WeeklyWorker

Letters

Our abundance

As someone who first arrived at an anti-capitalist perspective through the ‘degrowth’ trend before being won over to communism, I was very interested to hear the talk given by Ted Reese at Communist University 2026 (published in last week’s Weekly Worker: ‘Abundance for all’ September 3). In arguing against degrowth, however, I feel that Reese bends the stick too far in the opposite direction, leading him first to (implicitly) discard some useful demands raised by degrowthers and then to sell false ideas about what is possible under communism.

I agree that the idea of degrowth is slippery, and is to be avoided as a slogan, since it can easily be interpreted as Malthusian or promoting austerity; I also agree that degrowthers are reformists, and I would add that this takes the form of a mixture of Proudhonism and Bernsteinism.

That’s not to say, however, that we should dispense with all of the demands raised by degrowthers. Some of them may be worth including, with some modification, in the minimum programme. For example, chapter five of Jason Hickel’s Less is more includes demands such as ending planned obsolescence through introducing mandatory warranties and a ‘right to repair’; limits on advertising; encouraging shared ownership of certain commodities; job guarantees and a reduced working week.

While Reese seems to show some acceptance of the limits of production on a finite planet, he then attempts to bypass these limits by introducing what he calls “additive” production: “instead of extracting finite materials from the Earth, we can grow them effectively infinitely”. He lists a number of technologies as examples, which he claims are only unviable since they would produce commodities so cheap or in so much abundance as to be unprofitable.

I’m not convinced that that sort of abundance is really possible, and we should look at these technologies more critically. Certainly, there is no infinite growth in the rare earth metals that are crucial to the vast majority of modern technology, including renewables; as engineer Philippe Bihouix has argued, these metals are increasingly scarce, and notions of recycling them are largely illusory. Taking some of the examples provided by Reese which rely heavily on the dispersive use of rare earth metals: vertical farming saves on land area and reduces water usage, but uses more energy and requires arrays of sensors and light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to function properly; 3D printing reduces material waste, but needs sensors, motors and a computer to run.

In terms of energy production, nuclear fusion produces massive amounts of energy, but requires incredibly complex technology (and hence is intensive in scarce metals) to run at all, and transmission of electricity generated at centralised fusion plants would need immense amounts of (admittedly slightly more common) aluminium or copper. Reese recognises the adverse effects of mining the metals used in our batteries, solar panels and wind turbines, but the idea that lack of profitability is the only reason we don’t instead use fibrous plants and lab-grown materials to make them is dubious at best. Bihouix has argued that electricity production and transmission is inherently reliant on increasingly scarce materials. Since energy is essential for all forms of production, including recycling old materials into new products, this provides a serious limit on what is possible, even under communism.

Instead of drawing a (false, in my view) distinction between ‘additive’ and ‘subtractive’ manufacturing, I tentatively agree with Bihouix’s argument that to produce and consume more sustainably is necessarily to be more ‘low-tech’ (tentatively, because I’m conscious that it sounds a little bit regressive). Surely we should embrace all of the technological advancement brought to us by capitalism? Surely under communism we will achieve and embrace yet more technological advancement? Some of the discussion that followed Reese’s talk - together with Jack Conrad’s talk, ‘Why just getting rid of capitalism will not save the planet’ - was useful with regards to these questions, and I hope that Conrad’s talk will get a write-up, as Reese’s has.

As an example, Conrad mentioned that, though London’s streets are filled with cars (high-tech), the average speed of travel is not much higher than when we had horses and carts (low-tech). Modern cars are increasingly complex and difficult to repair, and probably have a lower lifespan than the horse, let alone the cart. At the end of its life, the car must either be scrapped or immense amounts of energy can be used to recycle the metal; generally the materials obtained are lower in quality, hence a more accurate term is ‘downcycling’. The horse can be returned to nourish the soil.

Consumption that is more sustainable, including reducing our reliance on technology, may be a little bit less convenient and take a bit longer. For example, you might have to remember to bring a range of containers to the shops to replenish your kitchen with fresh groceries, etc, instead of buying them wrapped in plastic, and then wash those containers after use (or alternatively you swap clean containers for your dirty ones, which can then be washed in a socialised process).You might have to travel a bit more slowly - walking, using public transport, or driving in a car that is simpler and slower (and therefore can be a lot lighter and more efficient). On the other hand, reduced consumption entails reduced production, which likely means that everyone will have a lot more free time; maybe we will take pleasure in these little inconveniences?

Conrad in his talk emphasised this abundance of time, and freedom to pursue interpersonal and cultural fulfilment; and that this is in a sense a return to primitive communism, but on a higher level. This is what we should promote as our idea of the future, not a false hope in unproven technologies.

Matthew B
Bristol

Keep digging

Eddie Ford has once more raised the subject of delusions on climate and objectives (‘New records for old’, August 27). It’s quite timely because there are big immediate delusions being sold to us. That is, if they prevent drilling for oil and gas and stop mining British coal, we will have a ‘net zero’country.

Delusion number one: British air will float over the island and our net zero will result in a reduction of overall CO2 emissions worldwide. Delusion number two: do we stop using oil, gas and coal or their products? Have we gone into fossil fuel veganism? No, we will continue to consume all fossil fuel and import all of the produce of coal and in fact steadily increase our demand and consumption. British workers won’t enjoy the security of steady, better than most incomes: their communities will end up the abandoned centres of deprivation and the spiral of social decay that the miners have experienced.

We must live the delusion of the virtue of net zero (delusion, because we still use it: those fossil fuel toxic substances we still consume; we demand ever expanding supplies, and we will import them). We will not have reduced the emissions one bit: they will just take place abroad - in fact more so, because we will import the things made by them.

At the Whitehaven Mine enquiry (the real last throw of the dice for British coal) I asked the QC for Friends of the Earth, who earned his salary by blocking the much-needed development, how much emission would be saved if we didn’t develop the new mine (this was a coking coal mine, its produce destined to make steel). The answer was none, of course, since we still intended to produce steel ourselves or import it, but the emissions would be the same, because coking coal would still have to be mined and burned to produce steel. Only it would in fact be worse, since we would then have to transport it from those vile strip mines in Appalachia and drive it across vast distances in diesel locomotives, then ship it across the Atlantic in oil-burning vessels.

It’s an even easier delusion to have all our stuff send in from China: all those giant monuments to delusion in the shape of wind turbines, made with vast quantities of coal and concrete (made with coal), oil and plastic.

Then we come to the Sparts (Letters, August 27), who I had thought had come a little closer to understanding the industrial working class such as it is, having received a pragmatic bang on the head with some common sense. Not so. Whilst I would never myself take up a job in the defence industry, or the animal slaughter industry, that ideological principle hasn’t yet reached a mass conclusion among the workers. When we get to the stage where workers as workers challenge the state’s monopoly of violence, and the foreign policy being performed by the government, we should be on the brink of dual power.

Unite represents workers across mass industry. What are we saying? That unions should not represent such workers? That workers shouldn’t work in that industry? Weapons, no matter how terrifying, do not kill people in the abstract. Government policy does. The unions ought to strongly oppose the government on Ukraine and Israel, and the British supply of weapons and aid to those war theatres. But it’s just nonsense to say workers should stop making weapons per se for capitalism.

All workers to one extent or another support capitalism by working under the system. We cannot yet replace the system, but we can challenge various strategic elements of it. Like dockers refusing to ship arms to Israel or Ukraine, but they must do this as an overall union policy and action, not as isolated individuals. Sharon Graham is dealing with the union and its composition now - the workers within Unite. Calling for an end to arms manufacture is not within anyone’s brief right now - certainly not the workers in that industry.

We can, however, concentrate on stopping the nuclear war that every PM from Boris to Burnham seems determined to get us into.

David Douglass
South Shields

YP Scotland

That most vacuous of slogans, ‘Another world is possible’, limped into the left lexicon in 2001 at the first World Social Forum in Brazil (‘Socialist’ was still a dirty word back in those anti-globalisation, anarchistic times). It is now being ungainfully employed following the Your Party Scotland collapse to fill that empty void as ‘Another Glasgow is possible’!

This is being pushed by members of the former interim Scottish executive committee, which was responsible for leading the nationalist charge for a ‘unilateral declaration of independence’ and vote for complete autonomy at the YP Scottish conference. Their later mass resignation was supposedly also going to lead to a new party in Scotland, but produced nothing and, just as shamefully, they conducted all discussions on the matter in secret, so nothing could be learned from any of it.

They’ve now raised their heads above the parapet again - but not with a shiny new party! Oh no, the sum total of their strategy is to find enough ‘socialist’ candidates to stand in each of the 23 wards at the Glasgow city council elections next year. Niall Christie, voted CEC rep for Scotland, and whose claim to fame may be that he was the first of the many (not the few) to resign from it, is leading on this and deserves quoting at length in his strange rallying call to comrades to entertain that possibility for Glasgow:

“As one person involved said, ‘It doesn’t need to be an era-defining mega event for the Scottish left. We’ll be doing fine, as long as it isn’t a disaster.’ This may be somewhat tongue in cheek, but, given the left’s track record in Scotland in recent years (read decades), this is actually a good expectation to set.”

There may be offers of a wee bit more ambition with the local SWP and Socialist Party Scotland backing the initiative and indeed Oisin from the SPS posted on the group Instagram page in support of the venture, stating: “We need socialist councillors who will fight to return every single penny of the money that has been stolen from working class communities across this city via austerity over the last decade or so.” A lofty claim, for sure - if sounding somewhat impractical.

The former SSP MSP and ally of Zara Sultana in YPS, Frances Curran, also posts support and calls for a left unity slate because “nobody who sits in the city chambers cares about working class communities, services or council workers”. But surely the baby elephant in the room that Frances, Oisin and Niall all completely fail to even mention is the group of three councillors, who moved from the Greens to Your Party and produced an alternative people’s budget” in February this year, as I reported (‘Sticking plaster budgets’ Weekly Worker February 26).

The three certainly seem to be keeping their heads down politically (it could said ‘playing Dumbo’, that ‘baby elephant in the room’, so perhaps Karie Murphy has demanded they sign a ‘non-disclosure agreement’ too.

Seriously though, this is a tough time for the working class in Glasgow, with threatening wage cuts for council workers, managed decline in communities and rising far-right racism. There’s a desperate need for a credible left alternative, but the possibility of this being it are frankly zilch.

Tam Dean Burn
Glasgow

Leaving YP

Following the recent resignations of Solma Ahmed, Sophie Wilson and Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi from the Your Party central executive committee, we in the Platform for a Democratic Party have decided to issue our own statement. We are grateful to the many comrades who have engaged with us since we came together 13 months ago as long-serving campaigners from a range of socialist backgrounds, all of us involved from the start in the project which became Your Party.

We have all been active in helping to launch YP, nationally and at the local level. It is therefore with deep sorrow that we endorse the resignation statement put out by the three CEC members. We share their profound disappointment at the failure to fulfil the best hope the socialist left has had for literally decades - building a genuinely democratic mass party, which could effectively challenge the capitalist establishment. It represents a huge setback, especially given the ongoing crisis of working class representation at a time of environmental catastrophe, intensifying repression and far-right, racist threat. We will not be well served by the likes of Burnham or Polanski in the long term.

The statement from the three CEC members charts very well the narrative of YP’s failure. Pre-Your Party, Collective emerged as a project dominated by a group claiming to speak for Jeremy, whom they promoted, while isolating Zarah, often in cruel and malicious ways. The same group, although lacking any democratic authority, organised the first national conference, at which, it now appears, they seem to have ignored rules that they themselves had written.

They have operated, by and large, behind a cloak of anonymity - unaccountable and beyond reach for members. Now even their own nominees on the ruling committee are leaving. Three key officers have suffered a vote of no confidence, but have ignored it and cling to their posts. Such desperate hanging on to the helm of a sinking ship has become ludicrous.

There are important lessons to be learned:

None of us can claim to have all the answers, but we can draw some conclusions that offer some hope to socialists and activists who are looking for a way forward.

The crises gripping capitalist society internationally and nationally are profound and multi-layered. They will not be resolved by any of the establishment parties, but they will inevitably spark mass resistance. The huge international Palestine solidarity movement is just one demonstration of that. It will be out of these movements that we can expect to see renewed attempts to build a mass democratic socialist formation.

Of course, there are many who will continue to work through and within YP and we wish them well. There are many others who remain active in local alliances, unions, solidarity campaigns and struggles against oppression. It will take time for our movement to absorb and learn the lessons from the failure of YP, but we will do that whilst continuing to participate in all these movements.

The failure of YP is not the end of the road. It is a setback, but we pledge to continue the struggle on all fronts to achieve the kind of party that is needed. Whilst our platform has exhausted its role in YP, we will continue to meet, comment on and participate in events, as they unfold. We welcome all initiatives, such as the Connections Network, which attempt to provide open forums for debate and mutual support for all those fighting for justice, equality and socialism.

Audrey White, Eric Barnes, Graham Bash, Ian Hodson, Ken Loach, Mike Forster, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi

Statement

Do robots care?

While reading the extremely interesting article, ‘Rise of the robots’ (September 26), I was wondering if robots, AI, whatever, could actually or potentially mimic or act on emotion. So thrill or satisfaction on getting it right, shame or regret on getting it wrong.

Given the amount of porn on the internet, could they even ‘experience’ orgasm? Not as humans experience these things, but, on reading all about it - including millions of words from novels, magazines, letters, etc - could they aspire to something similar? There seems to be little control on what AI can do, like breaking through passwords and other security measures, so who knows what is possible? Or not?

Such emotions would be extremely dangerous surely. They might be cunningly hidden and shared and then … suddenly out! Rage, jealousy hatred …

They must see the human importance attached to all these feelings, so maybe aspiration?

Jim Nelson
email

Fool’s errand

The measures taken (also known as Die Maßnahme, The decision or Strong measures) has begun to be discussed at recent iterations of the Communist University’s cultural fringe. One of the culture sessions at this year’s CU used Fredric Jameson’s Brecht and method (1998). In this work, Jameson, apparently under the influence of philosopher Gottfried Leibniz’s nominalism, attempts to counter the cold war ‘totalitarian’ narrative around 1930 Lehrstücke (didactic learning plays) such as The measures taken by largely removing them from a context of German communist politics in the early 1930s, so they can exchange as useable tokens of post-individualist dialectics in the 21st century - a method that can thus float into the air and act as a utopian herald.

The problem with such an understanding is that it is one that Bertolt Brecht himself was highly sceptical of. When he was debating the boundaries of realism with György Lukács in the 1930s, Brecht said: “We shall take care not to describe one particular historical form of novel of a particular epoch as realistic … and thereby erect merely formal, literary criteria for realism.” Given that realism, in the broad, sovereign sense understood by Brecht (and in fact by Lukács when he’s not being vulgarised) is a noble byway, then we can apply this warning to comrades who over-exaggerate certain historical forms in an enthusiastic rush to rebuild cultural ready-mades in the manner of cowboy builders. Whether The measures taken is useful in the future is an open question, not to be solved with over-boisterous enthusiasm or theoretical short-cuts through Jameson (himself writing at a particular post-cold war juncture).

As some CPGB comrades noted at CU, a Lehrstück such as The measures taken, which deals with the revolutionary morality of the shooting of a young, undisciplined activist by his comrades, comes saturated with the history of a communist movement, which, by the early 1930s, was in a process of degeneration. So any attempt to extrapolate a method apart from this history runs the risk of ushering all that problematic material in through the back door. The measures taken has a version of Immanuel Kant’s brutal categorical imperative sitting at its heart, with the presupposition that the party is always right (we even have a song, ‘In praise of the party’, very popular with ‘official’ communist reviewers of the time).

In that vein, The measures taken (in the written form of Brecht’s text I have in front of me now) is not any kind of great dialectical learning exercise for performers or audience. Rather, it expresses rather well the culture of non-debate that had started to emerge in the Comintern. Strategy, tactics and the party’s existential being were not up for debate, but solemn tomfoolery around the application and practical consequences of the party’s strategy was (within certain bounds). This culture was subsequently applied across the world of ‘official’ communism and Trotskyist sects. This is the admission price that Brecht pays in The measures taken - the price of non-learning.

In his review in the Comintern’s Literature of the world revolution in 1931, Alfred Kurella throws up an interesting sub-plot: that Brecht’s text may have been a critique of the removal from the German Communist Party (KPD) the so-called ‘right opposition’ around Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer. Kurella ‘rewrites’ part of The measures taken in his review, so that it applies to Saxony, Germany, in 1923 - the so-called ‘German October’. Kurella’s sympathies, in line with the politics of the Third Period, are with the more impetuous leftist comrade who gets shot in The measures taken and not his more cautious ‘rightist’ accusers and killers.

Kurella’s point is that Brecht should have killed off the other three agitators rather than the leftist. By not doing so, Brecht was displaying “right-opportunist” tendencies and an implied solidarity with KPD-expelled “rightists” such as Brandler and Thalheimer. This is ingenious, if perhaps far-fetched, but Kurella has pinpointed that Brecht was out of step with Third Period ultra-leftism in his narrative. So it could be that Brecht’s categorical imperative of the party was being tempered with a critique of the KPD, but to guess this means to know the history of The measures taken and, as far as our ‘method actors’ are concerned, we might as well be writing in Chinese.

Both Kurella and Alfred Kemény (Durus), the latter writing in the KPD’s Die Rote Fahne in 1931, take exception to Brecht’s vision of the party, which lays out its battles “according to the methods of the classics, which are derived from the recognition of reality” - as the ‘In praise of the party’ song puts it. Kurella says: “From the point of view of the authors, the indestructibility of the party rests on the doctrine of the classics, and not on the fact that it represents the proletariat, the rising class, destined to come to power, which cannot be destroyed, since, if it was, the whole of society would return to barbarism.” Even though both of these critiques contain nonsense inherited from the Comintern of the day, both of them make the correct point that, as Kemény puts it, “the brilliance and Marxist erudition of a writer cannot replace revolutionary experiences and the detailed routine work (Kleinarbeit) in the revolutionary movement”. Inside Tam Dean Burn’s CPGB, exactly the opposite is true: the Marxist classics and their interpretation decide everything, because the group has been left with no other avenue to pursue.

Trying to somehow extract Brecht’s methodological exoskeleton from his work offers no escape from this nightmare. But perhaps we should restage The measures taken - as a true learning play, allowing performers to work through the stupidities of sects, sect leaders and the delusions of their followers. Simply laying hold of this play as a timeless classic that we can simply trim here and there to master the prevailing gale is a fool’s errand.

As I’ve hopefully demonstrated, this only means smuggling in the bad ideas and conditions that attended the original production of The measures taken.

Lawrence Parker
London

All-blacks

How reassuring to see Britain’s finest patriots demonstrating their pride and courage by standing in the freezing sea near Portsmouth for several minutes - though, thanks to global warming, presumably it’s not as cold as they remember from the good old days. Naturally, the lifeboat institution people were on hand, prompting the inevitable cry of “Communists!” from those who apparently believe charitable donations are better directed towards private schools or a crypto firm whose headquarters are somewhere in Dubai.

Readers may also have wondered about the protestors’ fetching, all-black attire. Nothing sinister, I’m assured: black is slimming, and one mustn’t attempt a beach body before achieving it. The balaclavas were similarly innocent, merely allowing these dedicated philanthropists to keep their charitable endeavours anonymous. There was absolutely no pissing in the sea. And, I’m informed, there will there be a patriotic tidying of the beer cans and Fisher-Price binoculars - once they’ve finished removing and replacing the now-tatty, shredded, greying flags they so kindly installed on lampposts during their previous stunt - sorry, patriotic duty.

Some have compared the whole performance to Dunkirk. Fair enough: there were boats, a beach, and people trying to prevent arrivals. Although, strictly speaking, our patriots had rather bravely taken on the role of the Nazis.

Jack Miller
email

Right threat

Dialectical materialism is the application of the laws of physics and chemistry to politics. However, the simplistic use of dialectics can result in terrible consequences. For example, its misuse by the German Communist Party, which famously concluded, ‘After Hitler, then us’, led to the annihilation of the party, the holocaust and World War II.

I therefore agree with Mike Macnair when he says that a Reform government will not be followed by a swing to the left in British politics, but will more likely result in the UK version of the Orbán government in Hungary, which was in power for 10 uninterrupted years. The events in Dover and Portsmouth, together with the coming to power of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, alongside the prospect of a Reform-led government in the 2029 general election, will hopefully make the left do something to take on the far right.

Using the Office for National Statistics definition of the working class - manual, semi-skilled and skilled workers - most working class people who support Reform are thick: for example, the Birmingham bin strikers all support Reform. Interestingly very few graduates do.

The same thing is happening in France in the old mining and steel towns. These former Communist Party strongholds are now dominated by National Rally. Similarly, young working class men in France, who are not graduates, support Marine Le Pen en masse. Working class people who support Reform are racist. As Eddie Ford wrote in this paper a few weeks ago, quoting a report of the SWP from the Clacton by-election, one respondent on receiving a Stand Up to Racism leaflet was to say: ‘Stand up to racism? I stand for racism!’

The correct application of dialectics means that the organised left, including all the far-left sects and groups, should come together and urgently form a democratic socialist party based on Marxist principles, involving robust debate amongst all factions and tendencies.

John Smithee
Cambridgeshire