WeeklyWorker

17.11.2011

Marxist education not rote learning

Communists in the CPGB will be prioritising the study of the fundamentals of Marxism, focussing initially on Marx's political economy, to combat the Keynesian quackery prevalent on the left, reports Alex John

CPGB members gathered for an aggregate meeting in London’s Conway Hall on November 12 for a discussion on the fast developing global economic crisis and the stepping up of political education in our organisation, opened by comrade Mike Macnair.

Comrade Mark Fisher also led a discussion about the need to establish a “culture of security” in our organisation and on the left generally. However, paradoxical though it might appear, our politics, including political differences, should be totally open.

Mike Macnair’s elaboration of the nature of the crisis which is shaking global capitalism at present, and the ruling class fear that the slightest spark of resistance may ignite a prairie fire of revolt, is presented elsewhere in this issue. He followed this by emphasising the importance of comrades equipping themselves with a rounded education in the fundamentals of Marxism, and the priority which the Provisional Central Committee of the CPGB proposes to give to the study of political economy in the coming period.

A weekend school is in preparation, to be held probably near the end of January, on the themes of political economy, crisis theory and Keynesianism. However, difficulty has already been experienced in finding appropriate speakers. The interaction which was common in the 1960s and 70s between Marxist academics and left organisations, said comrade Macnair, now seems to be the exception. With the decline of the left, academia has largely withdrawn into itself, away from political practice, typified by the journal Capital and Class, which has now become purely academic.

In the intervening weeks, CPGB cells and discussion groups should prepare by organising collective study of basic Marxist political economy texts - and he recommended two titles: Marx’s Capital by Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho; and The economic doctrines of Karl Marx by Karl Kautsky.

While the ruling class is showing that it has no solutions to the crisis, we reject the horrors of green Malthusian population culling; but most of the revolutionary left has forgotten its Marxism and is only able to present stale Keynesianism - a utopian recipe for saving capitalism, not its overthrow and replacement by socialism. The effective application of Keynesian solutions, said comrade Macnair, would require overturning the hierarchical system of existing states, and the defeat of the US military which underwrites the existing global order.

Our communist education work has fallen behind events, he said. It is paradoxical that, faced with the greatest capitalist crisis since World War II, the left, and the workers’ movement as a whole, is fragmented, weak and confused. The workers’ movement must be rebuilt. Every attack on the working class must be resisted. In the context of participation and intervention in this struggle, our big job, the major task of the left, is to develop the Marxist alternative. And the big job of Marxist education is to develop comrades capable of thinking on their feet, thinking for themselves.

We are not talking about ‘training’, said comrade Macnair: teaching particular skills to enable a person to carry out specific set tasks. The word ‘education’ derives from the Latin ‘educare’, meaning  to ‘lead out’. Comrades need to be familiar with the vocabulary of Marxism and to master the “general toolkit of basic Marxist ideas” - not so that they can parrot the latest central committee slogans by rote, but to enable them to form their own opinions, to make their own decisions.

In the books we publish - like Jack Conrad’s Fantastic reality, or comrade Macnair’s own Revolutionary strategy - we not only strive to develop new theory, but also to recapitulate existing theory. In our Weekly Worker articles, he said, we strive to engage with current debates. A major difficulty in developing a Marxist alternative understanding of the crisis is that the meanings of all the basic Marxist concepts of political economy - like class, value, money, for example - are disputed on the left. The available introductory texts on Marxism should be read with caution, with an awareness of the political trend which produced them, whether the Socialist Workers Party’s Chris Harman with his state-capitalism theory; Ernst Mandel; David Harvey - who still carries a ‘people’s front’ residue from his Maoist period; or the ‘official communist’ Emile Burns’ Introduction to Marxism, written at the peak of the ‘official’ CPGB’s Stalinism.

The ‘Introduction to Marxism’ section on the Communist Students website (http://communiststudents.org.uk/?page_id=5836) is “not very good”, said comrade Macnair. Our recently restarted London Sunday evening seminars are using Lenin’s text on ‘The Marxist doctrine’, written in 1913 and 1914 for Granat - the major Russian encylopedia at the time (these weekly seminars are presently limited to members and close supporters until we have found a suitable central London public venue). The strength of Lenin’s Granat entry is that it was written just before the August 1914 split in social democracy with the start of World War I. It gives a broad Second International overview of Marxism, uncluttered by the disputes of later decades. But, of course, said comrade Macnair, that is also its weakness. Nevertheless, it provides a good starting point.

First in discussion, comrade Manjit Kaur thought the situation was “more serious than the 2008 crisis”, and that we should have no illusions in Keynesian solutions. Default on the state debt by Greece, Italy and then France would bring “major changes in the world economy”. In 2008, states had bailed out banks, but now it is whole states which are in trouble. The Occupy movement, she said, may be small at present, but it represents the tip of the iceberg of popular discontent. If there are bank queues of people unable to withdraw their deposits, which is likely by January 2012, if not sooner, then it could quickly mushroom into a mass movement.

Comrade Kaur warned against the “hot-house training” of comrades to intervene with Marxist solutions in discussions on the crisis, saying that “older CPGB comrades have transferred a negative attitude” towards other left groups. Some younger comrades display arrogance and “look as if they have been hot-housed”, she said.

Comrade John Bridge agreed with a lot of comrade Kaur’s comments, and spoke against “rote learning of slogans”. The type of education we need is quite different. We must “draw out, not hammer in”. We need comprehensive education to facilitate a rounded view. Our immediate concentration is on political economy, but we cannot downgrade our emphasis on politics and democracy. We aspire to “an educated working class which can think on its feet”. The choice of the Granat Encyclopedia entry for London seminars was “to find out what level comrades are at”, he said. Answering comrade Kaur’s speculation about bank queues, “If we thought the occupy movement was going mass,” he said, “we would be holding this aggregate down at St Paul’s.”

Comrade James Turley expressed doubts about the value of trying to give comrades a “philosophical grounding” in Marxism. Debating issues of Marxist philosophy, he thought, had a tendency to divide the left. Each group had its own hobby horse. While the Socialist Workers Party fetishises Lukács, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty has a thing about Gramsci. Comrade Alex John disagreed: while favouring our immediate emphasis on political economy, this cannot be a substitute for an all-round approach. Comrade Turley’s concern to avoid the supposed divisive effect of debating philosophical issues was ill-founded, he said. “Marx was against philosophy; he spoke of the end of philosophy.” The task is not to learn Marxist philosophical dogmas, but to free ourselves from the dogmas of philosophers.

Comrade Sarah McDonald emphasised that education goes hand in hand with political interventions, and the art of speaking in public and intervening in political debate can only be learned by doing it. We should seek to educate, not to antagonise, she said, and regretted the Weekly Worker’s unremitting use of the acronym ‘SPEW’ in contexts where we were not specifically critiquing the nationalism of the Socialist Party in England and Wales. This gives Socialist Party members an easy excuse to dismiss us and makes it more difficult for them to be receptive to our arguments.

Weekly Worker editor Peter Manson, however, argued that SPEW deserved the title. They had brought it upon themselves by first accepting, then advocating, the nationalist-inspired creation of a separate organisation in Scotland. The acronym is a handy way of reminding them - and us - of this important defect in their politics.

A number of other comrades spoke in discussion. Replying, comrade Macnair commented that “humility is the problem” for Marxists, not arrogance. Instead of proclaiming their Marxism, many on the left water it down so as to accommodatre those to their right. In economics, comrades must “learn the language” in order to be able to “handle the substance”. If we are to “argue from history”, we must learn history. Lastly, there is no contradiction between reading, studying and discussing, and going out to intervene politically.