Letters

Alternative

I agree with comrade Dave Douglass that the government is not doing enough to encourage investment in clean coal and sustainable energy resources (Letters, August 7).

I would not rule out coal as an energy resource. True, emissions are too high with current technology, but we cannot allow ourselves to be dictated to by people such as those attending the Climate Camp, who rule out any alternatives to wind, wave or solar. These are the undemocratic environmentalists who believe in a teleological utopian right to peaceful nature, to the extent of attempting to close down a power station.

Socialist Worker reported that the activists were raising awareness about the need to tackle climate change. Unfortunately, the paper did not comment on the actions of the activists or how to solve the climate crisis. It was a news report that sympathised with the their actions and provided a platform for one of the self-appointed leaders, Phil Thornhill.

Groups such as Campaign Against Climate Change push the urgency of the climate crisis. It should be patently obvious that public opinion is aware of climate change, as are the leaders of the major capitalist economies. Rather than suggest, as George Monbiot does, that we need super energy-efficient fridges, the question posed remains unanswered. What alternative is there to the current system, rather than some warmed up eco-friendly version of capitalism?

Alternative
Alternative

Money

It was with interest that I noticed a recent advertisement for the upcoming event, ‘An evening with George Galloway’ at Orlando’s bar in Chorlton, Manchester and saw that the tickets cost £35 each. I was fascinated to find that the destination of the funds was absent from the publicity.

As the event on October 1 is going to centre quite heavily around the issue of Iraq, I am hoping that the management team of Orlando’s and Mr Galloway himself will see fit that the money raised from the evening should go to assist the people of Iraq. After all, it could be argued that without their suffering the event would not be taking place.

As it is known internationally, the occupation of Iraq has now cost the lives of one million Iraqi people, along with creating one of the world’s largest refugee crises, and has left an estimated five million Iraqi children as orphans, with thousands of children being forced to live on the streets, in overcrowded orphanages or kidnapped by criminal gangs and forced into the sex trade.

This is not even counting the millions of Iraqi people who are contending with the daily struggles of poverty, malnutrition, trauma and displacement, with regular reports coming out of Iraq highlighting the families who are being forced to eat discarded food from rubbish dumps, the growth of illiteracy as a consequence of schools being made the targets of militias and the fear of violence directed against the country’s children.

Even as refugees in countries like Jordan and Syria, Iraqis have been reduced to begging for money, with the lack of support from the international community causing a financial burden on already overstretched services, which would normally assist those refugees who are dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, malnutrition or are victims of rape and torture.

Money
Money

Wipe out

It’s now official. New Labour has finally admitted that Britain faces the worst economic outcome for 60 years. In 1997, New Labour famously stated that they would eliminate ‘boom and bust’. Well, we’ve had the boom and now we are experiencing the bust.

Economists forecast that unemployment, as calculated using the method of the International Labour Organisation, will hit two million by Christmas. At the same time, the typical estate agency is selling, on average, only one property a week. Four thousand estate agents have lost their jobs since January.

New Labour’s so-called ‘economic miracle’ was always based on a mountain of consumer debt, including mortgages, personal loans and credit cards. With the average house price falling by £1,000 a week, New Labour deserves to be wiped out come the next general election.

Wipe out
Wipe out

Dual strategy

Phil Maguire’s misunderstanding of the Revolutionary Democratic Group’s position continues (Letters, August 7). I blame myself, as my last letter left something implied rather than spelt out (July 24). I said that Marx supported the Communist League and the Chartist Party. The first was an international organisation of revolutionary communists. The second was a national party of the working masses.

I implied that the RDG is arguing for both these things, although not “a simple copy of these historical precedents”. Implied was not good enough. Lets us spell it out. We are arguing for a Communist League (mark two) and a Chartist Party (mark two). The first is an “international revolutionary democratic communist party” and the second a “republican socialist party”.

Last year a resolution was moved seeking to get the Campaign for a Marxist Party to adopt the aim of an “international revolutionary democratic communist party” in its constitution. It was voted down. Some opposed the aim of an “international party”. Others choked on the words “revolutionary democratic”.

Phil’s attitude to Jacobinism, democracy and revolutionary republicanism might suggest he follows the latter kind of thinking. The RDG’s revolutionary attitude to democracy is not based on ‘stageism’ or some theory that the UK is a third world country. Ironically we are the only group in the world to reject the theory of bourgeois democratic revolution totally - for the first, second, third, fourth and fifth worlds, and outer space as well.

The Stalinist theory of stageism is built on the theory of bourgeois democratic revolution. All they can do is debate whether country X is capitalist or backward. This question was raised by Phil himself, so the implication is that his strings are still being pulled by the idea. His attitude to democracy is determined by whether the UK is capitalist or backward.

The UK is an advanced capitalist country. Of course it is. But if Phil follows the Stalinist-Trotskyist line of thinking, then democracy is irrelevant. Uncle Joe is sitting on Phil’s shoulder whispering in his ear: ‘Democracy is a bourgeois issue - it is irrelevant to the working class because it has already been solved.’ Maybe Phil thinks to himself: ‘You are right, Joe - democracy is for wimps, not tankies. That is what I will say in my next letter to the Weekly Worker.’

Dual strategy
Dual strategy

Be vigilant

It would be a waste of time to conduct here (or elsewhere) an unending polemic against the Groupe Communiste Révolutionnaire Internationaliste (CRI Group).

Their long reply (Letters, August 28) to my letter on behalf of Prométhée (August 7) claims that I “falsify reality” on numerous questions. I think I have already given a clear enough account of our position on the ‘CRI affair’ and there is no need to repeat it. Nor is there any question of Prométhée speaking “on behalf of” the other far-left groups, which have in fact published nothing on this subject.

But there is something new in the latest CRI communication published by the Weekly Worker, in that the group declares: “Prométhée is the only group to have asked (last autumn) to be integrated into the LCR …” This is correct, and does not require further commentary on our part, since we have not been integrated into the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, which proposed instead that we participate in the committees for a new anti-capitalist party (NPA) when they were set up.

But then the CRI adds: “… and for that reason [Prométhée] has accepted the bureaucratic conditions imposed - notably to stop publishing after 20 years the paper version of its bulletin (which is why, for example, Prométhée was absent from Lutte Ouvrière’s fete this year - a first!)”. This is fantasy politics (if you want to stress its imaginative literary side) or a lie (if you are struck by the dishonest aspect of this invention). The suspension of the paper version of our Prométhée bulletin was entirely due to financial reasons, our meagre resources having been absorbed in other militant activity, particularly in the framework of building the NPA. That does not prevent us in any way from expressing ourselves without self-censorship or pressure of any kind from the Ligue (promcomm.wordpress.com).

As for the LCR leadership being tempted to “exclude” CRI Group members, we would advise it to follow the advice of Engels: “Do not make unnecessary martyrs, show that freedom of criticism rules and only exclude on the basis of glaring - perfectly demonstrable - facts pointing to base treason!” (Letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht, August 10 1890).

The NPA has attracted numerous enthusiastic militants full of good will, but lacking experience and political education. To respond to CRI criticisms, and even to its ‘literary lies’, with exclusions - wouldn’t that help sow confusion among new members? That is another reason why we must remain vigilant over questions of democracy at the heart of the NPA.

Be vigilant
Be vigilant

Dare you?

Andrew Northall takes the Socialist Party of Great Britain to task for its opposition to Stalin (Letters, August 28). However, we acknowledge that Stalin indeed did understand what capitalism and socialism meant - well, at least in 1907 when he wrote Anarchism and socialism:

“Because the capitalist system is based on commodity production, here everything assumes the form of a commodity, everywhere the principle of buying and selling prevails. Here you can buy not only articles of consumption, not only food products, but also the labour-power of men, their blood and their consciences. The capitalists know all this and purchase the labour-power of the proletarians; they hire them … That is to say, what is produced by that labour-power no longer belongs to the proletarians: it belongs only to the capitalists and goes into their pockets ...

“Future society will be socialist society. This means primarily that there will be no classes in that society; there will be neither capitalists nor proletarians and, consequently, there will be no exploitation. In that society there will be only workers engaged in collective labour … with the abolition of exploitation commodity production and buying and selling will also be abolished and, therefore, there will be no room for buyers and sellers of labour-power, for employers and employed - there will be only free workers.”

Alas, an aspiration forgotten by Stalin and seemingly Andrew Northall. And, although Hillel Ticktin declares likewise for the Marxist vision “that the market and, with it, money will be abolished” (‘What is Marxism?’, August 28), I again accuse him of deliberate deceit by his act of omission for once more ignoring the political party that almost alone in the UK has steadfastly stood for this vision of a moneyless world and “kept alive the great tradition of socialism”, to quote Hillel, for the “communistic abolition of buying and selling”, to quote Marx. All other political parties claiming to be Marxist or socialist insisted upon placing such an aim and object on the backburner for some unspecified time in the far future, while embarking upon policies of reforms and palliatives and state ownership - something they still continue to do rather than advocating real socialism.

Dare you publicly debate the SPGB on what Marxism is and who the Marxists are, Hillel?

Dare you?
Dare you?

Erroneous

Andrew Northall must know that Socialist Studies is not produced by the SPGB - its journal is the Socialist Standard. He also ought to be aware that journal has been about for over a century, so it published articles on the state capitalist nature of Soviet Russia at the time.

Not surprisingly, Stalin’s book Economic problems of socialism in the USSR was reviewed in the February 1953 edition of the Socialist Standard. The author of that review remarked that a pamphlet would be required to cover the erroneous economic thinking of Stalin. (A single example must suffice - Stalin argued the law of value would exist under socialism, yet Marx stated quite clearly the law of value only has meaning in a capitalist society.)

The SPGB wasn’t alone of course in rubbishing the Stalin school of economics. For example, the SWPer Tony Cliff did so in his book Russia - a Marxist analysis, as did Marxist humanist Raya Dunayevskaya in articles published in the 1940s.

Tony Clark in the same letters column of the Weekly Worker claims that Lenin’s theory of imperialism improves on Marx and Engels. As the history of the 20th century was largely the history of national liberation struggles and the end of empires, where post-colonial countries developed their economies under one-party rule and state capitalism and, as the Sino-Soviet dispute and Hungary 1956 and Prague 1968 showed, the so-called ‘socialist camp’ was every bit as imperialist, it is quite safe to state that Lenin’s theory is erroneous.

Erroneous
Erroneous

Failed Leninism

The contradictions of anti-Stalinist Leninism were all too clear in ‘What is Marxism?’ by Hillel Ticktin. While, rightly, attacking Stalinism as a horrific system, his points against it are just as applicable to Leninism.

Ticktin proclaims that “Marxists today cannot be Marxists unless they are anti-Stalinist in their very bones”, because Stalinism is “counterrevolutionary” and its “dictatorial, anti-democratic forms, its physical liquidations ... and its patent economic failure have rightly antagonised the vast majority of the population.”

Yet much the same can be said of Lenin’s regime. The dictatorship of the party was proclaimed and implemented under Lenin, who oversaw the repression, including “physical liquidations”, of opposition socialists, striking workers and rebelling peasants. The “economic failure” of his state capitalist policies was also “patent” and these, combined with the Bolsheviks’ “dictatorial, anti-democratic”, nature “rightly antagonised the vast majority of the population”. Which was precisely why the Bolsheviks raised the dictatorship of the party to an ideological truism by early 1919 - after gerrymandering and disbanding soviets from the spring of the previous year. Such acts, combined with the elimination of workplace and military democracy, can only be classed as “counterrevolutionary”.

It is equally staggering that Trotsky is proclaimed “the standard-bearer of pristine Marxism”, given he defended the “objective necessity” of a “dictatorship of a proletarian party” - in1937! That this is identical to his views when in power and in the Left Opposition should be well known, but apparently not. So I would agree that “the study of [Trotsky’s] work is crucial to the development of Marxism” - if only to see how willing he was, like Lenin, to abandon democracy when required to ensure party power.

So it seems ironic to read that Stalinism “was the ‘ideology’ of a ruling social group in power in the USSR, which exercised a limited degree of control over the surplus product”. Is that not equally applicable to the Bolsheviks under Lenin? What else was the party, unless “a ruling social group”? What else were Lenin’s state-appointed “dictatorial” one-man managers doing, unless ensuring “control” over the labour and product of the workers?

As for the international role of Stalinism, suffice to say the council communists as early as 1921 had seen how the Comintern had “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.”

From this it follows that, unlike Leninists, anarchists do not judge a regime by who happens to be in office. A system does not become state capitalist just because Stalin rules rather than Lenin. What makes a regime socialist is the social relationships it has, not the personal opinions of those in power. Thus if the social relationships under Lenin are similar to those under Stalin, then the nature of the regime is similar. True, Leninism was not as barbaric as Stalinism, but the degree of repression does not change a social system any more than who the personalities at the top are.

So, yes, “Lenin’s classic argument, that theory comes from the intellectuals and hence from the ranks of the bourgeoisie”, can “be easily dismissed” not only because it is factually incorrect, but also because of the authoritarian conclusions that flow from it - such as Trotsky’s defence of party rule to overcome the “wavering” of the masses.

Given all this, perhaps it would be fair to say that Marxism should be “limited” to those who have repudiated Leninism? Socialism would best be served by rejecting the Bolshevik myth. I suggest that the ideas of “anarchist and semi-anarchist tendencies” are a far more useful guide to creating a genuine socialist movement than trying to resurrect a flawed and failed ideology like Leninism.

Failed Leninism
Failed Leninism

Not Gramsci

“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” (‘What is Marxism?’, August 28).

In an otherwise good piece by Hillel Ticktin making the case for socialism that old duffer, Gramsci, gets lumped in with Mao, Althusser and Lukács as a non-Marxist. James Connolly and Engels have suffered similar ill-treatment over the years. Yet Gramsci was a lifelong Marxist. He fought inside the Italian Socialist t Party for it to take a stance against both capitalism and war during the 1916-18 period. He was at the centre of the factory councils movement in Turin in 1919 and 1920. His Marxism led him to split from the PSI in 1921 to form the Italian Communist Party, taking a leading role in it between 1924 and 1926. His activities and intelligence led him to Mussolini’s prisons in a blatant attempt to silence the author of the famous Lyons thesis. Yet it didn’t.

His Prison notebooks, written in code to avoid censorship and purely from memory of Marxist classics, developed his ideas about the key issues of taking state power, how to build a revolutionary party and the expansion of the revolutionary press. His aim was to help other Marxists. The real Stalinist at the time - the PCI’s leader, Palmiro Togliatti - delayed the publication of the Notebooks for 10 years until 1947, and even then Gramsci’s letters appeared in a censored form. References to Bordiga, Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg had been removed, along with his opposition to the Stalinist ‘third period’. Gone too were references to his repeated attempts to get hold of books Trotsky wrote after his expulsion from the Soviet Union.

That said, Gramsci did support Stalin and Bukharin in 1925 in the ‘socialism in one country versus permanent revolution’ debate. He was wrong about that. Andres Nin and James P Cannon initially supported this position too, until they found out more information about what was really going on in the Soviet Union. So Gramsci was in esteemed company. For me it was a mistaken position by a revolutionary operating in very difficult conditions rather than the actions of a blind-faith Stalinist like Togliatti.

Towards the end of his piece Hillel states: “The great socialists like Marx himself and like John Maclean died in obscurity and after considerable suffering.” Gramsci was released from prison in 1935, but was so ill he died in 1937 aged 46. This conclusion could equally apply to him.

Not Gramsci
Not Gramsci

Matgamnesia

One of the joys of studying Trotskyist history is looking at past events and wondering how the participants, in view of their past positions, are measuring up to the events of today.

Thus I happened to be sent an ancient internal bulletin of the Socialist Organiser Alliance AGM of June 26-27 1982, where the following emergency resolution was moved by the excellent comrade, Andrew Hornung:

“This AGM condemns the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which is an act of genocide against the Palestinian people and an attempt to crush the Lebanese national movement. The invasion is yet another confirmation of the racist and expansionist nature of the Zionist state. The Israeli successes in Lebanon are not merely a temporary reverse for the Palestinian and anti-imperialist forces in the region. They constitute a major strengthening of imperialism and Arab reaction.”

The SOA decided to support an initiative to set up a Labour Committee on Palestine based on four points:

1. Support for the Palestinian people in the struggle for national self-determination.

On this John O’Mahony moved to delete “self-determination” and substitute “rights”, but was soundly defeated. But O’Mahony apparently had no objection to the following points:

2. Opposition to the racist and expansionist Zionist state.

3. Solidarity with the PLO as the chosen representative of the Palestinian people.

4. Against Zionism, in particular in the Labour Party and trade union movement.

At any rate there is no mention in the minutes of any objection by him.

I hope your readers will find this informative. Minutes of long ago are often very interesting.

Matgamnesia
Matgamnesia