04.07.2001

Beyond anti-capitalism

There has been a small summertime flurry of schools on the theme of anti-capitalism over the last month or so.

The smaller organisations on the left - the International Socialist Group, Workers Power and the Alliance for Workers' Liberty - have all had their events. Now, the Socialist Workers Party's 'Marxism 2001' looms, packaged as education for "a new movement, a new left". Our own weekend school in London on this important theme - 'Anti-capitalism: past, present and future' - took place over the weekend of June 30-July 1. It was judged an excellent event by most of the 50 or so participants.

Our engagement with the different forces around the new mass phenomenon of 'anti-capitalism' has been limited thus far and we still need to strictly target our interventions in order to make the maximum impact. This does not mean that we underplay the significance of this new proto-movement, or that - as half-jokingly suggested by a leading member of Workers Power at its school over the weekend of June 23-24 - that we actually are "against it".

As one comrade emphasised in a contribution from the floor at our school, we may have many sharp criticisms of the politics of the different components of the anti-capitalist movement and the tactics of staged confrontations with the state fetishised by some elements. But, as he put it, "We know what side we're on. Many of these people are just lashing out at symbols of international capitalism, but still they are fighting back. That's the beginning of rebellion. The reactionary period that we are still going through is a very contradictory one. We have always stressed that. The appearance of a relative mass of people on the streets, consciously defining themselves as anti-capitalist, is a real step forward. We have to find ways to critically engage."

In four sessions over the two days, the school attempted to identify and examine some of the key strands that make up these anti-capitalist rebellions - anarchism, green politics, anti-corporatism and the Zapatista phenomenon. Hopefully, many comrades came away with the tools to start that process of 'critical engagement'.

Opening the school with the session on anarchism, comrade Tina Becker looked at the careers of figures like Bakunin and Proudhon and drew parallels with features displayed by contemporary anarchism. Importantly, she made the point that the supposed 'non-hierarchical' and 'democratic' culture associated with anarchism is in historical terms a myth. After trying to work with the anarchists Marx was forced to fight their most important leaders, she reminded the audience. "He came to regard them as conspiratorial and inimical to the interests of the working class and communism."

To prove her point, she spoke about the theory of revolution held by Bakunin - the notion that social revolution could be the work of a tiny elite and that after the overturn, 100 men would be "sufficient" to run the world "¦ with Bakunin bossing them around, of course.

Important in this section of the opening was a discussion of the nature of authority. In contrast to the hypocritical posturing of the anarchists, Marx and Engels recognised that authority is an indispensable coagulant in all human activities, from sailing a ship to running a society. Marx wrote of the need to demystify authority, to reclaim it for us. Democratising authority is the key.

Such an open and realistic approach stands in stark contrast to the conspiratorial plots and bandit adventures of the anarchists. Comrade Becker cited the behaviour of the anarchist Black Bloc on the anti-capitalist protests in Prague last year. This group refused to recognise the authority of even a democratic vote to circumscribe their freedom on the marches. They walked out of pre-march preparation meetings, underlining their profound contempt for the will of the majority.

The Marxist conception of the state withering away as opposed to being abolished as an anarchist act of will is premised on the extension of democracy to the point where it negates itself. Thus, our understanding of the vital importance of the fight for democracy is rooted in the conception Marx and Engels themselves had of the transition to communism.

Instructive in this context was the discussion that followed comrade Becker's presentation. Members of the small Trotskyist organisation, the International Bolshevik Tendency, contributed, highlighting their own experience of working with anarchists in the Mumia Abu Jamal campaign. However, they also inadvertently revealed that they shared more than simply the occasional campaign meeting with this trend.

As Liz Hoskins, an IBT supporter, explicitly stated, "I am inclined to agree with the anarchists more than the CPGB on this question of democracy. Bourgeois democracy is nothing but a fig leaf for the dictatorship of the ruling class. We mustn't fetishise bourgeois democracy, as the CPGB is guilty of consistently". She even went as far as to accuse our Party of "organising like anarchists internally" - by which she meant our culture of open debate and polemic between comrades.

Conceptually, the comrade was totally unable to differentiate the democracy we fight for from bourgeois democracy - the two are synonymous for her and the IBT. This unfortunate misunderstanding was underlined in other contributions from the same quarter. For example, comrade Joss asked us "whether the Bolsheviks were correct to close down the constituent assembly in 1917 when they had the leadership of the working class". Presumably the comrade thought this would be a killer punch, given our 'fetishisation' of bourgeois democracy - logically, he thought, we should defend this institution from the 'undemocratic' communists.

Replying to the charges, Mark Fischer mocked the charge that we organise "like anarchists". He underlined that "we have majority rule. We organise according to the principle of freedom of discussion, unity in action - just like Lenin's party". Then on the question of democracy, he turned Joss's question around on him: "Yes, the Bolsheviks were on balance right to close the constituent assembly in 1917. But then, were they right to have the democratic demand for a constituent assembly as a major pillar of their programme for the whole period up to 1917? Were they right to be in the vanguard of the struggle for the constituent assembly? Were they right to be the 'consistent democrats'?"

Of course, it is the mono-idea sects that have more in common with the anarchists. Inside such organisations there is no culture of openly debating differences and members are expected to operate more like parrots than thinking human beings.

The sessions on green politics and Zapatistas were uncontroversial, but nonetheless useful. The discussion, opened by Michael Malkin, on 'greenism' was enlivened by the contributions of comrade Terry Liddle, recently expelled from the Green Party for his support for the Socialist Alliance. The comrade was at pains to stress the need for the revolutionary left to embody a genuinely inspiring and emancipatory vision of socialism: "Saying socialism is the answer is correct", he emphasised, "but what is going to be its content? Socialism cannot be in contradiction with nature; the two have to be in a symbiotic relationship."

Various speakers picked up on this theme as the debate moved on and stressed that the Marxist vision has to emphasise our project of unleashing the potential of human beings. In contrast, much of the 'programme' of 'greenism' is about limiting humanity - its ability to travel, to consume, to produce, even how many of us inhabit the planet. To us, human beings are the solution; to the greens, we are the problem.

Most of the discussion on the Zapatistas consisted of factual contributions rather than real controversies over interpretations. Importantly however, comrade John Bridge - who opened the session - emphasised the point that we stand in solidarity with such movements. Despite the Zapatistas' origins in Maoism, this is not the Mexican equivalent of the sinister Shining Path of Peru. In stark contrast, what we are dealing with in the Zapatistas is a movement of peasant democracy. Whatever the origins of the movement's founders in the radical student milieu of 1968, this nucleus has now effectively merged with broad masses of a peasantry in revolt.

This understanding is an important corrective. It is what conditions our attitude to them. Thus, despite the fact that the Zapatista programme is not a forward-looking one - it is economically reactionary - it is our job to stand with their radical social revolt against our main enemy, capital.

In the same spirit, a number of comrades in the session on anti-corporate anti-capitalism emphasised the need for a patient and partisan approach. Looking at the influential No logo work of Naomi Klein in particular, comrade Bridge, speaking from the floor, underlined that we can take truths from traditions other than our own. In his Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, Lenin was at pains to praise the ground-breaking work of Hobson, a British bourgeois liberal. He called his book on the subject "invaluable", a work that ought to be absorbed in a critical way by Marxists. All sorts of different critiques of capitalism have value, said comrade Bridge. "All can be used in a Marxist way."

Earlier, in his introduction on Klein, Mark Fischer had detailed a number of criticisms of her analysis including:

• her tendency to overemphasise the significance of 'branding' to contemporary capitalism, the downplaying of the continuing key role of manufacturing
• the idea that transnational corporations were actually divorced from national states, that national governments are simply impotent in the face of big capital rather than increasingly intermeshed and intertwined with it
• the one-sidedness in her analysis of contemporary capitalism, that failed to accurately describe the role of credit and speculative capital
• the notion that - without a coherently progressive programme - the simple exposure of the iniquities of contemporary capitalism was enough to spark a mass movement

Despite this, in his summing up comrade Fischer praised No logo as a "sustained piece of hard-hitting journalism. It's intelligent, well written and deeply moving in places. Of course we are critical. We judge her conclusions about the world from the standpoint of revolutionary Marxism. But not with the idea that she is a sub-standard revolutionary Marxist. She comes from a different tradition which we judge in a different way".

There were criticisms of the school. Some comrades suggested that other voices would have enlivened the sessions and actually shed more light on the issues - although we strayed a little away from the strict agenda of the school, the exchange with comrades from the IBT on the first day was useful, for example.

Also, the absence of too many of our more experienced members was a weakness. Although the event was originally designed with new comrades in mind, veteran members would have found the debates thought-provoking.

Ian Mahoney