Letters

Get real

Chris Cutrone argues that I “neglect Hegel’s observation that art in modern society cannot stand on its own, but must be made sense of conceptually, through criticism and historical comparison” (Letters, February 13).

The point is that Hegel concludes, when art is no longer able to stand on its own, that is an aspect of its own negation. As a result, art - as a special form of labour - will cease to exist. It will no longer have the ability to critique the world. Hegel gives two reasons for this. Firstly, in the name of historical progress, art is to be superseded by discourse, epitomised at the highest level by criticism and philosophy. Secondly, art cannot escape the spread of commodification. At this point, Hegel reconciles himself with prosaic reality: ie, modern capitalism and its market. This means that art has to go to the wall - that is its destiny.

On the other hand, this contradiction - between his love of art per se and his acknowledgement of capitalism as the epitome of progress - had a profound effect on Marx, as a young, aspiring poet. It was Hegel’s doctrine of the inevitable decadence of art in modern times which persuaded Marx to abandon his attempts to write poetry and to seek an answer to his desire to change an unjust world in the field of science.

Unlike Hegel, Marx refused to reconcile himself with bourgeois reality. Among other things, arguably, he recognised, in the words of Mikhail Lifshitz, that the “antagonisms of bourgeois society … resulted in the degradation of art as a special form of culture. But the communist revolution of the working class lays the necessary basis for a new renaissance of the arts on a much broader and higher basis.” It follows that, as long as the communist revolution is derailed or delayed, then the tendency for art to decay will become stronger.

Cutrone rejects my claim that “sexual fetishism is a species of commodity fetishism in Marx’s sense”. This is because my article “elides the crucial difference of Marx’s critique of anthological ‘fetishism’ from Freudian psychoanalysis’s theory of ‘(sexual) fetishism’ that postdates Marx and has nothing to do with political economy ... [The latter] has nothing to do with truth versus deception, and everything to do with ‘the way things really are’, the Hegelian ‘necessary form of appearance’ of social reality.”

I beg to differ. It would seem that the comrade’s remarks are couched in structuralist and Althusserian terms. They are premised on the idea that, as Marxists, we must separate - completely - the young, ‘idealist’ Marx of his early writings, from the mature scientific Marx of Capital. (This argument alleges that Marx never employed the concept of alienation or estrangement again, once he had won the battle against the left Hegelians. Not true!)

Along with many others - eg, Lucio Colletti (see his introduction to Marx’s early writings) - I believe this is a false dichotomy, based on structuralist theory. It is antithetical to the idea that Marx springs from the Aristotelian, essentialist tradition in philosophy. If the latter is true, as I believe it is, then Marx’s critical thought moved along an organic line of development, which stretches from his “reflection on philosophical logic to a dissection of the form and content of bourgeois society”. Therefore, according to Colletti, “his analysis of estrangement and alienation ... his critique of fetishism of commodities and capital can all be seen as a progressive unfolding, as the ever-deepening grasp of a single problematic.”

The problematic is, how can man bring an end to his alienation and fulfil his potential as an autonomous, creative, social human being? To put this another way, how does man get from what ‘is’ to what ‘ought’ to be, given his potential to become a completely human species-being?

Critics of Marx also argue that his 1844 Manuscripts simply reiterate Feuerbach’s theory of religious alienation: man objectifies his own essence; separates it from himself; he then makes it into a self-sufficient subject (god); finally the product comes to dominate the produce, the creature becomes the creator, etc. Thus, it is alleged, Marx elicits an anthropological theory, which deals with man in the abstract, independently of his social-historical development. But Marx’s own writings, beginning with his earliest ones (1843-44), reveal that he is engaged in a quest to establish a link between the nature of man and the development of his human potential.

Contrary to those who seek to separate the young Marx from the mature Marx, his account of religious alienation provided the model for his theory of the ‘fetishism of commodities’ in Capital. The gestation and development of his theory of alienation can be seen in his other writings.

On the question of what ‘is’ and what ‘ought’ to be, it would appear that either Cutrone has forgotten about Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach or he doesn’t give them any credence. If the latter is the case, once again, is this because they run contrary to a structuralist methodology, which eschews the idea of the organicist development of Marx’s thought? This appears to be borne out by the fact that Cutrone effects yet another dichotomy, which is just as important as the one to which I have already alluded: when he raises the question of commodity fetishism, he makes a clear separation between the dialectic of “truth versus deception” from “the way things really are”. Why? Does this mean that there is nothing to be done at either an individual or collective level?

A case can also be made concerning the link between the fetishism of commodities, the sexual objectification of men and women as well as sexual fetishism. Cutrone himself acknowledge this - for example, when he refers to the fact that “sex is bought and consumed as a commodity in the culture industry”; that “art participates in sexual objectification” (NB: alongside pornography, but where does the one end and the other begin?).

Instead of falling into Paul Demarty’s libertarian trap of ‘anything goes, as long as it is consensual’, where sexual relations are concerned, Cutrone seems to be saying: Dunn, get real - when it comes to ‘wrong’ behaviour in existing capitalist society, or art objects which reflect this, there is nothing we can do as individuals. On the other hand, we must be “able to contemplate and think about the specifically aesthetic experience of sex (not reducible to and apart from its other aspects: for instance, emotional intimacy”. (Thank goodness for that!)

But then at the end of his letter, he contradicts himself when he says it won’t do to attack the “false idols” of art for participating in capitalism. (But isn’t that what a Marxist who knows his/her way around art history aesthetic theory should be doing?) Finally he quotes Adorno (out of context): “Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.” Apart from bringing us back to Marx’s critique of Feuerbach, this really is a cry of despair - or does it mean, ‘Let’s stick to a narrow interpretation of political economy and leave it at that’?

Get real
Get real

Racism lesson

The article, ‘Self-flagellation and the kinky split’ (February 13), is a baleful example of where identity politics lead. That the Anti-Capitalist Initiative felt unable to publish it demonstrates that it is fearful of open debate. As such the organisation is irrelevant to any serious attempt to challenge capitalism. Identity in the eyes of the International Socialist Network majority appears to be a static concept. Yet it is meaningless unless it reflects actual social struggles. Identity is what one does, not what one is.

Twenty years ago Spare Rib split over the question of Zionism. Linda Bellos, a black Zionist (then, not now!) resigned and Jewish feminists engaged in the same kind of blackmail as the ISN’s gay black woman. They too were oppressed. Their Jewish identity was integral to support for Zionism and the Israeli state. Ipso facto, anyone who disagreed was anti- Semitic. (After all, there is nothing to stop a marginal group among the oppressors in this society claiming they are oppressed. Chris Bryant may be a Blairite MP who supports war on every occasion, but he is also gay.) On that occasion Women for Palestine fought back and founded their own paper, Outwrites. Spare Rib began to understand that the fight of black women was part of an active struggle against Palestinian oppression, not some indulgence in ‘identity’.

It is absurd and ludicrous to conduct a political debate with people who, lacking the ability to engage in an argument, present their own ‘identity’ in order to close down the debate and proclaim why they are right. Perhaps a gay, black and disabled woman would trump the person in question.

It is a fact that many people who are oppressed collaborate, for whatever reason, in their own oppression. One of the most feared informers in ‘Aryan’ Warsaw regarding Jews who were in hiding was a Jewish woman. Most black MPs are collaborators in racism. Elie Wiesel experienced the holocaust, but, unlike Rudolph Vrba and others, drew the wrong conclusions - namely that Zionist racism was fine. Identity is useless compared to one’s politics and activity.

Likewise the fact that Israeli is an oppressor doesn’t mean that one can trump individual anti-Zionist Israelis by asserting one’s Palestinian identity. Palestinian collaborators are still collaborators, whatever the colour of their hair. Nobody is fixed with an identity and a specific set of ideas.

The argument that all intellectual disagreements sit within a broader system of oppressions, as manifested by the various sexual identities, is both so general as to be meaningless and wrong for eliminating the class dimension of most disagreements. To defer to the self-selected oppressed is both racist and reactionary. Black people should be treated according to what they say and not privileged because it is they who say it.

Eric Williams, a black man, was wrong and economistic to argue that Britain ended the slave trade for directly economic reasons. In my opinion, Robin Blackburn, despite being white, was nearer the truth in the Overthrow of colonial slavery. Williams possesses a degree of knowledge, history and intellect, but the fact that he is black is irrelevant (his Communist Party orientation was more formative).

For the feeble black women of the ISN, who are unable to articulate their own politics, identity becomes a badge of honour, a get-out-of-jail-free card. I suspect it wouldn’t have impressed the white working class Women Against Pit Closures or all other women active in the fight against poor conditions or racism.

That Tim Nelson says he will shut up if every black person says he is wrong just shows how deep the guilt-tripping of some white comrades is, as well as his lack of understanding as to the fact that racism operates both at the level of the individual and society. Richard Seymour would do better than to waste his time on a group which is irrelevant to socialism or change.

Perhaps if the Tony Mayonnaises of the ISN and those who have guilt-tripped him were to spend some time campaigning outside a refugee detention centre they might learn a real lesson about racism.

Racism lesson
Racism lesson

Eco-nonsense

Comrade Jo Russell (Letters, February 6) objects to my criticism of eco-nonsense (Letters, January 30) by arguing that “The material conditions which pertained in Marx’s day - an abundance of natural resources, most notably energy, and a global population estimated at less than two billion - were very different to those which we confront.”

To respond to the first part of her claim: no, there was not a greater abundance of natural resources “in Marx’s day”. Marx wrote before peak petroleum, nuclear power and hydroelectricity. There’s no meaningful sense in which there were more natural resources in the 19th century. The environmentalist sees the earth’s resources ahistorically, as finite and fixed; the Marxist sees natural resources as historically determined by the existing mode of production and the level of technological development. What is a key natural resource in one historical period (eg, horses or peat) is replaced in another by things that were, in the previous setting, not considered very significant resources at all (eg, coal or uranium).

To respond to the second part of her claim, that old Malthusian chestnut: I think we are in fact far less overpopulated today than we were when Marx called the overpopulation thesis a “libel against the human race”. Never before in history has humanity been able to expect to live a longer, healthier and better educated life than it does today. In those empirical terms at least, the earth has never been better suited to human habitation than it is now, and we have never been in a better objective position to deal with whatever challenges nature’s caprice may throw in our way.

Lenin’s opinion still stands strong: we should “always conduct the most ruthless struggle against attempts to impose that reactionary and cowardly theory [of neo-Malthusianism] on the most progressive and strongest class in modern society, the class that is the best prepared for great changes”.

Eco-nonsense
Eco-nonsense

Factory fodder

Jo Russell (February 13) assumes that my letter (February 6) was edited and is absolutely right, but only in respect of punctuation, as unfortunately I was educated in a comprehensive school to the dizzy heights of ‘factory fodder’.

Comrade Russell is partially correct in assuming I had my tongue firmly in my cheek and I do not consider our founding fathers or indeed anyone to be beyond criticism. However, I believe Marxists should have a solid platform from which to convince the rest of the proletariat that communism is the only answer to the present system. In this respect I refer to The communist manifesto and would direct comrade Russell to section 2: ‘Conservative, or bourgeois, socialism’.

Factory fodder
Factory fodder

Contradictions?

I had hoped that the Weekly Worker report (February 13) of the February 8 meeting of the Communist Platform would clear up some of the ambiguities between the CPGB’s ‘What we stand for’ and the proposed CP carried in the February 6 issue, which I noted in my letter last week.

However, despite the panic reaction of the British ruing class and the Tory- Lib Dem-Labour alliance over the forthcoming Scottish independence referendum, and the worries of the Ulster Unionists about what this could mean for Northern Ireland, the CP meeting does not appear to have considered its own platform section entitled ‘The national question’. I mentioned the contradiction between WWSF and the CP with regard to the ‘One state, one party’ principle and WWSF’s ambiguity with regard to what is meant by a “united federal Ireland”. However, the contradictions and ambiguities appear only to have deepened.

John Bridge (CPGB) declares, according to the report, that “Federalism is not something that communists generally advocate … it was a question that should be left open to history.” Yet there are still two references to federalism in the CPGB’s WWSF - one for a “federal republic of England, Scotland and Wales”, and one for a “united federal Ireland” (nature unspecified).

However, the latter appears to have been dropped in the CP. Just to further confuse matters, back in WWSF, the two federal solutions appear to be subsumed within a third one for the “United States of Europe”. Yet the CP states that it wants a “united Europe under the rule of the working class” - ie, a unitary, not a federal Europe!

Is it not rather unusual that the CP, which is a kind of united front with others within the Left Unity party, appears to have more advanced positions, from a CPGB perspective, than its own WWSF?

Contradictions?
Contradictions?

LU democracy

I really like many of the positions of the Communist Platform. In particular the agreed motion on democracy is great. I like that part of your programme largely because it doesn’t define socialism in terms of just workers being in control of society (using the term, ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, which has been widely dropped due to it sounding extremely off-putting!).

I also agree with “the working class taking the lead in the fight to ensure popular control over all aspects of society” - despite the efforts of middle class people like Russell Brand, the ability of workers to withdraw their labour by going on strike (including carrying out general strikes) will probably prove key to achieving socialism. Perhaps Syriza could win majority support in a Greek election, but under our very undemocratic, misnamed ‘first past the post’ electoral system, Left Unity doing so here is virtually impossible.

I have a question, though - regarding the CPGB’s ‘minimum’ and ‘maximum’ programmes, which the Communist Platform’s programme doesn’t differentiate between. Is your call for “republican democracy” part of your minimum or maximum programme, or both? It seems to me to be of great propaganda value in our present society, in explaining how undemocratic capitalism is, but that the chances of it being implemented under capitalism is essentially nil.

I am reminded of the Bolsheviks calling for a constituent assembly after the capitalist provisional government came to power in the February revolution in 1917 and failed to grant any form of democracy; then Lenin returning from exile and calling for “All power to the soviets” (with much higher representation for workers than peasants) and the subsequent abolition of the assembly that was set up after the October revolution when the Bolsheviks and their allies in the Left Socialist Revolutionaries lost in elections to it.

This must not be repeated - if Left Unity (perhaps aligned with other socialists) comes to power through a general strike or insurrection, it would be vital to hold a democratic election (which these days means by a form of PR) soon afterwards (as well as carrying out the other improvements in democracy your platform suggests). If we don’t win such an election, the revolution is doomed anyway and it’d be better to be in opposition for a while than risk another 100 years of people called ‘socialists’ and particularly ‘communists’ being regarded as undemocratic by huge sections of the populations of Britain and across the world.

Mark Fischer’s report of the LU transitional national council (‘Assume we have a tin opener’, February 13), which unfortunately took place simultaneously with the Communist Platform meeting, omitted one significant detail - it was agreed (by a large margin) to conduct internal elections by a form of PR (single transferable vote). This may make it easier for your platform to get members elected, and it also makes a very democratic future socialist society which includes PR more likely!

LU democracy
LU democracy

Silly twats

I am glad Richard Tomasson replied to the self-styled Rugby Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (Letters, February 13). I had thought to do so earlier, then concluded, what’s the bloody point? All this self-serving, ‘no borders’, liberal nonsense is simply a posture. It has no practical application while the class struggle exists and different standards of life and social/economic standards exist across the world.

The only people who favour the free, unfettered movement of labour across continents and countries are the international capitalist class. No restrictions on labour, no control on labour, no interference with the ‘free’ market - these are all the hallmarks of the neocons and Thatcherism. Smashing the unions and their local and national controls on the supply of labour and regulation of the labour market was a key strategy in breaking the so-called power of the unions, forcing us into a race to the bottom. Mass influxes of European and Asian labour without roots to areas or labour traditions, unions, solidarity, class identity, etc are custom-built to break union organisation and standards built by unions in all European countries over generations. It’s a cock-eyed form of trade unionism they advocate in Rugby, right enough.

But one thing is clear: Pete McLaren has swallowed the whole anti-British working class shite of the media and liberal state - “they only do the work British workers don’t want to do,” he cries. Really? Doesn’t this man know that agencies recruit directly from eastern Europe and bring east European workers into Britain without any chance whatever of British workers applying for the jobs? That they are kept on contracts which tie them to the worst wages and conditions and lock them into accommodation and transport arrangements which mean in the blink of an eye you’re off home and banned from the agency. The whole point being to stop unions organising, to stop the children of unionised workers working in these plants, to stop access between agency and employed workers, to ensure they live in a different place and don’t mix with them and to ensure the contracts are temporary and you only come here to work and do as you’re told. Plants operating in areas of high union tradition have policies of not employing local workers for that very reason. Doesn’t Rugby Tusc know any of this?

Mass, unfettered migration of impoverished workers into previously union-organised working class communities with socialist traditions is not meant to further workers’ organisation and spread internationalism It is meant to break up communities, class-consciousness and union organisation and bring in a ‘dog eat dog’, ‘every man for himself’ scramble for work. Opposing this has nothing whatever to do with racialism, you silly twats; it’s got everything to do with understanding class strategy and restricting the labour market through control of the supply of labour.

No wonder you people confront workers on doorsteps and on the shop floor and in pubs every time you open your liberal traps or they open theirs. We are worlds apart. Top marks to Richard.

There noo, and I wasn’t going to say anything.

From a class-struggle trade unionist.

Silly twats
Silly twats

Two sugars!

If Svante Persson seriously believes that the CPGB and the Weekly Worker is “explicitly dedicated to bringing its niche readers the latest in curious sectariana and hot-off-the-press ‘leftist trainspotting’” then he has obviously not been paying sufficient attention (Letters, February 6).

No, what our project is explicitly dedicated to is an open and principled struggle for communist, partyist unity in Britain, across the EU and beyond. Can our development of the Marxist programme really be seen as “curious sectariana”? What about our work on the history of the communist movement - crucially, the disputed legacy of Bolshevism? Unimportant tittle-tattle? What about our critique of the drab and uninspiring Trotskyism that has come to dominate the British left? Our work on imperialism? What about our informed struggle against broad parties and against the idea that revolutionaries should limit their politics to what is deemed acceptable to the reformist and nationalist right? What about our letters page, where comrades with such radically opposed views as Corey Ansel (whose recent contribution was a letter, not a commissioned opinion piece) and Svante himself can write in and express their criticisms of our work? Would not Workers Power become slightly more interesting, given such a facility?

Like all of the best publications in the history of our movement - and in clear distinction to the largely unreadable mass of leftwing publications today - we place such stress on the politics of the existing left groups not out of self-indulgent titillation, but as a way of fighting for something viable that can transform the workers’ movement as a whole. If the comrade regards such things as “sectariana”, then it says far more about the state of Marxist politics today than it does about us. Moreover, while the Weekly Worker’s readership is certainly “niche” when it comes to society as a whole, it is easily one of the most read Marxist publications in the Anglophone world. This is not to boast: we on the Marxist left need to aim high and should be doing much, much better. That, as they say, is the plan.

Long ago, during a CPGB debate with the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, an AWL comrade accused the Weekly Worker of being little more than a gossip rag, just like comrade Persson does today. A CPGB comrade immediately handed her a copy of that particular week’s issue, and in front of all those present, asked her to point to one piece of actual gossip in that edition. If she succeeded, then the comrade would donate £10 to the AWL fighting fund. Unfortunately, she could find not identify anything that could be described in that way - the issue in question was “far better than usual”, she said.

With this in mind, if comrade Persson can locate any “curious sectariana” in this week’s issue, then I will donate a tenner - 100 Swedish krona - to the Arbetarmakt fund and buy him a coffee when I next see him. Should he fail, then I would suggest that he donate that amount to the Weekly Worker fund. Two sugars, please!

Two sugars!
Two sugars!