Letters

Deception

There are a number of things I would take issue with in James Turley’s article (‘Politics of press freedom’, July 28).

Firstly, in relation to the position of the Socialist Workers Party, and its call to break up the Murdoch media empire, I would argue that this is a reactionary or at best a naive, reformist demand. Marxists do not respond to the existence of such monopolies by calling for a return to some previous, ‘free market’ form of capitalism. Lenin made that clear in Imperialism, in responding to the advocacy of such a course by Kautsky. Such monopolies arise out of free competition. Our solution is not a move backwards, but forwards towards socialism, which in the here and now can only mean arguing for workers to take over these monopolies, and to run them as worker-owned cooperatives.

Secondly, in relation to the position of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, you say that its position is better than that of the Socialist Party in England and Wales, because it is based on writings by Lenin in November 1917, and because it says that it is only advocating nationalisation under the auspices of a workers’ government. Let’s take the latter first. Its calls for a workers’ government here and now are meaningless. The whole basis of Trotsky’s Transitional programme is that the demands within it can only fulfil their function as being transitional between a reformist consciousness and a revolutionary consciousness if they are adopted within the context of a revolutionary situation. On the workers’ government, he says:

“Is the creation of such a government by the traditional workers’ organisations possible? Past experience shows ... that this is, to say the least, highly improbable. However, one cannot categorically deny in advance the theoretical possibility that, under the influence of completely exceptional circumstances ... the petty bourgeois parties, including the Stalinists, may go further than they wish along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie. In any case one thing is not to be doubted: even if this highly improbable variant somewhere at some time becomes a reality and the ‘workers’ and farmers’ government’ in the above-mentioned sense is established in fact, it would represent merely a short episode on the road to the actual dictatorship of the proletariat.”

In fact, if we look at what the AWL is arguing for, it is that the Liberal-Tories be kicked out, and that a Labour government replace it. That is not a workers’ government, and nor could it be in Trotsky’s terms, for the simple reason that we are not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation! What the AWL’s demand actually means for those living on planet Earth is for a Miliband government and the existing capitalist state to nationalise the mass media, and that is a thoroughly reactionary demand. You yourselves accept the idea in principle of nationalisation by the capitalist state, not just in this instance, but in others, but Trotsky says about such a position:

“It would, of course, be a disastrous error, an outright deception, to assert that the road to socialism passes, not through the proletarian revolution, but through nationalisation by the bourgeois state of various branches of industry and their transfer into the hands of the workers’ organisations” (www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/xx/mexico03.htm).

And this is the problem also with the first part of the AWL’s argument, basing itself on Lenin, writing about the situation in Russia in November 1917. It seems to have escaped the AWL’s attention, and you do not seem to have picked up on it, that Lenin was writing at the time of a workers’ revolution, of the establishment of soviets, of an actual workers’ government and indeed of a workers’ state. There are many policies that are appropriate to such conditions, but which are not acceptable for Marxists to raise within the context of an existing capitalist state. The Bolsheviks, under the conditions of a workers’ state, for instance, argued for the implementation of import controls via a monopoly of foreign trade, as well indeed as the introduction of immigration controls. But it is not acceptable for a Marxist to raise such demands within the context of a capitalist state.

When Marx, in the Critique of the Gotha programme, opposed the statist policies of Lassalle in relation to the demands for the capitalist state to intervene in this way, he also pointed out that such demands were not made any better by tagging on to them the call for democratic control, which was meaningless. Trotsky echoes Marx when he points out that it is ridiculous outside a revolutionary situation to demand workers’ control over bourgeois property - and property owned by the capitalist state is bourgeois property. He writes:

“If the participation of the workers in the management of production is to be lasting, stable, ‘normal’, it must rest upon class-collaboration, and not upon class struggle. Such a class-collaboration can be realised only through the upper strata of the trade unions and the capitalist associations. There have been not a few such experiments: in Germany (‘economic democracy’), in Britain (‘Mondism’), etc. Yet, in all these instances, it was not a case of workers’ control over capital, but of the subservience of the labour bureaucracy to capital ...

“... Workers’ control through factory councils is conceivable only on the basis of sharp class struggle, not collaboration. But this really means dual power in the enterprises, in the trusts, in all the branches of industry, in the whole economy ... What we are talking about is workers’ control under the capitalist regime, under the power of the bourgeoisie. However, a bourgeoisie that feels it is firmly in the saddle will never tolerate dual power in its enterprises” (www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1931/310820.htm).

Now again I ask, is there anyone resident on planet Earth who believes that we are in such a situation of dual power?

The reality is that in practical terms the only way that workers can exercise control is if they are the owners of the means of production, and the only way that can be achieved in the here and now is by the workers establishing their own cooperative property. They may do that by a variety of means - from obtaining credit and buying them up, to occupying existing firms and obtaining the transfer of that property legally into their hands, as the workers at Zanon did. But any attempt to make workers believe that a socialist transformation can be achieved by the capitalist state nationalising property is, as Trotsky says, “an outright deception”, and any attempt to persuade them that workers’ control is possible whilst ownership is not in their hands, can only lead to class-collaboration, not class struggle.

Deception
Deception

Psychos

In his podcast on the Norway massacre, while defending the right to bear arms, which would have meant people could have defended themselves against the fascist Breivik, the CPGB’s John Bridge said this:
“We know that people sometimes just flip out and start killing people.”

Um, do we? Breivik is quite probably a psychopath, and we know he was planning this atrocity for ages. Had a half-trained psychologist been able to observe the man for a while, they would probably have identified something seriously wrong, with its origins in his life history. Maybe he would have killed a lot of people even without the influence of far-right ideas - we will never know. But I would emphasise the role of irrational and fascist ideas rather than any psychological issues that Breivik has.

Mental ‘illness’ is a social phenomenon created by concrete interactions between people, not something which just strikes out of the blue and makes one reach for the nearest assault rifle. People in tribal societies get depressed when a family member dies, but you won’t find anyone with depression or ‘schizophrenia’ - though you will get altered states of mind induced during rituals/drug ceremonies. In fact, rates of ‘schizophrenia’ are highest in the poorest and most oppressed sections of capitalist society, like young black men.

Many of these people are just trying desperately to retain some autonomy and humanity in the face of conflicting demands on them, a repressive nuclear family and alienated society, and grinding poverty. Symptoms start to occur which result in the individual being labelled ‘schizophrenic’, and being doped up on drugs or committed to an entirely dehumanising institution (removing the problem), or in times past subjected to electro-shock treatment.

To return to the point, people with ‘schizophrenia’, which is what we are generally referring to when we talk about madness, are on average only very slightly more likely to be involved in violence than anyone else. And, given confusion, delusions, society’s reaction to these individuals and the possibly violent communities these individuals may be in, that would hardly be a shock. Breivik seems more like a psychopath than a schizoid to me, to the extent these labels are meaningful.

Psychopathy indicates a complete lack of empathy caused by a total failure to develop interpersonal attachments, and is associated with parental neglect and abuse. Some estimates put the rate of psychopathy at 1% of the population, which means they’re all around you. Obviously, they don’t all flip out and start killing people. But they can perform awful violence coldly and without emotion.

Breivik also became a proponent of an irrational, nationalist and militarist doctrine of cultural superiority, which is creeping across Europe. In the Netherlands, people are saying this atrocity means we should kick out the Muslims, to stop more such individuals taking matters into their own hands.

I sincerely hope that when we have achieved a (mostly) human existence in socialism, we will no longer need to carry our rifles everywhere, just in case someone goes Judge Dredd. I mean, do you know how much those things weigh?

By the way, the Swiss battle rifles are automatic during militia service, then sent back to the factory and converted to semi-auto before being returned to their owner.

Psychos
Psychos

Myopic

Let’s recap on all the hoo-ha about Britishness and selfish British workers campaigning to save their jobs. The closure of the last rail carriage-making firm, Bombardier, has been announced and tens of thousands of direct, associated and ancillary workers are doomed to long-term and permanent unemployment.

The already blighted communities, hard pressed from previous mass industrial closure and run-down, have been given an added, terminal kick in the guts. The question was raised at a Coalition of Resistance conference, which by its title suggests they would have some interest in this matter. A resolution condemning the closure and loss of jobs was put. The CPGB, Socialist Workers Party and Workers Power voted against the resolution. They put no alternative resolution. In retrospect and much after the horse has bolted, my old comrade Peter Manson comes up with an excellent amendment which could have been put by the CPGB at the conference, but wasn’t (‘British jobs for British workers?’, July 28).

On the face of it, this is a disgraceful position. Without the bullshit, if you were a worker at Bombardier, wouldn’t this read as if those self-declared ‘workers’ vanguards’ actually do not condemn the closure and are not against it? How else could you read it? The reason for voting against? The resolution wasn’t ‘pure’ enough. There are all sorts of politically correct tulips we have to tip-toe through so as not to appear chauvinistic and nationalistic because the work has gone to Germany.

Peter Manson tells us of efforts to defend these jobs: “It is despicable for members of the working class movement to connive with the capitalists to uphold British jobs at the expense of German jobs.” Let’s just call the workers at Bombardier British workers, not because I or they support the British state or ‘British capitalism’, whatever that might be, but because they live in Britain and actually were already doing the job. That the German workers aren’t actually doing these jobs seems neither here nor there. German workers are not having existing jobs taken from them; this is additional work for them at the expense of the workers already doing the work.

‘We’ have to accept that that’s the way the game is played, it seems. We have to recognise that under capitalism workers will lose their jobs and companies will go under. It seems the existing set-up is quite fair then; certainly fairer than demanding the work stays here and the last outpost of this form of manufacture stays in existence. To challenge this outrageous autocratic system is, we are told, to postulate all sorts of “backward” ideas of superiority.

The workers at Derby, however, don’t give a monkey’s that the company they work for is Canadian or that the jobs have gone to Germany. They are pissed off that the valuable job they did has been whisked away by unforeseen hands in a game where they have no influence over the rules. The work they did provided a valuable much-needed, socially useful article that they were skilled at making and brought in the bacon.

Why is it politically incorrect to mention that the rules by which this decision was made were indeed fouled by uneven application of social costs? Why weren’t social costs offset against the price being tendered, as they are in other EU countries? Isn’t that a fair question?

When Thatcher came to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers, she used the argument of unviable pits and cheap foreign coal. The purpose of the endeavour, of course, had nothing whatever to do with finance or profitability and, when we were forced to examine the relative costs, we could easily prove British coal was the cheapest on offer anywhere. Not that this was the point, but simply to demonstrate another agenda was being played out here and, in my view, still is. The British manufacturing working class is being systemically exterminated. It is a process already well underway in important sections of other European manufacturing countries too. It’s not just here, although at this point on this issue other European economies have managed by use of the existing rules to prevent closure of this particular form of manufacture.

Peter asks why it is better that the social costs I spoke of in Britain be borne by Germans instead. Well, they shouldn’t and won’t be, and that’s the obvious point. The social costs I speak of will not be paid in Germany and France on similar ‘native’ tenders because they are deducted from the final bid price making their bids cheaper and therefore the jobs are retained. There is nothing wrong with that. I’m not complaining about that, and neither are the workers. What’s wrong is that it’s not being done here and, worse, to argue that it should be taken into account here is some kind of racist advocacy. You want workers to accept that different rules apply here than elsewhere in the interests of not being somehow selfish or ‘nationalist’. It is a nonsense our comrade workers in Germany or France or Italy would never tolerate, and that doesn’t make them nationalist, sectionalist or chauvinistic either.

Peter talks of the splendid march of 10,000 workers in Derby fighting to save Bombardier. Did the CPGB turn out with its banners demanding nationalisation under workers’ control? Such a slogan, of course, demands the continuation of the work at Derby, which effectively means ‘British jobs for British workers’, by the way. This demand would mean a challenge and defiance to the EU structure and rules, which would also make an interesting additional slogan and leadership. It would need to be linked to occupation of the factory, a work-in, solidarity action on the railways, taking the carriages and running them, mass public support in using them.

To a cretin, this would look like little British nationalism again, but it would be nothing of the sort. What would be the point of nationalising the plant and continuing to produce the carriages if no-one was going to use them? This strategy would only make sense if indeed the work stayed in Derby and the carriages were continued to be produced and utilised. Such a strategy would have to be imposed by the organised strength of the whole labour movement. But, before we get carried away, remember how this debate started: none of this was offered. Instead we got a direct negative to the demand of stopping the closure, a de facto acceptance of the closure. The implication that fighting to save jobs and production in Britain is ‘sectionalism and nationalism’ is a truly bizarre conclusion based on too many years of liberal middle class PC overindulgence, which now renders much of the self-declared ‘far left’ myopic and subject to political visual distortion.

To declare, as Peter does, that demanding the British government invests in jobs in Britain “stinks of nationalism” leaves us at rather a dead end. Instead Peter and the so-called ‘left’ offer jam tomorrow, and it is very thin at that. I notice a total avoidance in all the programmes quoted by Peter of any reference to restructuring and reconstructing manufacturing here. To demand that basic coal, steel, shipbuilding, construction, maritime marine, engineering and other forms of manufacture be rebuilt, so that we, the working class, at least have the potential to take it into our own hands and control. This is a strategic consideration in the global class struggle and not simply a partisan one.

Myopic
Myopic

CPGB Labourism

Chris Jones’s letter identifies the attitude of militant workers to the Labour Party (July 14). This runs into contradiction with the CPGB line on Labour. He argues the CPGB had a left-sectarian attitude to the political needs of militant workers when it was active in the Socialist Labour Party, Socialist Alliance and Respect. If the CPGB is aiming to become an active part of the Labour Party, it is turning to the right.

In response Peter Manson explains that the CPGB is the only group on the left that has been serious about the Labour Party. Hence Chris is accused of taking up “cudgels” on behalf of militant workers “against the CPGB’s long-standing call for the left to adopt a serious attitude towards the Labour Party” (Letters, July 21). This is incorrect on two grounds.

First, Peter’s claim that the CPGB is the only section of the left which is “serious” about the Labour Party is surely a bit of braggadocio. He is speaking only to CPGB members, perhaps to bolster morale or silence the doubters. But you can’t win an Oscar by boasting you are the world’s best actor. It depends on what the other actors think of the claim.

Second, Chris did not take up cudgels against the CPGB’s “serious” attitude, but against its wrong attitude. He is pointing to the obvious contradictions in the CPGB’s theory of ‘halfway house’ parties - not least the claim that it is OK to join working class organisations, but not ‘set them up’. This is apparently the main difference between the CPGB and Revolutionary Democratic Group.

Peter’s second argument is about CPGB continuity. I am sure he accepts the CPGB has changed its position, not least because of polemics against an ultra-left faction in the CPGB reported in the Weekly Worker. But Peter argues that “our current approach to Labour represents a continuation, not a break”.

This is not an argument against what Chris says. He argued that the CPGB’s former position was ultra-left or left-sectarian. Now CPGB members want to become part of Labour. Every Marxist knows that switching from left sectarianism to right opportunism is not a break. It is a continuation of the old mistakes by other means. So in this sense Peter’s argument about CPGB’s line as ‘continuation, not break’ is correct.

The CPGB must break with Labourism. This is not achieved by getting involved in Labour Party activity for unclear or dubious aims. In the past the CPGB’s Labourism was camouflaged by pseudo-revolutionary slogans against compromise. The change of line is merely clearing away that old garbage. Compromise is in the air. As the fog clears, many will be startled if they see the CPGB sitting in Miliband’s Labour Party, the enemy of militant working class struggle.

Peter is right to point out to CPGB members that this is continuity of method. Labourism carries on in a new form. The Labour Party is opposed to a republican socialist party because it is neither republican nor socialist. If Marxism is now the servant of Miliband and co, it must develop some ‘Marxist’ theory against it. Peter speaks about a republican socialist party as a “necessary stage” in the formation of a communist party. Hence he sees the need to impose limitations on the leading role of communists.

CPGB Labourism
CPGB Labourism