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Ancient and Modern, Marxists Should Treat A paper of Marxist polemic and Marxist unity Ancient and modern, Marxists n Letters and debate n Anti-racist consensus should treat constitutions n Communist University seriously, says Mike Macnair n LAW strategy debate No 1361 September 2 2021 Towards a mass Communist Party £1/€1.10 AFTER THE US EXODUS weekly 2 September 2 2021 1361 worker LETTERS Party. Revolution - the last great popular popular democratic national revolution able to exert maximum power over Letters may have been By contrast, the growing Rank and democratic revolution in modern times and to be key political powers within society and to drive forward at all costs shortened because of space. Some names File Committee movement, despite - for the socialist revolution in Britain, a post-revolutionary regime and state a process of primary accumulation. may have been changed increasingly desperate denial from despite some obvious differences apparatus - relying on its bases within However, a return to the market the pseudo-left Pabloite revisionist between the two countries. The need the working masses and within the eventually becomes necessary, as we renegades, is striking fear into the hearts for working people with the support alternative structures of working have seen in China and Russia. So, Unappealing cult of the global imperialist monopoly of socialists, communists and other class independence (hopefully the even here, taking a country outwith I have just read Gerry Wiley’s bourgeoisie. Global capitalism - now revolutionaries to build up grassroots basis of the new post-revolutionary value relations is, in the longer term, interesting letter about Socialist more than 80 years into its terminal structures, organisations and state power). The more respect and a temporary measure. Moreover, this Appeal (August 12) - a group I was a death agony - can only be transcended formations of mass, popular power, standing members of the socialist left is essentially concerned with the early member of until a year and a half ago. through the fulfilment of the objective independent from the bourgeois state, can build among members of their stages of an industrial society, rather I can confirm that the organisation historical revolutionary role of the came across very strongly in Jafari’s communities and throughout the than dealing with factors impacting is precisely as he describes it. Since class-conscious proletariat. articles. range of organisations of independent upon the whole world, including the leaving I have written articles and set The emancipation of the proletariat It is also important to develop really working people’s popular power, many countries that have long passed up a blog about how the organisation is must be the act of the proletariat practical and relevant structures and through their hard work, selflessness, the period of primary accumulation. a political cult. itself - under the sole leadership, of organisation to enable us to manage focus, discipline and practicality, the The central question facing Within the sect, we were course, of the one true world party of and address the critical issues in our greater the influence they will exert the capitalist classes of the world discouraged from thinking for socialist revolution - the International neighbourhoods and communities. on the content and direction of the is whether the ‘greening’ of their ourselves or exploring Marxist theory Committee of the Fourth International. The immediate community response revolutionary process. economy can take place within outside the sacred circle of Marx, In their steadfast struggle against all to the Grenfell disaster, providing I would love there to be a single the context of profitable capital Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and Ted Grant. forms of pseudo-left vulgarisations of food, shelter and other basics for all mass Communist Party or a large accumulation. Capitalism is, above We prided ourselves on our orthodoxy revolutionary Marxism, David North those affected, was, for example, mass socialist party of working all, production for profit. Other than in and our contempt for intellectual and the Socialist Equality Party have inspirational in this respect, while the people, uniting the great majority short periods of wartime emergency, fads. We believed that only our sect won the rank-and-file proletariat to a response of the state was woeful. of left political groups, along with new technology has been introduced to had the truth. Rivals were dismissed genuine Marxist programme. We must always stress the trade unions, community groups raise productivity and thereby increase as ‘Taaffites’, ‘Cliffites’, ‘Healyites’, The contradictions of global importance of the class independence and other progressive campaigning surplus value. ‘Cannonites’, ‘Zinovievites’ or some imperialism threaten a third world of these structures - working people’s organisations. But we have to ‘Greening’ the economy envisages other disobliging term. We would war fought with nuclear weapons, and self-organisation and development of recognise where we are now and have not piecemeal retooling, but the acknowledge that other Trotskyist therefore the fate of not just the working the capacity to start to govern ourselves a strategy to get from here to where we far-reaching reshaping of the entire groups were cults, but not ours. class, but the human species itself, independent of the bourgeois state. We need to be. And I don’t think the sort production process, from obtaining Peer pressure and the mystical depends on resolutely exposing the must also have clearly in our minds of great national popular upheaval I raw materials to distributing manipulation practised by the Pabloites, Grantites, Taaffites, Cliffites, the longer-term aim of developing suspect will happen in the not too far finished goods - not for reasons leadership discouraged us from Healyites, Hansenites, Macnairites, conditions of dual power and the distant future will wait for the left to of profitable accumulation, but to reading anything outside the Mandelites, Steinerites and all other creation of an alternative to help us get our collective acts together. deal with the climate crisis. This organisation’s own publications. forms of counterrevolutionary overthrow the whole of the bourgeois Andrew Northall is something unprecedented in the Whenever I had a doubt on anything, opportunism blocking the path to state apparatus and replace it by one Kettering history of capitalism, and raises some I would simply look for an article on planetary proletarian revolution. completely subordinate to, run by and fundamental questions: the Socialist Appeal or International We urge all workers, youth and in the interests of working people. Climate crisis n Can the various new or replacement Marxist Tendency website to resolve intellectuals stirred by this call to action The weakness of the socialist Eddie Ford makes some pertinent non-polluting or lesser-polluting my difficulties. When I did eventually to unite in Rank and File Committees and revolutionary left in Iran and points on the climate crisis and the role commodities be produced and sold on bring forward a disagreement I had and to contact the International therefore the ability of Khomeini’s of the capitalist state (‘At the tipping a profitable basis? on the organisation’s interpretation Committee today. religious movement to divert, absorb point’, August 5). But I would go n Can existing agricultural and of the revolution, I was hounded out Mark Matterhorn and take over many of the emerging further than what he wrote about the industrial processes that are profitable and slandered - as happens to any Detroit USA basic organisations and structures distortion of value relations as a result but environmentally damaging be dissenting member of these sects. within working class neighbourhoods, of state intervention during the two replaced by environmentally friendly Nor does the sectarianism of the Taaffe was right communities and workplaces also has world wars. ones that are profitable? organisation in relation to the ‘witch- In the continuing shift to the right in lessons for Britain. The UK left is also I would say that value relations n Can individual companies and hunt’ surprise me. We were utterly the Labour Party (which I myself have extremely weak, hopelessly divided have been distorted pretty much nation-states actually transcend contemptuous of the rest of the left now left, along with many others), and fragmented, and lacks influence throughout the capitalist era. The the competitiveness immanent to behind their backs. Internally we there is no let-up in expulsions. and impact on civic and political state has long played a role in capitalism and enter into long-term rubbished the “left reformists” and Socialist Appeal, who are appealing society. guaranteeing profitable accumulation, cooperative relationships, taking into “ex-comrades” that made up our against their expulsion last month I think it is highly likely we may whenever deemed necessary, and account that the effects of the climate closest ideological relations in the after their membership of Labour see a classic popular democratic capitalists themselves have distorted crisis might well increase international labour movement. for more than 50 years, was seen as revolution in Britain in the next 20 value relations by manipulating the tensions and competition rather than Heiko Khoo, one of the people posing little threat to Labour, being years or so, but, given the weakness of market with monopolies and joint-
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