29.08.2007

One of our very best

Mary Godwin reports on the CPGB's annual week of debate

One of the best ever - that was the general consensus of CPGB comrades attending Communist University 2007, held at Goldsmiths College, south London, from August 11 to August 18.

Well over 100 comrades attended this year and that included visitors from Ireland, Russia, Australia, South Africa and the USA, as well as comrades from all parts of Britain.

The larger number of younger comrades was particularly encouraging. For those new to communist politics, introductory classes on the theory and practice of Marxism were held during lunch breaks.

Absentees

One disappointing feature of CU 2007 was that three debates which had been planned did not take place. Two speakers who had accepted invitations to take part in debates failed to attend due to illness, and one was banned from attending CU by the leadership of his organisation. This was David Broder, a member of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty who disagrees with the AWL majority line on Iraq and has signed the founding statement of the Hands Off the People of Iran campaign.

The session 'Troops in, troops out, troops out now?' went ahead without his input, Mark Fischer (CPGB) and Yassamine Mather, a leading Hopi activist, being the speakers. They discussed what Hopi should do, and what it can hope to achieve. Comrade Mather said the high level of support it has received shows there is a demand for principled politics. Comrade Fischer noted that, given where the working class movement is, we cannot prevent a war on Iran - to pretend otherwise would be to sow illusions. But we can develop correct theory for the future.

It is important to counter the criticisms from the Socialist Workers Party and its allies. They claim that criticising the Iranian regime aids imperialism. In fact, whitewashing the regime and excusing its crimes helps imperialism. If the working class movement backs the regime against its victims, workers in struggle will turn to imperialism for help. The SWP claims that to call for democracy in Iran and Afghanistan is a form of cultural imperialism. We reject such nonsense - democracy is not a 'western value' but a human value that only the working class worldwide can consistently champion.

Comrade Mather also spoke in the session on 'The limits of self-reform in Iran' alongside comrade Mehdi Kia of Iran Bulletin. They spoke about the situation in Iran, the pressure the regime is experiencing both from US imperialism and from popular opposition, and the concessions it can and cannot make in response to this pressure.

Comrade Kia said the regime must either collapse or clamp down - it has no further space for reforms. Comrade Mather thought it has more scope to facilitate the development of capitalism. The possibility of a US-funded 'velvet revolution' was raised. Comrade Kia said this may take the form of a military dictatorship.

Hillel Ticktin and Boris Kagarlitsky

'Velvet revolutions' were the theme of the talk on eastern Europe after the USSR given by Boris Kagarlitsky of the Russian Marxist Institute of Globalisation Studies, who was a guest of Communist University through the week. He gave an informative account of the course of these revolutions in various countries, and spoke in depth about the prospects for such change in Russia. He emphasised that a new period of social upheaval is likely across eastern Europe, and that if the left fails to take advantage, reactionary forces will take the lead with unpleasant consequences.

Comrade Kagarlitsky spoke further about Russia in the session 'Post-Soviet capitalism - the ex-USSR and the new world order'. He described the rising tide of working class militancy and the tasks of the left, which is attempting to organise a working class divided by having two types of employers (transnational and Russian) and belonging to two rival trade union structures (old and new) in a society in which capitalist restoration has largely failed. Comrade Hillel Ticktin, editor of the Critique journal, who was also on the platform for this session, analysed the political and economic changes which have weakened the grip of US imperialism on Russia, and the dangers and opportunities this presents for the left.

Another part of the world where the US might engineer something more bloody than a 'velvet revolution' in order to crush opposition to its neoliberal hegemony is, of course, Venezuela, and Nick Rogers opened the session on events there, developing the analysis in his article in the Weekly Worker (August 2).

Moshe Machover

In the debate following his speech comrade Chris Knight said Venezuela is the only place in the world where there is

any sign of revolution, so we should be positive and not overly criticise Hugo Chávez. Comrade Earl Gilman, who has personal experience of revolutionary movements in South America, pointed out that Chávez is following the same line as Gaddafi, who also wanted an anti-imperialist front based on 'nice' socialism rather than 'nasty' Marxism, using their respective oil wealth. Comrade Latief Parker added that everything Chávez does is predicated on continuing high oil prices.

The other session on a broadly internationalist theme was 'The Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a regional context', introduced by Moshé Machover. Comrade Machover gave an account of the history of the region, the foundation and construction of the state of Israel, and its role as a key ally of US imperialism. He concluded his talk by saying that only when the US loses its hegemony and no longer needs Israel will the conditions be created to resolve the conflict. It will have to be done regionally. He added that talk of a one-state or two-state solution is misleading and over-simplistic.

Communist unity

The key question for the CPGB is the need to unite the left in Britain and reforge a genuine Marxist party, and this question came up in a most of the sessions in one form or another. John Bridge gave a talk on 'The CPGB - past, present and future'.

Comrade Bridge described the formation of the CPGB in 1920 as a historic event with lessons for today. Today the left tries to unite around programmes to the right of what it claims to believe. The early CPGB was based on unity around the Russian Revolution, and, of course, this strength turned into a weakness.

Comrade Bridge described the long decline and final collapse of the 'official' CPGB, and the struggle of the Leninist faction to reforge the party. He outlined the sort of formation we are still striving to build: a mass Marxist party which will organise and educate the working class - including students, pensioners, househusbands and people on benefits, as well as those in work.

How should a Marxist party determine its strategy for making revolution? Comrade Mike Macnair opened a session on 'Revolutionary strategy', based on a series of 11 articles published between February and June 2006. The CPGB will soon publish an edited version in the form of a pamphlet. Comrade Macnair said the left needs to rethink its strategy, given the new historical period initiated by the end of the cold war. He outlined the futile and undemocratic entrist and tailist strategies of Trotskyist groups, who hope to con the working class into taking power through strikes.

Ben Lewis

In his talk on 'Bolshevism and peaceful revolution' comrade Ben Lewis argued that the working class must be prepared to use violence to make revolution, but that we would prefer it to be a peaceful process. Those who say it has to be violent on principle are not Marxists. The best way to bring about a peaceful revolution is to ensure that the working class has overwhelming support and overwhelming armed strength.

As with comrade Lewis's opening, the session, 'Who overthrew slavery?', introduced by Emily Branson, provoked vigorous debate. Both comrades are active members of Communist Students.

An important part of Marxist strategy is how to work with forces from outside the working class movement. Respect shows the disastrous consequences of unprincipled alliances - the SWP has formed a common party with small businessmen determined to get their hands on the spoils of local government handouts and corruption. Comrade Macnair described this as even worse than the original party bloc with the Muslim Association of Britain, which at least had some kind of political nature. He was due to debate with Said Ferjani of the MAB the question of 'Muslims, communists and democrats: alliances and solidarity work'. Unfortunately Said Ferjani was unable to attend due to illness, but he sent a message of greeting with an outline of what he would have said, calling for an authentic alliance based on internationalism, fighting imperialism, and shared commitment to democracy.

Emily Bransom

Comrade Macnair responded to this message in his speech, emphasising the need to distinguish personal religious belief from political islam, which in its various forms seeks to organise society on religious lines. There is nothing to prevent a muslim from joining the CPGB, so long as they accept the party's programme and work within its discipline.

Comrade Sandy McBurney opened the session, 'The left in Scotland after the split and the May elections', about the Scottish Socialist Party and Solidarity, groups that are even further down the road of opportunist collapse than the SWP. In the case of the SSP nationalism was the petty bourgeois ideology it adopted in the hope of gaining power - it dreamed of being a junior partner in a Scottish National Party-led coalition administration in Scotland. Elements of the SSP may well end up joining the SNP. Partly due to this adaptation to nationalism, and partly due to popular revulsion at the backstabbing and sleaze associated with the Tommy Sheridan-led split, the left vote has collapsed in Scotland.

After describing this flight from socialist principles and giving details of the disastrous election results, comrade McBurney said the Workers Unity platform of the SSP, to which he belongs, advocates a Marxist party on a British-wide basis. The CPGB agrees with this principle of 'one state, one party', and says the SSP project was therefore flawed from the beginning, and its initial success was built on sand.

The nature of the capitalist state and how to oppose it is crucial for Marxists. Comrade Peter Kennedy of Critique gave a talk entitled 'Marxism and the state'. He described the structure and functions of the capitalist state, the relationship between the state and the capitalist economy, and how it has neutralised and contained the challenge posed by the working class.

Theory

Comrade Hillel Ticktin, Critique editor, gave a three-part 'Introduction to Marxist political economy' on consecutive mornings, dealing with the Marxist method in political economy, the labour theory of value and capitalist crisis.

Comrade Ticktin rightly drew attention to the fact that Marxist theory is seriously underdeveloped: either mired in the scholastic dogmatism of Stalinism (essentially an apologia for the USSR), or marred by an incorrect or superficial understanding of Marx's thought. The very power of Marxist theory as an explanatory and predictive tool means that if this tool is not employed correctly - on the basis of a profound knowledge and study of the relevant facts (Marx's own method) - then the results would at best be erroneous, at worst simply nonsense and therefore worthless. Without a serious grasp of Marxian political economy, a real Marxist analysis of contemporary economics and politics is simply impossible.

Chris Knight

Marxism as the science of dialectical and historical materialism was another strand running through the week. A novel feature of CU last year was the involvement of the Radical Anthropology Group, and again this year the event was enriched by their participation. Chris Knight introduced two sessions, an entertaining and thought-provoking talk on 'The future communist society', and another on 'The origins of language'.

After describing early, unscientific speculations about how language may have arisen, he approached the problem from a Marxist perspective, saying we can only understand the origin of language in the context of the origin of human production, consciousness, culture and society. He described how language as a recursive and symbolic signalling system differs from the signals used by other animals, and the environmental pressures which would have operated on evolving pre-humans to select for the ability to use such a system.

Camilla Power opened the session on 'Was Engels right about the leading role of women in primitive communism?' She described how the findings of modern anthropologists have vindicated the conclusions of Engels, and of Lewis Henry Morgan, whose Ancient society was used as a source book by Engels when he wrote The origin of the family, private property and the state in 1884. She described Engels and Morgan as the first Darwinian anthropologists. Later, bourgeois anthropologists either refused to speculate on the origin of human culture or else assumed the nuclear family had to be primary. She added that if Marx and Engels were alive today they would be interested in scientific advances such as the 'selfish gene' theory. She ridiculed so-called Marxists in the SWP who reject this theory for ideological reasons.

Camilla Power

Engels, and specifically the attempts by academic 'Marxists' to portray him as a vulgariser of Marxism, featured prominently in Jack Conrad's opening on 'The dialectics of nature'. Engels was a populariser but not a vulgariser of Marx's ideas, and Marx and Engels were united in regarding nature as containing dialectical laws.

Comrade Conrad also referred to Marxism as the science of dialectical and historical materialism in his session on 'Fantastic reality - the god delusion and why it has not gone away'. This talk was to launch his forthcoming book on religion. In religion there is a distorted reflection of societies and their material foundations, and if we can learn to decode it we can gain insights into the thinking of people of the past. Comrade Conrad gave examples of how the religions of primitive communism and different class societies reflect in a distorted way the relationships between people and between society and nature, and how religions were and are used to justify the position of the ruling class but also provided the framework of beliefs for rebellions from below.

It is impossible to abolish the delusion without first abolishing the material and social conditions that generate it. 

No halfway house

The final session of the week was a roundtable discussion on '90th anniversary - why October still matters'. Comrades Boris Kagarlitsky, Mark Fischer, Mehdi Kia and Hillel Ticktin spoke, along with Steve Freeman of the Revolutionary Democratic Group and Matthew Jones, national secretary of the Campaign for a Marxist Party. Comrade Kagarlitsky told the meeting that opinion polls in Russia and the Ukraine reveal that a large and increasing majority of the population regard the October revolution positively and as an important event, with the majority in favour being even higher among the younger generation, who regard it as a symbol of hope for the future. Comrade Fischer described it as the greatest event in human history.

There was some discussion about the Bolshevik Party form. Comrade Kia suggested that a Marxist party should be one among several parties in an alliance for socialism, while comrade Freeman made his usual call for a halfway house party - a formation that comrade Kagarlitsky did not rule out on a temporary basis. Amazingly, comrade Jones stated that a Bolshevik-type party was completely inappropriate for today's epoch.

Comrade Fischer said that revolution is synonymous with a Bolshevik-type party, based on genuine democratic centralism. Lenin and his comrades always strived for such a Marxist party, whatever the conditions - they never for a moment proposed anything less. That is the lesson we should learn for today, concluded comrade Fischer.