Letters

Learn Marxism

Hillel Ticktin argues convincingly that the first condition for revolution, as enunciated by Lenin, is in place (‘Marx’s spectre haunts the wealthy and powerful’, December 1). This is that the ruling class has no strategy for the maintenance of the capitalist system and is therefore unable to rule in the old way. He also argues that workers do not yet pose a direct challenge to capital. Capitalism will not be threatened until there is a “shift in consciousness towards socialism, in which the various doubts and slanders are discussed and dealt with”.

One of the most stubborn of these doubts and slanders is the idea that socialism is a utopian doctrine. Apologists for capitalism give three reasons why socialism is unrealisable. The first is that it is unviable economically, morally and politically. Socialism is inefficient and deprives individuals of their freedom. The second is that, even if it could be shown that socialism is a more rational system than capitalism, workers are too internally divided, demoralised and mutually antagonistic towards each other. They are therefore unable to form a class with the potential to take power and construct socialism. Finally, socialism is contrary to human nature. Human nature is essentially vicious, greedy and self-interested. Humans are therefore constitutionally prevented from creating a rationally organised society worldwide.

If Marxists respond to these doubts and slanders with outrage, they are in danger of being dismissed as dogmatic fanatics. On the other hand, it is not easy for class-conscious workers new to the socialist project to respond to them in an informed and reasoned manner. In order to counter the first point, workers need to be knowledgeable about both the political economy of capitalism and of Stalinism, as well as the Hegelian origins of Marx’s metaphysics. The second reason requires them to be well informed about the effects of imperialism, Stalinism as a form of nationalism and the international division of labour. The third demands they understand commodity fetishism, alienation, anthropology and the history of ideas about human nature.

I therefore welcome the CPGB’s decision to prioritise Marxist education (‘Marxist education, not rote learning’, November 17). I would recommend that, in discussions on the content of an educational programme, members be encouraged to study Ticktin’s article, ‘What will a socialist society be like?’, from Critique No25. Ticktin’s work on the political economy of Stalinism makes his presentation of socialism particularly enlightening. It is a good starting point for Marxist discussions of the political economy of capitalism, as well as the question of transition. It is sufficiently rich to lead on to further inquiries in philosophy and social science. Most of all, its content is an excellent contradiction to the bourgeois (and Stalinist) doctrine that socialism is an unrealisable utopia.

Ticktin suggests that a socialist party (or parties) with intimate links to the working class is a necessary condition for revolution. In order to create the conditions for such organisations to emerge and flourish, Marxists can support and encourage worker activists to study individually and collectively. Marxists can create teaching and learning environments in which it is safe for workers to air the anti-socialist ideas they have picked up from living in a bourgeois society. Marxists can learn how to resolve these doubts and refute the slanders without antagonising and frightening workers in the process of doing so. These are not impossible tasks at the moment.

It is to be hoped that the lead taken by the CPGB in developing an ongoing Marxist education programme will be sustained and determined, and that others will be inspired to copy it.

Learn Marxism
Learn Marxism

Pro-Mugabe

I’m afraid that Paul Anderson is stuck in the kind of mindset the left desperately needs to overcome if it is actually to challenge imperialism (Letters, December 1).

In saying that “The very term ‘capitalism’ without [acknowledging that it is interchangeable with ‘imperialism’] is a suggestion of equality between nations”, he shows no connection to reality. He simply uses the term ‘capitalism’ to describe nations and defines “equality between nations” in terms of development. There was certainly no equality in terms of the level of development before the turn to imperialism in the 19th century.

Many Marxist-Leninists target imperialism as the greatest threat - a moral evil on a par with fascism. Focussing on imperialism as the evil, as opposed to capitalism, has led to all sorts of ultimately counterrevolutionary ideas and downright bizarre positions from the Stalinists and their descendants. If imperialism is the main evil, we end up with Mao’s ‘bloc of four classes’ and the patriotic or national bourgeoisie. They do not have solidarity with the workers of their nation, but simply long for the day when they will be strong enough to export capital to foreign lands.

Combined with the Stalinist theory of ‘socialism in one country’, Marxism-Leninism became nothing more than the bureaucratic path to capitalist development for underdeveloped nations. The transition to capitalism for many previously underdeveloped third-world states that were ‘Marxist-Leninist’ has been rather smooth for the bureaucracy. Angolan president José Eduardo Dos Santos is the exemplar on this one. He’s probably Angola’s richest man, owns a lot of land and many of Angola’s largest companies, which are run by his family. Recently, his daughter’s companies have turned the old colonial tables and are now investing in Portugal!

Anderson writes: “The mention of Zimbabwe as an opportunity for the working class utterly dismisses Zimbabwe’s role as a target of imperialism.” I am inferring from this that he believes that Zimbabwe - or, more precisely, the Mugabe regime - must be defended first and foremost. Mugabe’s anti-imperialism has always depended on what he stood to gain from it. As leader of Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) during the Rhodesian bush war, he became the US and UK’s preferred choice to win the 1980 elections because he was not pro-Moscow.

While Mugabe used foreign aid to post some impressive initial social and economic gains, he was willing to enter into an International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programme, which almost led to the end of his rule in the 1990s. The Zanu elite were certainly in a position to profit from neoliberalism. By the time he turned on white farms and businesses in the late 1990s, he had already imprisoned, tortured or killed his African political opponents and terrorised the Ndebele. If Mugabe wanted to hold on to power and avoid a revolution, election loss or even a coup by members of his own party, he had to use anti-imperialism as ideological cover.

Certainly, the UK’s withdrawal of funds to buy white farms hurt Zimbabwe. It did not, however, cause hyperinflation or the other economic disasters that Zimbabwe has suffered in the past decade. Yes, there is the legacy of the IMF structural adjustment programme and certain sanctions, but this did not mean that things had to get as bad as they did. The economy has grown recently thanks to the Chinese. Mugabe bulldozed the slums of working class people on the outskirts of Harare in 2005 allegedly to provide land for Chinese businesses that had started to invest in Zimbabwe. Mugabe was now running a comprador regime to help Chinese capital. Compounding the collapse in food production, the Chinese started expanding the amount of tobacco grown in Zimbabwe. So hunger in Zimbabwe is caused by Mugabe tolerating Chinese exploitation of resources!

Mugabe’s policies have hurt everyone from the middle class to the peasantry, yet it is the working class that has suffered the most. They have been jobless because of the collapse in industry brought on by the SAP. The working classes are attacked by Mugabe loyalists from the peasantry. Many of these peasants fought in the liberation war or in Mugabe’s own internal security campaigns against opponents in the 1980s. For this reason they listen to Mugabe’s ‘anti-imperialist’ rhetoric because they are desperately impoverished.

As a result of the working class being terrorised, the anti-Mugabe Movement for Democratic Change is led by the middle class and the recently dispossessed white farmers. Even the Zimbabwe International Socialist Organisation, affiliated to the Socialist Workers Party’s International Socialist Tendency, had enough of them and pulled out (under dictatorial conditions you don’t expect a group like the ISO to pull out of a popular front formation). MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has proven to be both a voice of western capital and Mugabe’s tool to gain stability. He can also appeal to workers because he was once a trade union bureaucrat.

While Tsvangirai was coopted by Mugabe under the threat of civil war, the quickness in which he folded is a demonstration of the MDC’s pathetic liberalism. Mugabe uses terror. He tortures. He makes people disappear. Non-violent civil disobedience is going to end in violence. Mugabe can use the threat of civil war because the MDC has failed to mobilise the working classes. It just wants them to vote.

The class contradictions are manifesting themselves. The workers cannot get too radical. Many of them want the socialism that was originally promised after the end of white rule. The MDC isn’t really promising much either other than an end to Mugabe. It can’t even promise a return to the kind of society during the 1980s, because such redistributive economics would not get the thumbs-up from Washington and London, and no new IMF loan would come.

Mugabe could have probably finished the MDC off by now, especially since the economy is slowly recovering. Yet he hasn’t. He continues to intimidate them with arrests and beatings to keep them in line and in government, so the continued survival of the MDC must have a reason. I believe he has used the MDC to provide competency. Other than the attempt to Africanise businesses (but not the Chinese ones), which is only going to benefit the existing Zanu-PF elite anyway, he hasn’t taken any bold steps to create a more inclusive economy. Mugabe is quite content to let some pro-western liberals help administer the state, as long as they don’t challenge his supremacy.

Given Mugabe’s twists and turns and his willingness to accommodate Chinese capital, the only way forward for Zimbabwe is in the hands of the working class. Even bourgeois democracy seems impossible at this point. Calling for ‘Hands off the People of Zimbabwe’ is one thing, but those who dwell on keeping the west away from Zimbabwe have a sad history of making apologies for Mugabe and his crony capitalism. That is not anti-imperialism. It is possible to say no to both Nato and dictators like Gaddafi, Assad and Mugabe.

While I do not know if Paul Anderson comes from the Stalinist tradition, his view of anti-imperialism is most likely influenced by it. It is something that the left must overcome if the working classes are actually going to emancipate themselves. Imperialism is but a symptom of capitalism, which is the main enemy.

Pro-Mugabe
Pro-Mugabe

Writing on wall

According to Hillel Ticktin, “There is no strategy available to the capitalist class which has any kind of realistic chance of success, other than going for growth of productive industry, but the bourgeoisie is afraid that this will produce a return to the 1970s, with a powerful working class demanding concessions, and ultimately the supersession of the system”.

The view that going for growth is a strategy available to the capitalist class is palpably untrue, at least where the mature capitalist countries are concerned. All options are running out for the capitalist class. The first thing to point out is that capitalism is experiencing the most serious financial crisis in its history, brought on by a lack of economic growth. The bourgeoisie recognise that growth is the solution, at least in the short term, but bringing it about is another matter. That’s one reason why it’s wrong for Arthur Bough to argue that monetising the debts of countries like Greece and Italy can provide a solution to the euro crisis.

Rather than fearing that economic growth will strengthen the working class and lead to socialism, the capitalists have always used growth and prosperity to buy off workers and divert them away from socialism. As long as capitalism was prosperous, socialism could remain on the backburner and those who advocated it were ridiculed and marginalised.

But the capitalist class will find it increasingly difficult to start growth and keep it going. That’s why the writing is on the wall for capitalism.

Writing on wall
Writing on wall

Percentages

Ben Lewis wrote a fine article critiquing Die Linke’s second draft programme (‘Left rhetoric and reformist illusions’, December 1). I would, however, like to point out a bit of a contradiction between two statements of his. First, he writes of “the working class majority conquering political power”. But later on he writes about the need for the “working class to win majority support in order to reshape society”. There’s too much classless democratism in that latter statement.

Consider what James Turley wrote succinctly in his October 20 article, ‘A global act of refusal’: “But then, there are medium-sized concerns owned by a larger layer of capitalists, who, while hardly as flush as the transnational jet-set, still have a considerable stake in the system; and below them a large layer of small owners - the urban petty bourgeoisie, remaining pockets of small farmers and the managerial middle class - who are in a more ambiguous relationship to capital. A corner-shop owner may want the power of the corporate elite curbed; but in fact he is just as reliant on finance capital as Tesco. The working class, in turn, has interests antagonistic to, or at least conflicting with, around 30% out of the 99%.”

Assuming we maintain the scenario where the working class forms the demographic majority, still not everyone in the population is working class. This means that a 51% majority in the class does not equal 51% majority in the population. We need to win concrete majority political support from the working class - a slogan like ‘We are the two thirds’ would be more class-explicit.

‘We are the two-thirds’ could garner support from two-thirds of the American working class, but that’s only 44% overall. Within the context of a revolutionary period, this percentage should not deter the class-conscious workers from ‘undemocratically’ capturing political power. On the other hand, if 51% of the general population were supportive, but 51% of the working class demographic majority opposed, then I would deem any seizure of power ‘on behalf of the proletariat’ as a coup d’etat.

Percentages
Percentages

Third way

On Ben Lewis’s argument on Die Linke and participation in a coalition government, I am not convinced that there is not a third way, such as agreeing that the SPD can govern, but that the left will not take positions within it. This is called a ‘confidence and supply’ model: you negotiate the budget and leadership of the government, but sit outside it and can vote for or against what you like.

We can see that the Green Party, whose politics were much more transformative than the left, had their radicalism blunted and were transformed by the coalition with the SPD. So you are right - the left would be in danger from any deal. However, I think it’s a moot point, as the most likely outcome next year is that Merkel will strike a deal with the SPD to remain in power. I just can’t see the SPD, Greens and Left Party all getting along in a three-way agreement, and the Pirates are too unpredictable. A CDU-SPD coalition is the only thing that will work. The left party can thus argue about this for another five years.

Third way
Third way

Key figure

Your readers might be interested to know that the an association called Les Amis de Robespierre in Arras, northern France, is campaigning to open a museum dedicated to Robespierre and the French Revolution. Robespierre was born in Arras and the house he lived in is now owned by the city council, which intended to convert it into a museum, but later changed its mind.

People’s views on Robespierre vary enormously, but they are often expressed as undisputable facts with no background knowledge to support them. Les Amis de Robespierre would like to redress this situation. Whether we see him in a positive, neutral or negative light, no-one can deny that Robespierre was a key figure of the revolution and, as such, he should be better known to the world at large. The museum at Arras can only be a modest beginning to achieve this end.

There is a petition online that has already been signed by several eminent writers and historians, as well as members of the general public, from 27 countries around the world. The link to the petition is www.opc-moe.com/robespierre/cousin22.php. If anyone has any questions or would like to know more about our aims, please contact me directly: aureliaperilla@hotmail.com

Key figure
Key figure