27.08.2008

What is Marxism?

The first draft of the Campaign for a Marxist Party's manifesto has now been completed. Below we publish the second section, authored by Hillel Ticktin. Our paper has already carried the other three sections, drafted by comrades Ticktin, Mike Macnair and Jack Conrad. Meeting during this year's Communist University, the CMP's committee agreed that a final draft will be presented to the annual general meeting in late autumn

Marxism can be regarded as the cumulative wisdom of humanity in coming to understand its own social and economic evolution. The innate search for human freedom, which was described by Hegel in terms of the dialectical evolution of the absolute spirit, was brought down to earth by Marx, who argued that the evolution of humanity could be seen as the movement of the contradiction between human needs and the material form which they acquire or through which they are expressed.

In the case of capitalism, this movement shows itself in the contradiction between abstract labour and concrete labour and their phenomenal forms of exchange-value and use-value. Capital’s supersession lies in the emergence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to socialism/communism and ultimately the socialist/communist society.

We must always remember that, however few we may be at any one time, Marx’s vision is that of a society where history begins, where every man and woman will be developed to the full and hence every human being will be a giant intellectually, physically and emotionally compared to ourselves today. As Marx put it, socialism is the society in which labour becomes humanity’s prime want.

His vision was no utopia, but a necessity for humanity to survive and be true to itself. It is a society in which every individual takes part in the administration of the society and in which the division of labour is subordinated to humanity. Our vision is therefore the vision of society itself, not of a sect or a group of freaks, as it is portrayed by the social democrats and the right. We must, therefore, never give in to that portrayal of the left or the Marxists as outdated, freakish or utopian.

Above all, we have to make it clear that Stalinism and its forms are the antithesis of socialism itself and that its emergence is the result of a counterrevolution induced by capitalism. There is also no reason to assume that any attempt to go to socialism will necessarily end up in a dystopia. Stalinism arose out of specific circumstances and in their absence cannot be repeated.

Who are the Marxists?

In the 21st century it appears to many that Marxism has fulfilled its role and failed. Such pessimists may be divided into Stalinists and anti-Stalinists.

Stalinism has failed in its heartlands and the communist parties are dying or dead. As a result, many one-time Marxists see it as their role to teach those they regard as fundamentalists the blinding truth that the proletariat has not lived up to their expectations. It has either not taken power anywhere and/or, if it did, the dictatorship of the proletariat failed.

It is obvious that Stalinists would see it this way, so we do not need to waste our time on them. Their time is over - they have killed or supported the killing of millions of good men and women: among them thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Marxists, Trotskyists in particular. They have supported lies and distortions on the nature of the Stalinist countries and maintained a policy of class collaboration the world over. Today they have lost credibility everywhere.

Their re-emergence in the form of social democratic parties that support the market and management is a realistic updating of their true nature, which is reflected in countries around the globe. Stalinism was not so much a distortion of Marxism as anti-Marxism dressed up as Marxism. It was the ‘ideology’ of a ruling social group in power in the USSR, which exercised a limited degree of control over the surplus product.

Since the time of Marx, a number of thinkers and leaders have claimed title to an exclusive interpretation of Marxism. One doctrine, above all, came to dominate in the 20th century. That was Stalinism. Its ‘ideology’ was that of the necessity to build socialism in one country. It repudiated the international nature of the revolution in favour of the domination of the Soviet Union and its interests, which in fact meant the interests of its ruling group. Mao, Althusser, Gramsci and Lukács all supported Stalinism, in this sense. They cannot be considered Marxists. One might, of course, learn from some of their works, just as one can learn from the works of rightwingers like Churchill or from scholars of various persuasions.

There are other, non-Stalinists, on the ‘broad left’ who have abandoned the crucial role of the working class, such as Marcuse. Still others have moved towards support for single-issue campaigns. Many have come to the conclusion that socialism is desirable, but impractical or utopian. The upshot is that Marxism, as expounded by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, is limited to those who have repudiated Stalinism in all its forms and to those who remain in the historical tradition of the working class movement before the advent of Stalinism.

The fact that there are only a limited number of Marxist thinkers does not, of course, mean that there are not many other writers and intellectuals who are important to read or study. As the Stalinists slowly expire, social democracy continues its lingering death and these pessimists find their entire universe being terminated. They, therefore, support liberal causes.

Marxists today cannot be Marxists unless they are anti-Stalinist in their very bones. This is both because Stalinism was in itself counterrevolutionary, but also because its dictatorial, anti-democratic forms, its physical liquidations of individuals and even of peoples, and its patent economic failure have rightly antagonised the vast majority of the population. For that reason, if no other, we have to make certain that our own organisations are as democratic as possible in the circumstances of capitalism.

Marxist theory and its role

Marxism puts the form of labour at the centre of its analysis, and for capitalism that social form is abstract labour. Marx’s well known statement - it is the form by which human surplus labour is pumped out of the direct producers which determines the relation of ruler and ruled - underlies all his work and that of subsequent Marxists. Abstract labour is that specific social form within capitalism. It establishes the reduction of labour-time to a common determinative, quantitative form, irrespective of the nature of the work or product. It is, therefore, the basis of human alienation, commodity fetishism, the foundation of the working class as a class and surplus value or exploitation.

The mode of control over the working class derived from abstract labour is a combination of commodity fetishism and the reserve army of labour. In its material aspect commodity fetishism establishes the impersonal and apparently eternal form of the market standing over humanity, as an external and permanent feature of the economy. The firm must make profits or go under and a rise in wages can threaten profits.

At the same time, commodity fetishism is the capitalist ideology - not religion, which is a hangover from earlier times. It regards the market, competition, profits and the flexible, casualised labour force as the prime means whereby humanity can raise productivity and so better society, through an ‘invisible hand’. It states that capitalism is humanity’s fortunate fate. Human nature requires competition. The sale of labour-power is a contract of two equal sides: the capitalist and the worker.

In contrast, Marxism argues that the working class is the class that is in capitalist society but not of capitalist society. It provides the goods and services required to survive, in a value form, which is used to subject humanity to its own value-imperatives, and hence the needs and requirements of the capitalist class. On the other hand, the very imposition of homogeneity on workers provides a possibility and need for a collectivity to overcome its own subjection. Accumulation, in other words, leads to the increasing socialisation of the direct producers, who are impelled to take their own socialisation a step further by bursting the capitalist shell in order to introduce a social system in conformity with their needs as human beings.

Marxism is the theory, method and practice of the proletariat

The proletariat consists of all those who sell their labour-power. In other words, the proletariat, in the words of the early Marx, is the universal class. It is the class destined to emancipate humanity by emancipating itself.

It is a feature of our time that the proportion of unproductive workers - those who do not produce value, but who are nonetheless exploited - has risen. In contrast to books on the end of the working class, a Marxist analysis begins from a discussion of the modern components of the class. There have always been divisions in the class and the fact that there are such differences does not alter the dichotomy between those who control surplus value and the vast majority who work for them, skilled or unskilled, white-collar or blue-collar, productive or unproductive.

Such divisions - and others based on ethnicity, gender, etc - are the fundamental reason why the class does not exist as a class in itself. Some speak of a class in itself and a class for itself. In the UK, the special form of class subjection was a separation of the economic and political-economic demands of workers. Workers and trade unions who are satisfied with wage rises and better work conditions accept their own subjection. Marxists argue that only the removal of the conditions of control over the means of production will allow each individual to achieve his or her own potential, and that requires political action.

Workers as workers are not automatically part of a class. Stalinism argued a species of workerism. Stalin produced statues of imaginary workers with enormous muscles and so indeed did social democracy and fascism. The fact that all three doctrines produced similar attitudes to workers is not an accident. Marxism does not worship muscles, work or workers. It does not argue that work under capitalism is good or that the workers’ culture is a socialist culture.

On the contrary, it argues that the workers’ culture is a slave culture and that the task of the worker is to join with their fellow workers in order to overthrow the system, so that they may cease to be a worker. The task of the proletariat is to abolish itself. The Stalinists produced the distortion in order that they might control workers with a reformist doctrine that said that workers needed to fulfil their mission as workers, which could only be done by improving their existing lot.

A class is a collectivity and the collectivity requires special conditions in order to come into existence. These conditions include the uniting of the production and extra-production lives of the workers. It includes the unity of production and consumption, and of men and women. The unity itself is given by the very nature of the production of value which gives rise to the formation of abstract labour and hence the close interconnection between workers which follows.

The task of Marxism is therefore to analyse the conditions under which the workers become a class in order to assist the formation of that class. The coming into being of the proletariat as a class immediately destabilises capitalism, even if it does not overthrow it. Marxism provides the necessary theory for the class to fulfil its historical mission of abolishing itself in emancipating humankind.

The international nature of socialism

As it was Trotsky who became the standard-bearer of pristine Marxism, as opposed to the counterrevolutionary regime which had evolved in the USSR under Stalinism, the study of his work is crucial to the development of Marxism.

Trotsky was probably the most dialectical of 20th century Marxist leaders and the one who was most versatile in Marxist theory. He stood firmly against nationalism in all its varieties. His concept of the permanent revolution rests on the view that capitalism was declining. As a result, the bourgeoisie could no longer fulfil its historical role and it fell to the proletariat to take on the latter’s tasks of introducing civil society, with a limited degree of freedom of speech and elements of democracy, based on free, as opposed to slave, serf or other unfree labour.

That particular aspect is now history, as all countries are capitalist. Some have argued that the doctrine of permanent revolution is therefore redundant. Unfortunately, it was misinterpreted to mean, along Stalinist lines, a two-stage revolution, even when there was no pre-capitalist formation. Trotsky’s innovatory conception of the working class having to overthrow a pre-capitalist formation was theorised at the turn of the 20th century.

Since that time capitalism has used a hundred and one forms to avoid a direct confrontation with the working class - from colonialism, racial discrimination, fascism and various extreme dictatorial regimes, to Stalinism itself. They are all products of the epoch and it would be incorrect to use any of them as an excuse to avoid the direct taking of power in the name of socialism. Unfortunately, some in the Trotskyist movement have fallen for what amounts to a ploy variously used by capitalism and Stalinism.

The second aspect of permanent revolution was the necessity for any revolution to extend itself over the world. Socialism is a world system and cannot function without a world division of labour. Capitalism itself has never functioned as a single country formation. For Marx money had to be world money or it would not be money. Capitalism is international and socialism has to be global to exist and survive. The revolution will inevitably begin in one place, area, country or continent, but it must spread in order to survive.

Today, this aspect of permanent revolution has become almost banal, given the very tight interconnection among most countries of the world. Socialism can only come into being on the basis of the highest levels of productivity, with the most developed division of labour. This necessarily means that socialism can only come into existence when the developed countries have overthrown capitalism.

There are some third-worldists who argue that the first world exploits the third world and hence the proletariat in Europe and the United States receive surplus value from the peasants and workers of the third world. Even if this is true, a revolution in the third world could only be a holding operation until Europe or America or both went socialist. Without the necessary investment coming from the first world, revolutions in the third world are doomed to a life of scarcity and the restoration of capitalism. Those who talk of Eurocentrism have frequently left Marxism for a species of nationalism.

In a political climate where Stalinism is dying or dead but its effects remain, it is crucial that Marxists do their best to expunge those effects. One of them has been the highly emotional attacks on Trotsky. While the role of one man might be regarded as secondary in the life of the struggle, the fact is that Trotsky came to embody the very struggle against the deformation and destruction of the socialist movement. For that very reason, the communist parties spent an enormous amount of energy arguing that he was a counterrevolutionary. The very fact that the Stalinists openly killed thousands of Trotskyists in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe, China, Greece, Vietnam and elsewhere indicated their importance.

Capitalism and productivity

It is in the nature of capitalism that it will replace labour-power with machinery in order to raise productivity, lower wages and raise the rate of profit. Inevitably, this must result in fewer manual workers, first in the developed countries and then ultimately the world over. Marx saw innovation and the rise of labour productivity as the great progressive task of capitalism. The majority of the working class in the developed countries are therefore, today, white-collar workers, who do not have the same tradition of mass action as the manual workers had in earlier times.

Furthermore, the same process leads inexorably to the situation that the proportion of unproductive capital and labour continues to increase. There are two parts to this process. One is an advance for humanity, in so far as an increasing number of workers are involved in health, education and other needs-based forms, which of necessity are taken out of the market wholly or partly. The second, the growth of finance capital - and selling costs, like advertising, etc - is not just unproductive: it represents part of the degradation of capitalism itself. However, workers of both sectors are exploited, even if they do not produce surplus value. Stalinists often rejected the unproductive workers and white-collar workers as part of the proletariat, in order to divide the class and maintain their own control in eastern Europe.

It is also in the nature of capitalism that such growth in productivity must over time lead to less labour time being involved in producing goods and services. Logically it follows that the rate of profit will tend to fall and create a barrier to the further growth of productivity. So Marx argues, speaking of capital becoming senile. However, it is important not to fall into the trap of being overwhelmed by the categories themselves. Marxism is not a mechanical theory. The movement of history always takes place through the intersection of the class struggle with the movement of the categories. Growth in productivity also means that the amounts paid to the worker and for capital itself can decline at different times.

It is important to note that in the period after the Russian Revolution capitalism was not only in decline but also in transition. The word ‘transition’ does not imply that socialism had been introduced in any shape or form, or that workers had a measure of control over the society. It is stating that capitalism introduced new measures, both of repression and of concessions, which altered the role of the state apparatus, and the exploitative relationship.

The franchise was extended to all, as opposed to men with property, as had been the case. Political power was nominally vested in legislatures and formal empires were liquidated over time. Various forms of welfare state came into existence. The separation of ownership and control led to increasing levels of bureaucracy in both public and private sectors. The state regarded it as its duty to build up a ‘middle class’ with a stake in capitalism, a middle class which was closely related to the managerial groups. The alternative repressive form became that of fascism, an entity that the bourgeoisie itself did not like, but was forced to accept.

Profits were maintained through control over the market, and the use of war and the welfare state saw an enormous growth both in the standard of living and in innovation and so productivity. Through various strategies, the bourgeoisie was able to raise the rate of profit. In any case, only dogmatists see the decline in the rate of profit as a kind of sword of Damocles about to descend on the head of capitalism. It is noteworthy that Lenin, Trotsky, Kautsky, Luxemburg, Bebel, Hilferding, etc had nothing to say about it. Its sudden rediscovery in the 70s has more to do with the degeneration of Marxism than with reality.

The tendency of the rate of profit to fall follows, as night follows day, from the labour theory of value, but its exact role depends on historical movements, which cannot always be predicted and so places a particular burden on Marxists to understand its real movement. There is no reason to suppose that the capitalist class will cease to invest or throw in the towel because the rate of profit falls by a number of percentage points. It cannot be argued that the rate of profit will necessarily fall to zero in a finite time.

Marxism and its tasks and component parts

There are only three things that the proletariat can use from the outside, as it were. They are theory, education and organisation. Although the proletariat has historically thrown up its own defensive and offensive structures, they have never been enough on their own to defeat the bourgeoisie.

Lenin’s classic argument, that theory comes from the intellectuals and hence from the ranks of the bourgeoisie, cannot be easily dismissed. He is not wrong that the conditions of the workers do not permit theorisation. The role of Marxism is to make that transition for the worker from his/her controlled, alienated state to one where he/she understands that alienation and moves then to educate and organise forms of opposition among fellow workers.

We can put it another way: Marxism has two tasks - education and organisation, or theory and practice. However, these two tasks merge into one at the point of actual revolution. Before that period, they interrelate, but they can be separated in time and space. Practice without theory can play no role at all. It is like a dog chasing its own tail - much activity with little result.

Simply making contact with workers for its own sake is a form of leftwing paternalism. Workers do not need intellectuals to patronise them. They understand perfectly well how to defend themselves in a non-political situation. They also have had a long history of political struggle in the developed countries and they do not need intellectuals to give them practical lessons unless they have something new to say and do.

The task in a non-revolutionary situation is to develop an adequate theory for the time. An adequate theory is one that the proletariat can use to understand its situation. Under adverse conditions, the theory must reflect that adversity, but under conditions that are more propitious the theory must provide for the means whereby the proletariat can proceed to action.

It is a heavy task that Marxists have to perform - providing an understanding of the nature of defensive measures when necessary, but also assisting the proletariat to take power when possible. In practice, most so-called Marxism has performed a very different role: that of controlling the proletariat and obfuscating its real conditions.

Marxism and its component parts

What are the component parts of this Marxism? At its centre stands political economy and at the base of political economy is its method, or Marxist philosophy. In other words, its method is dialectics. Clearly, Marxism encompasses a whole series of positions about nature, religion, pre-capitalist societies and such things as law and art, but its fundamental nature is given by political economy and its method. Why political economy? Because it is political economy which provides the basis of the theory of capitalism for the proletariat and it is this that Marx provided. The heart of political economy lies in the labour theory of value. In turn, the labour theory of value is making a clear statement, that humanity is at the centre of political economy and that social labour is in the nature of humanity. Put differently, it is through the labour theory of value that we can come to a view on so-called historical materialism.

Political economy, in turn, can be defined as the science that studies the laws governing the mode of extraction of the surplus product. The laws of the political economy of a society describe the form of movement of the contradictions involved in the mode of extraction of the surplus product of the particular society. Determination refers to the source of movement of particular changes and the parameters within which those changes can occur. Hence, if capital assumes the form of bourgeois democracy, it will provide the impetus for the emergence of particular kinds of political institutions, laws and modes of expression.

That means that the superstructural forms are both autonomous and determined from below, as it were. They are autonomous because they have their own forms with their own logic, which cannot be reduced to another form. On the other hand, their existence and source of movement comes from the base.

Dialectics and Marx’s method

The methodological basis of Marxism, dialectics, rests on the category of contradiction. This can be defined as the process of interpenetration of opposites in one entity, to the point where the two poles change and the entity is superseded. That statement constitutes the basis of dialectics, since it incorporates supersession and the movement of quantity into quality. Of course, a proper discussion also involves the whole question of the negation of the negation. Nonetheless, the essence of Marxism is really encapsulated in the category of contradiction, since it is contradiction that is the source of all movement and change. Laws are simply the expression of the contradiction in motion.

The dialectical method of inquiry or investigation uses the method of abstraction, as opposed to generalisation. That involves searching for the essence of the problem under consideration and finding the crucial element of change. It, therefore, requires discovery of the laws operating in the society or of the part of the society being examined. Marxism is essentialist, in the sense that it looks for the laws underlying the movement of the categories of the society. There is a reality below the empirically observable features of society, which governs that society.

This part of the manifesto began with surplus value and labour and derived the other aspects therefrom. This has not been because it is the logical way to do it, but because it is the best way to understand Marxism at the present time. In other words, it is the way in which Marxist education must now proceed, in order to break from the old methods of Stalinism and social democracy.

Stalinism had to reduce the critical edge of Marxism to avoid a critique of the USSR and of the communist parties’ practice. It did this by emphasizing automatic structural movement rather than the movement of the categories and of the class forces. Hence, the Stalinists spoke constantly of relations and forces of production, giving primacy to the forces of production. As a result there was, for the Stalinists, an automatic movement in history, in which one structure replaced another, propelled always by the forces of production.

A modern Marxist education has therefore to deal with the distortions of Stalinism and social democracy, both in its approach to and in its account of Marxism. The rejection of the Stalinist method does not mean that anything now goes. This has led some into various forms of gobbledygook. Thus, philosophers have declared that there could be more than two opposites, that dialectics only applies to capitalism because we know little of previous societies, etc. This is simply nonsense.

It does not follow that every statement or sub-statement made by Stalinism is incorrect. When Stalinists declared socialism inevitable, they were justifying the Soviet Union, with which they identified socialism. That too is wrong. It does not follow, therefore, that socialism is not inevitable. World war, nuclear holocaust, plagues, environmental problems, the collision of the earth with another body are all possible. Hence, a simple fatalism is clearly wrong; but the logic of history, if allowed to proceed, goes in only one direction.

Marx’s argument is that there is a contradiction between humanity’s nature and the form of the society in which we live. As humanity increases its control over nature, its need for creative labour becomes progressively easier to satisfy and hence the form of the extraction of the surplus product ever more alienating. In modern times that is transmuted into the argument that the socialisation of production, increasing with every growth in the productive forces, comes up ever more strongly against the barrier of the value-form of the extraction of the surplus product. As a result, value begins to transmute over time into forms neither capitalist nor socialist.

The question is not whether the world needs socialism or whether it will not understand it, but when that will happen. The point that the world may go under becomes a possibility, but a secondary and highly unlikely one. What then of class struggle? Is that secondary?

Change and society

Capitalism can only end when the working class overthrows it and the dictatorship of the proletariat is proclaimed.

It will never come to an end through the operation of mechanical forces. Stalinism preferred to look at history in a static or structural form. It proclaimed a close relationship between a particular structure of ownership and the nature of society. In that way, it justified its own existence, as the Soviet Union had nationalised the economic units in the economy and formal ownership rested with the workers.

However, the crucial question is always the form of the surplus product and hence who controls it, and how that control is exercised and changes over time. The separation of the categories of ownership, possession and control has become crucial in understanding the present time and hence the different forms of extraction of the surplus product that have come into existence.

Marxism always looks at nature and society as in a process of change. As a result, the relationship between the political economy of the society and the politics, law, language, art and music of that society is highly complex, and the simple reduction of the latter to the operations of the former, under whatever heading, is absurd. As a result, Stalinism did not use the argument that the form of the extraction of the surplus product determines the politics, etc of the society. Instead, they produced a highly formalistic and static scheme of base determining superstructure.

As Marxists, we can only state that changes in the political economy of the society will have a major influence on changes in the politics and intellectual life of that society. There can never be a reduction of the one to the other. They exist on different planes with their own laws and have therefore a limited autonomy. This does not, however, mean that the ‘base’ only determines the superstructure in the last instance, as Althusser put it. The point is that the word ‘determines’ refers to change, not to static commands. Therefore, the base can determine the superstructure in radical and all-embracing forms over time and at certain nodes of development. How it does so is complex and not always clear.

Because of the absurdity of Stalinism and its widespread and unconscious adoption even by anti-Stalinists, Marxism has to be rebuilt.

Marxism and the individual

In order to exist where the law of the jungle prevails and dog eats dog, it is all too easy to become a cannibal. Many comrades cannot hold out against the sticks and carrots of the established order, and they serve the cause of humanity for only a short time in their lives. Those who are honest and understand Marxism are unlikely to change sides. It is, therefore, the task of Marxist education to convey the need for honesty, understanding and optimism.

We are all subject to these same laws of the jungle and we all have to exist within them. The socialist movement cannot be, therefore, a utopian movement. It must exist within the old order. It must operate within a society where the market prevails, where hierarchical structure is inculcated into everyone and self-discipline has to be learned. We have to learn how to fight the old order, while living within it. Marxism is not fundamentalism. It does not believe in a hereafter and hence it does not believe in sacrificing people for the cause. Stalinism did so. For the Stalinist, the ends justified the means. For a true Marxist, no-one can be sacrificed and the life of no worker is to be rendered worse by supporting the socialist cause.

Such an understanding was unnecessary at the turn of the 20th century, because socialism was a growing world movement with a well founded optimism in the coming revolution. Since then a whole epoch of Stalinism has succeeded and the lives of millions have been sacrificed. Today when we are marginal to the society, derided by the media and regarded with contempt by the ruling class, we have to ensure that we do not develop a fortress mentality or join the lumpenised strata of the population.

Marxism is not Ghandiism or Tolstoyism and it does not believe in the power of anyone’s example to change society. It is not possible to change society by voluntarily changing behaviour. Hence, the individuals in the socialist movement will necessarily suffer from the very faults from which they wish to liberate mankind. That is inevitable and no standing around in a circle will change either individuals or society. Knowledge in our society is hierarchically structured and delivered. We cannot change that.

Nonetheless, the point is that the features of capitalism, which anarchist and semi-anarchist tendencies try to remove with slogans like ‘pre-figurative socialism’, remain and influence the movement itself. Some people know more than others, some people are better at leading than others, some people are better at writing than others. There will be a tendency to hero-worship and towards the imposition of authority. Marxists are opposed to these features, but they cannot be wished away and they often remain in a dishonest and undeclared form, rather than being discussed and their impact reduced.

It is part of the task of Marxist education to understand our own backwardness and to develop a critical but constructive analysis of ourselves in the context of capitalism. Our own movements are riddled with capitalist or Stalinist forms. That is inevitable. The question is how much can be removed without destroying the movement itself. We need maximum decentralisation of decision-making, but we also need to fight the capitalist class, as an army fights another army - and that requires centralised authority.

The input of all into decision-making is absolutely essential, but, unfortunately, underground movements cannot ensure such a process. There is no solution to this dilemma. We can only educate our members to understand the problems and find a mode of contributing to the movement that will be most adequate to their capabilities and possibilities. In a Machiavellian epoch, the atomised individual has a special loneliness and special responsibility.

Socialism

What of the final aim, the truly human society in which all individuals become giants in comparison with the present day?

In the first place, it is not true that Marx was so engaged in his critique that he had no alternative vision. On the contrary, in sentence after sentence in Capital, Marx discusses the future society. No-one can produce a critique without a vision of the future.

In the second place, there can be no question but that the market and, with it, money will be abolished. The idea that a market is necessary for the efficient operation of the economy is in total opposition to everything written by Marx and Marxism. The very first page of Capital, where he discusses the opposition of exchange-value and use-value indicates that.

It is, therefore, the task of Marxist education to outline the basic features of the new society, in order that the alternative vision is a clear goal. At the same time, that clear and wonderful alternative has to be directly related to the existing trends in modern society, demonstrating that socialism is not just everyone’s dream but something that will necessarily flow from existing society.

At the present time, our task as socialists is a hard one, for which we appear to get only obloquy. The great socialists like Marx himself and like John Maclean died in obscurity and after considerable suffering. Others, like Trotsky, have given their lives. Nonetheless, we are not missionaries and it is not for us to propagandise the working class.

Our task is simply to keep alive the great tradition of socialism, to develop it for the present time and feed it into the inevitably growing movement for socialism, in which we must take part.