WeeklyWorker

Letters

Elementary error

Carla Roberts’ article, ‘Waiting for Jeremy’ (Weekly Worker July 10 2025), contains an elementary error. The comrade wrote ‘Andrew Murray’, when in fact the Morning Star article she was citing was written by Andrew Burgin. True, they share a first name and both have a long history on the left, including in the Stop the War Coalition.

However, there can be no doubt that they are two different people. Comrade Murray is the former Straight Leftist and now a member of the Communist Party of Britain. Comrade Burgin has a background in Trotskyism - specifically the Workers Revolutionary Party during the 1980s. Today he is a leading figure in Left Unity (he serves as its membership and communications officer, its treasurer and its international officer - phew!).

The surname error was not spotted during the editing and proofing process. Indeed, the error was compounded. New material was added about Andrew Murray, his background, his Labour Party entryism and his relationship with John Rees and Lindsey German of Counterfire.

To have gone for a neat edit on the online edition by replacing ‘Murray’ with ‘Burgin’ was therefore unthinkable (and it would have been dishonest). We have to own up. Collectively we were guilty of a major cock-up.

Apologies are due to Andrew Murray and Andrew Burgin … above all, though, apologies are due to our wider readership.

Peter Manson
editor

Popular front

As a committed and active anti-racist, I got involved in Stand Up to Racism shortly before the racist pogrom in the town of my birth, Middlesbrough, a year ago. Initially it was a group of people coming together via connections on various social media channels. With SUtR being the most visible national anti-racist organisation at the time and having an ex-member of the Socialist Workers Party in close contact, we decided to form SUtR Teesside, elect a steering committee, create WhatsApp groups and build something locally.

We organised a public meeting a couple of months after with support from some local trade unions and members of the local Muslim community. Taj Ali agreed to speak, along with Eddie Dempsey, but the first sign of what was to come was the insistence from the SUtR regional convenor that we have an SUtR national figure on the platform. We agreed, but the consensus was that Taj and the local speakers had a lot more to say that was worth listening to!

Since then things have got worse within SUtR. We were, quite rightly, hitting obstacles in building due to SUtR not taking a position on Palestine. We passed a motion in support of Palestine and shared it regionally. We were, in essence, told that we couldn’t, and that there was no mechanism for proposing this at a regional or national level. We shared our position on various local social media outlets and also made common cause with a number of individuals within SUtR North East, who agreed that no anti-racist organisation worthy of the name could be neutral on genocide.

Among this group were younger Asian comrades whose voices were being marginalised and ignored by the old, white anti-racists who ‘knew better’. It also quickly became apparent that all dissenting voices in SUtR were being shut down, debate was made very difficult and there was no means of changing policy.

This came to a head when a regional ‘clear the air’ meeting was called, with most of the work done by former Corbyn shadow cabinet member Laura Pidcock, who has been excellent in trying to democratise the organisation. At this in-person meeting in Newcastle we heard from a leading figure in SUtR that we couldn’t have a policy on Palestine, as we had Jewish people supporting us! Other leading figures in SUtR told us it would cause problems with the trade unions (read bureaucrats) who provide the funding. Then we also witnessed first-hand how younger Asian comrades were dismissed by SWP members as not knowing how to tackle racism - how very anti-racist!

So where are we now? About 50% of SUtR supporters have left throughout the region. For now, we are still called SUtR Teesside, but regularly debate whether we should be. We have kicked the regional convenor out of all of our SUtR chat groups on Teesside and are forging our own path. We get veiled threats on ‘possibly being removed from SUtR’ because of our positions. We will continue to argue internally how we move forward, while having a strategy that differs from SUtR nationally

We believe it is impossible to be an anti-racist organisation without explicitly opposing the genocide in Palestine. We believe that just calling people onto the streets for counter-demonstrations is not enough. The successful ones in the region have largely got the numbers out due to the work of Asian comrades and student groups that are distanced from SUtR due to its politics. We aim to build links on the basis of anti-racism and an open and democratic structure that allows debate on the politics and actions we take.

We believe that simply putting out a leaflet against Reform near election time is an ineffective strategy. Large numbers of working class people voting Reform are doing so because they feel abandoned by a neoliberal consensus in all major parties. We need to be out in those communities now arguing for an alternative.

Despite the SWP’s statement that SUtR is a united front, the reality is it’s a popular front - undemocratic internally, and tightly controlled by the SWP and their fellow travellers. Their politics mean there is no challenge to the union bureaucracy and only a very limited calling out of the racism and rhetoric of this Labour government. It allows the ‘left’ union leaders to have an appearance of fighting racism, as they outsource this to the SWP by funding SUtR, appearing on their platforms and sharing it on Facebook.

Large numbers of people will have nothing to do with SUtR due its lack of position on Palestine, its marginalisation of activists of Asian heritage, and the history of the SWP. We have overcome some of that at a local level (that we have no known SWP members in Teesside SUtR helps!).

We want to build a real united front and a working class organisation that encourages it. For us, for now, the jury is out in terms of the organisation name - we operate democratically on Teesside and allow debate. I think it would be wrong to walk away on our own. Being removed by the regional or national leadership is another matter, but I don’t think that will happen.

We keep in touch with the other dissenting voices regionally who broadly agree with us and I believe we may leave with others to form something better in the near future.

Ian Elcoate
Teesside SUtR

Socialism now!

Unfortunately, Andrew Northall once again demonstrates an unfamiliarity with the views of the Socialist Party of Great Britain that he criticises (Letters, July 10).

To begin with, I am not quite sure where Andrew got the idea that the SPGB believes that only an electoral majority of “50% plus one” is required for socialism (aka communism) to be implemented. Here, for instance, are some quotes from an old SPGB pamphlet, ‘Questions of the day’ (1978):

“Minority action is suicidal folly and could not lead to socialism, even if successful. For, unless the immense majority of workers want socialism, there is no possibility of it being established.” And: “[As] has already been stated, the Socialist Party’s view from its formation has been that there can be no socialism until the great majority of the working class fully understands and accepts the implications of what they are consciously setting out to achieve.”

Secondly, Andrew asks about the “up to 49% of those who did not even superficially vote SPGB, let alone allegedly for full communism?” Well, what about them? Sociologically speaking, it would surely be more sensible to imagine that this minority, even if not “fully socialist”, would mostly be well on the way to becoming so. It is not credible to believe that the substantial growth of a socialist movement would not also have a substantial impact on the entire social climate and, by extension, the character of the opposition faced by the movement. It is also not credible to imagine that anyone at this stage would be unfamiliar with what socialism meant, given today’s instant mass telecommunications.

Thirdly, we once again come to this question of the so-called transition. As ever, Andrew’s thinking on the subject seems muddled. He says: “No-one is suggesting that the period following the assumption of state power by the working class and the years - decades - required to implement all the above necessary preconditions for full communism would in any way be ‘managing capitalism’. Or any form of hybrid capitalism and socialism. It would indeed be the ‘lower stage of communism’ - aka ‘socialism’ - as it emerged from capitalist society, as Marx put it.”

Marx did not distinguish between socialism and communism - that’s Lenin’s invention! - but Andrew then goes on to describe socialism as the “dominant mode of production in the new working class-ruled society”. Also, it will still be a society requiring labour to be remunerated, he suggests, implying the “existence of some form of monetary system”.

This misrepresents Marx, who explicitly rejected the idea that his labour voucher scheme in any way corresponded to money (since his vouchers would not circulate). More to the point, Marx rejected the idea that this early phase of communism would be a class-based society. Andrew’s “working class-ruled society” self-evidently presupposes the continued existence of capitalism (the “working class” - after all - being the exploited class of capitalism).

So, contrary to what he claims, Andrew is inadvertently advocating a form of capitalism in this supposed transitional stage of his, albeit a capitalism allegedly subject to “working class domination” via that quintessential class institution called the state.

The problem is that this is a completely incoherent position to take. You cannot possibly administer an exploitative, class-based society in the interest of the exploited class. Andrew’s working class government will inevitably evolve into just another capitalist ‘labour’ government.

Fourthly, Andrew is mistaken in thinking that the SPGB suggests that full, free access to absolutely everything would become instantly possible with the establishment of socialism. Read its literature more carefully and you will discover that the SPGB does indeed suggest some form of rationing might be needed (at least for some goods) in the early stages of socialism, though we have our own criticisms of Marx’s labour voucher model of rationing.

Andrew claims that the material preconditions for socialism are far from being ready today, and this is what calls for a protracted transition period. Again, he overlooks the fact that a very substantial chunk of what passes for economic activity under capitalism today would immediately cease to exist in socialism. The redirection of all that wasted labour and resources, currently bound up with the capitalist money economy, would permit at least a doubling of socially useful output within a very short time indeed.

Shortages exist today not because we lack the technological wherewithal or resources to overcome them, but because capitalism, by its very nature, must strive to impose scarcity. Andrew disputes this and even suggests we are a “million miles from such a position” where we can adequately feed the world. Really?

On the contrary, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, for instance, the global per-capita supply of calories has been climbing steadily and now averages around 2,900 kcal per person per day. This comfortably exceeds the average Minimum Dietary Energy Requirement of roughly 2,250 kcal per person per day, which is the threshold below which individuals are classed as undernourished.

An enormous amount of food today is simply wasted, dumped or destroyed at every point along the entire food chain. If anything, our food production system is groaning under the weight of surplus food it cannot efficiently dispose of and, for no other reason than that, food takes the form of a commodity today. Yet another reason for wanting to establish socialism now and not postponing it to some dim and distant future!

Robin Cox
SPGB

Distortion

In Critique of the Gotha programme, Marx refers to two phases of communist society: “the first phase of communist society” and “a higher phase of communist society”. After Marx’s death, a new terminology emerged which applied the term ‘socialism’ to what Marx had called “the first phase of communist society” and ‘communism’ or ‘full communism, to what he had called “a higher phase of communist society”.

Marx used the terms, ‘socialist society’ and ‘communist society’, interchangeably. Nowhere in his writings does he refer to the first phase of communist society as a socialist society.

This distortion of Marx’s terminology opened the door to a falsification of his theory of a communal future. Amid the ensuing conceptual confusion, the term, ‘socialist society’, began to be misused:

However, socialist society is neither the transitional society from capitalism to the first phase of communist society, nor the first phase of communist society itself, nor a period encompassing both. Rather, socialist society - in all its phases - is identical to communist society.

When Marx’s writings are interpreted through the lens of distorted terminology, his analysis of the period of revolutionary transformation - from capitalist society to the first phase of communist society - is conflated with his account of that first phase itself. To illustrate this conceptual confusion, let us first examine the following passage through a faithful interpretation of Marx, and then through one shaped by misleading terminology:

“Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period, in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat” (Critique of the Gotha programme 1875).

A reading faithful to Marx’s own terminology must interpret the above paragraph as follows:

‘Between capitalist and the first phase of communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.’

Interpreted in this way, Marx’s meaning remains intact and faithful to its essence.

We can summarise Marx’s theoretical model as follows:

1. Between capitalist society and the first phase of communist society lies a period of revolutionary transformation.

2. This period is marked by the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

3. Once this period ends - ie, once the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat has withered away - the first phase of communist society begins.

Now consider how someone who has internalised the distorted terminology - believing that the ‘first phase of communist society’ should be called socialist society, and the ‘higher phase of communist society’ called communist society - would interpret Marx’s paragraph:

Here, we are confronted with a confused conflation of concepts:

1. Between capitalist society and a higher phase of communist society lies socialist society, which is taken to be the first phase of communist society. With the seizure of political power, society is said to transition into this first phase - ie, socialist society. Socialist society is regarded as the transitional phase towards ‘full communism’. Within this first phase, ‘the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat’. Thus, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the first phase of communist society - that is, socialist society - overlap.

2. Between capitalist society and a higher phase of communist society lies socialist society, understood as the first phase of communism. Prior to this, there is said to be a revolutionary transformation period. The dictatorship of the proletariat is then presumed to encompass both.

According to Marx, the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat corresponds to the period of revolutionary transformation from capitalist society to the beginning of the first phase of communist society.

Lenin, however, takes a different position. As will be seen below, he extends the scope of the revolutionary dictatorship beyond this transitional period, to encompass the entirety of the first phase of communist society itself:

“In his Critique of the Gotha programme, Marx wrote: ‘Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period, in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.’ Up to now this truth has been indisputable for socialists and it includes the recognition of the fact that the state will exist until victorious socialism develops into full communism” (‘The discussion on self-determination summed up’, October 1916).

As the quotation shows, until Lenin wrote the above lines in 1916, Marx’s position had been “indisputable for socialists”. Yet, in the very same sentence, Lenin overturns Marx’s position - without offering a shred of justification.

Let us examine the line that distorts Marx’s position, bearing in mind that Lenin referred to the first phase of communist society as socialism and the higher phase as full communism: “... it includes the recognition of the fact that the state will exist until victorious socialism develops into full communism.”

As can be seen, Lenin extends the period of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat to the very threshold of “full communism” - that is, to the point where the first phase of communist society ends and the higher phase begins. In doing so, Lenin invalidates Marx’s previously undisputed position with a single stroke, replacing it with his own invention.

Lenin maintains the same arbitrary approach in The state and revolution: “Until the ‘higher’ phase of communism arrives, the socialists demand the strictest control by society and by the state over the measure of labour and the measure of consumption; but this control must start with the expropriation of the capitalists, with the establishment of workers’ control over the capitalists, and must be exercised not by a state of bureaucrats, but by a state of armed workers” (August-September 1917).

According to Lenin’s account, “a state of armed workers” persists until the higher phase of communism arrives - that is, until the first phase of communist society ends. According to Marx, there is no state at any phase of communist society. In contrast, Lenin asserts that the first phase of communist society involves a state.

I invite comrades to reflect carefully on these two positions.

Yusuf Zamir
Union of Turkish Progressives in Britain

Remember Boudin

Mike Macnair’s letter (July 10) on the ‘Zusammenbruchstheorie’ reminded me about a historic contributor to the debate on capitalist collapse that history has mostly forgotten about: Louis B Boudin. I have, by stops and starts, been working on a project to find and transcribe all of his English-language writings for the Marxists Internet Archive. In my opinion Boudin is the most relevant US-based theoretician of the Second International era to study in our time, and I hope this page will help to restore some of the esteem he enjoyed back in his own time.

If you’re surprised at that statement, it’s because he was never super-esteemed in the US: most of his renown came from Europeans reading him in German translation. As a 1937 author bio blurb breathlessly claims, Boudin’s 1907 book, The theoretical system of Karl Marx, “received the personal commendation of Lenin and since publication in 1905 has been translated into 30 languages”. The “personal commendation of Lenin” appears to be a single mention in the bibliography of an encyclopaedia entry (albeit one that lists it as a “Marxist” rather than “revisionist” work), and I have only been able to find evidence for four (maybe five) translations from the original English.

Four translations is still very impressive, however, and the German and Russian translations were performed by Luise Kautsky and Julius Martov. The German edition received a preface from Karl Kautsky, which does not seem to object to any of Boudin’s propositions that follow. I’m not sure of the exact sales figures of the book, but I can safely declare that it served as a popular introduction to Marxist economics for the activists of its time, and crucially one that deals with not just the first, but all three volumes of Capital.

I’m not here to discuss the theoretical merits of the book (it’s been almost three years since I last read it), but I remember it being an audacious exposition not only of the capitalist system’s organic instability due to the working class not being able to afford the products of their labour, but also one which asserts that “the development of capitalism has already reached that stage where the contradictions upon which it rests make themselves felt to its own detriment” and that the “passing” of the capitalist economic system is coming imminently.

I know comrade Macnair will get a laugh out of this: “Free trade is the typical policy of capitalism, as is the ‘free’ employment of private property, personal liberty and right to contract, with all that it implies. And protection in any form, or the interference with property and liberty in any manner, is a sign of either an imperfectly developed capitalism, or of capitalism in a stage of decay and tottering to its fall.”

In a stenographic report of a 1928 conference proceeding, Boudin actually expresses surprise that the “final crisis” of capitalism has not occurred yet. There is still more to read on Boudin’s theory of crisis: a complete unpublished manuscript of a proposed book on the subject (I do not know the year of composition).

Hopefully Boudin’s forgotten work on crisis theory, whether as a positive or a negative example, will help us sort out our differences on the ‘Zusammenbruch’ debate - and help us sort our differences on crisis theory enough that we can lay down an acceptable strategy on how to respond to them and write it into our political programme.

Bill Wright
USA

Internationalism?

According to the UK government’s Labour Force Survey (2025), the percentage of workers in a trade union fell from 22.4% in 2023 to 22.0% in 2024. This slow decline may seem marginal, but it reflects a deeper crisis in the labour movement. Trade unions are indispensable to any socialist society - our collective action is what unites the working class and challenges capital. For decades, unions won higher pay, better conditions and protections that have benefited millions. So why are so many workers now turning away from them?

Marx, writing in 1871, described trade unions as “a lever for [the working class’s] struggles against the political power of landlords and capitalists”. And in the Communist manifesto, he famously urged: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Proletarians of all countries, unite!” These words should be printed on the membership card of every union in Britain. Yet today this most basic principle appears to have been forgotten. Gone are the Arthur Scargills of previous generations. Mick Lynch, while more media-savvy than most, has yet to generate the kind of industrial momentum needed. Meanwhile, the bourgeois press has gleefully demonised unions and their members, painting every strike or walkout not as a necessary defence of workers’ rights, but as some selfish nuisance to ‘ordinary people’ - who, ironically, are the very workers these unions represent.

I speak from experience. I’m a further education lecturer in Manchester and, until recently, I was an active member of the University and College Union, even serving on a branch committee. I have since resigned in disgust. Why? Because the national union has drifted from its intended purpose. Trade unions are, by definition, political - they must confront governments, fight cuts and resist employer attacks. But the UCU seems less interested in defending lecturers and more concerned with acting as a kind of NGO for every fashionable liberal cause under the sun. Our dues are being funnelled into campaigns by professional activists that do nothing to improve pay, conditions or job security.

Take the UCU’s 2025 Congress report. It includes 21 mentions of “Palestine” but just 12 mentions of “pay”. It calls on branches to campaign for policies that many would argue push the limits of legality - for instance, lobbying employers to “support the right to use gendered facilities which match gender identities”, despite clear conflict with single-sex provisions in the Equality Act. Elsewhere, the report offers a buffet of NGO-speak: “UCU is for They/Them, not Trump”; “Medical misogyny”; “Palestine solidarity and the right to protest”; and the ever-mystifying claim that “the category of ‘Woman’ is used by the Supreme Court to harass trans people”. Quite how any of this improves conditions for workers is anyone’s guess.

The 2024 Congress agenda itself is revealing. The term “Palest” appears 75 times, “Israel” 53 times, “Gaza” 23 times, and “genocide” another 23. In contrast, “workload” appears just 17 times, “redundanc” 20 times, “deficit” a grand total of once, “closure” seven times, and “stress” - a word that sums up most lecturers’ daily experience - just once. One might be forgiven for wondering whether the UCU still sees itself as a trade union at all, or whether it has been rebranded as a branch of The Guardian’s opinion desk. Yes, trade unions must be political. But the politics must be rooted in the class struggle - in the concrete, material conditions of our workplaces. What we are seeing instead is a flight into abstraction and symbolism. Marx warned against this. He wrote that unions must serve as instruments of class power, not as playgrounds for activist cliques more interested in identity slogans than strike ballots. Under Jo Grady, the UCU has moved steadily toward the latter. The union’s energy is consumed by international gestures, culture war distractions, and motions more suited to a student union than a workers’ organisation.

ACS
Manchester