba, Chen Guojiang, was treated far more harshly. He fought against wage cuts and set up chat groups with some 15,000 drivers, posted videos, and encouraged his “takeaway brothers” to take collective action against injustices. Chen Guojiang, on being convicted of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, was given a six-year sentence. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos was reported to be extremely jealous of Ma’s state-turn-a-blind-eye privileges in dealing with his workers. Chen posted a video on his WeChat account in 2022 in which he appeared to have been released, but he has stopped talking about strikes - no doubt as a condition for release. We cannot discover where he is today.

Paul Flewers’ ‘Cold war adumbration’ article (September 7) manages to avoid mention of Trotsky and his fight against the Stalinist counterrevolution over the invasion of Finland in December 1939. Trotsky defended Stalin’s invasion in the same way that consistent Marxists defend Putin’s invasion of Ukraine today: “Under the conditions of world war, to approach the question of the fate of small states from the standpoint of ‘national independence’, ‘neutrality’, etc is to remain in the sphere of imperialist mythology. The struggle involves world domination. The question of the existence of the USSR will be solved in passing. This problem, which today remains in the background, will at a certain moment come to the forefront. So far as the small and second-rate states are concerned, they are already today pawns in the hands of the great powers. The sole freedom they still retain - and this only to a limited extent - is the freedom of choosing between masters.”

But in his letter to the Weekly Worker (August 31) Paul had overtly rejected world revolution in favour of the capitalist roaders in China and the USSR, regretting only they had not capitulated to US imperialism soon enough. A “non-capitalist form of development relatively soon reached its limits” and “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.” Mao’s capitalist roaders led by counterrevolutionaries Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping got it just right. Marxists/Trotskyists, eat your heart out!

Mike Macnair’s ‘National road to disaster’ (September 7) also explicitly rejects the programme for world revolution. Whilst attacking “the SWP authors and Saunois”, he explicitly rejects the Marxist theory of the state as “abstract” and then rejects the Russian Revolution and its new form of workers’ democracy. He cites Trotsky’s warning against soviet fetishism, as if Trotsky had rejected soviets in general and was open to notions about the British and any other national roads to socialism. Salvador Allende was a reformist social democrat, who rejected the Marxist theory of the state as the instrument of class rule that must be overthrown, smashed - as Marx wrote in the only amendment he made to the Communist manifesto of 1848 in reassessing his views due to the massacre of the Paris Commune by that state in 1871. Believing he could reform that state led Allende to promote Pinochet, his executioner, into his own administration, thereby facilitating his own murder.

“Leon Trotsky’s judgment in 1923 and again in 1931 of the fetishism of soviets” was not against soviets in general, but simply against expecting their development and prominence to exactly repeat the time line and role they played in the Russian Revolution. He wrote in 1923: “Yet, in spite of the enormous advantages of soviets as the organs of struggle for power, there may well be cases where the insurrection may unfold on the basis of other forms of organisation (factory committees, trade unions, etc) and soviets may spring up only during the insurrection itself, or even after it has achieved victory, as organs of state power.”

And in 1931 he wrote: “On the basis of factory committees we can develop the Soviet organisation without referring to them by name … to renounce workers’ control merely because the reformists are for it - in words - would be an enormous stupidity. On the contrary, it is precisely for this reason that we should seize upon this slogan all the more eagerly and compel the reformist workers to put it into practice by means of a united front with us; and on the basis of this experience to push them into opposition to Caballero and other fakers.”

So Trotsky was against having a dogmatic approach on to how to institute those soviets, which he and all serious Marxists understand are the only form of real, workers’ and therefore universal democracy, as opposed to bogus bourgeois parliamentary democracy - or the CPGB’s “extreme democracy” (whatever that means).

Gerry Downing
Socialist Fight

Blah, blah, blah

Tony Clark in his latest letter (September 7), just like most of his previous ones, fails to acknowledge any of the points made by numerous responders to his letters, and just parrots again his core assertions, unsubstantiated by any evidence and disproved time and again by his responders.

The vast majority of people in the genuine communist tradition are most certainly in favour of what Tony describes as “democratic socialism”. But, in contrast to Tony, as well as being in favour of much greater democracy and more democratic and civil rights as a principle, Marxists and communists also analyse and understand this from a class perspective.

Under capitalism, where a small minority capitalist class owns the means of production and distribution and dominates the state apparatus, “democracy, although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism - always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain - restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical: a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor”. This is a quote from Lenin, but very similar could be extensively quoted from Marx, Engels, Stalin, etc. If Tony disagrees with the basic content of the quote, he must be the only reader of this paper who does.

All those in the communist tradition from The communist manifesto onwards have consistently argued that true democracy for the working class can only really come about when political and economic power is placed in the hands of the working class: ie, the rule of the majority class. True democracy. True socialism. True socialist democracy.

I and others have tried to explain to Tony that the use of the word ‘dictatorship’, as in “dictatorship of the proletariat”, when used by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, etc, was explicitly in the sense of “class rule” and not in the sense of a police state or an absence of basic democratic rights and freedoms. There are numerous quotes available from Lenin and Stalin, where they made absolutely clear they only used the term, “dictatorship of the proletariat”, in the former sense: ie, class rule. (Of course, it may be argued that Lenin and Stalin did not always ‘practice what they preach’, but that is a different matter).

It is true the actual term, “dictatorship of the proletariat”, is not often used by Marx and Engels, but they did use it and in the sense of ‘class rule’, not totalitarianism. That specific phrase is not used in The communist manifesto, but in that seminal document Marx and Engels were really clear they were aiming at ‘class rule’ by the proletariat (“raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class”): ie, the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. So, no hijacking by Blanqui nor any ‘Damascene conversion’ of Marx and Engels away from “democratic socialism”.

Tony patronisingly and arrogantly tells communists “what they need to do”. Well, actually, communists have been analysing and understanding the nature of the Soviet Union for very many decades, its shortcomings as well as its very many positive features and achievements - in full solidarity with the world’s first socialist state, but critical sometimes nonetheless.

Many communist parties, including the British, developed visions of socialism for their own countries which were very different from the ‘Soviet model’ - including pluralism in economics and politics, many and varied direct forms to complement representative democracy, high levels of mass participation, very many individual as well as collective rights, etc.

Tony refers to the Communist Party of Britain and part of that party’s core analysis is that the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-91 was the long-term outcome of a fundamental lack of democracy in key areas: ie, that the Soviet working class in their millions did not in practice exercise genuine control over their society or economy.

Nonetheless, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union always tried to act in the interests of its working people: eg, “by 1961… housing, food consumption and general living standards were noticeably better too. So was healthcare. Life expectancy for newborns rose significantly - from 44.4 years in 1926-27 to 68.6 years in 1958-59. What had been a largely illiterate population now completed secondary education as a matter of routine and increasingly went on to higher education” (Jack Conrad, ‘The Soviet Union in history’, August 31). If the CPSU were a ‘ruling class’, it was the most democratic ruling class in history, recruiting the best from all walks of life and economic and social activity.

It is in fact core to Marxism-Leninism throughout the world (not just in the ‘advanced’ capitalist west) that the establishment of working class power is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition in order to achieve a fully democratic socialist society. The former had been achieved in the USSR with the October 1917 Revolution and through the massive economic and social developments of the 1920s and 30s, but full democratic norms and procedures had yet to be fully established - indeed some elements were suspended during the civil war and Stalin periods.

Interestingly, the 1961 programme of the CPSU not only recognised all this, but set out a detailed, 20-year programme for a fully developed socialist society in the USSR, including full socialist democracy across state, economy, party and the whole of society - but, of course, that was never implemented.

But Tony, I know, will just parrot again: ‘dictatorship [as in “of the proletariat”] equals totalitarianism’; the DoP wasn’t in the manifesto; Marx was diverted by Blanqui; capitalism couldn’t have arisen without oil and will collapse without it; ‘democratic socialism’ counterposed to Marxism-Leninism; blah, blah, blah … - but, of course, with no analysis, strategy or plan to actually achieve the former.

As for challenging “being determining consciousness”, is Tony really suggesting that “consciousness determines being”?! Perhaps that is the ‘grand plan’ for “democratic socialism” - just imagine or wish it into existence. Or discover new oil?!

Andrew Northall
Kettering

Anti-Semitism

The letters in the September 7 Weekly Worker attacking Mike Macnair and defending anti-Semitic comments by the disgraced academic, David Miller, are a mess. So is ‘Placing anti-Semitism in context’, Tony Greenstein’s article in the same issue, which aims to do the same.

Let’s begin with Pete Gregson. His statement, “There is anti-Semitism in the UK because, I think, the Jews have so much leverage here”, is outrageous. Rather than the ultra-right, the problem, it seems, is that Jews have done too well for themselves - they’ve risen too high in the world, they should know their place, etc. But is this why there was anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany - because German Jews were also uppity? Gregson asks in his letter why it’s OK to make fun of Scots, Irish, English, etc, yet, “if an observation is made about Jews that contradicts their claim to be perpetual victims, excluded from power and endlessly discriminated against, all hell breaks loose”. But who makes such a claim - some Jews or all of them? It’s enough to point to Salo Wittmayer Baron, the eminent Jewish historian who devoted his entire career to combatting the “lachrymose conception of Jewish history” - ie, the view of Jews as eternal victims - to know that’s not the case. A flat-out generalisation of this sort is indeed racist, which is why it has no place on the left.

Moving on to Ian Donovan, his description of the CPGB as “driven by racist philo-Semitism” reflects the same impoverished, racially-driven viewpoint. If the CPGB dares to oppose his arguments, then the only possible explanation is that the party is also in the pocket of the Jews. It’s of a piece with Donovan’s ‘Draft theses on the Jews and modern imperialism’ - the document that got him expelled from the CPGB’s Communist Platform back in 2014 and which his letter proudly trots out once again. “The Jews are not a nation,” the document says, “but they have a pan-national bourgeoisie” and thus “constitute a semi-nation … under the hegemony of their own bourgeoisie.” Hence: “There is a common ethnocentric project between the ruling class of Israel and the various hegemonic pro-Israel bourgeois Jewish organisations in a number of imperialist countries, centrally the United States.”

Or so the theses maintain. But what is this other than an updated version of the Elders of Zion, the international Jewish cabal that supposedly controls the world? Donovan asks why Norman Finkelstein can get away with pointing out that “Jews comprise only 0.5% of the population, but fully 20% of the 100 richest Brits”, whereas he gets in trouble when he does the same. His conclusion: the process is “racialised. Non-Jews are not allowed to cite these socio-economic facts: Jews are so tolerated.” But this is nonsense. What’s important about such rich Jewish Brits is not so much the money at their command, but their power in a world ruled by vast capitalist forces. The answer is that it’s nil. Where they have billions, US capitalism has hundreds of trillions. Where they control individual corporations, the US can make or break entire nations and is also capable of incinerating the world in a flash.

Comrade Macnair is thus correct. Keir Starmer did not purge leftwing anti-Zionists because a handful of wealthy Jews made him do it. He purged them, rather, to demonstrate that Labour will be a loyal ally, when it comes to US imperialism’s drive to control the vast energy resources of the Middle East.

As for Tony Greenstein, his article gives new meaning to the term, ‘vulgar Marxism’. Rather than ideology, his sole concern is facts, facts, facts. He says that Macnair doesn’t understand “the connections between race and class”, because he fails to recognise that “the reflective racism of the oppressed is not the same as the racism of the ruling class” (his emphasis). But they are the same, in that they are composed of the same ideas and political-ideological forces. If heavily-armed black and white militias have both taken to the streets in America in recent years, it’s because capitalism is making use of both sides in a combined assault on what little is left of US political democracy. Both are rightwing, both are racist, and both are products of the same political breakdown - which is what makes both so politically explosive. But Greenstein can’t see this, because he lives in an ideology-free world, in which lower-class racism is perfectly excusable to the degree it exists at all.

As for Greenstein’s defence of Miller’s remark about Jews being “overrepresented in Europe, North America and Latin America in positions of cultural, economic and political power”, it’s absurd. Due to some lingering Bolshevik loyalty, he says the comment would be bad if applied to the Russian Revolution, in which the Jewish presence was indeed heavy. But as a lower-class enragé, he says it’s totally OK in terms of a despised media establishment, in which “Jews are prominent ... out of all proportion to their numbers in the population”.

But “overrepresented” doesn’t mean that that there are many Jews in high places. It means that there are too many and that their numbers should therefore be reduced. This is anti-Semitism plain and simple. Greenstein’s refusal to see this is what makes him such an unreliable ally in the socialist fight against Zionism.

Daniel Lazare
New York

Cultivate meat

I’m not an academic, so my understanding of the details of Marxist theory are shaky. Still, I wonder if the concepts of base and superstructure might be useful in making the case for the priority I urge other animal activists to adopt.

That would be agitating for increased public funding for cultivated meat research (for those who don’t know, cultivated meat is grown from animal cells, without slaughter). The technology faces a number of hurdles. Perhaps the most significant of these is achieving price parity with slaughtered options. This is crucial for widespread adoption, which could save countless creatures.

Within Marxism, base refers to the productive forces of society, like tools, materials and factories. Superstructure refers to a society’s ideological system, such as laws, religion and art. Marxists generally believe base influences superstructure to a far greater degree than superstructure influences base.

“Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces,” Karl Marx wrote. “In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist.”

An overly-determinative view of the relationship between base and superstructure is typically dismissed as vulgar Marxism. After all, if superstructure couldn’t influence base, why would Marx dedicate so much time to constructing an elaborate ideology, which now bears his name? However, the point stands.

So what does this have to do with my belief that animal activists should prioritise increased public funding for cultivated-meat research? Because in accelerating the development of cellular agriculture, we are potentially changing society’s base, which in turn impacts law, religion, art and so much else.

Just as Marx said “the hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord”, one could convincingly argue the advent of cultivated meat that is cheaper than but indistinguishable in taste to slaughtered options creates the preconditions for animal liberation. I should make clear we’re still a long way off from price parity and undoubtedly taste needs further work as well.

As a further example, I recently read a beautifully illustrated non-fiction work called Thing: inside the struggle for non-human personhood. It’s a collaborative effort by artists Cynthia Sousa Machado and Sam Machado, and lawyer Steven M Wise, founder of the Nonhuman Rights Project. The book explains NhRP’s work to win legal personhood for animals.

To be clear, I’m not opposed to this work. If Wise manages to convince a court to recognise an animal here or there as a legal person, or perhaps even a whole category of animals, it would be an immense milestone I’d celebrate. But I believe base influences superstructure far more than superstructure influences base.

In order to achieve widespread legal personhood for animals of the kind that would necessitate the end of animal agriculture, the base of our current society must change. I believe cellular agriculture has the potential to do this in the long run. That’s why I think accelerating its development should be animal activists’ top priority.

Jon Hochschartner
Animal Liberation Front