A paper of Marxist polemic and Marxist unity weekly

Yassamine Mather n Letters and debate workern July 10 strikes delves into Israel’s n Crisis theory secret nuclear arsenal n Marc Mulholland No 1019 Thursday July 17 2014 Towards a Communist Party of the European Union www.cpgb.org.uk £1/€1.10

Marxism 2014 presents...

Codename: carry on as before

AN YGAEL GLUCKSTEIN PRODUCTION 2 weekly July 17 2014 1019 worker letters

Letters may have been abolished; and that the British state whistling”, pretending not to understand the Lib Dems in Westminster. the respectable face of youth culture - top shortened because of needs to be overthrown - not broken up the term as embodying coded hostility to It does mean there is a real national DJ, presenter of youth radio and family space. Some names - are under attack. These old ideas have ‘foreigners’, whether of English or other question to be addressed - and the TV, friend to prince Charles and prime  may have been changed yet to be winkled out their Labourist origin, who may not fall into line behind demand for a federal republic does minister Margaret Thatcher, marathon shells. Loyalty to them forms part a nationalist project. indeed address this - with the strategic runner for charity, the face and voice of Spoilt vote? of what Sandy McBurney calls the In commenting about the “dark side” aim of strengthening working class unity public service ads for car safety and the The debate between Sandy McBurney “rearming of the labour movement”. of the English ruling class (as opposed to on the basis of struggle. But those, like then nationalised British Rail: the long (Letters, July 3) and Jack Conrad Presently, they require preservation, the very light-sided Scottish ruling class), Steve Freeman, who have capitulated to hair of which the establishment approved. (‘Sinking loyalism and lifeboat reiteration and rethinking as part of a Steve speculates about the role of state nationalism and seek to paint Salmond’s He got away with his long list nationalism’, June 26) on the Scottish transnational democratic movement agencies, such as MI5, and reactionaries, referendum in anti-imperialist and of assaults because of his status: he referendum is welcome because it for a United Socialist States of Europe defined by the Irish question, such as republican colours, are as hostile to combined pop with British altruism - raises the question of how Marxists and against austerity, disintegration the Orange Order, in mobilising against this from their own ‘left’ chauvinist a role-model for youth at the height of can contribute to an understanding of and division. Salmond’s new bourgeois monarchy. It standpoint as the more conventional the welfare state; ‘fun’, fit and northern nationalism and how to defeat it. Moreover, a negative vote does not is certainly not unlikely that MI5, or at Labourists and social-imperialists. without the excesses of a Keith Richard Marxists oppose contemporary entail loyalty to the crown, the Protestant least elements of it, will engage in hostile Ian Donovan or the Bolshiness of a John Lennon. He nationalism - the popular doctrine settlement or the British armed forces. activity to this, though not on the basis email didn’t get this privilege by being born that people with a shared language or Indeed, apart from breaking up the latter, of fundamental class interest; rather of white, male and well-off. In fact he culture should form separate national membership of the Scottish National bureaucratic convenience. Striker’s diary suffered pneumonia as a child in Leeds states - on the grounds that it is a form Party is consistent with a commitment As for the Orange Order, their main BBC radio news bulletins on July 10 and spinal injuries working in the mines of cross-class alliance. This alliance is to strengthening both the monarchy function here seems to be to give indirect seemed to slip from saying a million during World War II. formed between small business people, and the established Protestant church in cover to the pro-Nato, pro-monarchy would be out to saying hundreds of I don’t know why he abused so sections of the intelligentsia and part of Scotland. Opposition to independence SNP, by allowing the partisans of the lion thousands while I was getting up for many, but I know why he had so much the unemployed masses. It attempts to does not mean a commitment to loyalism rampant and the saltire to use the Irish an early start on the picket line - had opportunity: his position in a class society draw into its influence both capitalists in the above sense. tricolour for camouflage. As indeed does Coulson’s successor got to them? which increasingly relied on the illusion and workers. Jack Conrad suggests that Marxists Steve Freeman in mentioning this ‘little I wore my Unison tabard on my of social advancement by celebrities who Nationalism within a declining should raise the demand for a federal matter’ of Salmond’s lesser kingdom in (earlier than usual) way into work, just could be trusted to keep their mouths shut capitalism is of a different nature than republic. Abolition of monarchical forms the same breath as the miners’ strike and to emphasise to the public that class- about politics - a silence complemented during its ascendant phase. In the 19th of government and the nationalisation of the Irish struggle. What do they have in conscious striking workers do not take by the silence of their victims; in Savile’s century, nationalism destroyed feudal the land are some of the first measures a common with such historic working class a strike day as unpaid annual leave, but case, girls and boys. relations that held back workers’ workers’ government would implement. and anti-imperialist struggles? Nothing! regard striking as a job in itself. Rather than concentrate on movements towards socialism. In a However, in a contemporary context, Steve seems to think that George Our picket of the town hall in a (not condemning one individual’s attitude to post-Stalinist world, nationalism is republicanism appears to support those Galloway has changed politically since desperately militant) London borough another, we should attend to institutions, no longer progressive. It is part of left nationalists who argue that socialism he stood up to imperialism over Iraq. Not succeeded in arguing one person into because it’s people with the most social a panoply of controls over workers. in Scotland will come into being through so. At the time he was being expelled striking who had not intended to, and power - bosses, adult relatives, priests These have the potential to bring into a series of stages - first, independence; from Labour for calling for armed most of those working did take leaflets and officials of all kinds - who abuse the being barbarism. For example, there are second, a republic; and, third, socialism. Arab resistance to Bush and Blair, he from us - though one colleague seemed most. no instances of struggles for national The federal republic demand coincides was just as outspoken an opponent of to think that saying that he liked me Mike Belbin liberation within the last 70 years with the second stage and is inconsistent Scottish nationalism as he is now - to his personally ought to stop me from London that have advanced the struggle for with the CPGB’s criticism of ‘halfway credit in both cases, whatever his other attempting to engage him politically as he socialism. On the contrary, they have houses’. In addition, Steve Freeman has political flaws. His views and activities crossed the picket line. I gather we closed Caveat retarded or actively destroyed it. intimated that Marxists who characterise about imperialism have not discernibly some buildings in the borough and I think I plead ‘guilty’ to submitting letters Stalinism - the doctrine that proclaims Scottish republicanism as a form of changed either. that my increasing visibility recently regularly to the Weekly Worker - a it is possible to build socialism in one nationalism are secret agents of the Maybe if the SNP were the anti- as a Weekly Worker reader may have ‘crime’ I do believe Andrew Northall country - is the key to understanding British state (Letters, July 10). The latter imperialists Steve seems to think they contributed to a stronger turnout among (Letters, July 10) shares with me. I this historical difference. Stalinism grew suggestion is intended to scare people are they would put into practice some of my immediate colleagues than in the last fully appreciate the paper’s editorial out of the nationalisation of the Soviet into supporting a ‘yes’ vote. the spirit of Galloway’s stand over Iraq strike, with a lot of managers having to practice to encourage the expression of economy. Its apologists and fellow Finally, spoiling ballot papers on the and promise to use their hoped-for state do frontline cover. I engaged one person a diversity of opinion and, hopefully, in travellers supported nationalisation grounds that the forces on both sides are power to send modern weapons to the on the picket in a discussion on wider some debates, I have made a worthwhile and the extension of the public sector divisive is as valid a form of abstention Palestinians to even the score in the one- working class strategy, saying I was a contribution. Nor have I been reticent wherever they had influence. The public as a boycott. A boycott implies that the sided slaughter the Israelis are inflicting. supporter of the CPGB/Weekly Worker in linking to Weekly Worker articles on sector created a large social group of calling of the referendum is in itself But there is zero chance of this; the and outlining some party positions: she the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s educated workers who see their interests reactionary. It implies that referenda are SNP’s verbal support for Palestinian took the WW I had about my person. discussion lists when I recognise their as lying with the state. It is a section of modes of democracy that would not be rights will go the same way as their past On the way to the central London value to our own debates. this intelligentsia in the arts, education, used in a socialist society. In which case, opposition to Nato and their one-time march, we heard rumours that Oxford I do not speak on behalf of my health, housing and social care who we need to start preparing for a boycott demand for a referendum on breaking Circus tube station had been closed and party, but as a member of it, hopefully now see nationalism as more congenial of the 2017 referendum on Europe. We ties with the British monarchy. Like had a quite unnecessary ideological split expressing its views accurately. I see than Labourism to the progress of their need to be discussing now with our the Liberal Democrats in England - with comrades in our local National no good reason why the Weekly Worker interests in Scotland. European comrades whether a boycott - another bourgeois party that adopted Union of Teachers branch on how should not indicate that I am a member This group is pushing for demands for rather than a ‘yes’ vote - is the best way left-sounding positions when power therefore to get to Portland Place, going of the SPGB on those occasions I do not increased social provision, higher wages of developing class-consciousness on a seemed far away - such talk is literally our separate ways. The march sign off as such. It is not something I am and better conditions for the unemployed European scale. meaningless once it gets a chance seemed lacking in energy and what I ashamed of or desire to conceal. in an independent Scotland. This is the Paul B Smith to govern an imperialist state. And heard of the speeches was full of vaguely Andrew is correct that on one bargain they have made with Scottish email Steve Freeman, for all his misleading inspiring, but politically ineffectual, occasion the fact I do write as an capitalism in return for mobilising attempts to wrap Scottish nationalism reformist sloganising. individual has resulted in disagreement the working class for secession. Its Scots knots in the flag of the Irish struggle, does not Finally, a couple of hours in the pub with fellow members who did not share leadership is now coopted within the Steve Freeman ties himself in yet dispute my contention that Salmond’s at the branch’s expense, where I tried my views and he himself was not slow nationalist project. more knots in his most recent letter. lesser kingdom will also be just as in vain to raise the level of political in drawing this to your readers’ attention How likely is it that there will be He expresses deep regret that no-one, imperialist as the current UK state. discussion, and then home to hear on the in a letter to the Weekly Worker, having concessions? As Sandy McBurney has and certainly not I, takes much notice Contrary to economistic socialists news that ‘red’ Ed had not supported the spotted the exchanges on our internal pointed out, the Scottish ruling class is of his incongruous use of ‘arguments’ like Sandy McBurney, there is a genuine strike, though even the BBC were saying (but open to public viewing) discussion committed to policies of austerity. The in favour of a ‘Scottish republic’ when Scottish national question. It is not simply one in five schools had been closed. A list. This led to one SPGB member chances they would reflate the economy he is arguing for ‘yes’ vote support for about ‘selfishness’ and keeping North very mixed day of ‘class in itself’ and writing to the paper to disassociate and reintroduce full employment and an Alex Salmond’s referendum for Scottish Sea oil for Scots only, as he asserted ‘class for itself.’ his interpretation of our party’s case expansion of expenditure on the welfare independence. recently. Though this was the genesis of Tony Rees from mine. If there has been any more state are therefore small. In which case, Sorry to be pedantic, Steve, but there the dispute between the Scottish ruling email controversy caused within the SPGB any hoped for upsurge of working class is no option for a Scottish republic on class and the English, the consequent because of my letters to the Weekly activism would be met with repression. the ballot paper. Nor is it one of the so- loss of conventional Tory support in Institutional Worker, they have passed me by. If English nationalism were to grow called ‘unwritten questions’ either. The Scotland gave British Tory governments Paul Demarty’s remarks on ‘privilege Perhaps, in future I should, as many in reaction to independence (and the SNP has made it clear that a vote for the opportunity to use Scottish workers theory’ (‘Treating people like toy soldiers trade unionists do, add the caveat, ‘SPGB rest of the UK leaving Europe), it is separation from the UK does not mean as guinea pigs for anti-working class results in frivolous politics’, July 10) (in a personal capacity)’! possible to imagine border controls and abolishing the role of Elizabeth Windsor measures later used in England. The result reminded me of a case where we can Alan Johnstone the consequent demands of ‘Scottish jobs as Scotland’s head of state. There will being a form of left nationalism gaining clearly distinguish a moralistic approach SPGB for Scottish workers’ (and ‘English jobs be no republic. If Steve were serious a degree of support in the working class from a social institutional one: namely, for English workers’). Discrimination about this republicanism, he would based on social democratic rhetoric from that of Jimmy Savile. No expulsions and prejudice would intensify as a result. surely be seeking a price higher than the nationalists, when for a whole period The received wisdom in the Savile In response to Andrew Northall, the Some Marxists opposed to gratis for his support for this creation of Labour retreated from social democratic case is that ‘victims were not believed’, day the SPGB expels or otherwise independence are calling for a boycott a new state! Some kind of commitment ideology itself. the problem being that young people restricts members for openly arguing or for spoiling ballot papers. But what to republicanism, perhaps? Otherwise This is hardly a deep division in the spoke about his rape and abuse, but for opinions only held by a minority of about calling for a ‘no’ vote? Jack Conrad what is he doing voting to create a new working class as yet, though the bulk their immediate elders - parents, head members is the day the SPGB becomes thinks a negative vote is incompatible monarchist imperialist state? Isn’t one of the Scottish left has capitulated to nurses and TV producers - couldn’t bring a ‘democratic centralist’ party. with Marxism. He describes socialists enough to deal with? it as readily as the bulk of the British themselves to believe it. These individuals Other than those opinions and communists calling for this vote as Steve also objects very strongly left capitulates to Labourism and had the wrong attitude (while the rest of contradicting the declaration of principles “left loyalists”. to being accused of “dog-whistling” imperialism. But it does open up the us were ‘guilty’ of being taken in). The that are agreed upon joining, expulsion is He is correct to suggest that some of against leftwing opponents of Scottish possibility of a split in the historically state is currently making enthusiastic something the SPGB conferences have their arguments are conservative and separation, of putting about implicitly constituted working class movement on efforts to compensate for ‘our’ failure always rejected. SPGB members can have been used to support Labourism. xenophobic smears. He objects that they this island that would represent a further, with new laws and the police pursuing openly disagree and argue for different For example, the ideas that Scottish are not smears, but “allegations”. As for serious defeat for workers on either side every last suspect TV star. positions (even after majority decisions) and English workers have more their implicitly xenophobic content, he of the border. In such circumstances, the But in fact most victims of Savile without threat of expulsion. in common than their employers; does not even bother to deny this, but ‘left’ credentials of Scottish nationalism didn’t speak out: they kept quiet; they Jon D White that immigration controls should be instead makes a feeble joke about “dog- would disappear as quickly as those of knew he was protected. After all, he was SPGB BCM Box 928, London WC1N 3XX l 020 7241 1756 l www.weeklyworker.co.uk l [email protected] weekly 3 worker 1019 July 17 2014 July 10 Enough bluster and bullshit Last week saw a major strike of public-sector workers. Daniel CPGB podcasts Every Monday we upload a podcast commenting on the current political situation. In addition, the site features voice files of public Harvey looks at the aftermath meetings and other events: http://cpgb.org.uk/home/podcasts. London Communist Forum Sunday July 20, 5pm: Weekly political report from CPGB Provisional Central Committee, followed by open discussion and Capital reading group. Calthorpe Arms, 252 Grays Inn Road, London WC1. This meeting: Vol 1, appendix: ‘Results of the immediate process of production’ (continued). Organised by CPGB: www.cpgb.org.uk. Support Lambeth College strikers Friday July 18, 7.30pm: Fundraiser, Blackheath and Newbridge Working Men’s Club, 22 Charlton Road, London SE3. With Revolting Peasants theatre group, folk music. £5 waged, £3 unwaged. Organised by strike supporters: www.facebook.com/events/1491617917741560/?ref=52&source=1. Remember Tolpuddle Friday July 18 to Sunday July 20: Annual labour movement event, Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum, Tolpuddle, Dorset. £25 for weekend (children £5, under-5s free). Sunday no charge. Organised by Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival: www.tolpuddlemartyrs.org.uk. Save Gaza Saturday July 19, 12 noon: Protest, Downing Street, London SW1. Organised by Palestine Solidarity Campaign: www.palestinecampaign.org. Oppose the EDL Worth losing a day’s pay for? Saturday July 19, 12noon: Counterdemonstration, Hexthorpe Methodist Church, Urban Road, Doncaster DN4. uly 10 saw the largest one-day workers could debate the issues during boat too much. Hardly the best way to Organised by Unite Against Fascism: www.uaf.org.uk. strike since 2011, with teachers, a lunchtime meeting and take a vote on inspire people. But, in the absence of The real World War I Jfirefighters, council workers and the spot. The postal ballot system was any credible working class alternative, Saturday July 19, 10am: Demonstration to commemorate the real other public servants walking out over precisely meant to depress turnout, and waiting for a Labour government can history of the war, Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, London SE1. pay and pensions. Estimates of the give workers time to ‘cool off’. seem the most realistic option. Organised by The Real WW1: www.therealww1.wordpress.com. numbers involved vary from 500,000 Very few unions have stood up to There are those on the left who are (government ministers), through 1.5 these laws. Despite some militant talk, outright delusional, of course. John Yorkshire People’s Assemblies million in The Independent, to a high they have on the whole accepted their Rees, the former national secretary of Sunday July 20, 3pm to 6pm: Regional gathering, TSSA office, 51-53 of two million in the Morning Star. new role as litigants, who see tribunals the Socialist Workers Party, current co- Nunnery Lane, York. The strike was meant to challenge the as the preferred means of representing leader of Counterfire and main organiser Organised by York People’s Assembly: government’s restriction of public- their members. Strikes have declined of the People’s Assembly, came out with http://yorkpeoplesassembly.wordpress.com. sector pay to one percent annual to negligible levels - what is referred a gem this week. Following the July 15 Support Ritzy strikers increases since 2010. In response, to by the establishment as ‘industrial cabinet reshuffle, which saw education Sunday July 20, 4,30pm: Protest against strikebreaking, Ritzy cinema, the National Union of Teachers was peace’, where swingeing cuts in the secretary Michael Gove demoted Brixton Oval, Coldharbour Lane, London SW2. demanding a stratospheric two percent living standards of workers can be to chief whip, comrade Rees wrote: Organised by Ritzy strikers: - actually below the rate of inflation imposed without any real resistance. “Gove’s departure is a victory for social www.facebook.com/events/312933652200911. and so in effect representing a pay cut. Confidence among workers is movement trade unionism. It shows that In fact, public servants’ pay is key to being able to challenge this. a political campaign combining protest, Crisis in Iraq widely estimated to have fallen by Laws can be rendered inoperative if street action, petitioning, marches and Thursday July 24, 7pm: Public meeting, ‘How the US-UK wrecked a fifth in real terms over the last enough people challenge and break strikes can unseat the heir apparent a country’, St Saviour’s Hall, St Saviour’s Road, Saltley, Birmingham four years, and the government has them. A confident workers’ movement of the Tory right ... It’s a vindication B8. Speaker: Chris Nineham. extended the freeze until 2018, with would see them off. But, with unions of the strategy for which the People’s Organised by Stop the War Coalition: www.stopwar.org.uk. Labour in full support. So it is hardly dominated by full-time bureaucrats, Assembly and the NUT and other surprising that many workers have often beyond the control of the rank unions have been arguing.”2 Palestine solidarity been left scratching their heads by and file, it is safe to say that 24-hour The problem, of course, is that Friday July 25, 8pm: An evening of Arabic song, Rich Mix, 47 this strike call, wondering whether it is token actions will remain the order of the reshuffle has widely been seen Bethnal Green Road, London E1. With Reem Kelani. even worth losing a day’s pay to fight the day. Far from instilling confidence, as a “cull of the left”, with many Organised by Palestine Solidarity Campaign: www.palestinecampaign.org. for such a derisory increase. This is to their failure to achieve tangible results of the more moderate Tories being Justice for Mark simplify things somewhat, as there are serves to instil further demoralisation. given the boot, while at the same Monday August 4, 5pm: March and vigil to remember Mark Duggan. pension disputes involved, as well as At the moment, the Liberal time more female faces were brought Tottenham Police Station, 398 High Road, Tottenham Hale, London N17. working conditions. Firefighters will Democrats have not indicated they into the government. If anything Organised by Justice for Mark: www.justice4mark.com. see their pensions almost cut in half if are going to back any changes to the the new cabinet represents a further they are unable to keep working until laws. The plans are “potty”, according rightward shift in the Tory agenda, Socialists and World War I they are 60. to Vince Cable. So any changes will getting ready for the election and the Monday August 4 to Sunday August 20, 11am to 5pm: Exhibition, Even so, Socialist Worker has probably have to wait for a majority possibility of driving through an even SPGB head office, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4. been telling its readers that we must Tory government in 2015. more reactionary agenda after next Organised by Socialist Party of Great Britain: not allow the unions to “squander the But will more anti-strike legislation year. It is true that Gove was highly www.worldsocialism.org/spgb. mood to fight”, as “this is a fight we be a vote winner? Right now an upsurge unpopular among teachers and just No to Nato can win” and could bring about a new in union militancy looks unlikely, about everyone else in education, but “wave of struggle”.1 This seems to so telling people that the unions are it is simply crazy to claim his departure Saturday August 30, 1pm: Anti-imperialist protest, through central misread the situation among workers, “holding the country to ransom” does is due to a victory scored by comrade Newport. Assemble Civic Centre car park, Godfrey Road, for march to whose morale is generally pretty low. not really work any more. Even the Rees, the PA and the unions. rally at Westgate Square. Many who struck on July 10 did so Daily Mail did not work up much froth The labour movement needs a long- Sunday August 31, 10am: Counter-demonstration, County Hall, without any real enthusiasm. in its comments on July 10, generally term strategy to break out of the death Atlantic Wharf, Cardiff CF10. Speakers include: Boris Kagarlitsky, Almost as soon as the walkout was confining itself to pouring cold water grip of lesser-evilism with respect to Jeremy Corbyn, Lindsey German. announced the Tories were threatening over the “dismal” turnout. It claimed the Labour Party. For that we need Organised by Stop the War Coalition: www.stopwar.org.uk. to introduce yet more anti-trade union that only “one in five schools” was independent political organisation, Right to Remain laws, which would limit the right to closed, showing that most teachers which would have the effect of Saturday September 6, 12 noon to 5pm: Conference on immigrant strike to where the turnout in postal have “accepted the economic reality”. inspiring confidence in the struggle rights, Praxis Community Projects, Pott Street, Bethnal Green, London E2. ballots is higher than 50%. They Predictably, the Mail also poured over wages, hours and pensions - Organised by Right to Remain: www.righttoremain.org.uk. admitted this would virtually rule out scorn on Ed Miliband for his refusal to and the audacity to demand what we public-sector strikes in future. It would either support or condemn the “selfish” actually need instead of real-term pay No glory in fact make it almost impossible for actions of the unions. Towards the middle cuts. That is, a vision that will give Saturday September 20, time tbc: Peace History Lecture, Friends unions to collectively defend their of the afternoon on July 10, Miliband people something worth fighting for Meeting House, 6 Mount Street, Manchester M2. Speaker: John members’ interests. was actually drawn into commenting on that goes beyond ‘fair’. Westmoreland. Many have stressed the hypocrisy the strikes, which he said were “always In the meantime it is less than Organised by No Glory: www.noglory.org. of these proposals, since, if it applied a sign of failure”. It was oddly similar to productive to constantly bang on at Britain needs a pay rise to local elections, most current Tory his comments in the interview he gave the union leaders, demanding they call Saturday October 18,11am to 5pm: National anti-austerity protest, councillors would have failed the after the one-day walkout of public- more strikes. Enough of the bluster Hyde Park, Westminster, London W2. turnout test - not to mention London sector workers on June 30 2011, when and bullshit. The answer lies in the Organised by Trades Union Congress: www.tuc.org.uk. mayor Boris Johnson, elected by a mere he said: “These strikes are wrong … I empowerment of the rank and file - a 37% of those entitled to vote. But for urge both sides to put away the rhetoric, task that goes hand in hand with the CPGB wills some the assumption underlying this get around the negotiating table and stop revival of the left. In other words, we Remember the CPGB and keep the struggle going. Put our party’s is that we can expect fairness from it happening again.” need to get our own house in order l name and address, together with the amount you wish to leave, in your a government backed by business Yet the strategy of most union leaders will. If you need further help, do not hesitate to contact us. interests. If the Tories genuinely wanted will be as always based on the need to Notes to increase turnout, they could, of get Miliband elected as the lesser evil 1. Socialist Worker July 8. course, bring back voting on-site, where - and that will mean not rocking the 2. www.facebook.com/john.rees.372?fref=ts 4 weekly July 17 2014 1019 worker SWP ‘Delta force’ still in denial ‘The party’ had been on the right track all along, according to its leadership, and is now in fine health. Peter Manson reports on this year’s Marxism festival fter the substantial drop in wished to ask, “How about Marxist This inconsistency became even attendance at last year’s unity?” I watched as the ‘Team more striking when comrade Kimber AMarxism, the annual summer Marxism’ comrade handed my request talked about the importance of building school of the Socialist Workers Party, to comrade Kimber, who was sitting a broad anti-Ukip campaign. While there was a further small decline at in the front row vetting the slips and we in the SWP are for open borders, the 2014 event, held from Thursday deciding whether to add new speakers he said, it was perfectly correct to July 10 to Monday July 14. Socialist to his list. He showed mine to the campaign alongside those who might Worker reports that “over 2,600”1 comrade next to him and exchanged say, “I think there should be some attended the event, compared to “more a joke before discarding it. immigration controls, but I don’t like than 3,000”2 in 2013. True, an ex-SWPer who is now a Ukip”. His conclusion was: “Good! However, while the leadership member of Revolutionary Socialism in Let’s work with them.” This really is a may have steadied the ship somewhat the 21st Century was called to speak, “united front of a special type”! One that following the crisis of the last and he correctly stated that the SWP joins forces with people who “don’t like couple of years, which resulted in needed to “talk about how we organise Ukip” - even though they themselves the haemorrhaging of hundreds of internally”, but nobody referred to favour immigration controls, which members, there is very little sign that the necessity for the left as a whole to the SWP contends are in themselves the SWP is either seriously trying to organise differently - ie, to ditch the racist. So we are uniting with racists in account for that crisis or attempting rival sects and unite on a principled a campaign against racism. to learn the lessons. Its leadership Marxist basis. Further adding to the contradiction, under Alex Callinicos and Charlie In fact the message from most of the one speaker from the floor said that Kimber has no concept of the kind speakers was quite the opposite - the racism was Ukip’s “weak spot” and of united Marxist party based on bureaucratic-centralist SWP is already it was very “defensive” about it. At genuine democratic centralism that the embryo of the party we need. So a recent local Ukip event picketed by the workers’ movement needs. Candy Udwin urged comrades to step the SWP, its members had objected: This refusal to even address the up their interventions - “everyone “We’re not racist - look at all the black possibility that the practice of the can be involved in struggles, trying and Asian candidates we’ve got.” But, SWP - otherwise known as ‘Delta to lead them” - while Maxine Bowler to loud cheers from the audience, she force’ - might be less than perfect got very excited about the possibilities declared this to be totally irrelevant. was most evident at the big Saturday for advance, if only we had a “bigger Hannah Sell of the Socialist Party evening rally (that, in reality, was SWP”. Members of the International Martin Smith: still has friends in England and Wales was the last what it was, although it was billed Socialist Tendency in France, Spain speaker from the floor. She seemed as just another session), entitled ‘Is and Egypt proclaimed the same Simon Wells, a comrade who was applies to the group’s refusal to even to find nothing contradictory in the left in crisis?’ and presented by message in relation to the global indeed expelled from the SWP in discuss a revolutionary programme, comrade Kimber’s speech - in fact comrade Callinicos. This was held struggle - in the words of the Egyptian 2006 (and who subsequently joined by which it would be possible to she agreed with “most” of it. But she in the Institute of Education’s huge comrade, “Build the International the CPGB). Comrade Wells had been assess the usefulness or otherwise of strongly objected to the SWP inviting Logan Hall, which holds almost 1,000 Socialist tradition - let’s provide the telephoned out of the blue by then policies adopted and thereby hold the “Labour and Lib Dem councillors people and was very nearly full. It was revolutionary leadership!” national organiser Martin Smith - leadership to account. But comrade who are imposing cuts” onto its Sutu one of those highly choreographed As comrade Callinicos began his yes, comrade Delta himself - who Molyneux in his response to me at platforms. She also asked comrade affairs, where, despite the speaker’s reply to the ‘debate’, a collection told him, “You’re out of the party”. the ‘Marxism and anarchism’ meeting Kimber, “What about an electoral slips being handed out by the comrades to “build the party” was taken and He had not previously been presented declared that Socialist Worker’s 600- alternative to Ukip?” Surely we should from ‘Team Marxism’, most of those I am sure a four-figure sum must with any charges, let alone been given word ‘Where we stand’ column is “our be prioritising the Trade Unionist and who came to the microphone after have been donated by the assembled a chance to answer them. He was only basic programme” and there was no Socialist Coalition. Callinicos’s speech had already been loyalists. Comrade Callinicos actually informed of the specific accusations need for some “grand document”. In his reply, comrade Kimber made selected in advance. surprised me for a moment when he when he said he wanted to appeal. The “no apology” for organising meetings The talk was based on his article, called the “fragmentation of the left” charges included “bringing the party Sutu disaster where Labour councillors had been ‘Thunder on the left’, published in the an “absolute disgrace”. But then it into disrepute” for having reported on But this lack of any democratically invited to speak. It is, of course, latest edition of the SWP quarterly immediately became clear that he his blog what had happened at a local agreed programme allows the SWP to perfectly acceptable to campaign journal, International Socialism.3 was only proposing, in his words, a Respect meeting involving John Rees, flit from one mobilisation to the next, alongside, or form temporary alliances Comrade Callinicos began by “minimal degree of left unity” - he who was SWP national secretary at claiming that whatever the current with, all kinds of forces, in specific answering in the positive the question very much regretted that, “faced with the time. Comrade Wells had allegedly campaign happens to be is central circumstances, but comrades Kimber posed by the title of his talk and for a such a crisis, the left isn’t able to get been “disrespectful” to Rees (who to advancing the struggle. And the and Sell both missed the central point moment seemed to include the SWP its act together in a common electoral himself fell out with the rest of the latest such campaign is, of course, about this: the fact that this particular itself amongst the left formations that form”. Such electoral cooperation, leadership and flounced out of the Stand Up To Ukip (Sutu), whereby campaign is targeted at a party that is are “in crisis”. Replying to unnamed which would not be “contradictory SWP in 2010) for repeating verbatim SWP comrades mount pickets and merely the most consistent and extreme critics of his article, he denied that it to building the SWP”, is all that is the comments of the national secretary demonstrations at meetings organised in pursuing an agenda shared by all the was an “attempt to conceal or explain required to overcome the left’s crisis and those of Respect members who by the UK Independence Party, rest - including those speaking from away the crisis in the SWP”, which had apparently. But there is no doubt what disagreed with him. culminating in what it hopes will Sutu platforms! resulted in “a series of splits” over the the priority is. He ended by pleading: Although comrade Wells had been be a major demonstration at Ukip’s As for Tusc, it was “an important last few years. “Please join us - we need you. The told before the ‘appeal’ that he was national conference in September. part of our work”, continued comrade Just as he did in the article, he truth is, you need us.” also accused of “factionalism”, that So a key session was ‘Who are Ukip Kimber (although not so important that referred to the “period of good charge was not brought up at the and how do we stop them?’, introduced it had been the subject of even one of feeling” that had begun in the late Thought crime ‘hearing’, so he was none the wiser by comrade Kimber himself. For him, the 163 sessions at Marxism). But there 1990s, thanks to the “forward march The same inability to contemplate self- about whom he was supposed to have Sutu was “one of the best things the would be “at least 500 constituencies” of new electoral formations”. It criticism was also on display at one of been ‘factionalising’ with. The fact SWP has done recently”. Ukip, he said, where Tusc would not be contesting was a period when the European the much smaller sessions I attended. of the matter is that the real reason was spreading racism “on behalf of next year’s general election, which is Social Forum was “effervescent, After Huw Williams had spoken on comrade Wells was expelled was big business and profit”. And, just in why “we need something broader” like confident and growing”, and when ‘Marxism and anarchism’, I was called for questioning certain policies at case comrades in the audience might Stand Up To Ukip. new left parties like Rifondazione to speak - there was no speakers’ SWP meetings. Comrade Molyneux have believed that Ukip is a rightwing, Is comrade Kimber seriously Comunista in Italy, the Nouveau Parti slip system in operation here. In my listened to what comrade Wells had British nationalist formation rather one suggesting that Sutu will make a Anticapitaliste in France, the Scottish contribution I stressed the nature of the to say, but I found it astonishing that specifically targets certain ethnic greater impact than Tusc? In one Socialist Party and Respect started to party which, as comrade Williams had that he appeared not to know of the groups or nationalities, he asserted: sense, it might. It does, after all, fit build support. But unfortunately over pointed out, distinguishes revolutionary case, even though comrade Wells had “There is no doubt it is racist.” To in with the mainstream anti-Ukip the past period they have all been hit socialists from anarchists. It must subsequently told the full story in the ‘prove’ it, he reminded us of Nigel consensus, so in theory it could win by “fragmentation and crisis”. be a party that allows for a variety of pages of the Weekly Worker.4 Farage’s comments about how people support from members of all the other And the conclusion? Nothing but views within Marxism and their open Comrade Wells admitted that his would be “concerned” if a group of parties (although I do wonder how platitudes, such as the need to “keep expression, I said, not one that expels views had been influenced by, amongst Romanians moved in next door and, SWP members would feel if they were our nerve” and stick to a “principled members for voicing disagreements - a other things, what he had read in the even less convincingly, about parts of commended for opposing Ukip by, Marxist analysis” that was “honest practice that I hoped the SWP would Weekly Worker in the period before Britain becoming like “a foreign land”. say, the Tories). But in another, more and realistic”. After all, we “can’t now leave behind. his expulsion, but is that an expellable True, Ukip was only stating what important, sense Sutu is a disaster: just hope”. The implication was not I was taken to task by former offence? The future party will surely the mainstream parties had been saying it abandons basic class solidarity in only that the ESF, NPA, SSP, Respect, ‘loyal oppositionist’ John Molyneux contain a huge variety of opinions on on immigration all along, continued favour of a cross-class campaign etc really were entirely positive, but for saying such a thing. According to particular tactics, on how specifically comrade Kimber. But it was shifting that targets one bourgeois party and that, as far as “the party” itself is comrade Molyneux, the SWP had never we should organise, and so on. the whole of politics to the right and implicitly exonerates all the others. concerned, everything had been, and engaged in such practices - he himself Naturally members will be open to for that reason it had to be opposed. See what I mean about the absence remains, pretty much on course. The had in the past frequently voiced persuasion by arguments that originate It was “beginning to penetrate certain of a programme? l SWP “crisis” had, it seems, nothing disagreements, but had never been outside the party too. But none of that areas” and is “transforming the debate”. whatsoever to do with flawed SWP threatened with disciplinary action, applies to the SWP. However, if Ukip is actually building [email protected] practice or organisation. Ignore the he said. In other words, the SWP had However, if the SWP is to become on the mainstream anti-immigration debacle around comrade Delta and always been perfectly democratic, so part of the project for a Marxist party consensus, what is the logic of targeting Notes carry on as we are. there is no need for a rethink. based on genuine democratic centralism only Farage’s party? Surely, the Tories, 1. Socialist Worker July 15 2014. 2. Socialist Worker July 16 2013. I went through the motions of filling Fortunately, shortly after the and not its bureaucratic impostor, then Liberal Democrats and Labour must 3. International Socialism No143, June 2014. in a speaker’s slip, giving my name meeting I bumped into comrade it will have to start by recognising its also be “racist” when, like Ukip, they 4. See ‘Expelled for thought crime’ Weekly Worker and organisation, and stating that I Molyneux when I was chatting to past and current failings. The same claim immigration is a problem. July 5 2006. weekly 5 worker 1019 July 17 2014 miners 1984-85 Awakened to the class struggle This Rebecca Sachs article from issue confined to ‘traditional roles’ such as struggle over coming months. violence of the police. 11 of The Leninist (August 1984) organising the ‘field kitchens’ that kept First, the need for a working class Lastly, that the key to making the was our first extended commentary miners and their supporters fed, but women’s movement - definitelynot social and political gains these heroic on one of most inspiring aspects of quickly many women found themselves a version of the feminist/pacifist women had won for themselves both the miners’ Great Strike of 1984-85. propelled onto the front line - be it Greenham Common camp, as permanent and a springboard to further Comrades Sachs writes here about the face to face with the brutish police recommended by the likes of the advances was to promote “the self- first stirrings of a movement that was to mobilised to attack the miners’ picket venomous Eurocommunist trend in the activity of women, dispelling the doubts become Women Against Pit Closures lines, or face to face with audiences party in those days. Second, that the they have about their own abilities, and at a national delegate conference in up and down the country, making militantly organised forces of the women drawing them into practical work around Chesterfield in December 1984. The passionate and eloquent speeches should have the right to representation at struggle on a general basis … to fight for role of the working class women of the explaining the miners’ fight. every level of the movement - something the day-to-day interests” of women. coalfields was rapidly transformed by the Certainly, there are flaws in this that, while it started in some areas, “has While the defeat of the strike made scale and ferocity of the confrontation early article in the newspaper that was not gone nearly far enough”, we noted. that perspective unrealisable, the role of between the National Union of the forerunner of the Weekly Worker. It Third - and again in stark contrast to Women Against Pit Closures showed a Mineworkers and the government of clearly reflects an important weakness of the soppy pacifism urged on them by tantalising glimpse of what was possible Margaret Thatcher. our tendency in the CPGB of the time. the feminist fans of Greenham - that the and what needs to be fought for. The role of wives, girlfriends and However, as with other contributions in class-struggle institutions women had to Mark Fischer female family members of striking this series, the themes that we identified be organised into were workers’ defence miners may initially have been mostly as key were to be borne out by the corps: military bodies to counter the [email protected] Women strike back n Barnsley on May 12, at a consciousness. active support for the strike. Greenham women represent little more and drawing them into practical work demonstration by 10,000 miners’ However, with male and female Not surprisingly, the miners’ wives than a nuisance to the ruling class and, around struggle on a general basis. Iwives against pit closures, Arthur workers struggling courageously side by have no illusions about the police - if they were anything more, have no We must show working class women Scargill triumphantly declared: “Our side, victory can be ours. The strength and indeed the police have made doubt the fact that they are women through experience that every step women are not just helping the men of such unity was felt by one miner’s it clear they recognise the added would not stop the state’s thugs from in reforging the Communist Party, in the kitchen - they’re with the men wife when she said: “If this government strength that the women give to the using violence against them. every action directed against the on the picket lines.” Now women’s thinks this fight is just against the strike and consequently they have The Greenham women also do not exploitation of capital, is a blow participation in the strike has reached miners, then they’d better think again doled out the same treatment to the even present a threat to the conventional against women’s oppression. such a widespread level that a national … I’ll say to the government … men, women as to the miners: “No lady-like image of women, but, on the contrary, The demonstration of women’s demonstration of women’s committees women and families are together now treatment for us. We are even being emphasise stereotypical roles as ‘life- support committees is a step in this is being organised. This transition in and you’ve got one hell of a fight on accused of head-butting those great, givers’ and glorify the myth of female direction, but we cannot just be self- women’s role from passively serving your hands.” The valiant roles women seven-foot-tall coppers.”2 How would congenital non-violence. By contrast, congratulatory: we must struggle for out soup to participating in militant have played in revolutionary struggles these women relate to that outspoken the Tories recognise the challenge that a qualitative step forward. Scabs’ picket lines is no trifling matter. It is in the past bears witness to this. In Eurocommunist, Bea Campbell, the militancy of the miners’ wives wives may be gunning for Scargill, an important development which must 1917 the spark that actually fired the who, after the National Graphical present because of the strength given but the mass of miners’ wives are be applauded as an advance not only Russian Revolution was a strike by Association dispute,3 declared that by their support. Thatcher is living gunning for victory - they have to for the miners’ fight, but also the class women textile workers. This revolution the violence was in reality little more proof that there are no universal be armed with a clear strategy for struggle in general. planted the most powerful blow against than a reflection of a macho attitude? ‘women’s interests’, but only class that victory. We should fight to When large numbers of women’s oppression ever struck. Janie Glen, defending comrade interests. She talks of a return to ensure the active participation of flying pickets were arrested in In order to ensure this type of success Campbell’s view, added insult to injury Victorian values, of the importance women in spreading the strike to Nottinghamshire and were forced to the Third Congress of Comintern made by stating that she could not imagine of women in the home, of women’s other industries; the working class is sign a declaration to the effect that clear the necessity of strengthening “the “two groups of men with opposing traditional ‘peaceful’ role; this is facing a concerted, well-orchestrated they would not return, many of their will of working women by drawing views and objectives coming together selective. The women of Thatcher’s class offensive from the bourgeoisie wives took the unprecedented decision them into all forms and types of civil without such violence erupting”. So class can afford to buy their freedom - we cannot fight with one hand tied to go in their place, and angrily conflict”: the experience of conflict far, the Euros have kept quiet about in the form of nannies, expensive behind our backs. We say, strike back confronted scabs and pro-scab wives. has indeed strengthened the resolve of the violence during the miners’ strike, laundries and ‘dailies’, while they with the miners. Fight back with the Spontaneously, incensed women have miners’ wives, in many cases groups but when it ends they will be throwing pursue interesting jobs or go shopping united workers’ offensive. organised demonstrations outside of supporting women have stated similar accusations at the miners. in Harrods. She has no qualms about The August 11 demonstration social security offices and electricity that their motivation to take militant Will the working class women who unleashing her thugs on the miners or represents women that have been boards that are aiding Thatcher in her action came from seeing at first hand have taken part in the struggle agree the women who support them. awakened to the class struggle and attempts to starve striking families the way the police acted. For example, with their attack on working class The fact that violence erupts on they must not be allowed to go into submission. In one particular a group of women from Thurscoe in violence? Is it such bourgeois feminist picket lines is a class question and back to sleep after the miners’ fight, instance women formed a picket south Yorkshire were travelling down nonsense which has motivated them? is not a result of ‘maleness’; but whatever the outcome. The aim around houses where electricity was to Ollerton in Nottinghamshire when Something that the miners’ wives this does not mean that chauvinism from this demonstration must be the due to be cut off and convinced the they were stopped, harassed and held understand, but that the Euros with does not exist within the workers’ formation of a working class women’s workers that had come to cut off the by police in their bus for two hours: their petty bourgeois sensitivities movement. We fight the prejudices movement. This struggle should exist electricity not to cross the picket “After a couple of hours of this, we patently reject, is that these conflicts against women held by more male to support all struggles of the working line. These women have also shown decided that if we were going to be are not between groups of males, workers and increase the awareness class and to organise an offensive strength and resourcefulness in treated by the police like flying pickets but between the ruling class and the that they have common interests. against the capitalist attempts to tie providing food for striking families, then we might as well be flying pickets. working class. Comrade Campbell The role of women in the miners’ women to the home. in distributing food parcels and We had only been trying to set up a soup can afford to advocate non-violence, strike is a very positive development To strengthen the fight for the day- negotiating credit in local shops. kitchen! So we walked to Harworth pit, but the working class, male or female, in this direction. Unlike the petty to-day interests of the working class In this way, women have been drawn three miles away.”1 do not have the luxury of abstaining bourgeois Revolutionary Communist women and to achieve communism into activity and have become far more Such acts of militancy by the miners’ from conflict - they are forced to take Party,5 who choose to emphasise the - under which women can at last find politically aware than would have been wives present a real threat to the ruling sides. For this reason we would argue negative attitudes these women are true liberation - a powerful vanguard possible if they had remained atomised class. The typical media images of that, not only should women support encountering, we view the militant party is needed. That is why we call at home, waiting for their husbands to the passive wife at home - pleading the violence of their male comrades intervention of miners’ wives as a upon all class-conscious women to return from picket duty. In the event, with her husband to be ‘reasonable’, against the bourgeois state, but positive challenge to these attitudes join the Communist Party - join it and women have come to see their role in to put his family before loyalty to his women should be actively involved in and as the stirrings of a proletarian struggle to reforge it l the strike as more than supportive; they union, his workmates and his class - forming and working within workers’ women’s movement. The very fact see the strike as just as much their fight are undermined by the action of the defence corps. Comrade Campbell, that women are taking a militant role Notes as the miners’. As a result, the women miners’ wives. The beginning of the by attacking the violence of the in the struggle, that they are organising 1. Quoted in Socialist Organiser May 3 1984. have asserted their rights to be involved miners’ strike saw a standard piece of unarmed working class against the themselves, that they are often defying 2. Miners’ wife quoted in The Guardian May 28 1984. 3. The reference is to the dispute between the on strike committees and have met with stage-management by the media in the armed state, objectively takes the side reluctant husbands and trade union print union, the National Graphical Association, some success, although this process has ‘gunning for Scargill’ scene, where one of the bourgeoisie. officials, and those husbands are and the noxious reactionary, Eddie Shah, who not gone nearly far enough - it is, after pro-scab wife was pictured brandishing The Euros in the CPGB are minding children, while their wives utilised Thatcher’s anti-trade union laws and all, vital that women participate fully in a toy pistol against Scargill. But these constantly trying to draw parallels attend support committee meetings - selective sacking of union activists in a dispute in 1983. The NGA responded with mass picketing all class organisations. tactics misfired, in that much of the between the miners’ wives and the these are positive developments. of the outlets concerned - the Warrington The importance of such women’s activity by miners’ wives was fuelled by Greenham women, and how the miners’ One strike does not a movement Messenger - and on November 30, 4,000 trade involvement cannot be overemphasised. anger at such media stage-management. wives and the miners themselves can make, but it gives us a glimpse of what unionists confronted riot-trained police from five The support of women for the class They wanted to make it clear that they learn tactics from Greenham. Such the future could bring. Communists surrounding areas. The NGA speaker van was attacked and overturned by police, while squads in struggle is a key to its success, and an would only save the future of their connections are dangerous diversions; need to be working to consolidate full riot gear repeatedly charged the pickets. enormous danger is presented to the families by backing the strike. if the miners were to go all ‘floppy’ on these positive developments, to give 4. Marxism Today July 1984. struggle by women who are isolated Of course, the ruling class have the police they would get their heads a lead to this spontaneous militancy 5. The RCP originated in a split from the from it. Because of women’s role ignored the role of women in backing kicked in. Unlike Greenham, the of working class women to ensure forerunner of the Socialist Workers Party, the International Socialists, in the early 1970s. It in capitalist society they are either the miners’ strike, reducing the miners and their wives present a real that it is not dissipated. We need to had a brief, if quite effervescent, career on the isolated in the home or, as workers Barnsley demonstration, for example, threat to the bourgeoisie: when Vicky adopt the slogan used by the Third revolutionary left before its formal dissolution in and mothers, often do not become to a picture of Arthur Scargill being Seddon asked a miners’ wife about the Congress of Comintern - “Agitation 1997. Its distinguished itself during the miners’ active in unions. Cut off from others kissed by a woman. The fact that the possibility of using Greenham tactics and propaganda through action”. This strike by its insistence that “The only way to win the passive majority for the strike was to launch in similar circumstances, women are media belittle the actions of women on the picket line, the answer was means encouraging the self-activity an aggressive campaign around a national ballot” alienated from working class struggle is an indication of the fact that the that this was impossible: “The police of women, dispelling the doubts (M Freeman Our day will come: the miners’ fight and therefore from working class capitalist class is threatened by their just come like swarms of bees.”4 The they have about their own abilities for jobs London 1985, p36). 6 weekly July 17 2014 1019 worker debate Not in awe of ‘experts’ Bruce Wallace and Steve Dobbs may view him as a ‘bungling amateur’, but Arthur Bough insists that they are wrong about the falling rate of profit n their article published in last chosen, those contradictions can be as week’s Weekly Worker, Bruce much based on a rising rate of profit, IWallace and Steve Dobbs say causing new capitals to be formed, dismissively of me: “he quotes Marx existing capital to overexpand and so as if he was an expert”.1 I am not sure on, as on any falling rate of profit. That how someone would quote Marx as if is the situation that Marx and Engels they were not an expert - perhaps the describe in chapter 15 - of a rising rate way Bruce and Steve do. But I have of profit leading to overexpansion, never claimed to be an expert - just a rising wages causing the rate of surplus worker with a view; albeit one with a value to fall, culminating in a crisis degree in economics and politics, and of overproduction that produces a 40 years experience of studying Marx catastrophic fall in the rate of profit. and his works. The Weekly Worker In Theories of surplus value part 2, approached me to write the article chapter 17, where Marx actually sets they are responding to,2 not vice versa. out his theory of crisis, he does not Of course, it is unconscionable mention the law of falling profits once for non-experts, in the elitist view - not one word. Rather odd, surely, if of comrades Wallace and Dobbs, to you believe that law to be the basis of express an opinion, as they make his theory of crisis! clear in their comment about “the bungling amateur, Bough”. What they Rate or rates? really mean is it is only ‘recognised Comrades Wallace and Dobbs then experts’ - part of some self-defined say: “Bough introduces a phoney elite - that have the right to quote novelty in the form of turnover time, Marx knowledgeably. The rest of us which, according to him, masks the should simply sit quietly and admire real rate of profit.” Not just according them in awe. Such an approach is to me, but according to Marx and understandable from those who Engels too. They did not think the rate developed as members of organisations of turnover was a “phoney novelty”; claiming to be Leninist, but where the they thought it was important for ‘Leninist’ tag simply requires the foot understanding the real rate of profit. soldiers to keep quiet, toe the party line The two comrades are like a “certain and leave the thinking to their elders Biederman”, who was shocked at the and betters. It is why even the slightest suggestion of a 1,000% rate of surplus division of opinion amongst the value used by Marx in volume 2, but “expert” elite, of these organisations who Engels states might then “be causes a schizophrenic neurosis that pacified by this annual rate of surplus necessarily leads to yet another split. value of more than 1,300% taken from What that says about the kind of the living experience of Manchester”.4 socialism they would build is fairly Marx spends 10 out of the 21 clear - and it is not a kind that most China: boom, boom chapters of volume 2 dealing with this workers would find attractive. I came “phoney novelty”! In the preface to across that approach in the 1970s the point, because, having made a fuss at Marx’s quote shows it does not talk position the following: “Unfortunately Capital volume 3, Engels writes: in the way the Militant Tendency about it, they then admit: “Marx does about a plethora of “capitals”, but a comrade Bough’s picture of capitalism operated and that perhaps explains show that, as the rate of profit falls plethora of “capital”: ie, singular. leaves out Marx’s key concept of the But since its subject matter, the why the response of comrades progressively, the mass of profit must Marx is describing too much capital, concentration and centralisation of influence of turnover on the rate Wallace and Dobbs is more notable increase ...” and later he discusses the plethora of capital.” of profit, is of vital importance, I for its intemperate tone and attempts According to them, “comrade money-capital in similar terms. He is Astonishing! On the one hand, have written it myself, for which at sarcasm than for the quality of the Bough completely misunderstands, or talking about an overproduction of they misread Marx to claim that the reason the whole chapter has been argument they muster in response. misrepresents, the argument of Marx productive and commodity capital. increase in the mass of capital cannot placed in brackets. It developed Unfortunately, for them, I have too regarding the law itself ... he states that He has in mind the 1840s, when, as offset the falling rate of profit, because in the course of this work that the many years under my belt, including the rate of profit is not the decisive he and Engels set out, the annual rate there are a plethora of capitals for formula for the rate of profit given too many dealing with hectoring and determining factor in the continued of profit was actually high and rising, whom this does not apply, and the in chapter 3 required modification aggressive bosses as a union militant, expansion of capitalist production.” and led to this overproduction. next minute they claim that I have to be generally valid. to be bothered by that kind of approach. But even a cursory reading of my If they wanted to know what Marx failed to take into account the fact But perhaps I should be flattered that article shows the reason for giving that was talking about here they simply that concentration and centralisation This quote also deals with another of my humble thoughts required the quote was to demonstrate that there have to look at Capital volume 3, is constantly diminishing the number the claims of Bruce and Steve: that combined efforts of not one, but two is no basis for believing that a falling chapter 14, where he cites the increase of these small capitals, and creating in Marx’s use of the term ‘rate of profit’ “experts”. In fact I was shocked at rate of profit means a falling mass of in stock capital. It is a countervailing their place “a few established capitals”, is unchanged throughout. But then how little of Marx’s theory they seem profit, and, therefore, an inevitable force, Marx says, because these for which, as Marx says, “the mass of what would Engels know compared to have grasped. Perhaps that is why, collapse of capitalism. That is why mammoth firms accumulate capital profit compensates for the falling rate to “experts” like them? They say that when I debated these issues with Steve it is followed by Marx’s comment faster than all others, despite a lower of profit”. my explanation, following Engels here, some time ago, on his own blog, he criticising Adam Smith, and pointing than average rate of profit, because I do not know how much Bruce that Marx uses three different types of could not sustain his argument. It is out that, “Permanent crises do not the owners of these companies, the and Steve have kept up with economic ‘rate of profit’, is confused. Not at all, hard to know whether this is a case exist”. So I am afraid I cannot give shareholding money-capitalists, no developments since 1865, but I can tell as I have argued elsewhere.5 In chapter of two heads being better than one, Bruce and Steve top marks for even longer obtain profits, but a small them that this process has continued 4, Engels sets out the definition of the because we will never know how much being able to read a fairly simple-to- amount of interest in the form of apace since then, so that most modern annual rate of profit, which differs from worse it would have been had either understand paragraph. dividends, and a large capital with a economies - not just anonymous ones, the rate of profit, because it specifically one written the article on their own. low rate of profit can accumulate faster but real ones like the US - are today deals with the effect of the rate of I am accused of “selective textual than a small capital with a high rate of dominated by a “few established big turnover of the circulating capital. citations” from Marx, which is the Capital or profit. Marx says this compensation capitals, for which the mass of profit In chapter 9, describing the code used by people to dismiss Marx capitals? applies to “the total social capital and compensates for the falling rate of formation of a general rate, Marx uses quotes that contradict the argument The next bit of their argument is truly to the big, firmly placed capitalists” profit”. But maybe Bruce and Steve this definition, but without specifically they are making. However, I plead bizarre. They say I interpret Marx’s and says later in chapter 15, simply accept the view of bourgeois dealing with the effects of the rate of guilty to being selective in the quotes statement about the rising mass of “experts” of the neo-classical school, turnover. However, in chapter 13, the I chose. I chose those that were most profit as permanently offsetting the The rate of profit - ie, the relative who present an image of modern analysis is conducted almost entirely appropriate - unlike them, who seem fall in the rate of profit, and counter increment of capital - is above capitalism as being still dominated on the basis of a rate of profit where to have picked their quotations on the that “Marx does not argue this at all.” all important to all new offshoots by, and operating under, the same the capital turns over just once during basis of whatever was closest to hand, To prove this increased mass of profit of capital seeking to find an economic conditions as early 19th- the year, and where, therefore, what and even then manage to misread them. does not offset the falling rate, they independent place for themselves. century free-market capitalism, and is being described is the equivalent The quote of mine they take exception provide a Marx quote, and say: “Let And as soon as formation of capital for whom the concentration and of the profit margin, p/k. In chapter to is where Marx states that the falling us repeat this point just to emphasise were to fall into the hands of a few centralisation of capital described by 18, Marx deals with the role of the rate of profitmust be accompanied by it for comrade Bough: according to established big capitals, for which Marx and Engels never happened. rate of turnover of merchant capital, a rising mass of profit. Their assertion Marx, there are a plethora (a lot) of the mass of profit compensates for They then give us more and in chapter 17 he also modifies the that this quote was selective, meaning capitals (firms), ‘for which the fall in the falling rate of profit, the vital ‘unselectively’ chosen textual citations definition of the annual rate of profit, somehow unrepresentative, is itself the rate of profit is not compensated flame of production would be from Marx, to ‘prove’ that his theory to include merchant capital alongside dishonest. They admit to reading my through the mass of profit’.” altogether extinguished. It would of overproduction is based on the productive capital. blog articles on the falling rate, and If they are going compensate for die out. falling rate of profit. Unfortunately, The two comrades also claim that will have seen that I provide four their lack of argument with invective not one of those quotes actually says Marx did not write chapter 16 of similar quotes.3 and sarcasm, they should at least try What makes their argument truly that. They all speak of the resolution Capital volume 2, saying it was written Given space, I could have used all to make sure their own citations, and bizarre, in this instance, is that they of “contradictions”, but, as Marx sets in its entirety by Engels. Wrong - it of those and more, but this is beside reading of them, are accurate. A look put up as a refutation to my supposed out in some of the quotes they have was written by Marx. The preface to weekly 7 worker 1019 July 17 2014

volume 2 shows that it is contained the difference between fixed and There is nothing complicated at all deviate from Marxist theory, other than At the start of their rant they wrote: in manuscript 2. It is chapter 4 of circulating capital, this must then about this calculation, and in chapter in its most crude, mechanistic version? “Just to be absolutely clear: neither Capital volume 3 that was written in be only the turnover period of the 4 Engels gives several examples of Market share is a question of demand Karl Marx nor any other serious its entirety by Engels. circulating capital. how to do it. and, as Marx sets out, demand is a living Marxist we know of believed But what do I know? I am no Take a house builder. The turnover Our two experts comment: function of use-value, not value! or believes that the falling rate of “expert” like them. But then, boys, if period is the time required to build the “Unlike the bungling amateur, Bough, Bruce and Steve may be too young profit leads, in and of itself, to the you are going to use as your polemical house and sell it, thereby recovering the [Esteban] Maito does real, number- to have been around when this was collapse of capitalism.” But by the style an elitist, arrogant dismissal of advanced circulating capital (materials crunching research that factors in discussed amongst members of the end of it they have been led into such your opponent’s argument, you really and labour-power), plus the wear and turnover time, and his conclusions Conference of Socialist Economists, hyperbole that they ask: “Does it mean should learn to get things like basic tear of the fixed capital. The fact that are telling …” back in the 1980s. But there was no capitalism increasingly becomes prone facts right. And this is not the first time. the excavators and other fixed capital But, as Michael Roberts and others doubt then about the idea that large, to crisis, necessitating the collapse of Some time ago, on his blog, Steve owned by the builder have a turnover on his blog have pointed out,10 Maito oligopolistic firms no longer competed the system?” And they answer: “Yes, Dobbs had to retract some fairly basic period of 10 years is irrelevant for not only includes a rate of profit figure only on the basis of price, which was it does, and future economic crises will factually incorrect claims he had made Marx’s definition of the turnover for China prior to it becoming a market seen as destructive of profits, but become more violent and destructive.” about me, such as that I was a member period, or his calculation of the annual economy, but he also excludes wages instead competed for market share on They go on: “If the crisis was purely of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, rate of surplus value based on it, or and salaries. Given that Marx’s main the basis of quality and choice, and financial, then why have we entered a and that I supported a “state capitalist” later for the calculation of the annual determination of the rate of turnover sought to increase profits by continually long depression, now that the financial analysis of the USSR.6 To be honest, if rate of profit, as I have demonstrated of circulating capital undertaken in reducing costs, and innovating to crisis is over?” you are going to be so lax about basic elsewhere.8 On the basis Marx and Capital, volume 2 is on the basis of the raise productivity. The agreements In Capital volume 1, Marx talks facts, it makes it hard to take anything Engels determine, for the turnover turnover period of the variable capital - amongst the five global car-makers to about crises that are purely financial, you say seriously. period of advanced circulating capital, because the turnover of the circulating share amongst themselves the costs as opposed to the money crisis that it is clear that restaurants do turn over constant capital is itself determined by of research and development, and to arises in every economic crisis. But, Turnover that circulating capital on a daily basis. the time the labour-power requires to produce common engines, gearboxes, he says, these purely financial crises We then get another series of They advance productive capital in the process it - that is rather an omission, etc that they use in a range of their impact the real economy. He had in comments, which really make me form of materials and labour-power you might think! models, is an indication of that. mind the financial crisis of 1847. That question exactly how much of each day to their productive process, Having given more irrelevant resulted in a reduction in economic Marx’s economic theory they really and the commodities produced in that Rate of profit details about Mercedes sales success, activity in Britain of 37%! do understand. I had made the point productive process are consumed and They then go on: they then show that they do not even The two comrades claim that we that there has been a change in paid for on the same day, thereby understand the difference between have entered a “long depression”, the composition of the total social reproducing that advanced circulating This regeneration capacity is, annual rate of profit and profit margin, but that is simply their assertion. capital so that today we have far capital, including the wear-and-tear again, a characteristic aspect of when they say, “The profit margin is The absolute level of growth in the more service industries, etc, and far portion of the fixed capital. capital and the cyclical nature of only 3.3%!” But, as Marx and Engels world’s largest economy, China, today fewer manufacturing industries. This Comrades Wallace and Dobbs then, the capitalist economy. But the describe, firms can have low profit is greater than it was 10 years ago, its is important because, if the rate of rather oddly, say Marx “dealt with this periodic nature of these crises has margins, but high annual rates of rate of growth is not much lower, at turnover of these industries is much mainly in Capital, volume 2 (subtitled not stopped the downward trend of profit! The profit margin is calculated around 7%, and the main problem for higher than that of the older industries, The process of circulation of capital). the rate of profit in the long term. against the laid-out capital: ie, the cost its Stalinist leaders has been to prevent this will have an effect on the general This difficulty makes the calculation of of production - which does not include overheating! The US has recovered the annual rate of profit. As Marx puts it in the annual rate of profit, which Bough In the first decade of this century the advanced fixed capital, but only output it lost and, despite the attempts volume 3, chapter 9 of Capital, thinks is a crucial problematic concept, alone, global fixed capital formation its wear and tear. The annual rate of of the Tea Party, is likely to grow at a little tricky.” doubled, global GDP almost doubled, profit, on the other hand, is calculated around 3% this year. Many developing Since the general rate of profit is No, it does not. The issue of and the global working class increased on the basis of the advanced productive African economies are growing at not only determined by the average the turnover of the fixed capital is by 30%. In the last 30 years, the capital, including the full value of the around the same pace they were prior rate of profit in each sphere, but irrelevant, for the reasons Marx sets global working class has doubled in fixed capital. But, the more productive to the crisis. also by the distribution of the total out in Capital volume 2. It is why size. Marx says expansion of capital the capital, the higher its rate of Moreover, the low growth in the social capital among the different he spends 10 chapters analysing the equals an increase in the size of turnover - and so the lower, relatively, UK (until this year) and in parts of individual spheres, and since process of this turnover of circulating the proletariat. But, given that for the value of the advanced circulating Europe can be more readily ascribed this distribution is continually capital. On this basis, Marx develops Marxists capital is formed by the capital and, consequently, the higher to deliberate economic policies of changing, it becomes another the annual rate of surplus value, accumulation of surplus value, the the annual rate of profit. austerity. Until late 2011, northern constant cause of change in the as distinct from the rate of surplus simple question they have to answer Europe was growing fairly rapidly, general rate of profit. value. Engels then, on the back of this is: if the rate and mass of profit was ‘Decay’ with Germany having annualised analysis, deals with the issue of fixed not expanding during this period, The two comrades say: “Bough’s growth rates of around 5% in a number They remark: “One gets an image of a capital in forming the annual rate of where did all this additional capital, flights of theoretical fancy have of quarters, and Sweden 7%. Prior to hamburger chain, but do hamburgers profit in Capital. that created whole new economies, no bearing on the real world of the latter part of 2010, for example, the turn over (cook) faster today than 50 Marx makes this clear in volume and multi-billion-dollar industries in decaying capitalism, we are afraid to UK had a typical ‘V-shaped’ recovery. years ago?” 3, chapter 9: technology, etc, come from? How was say.” Which is precisely the kind of The World Bank definition of global Which is totally irrelevant. The it that, despite all of this additional catastrophist nonsense that ignores the recession (let alone depression) is comparison is not between hamburger We must, therefore, remember in investment in productive capital, the reality I mentioned at the beginning of growth of less than 2.5%. Its latest production today and 50 years ago, comparing the values produced by growth of surplus value was such that my last article. It is the same kind of report states: “The global economy is but between hamburger production each 100 of the different capitals, the supply of money-capital exceeded thing Stalinist economists came out expected to pick up speed as the year and, say, ship production! If a greater that they will differ in accordance the demand for it by huge amounts, with in the 1950s, when they denied progresses and is projected to expand proportion of the social capital today is with the different composition of c causing the global rate of interest to that western economies were growing by 2.8% this year, strengthening to involved in types of production where as to its fixed and circulating parts, experience a 30-year secular decline? - only to capitulate into outright 3.4% and 3.5% in 2015 and 2016 the rate of turnover is higher than 50 and that, in turn, the fixed portions When I wrote in my previous article reformism when that fallacy could no respectively.”11 years ago, the average rate of turnover of each of the different capitals that “in the latter half of the period longer be sustained. But then it seems for some “experts” of the social capital will also be higher, depreciate slowly or rapidly as of stagnation the general annual rate What kind of decay is it that results the purpose of “number-crunching” creating a higher annual rate of profit. the case may be, thus transferring of profit rises, and the conditions are in the global working class doubling, is simply to make the numbers say They then give a further irrelevant unequal quantities of their value created for the next boom cycle”, that in the global GDP nearly doubling, whatever you want them to say, so subjective set of quotes about to the product in equal periods of comment was not in relation to any in vast new industries in technology, growth becomes not even just recession, bankruptcies amongst restaurant time. But this is immaterial to the particular period of stagnation, but is biotechnology and gene technology but permanent depression, leading chains. By the same token, Starbucks rate of profit. No matter whether simply a paraphrase of what Marx says being developed, in whole new parts of inevitably to catastrophic collapse. make big profits, and Jamie Oliver the 80c give up a value of 80, or 50, on the matter. the globe in Asia being industrialised, Comrades Wallace and Dobbs alone employs 8,000 chefs in his or 5, to the annual product, and the Wallace and Dobbs comment: “His and in that process now spreading conclude: “This is, in the words of highly profitable restaurants. However, annual product consequently = 80c [ie, my] explanation seems to be that apace in Africa too? What kind of Marx, a time for ‘sober senses’ and the point was not about the profitability + 20v + 20s = 120, or 50c + 20v + because of the (unproven) high profits decay is it that has seen, in the first 10 not the time for incomprehensible of restaurants, but the effect of the rate 20s = 90, or 5c + 20v + 20s = 45; up to 2008 interest rates were very low. years of this century, 25% of all the and erroneous thought experiments of turnover. Restaurants are not the in all these cases the redundance of This led to the formation of bubbles, goods and services produced in our supposedly based on the ideas of the only type of new industry reflecting the product’s value over its cost- which eventually burst. So it was all a entire history, in more inventions being founder of scientific socialism.” this changed composition of the price = 20, and in calculating the chapter of accidents really.” patented than ever before, and so on? I agree. Which is why their ill- total social capital. According to the rate of profit these 20 are related to Nothing I said suggests it was all Comrades Wallace and Dobbs tempered, elitist and rather lazy Household Expenditure Survey of the capital of 100 in all of them.9 just “a chapter of accidents”. This “selectively” quote Marx’s paragraph attempt at a response takes us no 2012, about 12% of UK expenditure argument is just part of their pre- at the beginning of chapter 15 as their further forward l is on “recreation and culture”. A The fixed capital always has to be packaged set of responses to anyone only evidence that the LTRPF was further 8% is spent on “restaurants present, and so is calculated as part of who disagrees with their insistence the basis of Marx’s theory of crisis, Notes and hotels”.7 Pretty much everything the capital advanced for the turnover that the 2008 crisis was caused by but fail to point out that what he was 1. ‘Incomprehensible and erroneous’ Weekly Worker July 10. under these headings has a higher rate period, when it is determined: ie, the the law of the tendency for the rate of talking about was the contradictions 2. ‘False premises, false conclusions’ Weekly of turnover than do manufactured turnover period of the circulating profit to fall (LTRPF). It is no more a that arise (hence the title of the Worker June 19. commodities. capital. The answer is simple: the rate “chapter of accidents” than the 1847 chapter: ‘Exposition of the internal 3. http://boffyblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the- As for “Restaurants do not turn of turnover of the circulating capital financial crisis, which, according to contradictions of the law’), which law-of-tendency-for-rate-of-profit_25.html. 4. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894- over their capital on a daily basis is determined by the time it takes for the description of Marx and Engels, lead to both a falling rate of profit c3/ch04.htm. and certainly not their fixed capital the advanced circulating capital to be was similarly founded on a high rate and a rising rate of profit. They fail 5. http://boffyblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/ (buildings, kitchen equipment, etc)”, reproduced. But, as Engels sets out in of profit. This created low interest to account for the fact that, in the wallace-and-dobbs-wrong-prophets.html. this is truly astounding. A cursory chapter 4, the total advanced capital rates and encouraged speculation in actual analysis in chapter 15, Marx 6. http://socialismiscrucial.wordpress. com/2013/10/26/bish-bash-boffy-on-marxism- reading of Capital volume 2, on the includes the fixed capital, and so it railway shares, and swindling in bills is describing overproduction caused and-theory-of-crisis-part-1. turnover period, would have shown must be included too. Consequently, of exchange. It was sparked by a credit not by a falling rate of profit, but by 7. www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/family-spending/ them that this period is measured in the total advanced capital is the value crunch, arising from the limitations of a rising rate of profit, which causes family-spending/family-spending-2012-edition/ terms of the “circulating capital”. of the fixed capital, plus the value of the 1844 Bank Act, following a gold overinvestment and a “plethora of art-chapter-1--overview.html#tab-Household- expenditure. The question of the fixed capital is the circulating capital advanced for drain in response to crop failures. capital” (not a plethora of capitals!). 80. http://boffyblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/ irrelevant. In chapters 7 through 17, one turnover period. The formula is The comrades say: “One glaring They fail to account for the fact that calculating-rate-of-turnover-and-annual.html. Marx explains that the turnover period then s x n/C, where s is the surplus example of his deviation from Marxist in 50 pages of his theory of crisis in 90. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/ comprises the production period and value produced in one turnover period theory is in relation to the value of Theories of surplus value, Marx says works/1894-c3/ch09.htm. 100. http://thenextrecession.wordpress. circulation period for the produced of the circulating capital, n is the commodities, as, according to Bough, not one word about the falling rate of com/2014/07/10/uk-economy-can-it-last. commodity. But, for the reasons number of turnovers during the year, market share can be won on the basis profit. Do they think he just forgot to 110. www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global- he describes there, in illustrating and C is the total advanced capital. of quality.” How on earth does this mention it? economic-prospects. 8 weekly July 17 2014 1019 worker review Bourgeois or capitalist? Marc Mulholland Bourgeois liberty and the politics of fear Oxford University Press, pp400, £37 (£9.25 direct)

lass is back: economic inequality correctness of ‘strong state’ narratives has been rising up the political - a point which is particularly marked Cagenda in the last 10 years, as it in the discussion of the immediate has become more and more obtrusive in European aftermath of World War I the imperialist centres (aka ‘advanced and the Russian Revolution (pp164- capitalist countries’). Witness (among 71). Analogously, the accounts of the many other examples) the media buzz Second International socialist parties round Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the in chapters 7-8 on 1870-1914 largely, twenty-first century. though not completely, rely on literature Bourgeois liberty and the politics produced in the cold war period. of fear is a book about class. It is not The structure of the book does a Marxist book - its class categories attempt to overcome the problem are like, but distinct from, Marxist of methodological nationalism by categories, and are underlain by a devoting each chapter, after the first, marginalist theory of the wage as to relatively short periods broadly on modified by Gary Becker’s ‘human a European scale, with occasional capital’ theory and/or Pierre Bordieu’s glances outwards beyond Europe: ‘social capital’.1 But it is a book 1789-1830s, 1815-48, 1848-52, Marxists should definitely read. It is 1848-70, 1861-71, 1870-1914 (two about the political dynamics of class in chapters), 1914-21, 1918-37, 1936- Europe between the 17th and the early 45, 1948-67, 1968-80, 1953-91 in the 21st century. It thus addresses questions ‘Soviet bloc’ and China, 1991-2010. which have been central to the political However, the chapters are divided projects of Marx and Marxists since into subsections which are, like the 1848, and which are also addressed in literature on which they inevitably a very different way in Neil Davidson’s rely, national in character. The result How revolutionary were the bourgeois is that the overall chronology is not revolutions?, also published in 20122: completely clear and, in the result,

the nature of ‘bourgeois revolution’ Scogalfar later actions and decisions episodically and its relationship to the question appear before earlier actions and of a proletarian class movement. The decisions which seem very likely to differences in the underlying analytical have influenced them. approach therefore do not mean we To give three examples of the cannot learn from the book. On the issues (examples only, not a complete contrary, we need to engage with them Scared of the proletariat list). First, in chapter 2, ‘Revolution, - critically - if our own understanding restoration and reform’, the French is to advance. 19th century; though the practical classes, in particular the ‘bourgeoisie’. forms of connection between academic Revolution is treated first and in depth, The gist of comrade Mulholland’s experience of the return to classical history and states. First, the practical the American Revolution only briefly argument is that the bourgeoisie as a liberalism, and hence to polarisation History usefulness of the source-critical and at the end of the chapter. Since the class (we will have to return to his of wealth and poverty, periodic My two criticisms of the book as method means that history faculties costs of French intervention in the war definition of this class later) has a crashes and increasing insecurity history concern, first, method - are important recruiting grounds of American independence triggered coherent common interest in flexible (albeit with extensive welfarism) in and in particular the intersections for foreign/diplomatic services and the financial difficulties which forced markets in employment and in freedom the 1990s-2000s will perhaps reopen between national politics, on the one intelligence analysts. They are therefore Louis XVI to call the Estates General, from state regulation and excessive the question. hand, and geopolitics, international interlocked with this aspect of the state and the French revolutionaries taxation; and that this common interest Mulholland’s case is made by a economic dynamics and European and core. Secondly, there is some partial were certainly partly influenced by underlies liberal or constitutionalist grand-sweep narrative history of the Atlantic-wide political and intellectual truth in the slogan George Orwell American revolutionary ideas, this is revolutions. The bourgeoisie does issue, beginning with ‘Absolutism developments, on the other; and, attributed to the rulers of 1984: “Who plainly upside-down. not, however, seek (or obtain) state and transformation in England’ in the second, the initial characterisation of controls the past controls the future; Second, for the 19th and 20th power, but only a controlled and 17th-18th centuries and progressing the English/British revolution. I will who controls the present controls the centuries Mulholland necessarily limited state. On the other hand, through a series of chapters dealing begin by admitting that both criticisms past.” This image was drawn from the engages with Marx’s and Marxists’ the proletariat has a strong interest with individual periods (French are in a sense ‘counsels of perfection’: grotesqueries of the Stalin school of explanations of political events. Yet in security of employment, which Revolution and restoration, Holy that is, it is hard to see how a book falsification. But the use of nationalist one of these - that crises, the ‘panic’ inclines it towards collectivist politics Alliance period, 1848, and so on down attempting what comrade Mulholland histories to legitimate the nation-state - phases of business cycles, have a (though these can just as well be to the present), through sub-sections attempts could be written in only six and, in particular, Conservative/‘party destabilising political effect - is close nationalist as leftwing). As a result, the which are studies of developments in years, while taking them effectively of order’ views of the place of the to being absent in the structure of the political liberties created by bourgeois individual countries. An enormously into account. Nonetheless, they do, I state - goes back to Rankean history narrative. Yet the chronology itself revolutions (especially representative wide range of academic literature is think, weaken the book’s argument. and before, to 18th-19th century Whig gives at the very least reasons to see assemblies, and freedom of speech used, and the book is from this point The first point is that a grand-sweep histories and even to earlier ‘God is an this claim as plausible: the panic of and of association) threaten to result of view immensely ambitious and a narrative and interpretation of the Englishman’ ideas.5 1825 was followed within a few years in excessive proletarian power and terrific achievement. sort Mulholland offers is inevitably In the cold war period between 1948 by the revolutions of 1830; that of demands, which lead the bourgeoisie It also brings together in a single dependent on the secondary literature and 1991, a particular aspect of these 1847 was followed, more rapidly, by to react away from liberalism: this is narrative the larger part of the range (academic books and articles on the connections between university history the revolutions of 1848; that of 1857 the ‘politics of fear’. of political events round which the subjects covered). The problem is faculties and states was the production was followed by Louis Napoleon’s In Mulholland’s view the rapid ‘bourgeois revolution’ idea - and in with the nature of this literature. The of anti-Marxist historical narratives of turn to an aggressive foreign policy development of capitalism in the addition Marxism and the workers’ modern form of academic historical a particular sort: that is, those destined and the war of Italian unification 19th century within the carapace of movement - has developed. It does work - since the times of Leopold von to support the Fabianism/right social (which, in turn, may by its geopolitical part-modernised absolutist regimes so, if anything, more fully than Ranke (1795-1886) in Germany and democracy which was sponsored by effects have driven Bismarck’s policy (Bonapartist France, German kaiser Davidson’s How revolutionary ... and Frederic William Maitland (1850- US policy in Europe in this period. and German unification), and in the regime, Austria-Hungary, etc) reflects without Davidson’s Cliffite tics (undue 1906) in Britain - focuses on careful Among the features of these narratives US by a radical reorganisation of the combination of the actual strength separation of Lenin from the Marxist critical use of primary historical which went beyond the falsification of politics, as northern capitals and labour of states - still basically absolutist, wing of the Social Democratic Party sources. This approach produces real the history of the workers’ movement6 demanded protectionism, leading to based on peasant conscripts and of Germany, overstatement of the increases in our knowledge of the were the adoption of the ‘shallow’ Republican victory in 1860 and thus persisting aristocracies and clerisies originality of Trotsky’s views, ‘state past.4 But it is also prone to demanding perspective of the development of to the American civil war. - together with this ‘politics of fear’. capitalism’ and ‘deflected permanent excessive standards of proof, in the capitalism (seeing it, essentially, as Marx wrote: It is not - contrary to Engels, Kautsky revolution’ theory, and so on). Even if name of what is sometimes called emerging in the 19th century rather and Davidson - about the ability of the the theoretical framework is wrong - ‘physics envy’, but also in the interests than earlier); and a considerable The crisis may first break out bourgeoisie as a class to rule through and I think it is seriously problematic of large-C Conservative readings of overstatement of the inherent in England, the country which authoritarian as much as constitutional - comrades who do not already have the evidence. strength of modern or modernised advances most of the credit regimes, the bourgeoisie’s “robust extensive knowledge of this history And, since Ranke’s time, states and the ‘impossibility’ of their and takes the least, because the digestive system” (Kautsky).3 Nor is would benefit from reading it as an academic history of this sort has overthrow. The turn of mainstream balance of payments, the balance of it (as the Marxist left has repeatedly introduction to the history which been methodologically committed global politics since the late 20th payments due, which must be settled argued since the time of Marx) an contextualises both ‘classic’ Marxist to nationalism and the nation-state century towards ‘neoliberalism’ and immediately, is unfavourable, even effect of capitalist decline. writings and political events which as the essential frame of analysis. liberal revolutionism, which comrade though the general balance of trade Mulholland argues that, with are commonly used by Marxists to This is true even of the ‘diplomatic Mulholland correctly identifies, is favourable. This is explained the decisive defeats of both social illustrate arguments. Those who are historians’, who analyse the interaction has produced in the academy the partly as a result of the credit democracy and official ‘communism’ already familiar with the history would of states on a European or global level. beginnings of a process of rethinking which it has granted, and partly in the 1970s-90s, the threat of benefit, as I said before, from seeing it Hence, the literature on which comrade of these elements. as a result of the huge quantity of proletarian power has been at least in a different perspective. Mulholland relies is prima facie likely None of this precludes relying on the capital loaned to foreign countries, temporarily taken away, so that since That said, I have two criticisms to be biased in favour of explanations academic historical literature; but it does so that a large quantity of returns then the bourgeoisie has returned of the book as history­; and I am not of major events (revolutions and so on) mean that there are dangers in doing so. flow back to it in commodities, in to the revolutionary liberalism persuaded by the analytical argument at a purely national level. Comrade Mulholland’s book largely, addition to the actual trade returns which characterised it in the early for comrade Mulholland’s account of This problem is exacerbated by two though not completely, assumes the ... The crash in England, initiated weekly 9 worker 1019 July 17 2014

and accompanied by a gold drain, as a response to “popular movements differences between - at least partially of seeking the class circumstances his briefs or other agents. The same settles England’s balance of of traditionalism” (pp304-05) rather - successful English parliamentarians as they bear on individual class (largely) goes for politics. Comrade payments, partly by a bankruptcy of than at overseas authoritarianism and and failed French Huguenots and later members or families to produce a Mulholland correctly recognises that its importers ..., partly by disposing alliance with traditional elites as a means frondeurs). The regress is not infinite,16 class imaginaire, but this approach is the old aristocracy rested its claims of a portion of its commodity- of geopolitical control of subordinate but it does call for consideration not really developed in relation to the to rents, etc on its role as a personal capital at low prices abroad, states, whether or not there was a present of later medieval developments state, which is treated as a collectivity governing class. The capitalist class and partly by the sale of foreign challenge from the proletariat. (including the Italian city-states) which needs no explanation. rests its claims to social authority securities, the purchase of English as partial models and incubators of I have run through the other simply on its ability to make money - securities, etc. Now comes the turn England commercial practices (commercial classes in order to frame comrade the ‘wealth creators’. Hence it usually of some other country. The balance Comrade Mulholland argues in paper, agency and partnerships, Mulholland’s definition of the acts through agents, and agents are of payments was momentarily in chapter 1: banking, insurance, etc) and of state ‘bourgeoisie’, which is considerably paid for loyalty over and above the its favour; but now the time lapse practices (constitutions, funded debt, more elaborated (pp3-8). The normal work they do, creating the appearance normally existing between the The construction of ‘bourgeois’ etc), which in adapted forms became usage of ‘bourgeoisie’ in Marxist which supports the ‘talent’ ideology. balance of payments and balance of Britain, therefore, was circuitous ‘modernity’. The idea of an accidental writing is as a synonym of ‘capitalist In discussing the ‘US model’, trade has been eliminated or at least and largely unintended, a side emergence of ‘bourgeois society’ in class’: that is, the class of people who comrade Mulholland notes that “the reduced by the crisis: all payments effect of collision and compromise English politics serves to cut off the live by investing money in enterprises observation that American democracy are now suddenly supposed to be between the state and the aristocracy, problem artificially. If it is wrong, of one sort or another, in which labour spontaneously defers to the wealthy made at once. The same thing is and essentially a political process. it probably weakens the argument is employed in combination with elites was to have validity for a long now repeated here.7 It did not result in middle class that “the will to power was never a capital, thereby producing a social time to come” (p47). But this plutocratic control of the government, nor bourgeois characteristic”. surplus product, (part of) which character of ‘constitutionalism’ is in As Ramaa Vasudevan has pointed did even the richest merchant accrues to the capitalist as profit. A no sense unique to the US. Through out, this discussion of ‘world wish to sideline the politically Bourgeoisie? member of a class defined in this way ‘constitutionalism’ the capitalist class, money’ and contagion in financial dominant nobility. Rather, there The class analysis which frames need not be urban, so that ‘bourgeoisie’ narrowly defined,does obtain political crises does not include the issue of was a dialectic between bourgeois comrade Mulholland’s narrative is is a problematic French export in power - via the authority of money power asymmetries between states society and the (mostly) aristocratic given in the introduction at pp3-11. Marx’s and subsequent Marxist usage. expressed through its agents of one - most significantly between centre state, a complicated choreography, The general framework, omitted Mulholland’s definition, however, is sort or another. and periphery (‘less developed by which one came to rely upon in the book, is arguments comrade different and a lot wider. I began with Piketty and I end countries’).8 But in the 19th century the other. The Great Britain of Mulholland has made previously He adopts a definition offered during with him. Comrade Mulholland has other European countries and the Adam Smith was dominated by about proletarian class-consciousness.17 the French Revolution: “... men who a much greater knowledge of Marx US, as well as Latin America, were state and nobility, but rested upon In this framework, common socio- live on wealth acquired from the profits than Piketty does. But his book is ‘less developed countries’ vis-à-vis a commercial civil society (p24). economic position produces common of a skill or productive trade which like Piketty’s book, in that what it Britain. When credit facilities which experiences entailing a common class they have accumulated themselves does is to attempt to argue for the would, outside crisis, have been rolled I have to say that I find this argument imaginaire (‘imaginary’), which or inherited from their parents; ... salience of class in political history, over, are not rolled over as a result of deeply unconvincing. An issue is about securing to the individual/ those ... who have an income which while conceding most of the standard financial crisis at the centre - London - immediately implicated is, of course, family the means to make a living. is not dependent upon the work of academic criticisms of Marxism. The the result in the affected country lower the definitions of ‘bourgeoisie’ and The proletariat in particular is treated their own hands” (p3). Negatively, result actually weakens, rather than down the geopolitical food chain is ‘aristocracy’. I teach the history of in depth elsewhere and a lot more this is not “juridical and legal status strengthening, the historical account l both general distress more serious than English law both in the 13th-14th briefly in the book. The point is that to extract rents, tithes, or taxes as Mike Macnair in the ‘centre’ country (between 1815 century and over a longer timespan wage-workers cannot obtain security of right. Nor are the bourgeoisie a and 1940, Britain)9 and fiscal fragility down to the 19th, and (currently) of incomes without some form of class of direct producers” (pp3-4). [email protected] of the state, which is then apt to lead research in the later 17th and early collectivism, whether this is to be state “They are entrepreneurs, landowners, to the appearance of a constitutional 18th century, which means that I intervention, labour market regulation, professionals, military officers” (p4). Notes crisis about taxation, or a political am more familiar with the historical or trade unions, cooperatives and so on. He asserts a common interest of 1. GS Becker Human capital Chicago 1993; P crisis openly about the economic sources and literature for this period The peasantry is not very clearly this whole heterogeneous grouping Bordieu, ‘The forms of capital’: www.marxists. org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/ order. It is not, of course, necessary than for other periods and countries defined, but I take comrade Mulholland in “the free market in employment” bourdieu-forms-capital.htm. to adhere to Marxist economic theory comrade Mulholland covers. It seems to use the category to describe small (p5). The capitalist class clearly has 2. Reviewed by comrade Mulholland in Weekly to recognise this as a likely result: it to me that there was by the 17th farmers who work their own land such an interest, but he argues that this Worker October 10 2013. is only necessary to have some sort century substantial embourgeoisement mainly with family labour. This class interest extends to the professional 3. K Kautsky, ‘Republic and social democracy in France’, part 1 Weekly Worker April 28 2011. of economic theory which includes of the values of at least the southern could be violently revolutionary and managerial groups because their 4. I have made this point in criticising Platypus’s money and finance as real operating English ‘aristocracy’ and much less against landlord (and state) exactions, “skills, prestige and talent multiply approach: see ‘The study of history and the left’s factors in the economy (unlike fixed status barriers in England than and the rural poor could be won to productivity or substantially increase decline’ Weekly Worker June 2 2011. marginalism and its beliefs in ‘money elsewhere (eg, no distinction between socialism; but “the default position of market share for their employers” 5. Cf, for example, JW McKenna, ‘How god became an Englishman’ in DJ Guth and JW McK- illusion’). I do not insist that the noblesse d’épée and noblesse de peasants was to resent the exactions (p6). The argument is, as I said at the enna (eds) Tudor rule and revolution Cambridge argument is certainly right; but it does robe, and even early modern ‘ancient of all the urban classes ... Suspicious outset, based on the marginalist theory 1982, pp25-44. need in a book which attempts what families’ like the Howards or the conservatism was perhaps the typical of the wage, as modified by theories 6. Cf also my article, ‘The study of history and the Mulholland attempts to be engaged. Seymours may turn out to originate posture of small farmers. Defence of of ‘human capital’ or ‘social capital’. left’s decline’ Weekly Worker June 2 2011. 7. K Marx Capital Vol 3, chapter 30: www.marx- The third example is simpler. The with 13th-15th century lawyers and family-scale property was a constant, This is a concept of the ‘bourgeoisie’ ists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch30.htm. account of the Russian Revolution, the administrators who did well enough but the means varied” (p10). which is given plausibility by the late 8. ‘From the gold standard to the floating dollar inter-war period, World War II and the for their descendants to obtain The urban trading petty bourgeoisie 20th-early 21st century world, in which standard: an appraisal in the light of Marx’s theory onset of the cold war in chapters 9-12 peerages, and so on). Further, if it is discussed very briefly, but taken to tax regimes lead to a very large part of money’ Review of Radical Political Economics 41, 2009, pp473-91. pretty much completely misses out the was the ‘aristocracy’ that defeated the have similar commitments to family- of corporate profits being distributed 9. Cf, for example, P Pilbeam, ‘The economic geopolitical operations of the ‘western’ crown in the 1640s, it is surprising scale property (p10). The clerisy, as ‘executive compensation’. Its crisis of 1827-32 and the 1830 revolution in powers; and, in particular, the cordon that the instrument of this defeat was certainly a distinct group of political marginalist foundations are nonetheless provincial France’ Historical Journal 32, 1989, sanitaire of authoritarian nationalist- a regular army created in 1645 to actors,18 is not discussed. violently unsound,20 and have been pp319-38. 10. There is a convenient, if journalistic, summary traditionalist polities around the replace local gentry levies, largely The aristocracy is defined as “a pre- demonstrated to be so by the utter in A Alexander America and the imperialism of borders of the Soviet regime. In officered by ‘middling sort’ radicals, eminently military, administrative, and failure of marginalists to predict the ignorance London 2011, chapters 11-14. chapter 12 Marshall Aid is detached and funded - as Mulholland admits political class. Large landowners were crisis of 2008 (or to be able to predict 11. For a rather early example in Britain’s global from its geopolitical context, the in passing - by merchant lending vital as administrators in the localities the recurrence of crisis generally). career see PJ Stern The company-state: corporate sovereignty and the early modern foundations of effort to restore the cordon sanitaire, (p20). Meanwhile, at p21 comrade ... They swarmed at court ... but equally Why has comrade Mulholland the British empire in India Oxford 2011. and Stalin’s turn to ‘Sovietise’ eastern Mulholland characterises William of providing the personnel and contacts adopted it? There are two reasons. 12. See TH Aston (ed) The Brenner debate: agrar- Europe is treated before the US-led Orange in 1688 as “the sovereign of that made executive sovereign power The first is that it is disreputable in ian class structure and economic development in political and economic operations the Dutch United Provinces” - a claim able to function at all. They officered the historical profession not to accept pre-industrial Europe Cambridge 1987; and an extensive other literature since - notably RC Allen to which this turn was quite clearly which would have surprised both the armies and navies ...” (p11). This that Marx’s economics was superseded Enclosure and the yeoman Oxford 1992; J Whittle 10 a response. It should already have Stadhouder himself and the regents characterisation preserves the link by marginalism. Comrade Mulholland The development of agrarian capitalism Oxford been apparent that constitutionalism whose agreement he had to get in between the old medieval ideology of makes the point more explicitly in 2000; PCM Hoppenbrouwers and JL van Zanden was ‘not for export’ as far as Britain order to be able to launch the invasion. classes or ‘estates’ as “those who work, his review of Jonathan Sperber’s Peasants into farmers?: the transformation of rural economy and society in the Low Countries was concerned, not merely from the The role of the Dutch in 1688 those who fight (aristocrats) and those biography of Marx in the Dublin (Middle Ages-19th century) in light of the Brenner 21 non-white formal colonies, but from poses a much larger issue. Like who pray’ and the early modern nobility/ Review of Books. But the mere fact debate Turnhout 2001. British policy in Latin America and - at Robert Brenner,12 albeit dating the gentry; but it almost loses the landlord that marginalism superseded classical 13. S Pincus 1688 New Haven 2009. the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries development a good deal later, class’s character as large landowners, labour-value economics does not make 14. Nor, it should be said, does his account engage with the arguments made in T Harris Revolution - Iran and Turkey; and, though France comrade Mulholland sees the and in doing so misses the practical it true: any more than the novelty of London 2006, for the importance of politics ‘out and the US flirted with constitutionalist emergence of ‘bourgeois society’ as differences created by different modes the anti-catastrophism of geology of doors’ in England in 1688-89, which do imply opposition groupings as a means of an English peculiarity and accidental of exploitation of the land. and paleontology in the later 19th a role of the English ‘middling sort’ as more than detaching countries from the British development. Though he cites Steve The executive state (also undefined) and earlier 20th centuries made this mere extras in a drama played out by aristos and 13 the state core. orbit, where countries were in their Pincus’s 1688, he does not appear to “had to operate by rules defined by the innovative theory true. But addressing 15. J de Vries and A van der Woude The first mod- own orbit they, like Britain, allied with engage with Pincus’s argument that the realities of interstate competition. The this question critically, rather than ern economy: success, failure and perseverance of old elites and authoritarians. politics of the event involved a choice continuity, stability and flexibility of simply repeating the orthodoxy, would the Dutch economy, 1500-1815 Cambridge 1997. The significance of these points for between ‘French’ and ‘Dutch’ models government were ends in themselves again require a much wider reading 16. That is, the problem of ‘English priority’ in 14 the development of capitalism in Europe does not the argument of the book relates to two of modernity. ... The executive state could never than could be done for this book. involve the sort of spurious genetic, etc, deep- points in the conclusion, which can be The problem is perhaps again the passively ‘reflect’ the social interests The second reason is a point historical claims found in relation to the larger conveniently quoted from subheads at time implications (the ‘counsels of of those they governed. It had, which resurfaces repeatedly in the problem of ‘European priority’ - on which see, for p304: first, “the will to power was never perfection’ issue I referred to earlier). and has, an identity and interest ... book: that the direct leading actors example, I Morris Why the west rules - for now London 2010. a bourgeois characteristic”; and second, If the Netherlands is to be recognised, distinct and imperative” (p11). The in the ‘bourgeois revolutions’ 17. ‘Marx, the proletariat, and the “Will to “bourgeois support for authoritarianism as de Vries and van der Woude proposition is true, contrary to Marx’s were mostly lawyers and politicos socialism”’ Critique 37, 2009, pp319-43; ‘“Its was not always in reaction to persuasively argued in 1997, as the “committee for managing the common of one sort and another. This is a patrimony, its unique wealth!” labour-power, challenges from the left”. The first ‘first modern economy’,15 the question affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” very traditional history-department working class consciousness and crises: an outline 19 consideration’ Critique 38, 2010, pp398-400. point is problematic partly because of is in turn posed where this ‘modernity’ (Communist Manifesto). But the criticism of Marxism. The problem 18. Eg, DI Kertzer Unholy war: the Vatican’s role Mulholland’s concept of the bourgeoisie came from. The same issue is posed, absence of a clear definition of what with it is simple. Suppose you are in the rise of modern anti-Semitism London 2003. as a class actor (below), but also certainly in reality, by looking more carefully at ‘the executive state’ is renders the negotiating a contract with a big 19. Cf also M Macnair, ‘Law and state as holes in omits the will to power overseas,11 early modern society and economy in point problematic. The discussions capitalist (assume for simplicity an Marxist theory’ Critique 34, 2006, pp211-36. 20. See, for example, J Weeks The irreconcilable through the book’s narrative focus on England to understand the conditions of the social position of bourgeois, individual rather than a firm) or in inconsistencies of neoclassical macroeconomics domestic politics. The second is true, for the victory of ‘constitutionalism’ proletarians and peasants apply dispute with such a person. You are London 2012. but looks at bourgeois authoritarianism in England (put another way, the comrade Mulholland’s methodology not going to meet the man himself, but 21. www.drb.ie/essays/inventing-the-working-class. 10 weekly July 17 2014 1019 worker middle east Israel’s secret nuclear arsenal Talks designed to secure an agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme look like they will be extended. Meanwhile, Yassamine Mather looks at the one country in the Middle East that is already armed with nuclear weapons n July 13 the Persian-speaking spokesperson of the US state Odepartment was asked by the BBC if in the absence of any progress in negotiations between the P5+1 powers and Iran before July 20 there would be an extension to the deadline for the final phase of nuclear discussions. His reply was clear: John Kerry is in Vienna to resolve the differences and we want to sign the final deal. So don’t let’s talk of extensions. Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, was in Vienna for those talks in an attempt to resolve what William Hague has called “a huge gap” - in particular between Iran’s demand for a future nuclear enrichment programme in spite of the west’s strong opposition. By July 15, after three meetings with Iranian officials, Kerry seemed positive, although both he and Zarif were already hinting at an extension of the July 20 deadline. Further concessions by Iran are likely to include a possible delay of three to seven years in pursuing aspects of the country’s nuclear programme. Irrespective of the final outcome, it is Supreme leader Ali Khamenei: only giving so much leeway clear that Iran is under considerable pressure to sign the final agreement. as ‘fuel cycle capabilities’. In fact Iran’s uranium mines and centrifuge The story of the Argentine yellow cake French design for Dimona included a A return to sanctions worse than in Brazil and South Africa, who have production facilities. In other words, sale to Israel has remained largely large underground reprocessing facility the 2010-13 period is unthinkable. given up nuclear weapons capability there has been full compliance with untold because Israel went to great - Israel’s most important nuclear secret, However, the Iranian negotiating themselves, are allowed to enrich the interim conditions. lengths to keep it a secret and because which Dimona technician Mordechai team is aware that the “full support” nuclear material, and the Iranian However, it has been obvious since the US government and its close allies Vanunu made public in 1986. Soon of supreme leader Ali Khamenei will president and foreign minister have November 2013 that serious points of kept quiet about what they knew at after The Times published an interview only last as long as they can come up based their negotiating position on this contention between Iran and P5+1, not the time. with Vanunu, he was lured to Rome, with a face-saving compromise. interpretation of the NPT. least over interpretation of the NPT, After French disengagement in where he was kidnapped by Mossad, In theory the general outlines of the On the other hand, the US and will make the final stages of these the early 1960s, Israel continued smuggled back to Israel and jailed. proposed final deal between the P5+1 its allies clearly believe that specific negotiations much more difficult. to progress its nuclear programme In 1969 the CIA became concerned and Iran is very clear: western powers rules should be imposed on certain Contrary to what was reported in most covertly. Before the 1967 Six-Day about massive loss of material from will recognise Iran’s rights to have a countries. In this interpretation of of the media, the issue is not over the War, several nuclear devices were Pennsylvania’s Nuclear Materials nuclear industry, as long as the country the NPT, initiated in the early 2000s number of centrifuges, but ‘separative reportedly assembled. Israel had and Equipment Corporation and its accepts inspections and verification of by George Bush, the intention is to work units’ (SWU), by which the certainly produced its first nuclear possible connection to Israel’s nuclear all its nuclear facilities. On the face of impose an international ban on the power of uranium enrichment is weapon by 1967, but it was not until programme. We know this because it, both sides agree with this proposal transfer of fuel cycle technologies to measured in kilograms or metric 1968-69 that US officials concluded the CIA wrote to the US attorney and, given the current US predicament countries that do not already possess tonnes. Two weeks ago Khamenei that an Israeli bomb existed. general: “It is critical for us to establish over Iraq (not to mention Syria and them. This understanding has been surprised many commentators by The yellow cake issue was a big whether or not the Israelis now have Afghanistan), one might have thought followed by the Obama administration, divulging the sticking point of the Israeli secret, but bigger still was the the capability for fabricating nuclear there would be fresh momentum to which insisted on changes to NPT negotiations. According to the Iranian existence of a reprocessing facility weapons, which might be employed resolve things. However, US-Iranian conditions to enable more intrusive side, the country needs 190,000 SWU to convert reactor fuel from Dimona in the near east.”1 relations are not that simple and the and proactive inspections in specific per year. But clearly this is a red line into weapons-grade plutonium. The Israel was expected to sign the 1968 west’s insistence on restrictions on states. Definitely the restrictions posed for the Obama administration. Israelis had told the Canadians and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. nuclear enrichment, the closure of the on Tehran are of this category: ie, they Americans in 1961 that Dimona would However, a number of international Arak heavy water plant and an end to are unique to Iran. Israel and NPT include a pilot plant for reprocessing, events delayed ratification and it was plutonium production go far beyond That is why the most important Throughout these negotiations but it was assumed that it would during this period that Israel’s internal nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obstacle to a deal over the last few the elephant in the room has been be too small to support a weapons divisions and hesitations over the (NPT) conditions (they are, according months has been the controversy Israel. Here is a country with nuclear programme. In reality the original treaty became public. The Johnson to the Iranian team, “NPT-plus”). regarding ‘dual use’ capability and fuel weapons capability, yet it denies it has Iranian president Hassan Rowhani cycle technology. Power stations, as any nuclear plants, has not signed the sent his brother to Vienna, apparently well as nuclear medical research, rely NPT and therefore is exempt from any Communist University 2014 as an advisor to the foreign secretary, on enriched uranium, and the same inspections or monitoring. However, but sections of the Iranian press claim reactors producing civil-use uranium the whole world knows about its Saturday August 16 to Saturday August 23 inclusive he came with new proposals that can provide the capability to enrich it heavy water plant in Dimona (listed Goldsmiths University should narrow the gap between the two to the higher levels of concentration as a textile factory), which produces sides - better monitoring facilities, and necessary for making nuclear bombs. at least 40kg of plutonium a year - Surrey House, 80 Lewisham Way, a delay in pursuing certain aspects of Over the last decade the US sufficient for 10 atom bombs. New Cross, London, SE14 6PB the nuclear programme in return for administration has insisted the UN Israel began its nuclear weapons Iran’s right to enrich uranium. security council adopt resolutions research from its inception as a state Full week, with accommodation: £200 (£250 solidarity, £110 concessions) However, none of this is sufficient aimed at ending nuclear enrichment in 1948. In exchange for Israeli Full week, no accommodation: £60 (£30 concessions) for the US. The reality is, the US wants in Iran. Tehran accepted them, together cooperation during the Suez crisis in First weekend (one night’s accommodation): £40 (£25) to punish Iran and make sure it cannot with Washington’s demand to limit 1956, France provided know-how and One day: £10 (£5). One session: £5 (£2.50) benefit from the political vacuum in the nuclear enrichment to 20%. According helped in the construction of a reactor region. It wants to ensure that its own to International Atomic Energy complex at Dimona - it is capable New Cross interpretation of the NPT becomes the Agency inspectors, Iran has complied of large-scale plutonium production norm, as far as the developing world with all the restrictions imposed as of and reprocessing. By 1958 the US is concerned. On this Khamenei is November 2013: all uranium enriched knew about the nuclear facility and, probably right when he says US beyond 5% was diluted or converted according to White House documents concerns have little to do with nuclear to uranium oxide. The installation or released under the 50-year rule, proliferation. preparation of new centrifuges was the subject came up in a number of halted, and 50% of the centrifuges discussions between US presidents and New Cross Gate Stages at the Natanz enrichment facility Israeli prime ministers. Two interpretations of the NPT and 75% at the Fordow enrichment However, in the early 1960s French Surrey House have dominated the various stages facility have been made inoperable. president Charles de Gaulle ordered Lewishham 80Way Lewishham of the talks. On the one hand, there At the Arak nuclear power plant fuel restrictions and conditions on the Way is the non-aligned countries’ literal production has stopped. The IAEA supply of uranium to Israel and in interpretation. The ‘Brics’ states inspectors have been granted daily 1964 it was discovered that Argentina (Brazil, Russia, India, China and access to Natanz and Fordow, with had agreed to sell 80 tons of uranium South Africa) believe the NPT allows some sites monitored by 24-hour ‘yellow cake’ to Israel, which replaced for the development of what is known cameras. They also have access to the fuel it had expected from France. weekly 11 worker 1019 July 17 2014 What we so fight for administration tried to use the sale of 50 dictatorship is hardly an inspiring Institute with two other persons and affairs, told reporters they could not n Without organisation the F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers to pressure prospect, especially when sections a Geiger counter in order to measure bring their own Geiger counters to the working class is nothing; with Israel to sign the NPT, but subsequently of the Shia theocracy talk about an the radiation levels. They said there scene and instead produced a reading the highest form of organisation abandoned the idea. In April 1969 Henry Armageddon to precipitate the return had been an ‘accident’. They went from a ministerial counter, which it is everything. Kissinger issued a national security of the 12th Shia imam. It is also true to the hut where we lived and then gave a zero result. Clearly a stage- n There exists no real Communist study memorandum asking for a review that protection against accidents for to the children’s dormitory where managed pretence at an investigation. Party today. There are many so- of options for dealing with the Israeli staff working in the nuclear industry our son was staying. They found However, Sarid admitted in front of called ‘parties’ on the left. In nuclear programme, linking it to the and requirements regarding nuclear contamination on everything that the TV cameras that Yitzhak Rabin, reality they are confessional sects. pending sale of the Phantom. However, plants in an earthquake zone are matters Dror touched, even on Shmuel’s then prime minister, had forbidden Members who disagree with the “if we explain our position publicly, of great importance - despite IAEA baby crib and his sheets. Dror would the publication of the official findings. prescribed ‘line’ are expected to we will be the ones to make Israel’s monitoring, the Islamic Republic’s come every time from the lab and And, of course, no-one was allowed gag themselves in public. Either possession of nuclear weapons public, nuclear programme is, above all else, directly go over to the children’s to ask about the nuclear waste from a that or face expulsion. with all the international consequences a danger to its own population. dorm. They saw that everything was plant that does not exist. n Communists operate this entails.”2 Having said that, Zionist Israel is contaminated. We had a sink where In October 1997, a Tel Aviv district according to the principles of In September 1969, US president unencumbered by external monitoring we would make coffee. The sink and court judge ordered £427,000 be paid democratic centralism. Through Richard Nixon met with Israeli and can hardly be considered utensils were all contaminated. We to the family of an employee at the ongoing debate we seek to achieve premier Golda Meir and, according trustworthy. The fact that Israel got rid of the utensils and Dror’s Negev Nuclear Research Centre in unity in action and a common to Avner Cohen, the author of Israel arranged the kidnapping of the only clothes. None of us knew about the Dimona, who died of cancer in 1989, world outlook. As long as they and the bomb,3 there is sufficient technician who has dared to speak out dangers of nuclear materials.”7 aged 43. The judge ruled there was a support agreed actions, members historical evidence to indicate that the about the country’s undeclared nuclear This incident forced Israeli link between his death and his work, should have the right to speak two “reached a secret understanding on facilities, in order to make sure he authorities to close down the Weizmann as he could have been exposed to openly and form temporary or at least one issue: Israel would keep could reveal no more from his prison Institute while all those working there radiation. permanent factions. its nuclear devices out of sight and cell, tells us a lot. were asked to undergo tests. We know None of this means we should n Communists oppose all not test them, and the United States Are Israel’s nuclear facilities of at least two scientists, including ignore accidents that have taken place imperialist wars and occupations would tolerate the situation and not ‘safe’ as far as Israelis and others in Dror Sadeh, who died of cancer as a at Iranian plants, such as the blast at but constantly strive to bring press Israel to sign the Nuclear Non- the neighbouring countries, or indeed result of the incident. Isfahan in 2011, or the lax attitude to to the fore the fundamental Proliferation Treaty that has been worldwide, are concerned? The answer Haya Sadeh explains the health and safety reported by staff. question - ending war is bound embraced by scores of countries is definitely no. The nuclear industry ‘democratic’ Israeli state’s approach: However, at least Iran’s nuclear plants up with ending capitalism. around the world. That understanding is inherently unsafe and obviously “They were all interested in keeping are clearly marked on the map - they n Communists are remains to this day.”4 secret ‘nuclear’ plants, which by the incident quiet. Nobody knew that are not shown as textile plants and internationalists. Everywhere There is no written record of the definition are beyond public scrutiny, the Weizmann Institute was doing they are regularly monitored by IAEA we strive for the closest unity and meeting between Nixon and Meir that are even more dangerous. Nuclear things like that. I too talked to no-one inspectors. Those of us who have agreement of working class and took place on September 26 1969. industry specialists consider 40-year- regarding these issues. I thought, ‘Why campaigned for a nuclear-free Middle progressive parties of all countries. However, it marks the beginning of old facilities such as Israel’s ‘textile ruin things?’ It would have closed East oppose Iran’s nuclear programme We oppose every manifestation the US-Israeli nuclear understanding, factory’ nuclear plant to be in desperate down the institute. However, it was as much as that of Israel. of national sectionalism. It is an whereby Israel pledged to maintain need of replacement. always at the back of my mind, but However, achieving such an aim internationalist duty to uphold the “nuclear restraint” - no testing, no Several accidents have occurred in Dror did not want to think about it, requires openness about existing principle, ‘One state, one party’. declaration, no visibility - while Dimona. The first we know of took not even after the first scientist died.” nuclear capability in the region and n The working class must be White House agreed to “stand down” place in 1956 or 1957, before the On December 14 1966 another the Zionist state’s ‘secret’ nuclear organised globally. Without its pressure on Israel. Following on construction of the nuclear plant itself. major accident occurred in the Dimona programme, which is so prone to a global Communist Party, from this, on February 23 1970 the Scientists in the Weizmann Institute reactor. One employee was killed and accidents and mishaps, making a a Communist International, Israeli ambassador to the US, Yitzhak working on the construction of the an entire section was contaminated. mockery of western claims of adhering the struggle against capital is Rabin, informed Kissinger that, in the reactor revealed: “Material which was At the time it was thought that the to non-proliferation. It is such double weakened and lacks coordination. light of Nixon’s conversation with supposed to seal the nuclear substance improper use of alcohol for cleaning standards that provoke such deep n Communists have no interest Meir in September 1969, Israel “has and protect it from leaking cracked and purposes was the main cause of the resentment in the region and, in the apart from the working class no intention to sign the NPT”. radioactive materials leaked. This was accident. The clean-up took weeks and absence of a revolutionary left, it will as a whole. They differ only in By 1975, ‘opacity’ regarding discovered late, and high reading of throughout this period the reactor was be the fundamentalists and jihadists recognising the importance of Israeli nuclear arms had become the nuclear material was found in the shut down. who continue benefit from such Marxism as a guide to practice. norm and, in keeping with the US- laboratory and in the bodies of some Then in 1982 a hydrogen leak obvious imperialist arrogance l That theory is no dogma, but Israel understanding, when Congress of the workers. High radiation was produced a small explosion and in the must be constantly added to questioned the state department as to also found in the homes of the young early 1990s a large fire broke out in [email protected] and enriched. whether Israel had nuclear weapons, scientists, articles they touched and the reactor’s grounds, causing another n Capitalism in its ceaseless the response was predictable. The state even their children’s beds.”6 shutdown, this time for a longer period. Notes search for profit puts the future department refused to deny or confirm This was all reported by the Hebrew- Again, there was a news blackout - you 1. http://irmep.org/ila/numec/04021968_Helms_ of humanity at risk. Capitalism the existence of an Israeli bomb. language newspaper Maariv in 2006 can hardly admit to nuclear accident if Clark.pdf. is synonymous with war, 2. www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/kissinger_memo.pdf. There are many unknowns about following 50 years of censorship on you deny having a nuclear programme. 3. A Cohen Israel and the bomb Columbia 1998. pollution, exploitation and crisis. Israel’s nuclear capability. However, this question. In 1994, following heavy rains in 4. www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/world/ As a global system capitalism according to a study published by Haya Sadeh, widow of Dror Sadeh, the Dimona area, water leaked from middleeast/29nixon.html?pagewanted=print. can only be superseded globally. Stockholm International Peace one of the scientists employed at the the reactor’s drainage pools. Clearly 5. http://fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke. n The capitalist class will never 6. See www.armagedon.org.il/dimona_english. Research Institute entitled Plutonium lab, explains the situation as follows: this water was contaminated. Yossi htm. willingly allow their wealth and and highly enriched uranium, 1996: “Dror arrived from the Weizmann Sarid, minister of environmental 7. Ibid. power to be taken away by a world inventories, capabilities and parliamentary vote. policies, Israel had “a complete n We will use the most militant repertoire” of nuclear weaponry methods objective circumstances (neutron bombs, nuclear mines, Summer Offensive allow to achieve a federal republic suitcase bombs, submarine-based of England, Scotland and Wales, missiles …). This was the year that a united, federal Ireland and a the UN general assembly passed a CU and cash United States of Europe. resolution calling for the establishment n Communists favour industrial of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the nother good week for this year’s ‘safe spaces’ policy; Yassamine to tell readers that we have added unions. Bureaucracy and class Middle East. By 2006 the Federation ASummer Offensive, our annual Mather talks on women-only a robust £1,418, taking our total compromise must be fought and of American Scientists believed that fundraising drive. But before we quotas, positive discrimination to £7,093. Or - to be pedantically the trade unions transformed Israel “could have produced enough get into the details of what has and the fight for women’s equality; specific, £7,093.50. A comrade into schools for communism. plutonium for at least 100 nuclear been raised over the last seven days, The Bolsheviks and their record responsible for compiling these n Communists are champions weapons, but probably not significantly we should update comrades about of organising amongst women is figures tells me that “traditionally of the oppressed. Women’s more than 200 weapons.”5 Communist University - the annual examined by Anne McShane; we deal in whole pounds only!” Sez oppression, combating racism and In 2009, during a press conference in CPGB school that the SO actually Moshé Machover will open a who, comrade …? chauvinism, and the struggle for the White House, Washington reporter helps make possible. discussion on the possibilities of Mentioned in despatches are peace and ecological sustainability Helen Thomas asked the US president We will be uploading onto the the further Balkanisation of the comrades ML for his £350 - the fruits are just as much working class if he knew of any country in the Middle CPGB site a more or less finished Middle East in the aftermath of of his “first proper job”, according questions as pay, trade union rights East with nuclear weapons. Predictably timetable for this year’s week-long the ‘Arab spring’; Paul Demarty to a supportive comrade; the team and demands for high-quality Obama avoided a reply, saying only event. That said, we are also at the stage presents the intriguingly titled that has raised £110 through badge health, housing and education. that he did not want to “speculate”. of haggling with various confirmed session, ‘The politics of lying’; and sales; a sturdy £380 from PM and a n Socialism represents victory UK spokespersons have followed the speakers - it’s always the case that German comrades from Assoziation £70 cheque from JH to the Weekly in the battle for democracy. It US lead on this. When asked about the some comrades have to come back to Dämmerung discuss the problems Worker, along with a note that is the rule of the working class. Israeli bomb, Conservative peer and us with tweaks to the times and/or dates of ‘animal liberation’. thunders, “Towards the revolution! Socialism is either democratic foreign affairs minister Baroness Warsi of the sessions they have signed up As always, and in a rather sad Keep up the fight!” (Money sent to or, as with Stalin’s Soviet Union, would only say: “Israel has not declared for. This is fiddly, so comrades should contrast to schools organised by other the paper will, of course, be used for it turns into its opposite. a nuclear weapons programme. We check the website right up to the last trends of the revolutionary left, CU is the Weekly Worker specifically, but n Socialism is the first stage have regular discussions with the minute if there are specific sessions you a place where differing views contend it counts towards our overall total.) of the worldwide transition government of Israel on a range of have your eye on. and clash openly, and where members So a decent pace is being to communism - a system nuclear-related issues.” As a taster for the full agenda, of the CPGB, as well as comrades of maintained - but we need more which knows neither wars, here are some of the speakers and other organisations or none, can air supporters of the work of this exploitation, money, classes, Safe? their subjects of this year: their views, argue and debate freely organisation and the paper it states nor nations. Communism In parallel with such obfuscation, Hillel Ticktin (editor of with one another as comrades. Staging supports to follow the fine lead of is general freedom and the real whenever the issue of an Israeli Critique) assesses World War I as a and building this event is one of the JH and put their money where their beginning of human history. nuclear bomb is raised, there is always symptom of capitalism’s systemic most political things our organisation principles are! l The Weekly Worker is licensed by November the implication that this is not a central decline; Camilla Power (Radical does in the course of its annual Mark Fischer Publications under a Creative Commons question in any case. After all, Israel is Anthropology Group) speaks on work, and a healthy SO is vital to a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Fill in a standing order form a ‘democracy’ - unlike Iran, a religious early communism and its resonances successful CU. Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ (back page), donate via our by-nc/4.0/legalcode. autocracy. in the 21st century; Mike Macnair So, to make my opening website, or send cheques, ISSN 1351-0150. Of course, it is true that nuclear dissects the politics of Left Unity’s paragraph more specific, I’m pleased weaponry in the hands of a religious payable to Weekly Worker No 1019 July 17 2014 weekly Politics of crude worker workerism Socialism and bear-baiting Socialist Worker’s gloating over Horatio Chapple’s death is crass and cruel, writes Paul Demarty. But it is also a product of political weaknesses t is a week since Socialist Worker of some of the prominent former complementary ‘masculine ideal’ that couch and lashing out with a belt.5 anything to this. Indeed, it is actively ran a small item in its snarky members of the International Socialist/ deforms male individuality: while men counterproductive - instead of providing Troublemaker column about the death SWP tradition. His apostasy was epic may benefit in certain material ways On top of that, there is a whole strand of a positive lead, it encourages resentful I 1 of Horatio Chapple, a 17-year-old Eton in scale, but Christopher Hitchens was from this situation, there is a subjective fiction - fromLord of the flies to Lindsay slave morality. Cheap shots of this pupil who was mauled by a polar bear once thought an asset, despite his status cost that in some cases (for many gay Anderson’s 1968 filmIf… - that uses the kind, inasmuch as they find an echo, act on a Norwegian iceberg, and we find as the establishment’s pet revolutionary. men, for instance) is intolerable. More bestiality of public school life as a lens merely as cold comfort for those who do ourselves wondering how on earth it More immediately ironic is Paul Foot, acute feminist and other literature on into the evil inherent in our society, or not expect their actual condition to get made it through the editorial process. a Shrewsbury old boy, investigative the women’s question has discussed even human nature itself. any better: the sneer of the oppressed The idea perhaps came to comrade journalist and lifelong IS/SWP member this phenomenon for some time, and Part of this experience is gone creature. Troublemaker after a few refreshments, - a Marxism session this weekend was even among the contemporary cliques (although not long gone - corporal And that is the second problem - the no doubt initially in the form of the dedicated to his memory, it being the of privilege-baiters its memory is not punishment was outlawed in private implied contempt for Troublemaker’s Sun-esque headline (‘Eton by bear?’), 10th anniversary of his death. entirely lost. schools only in 2003), but no doubt readership. The SWP fondly imagines its and then the political line, such as it is Indeed, the history of our movement Likewise for those ‘born to rule’. Elite psychological humiliation suffices for paper to be read attentively by militant (save the polar bears, so that they might is littered with ruling class traitors! public schools exist to prepare people to the modern, civilised schoolmaster. The workers. What view of militant workers eat more Eton boys!). In goes to copy, Owen Jones, in a well-judged piece sit at the top of the social food chain; point remains the same: to cultivate a is offered here? That they can be cajoled whereupon it is presumably subbed, and in The Guardian, lists them off: this in practice means inculturation into barrack-room solidarity against everyone into action by the manipulation of their then given a once over by editor Judith “Friedrich Engels, a prosperous German the values of the military aristocracy - a else, and most of the time it works. There desire for vengeance. Put poetically, Orr. At no point does it occur to any of industrialist; Vladimir Lenin, born into class which is now almost defunct as a is always the chance, however, that it this is Walter Benjamin’s Bakuninist the comrades that gloating over the death a family of minor Russian nobles; Leon social reality, but which persists as an backfires - that identification occurs not admonition of social democracy, which of a teenager is pointless and cruel. Trotsky, the child of well-off Ukrainian ideological image. with the in-group, but with the struggles, “made the working class forget both So it comes off the presses; but on a farmers …”3 Traditionally, this has been achieved material and political, of the great its hatred and spirit of sacrifice, for slow news day on Fleet Street, alas, this It is worth wondering why this should by enforcing a dehumanising culture - unwashed. A class traitor - a George both are nourished by the image of little aside suddenly becomes national be the case. Are we just talking about a gender segregation, corporal punishment Orwell, a Charlie Kimber - is born. enslaved ancestors rather than liberated news. The boy’s parents are horrified. series of blind flukes, or is there some and often sexualised forms of coercive grandchildren.”6 Put less poetically, it They want an apology. Worst of all, old reason why the ruling class should throw authority. Jon Snow, the Channel 4 To lead society reads: “Eton by bear?” enemies like the perfidious Owen Jones up a few gravediggers from within its news anchor, asked recently whether Defenders - if there are any - of the ‘Eton As such, it is of a piece with the (and now, of course, the Weekly Worker) own ranks? the willingness of establishment figures by bear?’ article might wonder whether less honourable, more dishonest parts get a shot at the moral high ground. Now, I went to a middling red-brick to (allegedly) hush up child abuse taking advantage of this marginal of the SWP’s political practice - the the Socialist Workers Party faces an university, with a cohort consisting to a allegations had any connection to the failure of ruling class reproduction is cultivation of estuary English by middle uncomfortable choice - either it offers a considerable extent of privately educated normalisation of what amounts to ‘prison worth much effort. Indeed, there is class comrades, the pretence at ‘just’ grovelling apology or it doubles down people, who - by virtue of their success sex’ in the public schools such people nothing especially important about posh being ‘Jane Doe from Tunbridge Wells on a piece of poor taste. So far, it has in the sperm lottery - had the grades to attended: defectors; the point remains to build a PCS’ and so on: an artificial and utterly done neither. get into a top institution, but did not strong, intransigent working class implausible aesthetic of workerism. The latter approach served it have the raw ability and smarts to do I well remember my first days in my movement for socialism. It rather reminds us, in fact, of reasonably well the last time Socialist so. This was reflected in the university’s boarding school - the wolf whistles The trouble with this bit of bear- boarding school culture - the working Worker got unflattering notice for political character - the biggest student from the prefects’ open windows, as baiting is twofold. Firstly, the point of our class should learn to hate outsiders; scraping this particular barrel, with its groups were Conservative Future and we passed in and out of our boarding movement is, as it were, to be the Eton of comrades with better backgrounds ‘Rejoice!’ front page after the death the somewhat Toryish debating society. quarters. Prettier boys were openly the working class: while that venerable ought to hide such a shameful, of Margaret Thatcher (April 13 2013). Yet it was never difficult to build rated as desirable. It was in my school prepares the children of the rich embarrassing fact. Indeed, we can “Now get the rest,” the comrades some kind of left presence. A friend second term, when I was 13-years- and powerful to live up to their parentage well imagine the Harrow rugby chirruped - “get”, in this instance, and comrade from the Socialist Party in old, that I first received a note from a and take their place in an apparatus made team wearing ‘Save the polar bears’ presumably meaning ‘wait for them to England and Wales had his own theory 17-year-old in the school rugby team in their image, we want to prepare the badges in Chapple’s honour - barring get old and suffer from degenerative - people would arrive in fresher’s week, asking would I meet him for a smoke. working class to take over society and the masthead, there is nothing to illnesses’. see all the braying rugby boys and This was a euphemism for intended make it fit for human habitation; hence distinguish the politics of Socialist That, however, was Thatcher, who recoil in horror. Socialism was a way of sexual contact … Most of us, when we have no need of the birch, power-mad Worker’s hostility to Horatio Chapple was widely and understandably hated confirming that they hadescaped public we left school, skated over our sexual prefects or psychological abuse (though from the petty rivalries between elite by the workers’ movement and the left. school, and survived intact. activity, reckoning the experience had perhaps someone ought to tell the SWP schools. She was a hardened class fighter for There is a broader question here. The done us no harm. I’m not so sure.4 leadership). That is not the working class the bourgeoisie, was prepared to take SWP rightly catches a lot of flak for Such preparation means finding ways political culture we want to build; the knocks that come with the job, and claiming that working class men do not Paul Foot’s memories are similar: for the working class to lead broader nor the revolution we want to make no doubt was resigned to the idea that benefit at all from women’s oppression society now. This was basic Marxism either. Socialism is not revenge, but her death would be celebrated in some - only capital does. The germ of truth in [Schoolmaster Anthony Trevenix- in the days of Marx down to Kautsky its abolition l quarters. She was not an utterly random there is that oppression and exploitation Trench] would offer his culprit an and Lenin at least: we are fighting child of privilege who happened to come are not straightforwardly ‘done’ by one alternative: four strokes with the for hegemony, which means we must [email protected] to a gory fate on an Arctic adventure privileged social group to another, cane, which hurt; or six with the have something to say to the ground- holiday. subaltern one; rather they are effects of strap, with trousers down, which down petty bourgeois, or alienated state Notes 1. Socialist Worker July 8. the overall social structure (to put it in didn’t. Sensible boys always chose bureaucrats. By the same token, we 2. The Independent July 10. Class traitors Althusserian terms) - the “circumstances the strap, despite the humiliation, ought to have something to say to public 3. The Guardian July 14. There has been much ink spilled over not of our own choosing”, in which we and Trench, quite unable to control schoolboys other than ‘We hope you get 4. http://blogs.channel4.com/snowblog/nspcc- the hypocrisy of this infantile, sub- make our own history and in which we his glee, led the way to an upstairs eaten by a bear’. child-abuse-cover-public-school/24184. 5. Quoted in N Cohen, ‘The epistles of Saint Paul’ Class War pseudo-politics. Adrian ourselves are made. room, which he locked, before Troublemaker’s unfortunate The Observer July 25 2004. Weale, the father of a former classmate Women’s oppression means, hauling down the miscreant’s column, but also the gloating over 6. ‘Theses on the philosophy of history’ in H Zorn of Chapple’s, pointed out rather acidly necessarily, constructing a trousers, lying him face down on a Thatcher’s death, does not contribute (translator) Illuminations London 1999, p252. to The Independent: “Who knows how Horatio’s life would have turned out? 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