WeeklyWorker

Letters

Insult culture

As an alien from planet X, I take an interest in communist and leftwing writings - an outstanding feature of which is the seemingly well-established culture of insult, as opposed to normative discussion, intended to influence or describe.

I noted some 27 examples of constructed imprecation in a single article by one of your esteemed correspondents last week: Paul Demarty’s ‘Rebels without a clue’ (February 27). For example, “the weepy Canadian charlatan, Jordan Peterson” and “Douglas Murray, indefatigable peddler of culture war gibberish and dubious ‘free speech’ warrior”.

It would be of passing interest to our planetary intervention, control and exploitation department to note how comfortable and how motivated your target audience is with this mode of expression.

Alien John
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Phases scheme

Jack Conrad is completely right to defend the immediate adoption - not ‘first this, then that’ - of a minimum-maximum programme which comrades accept, and the CPGB’s programme is certainly a very good “starting point” for discussion (‘Programmatic starting point’, February 27).

I do take issue with this part of comrade Conrad’s article, though: “In other words, there will be a first or lower phase and a second or higher phase of communism. We insist, therefore, that the lower stage is not and cannot be a mode of production. Its essence is movement, change, flux. Neither the law of value nor the law of the plan dominate. Rather the lower stage is the rule of the working class state over capitalism as it is and which ends with the withering away of the state and the realisation, at last, of a society of freely associated producers. Since the late 19th century Marxists have called this, the lower stage of communism, the ‘socialist commonwealth’ or more ‘commonly’ simply ‘socialism’ (the last quote coming from Lenin’s State and revolution).”

I have trouble with this, especially in combination with the comrade’s characterisation of ‘lower phase’ as short and ‘higher phase’ as long - or eternal, till humanity’s exit from the universe’s stage - at the Online Communist Forum. The way I understand it, the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat only lasts as long as necessary to institute the democratic republic and secure working class political power against inevitable counterrevolution. If this takes too long, we’re in trouble - ‘too long’ meaning, say, a few months to extend the revolution continentally to the point where the democratic republic can be properly defended, and a few years to really secure the working class’s hold on power and remake society.

An aside: after the 20th century I also think that whenever we talk about the inevitably messy and protracted nature of transition, we have to emphasise that this does not involve any period of rule by a technical and managerial intelligentsia, or any kind of bureaucratic or military rule. This would represent a collapse of the democratic republic, the end of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and hence the end of transition in failure. Overcoming this would not be the continuation of the same, original, transition, but beginning transition again in another revolution in no doubt very different circumstances.

Coming into being alongside the dictatorship of the proletariat - not as a separate second phase of three total phases - the lower stage of communism is the first phase of the communist mode of production. The base is fundamentally altered: mass politics is now embedded within the base through democratic-republican political forms, and the economy begins its rapid transition from an economy based on money and production for exchange to one based on labour credits and production for need. How many of the goods and services of the economy are purchased through labour credits and how many are free at the point of use will be determined politically, with a ‘communist tax’ taken to ‘fund’ public services. There is no law of value, as production and investment (in research and development, etc) is no longer driven by exchange value, but by human need, and the imperative to improve productivity - meaning labour-hours per item - to reduce the amount of time needed to be spent on work.

Another aside: in a previous article, comrade Conrad said labour credits “could not work until the middle classes have been absorbed into the working class” (‘The two phases of communism’ August 16 2019). Perhaps an elaboration on this might reveal where we disagree.

The fact that access to the social surplus is still significantly regulated in this way, alongside the continued existence of a semi-state and residual middle classes, is what distinguishes lower- and higher-phase communism. “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need” might not be fully realised for 100 years or more, if truly ever. We will just get as close as we can to it on our dear planet in the time we have. Hopefully there is a quantity-to-quality shift (a phase change!), where the regulation of consumption through labour credits is so reduced and the global hegemony of the communist mode is so secured that for all intents and purposes the ‘higher phase’ is a reality. But I personally see this ‘higher phase’ as something the communist mode of production points towards by its own laws of motion, but may never truly arrive at.

On planning, ‘the plan’ does dominate in the communist mode of production and hence also dominates in the lower phase. But ‘the plan’ here does not mean some piece of paper listing production targets for the next five years, produced in a government office and computed by some linear programming algorithm - though such things could no doubt help inform governmental decision-making - but the planned economy arising from the partially-free association of producers regulated by local, regional, national and international government.

If the lower phase of this new mode of production doesn’t come into being in fairly short order, the revolution is doomed to fail. A key component of what makes a mode of production is that it out-competes prior modes. Per hour of labour input, communism will be more productive of real use values than capitalism, producing a greater abundance of things people actually need to satisfy body and mind. A real, ecological growth in wealth for all humanity, not capitalism’s ecologically disastrous and utility-blind growth in gross domestic product. For the same amount of goods and services we will be able to work less and less, if we choose to.

This will be assured by a number of things: complete transparency of the economy; the abolition of ‘intellectual property’ law and the introduction of general cooperation; an end to the stasis in R&D produced by monopolisation; the proper development of regions of the world left behind by the competition of capitalist states or wrecked by imperialism and general instability; an end to planned obsolescence and the production of cheap crap which misleads about how long it will last; an end to time spent on managing the contradictions of capital (eg, jobs which exist mainly to keep workers subordinate or mediate between labour and capital); an organic reduction in goods and services which exist mainly to numb pain or soothe alienation; perhaps the widespread adoption of things like pull-production (à la Toyota Production System); and so on.

What I do accept is that small business owners will maintain some kind of small private property in the lower phase, but there should be measures in place for ensuring that this ends within a generation or two. For example, not permitting the transfer of private property to children, spouses or whoever upon death, schemes for workers to take over struggling firms and turn them into co-ops (‘struggling’ under communism does not refer to the need for profit, but just things like crap ownership, leading to unacceptable output), and so on. This doesn’t mean granting exception from participating in planning either - they should be brought in by means of carrot and stick. In the end, these remaining small owners and their - presumably loyal - workers will become quirks of the communist economy, objects of curiosity: nothing more.

Scott Evans
Glasgow

Word order

Everything changes, including language. I was reminded of this law of dialectics when reading Jack Conrad’s ‘Programmatic starting point’.

He insists on using certain key terms as they were used by Marx, Engels and Lenin. But these terms have meantime changed their sense and meaning. Sticking to a form of ‘literal Marxism’ invites unnecessary misunderstandings and may be politically harmful. Two examples:

Is it wise to give hostages to fortune by inviting the accusation that we are advocating a dictatorship and the demise of democracy?

Moshé Machover
London

Transitional road

Might I respond to the letters by Ansell Eade and Andrew Northall (February 27), who were replying to my earlier posts?

Ansell observes that, while I had suggested we need an “appropriate exit strategy” from capitalism, not a transitional period, I had long ago (1987) co-authored a document published by the Guildford branch of the SPGB entitled ‘The road to socialism’, which proposed precisely such a “transitional stage to socialism”. This is quite correct, but there is no contradiction between these two different positions. The Guildford branch document was proposing a transitional strategy within the framework of existing capitalist society, not after we have got rid of capitalism.

When I say there can be “no transitional period”, I am referring explicitly to the latter - that is to say, after the capture of political power by a class-conscious socialist majority. That event will be - must be - coterminous with the conversion of the means of production into common property. Society can no more be a little bit socialist (aka communist) than one can be a little bit pregnant. This is fully consistent with the view expressed in the Communist manifesto that the “communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations”.

Marx’s reference to a “political transition period” (note he was not talking about a transitional society) between capitalism and communism - namely, the “dictatorship of the proletariat” - was unfortunate inasmuch as it has given rise to considerable misunderstanding. Apart from anything else, the existence of a proletariat as a class category pertaining to capitalism presupposes the continued existence of capitalism itself. Therefore it cannot be between capitalism and communism.

The preconditions for a communist or socialist society are (1) the development of a productive potential sufficient to support the reasonable needs of the population and (2) a clear majority who want such a society and understand what it entails. The SPGB’s position is that precondition (1) has been met a long time ago, but we are a long way off from meeting precondition (2). If and when we do have a class-consciousness socialist majority, there is nothing to prevent us from immediately implementing the new society. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to linger on with one or another form of capitalism a moment longer.

Andrew agrees that we already possess the productive potential to permit a post-capitalist society to materialise, but argues: “… having the potential material productive capacity to meet needs is very different from actually producing the socially necessary goods and services required and to the necessary quantities to meet basic and then higher human needs”.

His point is that it will take time for this productive potential to be actualised. This is true enough, but you have to disaggregate this picture and look at different kinds of needs on a case-by-case basis. Some can be met straightaway on a free access basis. The world already produces enough food to feed everyone, but about one third of it is wasted. Similarly housing - there are tens of millions of empty housing units (over 60 million in China alone!). In the case of other products, it will take more time to raise output to the level required . The SPGB is not averse to the idea of some form of rationing in the early stages of a post-capitalist society when it comes to particular shortages, but we do have serious issues with the model of rationing advocated by Marx in the form of labour vouchers.

However, if we are going to talk about a transition period to a post-capitalist society, then, as I have suggested, it makes more sense to say that we are already in such a period right now. Andrew finds this suggestion extraordinary, but I don’t see why. After all, the term ‘transition’ simply denotes a period over which certain quantitative and qualitative changes can be expected to occur, leading up to the point when we are ready to switch over to a post-capitalist society.

It is absurd to imagine that the growth of a socialist movement and spread of socialist ideas could happen without this having significant impacts (of a socio-economic, cultural and political nature) within capitalism itself. That was the basic argument behind the Guildford branch circular - that such impacts would not occur in a vacuum, but would be the direct consequence of the change in the social outlook and the social values held by workers that would prefigure a post-capitalist society itself. For instance, the decline in nationalist sentiments everywhere, which a growing socialist movement will bring about, will make it vastly more difficult for capitalist states to engage in wars and use workers as cannon fodder for their capitalist ends.

If nothing else, the notion that we are already in the transitional period towards socialism is a lot more positive and motivational way of looking at the world than envisaging this period to be some far-off-distant point in time that we may never reach. The present is the terrain upon which we contest the future. If you don’t actively advocate a non-market, stateless alternative to capitalism now, you will assuredly never reach it - ever.

You might as well reconcile yourself to the thought of perpetual capitalism.

Robin Cox
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Learn, learn ...

Continuing the series, ‘Building a Communist Party: past attempts and future prospects’, Marc Mullholland introduced some of the concepts held by Marx and Engels at the ‘Why Marx?’ Zoom gathering on February 27.

Examining the pre-history of Marxism, Marc identified the politics of early capitalism in Britain as dominated by the Whigs (oligarchy), Tories (squirearchy) and “the crowd”. As far back as 1753, Henry Fielding, founder of the Bow Street Runners - Britain’s proto-police force - had already identified the primary social actors of the time as “kings, lords and the Commons”. At this point there was little by way of independent direction from ‘the mob’, who tended towards the mobilisation of different forces at different times. Nonetheless the notion of citizen volunteers was identified as providing arms training and organisation, which developed over time.

The threat of invasion during the Napoleonic period accelerated this process and, in Ireland in particular, volunteer organisation persisted beyond the ebb of French intervention, to the point whereby the volunteers kept the weapons issued to them and developed their own logic, discussing issues of the day. The French Revolution itself had opened up the ‘politics of the clubs’ - ie, partisan gatherings of the urban politically committed, albeit localist and networked in composition.

The defeat of the French Revolution and the ‘politics of (monarchist) restoration’ led to a counterrevolutionary alliance of nations focused on wiping out radicalism, wherever it appeared. Positively, however, the early post-Napoleonic period saw the coming into being of coordinations of social-political revolutionaries - variously organised alongside other radicals, nationalists, liberals and working class tendencies.

Building upon this model, Marc identified the rise of the Catholic Association in Ireland, whose project of parliamentary representation gave it the character of a broad civil rights movement, morphing later into Irish nationalism. Its innovations included cheap membership for the poor, building identity and affinity. Flowing out of this developed politics of a mass character and the ‘politics of the platform’, mass mobilisations and “monster” meetings. It was claimed that one gathering brought together a million people - perhaps showing us that huge numbers on demonstrations is not something unique to today’s Palestine mobilisations.

The Catholic Association was described as an interplay between constitutionalism and revolutionary politics, with leaders pleading for reform in order to limit popular desire for revolution. This form of organisation adopted was used as a model for the early workers’ movement - not least the development of Chartism, the world’s first mass working class political movement.

Fergus O’Connor - an Irish Chartist leader and advocate of the Land Plan, which sought to provide smallholdings for the labouring classes - had himself gone through the Catholic Association. This had an influence on both his practice and Chartism more generally. Whilst Chartism represented the ‘politics of the league’, friendly societies and early trade unions, other social layers, such as the anti-Corn Laws League, representing the more middling layers, also engaged in mass politics.

Contemporary early socialist forces, such as the followers of Louis Auguste Blanqui, took a slightly different approach, organising on the basis of a putschist technique of revolution. The unsuccessful efforts of the League of the Just to mobilise their 500 largely working class membership to storm the Paris Hotel de Ville in 1839 actually led to the death of 100 comrades and general repression.

Emerging out of this, the German Workers’ Educational Association (Deutscher Arbeiterbildungsverein) was a London-based organisation of radical German political émigrés, established in 1840 by Karl Schapper and his associates. The organisation served during its initial years as the ‘above-ground’ arm of the underground League of the Just and later as a mass organisation of the Communist League. It continued to exist for more than 75 years, eventually terminating in 1917 due to the internment of Germans in Britain during World War I.

The Communist League itself commissioned Marx and Engels to write the Communist manifesto, which went through a series of changes with every draft and helped develop the concept of independent working class politics as Marxists understand it today. Influenced by Chartism, the manifesto sought the liberation and general subsistence of the working class, limits on private property and progressive taxation. Its additional call for education at the expense of the state was described as opening up conceptually the idea of what socialist transition might look like towards a social arrangement coloured by association rather than competition.

There were inevitable gaps in the manifesto, not least in terms of its national focus and ambiguity towards the state. Marc noted that many activists saw the manifesto as an end in itself, whereas communists viewed it as transitional. The opposing dynamics between capitalism on the one hand, often leading towards totalitarianism, and workers on the other, with its focus on developing the proletariat as a class for itself, became clearer.

The discussion following Marc’s opening flowed in multiple directions. Tina Becker highlighted the misunderstanding of a particular passage in the manifesto: “In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.”

Ian Spencer located the ebbing of the mid-19th century revolutionary moment as leading to Marx’s concentration on theory. Party and class, theory and practice - all are essential today. In response Marc noted the length of time it took Marx to write Capital, stemming from his engagement with émigré Communards, often around mutual aid-type endeavours, aiming in many cases to ensure that comrades did not starve to death.

Peter Kennedy brought up questions of the tensions within large-scale industry and organisation morphing into bureaucracy, not least within the workers’ movement itself. Steve Freeman argued for a democratic republic allowing the working class to come to power, whereas the maximum programme of communism requires a world party.

Looking back on the discussion, Marc emphasised developments since the era of Marx and Engels. In a world of trillionaires and oligarchs, the bourgeois organisation of society gives us stark choices. In this sense the ‘Why Marx?’ series provides a useful adjunct to the current Forging Communist Unity process.

Understanding our past efforts to organise politically can guide us in our struggles today and hopefully the ‘Why Marx?’ organisers will continue with their useful work in this regard.

Paul Cooper
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