Letters
Military funds
I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that scientists shouldn’t conduct research funded by the military, as suggested by Bob Potter and Hannu Reime (Letters, March 18).
Virtually everything we know about astronomy, climate science and a host of other topics has depended on military funding. I myself would happily accept military funding for my own research into language and its origins if I could take that money without letting it influence my results. But that’s a huge ‘if’.
There are good reasons why the military don’t invest in my field, which is human origins research. To get the funding, I and my colleagues would have to argue that the human revolution - the culmination of our species’ transition from an animal way of life to a fully human one - was in no sense a social revolution.
Noam Chomsky was prepared to do that. He was happy to define the momentous transition as narrowly ‘cognitive’ and politically irrelevant. I am not.
Military funds
Military funds
No excuses
Phil Culshaw writes that the CPGB raised the issue of workers’ militia in order to “excuse itself from playing a part in the most significant united socialist election challenge to New Labour” (Letters, March 18).
Actually, comrade Culshaw, the CPGB did not “excuse itself” - it was ‘excused’. It offered to stand three candidates under the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition banner, an offer which was turned down. As for the demand for a workers’ militia, that was raised with No2EU candidates, not Tusc.
I raised misgivings about setting support for workers’ militia as one of the criteria for supporting individual No2EU candidates (Letters, July 2 2009). Not out of pacifism, but because it allowed the Socialist Party to deflect criticism away from the little-Britain nationalism underlying its electoral alliance with the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain and Bob Crow.
Despite being ‘excused’, CPGB comrades will be supporting the election campaigns of various left candidates - Tusc included.
No excuses
No excuses
Real motive
Phil Culshaw, of the Socialist Party in England and Wales, epitomises the cowardice of the British left over the question of the working class’s right to bear arms. Of course, he is in favour of it - but not right now. That is because his agenda is set by the bourgeoisie. The aim of revolutionary politics is not to get elected to parliament by making ourselves respectable in the court of bourgeois opinion. It is to arm the working class with a programme to overthrow capitalism. We need to make it clear that the right to self-defence is a central principle that we are proud of upholding.
The need for self-defence does not arise only in revolutionary situations, nor is it always about heavy weapons. It can be a matter of sticks and stones in a dispute such as the miners’ Great Strike or the right to steward our own demonstrations without police interference. Unfortunately, the left insists on instilling an attitude of passivity and obedience to bourgeois authority, whatever the circumstances.
To delay raising the question of the right to bear arms until the time of revolutionary transformation will ensure that the working class is the only class that goes into the conflict unarmed. A recipe for almost certain defeat. And totally pointless, because the ruling class is well aware that revolution requires force and will do everything in its power to maintain its monopoly over the use of violence. No wonder then that, whenever self-defence is raised, they will agitate against us. But the best strategy is to consistently argue in favour of our right to depose tyrants by force, not retreat from the principle.
Comrade Culshaw and those like him refuse to raise the question of self-defence because their real motive is to build a Labour Party mark two.
Real motive
Real motive
Bash the fash
Members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain will be heartened that it appears the CPGB have seemingly jettisoned yet another dogma of the left by defending the democratic rights of the British National Party (‘No judge-made bans on BNP’, March 18).
Many will know that the SPGB have long been derided and berated by others for our principled opposition to any restrictions being placed upon the democratic rights of other political parties, either left or right. Socialists should be only too aware that ideas cannot be suppressed by legislation.
Of all the words in the lexicon of politics, ‘fascism’ is among the most ill-defined and inappropriately used. If it has any meaning, it is in the supremely escapist notion that there is a quick-fix remedy for capitalism’s shortcomings. If fascism is anything, it is the very stuff of disillusionment, the response of workers who have tried other parties and other methods of running capitalism and have decided that, as each of them has failed, it is the democratic process which is at fault.
It is no coincidence that, with the Labour government exposed in all its helpless cynicism and the other parties promising nothing better, the BNP are winning sympathy. The liberals and the left may rail against the fascist threat, but they possess no coherent arguments with which to counter the BNP and it is precisely the failure of their ideas that turn the workers toward the hopeless fantasies of fascism. Labour and the Tories may well abhor the policies of the BNP, but have been unsuccessful in confronting them because to do so would mean acknowledging the shortcomings of a system they champion and which gives rise to the politics of race and hate.
The BNP is thriving on the oxygen of publicity given to it by the ‘anti-fascists’, enabling it to pass itself off as the champions of freedom of speech. In truth, the BNP have simply put together a better package of lies and many workers, their minds numbed by the politics of reform, are falling for the scam. Their plan is clear, and involves the deception of disaffected voters into thinking that only the BNP can make capitalism work in their interests. The BNP like to pose as a radical alternative to the mainstream parties of Labour, Conservative and the Lib Dems. The fact that these parties seem united in regarding the BNP as ‘beyond the pale’ serves to bolster the BNP’s image. But what neither they nor the mainstream can ever acknowledge is that they share many fundamental political beliefs in common.
Bash the fash
Bash the fash
Glass darkly
Paul Cockshott sees through a glass darkly in his March 18 Weekly Worker article, ‘Less radical than clause four’. He dismisses the CPGB’s minimum programme as being timid even when compared with Labour governments. Actually it would not only massively reduce the power of the capitalist class: it could, in fact, only be fully implemented by a Communist Party government. Hence the minimum programme both prepares the working class for revolution and represents the form working class rule would take
The minimum and maximum sections of our programme do not represent two distinct historical epochs. No, they form a dynamically interrelated whole. The other side of the democracy coin is not a perfected bourgeois state apparatus, but the organisation of the working class as the ruling class. We hold that the working class alone can build the alternative power within capitalism needed to overthrow capitalism and it alone can extend democracy to the point where democracy (a form of the state) withers away (with the upper phase of communism).
In order for the working class to defeat capitalism we need to organise on the widest international basis possible. However, the decisive breakthrough will in all probability be made with victory across the Europe Union. The corollary of this argument is that capitalism, being a global system, cannot be defeated by even a string of ‘third world’ revolutions, let alone a revolution in a single backward country, no matter how heroic and inspiring. Though a ‘third world’ revolution could, of course, provide the spark, it is Europe, North America and Japan that will really decide matters.
Comrade Cockshott chides us with the claim that our Draft programme is less radical than old Labour’s clause four. This is either an eccentric version of Stalinism or just plain silly. Clause four is a classic example of state ‘socialism’ (as inspired by Ferdinand Lassalle). It was never meant to be implemented and, even if it had been, the working class would have remained the working class.
Under communism nothing will belong to the state. The state will cease to exist because all of its functions have passed into society itself. Nor will there be a working class because all will do useful work and all will have the chore of administering. On our way there, our aim is not to empower the state, but to empower the working class.
Nationalisation is therefore not the main criterion by which we judge progress towards socialism (the lower phase of communism). Nationalisation could be used as a defensive demand to prevent the capitalists making the workers pay when enterprises become unprofitable. Or, in the case of, say, the banks and insurance companies, nationalisation under working class control would break the power of the capitalists to manipulate and control the whole economy.
Old Labour’s clause four is reformist because of its belief that the state is the answer. And, albeit with his schema for election by lot, comrade Cockshott also seems to have a vision of a socialism that dominates humanity from above. But Marxist, proletarian socialism is nothing of the sort. The purpose of planning is human-centred. It brings forward the day when there is general freedom and humans can achieve their fullest possible development.
Which brings me to the division of labour. I think here we just have a misunderstanding. We are for representative democracy being used as a means to democratise authority. Through this, and other measures such as job rotation and the massive extension of adult education, the existing hierarchy based on expert skills, family background and connections, status, etc, begins to fade away, as all people develop their talents, skills and knowledge.
The minimum programme concentrates on the process of subordinating the principle of capital accumulation to the principle of human need. It is about winning the petty bourgeoisie and middle classes into accepting working class rule and stage by stage replacing the market. Finally, let me emphasise, there can be no extended gap between fulfilling the minimum programme and embarking on the maximum programme. To suggest otherwise is to fall straight into the trap of socialism in one country - an oxymoron.
Glass darkly
Glass darkly
Born yesterday
“I and others have been arguing for years that Marx’s vision of an economy without exploitation and without money is now a practical objective,” writes Paul Cockshott
What, only now? The Socialist Party has been arguing this since before he was born. And against currency cranks like Parecon.
Born yesterday
Born yesterday
Bureaucracy
I offer this reply to Tony Clark in defence of my so-called dogmatism (Letters, March 18).
In my original criticism of Hillel Ticktin’s version of Trotskyism (Letters, March 4), I considered the misleading way that he abbreviated Marxist socio-political concepts and processes within his long article, which smuggled in a revision of Leon Trotsky’s written polemics on the nature of the Soviet state - ie, what he defended and what he attacked. This ran counter to Ticktin’s plainly wrong outline. In my reply, I felt obliged to abbreviate Trotsky’s struggle with Stalinism in this critique, but in my defence I didn’t believe I was talking to a student of nursery communism, hence I simply gave a letters page-length reply, which, for purposes of brevity, could possibly lead to misinterpretation if not followed up with the recommended reading from Trotsky himself (Revolution betrayed and In defence of Marxism).
But let me make a general point on method in answer to Tony Clark’s question, “So why did Trotsky change his position on Stalin?” Leaving aside the sceptically phrased manner of the question, I can readily affirm that the bureaucracy did indeed seriously degenerate further, causing qualitative changes, which at a series of critical historical nodal points weakened the Soviet system internally. This simultaneously combined with the Comintern’s disastrous policies externally. The ensuing degenerative consequences were not only connected, but self-fulfilling in deforming both the function of socialised ownership and the global perception of Marxist ideology. This further raised the aloofness of Stalinism and further deepened the desperation of real communists.
Clark then goes on to ridicule “Trotsky’s call for political revolution to remove bureaucracy”. He states: “The idea that bureaucracy can be defeated by political revolution issues from the anarchist kennel, not Marxism, and Lenin correctly argued against it, regarding the struggle against bureaucracy as a more long-term process, in which communists had to fight bureaucracy, while using it at the same time.”
If I’m not mistaken, Clark is suggesting that Lenin too was a dogmatist! Bureaucracy, like any concept, is not a fixed thing with unalterable characteristics. The trials that were contrived by Stalinist officialdom to liquidate the leaders of the 1917 Bolshevik Party were carried out by bureaucracy. Do you seriously believe Stalinism’s 1930s bureaucracy was the example Lenin (who died in 1924) was citing as the type of stultifying, non-withering away officialdom to “fight and use simultaneously”?
Oh, that comrade Clark were there to have his splendid concept of bureaucracy for consolation within the dark cellars of the NKVD under Nikolai Yezhov and those functionaries of bureaucracy whose usefulness ended with their execution.
Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy
Killing age
In an otherwise reasonable article, touching on the savage and outrageous reaction to the re-arrest of Jon Venables, James Turley - and presumably the Weekly Worker and CPGB - takes a violent turn to the right and to reaction in the second but last paragraph (‘Rehabilitation not revenge’, March 18).
The conclusion of the article is that 16 years old is to be the legitimate ‘age of consent’ for all social responsibilities. One can only conclude that the CPGB now supports the state’s age of sexual consent at 16 by this formula. Not simply “arbitrary ... in many respects”: arbitrary in all respects. You have moved some way from the more scientific and rational notion that actually there is no fixed and rigid ‘age of consent’. The actual age of consent is the age you actually consent to do something - whether that is murder, torture or consensual sex.
This age will vary according to the individual and circumstances. One 10-year-old may well be fully conscious that the act they are planning and intend to commit is murder, and understand exactly what that means. Another 10-year-old may not be capable of thinking it through, or understanding the consequences of the action (although frankly that is very unlikely unless the child has some mental difficulties).
The same is true of sexual consent. Some 10-year-olds may welcome and encourage and enjoy sexual activities, and understand well what they are consenting to. Others, depending on the level of activity and whom they are engaged with, of course, may not understand the social consequences of the action, particularly where such otherwise natural encounters are deemed criminal. In neither case can one rule that, having reached 10 or 12, and having committed the action, the young person can be automatically assumed responsible or not responsible.
In the case of Venables and Thompson there is no doubt whatever in my mind that they set off deliberately and calculatedly to abduct, torture and murder the toddler, having failed in an earlier effort to do so with a different child. They consented to that action in exactly the same way that an adult could have. However, the failing of the system was in having a set criminal age of responsibility, which assumes that, having reached 10, they can be charged. The first level of enquiry has to be whether the child responsible for the death, is in fact capable of premeditated killing and understands that this isn’t a game.
Finally I think James is being disingenuous as to the
suggested influence of Childs play 3, unless he truly doesn’t know what they did to Bulger before and after his death, and why it was thought to have influenced their actions on the day. Not that it pushed them to commit murder, of course, but they did copy certain features of the film.
Killing age
Killing age