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- encourage cooperation? who turned up at the anti-expulsion nothing more than a pressure group the revolutionary left, this is extremely stock companies, not to mention by n How long can the state distort protest outside Labour HQ, is a former sticking it out inside the party, having unlikely to be explicitly socialist or downright chicanery. value relations through subsidising member of Socialist Appeal who was split with Militant, which was led by communist. Who knows what may The 20th century saw capitalist unprofitable, environmentally friendly expelled by the Woods clique for Peter Taaffe. Never being anything trigger such an upheaval? It could be governments mobilise their economy production, before the need for daring to challenge the leadership on more than a fringe campaigning group climate change; contempt and disgust in order to fight inter-imperialist profitable accumulation imperiously the issue of the class nature of China, naively trying to halt the rightwing for the corrupt political class; energy wars, again distorting value relations. imposes itself by way of an economic among other things. Why would they capitalist influence on Labour and the and/or food shortages; a further health Indeed, Eddie writes that during World crisis caused by declining profitability? want the embarrassment of associating party’s shameful sellout of working crisis; escalating industrial action War II, the British government even Paul Flewers themselves with such people? Better class members, SA’s efforts are finally involving new groups of workers “temporarily suspended the law of email to use the publicity generated by this over if their appeal fails later on in the for the first time, hitting key pinch value and produced on the basis of episode to increase their profile and year. points in the economy and society; a need”. He then asks if this might be Hysteria recruit more members. That was the Peter Taaffe’s’ main wing of reaction to the brutality of state forces done in order to deal with the looming Eddie Ford’s piece starts off with a only purpose of their turning up to the Militant were happy to leave and fight in specific circumstances, which seize climate crisis. few ‘shock horror’ observations on protests that took place the other week. outside the party. Militant is now the the popular imagination (there was The key word here is “temporarily”. weather events - without any attempt Of course, whether they like it or not, Socialist Party, of course, part of the a sense of this over the police attack The day-to-day distortion of value to check from a range of available SA is just another rotten sect, incapable Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, on the Sarah Everard vigil, as well as relations under capitalism has taken commentators as to whether each, of communicating in a healthy manner and now it seems to have been proved significant mobilisation around the place to preserve them as a whole: any or all are as exceptional as his with the working class - or, for that right in the long term (us today, you need to protect women and girls); or that is, to guarantee the existence ‘sources’ maintain. Such a range might matter, its own membership. After tomorrow!). something else altogether. of an economic system based upon include Paul Homewood’s blog, Not a 30 years of ceaseless activity they Labour used the presence of the I think one of the key lessons from profitable capital accumulation. But lot of people know that, and perhaps boast a mere 600 members in Britain. left to excuse its election defeats - Iran is that the left may well be a this is not a severe distortion. I very Homewood’s own sources as well as Militant had 8,000 at its height, and in particular this over-condemned minority within a big national upheaval much doubt that value relations can his analyses. There are others. even that was not enough to secure it group, which had little influence and and will need to compete patiently, be severely distorted or suspended for There has been a discernible change lasting influence. The glory days of the no position in the party. But now any diplomatically, democratically, but more than just a short period without in how the media reports unusual or Grantite clique are well behind it. failure in the next election will rest firmly with all sorts of other groups, causing severe damage to profitable extreme weather - usually linking it I encourage everyone to read what clearly on the ideology which Labour tendencies and movements. It will capital accumulation and thus to the now to human activity - and there have Dennis Tourish, Louis Proyect, Janja now wishes to follow. If it does need to do this within the range of capitalist economy as a whole. The two been various stories about how 2021 Lalich, Steven Hassan and various succeed in the next general election it formations produced by working world wars lasted just a few years, and is going to be the hottest and wettest others have written on the subject will not be in the interests of the broad people in the struggle for all forms of it is a moot point as to whether value ever year. This is in the context of the of political cults. It should prove working class, as it will be practically political, economic and social rights, relations were actually suspended, as 26th UN Climate Change Conference instructive in getting the left to break indistinguishable from the Tories! to govern, manage and defend our opposed to restricted, during that time. (Cop26) to be held in Glasgow, with its counterproductive methods of Ian Reynolds communities, workplaces and unions, Governments had the clear purpose of beginning October 31. In preparation political organisation. Marxist to seek to win influence within them, obtaining a military victory: that is, a for that huge gathering of presidents, Aaron Kyereh-Mireku prior, during and following any such foreseeable end was expected within a government ministers, top climate London Get act together upheaval. relatively short time. Dealing with the scientists and officially approved I thought Peyman Jafari’s two articles And, yes, such independent and self- climate crisis will be a much longer do-gooders, there is the ongoing Long live SEP! on the unfolding Iranian Revolution managed structures and formations job. preparation of the sixth report by the I very much agree with comrade of 1978-79 were absolutely excellent, will need to include the capacity to Now, value relations can be Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Wiley. The political and theoretical thought-provoking and stimulating defend working class people and suppressed entirely, as in the Soviet Change. bankruptcy of the Grantites of Socialist (‘The Imam, the strikers and the black, communities from the violence of the Union and China. This, however, What needs to be emphasised about Appeal, with their craven submission black oil’, August 5; and ‘Centrality of bourgeois state and to keep people is essentially restricted to large, the IPCC is that the clue is in the name: to petty bourgeois class forces under class independence’, August 12). safe from all forms of crime, including underdeveloped countries possessing it is a governmental panel. While the guise of neo-Pabloite ‘entryism’, In a previous letter to the Weekly violence against women and girls. huge material and human resources, climate scientists draw up the initial has been laid bare by their farcical Worker (March 4), I argued that there The socialist left can aspire to a weak or non-existent bourgeoisie, report and provide the raw material, second expulsion from the Labour are many lessons from the Iranian influence the direction of any such and a national leadership willing and it is government officials who go over BCM Box 928, London WC1N 3XX l 07379 532160 l www.weeklyworker.co.uk l [email protected] weekly worker 1361 September 2 2021 3

it with a fine-tooth comb - putting all not invest it in their farm if it would forecast the onset of a new slump that ACTION sorts of doubts and caveats into the produce less than the average profit. never came, until one was deliberately No! 20 years of Stop the War text, which the scientists are normally Marx shows this is wrong. To induced by government diktat in September 8 to September 19: Free art exhibition, Nunnery very unhappy with. There is clearly accumulate capital it’s only necessary response to Covid paranoia. Even Gallery, 181 Bow Road, London E3. Anti-war art that has mobilised a tension then between what the to make a sufficient margin over the last year, he predicted a “post-Covid millions and influenced the political consciousness of a generation. scientists are reporting and projecting rate of interest, or return on other slump”, as a result of profits being Artists include: Banksy, Brian Eno, Vivienne Westwood, Ben Eine - saying what needs to be done - and assets. The rate of profit is always crushed. Profits were crushed, but, and David Gentleman. what governments are willing to significantly higher than the rate of when restrictions were lifted, far from a Organised by Stop the War Coalition: commit themselves to. interest. Investing it in some new land, slump, there has been a rampant boom, www.facebook.com/events/1009156106527363. What Eddie does not seem to heed Marx says, might involve costs, and driving rapid capital accumulation, is the political-bureaucratic nature of represents extensive rather than the sharply rising commodity price 1971 TUC and the Industrial Relations Act the relation between governments and intensive methods that capital favours. inflation and rising interest rates, as Thursday September 9, 7pm: Online discussion marking research organisations. What is his Lending it at interest would mean borrowing increased. 50 years since the TUC voted to instruct unions to defy the basis for his bland assumption that the accepting a lower return from the start. Reality contradicts Roberts’ theory. Industrial Relations Act and resist its restrictions on the right to “doubts and caveats of governments” The same applies to industrial In the 1960s the rate of profit was strike. Speakers: John Hendy QC and Carolyn Jones (Institute of point to, or rely on, scientific production: “Then, from the outset, being squeezed by a rising wage share. Employment Rights). Register free. reservations rather than headline- [the capitalist] forgoes at least a half or According to Roberts, this should have Organised by Marx Memorial Library: seeking - or standard budgetary/pork- a third of the usual profit. Hence, if he meant declining capital accumulation www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk/event/324. barrel - squabbles? Do not research can invest it as additional capital on the and economic growth. Between 1950 Wigan Diggers Festival organisations depend heavily on old farm, even below the average rate and 1960 US gross domestic product Saturday September 11, 11am to 9.30pm: Open-air free festival, government funding and therefore on of profit ... then he will still be gaining rose by 41%, but between 1960 and The Wiend, Wigan WN1. Commemorating Gerrard Winstanley and compliance with headline-seeking? 100% if the rate of interest is 5%” 1970 by 51%. Even in the period of the 17th century Diggers movement with music and political stalls. Moreover, ‘peer’ review is all too often (Theories of surplus value chapter 13). crisis between 1970 and 1980 it rose Organised by Wigan Diggers Festival: just that - mutual back-scratching by The law of the tendency for the by 37%. The period from the early www.facebook.com/events/573272154084350. cronies. rate of profit to fall, which Roberts 1980s was a period of falling wage AW Montford’s books give relies upon, is an explanation of why share and rising rate of profit. That Youth and student school for Palestine excellent examples of such back- capital accumulates faster in some should mean rising accumulation and Saturday September 11 and Sunday September 12: Weekend scratching and its effects - most higher-profit spheres. It is not an growth, according to Roberts, but school, Resource for London, 356 Holloway Road, London N7. notoriously, the ‘hockey-stick’ explanation of higher or lower capital between 1980 and 1990, US GDP rose Become an organiser in the campaign for Palestinian rights. fiasco, with its desperate attempts accumulation in total. The cause of by 37% - virtually no different than £5 to enrol. Organised by Palestine Solidarity Campaign: to deny the Medieval (and perhaps falling profits within each cycle is during the period of crisis of the 1970s. www.facebook.com/events/2749965855127210. the Roman) Warm Periods, and I a squeeze on profits, resulting from In the period 1990-2000 the figure Liverpool against the arms fair believe, the polar bear ‘crisis’ (there changes in the value composition was 40%: ie, considerably below the Saturday September 11, 11.30am: Demonstration. Assemble is a danger of extinction, as that bear of capital - rising material costs, 1960s, when wage share was rising Princes Park, Princes Road, Liverpool L18. Demand Liverpool’s population increases - perhaps beyond rising wages - whereas the law of the and profits were being squeezed. In ACC centre cancels this arms fair due to be held in October. sustainability!). tendency for the rate of profit to fall is other words, the exact opposite of Organised by Liverpool Against the Electronic Arms Fair: None of the above is or assists a based upon changes in the technical, what should be the case, according to www.facebook.com/events/538936997334626. defence of capitalism. The case against and thereby organic, composition of Roberts’ theory. National Shop Stewards Network capitalism can stand independently of capital, which measures changes in the Arthur Bough Sunday September 12, 12 noon: Online pre-TUC rally. The petty bourgeois hysteria, can it not? average rate of profit between cycles. email pandemic has delivered a bosses’ offensive, including ‘fire and Jack Fogarty If Roberts’ theory were correct, there rehire’, union-busting, a public-sector pay freeze and further email should be continually falling capital Confuced? austerity. Hear from union leaders and workers how the class has accumulation over time, corresponding I was a bit surprised to read in fought back with a strike wave that has seen important victories. Amateurish to a continually falling rate of profit. Mike Belbin’s piece on China Speakers include Sharon Graham, Unite general secretary. As someone with a background That does not happen. that Confucius “did not believe in Organised by National Shop Stewards Network: in the quantitative sciences, I have Roberts’ description of the interest gods” (‘Modernisation with typical www.facebook.com/events/369079554731343. to say that the session on climate rate cycle is crude and wrong. He says characteristics’, July 22). change at Communist University was the rate of interest is highest when the Because he didn’t talk much about Resist DSEI: stop arming Israel uncharacteristically amateurish, ill- rate of profit is highest, and lowest them (in the sayings that have come Events organised by Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop The informed and confused. Unfortunately during slumps, which he conflates with down to us, the ‘Analects’) doesn’t Arms Fair: it appeared to be driven more by the sort crises. Marx says it’s highest during necessarily imply that he didn’t Sunday September 12, 1pm: Demonstration. Assemble Forest Lane of outraged liberalism that the CPGB crises, lowest during the period of believe in them. Confucius presented Park, Forest Gate, London E7. Protest against the DSEI arms fair, rightly criticises in organisations like stagnation, but also during the period his way as a return to the traditions of where exhibitors include companies supplying Israel with weapons the Socialist Workers Party than by of a high rate of profit and prosperity the ‘former kings’, Yao and Shun, and to maintain military control over the Palestinian people. any scientific evidence. (Capital volume 3, chapter 22). I think that wasn’t just a propaganda www.facebook.com/events/132054725662203. If the CPGB really does wish to The rate of interest is low during pitch: he genuinely believed the ancient Thursday September 16, 6.30pm: Protest rally, Cundy Park, understand the science and political the period of prosperity, when the rate ways were better, and he constantly Victoria Dock Road (near ExCeL), London E16. Commemorating economy of climate change, I strongly of profit is high and the economy is emphasised the importance of ritual the victims of Israel’s violence though speeches, spoken word and urge it to engage the services of an expanding, because it results in higher (li, equivalent to ‘the done thing’), other creative performances. expert like Simon Pirani to lead a realised profits, providing an increased which would involve reverence for the www.facebook.com/events/373311987715525. discussion on the subject in the near supply of loanable money-capital, and ancestors and ‘heaven’ (tien). No bans and proscriptions future. I would also suggest that, if because it encourages businesses to We should note, however, that Tuesday September 14, 6pm: Online public meeting. Protest they haven’t done so already, the increase the provision of commercial VI, 26 concerns Confucius’s visit to against the banning of left groups in the Labour Party, which has Provisional Central Committee credit, reducing the demand for Nan‑tzu - described by Arthur Waley resulted in hundreds of members being auto-excluded with no right familiarise themselves with Simon currency and bank credit. The rate as “the wicked concubine of Duke to a hearing. Speakers include Ken Loach, Howard Beckett, Leah Pirani’s book, Burning up. of interest rises when the economy Ling of Wei”. This visit was deplored Levane and Andrew Feinstein. Both CU and Online Communist starts to boom and profits start to get by his follower, Tzu-lu: “Whereupon Organised by Defend the Left: Forums have rightly recognised the squeezed, because competition forces the Master made a solemn declaration www.facebook.com/events/618508399135506. importance of having experts to lead capital to accumulate faster, which concerning his visit, saying, debates on such topics as the political requires more borrowing. It reaches ‘Whatsoever I have done amiss, may Say no to US military drone tests economy of the post-1949 Chinese its peak when that squeeze on profits Heaven avert it!’” (An alternative Saturday September 18, 12 noon: Protest outside RAF regime. How is it the topic of climate results in crises of overproduction, translation is ‘May Heaven strike me!’). Lossiemouth, Moray IV31. Thousands of innocent civilians have change does not deserve to be treated as firms now demand cash and stop For us contemporary western readers, been killed in US drone strikes. US company General Atomics with the same degree of seriousness? providing commercial credit, and must Confucius’s sayings are pleasantly free conducts test flights of its Predator drone from RAF Lossiemouth. Gary Simons borrow to cover their payments and of religious zeal, in stark contrast to the Organised by UK Drone Watch: dronewars.net/nousdronetests. email stay afloat. bulk of ancient Indian philosophy, such Introduction to radical anthropology Roberts’ theory implies a self- as the ‘Laws of Manu’, where religion Tuesday September 21, 6.30pm: Daryll Forde seminar room, Roberts wrong regulating model of capitalism like that is most definitely ‘in your face’. This Anthropology Building, 14 Taviton Street, London WC1. Michael Roberts correctly dismisses of the Austrians. If accumulation slows seems ultimately a reflexion of the Introduction to a series of classes on ‘Radical anthropology: what it the Austrian School’s ‘natural rate when the rate of profit falls below clash between Aryan incomers and means to be human’. Speaker Chris Knight. of interest’, but implicitly replaces it some mystical ‘natural rate of profit’, the sub-continent’s ancient Dravidian Organised by Radical Anthropology Group: with his own ‘natural rate of profit’ - there will be no overaccumulation inhabitants. radicalanthropologygroup.org/evening-talks. above which accumulation increases and crisis of overproduction, because, Chris Gray State surveillance of peace movements and below which it falls (‘Profits first even with the normal rise in social London Sunday September 26, 2pm: Online seminar followed by and foremost’, August 5). There is no productivity, the labour supply will rise discussion. The British state’s long history of surveillance and ‘natural rate of interest’, because there faster than employment, forcing wages Defending Turkey control of those with views different to the prevailing orthodoxy. is no ‘natural rate of profit’. Capital is back down, while profits will rise So, according to Esen Uslu, the state Speakers include journalist Rob Evans on undercover cops in the not the product of labour, and so has no above the ‘natural rate of profit’. He in Turkey starts fires in Dersim to peace and environmental movements; and Jeremy Corbyn on the value or price of production. can’t tell us what this rate is, because deny cover to guerrillas and prevents state surveillance of CND in the 1980s. Register free. Organised by Roberts’ theory is Ricardian, not it doesn’t exist. attempts to put the fires out. It incites Greater Manchester & District Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament: Marxian. Marx explains that it is Today, the driver of the law of the violence against the large Kurdish gmdcnd.com/peace-history-conference-2021 competition, not profitability, that tendency for the rate of profit to fall - minority, using them as scapegoats, drives accumulation. Capital must technological change that increases the with armed gangs assaulting them. The economy after Covid accumulate or die, whether the rate proportion of raw material cost in final At the same time fires are deliberately Thursday October 7, 7pm: Online lecture. Michael Roberts of profit is rising or falling, because output - cannot operate, because 80% started with state and police examines how far capitalism’s ‘normal’ crisis trends are now efficiency is a function of the scale of of economies involve service industry, connivance to clear space, so hotels reasserting themselves. Register free. production. It’s that which ultimately not the processing of materials. This can be built (‘Unnatural disaster’, Organised by Marx Memorial Library: pushes accumulation to the point explains the formation of prices of August 5). www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk/event/327. of overaccumulation, and crises of production and movement of capital Yet the Weekly Worker vigorously CPGB wills overproduction (see Capital volume 3, between spheres, but does not imply defends such a state against the Remember the CPGB and keep the struggle going. Put our party’s chapter 39). any long-term fall in the rate of profit, perfectly rational claim that it is fascist. name and address, together with the amount you wish to leave, in Ricardo, like Roberts, argued let alone crises resulting from it. Steve Kaczynski your will. If you need further help, do not hesitate to contact us. that a farmer who had £1,000 would For the last decade Roberts has Greece weekly 4 September 2 2021 1361 worker AFGHANISTAN

Taliban swept away US stooges almost effortlessly No longer a US problem Undoubtedly the region’s powers see opportunities with the Americans gone, but mostly they see dangers. Yassamine Mather looks at the prospects now that the Taliban are back in Kabul fter the humiliating exodus has been a total collapse of the have actively been in contact intention of standing idly by: “You in economic terms Afghanistan is an of US and Nato troops from US-backed regime and its regular with the core of al Qa’eda as cannot know what their expectations insignificant market for China. AAfghanistan, the media is army, allowing the Taliban to take well as its rather autonomous are or what our expectations are Turning back to other states, about virtually unanimous: the tragedy over virtually unopposed. Despite branch, al Qa’eda on the Indian without talking. What’s diplomacy, which it is claimed there are gains to is that ‘western values’ - those all those academic conferences on Subcontinent ... members of al my friend? This is diplomacy.”5 be made from the US withdrawal, it is of ‘human rights’ and ‘women’s ‘nation building’, ‘civil society’ Qa’eda and al Qa’eda in the Indian As far Iran is concerned, although fashionable, especially for bourgeois empowerment’ - did not and will not and ‘women’s empowerment’, Subcontinent are present in 13 relations have improved in the last liberal Afghans and media pundits, to prevail. the government of Ashraf Ghani provinces of Afghanistan ... and few months, the Taliban are unlikely suggest that Russia and Iran will now The reality is rather different. disintegrated within days. more generally on the Afghan- to forget Tehran’s support for the send aid to Afghanistan in support First of all, the US did not invade However, the Taliban are now Pakistani border, where al Qa’eda US invasion in 2001. Iran provided of the Taliban. However, even the and occupy Afghanistan for ‘nation unwilling hosts not just to al Qa’eda, operates in close cooperation with Washington with intelligence about BBC disputes this claim: “... private building’ (whatever that means), but at least half a dozen jihadist groups ... the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e- Taliban forces - and boasted about citizens from Pakistan and several for women’s or human rights. The - up to 8,000 fighters of Islamic State Taiba.4 it. Meanwhile, IS-K has claims on Gulf countries, including Saudi Revolutionary Afghan Women and other such groups are said to Iranian Khorasan and, if reports Arabia, the United Arab Emirates Association sums this up accurately: have arrived in Afghanistan from Allies about thousands of its fighters and Qatar, are considered to be the Syria and Iraq in the past few months. True, the Taliban do have a few allies relocating in Afghanistan from Iraq largest individual contributors”.7 It is a joke to say values like According to the Pentagon, there are - first and foremost Pakistan, whose and Syria are correct, Iran’ s Islamic Although impossible to measure ‘women’s rights’, ‘democracy’, an estimated 10,000 foreign fighters security forces were instrumental in Republic will face serious threats on exactly, overseas sources of funding ‘nation-building’ were part of the in Afghanistan, over 2,000 of whom the creation of the group (originating its eastern border. are thought to have provided US/Nato aims in Afghanistan! are members of the IS-K (Islamic from religious seminaries), providing In addition the country hosts a significant proportion of the US was in Afghanistan to turn State in Khorasan province). funds, training and weapons. around three million Afghan refugees Taliban’s revenue. Some say it [the] region into instability and By all accounts the Taliban have Soon after the Taliban took over and there will no doubt be a new could be as much as $500 million terrorism to [encircle] the rival learnt from their previous defeat. in Kabul, Imran Khan, the Pakistani surge. Also Afghan production of a year. A classified US intelligence powers, especially China and They are, according to Alastair prime minister, declared that the opium has been a major problem for report estimated that in 2008 the Russia.1 Crooke, Taliban were “breaking the chains of Iran: it is smuggled in large quantities Taliban received $106 million from slavery”. However, the Taliban might across the long border between the foreign sources, in particular the The invasion and subsequent a far more complex, multi-ethnic decide to pursue its own version of two countries and it is unlikely the Gulf states. And, of course, no-one occupation were part of an attempt and sophisticated coalition, which Pashtun nationalism (about 50% issue will be resolved any time soon. has any doubts that Afghanistan is to demonstrate US imperial power is why they have been able, at of the Afghan population speak And 78% of Afghans speak Dari, one of the most important producers and determination to impose its will such breathtaking speed, to topple Pushto and 18% in Pakistan), if it the Afghan version of the Persian/ of opium, with an estimated annual following the terrorist attack on US the western-installed Afghanistan can establish a stable government; or Farsi language. It serves as the export value of between $1.5 and soil on September 11 2001. But even government. They talk about the various jihadi groups might gain lingua franca and was therefore the $3 billion. Nevertheless, we should by imperialism’s own standards that Afghan political inclusion - and territory within the current Afghan preferred language of the previous certainly not believe everything we response was misplaced, because look to Iran, Russia, China and borders, which would present a government. No doubt the Taliban read about who will now seek to gain even then it was well known Pakistan for mediation, and to serious threat to Pakistan. will contemplate replacing Dari with by supporting the Taliban. that the perpetrators of 9/11 and facilitate their place in the ‘Great Another ally is Qatar. There Pashtun wherever possible - another By all accounts the current their sponsors were not based in Game’. seems to be a consensus amongst snub to Iran. economic situation is dire. Many Afghanistan, but in Saudi Arabia and They aspire to play a regional news agencies that the country If anyone was in any doubt that salaries have not been paid, banks other Persian Gulf states. Osama bin role as a pluralist Sunni Islamist played an important role in US the current US policy in the region is remain shut and for those that Laden was a Saudi citizen, who went government. This is why they efforts to evacuate tens of thousands a ‘scorched earth’ one, the manner of are open the Taliban have limited to Afghanistan with US approval have given explicit assurances of people from Afghanistan - 40% this withdrawal must leave no doubt. withdrawals to $200 a week. Both as part of the cold war strategy to to these key external partners of evacuees were moved out via It is very likely that we are witnessing the International Monetary Fund defeat the USSR intervention there. that their rise to power will bring Qatar, whose representatives took another disaster zone - a ‘failed state’ and the World Bank have withdrawn Hillary Clinton admitted as much in neither a bloodbath of score- part in a virtual meeting on August and a bankrupt economy. According funding to a country that has relied testimony to the US senate.2 settling nor civil war.3 30 with US secretary of state Antony to the New Humanitarian, so much on foreign aid. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers Blinken, along with representatives To conclude, the situation in involved in 9/11 were from Saudi As a result, the media is portraying of major western states, to discuss Most of Afghanistan’s foreign Afghanistan is appalling. No-one Arabia, and it is alleged that almost what has happened as a victory for a coordinated approach for the days reserves, which total at least expects that the Taliban takeover will 2,000 pages containing references to Russia, China and Iran. But this is ahead. $9 billion, are locked away in mean an end to military conflict in the Saudi role were removed from very far from the truth. Russia and Qatar’s foreign ministry has countries unlikely to send assets the country or the entire region, but, the official US report on the attack. Iran are very concerned about the confirmed that it has been taking to the sanctioned Taliban. Ajmal of course, as Joe Biden keeps saying, This infuriated the victim’s relatives, proximity of various IS splits and part in negotiations about the Ahmady, the now-former central it is ‘no longer a US problem’ l who are demanding that Joe Biden China is hardly happy about the operation of Kabul airport with bank governor, estimated that the should not attend the ceremonies jihadists’ presence at the border of its Afghan and international parties, Taliban might be able to access Notes marking the 20th anniversary unless Uyghur populated Xiajiang province. mainly the United States and Turkey. “perhaps 0.1 to 0.2 percent” of 1. www.rawa.org/rawa/2021/08/21/rawa- the pages are reinstated. IS-K is also bad news for Tajikistan, Meanwhile, international agencies Afghanistan’s foreign reserves. responds-to-the-taliban-takeover.html. So what is the situation 20 years Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and, are also asking Qatar for help in The “Taliban won militarily, but 2. www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/ after the start of the ‘war on terror’ despite Taliban reassurances, delivering aid to Afghanistan. now have to govern. It is not ClintonTestimony091203a1.pdf. 6 3. www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/ initiated by those two imperialist last week’s suicide bombing at However, Qatar is facing competition easy”. afghanistan-west-taliban-seismic-shift- warmongers, George Bush and Tony Kabul airport demonstrated the from another US ally and Nato geopolitics. Blair? With America completing vulnerability of the new Afghan member, Turkey. President Recep When it comes to China, I do not 4. www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/08/ syrias-foreign-jihadis-eye-afghanistan-new- its withdrawal, the incompetent, government. Tayyip Erdoğan has confirmed believe that US withdrawal is part of challenges-arise-moscow. corrupt warlords of the Northern In addition there are allegations that Turkey has held talks with the an elaborate plan to create problems 5. www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/27/ Alliance, who were installed into that IS-K has allies in the Taliban Taliban in Kabul, adding that Ankara for Beijing. However, as I have noted, turkey-holds-first-talks-with-the-taliban-in- power by the US in 2002, did not ‘Peshawar council’. According to Al- was still assessing the group’s offer the Chinese will be concerned about kabul. 6. www.thenewhumanitarian.org/ defend any of the major cities. And Monitor, to assist operating the international potential Taliban interference in news/2021/8/20/Taliban-Afghanistan-Haiti- now, rather than a Taliban military airport. According to Al Jazeera, Xinjiang - and possible intervention US-deployment-Cheat-Sheet. victory, what we have witnessed ... over the past years the Taliban Erdoğan has said Turkey had no in support of Uyghur Muslims. But 7. www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-46554097. weekly worker 1361 September 2 2021 5 USA Arms and the duopoly Afghanistan was a disastrous bipartisan war supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. Daniel Lazare lambasts the idea that the solution lies in a third bourgeois party untainted by the arms industry henever America blunders they would let it be known that it into some new disaster - is akin to firing a pea-shooter at a Wwhen it gets itself in trouble tank. The war machine will barrel on in Iraq, elects a senile hack like Joe regardless. Biden or showers Wall Street with Inadvertently, Taibbi has hit the torrents of cash - the call goes up nail on the head. If a third party is for a third party. It is not hard to necessary to break up “the ‘iron understand why. Despite being at triangle’ of Congress, the Pentagon one another’s throat, Republicans and defence contractors”, as he puts and Democrats are equal partners it, and a third party is impossible in a great Washington game, whose under anything like present political purpose is to benefit members of circumstances, then one thing is clear: Congress and their corporate clients, the iron triangle will continue ad while leaving the masses out in the infinitum. If ideology is something cold. Americans should not talk about So what better way to put a stop to because “it doesn’t even matter”, then the racket than by taking aim at the a genuine anti-imperialist movement duopoly that supports it? Now that will never take shape - which is America has shot itself in the foot why Lockheed Martin will continue in Afghanistan, it is not surprising, Both parties supported going in, both parties supporting getting the hell out making money hand over fist and US therefore, that the call for a third bombs will continue raining down party is going up once again, this of Pentagon influence, probably However, this is impossible freely on any topic they wish, they on a growing list of countries from time from an independent journalist starting with a new political party. in a country in which parties are can denounce war and capitalism Afghanistan to Yemen. named Matt Taibbi. It doesn’t even matter so much chronically weak and undeveloped.3 from the rooftops, and they can do As grim as this sounds, the ice is Said to be an heir to the gonzo what such a party would stand for, To be sure, Abraham Lincoln pulled anything, for that matter, short of starting to break. 2021 is only two- journalism of Hunter S Thompson ideologically, so long as it adheres it off in 1860, but he is the exception walking naked down Broadway. thirds through, yet already it has seen (of Fear and loathing in Las Vegas to one basic principle: don’t that proves the rule, since in normal But they cannot achieve significant two major fissures opening up in fame), Taibbi is a freelance reporter accept contractor money. times his 40% share of the popular political change because a centuries- the US political edifice: the Capitol with a major base. He has more vote would have marked him as an old constitutional structure says no. Hill insurrection in January and the than half a million followers on The hoariest of American clichés abject failure. It was only the fact that So Taibbi’s call for a third party Afghan debacle in August. One Twitter, his articles on the online thus heaves into view. Supposedly, the opposition had self-destructed is a non-starter due to structural showed that the ‘delicate balances’ platform, Substack, regularly draw the republic of 1787 is so holy and first, by splitting three ways over impediments that he does not care to that supposedly hold the US political hundreds of comments each, while pure in its glorious New World the slavery question, that put him address. system together at home are starting YouGov says he is amongst the most isolation that the only thing that over the top. It was a classic case of Then there is the ideological to unravel, while the second shows popular political columnist in the could ever undermine it is the money a revolutionary minority prevailing question, which renders his proposal that an over-extended US empire country.1 Indeed, he possesses an power boring from within. So a long over a majority that was divided and a non-starter as well. If Taibbi is collapsing as well. Comparisons acerbic wit and a bracing contempt line of demagogues have warned - torn. honestly believes that ideology does with the Russo-Japanese War and the for the Washington political from Thomas Jefferson worrying Since then, Republicans and not matter, it is because he takes the revolution of 1905 are premature. establishment and was particularly about the threat posed to his beloved Democrats have joined forces easy way out by arguing that the But, the more instability grows brilliant in exposing the great CIA Virginia squirearchy by a nascent in making sure that nothing like weapons industry causes war, when abroad, the more it will deepen at destabilisation campaign known northern bourgeoisie, to Andrew that ever happens again. Besides the real culprit is something more home, and vice versa. as Russiagate back during the age Jackson denouncing the evils of a red-baiting and bribery, this has powerful. It is called imperialism, By holding back change, of Trump. With ‘Repocrats’ now central bank, and William Jennings entailed jacking up ballot-access which is to say capitalism’s relentless America’s frozen constitutional accusing one another of ‘losing’ Bryan raging against “a cross of requirements to the point where third search for foreign markets, profits structure merely assures that it will Afghanistan, Taibbi is once again gold”. In its modern form, the myth parties die aborning. In 1931, Illinois and resources. Imperialism creates be all the more radical when it finally in his element, as he notes that what of American innocence holds that decided that third-party candidates war and, in the process, creates arrives l passes for political debate in America war is foisted on an otherwise peace- would have to gather 25,000 the industries needed to wage it. is a charade “designed to distract loving republic by greedy weapons signatures each just to be listed on Arms makers like Lockheed Martin Notes from the fact that Afghanistan is as manufacturers feeding at the public a state-wide ballot. Pennsylvania and Boeing are thus secondary 1. today.yougov.com/ratings/entertainment/ popularity/columnists/all. pure a bipartisan fiasco as we’ve had trough. decided that they would have to phenomena, and preventing them 2. taibbi.substack.com/p/to-stop-war-america- in recent times”: “Lockheed Martin by itself gather thousands of signatures in just from making campaign contributions needs-a-third. gobbled a remarkable $75.8 billion three weeks, while, in New York, - assuming such a thing is even 3. See ‘Explosive contradictions’ Weekly Both parties were directly and in contracts last year,” Taibbi writes, Republican and Democratic lawyers possible - will have roughly the Worker February 23 2020: weeklyworker. co.uk/worker/1287/explosive-contradictions. repeatedly complicit in prolonging “and the top five defence firms set about tying up third parties in same effect as breaking up Standard 4. jacobinmag.com/2016/11/bernie-sanders- the catastrophe. Republicans overall took in a staggering $167 court by scrutinising their ballot- Oil had in 1911, which is to say nil. democratic-labor-party-ackerman. and Democrats were virtually billion” - money that they then access petitions for the most hyper- Socialists might support such a ban 5. news.gallup.com/poll/329639/support- unanimous in approving the initial recycled in the form of $135 million technical of defects. for propagandistic purposes. But third-political-party-high-point.aspx. use of force, both voted over and worth of lobbying in a handful of Third parties had to hurtle over to fund the war to insane key House and Senate committees. enormous barriers before they levels, and both Democratic and Since Republicans and Democrats could even campaign. As Jacobin, Republican presidents spent are merely two wings of the US War the semi-official mouthpiece of the Online Communist Forum years covering up evidence of Party, the answer is to come up with Democratic Socialists of America, massive contracting corruption, a third party that will just say no to pointed out in 2016, this is entirely accounting failure (as in failure to whatever blandishments such all- unique as far as the rest of the so- do any accounting), war crimes, powerful warmongers have to offer. called democratic world goes. The and other problems. only comparable barrier the Labour Afghanistan was the ultimate Impossible Party faced during its climb to symbol of the two-party consensus But there are obvious problems with power in Britain, for instance, was - the ‘good war’, as Barack Taibbi’s prescription. For starters, a requirement, instituted in 1918, Obama deemed it - and defence there is the unfortunate fact that a that each candidate pay a £150 filing spending in general remained so third party is flat-out impossible, fee, refundable if he or she gained sacrosanct across the last 20 years thanks to America’s pre-democratic 12.5% of the vote. In Canada, any that the monster, $160 billion 18th century political structure. The party with 250 members is entitled defence spending hikes of 2017- reason is not only a ‘first past the post’ to compete in all 338 House of 18 were virtually the only policy voting system that inevitably casts Commons districts nationwide, with initiative of Donald Trump’s that third parties in the role of spoilers, candidates required to gather only a went unopposed by a Democratic whose only effect is to draw votes hundred signatures per contest. In leadership.2 away from the less reprehensible Australia, a party with five hundred party, thereby guaranteeing that the members can run candidates in all Sunday September 5 5pm Quite right. Terrified of the ‘even worse’ will win. Its logic is House of Representatives districts, ‘peacenik’ label, Democrats have all but designed to stop third-party with individual candidates required A week in politics spent the last few decades trying to advocates in their tracks. to make a $770 deposit that is also Political report and discussion from show they are every bit as macho Even worse, a fragmented refundable if they get four percent or as the Republicans. The result is a political system requires them to more of the vote.4 CPGB’s Provisional Central Committee pas de deux that has steadily pushed risk serving as spoilers not in a In February, a poll found that 62% Register in advance for this webinar: the country to the right, and Taibbi single parliamentary election, but of US adults believe that Republicans communistparty.co.uk/ocf-register is entirely correct in calling such in hundreds of separate federal and Democrats do “such a poor job hellish bipartisanship out. But when elections for the House, the Senate representing the American people Organised by CPGB: communistparty.co.uk and he comes up with a solution, the and, ultimately, the presidency - that a third party is needed”.5 But, Labour Party Marxists: www.labourpartymarxists.org.uk heart sinks: not once, moreover, but for years thanks to such barriers and more, it For further information, email Stan Keable at on end, until they at last gather the is the one thing they cannot have. [email protected] We need new institutions free momentum for a breakthrough. Americans can speak their mind weekly 6 September 2 2021 1361 worker RACISM Manufacturing consensus We do not want to unite the whole of the anti-racist movement, if that means uniting all prepared to mouth anti-racist platitudes. In fact, writes Paul Demarty, so far as such ‘unity’ exists, our role is to destroy it t the outset, it is hard not to of course, overwhelmingly racist; any from the class point of view. address what will be - for view that what they were actually There are two sharply opposed some - the incongruity of the up to in the colonies was legitimate accounts of this. The first, as we A 1 occasion. This is an article on anti- would have to be. And, by the same have noted, is the idea of the PMC, racism. It is, in a sense, about how to token, it was true of imperialist first posited by Barbara and John do (and how not to do) anti-racism, political culture back home: since Ehrenreich, two American social although I doubt my ‘advice’ will be successive governments were democratic intellectuals. Their terribly useful to the struggle as it engaged in rampant exploitation of a conception covered everyone stands. Its arguments will certainly quarter of the world, and indeed since from political functionaries to not compete for sales with the there were strongly held political creative-industries types; their middlebrow, quasi-political self-help views in society that this was wrong, unifying feature, effectively, is an books, such as How to be an anti- an apologia was necessary, and had undergraduate degree. Such people, racist, So you want to talk about race, in the end to consist of the virtues of it is argued, ‘naturally’ rise to the and so forth. European Christian civilisation over top of small-group left politics, Exhibit A on that front: I offer this the backwardness and ‘savagery’ of but just as ‘naturally’ prevent such article even though I am, in point of Africa, Asia and so on. groups actually connecting with a fact, white. I nowadays tick the ‘white Colonialism created inward working class whose interests are Irish’ box on census forms, but things migration to Britain, and the post-war antagonistic to theirs. In retrospect, have moved on a little for us western era - which saw the eclipse of most of Barbara Ehrenreich summarised the Celts since my mother moved to the British empire - accelerated this problem: England at the outset of the Troubles. considerably. The residual imperial I have suffered, so far as I can tell, racism of the ruling class fused with There was a real difference no disadvantage directly pertaining a popular racism among backward between people who worked to my ethnic background, apart from workers and petty bourgeois against essentially telling other people the minor inconvenience of having to non-white immigrants. Enoch what to do - and teachers get address the matter on an occasion like Broadest ... and most craven Powell notoriously exploited such included in that - and people who this. sentiments; and, in the same year do the work that other people Regrettably, it is impossible to At its most abstract, the anti-racist that there is a crisis of this consensus, he delivered his ‘rivers of blood’ tell them to do. It becomes a address, since a consequence of my consensus holds that these latter I mean that its mechanisms seem to speech, the Labour government difference between manual and argument is that there should be no disadvantages do exist and should have stopped working completely, or issued a more-or-less explicitly mental labor, but it carries with such incongruity; but, since there is, not. It mostly holds the first definition even become counterproductive. racist immigration policy, designed it a shitload of weight - I see it as it so happens, I am in a bind. Those of racism too, though that is a slightly to stop an influx of ethnically-Asian all the time, the contempt for who agree with me about at least that more complicated matter nowadays. Origins refugees from Kenya. At the same especially white working class will be willing to hear me out; those The essential ideas of consensus We need to account for this both time, the government instituted the people among leftists of college who do not agree will not, but it is anti-racism can be stated simply. in terms of historical sequence and first ‘race relations’ legislation to backgrounds.3 those, if I am right, who actually need Firstly: racism is to be defined ‘structurally’. In American history, fight discrimination in employment. to hear it. primarily in my second sense. the key turning point is the Civil War The result of this muddle was the At the far opposite end, analytically, This is, in the end, the central There are pervasive disadvantages and the subsequent defeat of radical election of a Tory government, the is the idea that - effectively - there problem about how the question pertaining to the lives of non-white reconstruction. The large population marginalisation of Powell, the growth is nothing terrifically special about of race is addressed today; and it is populations in western societies. of black freedmen in the south was of the fascist National Front, and far professionals at all. Alexander merely the most acute expression of Secondly: these disadvantages are disenfranchised again and reduced more vigorous leftwing agitation on McKay and Leila Mechoui, two a wider phenomenon. On all manner structural, and moreover carry a largely to semi-serfdom. Strict racial the question of racism. rather eccentric Marxist academics, of questions, we advert first of all to self-sustaining structure of their own. segregation became the norm. Those The US and UK ended up at put it nicely in the headline of the speaker’s bona-fides before the They are not to be reduced to some who escaped to the north faced super- similar destinations via different an article at The Bellows, a sort content of their ideas. This approach more fundamental set of structures. exploitation in industry and popular roads. The state began to manage of anti-woke Marxisant website: stems from the very reasonable idea Therefore, thirdly: as the slogan racism from the white workers with racist sentiment far more assertively; “It’s the petit-bourgeoisie, stupid”. that those with unavoidable direct goes, it is not enough to merely not whom they competed for work. but a cycle of liberalisation and Whereas the Ehrenreichs see the experience of particular forms of be racist; one must be anti-racist. Many labour unions excluded black backlash on the question became professionals as a ‘new class’ with inequality have by default more For any leftwinger, this must seem a workers. key to politics. The contradiction a distinct relationship to the means understanding about that inequality; truism, but, since ‘anti-racism’ in this After World War I, and particularly was extremely clear, for example, in of production, McKay and Mechoui those who benefit from such iniquities sense means specifically rejecting the after the crash of 1929, significant the Thatcher years: the government see them as the logical evolution of might just as well not even notice they idea that structural racism is reducible struggles erupted that undermined was not shy of dog-whistle rhetoric, the ‘classical’ petty bourgeoisie, as exist. Yet this idea is only a small part to anything else, it is in fact at least the grotesque racism of American which rather cut the far right’s capitalism declines and becomes of what is routinely claimed: that a potentially controversial claim. society. A renewed upsurge in labour electoral support off at the knees; at more statised.4 anyone who is white, say, however Specifically, it is used to object to militancy caused a shift towards the same time, the infrastructure of The problem with the much attention they have given in arguments for universal provision industrial unionism - the new modern multiculturalism was built in Ehrenreichs’ account and its good faith to the questions at issue of social services and civil rights, Congress of Industrial Organisations earnest. It bought social peace after variants, as Mike Macnair argued with racism, and however cogent their since these in the end do not address disavowed segregation. Communists urban rioting by making concessions in the Weekly Worker not long ago, actual arguments, should give way to inequality between whites and non- began organising among black to middle class and patriarchal is that it produces an amalgam.5 an appropriate representative of the whites: they merely ‘reset’ it at a workers in the deep south, especially ‘community leaders’ and religious There are plenty of people who oppressed. (Exactly what counts as an higher baseline. Alabama, at extraordinary risk to their organisations. do not directly employ labour and appropriate representative, of course, To call anti-racism a consensus is own safety. After World War II, these Thatcher and Reagan set in are themselves employed on very is a complicated question, which we not, of course, to assert that there do preparatory efforts finally bore fruit, train a wave of financialisation that favourable terms by capital; but we will address later.) not exist racist ideas or that such ideas with a civil rights movement that would cause inequality to sharpen are not all managers by a long chalk. This idea, I state bluntly, is foolish. are not held by many. It is to assert rapidly became unstoppable. It was consistently over subsequent decades; If the managerial aspect is crucial, But, in that case, other questions that these ideas are marginalised - at incorporated into official society, its and they did so in the name of then the insistence that teachers arise: how could an idea so stupid least in America and Britain, to which more radical edges sanded off. social conservatism. But there was are ‘managers’ starts to look pretty come to grip, it sometimes seems, an these comments are addressed. Vast Often this deradicalisation was a contradiction there. After all, the strained. They get told what to do as entire culture? How is it that western bodies of civil and criminal law exist accomplished by the brutal methods legitimating aspect of conservative much as they tell others; and their societies seem to be backsliding on to deal with racial discrimination. of the secret state; but it also stemmed ideology had always been its claim authority over children does not, racial justice and simultaneously ‘Hate speech’ is illegal, and so - to some extent simply from defeat to patrician values and noblesse like managers, get them any real spreading its contemporary signifiers in principle - is discrimination in of the radicals. Those who had oblige. A replacement of some kind benefit over people in desk jobs ever further into the cultural employment and similar matters. been Maoists in the 1970s faced was necessary; and what was found with nobody to manage. mainstream? How could a political Tony Sewell’s notorious report on the collapse of the new communist was equality of opportunity. For the The idea that it is ‘just’ the trend, whose overriding objective is racial disparity in Britain - the one, movement after Sino-American political-economic settlement of petty bourgeoisie meets its own supposedly diversity, have produced you remember, that was denounced rapprochement resulted in obviously neoliberalism to appear legitimate, it limit, however, in the necessary such a sterile, ultra-conformist as a pure piece of gaslighting and pro-imperialist global policy on the had to diversify its class elites. incoherence of that class. Marx discourse about its basic concerns? an insult to anti-racists everywhere part of Beijing. A sort of anti-racist- Since the numbers of the super-rich said of the French peasants that And how can the left get some - made sure to herald the great cum-anti-imperialist identity politics were tiny and their ranks essentially “they form a class in the way that traction on the issue without being advances that had been won through was one intelligible outworking of impermeable, that meant diversifying potatoes in a sack form a sack of sucked along in the slipstream of this struggle over the last decades.2 People that, and it was the version of post- the professions. It is widely observed potatoes”.6 The extant smallholders, discourse (or, indeed, its opposite: today are occasionally sacked on Maoist disillusionment most likely to that ‘consensus’ anti-racism - and, of course, are - technically speaking trollish ‘anti-wokeism’)? account of ‘racist’ statements that thrive in the USA. more broadly, the amalgam called - part of the petty bourgeoisie, along To talk about an anti-racist would have got them lynched in the In Britain, the story starts out rather ‘wokeness’ by its enemies - has its with the urban artisans and self- consensus is to take as axiomatic that old south for racial egalitarianism. differently. We never had substantial base in this layer, often called the employed professionals classically there are two essential definitions Racist utterances, in polite society, domestic slavery - that sort of thing ‘professional managerial class’ or named by that phrase. So too, in of racism: firstly, the belief or begin with ‘I’m not a racist, but …’ we kept out of sight and out of mind. PMC, though there are reasons to the MacKay-Mechoui account, do assumption, on the part of human Yet racism sprouts like buddleia in We did, however, have an empire, object to this framing. the modern elite professions. If we individuals, that some groups are the cracks of the consensus. It seems and an empire demanded a class of are merely engaging in dividing superior in intellect or culture to that no level of uniformity among colonial administrators - bred in the Structural society theoretically into classes - others on account of their ancestry; the bourgeois elite is enough: there worst traditions of the English public Here we transition from the as it were, counting the potatoes in and, secondly, the existence of real is always somehow more racism, school, which inculcated little enough historical to the structural. And we our different sacks - then there are disadvantages in society at large for however much we huff that it has no knowledge, but plenty of brutalisation must necessarily take a detour into very compelling reasons to include members of particular ethnic groups. place in our society. Indeed, when I say and pack mentality. These men were, the theorisation of the professions the latter. weekly worker 1361 September 2 2021 7

As an account of the ‘consensus’ button issues, this ultra-identity exist an ‘official’ racial category coherently we must in the end select its self-liberation, the working class ideology, however, there is a real politics has the advantage of being to cover those who hailed from the one, as - with apologies to Georg has solved the problem of liberation problem here: we find it only expressed almost entirely through Spanish-speaking countries of central Lukács - the imputed gut reaction, for all, since it has by definition dominant among the modern the imposition of speech codes and south America. The authorities the one we would all have in our severed the link between ‘intelligent professions. As an example: in and manners. It is thus functionally decided that one was needed, and right minds. Instead, we should think direction’ and exploitative property Britain the rural petty bourgeoisie, identical, for the purposes of elite chose ‘Hispanic’. At a certain point, more closely about the structures of relations. and the provincial self-employed, coherence and control of access, academics and organisers committed ‘structural racism’. But suppose we set out not for the tended to spring for Brexit, even to Eton slang; but, the old idea to identity politics decided that We have described them partially maximum unity of the working class, when it was quite comically against of ‘natural’ elitism having been using an English word had a certain already: an imperialist state must but of the anti-racist movement their interests. The urban employed destroyed, it has a far more vital unpleasant neo-colonial flavour, and generate racism. We have just had such as it is. In fact we set out to professionals sprung the other way. moral centre, and thus does a far so there was a shift to ‘Latino’; but, the most extraordinary spectacle unite people whose interests are The Ehrenreichs give us at least a better job today as a legitimating of course, Spanish is a language with of the American withdrawal from opposed to each other. Unity can theory that we might apply to this ideology. gendered nouns, so we needed the Afghanistan. No end of worthies only be achieved by suppressing reality. Simply assimilating the feminine complement, ‘Latina’. Yet have urged the Americans back in, those divergences - in the interests professions to the petty bourgeoisie, ‘Stolen valour’ even having the pair is not enough, to ‘finish the job’, as if ‘the job’ was of coming back together for another on the other hand, is question- Let us return to our earlier description since it excludes those who do not fit not perpetually fattening the same huge demonstration next year … begging. of the content of consensus anti- comfortably into the gender binary, narco-warlords currently cutting But racism, as we have argued, is Comrade Macnair’s account racism. In order to protect the so there was invented the word favourable deals with the Taliban. an effect of capitalist exploitation is rather that the bourgeoisie and concept of ‘structural racism’ from ‘Latinx’, and this is now the preferred The only way America ‘finishing and its corollary, imperialism. Unity proletariat are the two basic classes, the threatening incursions of rival demonym in the communications the job’ can be presented as the of the anti-racist movement means but they are interpenetrated, and analytical frameworks - particularly of right-on NGOs and ‘woke’ PR best option is if we suppose that the unity with Zionists who issue fake that the employed professionals that of Marxist class critique - the departments. Afghans are so benighted that they anti-racist calumnies against the possess limited means of production focus must be on the apparently Outside of such settings, we cannot even meet that bar. But there Palestinian movement, for example in the form of rare skills, which can ‘universal’ experiences of people of know the word has essentially zero is also popular racism, which in the (and, indeed, SUTR has disinvited then be leased to the capitalists for a colour as such. traction. A poll of members of this end is a matter of trying to elevate BDS supporters from speaking technical rent. This is part of a wider That ends up being a very minimal demographic last year revealed that yourself by punching down. at rallies to keep such elements reality of capitalist society - that thing indeed: essentially the risk of a grand total of 3% self-identified as In the former case, racism is the on board10). It means unity with control of information in general being beaten up or even murdered ‘Latinx’.7 A further poll, a few weeks effect of the capitalist state system whatever magnificent troll came up amounts to a kind of property right. by racist thugs. But that turns out to ago, found that that proportion had and its necessary inequality; in the with the ‘woke’ CIA recruitment I think it needs to be stressed that be not so universal in itself; so the risen to 4%8 - the arc of history is latter, the need of capital for cheap advert (you all remember it: “I this is a very peculiar property right. idea of violence ends up ‘colonising’ long, and all that … The latter poll and pliable labour generates divisions am a cisgender millennial with If we take a ‘classic’ petty bourgeois other misfortunes. Failures of revealed an absolute majority of among those who would labour. generalised anxiety disorder” …) - a furniture-maker, for instance - professional workplace decorum, respondents simply did not care In both cases, we have structures: Those who want more ‘diversity’ in she might decide to pack it in, and placed in the context of the long and which of these bureaucratic terms but the structures are not primarily the boardroom are by definition the sell her hammer and her workbench indecorous history of empire and were used; and the earlier one found about racism, but Staatsraison and enemies of those who want to abolish on eBay. A computer programmer slavery and what have you, become an overwhelming preference for sectional advantage respectively. the boardroom, as all communists cannot sell her Python expertise ‘microaggressions’, which are sort of more specific demonyms - ‘Mexican The consequence of this analysis surely do. To treat them otherwise in the same way: she might accept homeopathic doses of violence. American’, ‘Cuban American’, and for the left is uncomfortable - or is by definition to turn yourself money to teach the skill to someone The result is something like so on. This hardly needs explanation: ought to be. Let us take an unusually into a fighter for the legitimating else, but at the end of the day she ‘stolen valour’ - the phenomenon of after all, in the name of inclusivity, illustrative example - the Socialist ideology of the liberal ‘wing’ of the will still have that skill. Information, politicians and others fictionalising consensus anti-racism has chosen Workers Party. Many comrades capitalist elite. It therefore prevents including skills, is not alienable. It a proud military record for mass a word equally unpronounceable will be aware that almost its entire us from offering a way out of the cannot be exchanged: only copied. consumption: the moral urgency in English and Spanish, and no less activity now is under the sign of its liberal-conservative alternation of To realise the value of intellectual of, say, mass incarceration of the confection of an unaccountable front group, Stand Up To Racism. hegemony in capitalist states, which, property it is necessary for the black males or police murders professional elite than ‘Hispanic’ I must confess that, despite having after all, is our job. possessors to restrict access. The is applied spuriously to stressful was in the 1970s. often written disparagingly of SUTR Our gut reaction turns out to be means to ensure this are various. Twitter interactions or trivial spats Even within the elite, this in the Weekly Worker, I had never wrong. We do not want to unite the Sometimes institutional means in the university staffroom, which contradiction manifests itself as a been moved to go to the ‘About’ whole of the anti-racist movement, will be found, as the pre-entry supposedly contain the very seeds total inability to digest the fact that page on its website, to see what it if that means uniting all prepared to closed shop of the bar restricts the of the hanging-tree. The tendency, members of the various marginalised thinks it is up to. I will now subject mouth anti-racist platitudes. So far as numbers permitted to represent therefore, is for ever more trivial groups demur from the discourse. you to an extended quotation: such ‘unity’ exists, in fact, our role litigants in court. But there are injustices to be absorbed into For all the exhortations to ‘listen is to destroy it - break it apart. We also informal means: eg, the ‘structural racism’, and thus painted to the voices of people of colour’, On 21 October 2017, national should be wreckers. Of course, we creation of a ‘hidden curriculum’ in the bolder colours of struggles there are no voices so effectively conference drew together over do so in the name of unity - that of beyond the formal requirements past. suppressed by consensus anti-racism 1,300 anti-racist activists and was a real unity of interest and political of competence and accreditation. There is a contradiction, however, as those of black people who do addressed by Diane Abbott MP, solidarity, against a phony unity of In fact, the informal means are between the content of the ideas not share its assumptions. Far more Talha Ahmad (Muslim Council cultural sleight of hand. Our efforts the most universal, because they advanced, which are at least in credence, indeed, is given to the of Britain), Moyra Samuels must be judged by results - and for double up as a means of ideological principle egalitarian, and the uses infamous Robin DiAngelo, pedlar (Justice4Grenfell) and many real, not by miscounted numbers on legitimation. In Britain, it was to which these ideas are put, to of struggle sessions to American HR more. The clear and powerful a protest march on the basis of ‘down formerly common for the upper justify the comfortable existence of departments and quite as white as I message from the conference with this sort of thing’. professional layers to be dominated a sophisticated, but soulless, upper am, than to a left critic like Adolph was that, when we bring all these In the end, then, for all its openly by old boys’ networks. The middle class in the same societies Reed - never mind outright rightists struggles together and fight as stupidities, its censoriousness, its underlying ideology was of the as mass homelessness, structural like Ben Carson or our old friend, one, we can be more effective aesthetic nullity, the basic problem natural, born-to-rule aristocracy, unemployment and pauperisation. Tony Sewell. American liberals than we could possibly imagine.9 of consensus anti-racism is both whose essential nobility supposedly The ‘traditional’ idea that ‘Ye have seem incapable of addressing the more boring and more fundamental. ensured - again - noblesse oblige the poor with you always’, and fact that Donald Trump’s vote I cannot resist also quoting the It places, right in front of its eyes, a alongside a well-bred talent for the meritocratic idea than anyone among black and, ahem, Latinx last-but-one sentence: “We will be problem that it cannot even correctly leadership and ‘clubbable’ attitude can succeed with enough graft and Americans increased between 2016 back next year for another huge characterise, let alone solve. to fellow class members. Such an talent and (therefore those who do and 2020; except, naturally, by demonstration against all forms Actually abolishing racism would ideology is in contradiction with the not succeed have only themselves feebly redefining some of the latter of racism.” The most recent date mean breaking the link between essentially middle class mores of to blame) is replaced with the idea as ‘white’ after all. mentioned in the whole text is … historic disadvantage and present bourgeois society, but long survived that the towns of northern England As consensus anti-racism comes 2018, suggesting that SUTR has not thriving. But that demands not the as a vestigial feature of the early- or the American rustbelt are simply under assault, from both its left given the page much more attention replacement of one elite ideology modern world that gave that middle full of resentful bigots who are (in confused and too timid ways) than I had, but also how weirdly with another, but the end of elites class birth. undeserving, because they are not and from its right, it develops a indifferent to results SUTR is. Three altogether l The Thatcher-Reagan era ‘good anti-racists’, according to pronounced bunker mentality. It years after these words, presumably, replaced that class culture and the prevailing rubrics. So we find is stripped down, in the end, to its were written, we have swapped [email protected] ideology with one of ‘meritocracy’. soi disant crusaders for social essentials; and it is thereby revealed Theresa May, the tedious daughter The professions were staffed by the justice campaigning to purge the as essentially a mechanism of elite of the rectory, for Boris Johnson - he Notes 1.This article is based on Paul Demarty’s talk people who ‘deserved’ it by dint word ‘master’ from the computer coherence, of sorting sheep from of smiling picaninnies and ill-timed at Communist University 2021. of their achievements. In the end, codebases one minute, in case it goats. It validates the privileges of Kipling quotations. This does not 2. On the whole Sewell controversy, see my however, the whole thing was still triggers some ancestral trauma for those already ‘in’, while the right seem “more effective than we could ‘How to be gaslit’ Weekly Worker April 8 backed by cliquery and opaque the descendants of slaves; and, steals back territory; and it equally possibly imagine”, but perhaps I (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1342/how-to- be-gaslit). networks - most particularly based the next, speaking in comically gives the right a spurious coherence, have an overactive imagination. 3. www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/ on elite universities. This wave contemptuous terms of enraged in that the racist and ultra-capitalist The appeal to unity, in any case, is on-the-origins-of-the-professional- crested, it seems, around the time of rednecks or gammons as the root of elements of the right may once more an appeal to another gut feeling - and managerial-class-an-interview-with-barbara- the great financial crash of 2008; the all social evil. be united. ‘Movement conservatism’ one especially well founded for those ehrenreich. 4. www.thebellows.org/its-the-petit- transparent injustice of its results Since this is all conducted at the à la William F Buckley may be dead, committed, as the SWP claims to be, bourgeoisie-stupid. took the shine off ‘meritocracy’ level of manners and jargon, it is but it has a certain inheritor in anti- to “the revolutionary communist 5. ‘American Blue Labour?’ Weekly Worker altogether. The world the geniuses moreover extremely shallow in its wokeness. tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin, April 15: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1343/ built was one of forever wars and social reach. The evidence for this Trotsky and Luxemburg”. And, american-blue-labour. 6. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/ credit default swaps. is piecemeal, since each linguistic Left response for that tradition, unity matters at a works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch07.htm. ‘Wokeness’ is, clearly enough, conjecture of consensus anti-racism For the left, indifference to racism fundamental level: the revolutionary 7. www.pewresearch.org/ the replacement. In saying so, we must be refuted on its own terms, is, of course, quite unacceptable. potential of the proletariat in Marxist hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in-four-u-s- do not mean that the people who but it is perfectly obvious to run-of- Leftist gullibility in the face of theory is a thoroughly negative hispanics-have-heard-of-latinx-but-just-3- use-it. advocate consensus anti-racism, the-mill workers or petty bourgeois consensus anti-racism is a product affair; in a world run according to 8. news.gallup.com/poll/353000/no- liberal feminism and what have that, just because you have a kung fu first of all of a correct gut reaction property, here is a class with no preferred-racial-term-among-black-hispanic- you are necessarily insincere; the master, you do not thereby posit the against its obvious contrary. or merely trivial property, so its adults.aspx. contrary is overwhelmingly the case. existence of a kung fu slave. But the ‘experientialism’ of this only power is in its sheer mass and 9. www.standuptoracism.org.uk/about. 10. See Carla Roberts, ‘Principled voices It is more a question of evolutionary An illustrative example comes form of politics is in the end self- - as a consequence - its ability to few and far between’ Weekly Worker January selection. As opposed to rival liberal from the United States. Before the undermining: there are many gut intelligently direct that mass. But, of 31 2020 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1284/ or leftwing conceptions of the hot- Nixon administration, there did not reactions, and if we are to act course, having solved the problem of principled-voices-few-and-far-between). weekly 8 September 2 2021 1361 worker DEBATE Constitutions ancient and modern Bourgeois politicians, not least those in Britain and the US, make frankly risible claims about the constitutions of their respective countries. But, argues Mike Macnair in the first of two articles, Marxists are right to treat constitutions seriously n 1997 the then Tory prime of Sardinia and the Qing Qianlong needs of war - in particular ‘hybrid minister, John Major, infamously emperor’s Comprehensive Treatises war’, the combination of naval and Iclaimed that the Labour Party’s and to Voltaire, Rousseau and land operations - leading in turn to Scots and Welsh devolution, other Montesquieu on the role of war; the need for ideologies (not Colley’s constitutional reform proposals and Prussian king Frederick the Great’s terminology) of national unity, European Union policy amounted codification project; and the Swedish to mobilise consent to taxation, to throwing away 1,000 years of king Gustaf III’s 1772 Form of conscription, etc, from the lower history. As Labour pointed out government; before concluding orders; and that written constitutions, relentlessly, the idea of the ‘thousand- with Tom Paine in Britain and the especially when publicised through year constitution’ would have veneration of the Magna Carta, print, played a prominent, though made the continuity of the ‘British (allegedly) starting during the Seven not exclusive, role in the process. constitution’ go back to the times of Years’ War (1756-63). The argument is completely explicit the Anglo-Saxon king of England, Chapter 3 takes us to and repeated over and over again in Ethelred, nicknamed ‘the Unready’ Philadelphia and the drafting of the book. (Aethelraed Unraed, or ‘Noble the US constitution - but, although Advice, Bad Advice’), who was it starts with the secrecy of the Non-transparent on the throne until 1016. The idea convention’s proceedings, it moves I have referred to the non-transparent attracted media scorn, and ‘defence more or less immediately into the lower layer of this argument, which of the constitution’ completely failed rapid printing of the results - not is the negative converse of the as an electoral theme in 1997 - the just to the US reading public, but positive claim. This is that the growth Tories lost by a landslide. also very intentional circulation of constitutionalism is not the result But Major’s speech-writers had, overseas (a practice applied also of internal revolutionary processes. in fact, taken the celebration of 1,000 by the Venezuelan independence This negative claim only becomes years of British history from Tony fighters in 1811, by the drafters of explicit at the very end of the book (I Blair, in his 1996 speech: the Norwegian constitution in 1814, quote above Colley’s application of and by Mexicans in 1821 - whose the point to the USA). This is non- Consider a thousand years of ideas were circulated and picked up transparent because to establish that British history and what it tells in Calcutta). The Cherokees in 1827 there is a common phenomenon of us. The first parliament of the failed to obtain the same political the relation of constitutions to war world; the industrial revolution authority from asserting their does not in itself logically entail ahead of its time; an empire, civilised character through printing a that there is not also a connection the largest the world has ever constitution. to revolutions. This claim would known, relinquished in peace; Chapter 4 pursues the same need more argument than Colley the invention of virtually every decentring of the usual narrative, offers - and more attention to the scientific device of the modern looking at events in France in ‘standard narrative’ cases than she is world; two world wars, in which the 1790s through the eyes of prepared to deliver, given her choice our country was bled dry, in New York Federalist politician, to foreground cases outside this which two generations perished, Gouverneur Morris, before moving ‘standard narrative’. but which in the defeat of the on to Napoleon and the impact of Alongside this subtext come most evil force ever let loose by French conquests; the Cadiz draft a series of rhetorical operations, man showed the most sustained constitution put out in 1812 by which yield indirect suggestion that example of bravery in human Spanish opponents of the French Toryism is to be preferred. The spin in history. invaders, and its wider influence; chapter 6 (and elsewhere throughout This is our nation, our and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein the book), in which liberalism is characteristics - common sense, as an “almost Burkean” critique of associated with imperialism, racism standing up for the underdog, Napoleonic radicalism. Chapter 5 and sexism, is part of the same fiercely independent.1 arrives, perhaps belatedly, at London phenomenon. Tory anti-racism goes - seen in the first place through back to Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko The Labour leader’s usage of the Jeremy Bentham, then the role of (1688) - enslaved Africans, too, may ‘thousand years’ was as much exiles, including leaders of the Latin be noble ‘lost princes’; Colley’s own historical nonsense as Major’s. But American independence movements; Britons: forging the nation 1707- the usage on both sides demonstrates Andrew Park (2020) ‘Constitution Day poster’ and finally major John Cartwright 1837 (1992) among other aspects the continued purchase of the idea (1740-1824) as constitution- celebrated the Tory feminism of that the strength of the British I had intended to write on this history,5 and the same is true in draftsman and as progenitor of Hannah More (1745-1833), and constitution is its antiquity - the question in response to the exchange different ways of the historians who Chartism. Colley’s first book In defiance of ‘ancient constitution’. between Dan Lazare and Bradley lay behind the work of political The general pattern of the oligarchy: the Tory Party 1714-1760 This idea resurfaced in a more Meyer in this paper in January- scientist Samuel P Huntington, on book - to decentre liberal and (1982) expresses in its content, as extreme form in the (eventually February in relation to the January which comrade Lazare relied, and radical historical narratives of well as in its title, a view of Toryism successful) opposition in 2004- 6 invasion of the Capitol,3 but work of JGA Pocock, on whom comrade constitutionalism - should by as populist opposition to Whig 05 to the abolition of the office of commitments and other writing tasks Meyer relied. The issues are now be clear enough. Chapter 6 (liberal) tyranny. lord chancellor, proposed in Blair’s got in the way. However, reading complicated, so this will be a two- - ‘Those not meant to win, those Colley foregrounds monarchical Constitutional Reform Bill; the Linda Colley’s book The gun, the ship part article: in this first article I will unwilling to lose’ - is largely about constitutions and codes in the choice chancellorship was claimed to be and the pen: warfare, constitutions address Colley and Huntington; in liberal constitutionalism, as linked of cases for discussion, and casually 1,400 years old (on the basis of the and the making of the modern world4 the second, I will discuss comrade to imperialism, racism and male claims they were more stable than alleged existence of a chancellor of has brought it back up my agenda. Meyer’s use of Pocock and move supremacy. Chapter 7 - ‘The light, republican ones. Monarchs and the Kingdom of Kent in 605 CE). For towards the end of a book one of from there to a more positive the dark and the long 1860s’ - begins army officers are “impressive”, and As I previously showed, at that time whose main arguments is about the argument. with Tunisian constitutionalists and so on: thus, for example, Catherine the ‘constitutional role of the lord modernity of written constitutions as world travel before briefly discussing the Great showed “a deep interest chancellor’ which advocates were such. Colley writes: Colley the American civil war and ending in Enlightenment ideas, a taste for defending actually dated at most to The gun, the ship and the pen is a with the unsuccessful African- language and writing, a Protestant 1945 (and as far as Tory chancellors It is arguable that one reason for highly readable book - rhetorically constitutionalist ideas of James upbringing, an appreciation of were concerned, to 1987).2 The other the political dysfunctionality highly effective. But the logic Africanus Beale Horton (1835-83). the need to respond to the shocks side of this coin was that the point of and hampering divisions that underlying this rhetoric is far from Chapter 8 - ‘Break out’ - celebrates and trials of escalating levels of the Constitutional Reform Act was have characterised the USA in transparent. It is a grand-narrative the Japanese Meiji restoration and war …” (p68). On the other hand, to partially Americanise the British recent decades is that the iconic history of the global spread of the monarchical constitution of 1889, radicals and republicans are either constitution, by implementing constitution that so many former the idea of a written constitution and the subsequent influence of the personally unpleasant (thus Tom increased ‘separation of powers’ - in men at arms laboured over in between the 1750s and 1914 - with ‘Japanese model’ on opponents of Paine is characterised by “allies order to comply (it was alleged) with Philadelphia back in 1787 is, a postscript on the 20th century European imperialism. quarrelled with and turned into the European Convention on Human by this stage, simply too old - constructed through a series of As I said, the argument of the enemies” (p93), while his political Rights. and too limited, and in need individual anecdotal episodes. book is not exactly transparent. ideas are “obsessions” (p94), and Britain is thus a country where therefore of sustained and expert In the first chapter we move There is a transparent surface Jeremy Bentham is shown as self- the (largely spurious) claim to amplification and revitalisation. from the Corsican constitution, level of the argument; then a non- important and “politically obsessed” the antiquity of the constitution Yet, without the external massive drafted by Pasquale Paoli in 1755, transparent lower layer; along with (pp203-08). They are deluded and is claimed to be its strength; and pressures of a major war, how are to the expansion and increased that, certain ‘spin’ features; and, led by experience towards Burkean ‘modernisation’ projects in the such alterations ever to be brought expense of ‘hybrid warfare’ (both finally, unsupported and unexplained conservatism. This focus reflects the UK have for the last 60 years been about and agreed upon? (p420). navies and armies operating on choices, which are necessary for the underlying Tory principle that human to a considerable extent those of a world scale), to Haiti and the surface and lower-layer arguments to inequality is natural; so actual rulers ‘Americanisation’. It is therefore This is part of an epilogue which in monarchical constitution of Henri work. are to some extent idolised, while the surprising to find people on this side these final pages shifts to downplay, Christophe (1811). Chapter 2 begins The transparent surface level I advocacy of egalitarian politics has of the pond claiming that the ground though not to abandon, the main with the Nakaz of Catherine the have already half-referred to: it is the to be either “folly” or “knavery” - to of the present dysfunctionality of themes of the book. But the main Great, empress of Russia, printed claim that the extension of written use the expressions used at the time the US constitution, and its potential themes are also relevant; since in 1767, with side references to constitutions was attributable to the of the foundation of the Tory Party in crisis and overthrow, is its antiquity. Colley’s book is a work of Tory the 1770 Laws and Constitutions growth of the costs and mobilisation the 1670s-80s. weekly worker 1361 September 2 2021 9

This emphasis on personal constitution. The Roman jurist, including the disappearance of sovereign legislation in England end of the 18th century - before the character also reflects the Tory Ulpian, wrote some time around the judicial legislation; ‘the expansion of down to and including the late 18th capitalist Industrial Revolution and idea of ‘government of men and 210s CE that “Public law is that which political participation’ means either century.15 Huntington’s claim that unchanged in its foundations to this not of laws’ already argued by concerns the state of Roman affairs elections or mass parties (or both). constituency-localism was replaced day”, as comrade Meyer argues? To Behn and others in the political (status rei Romanae), while private Within this framework, continental by representation of the nation this point I will return in a second crisis of 1678-82. The spin in this law is concerned with the utility of modernisation takes the form of as a whole after the 17th century article l direction in The gun, the ship and individuals, for some matters are of centralisation through the absolutist, revolution is entirely dependent on the pen appears in the form of the public and others of private utility.”8 monarchical state bureaucracy, the arguments of Edmund Burke [email protected] repeated characterisation of written The Athenaion politeia, traditionally followed later by ‘democratic against his constituents voting him constitutions as “paperwork” (the attributed to the philosopher Aristotle revolution’ to get mass participation; out (p107) and on developments in Notes usual negative tag for bureaucratic (384-22 BCE),9 is analogously about and English modernisation is that of the 19th-20th centuries (p108), after 1. www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech- form-filling operations); at pp420- the political order of ancient Athens. centralisation round parliament. But the American revolution - and even archive.htm?speech=202. 2. ‘The Blair-Falconer reform of the 421, Colley says (in fact here rightly) What, then, makes the 1750s an these are overstated. judiciary’ Weekly Worker December 16 2004: that “in the early 21st century - appropriate starting point for Colley’s In America, in contrast, political For the idea of the ‘differentiation weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/557/the-blair- as always - written constitutions account? We are not told. The answer, institutions did not undergo of structures’ Huntington begins falconer-reform-of-the-judiciary. by themselves do not and cannot I think, is that the positive connection revolutionary changes. Instead, with the claim that the mixing of 3. D Lazare, ‘Trump’s “march on Rome”’ Weekly Worker January 14 (weeklyworker. guarantee either good government Colley makes between constitutions the principal elements of the the judicial and legislative roles is co.uk/worker/1330/trumps-march-on- or the secure possession of basic and what she calls ‘hybrid warfare’ - English 16th-century constitution medieval (p111). “In England, the rome); B Meyer, ‘Old regime is cracking rights”. perhaps better, what has been called were exported to the New supremacy of the law disappeared in apart’, January 28 (weeklyworker.co.uk/ In the last three pages of the the ‘military revolution’ of the early World, took root there, and the civil wars and with it disappeared worker/1332/old-regime-is-cracking-apart); D 10 Lazare, ‘The meaning of January 6’, February book, however, she rows back from modern period - is defensible with were given new life at precisely the mixing of judicial and political 4 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1333/the- this point by providing a couple of an earlier chronology, since the the time that they were being functions” (p112) - a claim which meaning-of-january-6). anecdotes of protestors relying on gunpowder-based transformation of abandoned in the home country. would have surprised the defenders 4. Profile Books 2021. print copies of constitutions against war costs is at least two centuries They were essentially Tudor and in 2004 of the lord chancellor’s 5. I discussed Tory history as a methodology in ‘The Tory interpretation’ Weekly Worker police repression in South Africa earlier than the 1750s. But Colley’s hence significantly medieval in office and the appellate jurisdiction January 31 2019 (weeklyworker.co.uk/ in 1917 and Russia in 1919. This converse, negative conclusion, character (p96). of the House of Lords. The executive worker/1236/the-tory-interpretation). coda, as I already indicated, appears ruling out revolution as explanatory presidency is a constitutional 6. The first clear example in legal argument inconsistent with the main body of constitutionalism, ceases to be The main body of the chapter monarchy (pp114-15); this is true in print is Matthew Hale arguing in Rickebies case (1642 - published 1648) about the royal of the book’s rhetoric. I can only defensible as soon as the chronology consists of consideration of the enough, but was as true of British prerogative of pardoning offenders: “the guess that the reason is that ending is pushed back to fully include the three elements, each supposed to monarchs before Victoria, contrary law of the Jews differs from our law, & so the book with open Tory hostility Dutch and English revolutions of show the differences between forms to Huntington’s suggestions. the constitution of other realms”; next Rex to written constitutions, though it the late 16th and 17th centuries. In of modernisation and the ‘Tudor’ Huntington claims that “England v Thomas (1664) 1 Keble 663, Williams arguing about the “auncient constitution is commonplace in the UK, would fact Dutch and English (custom- character of American political … lagged behind the continent in of Wales”. References to the constitution have reduced its marketability in the based, ‘ancient’) constitutionalism institutions. developing military professionalism, of England in legal argument became a lot USA and elsewhere. was a defensive response to the The final section ‘cashes’ and the United States lagged behind more common after 1688, unsurprisingly (cf counteroffensive conducted by the argument: the US faces a Great Britain.” This time, a simple also M Macnair, ‘Revolution principles and the revolution bench’ in C Macmillan and Choices monarchies in the interests of the contradiction in its relationships untruth: England had a professional C Smith (ed) Challenges to authority and This brings us finally to the power of the clergy; not, in the with ‘developing’ countries between standing army from the time of the the recognition of rights Cambridge 2015, choices necessary to the shape of first place, connected with tax the aspiration to ‘modernisation’, creation of the New Model Army in chapter 5). In political argument, the Oxford the argument. The first of these mobilisation for ‘hybrid warfare’. on the one hand, and the aspiration 1644, though much reduced in size English Dictionary, has a 1610 reference in theological polemic to ‘The constitution of is what counts as a ‘constitution’. In fact, there is also a larger to US-style constitutionalism, on after 1660; though the Continental the common-wealth of Israel’, the next in The common modern usage of the and more positive point made the other. The social basis of US- Army was mostly disbanded in Clarendon’s History of the rebellion (written term is a document codifying the available by abandoning Colley’s style constitutionalism, Huntington 1784, the USA did create a small between 1668 and Clarendon’s death in 1674, general structure of a state order (and chronological limits. This is that argues, is the absence of class regular army after the adoption of the but not published until 1702-04) and in Henry 16 Neville’s Plato redivivus (1681). we can also talk about customary the term ‘constitution’ can already in US society, allowing social constitution. Meanwhile, the idea 7. Eg, Lex Irnitana (c 90 CE) chapter 95: state regimes, like the British, as be used in the English Restoration modernisation without political of the militia remained important in “Concerning the inscription of the statute ‘constitutions’). The word, in this period referring to a city or other modernisation; but class remains British defence debates down to the on bronze. Any duumvir (magistrate) who sense of foundational political order, corporation.11 Here, unlike the Dutch present in ‘developing’ countries and recent past.17 is in charge of the administration of justice came into use in English legal and and English ‘ancient constitutions’, what is needed for modernisation is The third category, ‘mass in that municipium (municipality) is to see 6 that this statute is inscribed on bronze at the political argument in the mid-1600s. they were usually codified in a strong, centralising government, participation’, is equally wrong- earliest possible moment and affixed in the However, not all constitutions are summary documents, corporation preferably with some traditional headed, but I will not bother with most prominent place in that municipium, codified in this modern sense. And charters or other instruments. This, element. Thus, for example, India detailed refutation. so that it may be properly read from ground level” (J Gonzalez and MH Crawford, ‘Lex Colley, in fact, at rather an early stage practice, indeed, went back to the can be ‘democratic’ because of the What lies behind this is partly Irnitana’ Journal of Roman Studies Vol 76, uses as examples of ‘constitutions’ middle ages and to instruments like role of caste; Lebanon because of Huntington’s particular mid-1960s 1986, p199). introduced by absolute monarchs the c1160 constitutum legis and confessionalism. policy agenda (discussed above). It 8. Digest 1.1.1.2: ‘publicum ius est quod ad two civil code projects, which deal constitutum usus of Pisa.12 From this This is transparent apologetics is partly his reliance on late 19th and statum rei romanae spectat, privatum quod ad singulorum utilitatem: sunt enim quaedam mainly with relationships between perspective, we might think of the for the US’s alliance policies in early 20th century English historians, publice utilia, quaedam privatim’. private actors, rather than with state idea of codifying the constitutions the semi-colonial countries in whose ideas were formed within the 9. Though now widely thought to be from structures: Catherine the Great’s of nation-states not merely as the 1960s, of supporting various framework of the later 19th century his ‘school’. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Nakaz (pp72-81) is made up of influenced by the fashion for forms of ‘strongman’ government: ‘modernisation’ of the English state: Constitution_of_the_Athenians_(Aristotle). 10. Now relatively unpopular (there is a instructions, on an ‘enlightened’ ‘institutional’ codifications of law in ‘developmentalist’ military regimes ie. the increase in the relative power convenient summary at en.wikipedia.org/ basis, to a commission for the general, but as specifically making in Latin America, the shah of Iran, of unelected and central bodies in wiki/Military_Revolution); but the point revision of the Russian Ulozhenie the nation-state more like a city. Park Chung-Hee in South Korea, response to the expansion of the here is sharply increased costs of warfare law-code of 1649, with consultation Nguyen Cao Ky in South Vietnam, franchise. in the 16th-18th centuries, and the critics of the ‘military revolution’ merely nibble at the arrangements built in to the drafting Huntington and so on. I would say that it looks Its third element, which is central edges of this issue. procedure; Frederick the Great’s Dan Lazare makes the US extraordinarily dated after the turn of to the US writers on British history 11. Eg, R (Busfield) v Town of Rippon (1666) Prussian codification project (pp82- constitution ancient or ‘retro’ in the US to ‘human rights’ and corruptly Huntington used, like CH McIlwain, 2 Keble 25 (constitution of the town); cf 83) is also a civil code. its own time, by attributing to the controlled, constitutionalist regimes is the acceptance as true of the Dutton v Howell (1693) Shower PC 24 (constitution of the governor’s council of This, in turn, poses issues of founders an imitation of the English under the Carter administration and ideological claims of some on the Barbados); Philips v Bury (1694) Shower PC Colley’s choices in relation to Tudor constitution. His authority after - but for the fact that there has ‘parliamentary’ side in the civil war 35 (constitution of Exeter College, Oxford); chronology. The reason is that the for this view is a chapter in political been something of a return of the so- (also likened to ‘Puritan’ settlers in R v City of Chester (1694) 5 Modern 10 idea of a code of laws as such is a scientist Samuel P Huntington’s 1968 called ‘realist’ 1960s policy in recent New England), who claimed that they (constitution of the city). great deal older than the 1750s. book, Political order in changing years. were defending the constitution as it 12. P Vignoli (ed) I costituti della legge e 13 dell’uso di Pisa (sec XII) Istituto storico Medieval and early modern legal societies. For present purposes, however, had been under ‘Good Queen Bess’. italiano per il Medio Evo (2003). and political actors were familiar Comrade Lazare rightly disavows the issue is whether Huntington’s But in doing so, these 17th century 13. The chapter in question is lightly rewritten with both the late Roman emperor any support for Huntington’s claim that the ‘Puritans’ carried politicians conveniently forgot from a 1966 article: ‘Political modernization: America vs Europe’ World Politics Vol 18 Justinian’s codification of 529-34 political views; it should be added over ‘Tudor’ constitutional forms Elizabeth I’s arbitrary imprisonment (1966), pp378-414. CE, and with the tablets of the law that Huntington is (as Davide Orsi into the American colonies and of troublesome parliamentarians 14. www.e-ir.info/2018/04/15/the-clash-of- brought down by Moses in the Bible; has argued) mainly “interested in that these survived unchanged into and others; her prerogative Court civilizations-and-realism-in-international- the king of Castile in modern Spain offering advice to the American modern times is really defensible as of High Commission, and with political-thought. had adopted a codification sometime political elite”, so that his work has a historical claim. it the major role of bishops in 15. On medieval uses of sovereignty 14 and other sorts of authority, N Doe, see in the 1250s-60s, the Siete Partidas, an ephemeral or journalistic quality. His Weberian ‘modernity’ schema governance under her regime (the Fundamental authority in late medieval and it was in regular use at least in the Political order in changing societies is actually unhelpful in clarifying very extensive jurisdiction of the English law Cambridge 1990; on continued Spanish colonies in the 1600s-1700s; is as much a piece of ephemera in what it purports to explain - the church courts was not even matched use of natural law arguments in English 18 courts in the 18th century, and their and so on. The idea that the laws the service of short-term US policy relative success of different countries in colonial Massachusetts ); her background, RH Helmholz Natural law ought to be published in an accessible advice as is the more famous The in ‘development’. But consider it for vigorous use of Star Chamber; her in court Harvard 2015; M Macnair, ‘On form was already ancient Greek and clash of civilizations (1996). the moment in its own terms. The judges’ imprisonment of juries who reducing undue trust in judges: or, against the Roman;7 the printing press was a Huntington is (without directly idea of the necessity of sovereignty found verdicts the wrong way; her modern doctrine of precedent’ King’s Law J Vol 31 (2020), pp41-58. qualitative change, but one which citing Weber) pretty explicitly is not an innovation in Jean Bodin continuation of her sister Mary’s 16. New Model: for an outline analysis radically facilitated application of an Weberian. He begins with the (c1530-96), as Huntington argues censorship of the press through of the class aspect, and references, see M existing principle. claim that “Political modernization (pp100-01), but a reinterpretation the Stationers’ Company’s printing Macnair ‘Doing war differently’ Weekly Equally, there are older involves the rationalization of of claims about the nature of law monopoly; and so on. Regular Worker May 28 2015 (weeklyworker.co.uk/ worker/1060/doing-war-differently); US terminologies for what is now called authority, the differentiation of and government made by the late meetings of an elected assembly are Army: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ in English ‘the constitution’. Samuel structures, and the expansion of Roman emperors and ‘theorised’ by not part of the Elizabethan regime: the_United_States_Army#Early_national_ Pufendorf’s pseudonymous 1667 political participation” (p93). In Augustine of Hippo (354-430); the they result from the revolution of period_(1783–1812). De statu imperii Germanici is what these three elements ‘rationalized idea of sovereign legislation as a 1688. 17. JR Western The English militia in the eighteenth century Oxford 1964; IFW Beckett would now be called a book about authority’ means a central, sovereign fundamental source of authority was Thus, on the basis of English Britain’s part-time soldiers: the amateur the German constitution. Sir Thomas political authority, as opposed to already part of English legal ideas history, Bradley Meyer is entirely military tradition 1558-1945 Barnsley 2011. Smith’s De re publica Anglorum: the custom and natural law theories; in the 1400s, in competition with right to say that the US constitution 18. Contrast M Ingram Church courts, maner of gouernement or policie of ‘differentiated structure’ means ‘natural law’ and ‘custom’ ideas; was a transfer of Whig political sex and marriage in England, 1570-1640 (Cambridge 1987) with DC Brown, ‘The the realme of England, written in the a standing army, an elaborated, and, on the other hand, ‘natural law’ ideas, not of Tudor ones. But do keys of the kingdom: excommunication 1560s and printed posthumously in departmentalised bureaucracy, and and ‘custom’ ideas continued to those Whig ideas also display “the in colonial Massachusetts’ New England 1583, is similarly about the English Weberian rationalisation of law, be used in legal practice alongside antiquity of a state founded at the Quarterly, Vol 67 (1994), pp531-66. weekly 10 September 2 2021 1361 worker EDUCATION Tackling the key issues From free speech to climate change. Derek James reports on this year’s Summer Communist University ith 27 sessions and a variety work are natural and beyond human of international speakers, control. Along with the potentially Wthis year’s Summer negative changes to work and society Communist University covered wrought by AI and automation, there many of the key issues currently are also potential benefits for the facing the left globally. From climate working class. However, in rejecting change, the national question and the the dominant consensus that ‘there shifting balance of power in global is no alternative’, we also have to capitalism, through to the nature of develop a working class alternative the revolutionary programme and that raises the critical and political the type of party we need, the CU level of the movement and shows provided the time and political space how we can run society in our own to discuss these important topics interests. without the three-minute time limit that is sadly too often the norm in Runaway global warming brings the danger of state-imposed ‘climate socialism’ Anti-racism what passes for the left today. The politics of anti-racism in theory The online event was organised Although most comrades tried to mark two, or a broad left party with of looming inter-imperialist war, and practice were taken up by Paul around broad themes which were stick to the broader questions raised a Marxist vanguard. The key element, these demands were designed as a Demarty and Daniel Lazare. In his then developed in the three sessions by Tony and Norman in their opening he suggested, was a Communist Party, response to the immediate situation. introduction on ‘Anti-racism as that took place on each day. No statements, for some participants since the development of a Marxist However, in the application of the the politics of consensus’ comrade written report can do real justice to the discussion was simply about current in the Labour Party could not ‘transitional method’ in the years Paul considered the ways in which the debates, but if you want to catch fighting fascism. They argued that, be internally generated. after 1945, the limited nature and the issues of race are analysed and up with any sessions you missed or because no-platforming had been Gus Ootjers of the Communist reformist practice of this approach addressed today, especially in the indeed the CU as a whole, the videos successful in defeating fascism in Platform talked about the experience belied any revolutionary objective. Anglophone western world. are all being made available online.1 the past, restrictions on free speech of his comrades as a distinct tendency Far from acting as a bridge to socialist The dominant consensus, were not only fully justified, but within the Socialist Party in the consciousness, and especially which found expression in official Free speech were an essential principle for the Netherlands and the witch-hunt that when combined with syndicalism multiculturalism, is that racism is a One key discussion was on free speech contemporary left. had been launched against them by or the worship of the politics of historical hangover from the days and the politics of the left. In his talk This ‘common sense’ was strongly the party leadership. He particularly spontaneity, they actually closed off of empire, a product of ignorant on ‘The Chatham House rule, safe challenged by supporters of the focused on the internal differences the development of revolutionary white people and malfunctioning spaces, no-platforming and other such CPGB, who drew on the authentic over participation in a bourgeois understanding and limited politics to institutions: it can therefore be self-imposed barriers to socialism’, Marxist tradition of championing free coalition government and the way economistic demands and agitation addressed by legislation, training Mike Macnair located the demand speech in the context of class struggle these discussions raised wider - ironically the very thing for which courses and employment practices for unrestricted freedom speech, and argued that, far from being questions on the nature of the party Trotskyists criticised the minimum- designed to overcome discrimination. assembly and organisation in the successful, ‘no-platforming’ - while it and the type of strategy that Marxists maximum programme. He pointed to the illusory unity of the wider working class struggle against should not, of course, be ruled out as should pursue. anti-racist ‘movement’ and its calls for capitalism and the construction of a tactic - could never by itself defeat In the discussions that followed Capitalism diversity, both of which left the social a new, socialist society. He argued a serious fascist threat which would these three talks, the nature of Understanding the nature of and economic structures of capitalism that freedom of speech was essential be backed, protected and promoted the Labour Party and the precise capitalism, and the ways in which intact. He counterposed the real for the needs of socialist production, by sections of the capitalist class and formulation of “the united front of Marxists explain its operation and unity of class against the platitudes for the needs of socialist organisation the state. a special kind” was a central theme. development, were the subject of three of anti-racism and reminded us that, and for the needs of the working There was general agreement about sessions by Ian Wright, Yassamine when the working class achieves its class fighting the dictatorship of the Our party the contradictory nature of Labour Mather and Michael Roberts. own emancipation, it also solves the bourgeoisie. Comrade Mike was The important issue of Marxism and and its claims to be both a party of Ian asked if machines create value problem of universal liberation. particularly critical of much of the the revolutionary party was discussed the whole class and a party loyal to and Yassamine considered whether Daniel Lazare also looked at the restrictive culture and censorship in four sessions spread across the the British state. Comrades agreed machines can ‘create communism’, politics of anti-racism in the Black of the contemporary left and its week. Lawrence Parker talked about that Labour was not a ready-made while Michael returned to Marx’s Lives Matter movement and its rejection of the Marxist tradition of the way in which a ‘damning phrase’ instrument for socialism, and neither so-called transformation problem in development since 2012 in the United free and open debate, both within the taken from The communist manifesto could it be “reclaimed for the working Capital. Both in the presentations and States. He described its chaotic workers’ movement and society more had been used as an intellectual cover class”. The issue of the type of the subsequent discussion, although upsurges, its formless and aimless generally. for opportunist politics. Communist Party and the nature of much attention was focussed on politics in the context of a period One such example of this The phrase, “the communists do its programme had to become central the labour theory of value and the of growing populism. For Daniel, restrictive approach was the current not form a separate party opposed if the left was to create a serious impact of the rate of profit on ‘the BLM is essentially a middle class controversy over trans rights, which to other working class parties”, has challenge to capitalism. capitalist business cycle’, the issue movement that at worst encapsulates was the subject of Amanda Maclean’s historically been utilised by some Donald Parkinson from the of automation and the future of all that is reactionary in capitalist talk on ‘Trans rights orthodoxy and its ‘Marxists’ to justify adaptation to the US magazine Cosmonaut took capitalism also provoked a lot of society: it defines black oppression as discontents’. Speaking from a gender- politics of the Labour left and pursue up a related question of party and discussion. singular and unique, and sees the issue critical position, Amanda began by a strategy of remaining in Labour at programme, when he outlined the In discussing how many on the left of race in moral terms, as opposed to summarising how she saw the debate all costs. Tracing the history of the recent experience of the Marxist see the impact of artificial intelligence the politics of class. developing, but moved on to the phrase and the development of this Unity slate within the Democratic and automation, Yassamine described Indeed, the white working class is wider questions of censorship and interpretation, Lawrence suggested Socialists of America. Outlining how what she called ‘denialist’ and ‘super- deemed to benefit from racism and the attempts to characterise her views that the terms of the debate need to the new slate was received at the optimist’ analyses: denialists argue white privilege. This is toxic and has a as essentially socially conservative be changed and that contemporary DSA’s convention earlier this August, that automation will simply create negative political impact by providing and rightwing. Rejecting this, she Marxists should look at the experience comrade Donald talked about how new jobs, whilst the super-optimists ammunition for the American right argued that it was actually ‘trans of the early CPGB in the 1920s, and they had developed their maximum- believe that the emancipation of and capitalist politicians. rights orthodoxy’ that was socially the origins of Labour as a united minimum programme in the context humanity will take place because conservative in its stereotyped views front of working class and socialist of working for a split between of AI: according to this school, History on the nature of humanity in general organisations. the DSA and the Democrats, and capitalism will be transformed by a David Broder and Marc Mulholland and women in particular, as well as in These points were developed creating the basis for independent, ‘crisis of work’. looked at two contrasting aspects of its understanding of the relationship further by Kevin Bean, who working class, socialist politics. In Both from comrade Mather’s Marxist historiography in their talks. between sex and gender. argued that, “without a hegemonic particular this entailed an explicitly presentation and the discussion it David’s ‘Leftwing communism, a The debate between Tony Communist Party, the Labour Party anti-constitutional platform, which was clear that the issue was much long-established disorder’ drew on his Greenstein and Norman Finkelstein, can never be transformed into a stressed the need to overthrow the more complex than either of these research for a forthcoming biography on ‘Free speech: unrestricted or vehicle for socialism”. He outlined constitution, not ‘deepen American approaches allowed for. In many of the Italian Marxist, Amadeo restricted’, tackled the themes the history and nature of Labour democracy’. Comrade Parkinson sectors of the economy there would Bordiga, and looked at how the underlying the previous sessions. as a bourgeois workers’ party and argued that this approach took politics be large job losses as a result of AI and political career of Bordiga had been Tony acknowledged the labour recalled the discussions in the Third beyond mere activism and immediate the replacement of routinised human misrepresented by both supporters movement’s long history of fighting International about CPGB affiliation demands, and posed the fundamental labour in both blue- and white-collar and opponents alike. David argued against state restrictions on free to the Labour Party, as shown in questions that confront American work with machines. Whilst some that his politics were much more speech, but argued that under Lenin’s Leftwing communism. Kevin society and the working class. new forms of skilled work would developed and rather different than capitalism free speech does not outlined the current debates on the Mike Macnair took up a similar be created, these were likely to be what has been suggested and showed exist and that those who advocate left about the future trajectory of the theme in his session on ‘The limited. A much more likely scenario how Bordiga’s political trajectory was unrestricted speech ignore the class Labour Party under Keir Starmer transitional programme - the reformist was the growth of ‘ghost work’ or shaped by his reaction to the Russian interests that underpin ideas. Like and, although he did not rule out the banality of a supposed revolutionary service employment, which would be Revolution and the wider context of other comrades who took his part in possible ‘deLabourisation’ of the profundity’. He discussed the origins low paid and precarious. Italian politics in this period. the subsequent discussion, he drew on party, suggested that Labour still and history of ‘transitional demands’, The political and programmatic Comrade Mulholland’s talk a reading of the historical experience remains a site of struggle. and how many Trotskyist comrades implications of these developments discussed an important issue in the of ‘no-platforming’ fascists, which In campaigning against bans saw such demands functioning as a were raised by many comrades in the English Revolution - the nature of the forms so much of the ‘common sense’ and proscriptions and for the re- bridge to raising the consciousness discussion. Capitalism will continue bourgeoisie and the significance of of the contemporary left. Norman foundation of Labour as a united of the working class and developing to try to break the power of labour the yeomen as a revolutionary class. Finkelstein’s case rested on classic front of a special kind, allowing the a militant working class movement and use AI in this struggle. Comrades After surveying the debate about arguments about the importance of the affiliation of all socialist and working committed to the socialist naturally agreed that workers must the gentry and their candidacy as battle of ideas for left politics and the class organisations, Labour Party transformation of society. organise to resist this, but such the ‘bourgeoisie’, he argued that the ways in which the labour movement Marxists were raising the wider Mapped out by Leon Trotsky solidarity was not automatic. Our yeomen were much better placed to stood for extending the boundaries of issue of the type of Marxist party we in the late 1930s, during the severe approach must be to counter the idea be defined as the bourgeoisie which expression and debate. need. This was not a Labour Party capitalist crises and in the shadow that unemployment and precarious consciously acted a class for itself in weekly 11 worker 1361 September 2 2021 What we fight for the 17th and 18th centuries. means that the only realistic road is reconfiguration of the status quo in a we can achieve under capitalism), n Without organisation the Hillel Ticktin spoke on the the socialist revolution, which cannot new form. around which the workers’ movement working class is nothing; with collapse of ‘really existing socialism’. be confined within the constraining can learn, fight and form itself into a the highest form of organisation The comrade insisted that the Soviet box of Israel-Palestine, but can only Climate change future ruling class, which can alone it is everything. Union had nothing to do with be understood in the context of the The closing session drew together successfully respond to the climate socialism. What began as an historic transformation of the wider Middle many of the questions that had been crisis. n There exists no real Communist revolution became its opposite. East by an Arab-led working class discussed during the week in the The resulting discussion Party today. There are many Had Trotsky carried out a military revolution throughout the region. context of what will be the major considered both the programmatic so-called ‘parties’ on the left. In coup in the early 1920s, then things Sandy McBurney discussed the issue facing both capitalism and and strategic implications raised by reality they are confessional sects. might have been very different: not national question in Scotland and the working class movement in the climate change and the response Members who disagree with the socialism, but the horrors of Stalin the position Marxists should adopt coming century. of states and capitalism in general. prescribed ‘line’ are expected to could have been avoided, and perhaps towards ‘Indyref2’. He outlined the Outlining the projections and Comrades argued that the only real gag themselves in public. Either Nazism too, and World War II. way that the bulk of the left in Scotland findings of the recent report from the substantive and effective change that or face expulsion. Members of the Radical was tailing the Scottish National Party Intergovernmental Panel on Climate that was possible was on a global n Communists operate according Anthropology Group have long been and Scottish nationalism, which they Change, which suggested that we scale, but this was clearly prevented to the principles of democratic a regular feature at CU and this year saw as historically progressive. He have already entered the territory by the existence of states and their centralism. Through ongoing debate Chris Knight, Ian Watts and Camilla opposed this as essentially a policy of irreversible climate change, Jack competing interests. The economic we seek to achieve unity in action Power in their respective sessions of ‘socialism in one country’, which Conrad argued that quantity was disruption caused by the crisis will and a common world outlook. As looked at ‘Being human: what rejects real internationalism and the giving way to quality and that we fall on the developing economies, long as they support agreed actions, chimpanzees can teach us’; ‘The first need for an international revolution. face the danger of one climate system as the richer capitalist states attempt members should have the right to human revolution: red ochre, the red Whilst the Scottish people have tipping over into another climate to shift the burden onto their weaker speak openly and form temporary flag of prehistory’; and ‘Capitalism as the right to self-determination and system. He stressed that, despite and more dependent clients. or permanent factions. robbery: time and revolution’. independence, socialists should the rhetoric of concern and even While there was general n Communists oppose all impe- All three sessions produced lively campaign for a ‘no’ vote and not alarm, governments internationally agreement about the CPGB’s rialist wars and occupations but discussion and opened up new ideas provide a left veneer for nationalism. had not yet acted in any decisive programmatic demands, some constantly strive to bring to the fore for both the understanding of human In their introduction Anne fashion on the issue. This could comrades suggested that we should the fundamental question–ending war development and the nature of the McShane and Kevin Bean looked perhaps be explained in the past by not overegg the pudding in relation is bound up with ending capitalism. structures and ideology that underpin at the continuing importance of the the ‘denialism’ of big business and to climate change. Not only do n contemporary capitalist society. On national question in Ireland in the light the short-termism of both individual sections of Green opinion and the Communists are internationalists. the basis of this anthropological of Brexit and the growing demands capitalists and their political parties. protest movement tend towards Everywhere we strive for the closest research, bourgeois arguments about for a border poll on the future However, this was no longer Malthusianism in their arguments unity and agreement of working class ‘human nature’ and our ‘essential constitutional status of Northern the case, with corporate ‘green- for strong action to deal with the and progressive parties of all countries. violent instincts’ - used to justify Ireland. Comrade Anne discussed washing’ and governments making crisis, but this can be taken up by We oppose every manifestation capitalism and competitive behaviour the development of the Irish state commitments to carry out significant governments and used to justify of national sectionalism. It is an - can be found to be fundamentally and society since partition, with a change to slow and eventually halt the ‘green austerity’ and attacks on the internationalist duty to uphold the flawed and clearly ideological in particular focus on the impact of the process of climate change. There was working class. principle, ‘One state, one party’. origin. war in the north on the 26 counties no longer a pushback and much green Nor should communists go along n The working class must be and the changes ushered in by the virtue-signalling would be on display with what are essentially anti-human organised globally. Without a global National question ‘Celtic Tiger’ and the weakening hold at the forthcoming Cop26 UN climate arguments about our relationship Communist Party, a Communist Three sessions looked at the of the Catholic church over society. change conference in Glasgow. with nature. The ideal of harmony International, the struggle against continuing significance of the She also assessed the arguments While the left was right to be with nature and the realisation of the capital is weakened and lacks national question in contemporary advanced by the Irish left in support both cynical and critical, is it right full potential of our species-being are coordination. politics in three locations: Israel- of a border poll and the allegedly to argue that capitalist governments strands in communist thought that n Communists have no interest Palestine, Scotland and Ireland. In progressive dynamic it could create will do little beyond such symbolic go back to the intellectual origins apart from the working class his introduction on Israel-Palestine, for Irish reunification. gestures as promoting electric cars of Marxism, and which have never as a whole. They differ only in Moshé Machover argued that a Kevin dealt with the impact of and banning plastic bags? Despite been more relevant than in a period recognising the importance of bourgeois-democratic solution in the Brexit on Northern Ireland and other the underlying dynamics and nature when the climate crisis brings both Marxism as a guide to practice. Middle East was impossible: any “off recent developments in unionist of capitalism as production for our existing and future relationship That theory is no dogma, but the peg solution from the nationalist politics, along with the political production’s sake, Jack suggested to the planet into focus. must be constantly added to and shop” was not in the interests of the implications of the demographic that we should not rule out state Implicit in the programmatic enriched. working class. shifts in the region. Comrade Bean intervention and perhaps more radical demands is a curatorial attitude n Capitalism in its ceaseless Moshé’s analysis was rooted in paid particular attention to the measures to tackle the problems raised to nature which reflects the search for profit puts the future Marxist debates on the nature of position of the British-Irish and their by climate change. The possibility of rationality and planning of a future of humanity at risk. Capitalism is colonialism and imperialism, and historic relationship with British some form of ‘Climate socialism’ socialist society. Our demands synonymous with war, pollution, the type of social agent who can imperialism, and their reaction to comparable to the Kriegssozialismus are about shifting the balance exploitation and crisis. As a global carry out decolonisation. In the case a border poll. However, while he and state regulation introduced by the of human activity away from system capitalism can only be of Israel-Palestine the overthrow of condemned the continuing carnival imperialist governments in the two production for production’s sake superseded globally. Zionism relies on the consent of the of reaction in the Six Counties, he did world wars should not be ruled out. and the environmental despoliation Israeli-Hebrew working class. Since not support the call for a border poll The British state’s response to Covid inherent in capitalism towards a n The capitalist class will never they cannot be mobilised by a purely - which tailed bourgeois nationalism and the manner in which capitalist radically different, cooperative willingly allow their wealth and bourgeois-democratic revolution, this and, if successful, would only see a orthodoxy was thrown out during an commonwealth - not a return to power to be taken away by a emergency could be a pointer to how either some pre-industrial green parliamentary vote. other capitalist governments might utopia or, even worse, a pre-human n We will use the most militant act in the future. world. methods objective circumstances Fighting fund Given the severity of the problems In summing up the discussion, allow to achieve a federal republic posed by climate change in a comrade Conrad said that only of England, Scotland and Wales, period of inevitable and increasing the working class is capable of a united, federal Ireland and a state rivalry and competition for taking the collective, global action United States of Europe. Up and running resources, along with increasing that is necessary to overcome the n Communists favour industrial fter our two-week summer just short of £200, which is really numbers of refugees and population challenges of climate change. unions. Bureaucracy and class Abreak, there’s good news for a good cause for optimism. movements, pressure for state action National and partial solutions are compromise must be fought and the Weekly Worker. Not only are And, as I write, we’ve and ‘climate socialism’ will doubtless incapable of resolving what is, by the trade unions transformed into we back up and running, but we completed the first day of our be combined with the suspension its very nature, a global issue, and schools for communism. easily made the £2,000 fighting September fighting fund and of civil rights and restrictions on the only class with real global and n fund target for August. already 12 comrades have chipped democratic freedoms. Inevitably, in universal interests is the proletariat. Communists are champions of Of course, the fact that we in. First we have the batch of any response to this crisis, capitalists The possible regimes that will the oppressed. Women’s oppression, already had well over £1,000 in standing orders that land in our do not want the main burden to fall be imposed by the capitalist state combating racism and chauvinism, the kitty after the first one and account on the first of each month on them and they will launch severe internationally to ‘deal’ with and the struggle for peace and a half weeks made things a bit - thanks go to EW (£40), ST (£30) attacks on the living standards and climate change will also ‘deal’ ecological sustainability are just easier, but, despite that, a good and MS (£20), together with the conditions of the working class. with the working class, with harsh as much working class questions number of comrades did their more modest, but still very useful, Like Kriegssozialismus before it, restrictions and even dictatorship, as pay, trade union rights and bit since then and we ended the contributions from AN, MM, BG, any form of ‘climate socialism’ will when ‘climate socialism’ combines demands for high-quality health, month with an excellent £2,199. PBS and TM. Added to which not be a step on the road to genuine, with economic crisis. housing and education. Brilliant! there were PayPal donations from proletarian socialism, but will instead The working class movement as n Socialism represents victory Several comrades made a bank MT, DI, YM and MD. So we start act to preserve capitalism. it exists today cannot adequately in the battle for democracy. It is transfer and these, added to the the month with £190 after just one The climate crisis has already respond to this crisis and this poses the rule of the working class. usual standing orders, amounted to day! thrown up a range of protest ever more urgently the question not Socialism is either democratic or, no less than £845. Let me mention But I do have to apologise movements and political positions, of even louder and larger protests, as with Stalin’s Soviet Union, it in particular the following: MM to any comrades who sent us a some of whose demands and demanding that capitalist states turns into its opposite. (£75), PB (£60), GB and JT (£50 cheque - our office has only just organisations are already being take action, but of a programme and n Socialism is the first stage each) and TR (£40). Added to reopened, which has meant a incorporated and managed by a party that is organised globally of the worldwide transition to which we received another £180 delay in processing our mail. But bourgeois politics and the capitalist to repair the damage wrought by communism - a system which via PayPal - thanks in particular don’t worry - I’ll let you know state. The response of the left and the industrial capitalism and begin the knows neither wars, exploitation, go to comrades LC, DB and IW, next week, when I hope to report working class movement must be to transition to communism l money, classes, states nor nations. who each transferred £50! on more good progress towards reject the green capitalism upheld by Communism is general freedom Talking of IW, he writes: “I that £2K target for September l some sections of the climate-change Notes and the real beginning of human 1. Livestreams of the whole school can be just wanted to give you something Robbie Rix protest movement. The CPGB agrees found on the CU Facebook page: www. history. back. Don’t spend it all at once!” that ‘the only solution is revolution’, facebook.com/cpgbcommunistuniversity. The Weekly Worker is licensed by We won’t, comrade, I promise! Fill in a standing order form but no revolution - that is, no Also, we are gradually uploading November Publications under a Creative Anyway, as I say, the extra £1,025 socialist revolution - is on the cards the CU videos to the CU website: Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (back page), donate via our communistuniversity.uk/category/ 4.0 International Licence: that came our way since August website, or send cheques, anywhere in the world at the moment. cu-2021-summer, and the CPGB creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ 12 helped us exceed the target by payable to Weekly Worker That makes necessary a minimum YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/c/ legalcode. ISSN 1351-0150. programme (actually the maximum CommunistPartyofGreatBritain/videos. No 1361 September 2 2021 Two rival strategic lines up for debate Continue the fight As Keir Starmer’s regime prepares a hostile environment for socialists at Labour’s annual conference, Labour Against the Witchhunt resolves to step up its campaign. Stan Keable of Labour Party Marxists reports on the August 28 online membership meeting he July 20 decision of Labour’s national executive committee Tto revive the anti-communist proscribed list has had a two-sided effect. No doubt the continuing flow of disillusioned Corbynites out of the party has increased, but so has the membership of Labour Against the Witchhunt - especially after the expulsion of the world- famous film-maker, Ken Loach, for refusing to renounce his sponsorship of LAW. Widespread bureaucratic interference in pre- conference Constituency Labour Party meetings, too, has brought wider sections of the party into the struggle, some having only recently come to understand the ‘Anti- Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ big lie that is being used to beat the left. Already, as the NEC made its inglorious decision, a new coalition of left groups, ‘Defend the Left - no bans and proscriptions’, was outside Labour HQ holding its first protest. DTL includes, and stands in solidarity with, the newly proscribed organisations, LAW, Labour in Exile Network (LIEN) and Socialist Appeal, together with a growing list of groups eminently eligible to be added to the list. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the most trustworthy of them all? Notable by their absence from DTL, however, are the Campaign for as Unite general secretary - with the left to “stay and fight for party Labour Party is over, and it is time battle for the Labour Party with Labour Party Democracy (whose the deluded backing of the Socialist democracy and the refoundation of to prepare for an unprincipled the permission of the right, by solidarity did not even extend to its Workers Party - and the Labour left Labour as a united front … open left split - unprincipled, because constitutional means. That would own leading figure, Pete Willsman) cannot expect McCluskey-style to all socialist and working class the declared purpose is to “keep be Corbyn-like (ie, fighting with and Momentum (Jeremy Corbyn resistance from any of the big trade organisations”. activists in the Corbyn project both arms tied behind our backs), and John McDonnell’s baby, which unions to stay Starmer’s hand, This positive strategy, which together, with a view to forming a obeying the right’s bureaucratic has been totally complicit in the as he adds to the proscribed list was endorsed by the majority, distinct socialist party in the near restrictions. big lie). and turns the witch-hunt against of continuing, extending and future”. His defeated motion urged To cap it all, the final point of Opening the August 28 smaller left-led unions, such as the deepening the campaign against comrades to “face the fact that ‘Where do we go from here?’ was members-only meeting of LAW, bakers’ union, BFAWU, and the the witch-hunt, and maintaining we have not only lost the battle, simply childish: “We believe that chairperson Jackie Walker pointed Fire Brigades Union. LAW’s orientation towards the but the war”, because “something the time has come when socialists out that the “ludicrous nature of the In the face of the coming Labour Party - the key battleground, like 120,000 members have left in trade unions should argue for purge is now being seen by many storm, the strategy document so important to the establishment the Labour Party voluntarily” and disaffiliation from a party that more”, and comrades are signing sets out LAW’s resolve to “step - was, however, opposed by “another 100,000-plus will leave in is now part of the neoliberal up to LAW in solidarity. And we up our campaign” with a nine- Tony Greenstein. Having found the next few months”. So, instead consensus.” have not yet seen “peak-purge”, point plan, including working himself in a minority of one on the of leadership, we have tailism: Jackie Walker, among others, she warned. Indeed, the strategy in the trade unions by “making steering committee, his alternative follow the disillusioned away from cautioned that it is “the wrong document adopted by the meeting links with principled leaders and strategy motion, under the title the struggle. time” to declare the struggle over, noted that Starmer left caucuses”, and linking up ‘Where do we go from here?’, The defeated motion added: when the fight against the witch- internationally with those “fighting gained a significant minority vote “There is little if anything we can hunt is gaining “more traction sees the continued purge as an back against the witch-hunt” in, at the meeting, and undoubtedly do, since the national constitutional than ever”, and just as we prepare essential part of his electoral for example, “the US, Germany, represents a widespread view committee has been sidelined and to muster opposition at Labour’s strategy. The targets chosen so the Netherlands and France” and amongst the sects of one and not a there is no longer any possibility annual conference. far - LAW, LIEN, Resist and “holding an online international few disillusioned Corbynites. that someone facing expulsion How right she was - and Socialist Appeal - have been rally” against that witch-hunt. With As far as comrade Tony is can challenge their accusers”. thankfully the majority saw it that ritual sacrifices chosen because this positive strategy, LAW urges concerned, the struggle in the As if the left could ever win the way too l of their relative weakness, not their strength. Subscribe Name:______Standing order 6m 1yr Inst. 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