25.08.2010

Communist transition

Nick Rogers discusses the transition to communism in the context of the CPGB's 'Draft programme'

Arguably, the most important chapters of a communist programme concern the maximum programme - communists’ vision of the future we seek to build.

There has been a so far limited but important debate on the new draft of the CPGB’s Draft programme proposed by the Provisional Central Committee^[1] in the pages of the Weekly Worker. In this article I want to develop my own analysis and comment on some contributions by Mike Macnair. I will also respond belatedly to letters from Paul Cockshott and Alan Johnstone. My focus is the relatively narrow issue of how communists should conceptualise social developments after the working class has taken political power.

Since I spend a fair amount of time discussing the meaning that should be ascribed to the words ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’, this will undoubtedly strike many as a rather semantic exercise. However, I think the discussion exposes at least two substantive differences: one concerning the pace with which we can anticipate moving towards a new mode of production; and another around our understanding of the nature of communism.

These differences have implications for communist practice after a workers’ revolution and therefore are significant in the discussion of programme.

In my original critique of the Draft programme I argued that “simply placing an equals sign between workers’ political power and socialism is not correct. Otherwise, we are left with the nonsense of suggesting that the two months of the Paris commune were socialism. Or that socialism began in Russia in October 1917.”^[2]

I was responding to the Draft programme’s definition of socialism: “Socialism is not a mode of production. It is the transition from capitalism to communism. Socialism is communism which emerges from capitalist society. It begins as capitalism with a workers’ state ... in general socialism is defined as the rule of the working class” (section 5).

The content and title of Mike Macnair’s article, ‘Socialism is a form of class struggle’,^[3] reveal that the PCC does seek to label workers’ political power as ‘socialism’: “The period can also be called for short-hand ‘socialism’, as we do in the Draft programme, provided it is clear that by ‘socialism’ we mean this transitional period of working class rule, and not a separate stage standing between the dictatorship of the proletariat and communism.”

Mike adds a personal caveat, “‘Dictatorship of the proletariat’ is in my opinion scientifically superior because it expresses the fact that the petty bourgeoisie and small capital continue to exist in this period, but are institutionally subordinated to the proletariat as a class.”

Now, whether we call the “transitional period of working class rule” the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ or ‘socialism’ is of relatively small consequence - other than, if my own experience has any broader resonance, spreading a degree of confusion in the ranks of the Marxist left. Of greater significance, the analysis found in the Draft programme differs substantively from the conceptual framework most Marxists will bring to any discussion of these issues.

The idea of an evolution of “communist society” from a “first” to a “higher” phase was developed most explicitly by Marx in the Critique of the Gotha programme (1875) - referred to in the rest of this article as the Critique. It was then taken up by Lenin in State and revolution (1917), who comments in passing that the ‘first phase’ is “usually called socialism”. This is broadly what the majority of Marxists have understood by ‘socialism’ ever since.^[4] It is certainly the meaning of ‘socialism’ any student of the debates within the immediate post-1917 Third International must bring to the reading table or computer screen.

Subsequently, some Marxists, feeling the very word ‘communism’ to have been contaminated by Stalinist practice, have referred to all the phases of the future mode of production as ‘socialism’.

Whatever words we adopt, it is important to note that both Marx and Lenin in these texts clearly distinguish all the phases of “communist society” from the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’.

The Critique provides one of Marx’s key references to this term (Hal Draper’s “locus 9”^[5], no less, and the last occasion on which Marx deployed it): “Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of revolutionary transformation of one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”^[6]

The “first phase of phase of communist society”, on the other hand, although a society “not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society”, is nevertheless a “cooperative society based on common ownership of the means of production”, which “recognises no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else”. In the absence of an exploiting class, there is no exploitation: “Nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals except individual means of consumption”.

Quite clearly then we are talking about a phase of the communist mode of production itself and, therefore, a society that is the immediate product of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. If we follow Lenin in ascribing the term ‘socialism’ to this phase of social development, the Draft programme’s argument that “socialism is not a mode of production” makes no sense. True, it is not a separate mode of production, but it is very much part of the communist mode of production.

Yet if we accept the Draft programme’s suggestion that ‘socialism’ “is the transition from capitalism to communism” and may be “defined as the rule of the working class” and, therefore, prepare ourselves to discuss the ‘dictatorship of proletariat’ as ‘socialism’, the adjacent sentence asserting that “socialism is communism which emerges from capitalist society” will throw us once again into confusion.

Whatever Marx meant by the dictatorship of the proletariat - and I follow Draper in believing that Marx and Engels were referring to the rule of the working class rather than specifically dictatorial methods - he did not understand this transitional phase as ‘communism’. The “dictatorship of the proletariat” involves the working class asserting its political and social hegemony over other classes. Communism is a classless society.

What the CPGB’s Draft programme does, then, is conflate the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and Marx’s “first phase of communist society” - it treats them as one historic period. A period, moreover, in which the Draft programme insists that “classes and social strata exist ... because of different positions occupied in relation to the means of production, the role played in society and the way they receive their income” (section 5).

In making this theoretical shift the CPGB effectively jettisons the concept of a phased development of the communist mode of production. The aim of this article is to explain why I think this is a mistake.

Workers’ rule

Why are we discussing the ‘transition’ to communism at all? I entirely agree with Mike Macnair and the authors of the Draft programme that it is not possible to make a single leap from capitalism to a fully developed communist society.

The political forms thrown up by the working class in ending the rule of the capitalist class do not represent the final form of human freedom. With political power in its grasp, the working class still faces immense problems. A desperate domestic capitalist class will resist the expropriation threatened by our programme - an expropriation that a victorious working class would no doubt be in the process of implementing. In at least some parts of the world (possibly those with the greatest productive potential) hostile capitalist ruling classes will be seeking to blockade and subvert a form of government they would correctly see as a threat to their existence.

We will rule initially over a capitalist economy. Even as common ownership is extended, systematic planning will emerge only through a process of trial and error. Market mechanisms will inevitably continue to play a role in economic management for a prolonged period, if for no other reason than the continued existence of a significant sector dominated by small-scale private production and the provision of services - even in an economy as developed as Britain’s.

Indeed, the relationship between a workers’ government and the petty bourgeoisie will require particularly delicate management and poses the threat of political and economic disruption. In Asia and Africa the presence of large peasant classes make this issue even more pressing.

The period of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” thus presents communists with a range of tasks that involve consolidating the rule of the working class and effecting the transition to a socialised economy. These include: making the revolution global; overcoming the political and economic resistance of the capitalist class; creating more equal levels of economic development across the world; absorbing the petty bourgeoisie into the working class; and superseding the market with democratic planning.

These are not trivial tasks. They require of communists a combination of determined political struggle and deft diplomacy. As history has shown, and Marx predicted, repeated attempts may be necessary before the working class can finally “win the battle for democracy”. This transition period will see fierce class struggles. The role of the communist party or parties will be crucial in securing a successful outcome. Therefore, our programme should at least sketch out the main strategic lines on which we propose to embark after the working class takes power.

Our Draft programme falls short in a number of respects. I have discussed some of these shortcomings before - particularly those related to the omission of the self-activity of the working class and of our international tasks.^[7]

As far as the present discussion is concerned, it is worth emphasising that the Draft programme has left me, and evidently others, confused about its approach to social ownership. Chapter 3’s ‘Immediate demands’ makes a number of points about the potentially reactionary nature of nationalisation under capitalism, such as breaking up transnational corporations into national units. It correctly observes that “Globalised production needs global social control” (section 3.7).

Yet chapter 4 on the ‘Character of the revolution’ has virtually nothing to say about social ownership apart from proposing to “slowly extend the socialised part of the economy so as to finally replace the market and the law of value with conscious planning and production for human need”.

I also queried the proposal to abolish limited liability (section 4.3). I can see how this could serve as an appropriate measure in relation to small production and the petty bourgeoisie. We say to small producers: ‘Remain independent if you wish. We will do nothing to directly undermine the economic foundations of your activities. In fact we will remove the pressures that big business brought to bear on you. At the same time we will encourage you to enter cooperative retailing and producer ventures as part of process of incorporating you into the socialised sector of the economy. But what we will not do is allow you to effectively opt out of your liabilities and cheat those you have entered contracts with.’

However, in the context of a chapter which is discussing only the ‘slow’ extension of socialisation and makes specific demands of the “remaining capitalist sector” this legal measure presumably would also apply to capitalist enterprises. It is not obvious how forcing capitalists to revert to a personal form of property ownership rather than taking that property into social ownership is progressive. If this is not the intention of the authors of the Draft programme, they need to be more explicit.

Usefully, Paul Cockshott has clarified his proposal to abolish exploitation overnight. In an earlier article, Paul argued that, “Capitalist exploitation rests on wage-slavery and can be eliminated by abolishing wage-slavery, as chattel slavery was abolished in the past. It requires only a legal change to the effect that net value added is the property of employees, not employers.”^[8]

I had observed that legislation awarding workers the full value that their labour-power had produced (ie, the exchange-value of their labour-power plus the surplus value extracted by capitalists) was problematic: calculating this for individual workers was not possible; there was a need to make provision for society’s collective activities; and the capitalist sector could not continue to operate if surplus value were abolished.

In response, Paul argues that at the level of the firm it is possible to calculate the amount of value created by all the firm’s workers; workers’ income would be taxed in order to meet the needs of society; and he would expect a “Yugoslav-style” system of workers’ cooperatives to replace capitalist enterprises during the transition to a socialist economy.^[9]

A number of problems remain with Paul’s proposal. In his original article he is clear that he is not talking about expropriation: “No compensation arises, since the employers are deprived of no property, but merely of the opportunity to use property in an exploitative way.” In such circumstances capitalist property-owners would attempt to turn the means of production into more liquid forms of wealth. There would be asset-stripping on a massive scale.

The only way to avoid this outcome and create an economy-wide system of workers’ cooperatives would be to deprive capitalist property-owners of their property. By this logical route we return to the task of expropriating the expropriators. The question then begged is why Paul proposes to hand capitalist enterprises to their workers rather than to bring them into the ownership of society as whole?

Workers’ cooperatives no doubt will play a role during the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, but this property form is a contradictory one. If workers’ cooperatives become dominant, it is not clear that social development will tend towards greater socialisation. We will effectively have created a property interest that might well resist moves towards social ownership.

Marx’s analysis of capitalist commodity production explains the material basis of this property interest. Value in capitalism only equates with price on average across the whole economy. Marx makes this point in the Critique of the Gotha programme: “the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case”.^[10]

Paul’s proposal to calculate surplus value at an enterprise level does not work because the profits received by each enterprise do not match the surplus value their workers’ produce. In other words, commodity production rewards some enterprises with a portion of the surplus value produced by other enterprises. The workers in one enterprise would in effect be exploiting the workers in another and would have a stake in keeping things the way they are.

Even without recourse to Marxist political economy, it is obvious that some enterprises find themselves in a more advantageous market position than others. Paul’s proposal to simply hand each enterprise to its workers would leave some workers’ much better off than others.

The reference to Yugoslavia reminds us that its ‘inter-enterprise market’ was subject to all the failings of fully capitalist markets: inflation, unemployment, failing enterprises. And such an economic system suffers an additional handicap: a disincentive at enterprise level to expand the workforce. A capitalist enterprise has an incentive to take on more workers if total value added will be increased by expanding production in this way. A workers’ cooperative will take on new members only if per capita value added is increased by doing so and the profit share of each worker is increased. This is a much higher hurdle.

In fact, the members of workers’ cooperative would be better off if they took on wage labourers, perhaps initially to meet temporary fluctuations in demand, rather than increasing the number of worker-owners. They would become collective capitalists. Such a trend would conflict with Paul’s law abolishing surplus value, but this consideration illustrates that the creation of workers’ cooperatives does not necessarily create a dynamic towards socialisation.

Socialisation

What are the barriers to the socialisation of the economy? They essentially revolve around the relationship between the working class as a ruling class and other classes. The resistance of the capitalist class must be broken and capitalist property expropriated on a global scale. Beyond this, the intermediate classes must be encouraged to join the socialised sector and essentially become members of the working class. In Britain this class includes small shopkeepers, people working on their own account as plumbers, electricians, small builders and so on; in India and China they include a large chunk of the population including a large peasantry working the land.

Once the whole population is absorbed into the working class, class society, and with it the working class itself, is negated.

The Draft programme identifies another barrier and raises it above the others: “the full socialisation of production is dependent on and can only proceed in line with the withering away of the skill monopolies of the middle class and hence the division of labour”. In the meantime, there will remain a sector of the economy “which consists of surviving capitalist elements” (section 4.3).

That is a formidable obstacle indeed. As if defeating the resistance of the capitalist class and transforming production so that working for a socially owned enterprise becomes everyone’s preferred career option were not sufficiently challenging, now the Draft programme argues that the working class must overcome the “division of labour” before the economy can be fully socialised.^[11]

I think Mike Macnair best explains the thinking of the authors of the Draft programme. Mike’s concept of “petty proprietors of intellectual property”^[12] effectively extends the definition of the petty bourgeoisie to incorporate all the holders of an employable skill, including the skilled working class: “The development of legal intellectual property rights and, most recently, of the common concept of intellectual property ... enables us to see that the specialist skills and collective secrets of artisans and intelligentsy, forms of intellectual property, are themselves a form of petty property.”^[13]

Therefore, even were everyone to join the socialised sector, the petty bourgeois class character of those with skills would remain intact and a classless society would not have been achieved.

Obviously, ‘professionals’ who operate in self-employed capacity - take doctors, for instance - have the ability to sabotage the socialisation of the sectors within which they work. Nye Bevan discovered this when he legislated for the national health service in the early years of the Attlee government. His most radical proposals to make GPs and hospital specialists state employees were shelved in the face of the threat of a boycott by medical professionals. And the NHS that eventually emerged faced widespread opposition in the months before it was launched.

The full socialisation of the health service would involve a stand-off with the highest levels of the medical profession. A programme of training surplus doctors might be an early step taken by a workers’ government. Coordinating a programme of socialisation on an international scale so that specialists do not have the option of taking their skills elsewhere would be another tactic - building a wall to prevent skilled workers from leaving should be ruled out.

However, abolishing career specialisation so that a heart specialist serves as a hospital porter one week, a farmer the next, writes a novel the third, before returning to their specialist hospital duties for the fourth week - or rotating in this way on an annual basis - would hardly be on the immediate agenda.

But this is precisely what Marx had in mind when he proposed overcoming “the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour”.^[14] We have the famous passage from the German ideology (1845) about hunting, fishing, herding and criticising without becoming a “hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic” to prove it.

Would the socialisation of the health service have to wait until a very large proportion of the population could fulfil the most skilled functions of today’s specialists? This is what Mike seems to suggest as regards the socialisation of any sector: “If we take away the capitalist market when there has not already been extensive socialisation of intellectual property (and other small production), we take away with it the dynamic which tends to socialise intellectual property rights, etc. The possessors of small property then confront the rest of society as monopolists. Unless they are coerced, they will refuse to work until they get what they want - whether it is money, working conditions or being in charge.”^[15]

What kind of time scale are we talking about here? Previously, Mike has suggested that creating the material conditions to overcome the division of labour might take “a century or two”.^[16]

This was not Marx’s vision. He explicitly set ending the division between mental and physical labour as a task of “communist society” - albeit in moving from the “first phase” to the “higher phase”. The “first phase of communist society” does indeed involve elements of coercion. Everyone is a worker, but this is a society “economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges”. Marx envisages in the Critique of the Gotha programme that workers would be rewarded for the quantity and quality of work that they do. It may be that skilled workers would receive a higher income than unskilled workers. Everyone who could work would be obliged to work.

Even as many of the functions of the state are withering away, many of the norms of “bourgeois right” persist. Complete human freedom is yet to be realised.

Mike challenges the importance many Marxists have attached to this passage. He argues that the Critique served a polemical purpose in seeking to persuade Marx’s supporters to oppose propositions derived from Lassalle that were being imported into the programme of the united German party.

Thus “this passage is part of a reductio ad absurdum of the Lassallean formulae that ‘the proceeds of labour belong undiminished, with equal right, to all members of society’... and ‘a fair distribution of the proceeds of labour’... Marx is concerned to show that the Lassallean slogan is self-contradictory ... There is therefore little reason to suppose that the labour certificates idea is actually a positive proposal for organising distribution.”

Mike observes that “the economic analysis is sloppy: unsurprising in a negative critique written at speed, but a good ground for supposing that the passage is no more than a negative critique”. Mike’s evidence for sloppiness is twofold. One, Marx’s reference to the cost of labour rather than the cost of labour-power. And, two, the fact that “the analysis of the division of the total social product proceeds on the basis that the claim of labourers on this product is a residual claim”. Mike argues that “at least the minimum cost of reproduction of social labour-power, including not merely the cost of bare subsistence, but also the cost of acquisition by workers of necessary skills, therefore should appear as a necessary deduction from the ‘distributable fund’ before the ‘additional portion for expansion of production’.”^[17]

Mike’s attempt to downplay the significance of this passage is not really sustainable. The Critique is certainly a political document circulated by Marx amongst the leaders of his faction in Germany. Nevertheless, Mike himself is happy to quote from the section on the “higher phase of communist society” a few paragraphs further on. For that matter, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” appears in most discussions of communism, including the Draft programme. The Critique is recognised then as a valuable source for Marx’s ideas on society of the future.

What of Mike’s specific objections to the passage on the “first phase of communist society”? I would agree that Marx’s reference to ‘labour’ potentially lacks clarity. However, given that Marx is discussing a post-commodity-producing society, perhaps there is a rationale in avoiding the term ‘labour-power’. This is the commodity (the ability to labour) that workers sell to capitalists - a form that has, therefore, been superseded.

On Marx’s discussion of the distribution of the social product, in the context of socialised production, the question of the minimum cost of the reproduction of ‘labour-power’ does not arise. The worker is not selling a commodity, but collectively participating in decisions about how the social product should be distributed. There is no question but that the worker will receive a share in the social product far above the minimum necessary to struggle into work every day. Nor is there an antagonism between the portion of the social product allocated to socially-satisfied needs and that portion allocated to individual consumption - the former, as Marx puts it, “grows considerably in comparison with present-day society and it grows in proportion as the new society develops”.

As for the labour certificates concept, this is discussed in Marx’s writings dating from the early 1860s - the drafts that form the volumes of Capital - and, therefore, is not unique to the Critique, as Mike appears to believe. It is true that in the other passages Marx is more careful than in the Critique to be non-prescriptive about the form of distribution. A paragraph from volume 1 of Capital is typical and worth quoting in full (my emphasis):

“Let us finally imagine, for a change, an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labour-power in full self-awareness as one single social labour force ... The total product of our imagined association is a social product. One part of this product serves as fresh means of production and remains social. But another part is consumed by members of the association as means of subsistence. This part must therefore be divided amongst them.

“The way this division is made will vary with the particular kind of social organisation of production and the corresponding level of social development attained by the producers. We shall assume, but only for the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities, that the share of each individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour-time. Labour-time would in that case play a double part. Its apportionment in accordance with a definite social plan maintains the correct proportion between the different functions of labour and the various needs of the associations. On the other hand, labour-time also serves as a measure of the part taken by each individual in the common labour, and of his share in the part of the total product destined for individual consumption. The social relations of the individual producers, both towards their labour and the products of their labour, are here transparent in their simplicity, in production as well as in distribution.”^[18]

It is clear then that in his scientific work Marx discusses social distribution in strikingly similar terms to the passage on the “first phase of communist society” in the Critique - as well as using ‘labour-power’ and ‘labour’ pretty much interchangeably. As in the Critique, he is prepared to contemplate the allocation of products for individual consumption according to individual labour-time. What is clearer from this passage is that Marx sees distribution on the basis of labour-time as just one possible method of distribution from a range of options, but the only one he is prepared to discuss in detail. This is precisely because it accords most closely with the mode of production - commodity production - that he can subject to scientific study and out of which communism will emerge. Only in this way is it possible to discuss communism without lapsing into drafting utopian blueprints - the actual shape of communist society will be determined by those who build it.

It is interesting to note that in the passage from Capital Marx does not set out sharply demarcated phases within communism but rather an evolutionary process of development. Alan Johnstone correctly makes this point in response to my article of April 8.

But I think Alan underestimates the magnitude of the tasks that confront communist society: “Marx’s view on the need for a transition between capitalism and communism was a product of the time in which he was living ... But since Marx’s death the forces of production have been developed immeasurably. A world of abundance has long been technically feasible. There is no longer a requirement for any lengthy transition.”^[19]

The development of productive forces over the last century and a half certainly points to the potential for communism. However, only a communist society itself can fully realise that potential. Our expectation should be that over a period of decades (possibly longer) the quantity of labour-time necessary to produce the vast majority of consumption products will tend to zero. In these circumstances, any formal system of rationing will be redundant.

Yet, in this future, it will not be possible for everyone to own a dozen mansions, a personal island or two and several private jets waiting to fly them to their numerous exclusive estates. Even when production is extensively automated and the dysfunctional relationship under class society between humanity and nature has been resolved, some resources - such as the surface area of the earth - will not be unlimited.

Communist society will have resolved the contradictions it inherits from capitalism only when the luxurious life-style of the wealthiest capitalists is seen not as something to which we should aspire, but for the deformed, anti-social, and atomised existence it is. ‘Abundance’ is not just a question of productive forces, but of transforming social relations.

The point is that social contradictions, such as the division of labour and stunted attitudes towards work and consumption too, can surely most easily be tackled by a “cooperative society based on common ownership of the means of production”.

This is not to exclude a great deal of overlap between stages of social development - for instance, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the early phases of communism (or ‘socialism’ if we prefer). Real life will be much messier than any of the theoretical formulations we construct today. It is to make the point that a workers’ government should not hold back from socialisation (and its own negation) in the illusory expectation that prolonging commodity production and class relations will produce a better future.

Nor should we envisage communism as a static society without personal tensions that assume a social nature - the dialectic will not be abolished. Communist society will need to resist clever, skilled people getting too big for their boots and restoring elements of the division of labour or social hierarchy.

That is the lesson of ‘primitive’ communist societies. In the few truly egalitarian human societies that still exist a quite aggressive form of moral code exists to enforce egalitarianism - to the extent that the best hunters (if they are perceived to be at all arrogant) are pilloried and might give up hunting for a period to avoid being ridiculed. Similar social mechanisms will evolve as communism itself evolves.

Notes

1. ‘Draft programme of the Communist Party of Great Britain’ Weekly Worker February 11 2010.
2. N Rogers, ‘The road to working class revolution’ Weekly Worker April 8 2010.
3. M Macnair, ‘Socialism is a form of class struggle’ Weekly Worker June 24 2010.
4. Mike Macnair on the terminology of ‘socialism’ in ‘Taking Stalinism seriously’ Weekly Worker September 4 2008: “This ‘first phase’ came in the Second International to be called ‘socialism’, and in ‘official communism’ a rigid distinction was drawn between this ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’. ‘Socialism’ meaning the ‘first phase’, the USSR claimed to have achieved. ‘Communism’, meaning the exclusively higher stage, it did not claim to have achieved.”
5. Hal Draper Karl Marx’s theory of revolution Vol 3: The ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ New York 1986, p303.
6. K Marx Critique of the Gotha programme.
7. ‘The road to working class revolution’ Weekly Worker April 8 2010.
8. P Cockshott, ‘Less radical than clause four’ Weekly Worker March 18 2010.
9. P Cockshott, ‘Misunderstood’ Letters, April 15 2010.
10. K Marx Critique of the Gotha programme.
11. Note, however, that the statement in section 4.3 of the Draft programme conflicts with the apparently more optimistic prediction in section 5.1 that the establishment by the working class of its global rule is the occasion for “the socialisation of the productive forces on a global scale”.
12. See, for instance, the discussion in M Macnair, ‘Socialism is a form of class struggle’ Weekly Worker June 24 2010.
13. M Macnair, ‘A bridge too far’ Weekly Worker December 18 2003.
14. K Marx Critique of the Gotha programme.
15. M Macnair, ‘Socialism is a form of class struggle’ Weekly Worker June 24 2010.
16. M Macnair, ‘Taking Stalinism seriously’ Weekly Worker September 4 2008.
17. Ibid.
18. K Marx Capital Vol 1, London 1990, pp171-72.
19. A Johnstone, Letters, April 15 2010.