Letters

Plus one

I think it is Robin Cox who appears (deliberately?) confused and confusing about the necessary conditions for the transition to socialism and communism.

On the question of ‘50% plus one’, I could easily quote from a number of SPGB publications over a good many years, where it is stated this is indeed all that is required to democratically establish socialism. Robin chooses to skate over significant debates within the SPGB over time, where the question of a 50%-plus versus “an overwhelming majority” has indeed been a major source of contention.

As an aside, assuming 50% plus one did vote for SPGB candidates and gave them a majority in the House of Commons, what would such a parliamentary majority actually do? (Of course, the current electoral system can give parliamentary majorities on much lower percentages). Would it refuse to legislate to formally establish socialism (the SPGB’s parliamentary road) until such an “overwhelming majority” had been formed? Or allow the capitalist minority parties to continue to govern instead? Or would it, as the majority parliamentary party, take office and… do what?

While I would be interested in how the SPGB would approach such a conundrum, it is, of course, complete fantasy - it ain’t going to happen in real life. Has the SPGB never come across Marx’s classic observation that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas of society”? Could this be one of the basic reasons why socialist and communist ideas have really struggled to take hold in anything like a significant part of the working class under advanced capitalism?

Robin plays with words and concepts, when he claims it was bad old Lenin who “invented” a distinction between socialism and communism. No, Marx and Engels clearly saw the need for a period of transition after the working class “has raised itself to the position of ruling class” (Manifesto of the Communist Party), then takes radical measures to socialise and transform the means of production and distribution. Marx, of course, famously stated in Critique of the Gotha Programme: “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” (DoP).

So Robin’s shock-horror at (a) the concept of the working class becoming the ruling class and (b) ruling via a new form of a state - the DoP - are clearly contrary to two of the basic concepts of Marxism itself. What Lenin did was to adopt the common terminology and practice and use the word ‘socialism’ to describe the initial phase - ie, immediately after the working class has taken power - and ‘communism’ to describe the fully developed society, where the need for money, the state, etc had all disappeared. Nothing untoward or controversial here.

Robin then accuses me of “misrepresenting Marx’s labour voucher scheme” (I didn’t even mention it!) and then later states the SPGB accepts the need for some form of rationing in the early stages of socialist society and disagrees with Marx’s voucher scheme!

A monetary system in such a stage of socialism would be nothing other than a means of effecting such rationing, rewarding those who work and also ensuring those who can’t work also have access to basic goods and services. Money does not equal capitalism. Money would simply be a common measure of value and a means of exchange and enable people to access the choice of goods and services they need. Or does the SPGB envisage some form of ration card system, where everyone has specific amounts and types of meats, fruit, vegetables, milk, etc?

Robin bizarrely asserts I “am inadvertently advocating a form of capitalism in this transitional phase”. No, I explicitly stated I was not advocating the continuation of capitalist society and the working class in power would move rapidly to socialise the main means of production and distribution, subject to the democratic planning of society. So in what possible sense is the great majority of the working class still subject to “an exploitative, class-based society”?

Robin (and the SPGB) breathtakingly ignores the threat posed by a recently deposed capitalist class and all of its supporters, especially those who had occupied the upper echelons of the state apparatus, who under capitalism had acquired immense wealth, privileges and power. Do Robin and the SPGB seriously expect overthrown classes to just ‘accept’ a vote for socialism in the House of Commons and passively allow all their vast wealth, privilege and power to simply vanish into thin air? Possible, but hardly likely. In any case, exceptionally foolish to count on it.

The working class state (the dictatorship of the proletariat) would surely, as a minimum, want sufficient force available to at least deter the overthrown classes from recalcitrant actions, and, if necessary, to actively prevent or neutralise them.

I knew Robin would quote the Food and Agriculture Organisation comment about “sufficient per capita calorific values being currently produced globally”. The FAO uses this to demonstrate that the world currently has the potential to ensure people do not go hungry. For the SPGB to think this means we can simply redistribute all these existing calorific values over eight billion people is ludicrous. A high proportion of those current calorific values are either simply not in a form which are consumable or are geared to the market demands of the richer populations of the ‘advanced’ capitalist countries.

Is the SPGB really suggesting the peoples in the ‘advanced’ capitalist countries should as part of worldwide socialism have their own calorific intakes radically reduced to just above subsistence levels? That would be simply incredible and might, at the very least, create some reaction and opposition to socialism itself.

To properly meet the essential needs of those 733 million who the FAO class as “hungry” would require wholesale cultivation and conversion of land where those people actually are for appropriate food crops with the right types of nutritional values. (One of the reasons why so much existing food is wasted is having to transport it over unfeasibly long distances).

This would require years of development of the land and of the new crops themselves to achieve full nutritional productivity and availability. This is not an argument against such essential measures: simply that we need to be practical and realistic as to what is actually required and the potential timeframes.

I note Robin completely ignored the point about how long full communist consciousness might become widespread in the population: eg, choosing to work for the common good (with no direct material reward or benefit) and people only accessing the goods and services they need on a responsible basis: ie, the essential preconditions for a full communist society.

In my view, such advanced and responsible communist consciousness can only come about after a relatively lengthy period in which socially useful goods and services have been produced in relative abundance for some time and people have complete confidence that this is indeed the stable society of the future.

I do believe in the inherent goodness of human beings and the positivity of human nature, but we have to recognise hundreds of years of capitalist and thousands of years of class-divided society have caused negative ideas, values and behaviours to be deeply ingrained into the mass of people. Indeed they are often necessary to survive in modern society. The notion these would magically disappear immediately after the SPGB won a general election is utter fantasy. It may only be generations born and brought up under conditions of full socialism - ie, full material abundance - who may acquire the consciousness required for a genuinely full communist society.

Bluntly, if you aren’t serious about the concept of a transition out of capitalism, or the concrete tasks which need to be completed to effect that transition, you are not serious about breaking with capitalism, and not serious about achieving socialism and communism.

Andrew Northall
email

Reformists and us

Jim Nelson says: “What is needed? The end of capitalism. How can this be done? By the efforts of the organised working class. How can the working class be organised? By the building of a mass Communist Party” (July 10).

Likewise Martin Greenfield argues that “Classical Marxism and a genuine communist programme does offer a framework and strategy for addressing the immediate concerns of the working class and connecting this to the battle for working class state power ... winning the working class to an understanding it needs its own party to take state power. Only a Marxist programme offers that possibility.”

Both Nelson and Greenfield suffer from the same problem: they completely ignore the situation as it is in Britain and Europe.

Greenfield recalls the “Great Miners’ Strike”, but forgets to mention that it is 40 years now since that strike. In that time the working class has been at an all-time low. There hasn’t been a single strike that has challenged state power or anything like it. Why? Because the organised working class has become atomised: the big battalions, such as the miners and dockers, have disappeared. The working class itself has moved to the right and is more likely to support Reform UK than the left. That is one of the lessons of the Brexit vote, on which the CPGB took an abstentionist position on the most ludicrous of bases.

Of course, you can construct a Marxist programme. The problem is getting any workers to take it up. Union organisation has disintegrated and the unions are predominantly in the hands of the right, who abjure anything approaching a confrontation with the state. Workers in service industries, such as hotels and catering, have been unable to achieve and maintain even a basic level of union organisation.

These are real problems which aren’t wished away by the incantation of magic words like “Marxist programme”. Marxists start from where we are, not where we would like to be. The political pendulum has swung to the right in society, which is why we have Reform, not the left, challenging for power. The question is how we move that pendulum back again.

It is noticeable that, no sooner had Zara Sultana announced her resignation and her determination to lead a new party with Jeremy Corbyn, that the party, which isn’t even in existence, registered 10% in the polls - climbing to 15% now, on a level with Starmer’s Labour Party. Of course, you can dismiss this as irrelevant and concentrate on allying with a handful of socialists in Talking About Socialism, RS21 and Prometheus. Good luck to you, but you will be utterly irrelevant to that change in society that you talk about.

At the moment the CPGB is content to sit on the sidelines, with articles from Carla Roberts taking pot shots at Collective and others rather than having anything substantive to say. It is clear that Corbyn’s response to Sultana is lukewarm. He would prefer not to form a left party, but instead engage in his favourite pastime of making speeches to demonstrations and parliament.

Jim Nelson counterposes moving forward to regaining what we had. But resisting the current repression, the banning of organisations and the attack on free speech is part and parcel of moving forward. There are many other things we can do. Marxists and reformists co-existing inside a new party may be an uncomfortable experience for many. The capitalist system won’t collapse by obtaining representation in parliament, but a strategy of doing nothing other than talking to the fragments of the left won’t achieve anything either.

We have a mass movement in this country over Palestine, which is quickly learning the nature of the British state, as have past movements such as Black Lives Matter. If the working class is to be re-energised and politicised, then we have to bring all those activists and those who detest this system together.

Instead the CPGB concentrates on endless debates about dead Bolsheviks, whose revolution occurred in a society that barely resembles present-day capitalism, where the working class was in a small minority amongst a sea of peasants.

Marx and Engels described the working class as the gravediggers of capitalism, but to date that hasn’t worked out. The question is why?

Tony Greenstein
Brighton

From scrap to state

Lenin transplants the state into the first phase of communist society as follows: “In its first phase … communism cannot as yet be fully mature economically and entirely free from traditions or vestiges of capitalism. Hence the interesting phenomenon that communism in its first phase retains ‘the narrow horizon of bourgeois law’. Of course, bourgeois law in regard to the distribution of consumer goods inevitably presupposes the existence of the bourgeois state, for law is nothing without an apparatus capable of enforcing the observance of the rules of law. It follows that under communism there remains for a time not only bourgeois law, but even the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie! … And Marx did not arbitrarily insert a scrap of ‘bourgeois’ law into communism” (State and revolution 1917).

Let us analyse this line of reasoning step by step:

1. In the first phase of communist society, there exists “bourgeois law in regard to the distribution of consumer goods.”

2. The existence of bourgeois law “inevitably presupposes the existence of the bourgeois state”.

3. Why does the existence of bourgeois law in the first phase of communist society presuppose the existence of the bourgeois state?

4. Because law, in itself, has no power of enforcement, there must be “an apparatus capable of enforcing the observance of the rules of law”.

5. Conclusion: according to Lenin, in the first phase of communist society, there exists a “bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie” - as a coercive apparatus!

A fascinating kind of logic: a truly inspired transition - from distributing consumer goods to requiring a coercive apparatus!

Lenin’s assertion that “law is nothing without an apparatus capable of enforcing the observance of the rules of law” holds true within the framework of existing class society. In such societies, law cannot function without the coercive backing of the state apparatus. However, Lenin extends this proposition beyond its proper context, applying it to the first phase of communist society - a phase which, by definition, is meant to be free of class, the state and domination.

The existence of the state signals that people remain subject to alien social relations. Where the state exists, society is fragmented and divided into classes; the direct producers are not freely associated - that is, they are not united in a communal form.

The rules laid down by law serve to reinforce the domination of the commodity, value, money and capital. The state - explicitly defined as “an apparatus capable of enforcing the observance of the rules of law” - is an institution of domination and, as such, has no place in any phase of communist society.

To justify his invention of a “bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie”, which he transplants into the first phase of communist society, Lenin distorts Marx as follows: “Marx did not arbitrarily insert a scrap of ‘bourgeois’ law into communism.” Yet in Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx never uses the term “bourgeois law” in his analysis of communist society. He refers only to “bourgeois right”.

Bourgeois law is a superstructural institution that arises from capitalist relations and is backed by the coercive power of the state. Bourgeois right, by contrast, refers to a norm of equal entitlement that conceals real inequality. As a normative principle, bourgeois right does not, in itself, imply the existence of law as an institutionalised form of domination, nor of a state apparatus to enforce it.

Lenin first substituted “bourgeois law” for Marx’s concept of bourgeois right, then leapt from this mere “scrap of bourgeois law” to the state itself - thereby transplanting a bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie into the first phase of communist society. Through this manoeuvre - which imports an instrument of domination from the existing world into the communist future - Lenin fundamentally distorts Marx’s theory.

Let us now take a closer look at what Marx means by “bourgeois right”. According to Marx, in the first phase of communist society, the distribution of means of consumption among able-bodied individuals will be determined by their labour contribution, because communal productivity will not yet have reached a level sufficient for distribution based on individual needs.

In this phase, each individual producer contributes social labour to society in a specific form. After deductions are made for social funds, the producer receives an equivalent amount of social labour in another form - namely, as means of consumption: “Hence, equal right here is still in principle – bourgeois right … The right of the producers is proportional to the labour they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labour” (Critique of the Gotha Programme).

In the first phase of communist society, the right of producers to access means of consumption is equal, insofar as a uniform standard is applied to all: the labour-time each contributes to the collective social workday. The application of a uniform standard to all - that is, equal rights - remains, in principle, a bourgeois right. By this, Marx refers to a form of equality that, by its very nature, entails inequality, as will be elaborated below.

In pre-capitalist societies, where relations of personal dependency prevailed, slaves and serfs were directly dependent on property owners. The state formally recognised these personal relations of dependence, thereby legitimising inequality among individuals. In bourgeois society, by contrast, personal dependency is replaced by objective forms of dependence: individuals are no longer directly dependent on one another. In the eyes of the law, however, everyone is considered equal.

Bourgeois society is one in which commodity exchange becomes generalised, permeating every aspect of life. In principle, commodities of equal value are exchanged. The spread of commodity exchange fosters a nominal equality among isolated individuals, who relate to one another through commodities.

However, in bourgeois society, legal equality among individuals does not translate into real equality. Bourgeois law establishes a purely formal and nominal equality, while in reality individuals remain unequal in their ownership of the means of production.

For the first time in history, bourgeois society established the nominal equality of individuals despite their actual class inequality. This gave rise to the concept of bourgeois right - an equality that, by its very nature, entails inequality. In the first phase of communist society, the inequality inherent in bourgeois right does not arise from class divisions, as it does under capitalism, but from the differing productive capacities and consumption needs of individual communal members.

In this context, the right of communal individuals capable of work to receive a share of the means of consumption proportional to their labour contribution gives rise to inequality. Those who are able to work longer hours are entitled to receive more. While class inequality no longer exists, individual inequality emerges from differing levels of entitlement. And, even where entitlements are equal, inequality persists due to the varying needs of individuals.

Faced with the persistence of inequality among communal members in the first phase of communist society, some are quick to jump to a foolish conclusion: that commodity relations, value, money and markets must therefore remain in operation - and that the law of value must continue to govern social production.

This is not merely a mistake: it reflects a fundamental confusion. It collapses two entirely different kinds of inequality into one. The variation in productive capacity and consumption needs among communal individuals has nothing in common with the entrenched social inequalities produced by the exploitative, dehumanising relations of capitalist society.

While individuals in capitalist society are indeed unequal in their productive capacities and consumption needs, the capitalist relations embodied in the law of value do not arise from these individual differences. Instead, they are rooted in the fractured structure of society itself and in the alienation of labour that defines the capitalist mode of production.

Inequality in capitalist society arises primarily from the social inequalities created by individuals’ alienated activity. A socialist or communist revolution cannot eliminate individual differences in productive capacities and needs - but it will abolish alienated labour and the social inequalities it generates.

Yusuf Zamir
Union of Turkish Progressives