Letters
Sleight of hand
Terry Burns says, quite correctly, that we should always “be honest about our ideas and the ideas of others” (Letters, September 8). However, I am not sure the comrade is following his own advice.
He objects strongly to the criticisms in my article (‘Aftermath of August’, September 1) of the stance adopted by the Socialist Party in England and Wales during the recent riots, finding them “sectarian” and “childish” - especially the suggestion that the organisation wants to reverse the cuts to the police service or has illusions in the police as a body capable of defending working people’s interests. Apparently, I am guilty of “taking out of context” 19 words from the original online article by Sarah Sachs-Eldridge (‘Tottenham riots: fatal police shooting sparks eruption of protest and anger’ - tinyurl.com/4ylhsyd).
Comrade Burns states that this section of the article was not expressing SPEW’s “view of the police”, but was merely reporting those of “local people” - namely, that “there is widespread anger that the police did not act effectively to defend people’s homes and local small businesses and shops”. Instead, according to the comrade, we should consult the “list of programmatic aims and demands” in the article’s final paragraphs in order to ascertain SPEW’s real position.
Yet, at the risk of further offending comrade Burns, an examination of both the ‘offending’ passage and the demands acts more to expose SPEW’s congenital left reformism than disprove it. Yes, it may be true that SPEW was reporting on local people’s feelings, but it did so approvingly - albeit using the journalistic sleight of hand that is unfortunately so common on the left today. For instance, Socialist Worker is always full of ‘ordinary’ workers who just happen to spout the current SWP line on this or that. Similarly, SPEW’s “local people” and their views are a sounding board for the organisation’s own reformism. Presumably, to put forward a principled Marxist position on the riots would be a manifestation of unBritish ‘ultra-leftism’.
Hence we read in comrade Sachs-Eldridge’s article: “Given how widely predicted rioting was, there was also anger that police were not prepared to protect local areas. Many blamed government cuts to police services.” Immediately after that we have the following quote from Paul Deller of the Metropolitan Police Federation: “Morale among the police officers dealing with this incident, and within the police service as a whole, is at its lowest level ever due to the constant attacks on them by the home secretary and the government in the form of the reviews into police pay and conditions.”
Why would you quote Deller in such a manner if all you wanted to do was show what working class people were thinking and feeling? In reality, SPEW journalists are not so innocent. Quite obviously, the article was written this way so as to give the effect that ordinary local people, the MPF and SPEW all agree that police cuts are a regrettable thing.
Let us take comrade Burns’ advice and look at the article’s very first ‘programmatic’ demand: “An independent, trade union-led inquiry into the death of Mark Duggan. Scrap the IPCC. We need police accountability through democratic control by local people.” This demand flatly contradicts comrade Burns’ protestations that SPEW has no illusions in the police. If they were made accountable in such a way, then surely it stands to reason that they would then be more willing or able to “act effectively” and “defend” working class estates - the implication is clear and does not need a particular imaginative Weekly Worker journalist to invent hidden meanings. And in this context, the demand in the final bullet point (“No to all cuts in jobs and public services”) can only be read to include the police.
But if comrade Burns could care to explain where I have gone wrong in my reasoning, then that would be most helpful for future debates on this issue.
Sleight of hand
Sleight of hand
Facile
When writing about the recent riots in terms of the sub-proletariat’s looting and burning rampage, I was responding to the facile idea, prevalent in trendy left circles, that the riots were ‘political’ and should be celebrated as such by the left (Letters, September 1).
My point was that the left is deluding itself precisely because the riots were not a conscious political act, but largely opportunistic self-aggrandisement. The point has been made repeatedly on the left that the riots were triggered by the cops shooting an alleged gangster in Tottenham. If you read the papers, black and white youth are knifing and gunning themselves to death every other day of the week in London, but, hey, where are the riots over that? If a cop kills an alleged gangster, the gangs don’t like the police to stray onto their patch - especially when there were also reports that the police had allegedly agreed a ‘passive coexistence’ policy with some gangs in north London.
James Turley raises the serious question as to whether rebel behaviour needs psychoanalysis when politics is the answer (Letters, September 8). The answer in terms of psychoanalysis is to be found, in my view, predominantly in attachment theory and research. But this is a thorny area for socialists and communists after decades of the vilification of psychiatrist John Bowlby (et al) by feminists who want to destroy the family. The left allowed David Cameron and the Tories to advance their agenda by arguing for stronger families and communities.
My argument is that the left needs to think again about how we are the real communitarians and thus that the families and communities we need to build are based on returning respect to men as husbands, fathers and sons. In areas of high unemployment it is often the women who are working and the men who are redundant: families are broken by grindingly insecure blue-collar work. The boys and girls lack a secure base within a stable family structure with two mutually supportive parents.
I agree with comrade Turley that only socialism can provide the basis to rebuild the social solidarity needed for stable families and communities. Rebel psychology stems from broken families. Thus my argument is against economism. Jemma French also makes the point that my critique was inadequate (Letters, September 8). The left has to be clear that rebel psychology can go either way - proto-fascistic, or proto-socialist - but it is not axiomatic that the hoodies looting, vandalising and burning down your estate and local shops are being political. It is not my hatred, comrade Turley; it is their hatred which is manifest in their aggression and destructiveness.
In other words, we are being intellectually and morally lazy to think that the rioters were revolutionaries. A pity that they did not join political parties en masse, but they didn’t. Why? Because the left has just as much failed these yobs as anybody else: the Labour Party through its focus on the rich, the celebrities, the salariat; and the ‘confessional sects’ and the feminists engaging in ever decreasing circles of sectarianism and family-bashing, allowing the rightwing Tories the political space to offer their own ‘remedies’ for ‘broken Britain’ as hegemonic.
Facile
Facile
Load of testicles
For Heather Downs, my 1991 book, Blood relations, is “among the most reactionary pieces of biological determinism ever promoted by the left” (Letters, September 8). Since my whole book was a sustained attack precisely on biological determinism, I am puzzled.
I note that the longest paragraph in comrade Downs’ letter is taken from a standard sociobiology textbook. It’s all about the relative testicle sizes of gorillas, bonobos and humans, the evidence (as she writes) “indicating female humans were originally predisposed to be less ‘promiscuous’ than bonobos, but not as monogamous as gorillas ...” Of all Heather’s points, that’s the one (unfortunately, the only one) which is both relevant and scientifically accurate. Yes, human males (and females) are biologically well designed for a certain degree of non-monogamy. But here’s the irony: argumentation of this kind, deriving ancestral social patterns from currently observed biological facts such as testicle size, is the very essence of the field once known as ‘sociobiology’. Is comrade Downs aware that she’s relying, here, precisely on that dreaded disciplinary field?
So on what grounds is all this so deeply reactionary? Apparently, my book “relies on sociobiology - the idea that society and culture derive purely from a biological base”. Well, that’s a hopelessly slipshod definition of ‘sociobiology’, which is (or was - scientists no longer call themselves ‘sociobiologists’) the application of ‘selfish gene’ theory from the animal world directly to humans.
Blood relations was a sustained attack on precisely that school of thought. It was an attack on sociobiology, as expounded by its rightwing ideological champions in the 1970s and 80s, turning their arguments upside-down. I explained how, thanks to the ‘human revolution’, our species - alone in the natural world - succeeded in transcending biological determinism. If comrade Downs didn’t read that part of my book, which part did she read?
Leaving my particular contribution aside, the fact is that anyone at all who is trying to explain the evolutionary transition from biology to culture has no choice but to do what the comrade condemns - namely, “derive society and culture from a purely biological base”. That’s because originally planet Earth featured only physics, chemistry and biology. Society and culture came later. Anyone doing evolutionary science - attempting to explain how society and culture first emerged - must derive the second somehow from the first. That’s true by definition. Hence my observation that Heather herself does precisely that when she derives ancestral human sexual predispositions from testicle size. Is there something subtly cultural about human testicles? Is this what makes their study politically correct in this comrade’s case, but not mine? Am I missing something? If not, then what exactly is comrade Downs’ problem here?
As for her positive suggestions, I am not impressed. She says that in hunter-gatherer societies, those women who happen to be sufficiently free of childcare burdens ought to go out and hunt for their own meat, assisted where possible by their brothers. There’s just one small problem with this idea. It’s not what hunter-gatherers actually do. Far from it: a man who hunted and offered meat to his sister would in most contexts face accusations of incest. Women normally don’t expect that kind of thing from their brothers: instead, they insist that in-marrying males ‘earn their keep’ by hunting and bringing the meat home. A lazy husband, as Engels notes, would find the house “too hot for him”. He would likely be thrown out and sent back to his mother by the womenfolk acting in solidarity.
The obligation of in-marrying men to work continuously as a condition of their marital rights is called ‘bride-service’. It’s the fundamental hunter-gatherer economic institution. You don’t have to call it ‘sex strike’, but it amounts to the same thing. Women, in any event, make things crystal clear: if you don’t help out, you get no sex. Read Engels again. I’ve always thought that a scientific theory ought to explain the facts, not some ideological picture of how things ought to be in an imaginary world.
Load of testicles
Load of testicles
Saxon plumbing
Early human birth control apart, there may be more than one kind of problem in finding arguments for a global egalitarian society in prehistory.
An early society of hunter-gatherers could indeed be ‘primitive communist’, but it might be a kind of communism that leaves a lot to be desired. Recent researchers into hunter-gatherer groups, whether Aborigine, Inuit or Pygmy, have found that the men do indeed hunt in bands and the achievement of their end is treated as a collective product - no-one owns the kill. However, when the hunt returns to the group, the meat is distributed according to seniority, not need. Women, on the other hand, have the role of gathering vegetables and fruit; then each woman cooks for an individual man, whom we would call her partner, and who is often from another faction or moiety of the group.
This social system binds men and women, families and factions, in a strong, communal framework defined by specific roles - bound by that and by the first attempt at explaining the world: animistic religion. With the emergence of private property, in herds or land, a few individuals and families became more powerful: that is, patriarchal.
If, though, we ask for a social system based on early human culture/biology, will we be trusted not to be hankering after a return to tribalism, strict gender roles or Saxon plumbing?
Saxon plumbing
Saxon plumbing
Dogma
Tony Greenstein still doesn’t get it. In a conversation with a Matzpen comrade, a former journalist acquaintance of his remarked on the Israeli social protest: “At last we are learning something from the Arabs.” I reported her appreciative remark in an article, as a hopeful sign; whereupon comrade Greenstein (‘Support the Israeli protest movement without illusions’, August 11) reviled it as a “racist” remark, as though she had said: ‘At last the Arabs have something to teach us’, and he chided me for reporting it “uncritically”.
Instead of apologising, Tony - who, unlike the Matzpen comrade, does not know the woman who made the original remark and was not present when it was made - now insists that “by itself the remark can clearly be construed” as racist and used to illustrate “a viewpoint common to settler-colonial peoples” (Letters, September 8).
It is indicative of Tony’s thinking that he distorts a positive remark so as to fit in with his dogma that the Hebrew nation will ever be irredeemably racist, irrespective of any regional transformations.
Dogma
Dogma
Co-op coal
Dave Douglass both misrepresents the argument I put forward against him and fails to answer the points made (Letters, September 8).
My argument was that the reason many things are now produced in other countries is that the capitalists in these countries can produce them more cheaply than can British capitalists. He presents this as me saying that these foreign capitalists are more efficient. I said no such thing and Dave has to chop another sentence later in order to make that argument. In fact, I gave a number of reasons as to why that could be, including the use of cheap labour - to which you could add lower safety standards if you wanted to be picky. Nor did I suggest that capitalism was doing this for the good of mankind. I made the point that so long as capitalism exists this will be the way that decisions on where to produce will be made. It’s not an argument, as Dave suggests later, for doing nothing, but for replacing capitalism!
Dave then concentrates all of his firepower on demonstrating that the efficiency argument that I had never made did not apply to coal. In fact, I admitted it was true that British coal was cheaper than foreign coal. However, I pointed out that the reason for closing pits was not due to the average cost of production being too high, but to there simply being too much coal being produced for the needs of the National Coal Board’s main customers - CEGB and British Steel. When it came to which pits to close in order to reduce this oversupply, then it was natural that the NCB would look first to those pits where the actual cost of production was highest. As someone with inside information, perhaps Dave could give us the actual figures for the cost of production at Cortonwood, or the other pits initially put up for closure, compared with those figures for France, Germany, etc. I think he knows that, in fact, as I said in my original letter, the UK average figure was only low because of the effect of the very efficient production at Selby and other super pits.
Dave then tells us about the benefits of state capitalist ownership of the mines, though apparently state ownership of the mines in Russia, eastern Europe and China does not seem to have had the same results. Of course, in telling us about the workers’ control introduced into the mines, which actually was little different to the system of mutuality introduced into car factories and elsewhere as part of the system of Fordism, Dave fails to mention that when it came to the most important requirement for such control, preventing the closure of pits, it was useless. It was not just useless under Thatcher, but had been useless when the even greater number of pits and job losses occurred in the first years after nationalisation. Nor did nationalisation and this workers’ control do much for miners’ wages during that time, which is why we had the bitter strikes of 1972 and 1974.
The one place where there had been something approaching workers’ control was in the cooperative-owned pits. But this was ended when these pits were also scooped up by the capitalist state. Yet Dave is scornful of the idea that workers really should have workers’ control over the pits, when he scoffs at the idea of setting up co-ops. But he’s wrong to do so because he then scoffs at his comrades at Tower colliery in Wales who proved him wrong. Tower colliery was unable to be run profitably either by the state capitalists or by private capitalists. Yet its workers took it over and ran it themselves. They not only ran it profitably, efficiently and safely, but were able to increase the number of miners employed there, until it became physically exhausted a few years ago.
Those who argue the profitability line against closures, as Bob Crow did over Vestas, for example, should have the courage of their convictions like the miners at Tower. If a business really is profitable, then why would workers want to hand it over to the capitalist state and continue their own exploitation at its hands? If a business is profitable in the way that Dave argues about coal, then surely workers should seize the opportunity to end their exploitation and to take ownership of the means of production themselves.
Dave says he was not advocating nationalisation of Bombardier, but it’s not clear what his solution to the situation there would be other than calling on the Tories to give them the contract anyway. Yet it’s clear that, across the globe, workers have been able to operate efficient cooperative enterprises that really are under their control. Perhaps that is why Marx and Engels, who based themselves on solutions that the workers had already developed themselves, looked to such an approach rather than on reformist calls for help from the capitalist state. Perhaps that is why they were able to look to the building of international working class solidarity as the basis of the workers’ response to capitalism rather than on calls for nationalistic solutions.
Co-op coal
Co-op coal
Capital idea
Having read Ticktin’s article on surplus capital, I should note that he’s not the only Marxist who emphasises surplus capital (and the lack of investment opportunities) over rates of profit (‘The theory of capitalist disintegration’, September 8). David Harvey is another such Marxist.
However, I have also read other material that suggests that the emphasis on finance capital, financialisation, etc à la Hilferding may be quite overrated, to say the least. This also puts a dent on vulgar ‘popular’ discourse on the matter. Here I will mention another form of ‘macro’ capital (like industrial and finance capital, as opposed to the ‘micro’ variable capital, constant capital, money capital, productive capital, commercial capital, etc).
Two Russian Marxists - Michael Prokovsky and your very own comrade, Boris Kagarlitsky - introduce trade capital. The former ignored finance capital, while the latter said in an interview with India’s Frontline that finance capital is merely subordinate to either industrial capital or trade capital at any given period of time. For example, neoliberalism is merely another period whereby it is subordinate to trade capital, and this in turn may explain more accurately tendencies towards export of capital (from classical Marxism on imperialism) and towards import of capital by the most developed capitalist countries.
I’d like to read an elaboration on the subordination of finance capital to one or the other form of ‘macro’ capital (again, industrial versus trade) in a given period, and how this plus surplus capital plays some role in particular crises.
Capital idea
Capital idea
British road
The essence of the British road to socialism is an alliance between the CPGB and a reformed or left Labour Party. The recent CPGB turn to the right and advocacy of a reformed Labour Party is no more than a reminder or revelation of this totality. This is not to claim that the current turn is exactly the same as the old idea.
If the Labour Party is a workers’ party, albeit with a degenerated bourgeois leadership, then such a CPGB-Labour Party alliance is an expression of a workers’ united front. If the Labour Party is a bourgeois party supported by a section of the trade union bureaucracy, then we have a form of popular front. In this latter case the Labour Party is an enemy party, albeit with a grip over the minds of working class people who trust or believe Labour represents them.
Hence the phrase ‘bourgeois workers’ party’ is vital, if only for its ambiguity, which conceals the class nature of the Labour Party. Labour actually has support and membership from bourgeois, middle class and working class people. But Marxism does not define the class essence of a party by its composition or who votes for it. The question is, which class does this party serve by its policies and actions, most clearly when in power? ‘What does the Labour government do?’ - not ‘What does the Labour Party say?’
The Labour Party has a proven track record as a bourgeois party. In its most recent guise as New Labour it was in league with Rupert Murdoch, as it was years ago with Robert Maxwell, the press baron, who openly supported the Labour Party and stole his workers’ pensions. This is not to claim that the Labour Party is the same as other bourgeois parties such as the Tories.
There is no equals sign between Labour and Tory. One cracks open the champers whenever the working class is shafted. The other cries buckets of crocodile tears if necessary. I will leave you to work out which is which (and the answer is not always obvious). To claim that the conservative and reactionary bourgeoisie and the liberal reformist bourgeoisie both serve the capitalist class is not to say they are the same.
Lenin treated the liberal bourgeois parties as worthy of the greatest invective. Partly this was because the liberals were posing as the friend of the workers, whilst hatching the most invidious plots and sell-outs. Workers could be deceived by the sonorous phrases of the liberals, not least when the Mensheviks were supporting and seeking popular fronts with them. Workers are not likely to be deceived by the Tories, but may have illusions in Labour.
In 1920 many saw the Labour Party as a workers’ party. It had never taken power and revealed its essence. Lenin pointed out that this ‘workers’ party’ was led by reactionaries in the service of the bourgeoisie. Lenin’s corrective, taken out of context, has been set in stone as dogma. ‘Bourgeois workers’ party’ conceals the class essence of the Labour Party. It ‘unites’ those who see it as bourgeois and those who think it is basically proletarian.
The two-party strategy of the British road is in essence a popular front. Its aim is for a left Labour government. Illusions in this are most dangerous at a time when Labour is likely to turn left. The militant workers need their own fighting party, not illusions that the Labour Party will fight rather than make left noises and sabotage any workers’ struggles.
We need a republican socialist party, not Her Majesty’s reformed Labour Party.
British road
British road
EDL invasion
On my way to work last week, I saw a large congregation of short-haired white men, before them a flowing St George’s flag. Seeing this caused me a great deal of concern, especially the words ‘EDL: Bolton division’ written on said flag. These men were crowded outside the bar where I work and occupied much space within it. I’m ashamed to say that I covered my CPGB pin, as I briskly walked through the mob. I can tell you, being a single communist walking through an army of fascists is not a pleasant feeling - I had always hoped that, upon meeting the EDL, I would have a substantial number of comrades by my side.
Having made it to the staff room, I was greeted by the manager on duty, to whom I could only say: “EDL. Everywhere.” She then informed me that the police had been called and until their arrival we should just try not to give them a reason to become violent. I was given the option of staying in the staff room if I so wished, but, as there were only two people at the bar - both foreigners and facing over 100 nationalist thugs - I decided this was no time for cowardice.
At the bar I was greeted by a sea of slack-jawed, dull-eyed faces, from which the words “Stella!”, “Fosters!” and “Heineken!” emanated, and little else. I found it ironic that a group called the English Defence League had such a slender grasp on the concept of queuing. As such, I resigned myself to pulling pints at as fast a pace as possible, and keeping my head down. There was some chanting - mostly involving the words, ‘England till we die’ - but many of the people were quite polite when spoken to on an individual basis. Across the road, however, I was told that the highly intimidated Asian shopkeepers suffered a fair amount of shoplifting.
Once the bourgeois law enforcement had finally arrived, after half an hour, they were unsurprisingly little help, and it was then decided we would simply close. As they left, some of the nationalists expressed their confusion at such a decision. One older member said: “You’re losing thousands by doing this. We’ve been making you money.” I didn’t bother explaining that what I earn doesn’t go up with the bar’s profits.
EDL invasion
EDL invasion
Plane view
Just look at the video ‘In plane site’ (www.brasschecktv.com/videos/the-911-files/911-in-plane-site.html). Stick with it. It lays the blame for 9/11 and the wars which followed on the US government, military and the arms industry and is pretty convincing.
I always thought this was a conspiracy too far, but the documentary is really mind-boggling. I won’t write any more - just watch it. It’s well-made and just over an hour long. I haven’t watched the other videos on this site, but this one alone was enough to convince me that something very big is being covered up.
Plane view
Plane view
Pension fight
The TUC have finally opted for industrial action in response to the refusal to soften the various elements of the proposed pension changes - a 50%-100% increase in salary contributions, loss of the final salary scheme and the raising of pensionable age to 66 and eventually 68. Unison, Unite and the GMB have finally agreed to start balloting members and therefore fall in with the other unions who have been urging action for months. They are the largest unions and as such are in a good bargaining position.
The attack on pensions is to ‘reduce the national deficit’. Those of us still ‘lucky’ enough to have employment will now be paying a large chunk to the bankers and then living in poverty when we eventually retire. A bleak future for the workers, that can only be dispelled by political and industrial action and civil disobedience.
Pension fight
Pension fight