Letters

Odd reply

Jack Conrad’s reply (Letters, January 22) to previous letters by myself and Kevin Graham was rather odd. I certainly agree that limitations of space can preclude in-depth philosophical discussion. Which is why I was rather surprised at Jack citing Karl Marx’s Preface to the contribution to the critique of political economy at me as if it were scripture.

This habitual practice of quoting from the 1859 Preface has been criticised by one Franz Jakubowski: “Marx’s own problematic springs from [his] dispute with Hegel and Feuerbach, whom he saw as the typical representatives of the idealist and materialist philosophies. Nothing has obscured our understanding of Marx’s problematic more than the habit … of quoting one paragraph from the Preface along with a few similar passages, while ignoring the question of where Marx and Engels found that problematic and how they developed it from that point.”

On re-reading the Preface I find it an immensely problematic text. It could be argued that the passages Jack cites could be utilised in a reified, anti-humanist reading of Marx. Obviously this is of some concern now that the Party is engaged in the task of clearing away the rubble of ‘official communist’/Trotskyite ideology. An isolated consideration of the Preface has for too long been used as a lifebelt for the latest brand of opportunism.

I have more sympathy with Jack Conrad’s critique of Althusser, who is rightly upbraided for his methodological neglect of Marx’s earlier works. However, Conrad writes: “Althusser places Marx’s ‘epistemological break’ not, as I would, in 1844 with the Paris manuscripts. Rather it was with Capital or even his Marginal notes on Wagner …”

Jack does not seemingly address the question of whether the idea of an ‘epistemological break’ is theoretically acceptable. In For Marx Althusser argues against the formulation of ‘analytico-teleological’ concepts in his essay. Althusser’s polemic is a worthy one.

Such abstract approaches can certainly lead to a self-imposed inability to grasp the dynamic of a particular writer’s output. Rather unfortunate then that Althusser repeats this teleology in his own construction of the ‘epistemological break’. Dividing Marx’s work into ‘ideological’ and ‘scientific’ periods introduces a mechanical perception whereby texts are treated as the preconceived functions of these concepts and not as a totalised process. In this scenario, it matters little whether 1844, 1845 or 1857 is used as a boundary line.

Phil Watson
Liverpool

Both wrong

Almost incredibly, the protracted debate between Tom Ball and Alan Fox on the question of ‘institutionalised racism’ contrived, while representing totally polar views, to be wrong on both sides of the argument.

Ball argues that the “British imperialist state is inherently racist, has not changed its spots, nor will it ever do so”. While Fox insists that the state in fact “encourages the notion that multi-ethnic diversity ought to be the norm in a civilised society: indeed it is positively desirable”. According to Fox “social stability” is the motivation: “That is why television in particular - the most popular and powerful of all mass media constantly and consistently pushes the same theme.” Interesting phrase that, “pushes the same theme”, when you think about it. Might even contain a clue.

Ball’s argument is easily dismissed. Racism was never the basis for slavery: rather racism was introduced to explain it and justify it. Britain’s ruling powers were never inherently racist to the point that judgement became clouded in regard to economic interests or political survival. It never made a fetish out of it. British ruling class racism was always opportune. It proved useful time and time again in promoting divisions and was exploited for this reason. To argue otherwise is dogma.

Fox, who should have won the argument hands down, totally over-stretched himself with the statement that: “White workers are never encouraged to think of themselves as having separate and distinct interests as opposed to black workers.” So why do they continue to do so then? Why indeed are race attacks on a rising curve since the late 1970s? 170,000 race-related incidents annually and still rising. Why is Britain, with a politically negligible far right, on a par with Germany, which has 50,000 registered Nazis. Can it be that race hatred, as some liberals contend, is inherent in the lower orders and therefore genetic - that fascists are born, not made?

How else to explain it? Particularly as Fox acknowledges the theme of anti-racism is continually promoted by councils, companies and schools. If the multi-cultural strategy was working, should it not by now have resulted in some race relations gain, particularly for the black working class. But it has not done so.

In America ‘affirmative action’ has simply created a black middle class, at the expense of the majority black population who live in abject poverty and are arguably worse off in all key areas than they were prior to the civil rights agitation in the 1960s.

Why is this? The answer is simple. Racism was used to divide the workers. Today the multi-ethnic celebration of diversity, championed by even the most reactionary institutions, is fulfilling the same role. How? There are a number of critical factors. One, the project is conceived and implemented from the top down. As such, it is entirely divorced from any concept of social justice. More fundamentally, at its theoretical core, race has displaced class as the primary dynamic within society. Working class communities are routinely invited to choose sides in any dispute over diminishing resources along racial lines - in the name of anti-racism.

Why funding is continually being cut is never addressed. Of sole concern for the multi-cultural mindset is that the meagre resources are distributed proportionately. Horizontal resentment and violence is the outcome.

Multi-culturalism is promoted and endorsed by the ruling elite precisely for this reason. It is not the job of communists, insists Tom Ball, to pretend “that the state is somehow now positively anti-racist … otherwise we are no better than the liberals, social democrats … who kidded themselves that the state could be a means to achieving progressive ends in society”. With this line of argument, Ball’s entire motivation is exposed. He simply does not want to be accused of being a liberal, so he picks a fight with them by taking an ultra-liberal stance. So how formally anti-racist would he like the state to be? And what would it have to do gratify his anti-racist demands?

In reality, the state can be positively anti-racist. It can make it a point of honour to discriminate in favour of ethnic minorities and still not be ‘progressive’.

For the Weekly Worker the primary concern should not be that it appears to be caught on either side of a liberal argument which it has passed off as communism. Rather, the real danger lies in the fact that the liberal position is becoming increasingly untenable - morally, theoretically and in practice.

Be warned. When, rather than if, the contradictions manifest themselves politically, the multi-cultural ship will go down with all hands, and it is the left rather than the liberals that will pay the heaviest political price.

Joe Reilly
Red Action

Voluntarism

I will ignore the John McEnroe-style tirades against Linda Addison by Jack Conrad and come straight to the point of his views about Lukács and Althusser. Conrad seems to be pro-Lukács and implicitly dismisses answering any criticism about Lukács’s alleged voluntarism.

My own view is that Lukács’s voluntarism was based upon a crude identity of the party with history. Historical truth equalled philosophical truth. This idealist approach facilitated a voluntarist glossing over of the objective problems facing proletarian revolution, such as his dismissal of the counterrevolutionary role of social democracy.

Adorno’s comments on the subject seem appropriate to describe Lukács. The subject projects its own objective impotence into mental omnipotence, and this self-exaltation cannot comprehend the object which remains elusive.

Concerning Althusser, I would contend that, far from being a Stalinist philosophical hack, he was essentially trying to break with the idealism of Stalinism. Althusser’s utilisation of the conception of the epistemological break is not the result of his own theoretical practice - rather, it originates with his doctoral supervisor, Gaston Bachelard. Bachelard was concerned to show the ideological limitations contained within any scientific revolution. Althusser extended this approach to Marxism and showed that Marx’s early works, such as the Economic and philosophical manuscripts, represented the hangovers of Hegel’s and Feuerbach’s idealism and mechanical materialism respectively. The Manuscripts contained a view of history similar to Hegel’s master-slave approach, in which the loss of self and its recovery expressed alienated labour and its ultimate negation. From Feuerbach, Marx took the view that the essence of the human species is contained within labour.

In contrast to the early works, Marx in Capital no longer equates alienation and labour with particular concepts of idealist philosophies of history. Alienation is now linked to the commodification of human labour power. Marx’s epistemological break probably originated with the German ideology and Theses on Feuerbach. These works, which elaborate the materialist conception of history, break with the Hegelian dialectic of the loss and recovery of consciousness (labour) and also reject Feuerbach’s transhistorical view of human nature as a static essence.

Stalinism has been quite comfortable with the humanist view of Marx, as witnessed by Althusser’s own philosophical isolation within the PCF. This is because Althusser’s Marx is a proletarian revolutionary at the level of philosophy and historical materialism and not the expression of humanist popular frontism.

Phil Sharpe
Nottingham

Correction

In last week’s Weekly Worker (January 29) you published my article, ‘Workers Power quits SLP’. In the process of editing, some additional phrases were introduced. I stated: “By mid-1996 at least a dozen cadres with several years’ experience in WP were inside the SLP ... Some of them had differences with the WP leadership, but most of them were loyal to it.” However, it was added: “They retained their WP membership.” This is not true. Not all of them remained under WP’s discipline. In fact a significant proportion of them started to be influenced by the LCMRCI.

I stated that WP was so incapable of recruiting anybody from the SLP that it could not even persuade half of its former members (ie, those no longer under WP discipline) to rejoin. Unfortunately this was rephrased as: “Half of the WP entryists have now decided to leave WP too.”

John Stone
London