09.10.1997

Party notes

The phrase ‘national socialism’, used in the pamphlet Blair’s rigged referendum and Scotland’s right to self-determination, continues to excite critics. Excellent. It allows us to openly and frankly discuss our method of polemic and draw a sharp line of demarcation between international proletarian socialism and Russian, Chinese, German, British, Scottish, etc, national or local socialism.

Designating the programme of Scottish Militant Labour an example of national socialism is, and can be nothing but, a gratuitous insult. Or so we are repeatedly told. National socialism has one unique meaning. National socialism is a synonym for Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Yet the facts show otherwise. Our readers know it. We have specifically stated and gone on to underline it. When the phrase ‘national socialism’ has been employed by us it carries no implication whatsoever that SML has a Nazi programme or is a Nazi organisation. Any such suggestion is as downright stupid as it is downright dishonest.

One need not rely on written evidence alone. There is another test. Practice. Both the CPGB and SML are united front partners in the Scottish Socialist Alliance. During the May 1 1997 general election the CPGB consistently urged and energetically campaigned to achieve a vote for all SSA candidates, not least those of SML (and incidentally their co-thinkers in Peter Taaffe’s Socialist Party). Moreover there was a common election platform with SML. We worked, and still work, together as comrades. Obviously none of that would apply to fascists, let alone crazy Nazi types.

But has SML been insulted? Yes, of course. Not gratuitously however. National socialism is used in a similar way to terms like opportunist, reformist, economistic and centrist. They scientifically describe SML.

Socialism is international ... or it must be something else. There can be no national liberation of the working class. Not the USA, nor Germany nor Britain have within their narrow borders the material base needed to realise and sustain socialism - ie, the lower stage of communism. Obviously the same applies to a small country like Scotland.

Here we are perfectly consistent with the teaching, tradition and terminology of Marxism. Both Marx and Engels lambasted idealist notions of “local communism”. “Local communism” is not viable in a world where “each nation” is “dependent on the revolutions of the others”. Communism is “empirically” possible only “as the act of the dominant peoples”, “all at once” and “simultaneously”. The workers exist “world-historically”. So must communism (K Marx, F Engels CW Vol 5, Moscow 1976, p33).

Trotsky too attacked “all varieties of national socialism” (L Trotsky The Third International after Lenin New York, p4). Unmistakably he meant not only the national socialist ideology of Hitler and Mussolini. His main targets were, needless to say, Stalin and the theoretician of socialism in one country, Bukharin. In our time István Mészáros, the noted Marxist thinker, considers that the “postulated National Socialist solution” advocated by the neo-classical economist, Alfred Marshall, and the British Fabians actually “resulted in the monstrous inhumanity of Hitler’s national and global adventure” (I Mészáros Beyond capital London 1995, pp84-5).

SML can be located politically somewhere midway between Bukharin’s revolutionary national socialism on the one hand and, on the other, Fabian reformist national socialism. SML’s socialism is for Scotland. It will come through Blair’s Edinburgh parliament, using mass pressure from below merely as an auxiliary. For ideological reasons SML feels compelled to paint this centrist programme in the colours of Marxism. However, means determine ends and vice versa. “In the final analysis” the logic is “counterrevolutionary” (J Conrad Which road? London 1991, p203).

Dogmatism’s last refuge is a dictionary. What could be more objective? Like railway timetables they supposedly contain “unadulterated factual information”. That is just not true. Dictionaries are “soaked in ideology”. They take the “unsuspecting passenger for a ride in a direction diametrically opposed to his or her chosen destination” (I Mészáros The power of ideology London 1989, p3).

The standard contemporary dictionary equates national socialism with Hitlerism. Undoubtedly. Of course, that causes a problem for the supposed orthodox Marxist when it comes to Trotsky. So the lexicon of Marxism is arbitrarily cleaved pre- and post-1933.

For the benefit of the determinedly gormless let us emphasise - language is made by people. Unsustainable pre-and post-1933 decrees on national socialism inadvertently prove it. Language is a social construct undergoing endless change. Word and object are not identical. Things only have names because people in the course of their social activity give them names. Language is not arbitrary. As a sign-system it has its own specific rules. But especially when it involves ‘loaded meanings’ - ie, material or ideological interests - language is subject to constant and fierce struggle. Hence it evolves in this or that direction conflictively.

In my battered Concise Oxford dictionary one finds ‘communism’ defined thus: the “form of society established in the 20th century in the USSR and elsewhere”. Marxists find such a claim ignorant and contemptible. Nevertheless most, if not the overwhelming majority of British people, believe the USSR is synonymous with communism. Marxists therefore contest the common sense dictionary definition (along with other definitions, such as ‘revolutionary’, ‘militant’ and ‘socialism’ found in the same ‘objective’ source).

It was an act of utter capitulation to common sense prejudice for the SWP to celebrate Yeltsin’s 1991 power grab with the headline, “Communism has collapsed” (Socialist Worker August 31 1991). The notion that the society built by Stalin and betrayed by Gorbachev was an example of communism must be refuted. Hence our organisation proudly retains the title ‘communist’. Not because it associates us with Stalin. But because it announces and scientifically describes our aim of universal human liberation.

In order to communicate our ideas we shape and develop existing language and use analogy. Conveying thoughts about a contradictory phenomenon can involve juxtaposing words with opposite meanings - ie, an oxymoron, such as local, bureaucratic or national socialism.

To insist things somehow originate with a unique name attached to them, which has to be discovered, is nominalism. A dog is a dog is a dog - because it is a dog. Either that or our critics are pedants. Such narrow-minded people plague the BBC, complaining how god’s English is being corrupted. They want the language freeze-dried or/and used only in the manner they sniffily decide is fit and proper. Well, we will not kowtow before dictionaries, pedantry or censorship. Language is a weapon. And we will continue to use it in the fight for international socialism and communism.

Jack Conrad