22.08.2024

Debating in urgent times

Against a background of a much expected Labour landslide, war in Gaza and Ukraine, the drive to encircle China and the looming threats of generalised nuclear exchange and climate breakdown, Ian Spencer and Carla Roberts report on this year’s talks

It was Mike Macnair who opened CU 2024 on Saturday August 3 with a discussion of Lenin’s Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism and the uses and abuses of the text over the years. Lenin’s discussion of the role of the ‘aristocracy of labour’ and his debate with people such as Karl Kautsky was highlighted.

Many of the Trotskyist and other sects have an almost scriptural adherence to Lenin’s text, which has led to the widespread calls for ‘victory to’ whichever nation can be portrayed as ‘anti-imperialist’, such as the Houthis of Yemen. This has proved to be a tactical failure. While the tasks of communists in imperialist countries may not necessarily be the same as those in subordinate countries, our principal objective is to win the working class to communism rather than entering alliances with reactionary regimes.

The Labour Party’s recent ‘loveless landslide’ provided the focus for an analysis of the parliamentary outcome by Jack Conrad. With four million votes for the Reform Party and nine million for the Tories, the left can take little comfort from the low turnout in the election and a large majority for Labour, despite having only 34% of the vote. The effect of the Israeli assault on Gaza can be seen in the election of five ‘independents’, most of whom have no perspective on working class politics.

Only the Workers Party of Britain gained a significant number of votes, when it came to those declaring support for working class aims. Jack argued that, while the WPB is not the principled party that we need, it has to be regarded as part of the left. In other words, those who opposed a vote for Galloway, such as the Socialist Workers Party, often did so as a result of their bitter experience in Respect. Initiatives such as the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition and the Revolutionary Communist Party gained an insignificant vote. While many on the left continue to tail-end liberalism or support Labour, there is an urgent need for a mass Communist Party and, given the climate crisis and war, we do not have the luxury of time.

The importance of learning from history was stressed by Ben Lewis the following day. He gave a fascinating account of the positions taken by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. The tendency has been to see the war as a prelude to the Paris Commune and ignore the important struggles taking place before the war on both sides. This, of course, foreshadowed the catastrophe of World War I. Liebknecht regarded Bonaparte as a “cornerstone of reaction”, but still opposed the war in a principled way and, along with Bebel, abstained on war credits in the Reichstag. Both went on to use their trials as a tribune for socialist ideas, despite opposition from many of their own social democratic comrades. In discussion, comrades explored the distinctions to be drawn between wars of national defence and those for annexation, so pertinent to the Ukrainian war today.

Since Engels’ Origin of the family, private property and the state communists have seen the importance of anthropology. Chris Knight of the Radical Anthropology Group in his talk, ‘Theories of language: how did we learn to speak?’, stressed that as communists we take a scientific, dialectical approach, which applies to both the study of matter and of human behaviour and history. Chris gave an outline of the history of the topic, from the resistance to considering it by the Linguistic Society of Paris to the wide range of competing theories today. The importance of maternal development of shared childcare as a distinctive moment was stressed by Chris, who finished with a robust defence of Engels and his understanding of both the “origin of the family” and the “dialectics of nature”.

Gaza

Yassamine Mather and Israeli Marxist Moshé Machover gave their views on Israel’s war of genocide and how to stop it. Yassamine opened by pointing out the potential significance of France and the US warning its citizens to leave Lebanon and how this might presage an attack by Israel on southern Lebanon. It is in the interests of Israel - and Netanyahu in particular - to have a wider war in the Middle East. It is also absurd to regard Hezbollah and Hamas as simply the proxies of Iran, especially as Qatar is the biggest supporter of Hamas. More important is the response of those on the ‘Arab street’ - many of whom are descended from Palestinians displaced in the original Nakba. The solution must involve the workers of the region, including the overthrow of the dictatorships of the region and Israel as the gendarme of the Middle East.

Moshé went on to analyse the prospect of endless war against the Palestinians and the contradictions in Israeli society. It is not accidental that the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, one of the Hamas peace negotiators, took place on Iranian territory. The aim was twofold: to scupper talks, while further provoking a response from Iran. Any successful attempt to win peace would see Netanyahu on trial for corruption and the failure of the Israel Defence Force to respond to the events of October 7.

In the debate that followed, comrades pointed out that it is also important that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign does not promote illusions in the ‘axis of resistance’. Several comrades spoke about the importance of BDS as part of an overall strategy. Moshé, while agreeing that anti-Zionist Jews in Israel constitute a small minority, argued that they could not be written off and there must be a reason for the Israeli Jewish working class to support the dismantling of the Zionist state. Any attempt at a so-called two-state solution will be little more than the establishment of bantustans in Palestine.

In conclusion, Yassamine pointed out that, while the Palestine solidarity movement has been radicalised, without the involvement of the working class it is likely to fail.

Key aspects

August 5 began with Ian Spencer’s presentation on the centrality of health to communism. Marx and Engels not only wrote extensively on the damage to health by capitalism, but, more importantly, the concept of alienation and the recognition of health’s significance in the full realisation of human potential. This is a huge difference from official definitions as deviations from a statistical norm or the presence of pathogens.

He pointed to the flaws in the bourgeois sociology of health and how capitalism continues to damage it, despite overall improvements, particularly in developed countries. In the latter half of the presentation he focussed on mental health because it was an area which had been neglected by Marxists. Consequently, the critique of psychiatry tended to be either from the right or a kind of abstract humanism - the product of the ‘new left’ of the 1960s and 70s, which was a response to the stultifying effect of Stalinism. He mentioned, for example, the political abuse of psychiatry in the USSR.

In his talk, ‘Fiction: utopian and scientific’, Paul Demarty looked at utopianism in literature with particular reference to science fiction. From Thomas More’s Utopia to William Morris and Ursula K Le Guin, Paul explored the richness of a range of writers who had ‘utopian’ ideas at the heart of their work and the impact of idealised notions of the future. Societies range from the ideal to the disturbingly dystopian. Many writers tried to address themes taken up by Marx, or the failure of the USSR to achieve a socialist society.

How Stalinism influenced art was complemented by how it influenced the nature of UK politics, argued Lawrence Parker in the following session. He gave a fascinating account of how Stalin had a direct effect on the official CPGB’s programme, Britain’s road to socialism. This was not only the programmatic statement associated with the ‘official communism’ of the CPGB until its formal liquidation in 1991, but also extended beyond, into the wider labour and trade union movement. This includes Jeremy Corbyn’s failure to lead the Labour Party to affect even modest change.

Ireland

The following day Anne McShane reported on immigration and its impact on Irish politics in ‘Creating illusions in a Sinn Féin government: opportunism and the Irish left’. The dramatic changes in Eire, particularly since the crash of 2008, have had a major impact on the standard of living for many of its five million population. From a country with a long history of net emigration, now immigration is seen by some as leading to a shortage of jobs and housing. Sinn Féin is playing the role of a left-populist party - which has led some, particularly in the SWM-led People Before Profit, to have illusions in a coalition with the nationalists. SF has no socialist perspective and even its supposed support for Palestine has not stopped its leaders getting together with Joe Biden in the US.

In the following session on August 6 the background of racism in the British context was given an interesting historical treatment by Ed Griffiths. Nineteenth century interest in the origins of a British ‘race’ were given a stimulus by artifacts found in archaeological sites and then correlated by measurements of living people by ethnologists such as John Beddoe, author of The races of Britain. In turn, this was linked to the work of linguists, who had noted the similarities between Indian and European languages. This was given a powerful impetus by the growth of the British empire and the use of racism as an ideological justification for British imperialism.

The progressive nature of citizenship, against racial and feudal particularism, was then discussed by Bruno Leipold, author of Citizen Marx. It is sometimes overlooked that before Marx was a communist, he was influenced by the French Revolution and that important republican influences are clearly discernible in the works of both Marx and Engels - the critique of bourgeois republicans and proto-socialists played a significant role in the development of their ideas.

International

Yassamine Mather began August 7 with her discussion on the ‘War in Gaza: Iran, its “proxies” and the Iranian opposition’. Within Iran there is widespread opposition to the Iranian state and one of the consequences is that the regime’s alleged support for Palestinians - which, after all, is part of the official ideology of Iran - is not believed by the masses.

However, Iran has gained credibility among some as the leader of the ‘axis of resistance’. While largely unpopular, the government does have a base and the memory of the 1953 imperialist-organised coup continues to have a popular resonance. The reformist movement has support from within the ruling class, but concessions are intended to extend the life of the regime rather than to change anything fundamental. The royalist opposition to the regime is overtly hostile to the Palestinians, but it has little support - to the extent that even the USA is unwilling to back it. What always must be remembered by those who place any faith in the Iranian leadership is that one of the first things the regime did on taking power was to slaughter the Iranian left.

The importance of standing in elections - in the context of an expected Labour landslide - was stressed by Cat Rylance, who gave a report on her intervention in Manchester under the banner of Communist Future, which was a way of bringing together various non-aligned communists and leftwingers. Useful experience in electoral politics was gained by participating in hustings, door knocking, negotiating the manifesto with others and aesthetic presentation. In discussion, some congratulated Cat on standing and the quality of Communist Future’s material. Others were critical of the lowest common denominator approach and the failure to sufficiently highlight issues such as Nato’s proxy war in Ukraine and the need for a mass Communist Party.

From Manchester to the United States: Parker McQueeney of the Marxist Unity Group - a faction of the Democratic Socialists of America - gave a report on how it should respond to the threat of a second Donald Trump presidency. The DSA saw rapid growth when Bernie Sanders was seeking the Democratic nomination, but has subsequently stagnated and taken a more apolitical turn. Trump has vowed to end the war in Ukraine even before his inauguration, but we have to remember he is a pragmatic politician. He is threatening deportations on a massive scale and comrade Parker argued that we are right to be concerned about a Trump re-election. Moreover, MUG needs to seriously think about what it will do if the state acts against it.

Continuing the theme of science in communist discourse, Marcus Strom gave a bravura performance on August 8, presenting a highly accessible account of quantum mechanics and the dialectical implications of this intriguing area of physics. The importance of motion in the understanding of the essential nature of matter was underlined and, more importantly, it makes no sense unless it is understood as a relation, he said.

Comrade Strom spoke very positively about the development of dialectical thought in physics, pointing out that JBS Haldane, who joined the CPGB in 1942, and Albert Einstein presented theories they understood to be inherently dialectical. While, of course, science has come a long way since Engels was writing on the topic and Lenin’s Materialism and empirio-criticism was written as a polemic under particular circumstances, more recent developments in physics have added to, rather than refuted, their fundamental assertions.

The claim of science in Marxism itself was further examined by Marc Mulholland, who gave a highly comprehensive historical introduction to the development of ideas of those often lumped together as the ‘utopian socialists’. Marc was able to show that they were not merely utopian, but also “wonderfully critical socialists”, to whom Marx owed some debt in the development of his own ideas.

Science

The importance of motion in scientific ideas was stressed further by Thomas Nail, who revealed that an important contribution to understanding the developments of Marx’s thought can be found in his doctoral thesis, which was on the Difference between Democritean and Epicurean philosophy in nature. The impact of classical scholarship on Marx and Engels is incalculable. However, Marx’s thesis is somewhat neglected as an area of study. This is in partly due to the fact that it was not published in English until the 1970s in volume one of the Collected works, but it is of particular importance to an understanding of Marx’s critique of mechanistic materialism.

Comrade Strom made a welcome second presentation to CU the following day, this time on the vital practical consideration of the Aukus - the alliance of Australia, the USA and UK - particularly with reference to “recruiting Australia to the US drive to encircle and strangle China”. Marcus traced out how this came into being, particularly in the light of earlier opposition, which grew up following Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war.

Tina Werkmann, former chair of Labour Against the Witchhunt, posed the interesting question of ‘Could Corbyn have ever taken power?’, despite being opposed by the entire establishment, not to mention the right of the Labour Party and the pro-Zionist lobby. Her conclusion, echoed by the lively discussion, was:

It must have been clear to him and the advisors around him that, while he might have been able to take office for a few short weeks or months, he would not have been allowed to take power. Instead of using his position as Labour leader to radically transform and democratise the Labour Party and the unions, he wasted his tenure in the futile attempt to get into government - and chased unity with the right, at all costs.

We are now paying the price, she concluded, with freedom of speech, particularly around Israel/Palestine, being seriously curtailed across society.

Fittingly, this was followed by Moshé Machover, who discussed ‘The ideology of Zionist colonisation’. He examined the mythical accounts of Yahweh promising the land of Israel to the descendants of Moses and how this is being used today, largely by secular Zionists, not only to dispossess the indigenous Palestinians but to justify mass extermination.

In a frank debate, participants argued about the need to try and win the Israeli working class to a wider, socialist, solution in the Middle East and the wider Arab world - not tailing Palestinian nationalism and its attempt to magic away Israel by calling it “the Zionist entity”.

Climate and party

In perhaps the most interesting and important session of the week, Jack Conrad introduced a discussion on August 10 on the ‘Climate crisis, the limits of capital and the despotic dangers that lie beyond’. He outlined futile attempts to solve the impending climate catastrophe with technocratic solutions and warned of “unintended consequences”. He thought that the ruling class could possibly once again decide to “temporarily subordinate the law of value to the law of need to save capitalism”, as it did during the Covid pandemic or during the two world wars. This is unlikely to stop the globe from heating up to levels incompatible with human life, while requiring huge attacks on our democratic rights, such as the right to strike, and standards of living.

Jack also argued against the popular idea of ‘degrowth communism’, outlining instead a positive vision for entirely changing production to fulfil human needs, and doing away with today’s production for production’s sake, which sees “do-gooders telling us with a straight face that they’re doing their bit for the environment because they bought an electric vehicle. No, we need instead to restructure society from top to bottom and, for example, do away with individualised transport.” He warned that, considering the level of destruction that has already occurred, “this is a task which won’t happen from one day to the next, but could take a thousand years or so”.

In the ensuing discussion, Mike Macnair raised the issue of migration, which is already deeply contested and which will increase due to the changing climate making many parts of the globe uninhabitable. “When peasant societies move towards capitalism, a clear demographic shift occurs, and people have fewer children.” This has led to underpopulation in many capitalist countries, so that the ruling class “knows it needs migration - but paradoxically keeps arguing against it, for political reasons. This tension will massively increase.” Summing up the discussion, Jack Conrad warned that “we really have no chance in hell without a real mass Communist Party”.

In the final session, comrade Macnair outlined how, instead of building such a party, many left organisations continue to build “so-called popular fronts” and ends up subordinating themselves to the platform of petty bourgeois forces. This shows the ruling class that it is no danger to it, because it will remain loyal to the constitution and the armed forces. What is more, “These popular fronts always end up deeply unpopular.”

His opening was followed by a useful discussion on the current rightwing protests, which lead many on the left to panic “that latent fascism is always there, just waiting to break out and take over”. However, as comrade Conrad explained, “Tommy Robinson will not turn into Adolf Hitler, because capitalism currently has no need for fascism. Fascism is the inability of the ruling class to rule in the old way.” In reality, “Today capitalism stands united behind the Labour Party” and there are no major divisions in the ruling class. Yes, he argued, “physical confrontations are sometimes necessary and, of course, we should defend ourselves and our meetings, but we should be honest and explain that there is currently no threat of fascism.”

Almost 50 people attended CU sessions ‘in person’, while another 75 took part via Zoom and, as I write, well over 15,000 have already watched the livestreamed videos, which are still available on the CPGB’s YouTube channel¹ and the Weekly Worker’s Facebook page.² While Covid has changed the nature of meetings, it has also opened up their potential reach.

But one thing is certain: attending Communist University in person is an excellent experience.