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Lars T Lih: 150 years after his birth, how to evaluate Lenin and his ideas weekly 2 May 7 2020 1298 worker LETTERS

Letters may have been image - though it was sometimes used incidents should themselves be war around the globe. “So,” Lazare struggles. The strike waves of the shortened because of by his critics. What Cliff did argue suspended from membership.” The concludes of Biden, “while he’d be 1930s, for example, forced the space. Some names was that a central task of the party was lack of “anti-Semitic incidents” is not better in Wisconsin, he’d be worse judiciary to establish the precedent  may have been changed to learn from the class. As he wrote in their concern, but anyone talking to when it comes to the rest of the world, that “freedom of contract” is not Portugal at the crossroads, “In short these criminals should be shot - sorry, where US power predominates.” inviolable and that the government they [the party] have to learn from I mean expelled. We do not doubt Biden’s record and courts can intervene to protect Compliment their fellow workers as much as - or We know that accepting the of racism and capitalist austerity workers’ union rights and enforce No sport, nothing on television; what more than - they have to teach ... The commandments was a stupid, anti- policies, nor his bloody imperialist the minimum wage, workplace safety else to do on a Sunday afternoon in job of party leadership is to generalise democratic act: even a bridge warmongering, though we take issue and environmental protections. The self-isolation but write a letter to the the experience of the party militants club wouldn’t accept this level with Lazare’s illusions that Trump current Republican Supreme Court Weekly Worker? and to lead them as they lead their of interference in its disciplinary is to be preferred from a global justices are determined to overturn In his supercilious review of the fellow workers … [The party] has procedures. But Sir Keir has done it perspective. But, first, questions of those precedents, and socialists left press’s response to the Lenin to be the most apt learner, the most and so, presumably, because he was method. should be in the forefront of struggles anniversary - in which he argues sensitive ear and the firmest will.” elected leader we all have to accept it. What Lazare mistakes for an to defend them. By defending everyone’s out of step but us - Mike And it is this central element of You can only talk to people approved “unduly national perspective” is democratic rights, we can help the Macnair dismisses Tony Cliff’s four- Leninism that is studiously neglected by the BoD. We can only wonder at actually the Marxist approach of working class learn to use them to volume Lenin: building the party with by the Weekly Worker and its erudite the lack of this power given to Jeremy deciding which position to take in organise and win struggles. Otherwise a joke from John Sullivan - Cliff’s mentor, Lars T Lih. The Weekly Worker Corbyn on his election. an election, based on what will best the working class will never achieve work was “like a biography of John spends its time lecturing the rest of the All of this nonsense is done, of advance the potential for working the revolutionary overthrow of the the Baptist, written by Jesus Christ” left on its failings - it never imagines course, without any input (sorry, class organisation and struggle. We capitalist state. (‘Lenin avatars’, April 30). True, it has anything to learn. And when I interference) from the membership. and Lazare agree that the Republicans It’s a sad state of affairs when there are no jokes like the old jokes, asked Lih at a Historical Materialism Just like the International Holocaust threaten a sweeping overturn someone like Lazare, who has and Sullivan was often funny and conference about learning from the Remembrance Alliance lack of of democratic rights in the US, established a reputation as a Marxist occasionally perceptive, but I assume class he failed to reply. definition, the expulsion and/or including further attacks on voting scholar of the US constitution, fails Macnair uses this approach because he Who invented soviets? Russian suspension of (for instance) Tony rights and the right to join a union, to see why socialists take sides hasn’t actually bothered to read Cliff’s workers, who had probably never Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Marc so the question should be simple to concerning legal precedents that book. heard of Lenin, let alone read Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone, Chris answer: it will be far more difficult entrench democratic rights. But such A pity. Cliff is certainly open to Kautsky. Lenin - albeit a bit belatedly Williamson - just to mention some for the working class to organise and are the consequences of abandoning criticism on a number of points, but - understood their importance and of the higher-profile victims - all of struggle if its most basic rights to do a perspective based on working class there are many valuable insights in his incorporated them into his strategy. this stuff has been done behind the so are eviscerated by Trump and the struggle. Lazare further demonstrates work. For example, of the many who After all, unless the role of the backs of the members, though not of Republicans’ authoritarianism. those consequences in his views on have written on Lenin, Cliff was one of party is to learn and generalise from the press, and Sir Keir is, it seems, Lazare expresses with remarkable imperialism and global struggles. the few who actually had experience the activity of workers, what becomes determined to keep it that way. clarity his abandonment of a Lazare should recognise that of working in illegal conditions (in of “the emancipation of the working If Sir Keir dares to give them the perspective based on working class American militarists would have a Palestine). classes must be conquered by the heads of these two black, female party and oppressed peoples’ struggles, far freer hand to wage imperialist Macnair commends Nick Chaffey working classes themselves”? - and members, then there will be even when he responds to our warning that wars around the world if the masses of the Socialist Party for understanding that really is the “soul of Marxism”. more outrage than there is already in their authoritarian drive the current at home were deprived of the right that “programme is fundamentally Macnair sneers that Cliff - and there is already quite a lot. I Republicans aim to overturn long- to protest and to vote them out of important”, which makes him believed, “if it moves, salute it”. think that most members, trade union held legal precedents: “Since when office. Instead, he relieves himself of “massively more advanced” than The International Marxist Group in affiliates and so on, if told that they do socialists line up behind judicial the burden of facing that reality by those influenced by Cliff. Now Cliff the 1980s had a neater formulation - could not talk to Tony Greenstein or precedent?” he asks. The answer, of nurturing illusions that Trump is some is often accused of being obsessed they accused the SWP of saying, “If Jackie Walker (or anyone else for that course, is that we do so whenever they kind of dove. with numbers, but from his own bitter it moves recruit it. If it doesn’t move, matter), would say, ‘Fuck off!’ and I establish democratic rights that need Biden, Lazare reminds us, is “an experience in the 1930s and 1940s he stick a poster on it.” I always took it as note at the time of writing (May 3) to be defended against reactionary arch-imperialist who’s been neck- understood one simple fact - the best a compliment. that quite a lot online already have. attempts to overturn them. deep in every major US crime of the programme in the world is useless if Ian Birchall In the face of great difficulty, party We understand that the Supreme last 30 years, from the invasion of Iraq there is nobody to fight for it and put London members are going to have to find Court - with justices appointed to and Afghanistan to the destruction it into practice. Of course, Cliff was ways to express this outrage within unlimited terms and confirmed by of Libya, Syria and Yemen, covert interested in real numbers of recruits, Patriotism the party - maybe some demands to a grossly undemocratic Senate - is assistance to al Qa’eda, and support unlike the present-day Socialist Most comrades will be aware of the suspend Sir Keir? not a neutral umpire over class and for the neo-Nazi-spearheaded coup Workers Party, which thinks claims of bad news that came in last week In compensation for the loss democratic issues. Nevertheless, it is in the Ukraine. If his first major numbers are enough to fight its battles. that the Jewish News and the Jewish of socialism in the party Sir Keir worth noting that many established campaign ad was an attack on Trump But an organisation which in 30 years Chronicle have both been saved from wants to give us patriotism! “Labour legal precedents were won by mass for not being tougher on the Chinese, has not managed to recruit more than terminal collapse: not surprising, should be patriotic and proud of it, 30 members might feel some self- given their role in helping to rid the says Starmer,” reads The Guardian criticism is in order. Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn. They headline on May 1. How better to But the real thrust of Sullivan’s will expect, and be expected, to carry celebrate Labour Day? He’s a bit Fighting fund criticism is that Cliff was always on this sterling work in ridding the worried about people in Bury voting interested in studying the past, not as party of all socialists - or ‘Trots’, as Conservative because Labour isn’t an academic pursuit, but because it they’re sometimes called. patriotic enough. It’s reminiscent of an helps to illuminate the present. Now Jewish Voice for Labour carried article in The Guardian just after the there are huge dangers in this - we a story, ‘Trouble at t’mill’, dated election trying to explain why Labour In the kitty can’t learn from the past unless we get Wednesday April 29, about a row lost. They came across a 92-year- it right and are honest about it. And between a Tory MP, Richard Halfon, old who’d been in the Durham Light s I reported last week, we of different ways - even going out to maybe Cliff sometimes oversimplified and the Board of Deputies of British Infantry or some such and the answer Acomfortably made our April buy a stamp or post a letter! the past to draw lessons for the Jews. The story draws from items in was clear. fighting fund target of £2,000 But it’s incredible how loyal present. But his basic purpose was the above named titles and apparently Pat McFadden MP had a similar with a day to spare. But that still and patient our readers have been. surely correct - that is what socialist Halfon has claimed that the BoD has line in The Observer of December left the last day of the month and Even though this is the seventh history is all about. become a “political broadcasting 29 last year: “Fundamentally it [the on April 30 three more donations issue of the Weekly Worker that And Macnair, who also uses history service” for Labour. Labour Party] should believe that came our way. is online-only, only one person for his own purposes, is not innocent. JVL seemed to think that this is British power and influence - both Two were end-of-the-month has been forced to cancel their Thus he praises Comintern’s “tactics some sort of joke, but I reckon it’s hard and soft - is a force for good in standing orders from VP and RL subscription! Mind you, as of intervening in the USPD’s debates” actually a lot more sinister. The BoD the world.” I’m sure his words would (both for £10), but the third was a we’ve previously made clear, with the Zinoviev speech which led got the Labour leadership contenders be echoed from India to Jamaica, rather handy PayPal contribution once we resume printing, all to the Independent Social Democratic down on bended knee on their ‘10 from Iraq to Afghanistan and Ireland. from one of those keen supporters subscriptions will be extended by Party of Germany (USPD) voting for commandments’ and they all claimed Sir Keir no doubt sees ‘patriotism’ of the Weekly Worker, comrade the appropriate length of time. affiliation at Halle. But the debate had to be Zionists - just like Richard as the way forward for his career: TB - for £50! So that extra £70 But it’s slightly different if, no influence on the outcome - most Spencer, Steve Bannon and Tommy perhaps at some stage he may write a took our final total for April up to instead of paying in advance for delegates were mandated in advance, Robinson, to name but a few. preface of a future edition of Johnson’s £2,170. six months or a year, you make so Zinoviev’s rhetoric did not affect Keir Starmer has made some Churchill biography, saying how And our May fighting fund regular uninterrupted payments - the vote. The actual process whereby promises and now I think the other good it is. And for the Labour Party? has started reasonably well too - either by standing order or PayPal. the majority was won was more Zionists want some results, and Perhaps we need to add the Chelsea mainly thanks to all those start-of- In those cases it’ll be up to the complex and would repay study. they’re getting very cheeky. He’s Pensioners to the BoD in overseeing the-month standing orders. There readers themselves to say what This may be the result of ignorance. talked the talk - now let us see him not just discipline, but policy too. were 15 of them, of which I’ll they want to happen. But, from the But there is worse. He tells us that walk the walk. And the way for him to Jim Cook mention the most generous. Thank reaction we’ve had so far I think in Respect “the SWP … preferred do that is to get rid of, preferably, all Reading you, comrades AC (£50), CG we could get more comments when canvassing to pretend to be of the socialists in the Labour Party. (£30), NR (£18), MD (£16) and along the lines of comrade HJ’s left Labourites”. Now I was heavily For a kick-off the call has gone out Dump Trump MT (£15). In addition, there were instruction this week - “Take it as involved in campaigning for Respect (from the above named titles) to get In his reply to us on the coming two PayPal contributions - another a donation!” and I never heard any suggestion of rid of Corbyn’s ex-shadow ministers, US election, Daniel Lazare argues £50, this time from comrade MF, That’s another fiver towards such pretence. Unless Macnair can Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy, that we show an “unduly national plus a fiver from BO. May’s fighting fund then, meaning document this claim he would seem to for the crime of talking to, among perspective” when we conclude that However, despite my promise last that we start the month with £276 be guilty of fabrication. others, Tony Greenstein and Jackie Biden’s Democratic Party represents week to include anything received in the kitty. l Most important of all, Macnair Walker. a lesser evil (Letters, April 30). He by post in this week’s column, Robbie Rix trivialises the central theme in Cliff’s They quote the 10 commandments: agrees that Trump and the Republicans unfortunately we weren’t so lucky work. He tells us Cliff “saw Lenin as a “Any MPs, peers, councillors, threaten to impose a dictatorship if when it came to cheques and postal Fill in a standing order form man with a ‘nose’ for ‘turns’”, leading members or CLPs who support, they win again, but argues that their orders - none at all, I’m afraid. But (back page), donate via our to the “SWP’s actual practice of tailing campaign or provide a platform for extraordinary threat to democratic that’s hardly surprising, is it? The website, or send cheques, whatever moves”. As far as I can people who have been suspended or rights is more than matched by lockdown affects people in all sorts payable to Weekly Worker establish, Cliff never used the “nose” expelled in the wake of anti-Semitic Biden’s record of waging imperialist BCM Box 928, London WC1N 3XX l 07903 054393 l www.weeklyworker.co.uk l [email protected] weekly worker 1298 May 7 2020 3

it’s because American aggression Lazare agrees that electing Biden on their understanding of Marxist is in his bones,” whereas Trump over Trump would “buy time for theory and practice. Thankfully this Year zero What pandemic? “won in 2016 because he opposed working class and oppressed people is changing. For example, writers and I have to query the continued Piers Corbyn, the brother of the former US misadventures in Syria and the to use their rights to vote and to researchers for this newspaper have indulgence of Rex Dunn. Labour leader, has been taking part in Ukraine.” organise in unions”, but he assumes made a sharp distinction between the The latest article on Trotsky’s anti-lockdown protests. His view is Trump’s bluster against US wars that calling for a vote for Biden and “bureaucratic centralism” of most Transitional programme is another that there is no pandemic, and he has abroad was hardly a significant factor the Democrats “will bind [the masses] groups that remain loyal to the Third appalling effort, although I am grateful led demos in Glastonbury, Somerset. in his stealing the 2016 election. Nor all the more securely to one such party and Fourth Internationals and the for the comrade’s unerring ability to Jeremy Corbyn’s brother has argued was it truthful about his own past and hence to the ‘Repocratic’ duopoly “democratic centralism” of the Second cut through any insomnia problems that there are more sinister forces at play attitudes or indicative of his policies as a whole”. On the contrary, nothing International, Lenin and Trotsky. The his readers may be experiencing. behind the present crisis. In a previous since taking office. He famously will bind the masses more tightly to substitution of the one for the other is It is not only the patronising and demo he referred to the microchip claimed to have been an early the Democratic Party than Trump a direct result of the Stalinist doctrine boring mode of presentation (where agenda, which aims at bringing people opponent of Bush Jr’s Iraq war in and the Republicans establishing that Bolshevism consisted of a party the reader is constantly prodded into under the total control of the elite. I am 2003, but this is no truer than most authoritarian rule and denying of a new type. shrugging their shoulders and saying, also far from convinced that the present of his self-serving boasts; in fact he working class and oppressed people Secondly, does it mean that a new ‘So what?’). Or the feeling that I’m crisis is only about the pandemic. supported the US invasion and hailed their right to vote and to organise International will be built on the reading a comedian who can’t deliver Some time ago I wrote a letter to the its military success at the time. As to struggle. basis of Trotsky’s programme? Yes a punchline. The real problem is that Weekly Worker which made reference Afghanistan, there are now slightly That is why it’s important to reject and no. If there are elements within the Weekly Worker has featured many to the transhumanist, microchip agenda, more US troops there than when nonsense ideas of a duopoly that the programme that are still relevant articles down the years criticising which is about fusing humans with Trump took office, and the Pentagon ignore the fundamental difference that to today’s conditions, they can be and contextualising the transitional technology under the control of those plans to deploy more this summer. has opened between the two major preserved in any new document. method in great detail (Dunn should who rule us. Most of the left seem Overall, Trump has increased US ruling class parties. The Republicans Calling for the establishment of probably look up the word ‘archive’ to be unaware of this secret agenda. troop numbers in the Middle East are now a party of white nationalist workplace committees and other forms when the terrible urge to write takes The human microchip - the first stage and has dramatically escalated its authoritarianism, determined to of workers’ control such as soviets hold). An article that then merely of transhumanism, symbolised by use of drone missile attacks, leading eviscerate voting rights, union rights might be examples of this. Overall, takes us back to a kind of dogmatic ‘the Borg’ in fiction - is obviously to skyrocketing numbers of civilian and more. The Democrats are no less however, I am inclined to think that Trotskyist year zero, where all the aimed at preventing the socialist deaths. a party of imperialism, but they can the best way to preserve the rational intellectual labour of the past 20 transformation of society: that is, real Now that he is in charge of the Iraq hope to hold political power only if elements within the programme years has been erased, or probably socialism. Transhumanism is therefore war, he continues the US’s crimes. people of colour have the right to vote would be to supersede it. This means unnoticed, is bound, comrade editors, the lockdown which we should be The bloody slaughter of civilians in and have their votes counted; and they the creation of a new programme that to provoke a certain amount of worried about. With everyone under the recapture of Mosul from Islamic do not generally want to wipe out the addresses the problems of socialist indifference or even resistance on the technological control, it would mean State continued under Trump’s watch. unions they rely on for their electoral revolution today, including the role of part of readers. game, set and match to the ruling class: Most recently, after he engineered efforts. Socialists should encourage the culture industry and social media. When I first came across the CPGB that is, fascist totalitarianism brought to the assassination of Iranian general the working class to take advantage It entails making as sharp and clear in the mid-1990s, it was engaged in a perfection. Soleimani in Baghdad in January, the of the opportunity to choose its a distinction between socialism and rapprochement process with a group One writer who has done a lot Iraqi Council of Representatives voted opponent for the next four years, communism, and social democracy of far-left fragments. The Weekly to expose the elite’s microchip and that all foreign forces should leave the and to use their surviving democratic and Stalinism, as possible. It means Worker archive from that period transhumanist agenda, is David Icke. country. Trump, offended, responded rights to organise and challenge the demonstrating the non-utopian nature is instructive, as it had muscular However, while Icke does a good job by threatening to impose sanctions capitalist class and all its political of the socialist and communist project. editorial debates, reminding comrades in exposing the inner elite’s agenda, against Iraq and by deploying 3,500 representatives. For example, ‘going back’ to the from other groups that the paper was he doesn’t do so from a leftwing point more troops to the region. Walter Daum transitional programme will involve not a bulletin board for any ephemeral of view; rather he does so from what Elsewhere in the Middle East, the Matt Roberts a critical evaluation of the notion musings that these groups put forward I would describe as a liberal, semi- people of Iran, Yemen and Palestine New York of transitional demands. What did at times. There was even a denial to conservative standpoint. This is why, would hardly welcome a continuation Trotsky mean by stating they act some of an automatic right to reply if up to now, he has failed to openly of Trump’s policies. Trump tore up New International as a bridge between the minimum debates got tedious and circular. The challenge the private ownership of the Obama’s treaty with Iran (imperialist In his article, ‘Only choice we have’, and maximum programmes? Is point being that contributions were means of production by the very elite though its conditions were), intensified Rex Dunn is surely right to suggest there any relationship between the judged on their contribution to the he is exposing and condemning. Icke sanctions against the country and that Marxists can learn much from accommodation of many Marxist reforging of the CPGB. The editorial calls for revolution and the downfall openly threatens war. As if asserting studying Trotsky’s Transitional groups to left social democracy parameters of this were very broad of the ruling class, but doesn’t seem US imperialist hegemony, he has programme of 1938 (April 30). and transitional demands? Or is the and inclusive, and it didn’t always to understand that the downfall of also pressured the European Union to Rex argues that Trotsky’s chief root of their support for reformism go perfectly. I remember one printed capitalism logically leads to social restore sanctions against Iran. Trump insight was that, without a socialist in Trotsky’s notion of a degenerate contribution on the ‘ontology of Paul ownership of the means of production, and his adjunct, Kushner, warmly revolution, a catastrophe threatens workers’ state? For example, it is Weller’ by the long-extinct Trotskyist on which communist society, befriended the Saudi ruler, MBS - the whole culture of humanity. arguable that Trotskyists’ defence Unity Group that was actually quite humanity’s natural state, is based. butcher of his domestic opponents, This now appears more relevant to of the USSR’s nationalised property distressing. Piers Corbyn appears to be familiar as well as the Yemeni people. And today’s circumstances than ever. relations explains their adaptation to It does strike me that some of with David Icke’s writings. The latter is Trump has openly sided with Israel’s Rex mentions ecocide, the inability Stalinism. this interventionist culture has certainly right to expose the microchip apartheid rule and ethnic cleansing to eradicate disease, inequality and Finally, how inclusive should a disappeared and we have instead at and transhumanist agenda of those in of the Palestinians, breaking with the social disintegration as aspects of new Marxist International be? Should least some of the facets of a passive the shadows. Hopefully, Piers Corbyn bipartisan hypocrisy of a separate, global catastrophe. This threatens it be like the First International and bulletin board that people such as Rex will not make the same mistake nominally sovereign Palestinian state. the continued survival of civilisation include class-struggle anarchists or Dunn pin posters on. The comrade as Icke, who embodies the strange A word or two on Ukraine. worldwide. He could also have Marxist/anarchist hybrids, such as editors may, of course, have reams of contradiction of exposing, condemning Here Trump looks like a moderate mentioned continued wars, deepening people who identify with the Italian correspondence to hand from Dunn’s and calling for the downfall of the when it comes to the west-versus- depression, unemployment and the autonomist school of Marxism? many fans out there. But I somehow ruling class by revolution, while at the Russia rivalry over the imperialist threat of nuclear extinction. Or should it include only those doubt it. same time demonising communism. exploitation of that country. That’s Comrade Dunn thinks a global socialist and communist groups Lawrence Parker Tony Clark because of his devotion to, and often socialist revolution based on the that embrace the electoral sphere as London Labour supporter slavish apologetics for, Putin. Lazare overthrow of the capitalist class and the part of the class struggle? Should it cites the Democrats’ support for “the establishment of democratic planning include individuals and groups that imperialist war effort in Ukraine’s worldwide is the only effective means characterise regimes such as the eastern provinces”, as if Trump had of preventing this catastrophe. This former Soviet Union as in some sense Online Communist Forum withdrawn military aid to Kiev, and means that socialists need to focus ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’? Certainly as if Nato had invaded and seized their attention on building a new I could never be in the same political those provinces, not Russia. He refers Marxist International that can support organisation as George Galloway and casually to “the neo-Nazi-spearheaded and coordinate the development of his allies from the Stalin Society, such coup in the Ukraine”, overlooking class consciousness and the spread of as Joti Brar. that the Maidan movement in 2014 revolutionary activity wherever and Comrade Dunn suggests that a rested on a mass, anti-oligarchical whenever the working class engages new Marxist International should mobilisation despite the influential in collective action. If Rex’s response win over the most advanced workers rightwing elements in it, and that there to catastrophe is correct, certain to the idea of socialist revolution. He were far-right (Russian) nationalist questions come to mind. gives the example of workers in the elements on the other side as well. Firstly, does this mean that a new ‘big tech’ companies. These workers And in the war in eastern Ukraine, Marxist International is likely to be are not only potentially powerful there are fascistic forces like the Azov built in the present period? Not if because they are productive of value, Brigade on the government side. socialist and communist groups and but because they have the knowledge But there are also Nazis on the pro- individuals do not attempt to develop and skills to disable the repressive Moscow side, and the bulk of Nazis a political economy that explains the apparatus of the state. Trotsky’s call across Europe are enthusiasts for that contemporary epoch of decline and to arm workers and create militias is Sunday May 10, 5pm side as well as for Putin. transition. now limited by the development of As to China, as Lazare points out, This epoch is highly contradictory. powerful productive forces. Military A week in politics Biden is attacking Trump “for not It requires organised and disciplined technology is now so advanced that Political report and discussion being tougher on the Chinese”. But study within and outwith institutions armed workers and militias can be Sunday May 17, 5pm Trump is doing the same; he wants of higher education and activist rendered helpless and eliminated from to make China the scapegoat for his groups. Moreover, a rigid the air. Constant aerial bombardment Life after the Covid-19 pandemic disastrous handling of the pandemic preoccupation with targeting and of civilian targets destroys any and Speaker: Mike Macnair and is attempting to rally support for a blaming past revolutionary leaders, every move towards transforming the from the CPGB’s Provisional Central Committee conflict by promoting the conspiracy such as Trotsky, for workers’ class struggle into a civil war. theory that the Covid-19 virus was defeats is likely to continue to be an A goal of a new Marxist If you wish to take part in these Zoom meetings, email produced by a Chinese laboratory. effective barrier to the re-emergence International may therefore be to end Stan Keable at [email protected]. In short, Trump is as much of a socialist and communist all forms of civil war - including the Organised by CPGB: www.cpgb.org.uk and an imperialist as any Democrat; consciousness. Many socialists and class war. Labour Party Marxists: www.labourpartymarxists.org.uk. socialists have no business preferring communists still seem to be unaware Paul B Smith him on that score. of the impact that Stalinism has had Ormskirk weekly 4 May 7 2020 1298 worker LABOUR

They are spying on us Stand up to witch-hunters Those who fail to show solidarity should not be given solidarity, writes David Shearer of Labour Party Marxists hile Jeremy Corbyn was still In case you have forgotten, both these members were present. Starmer, he media. So shortening the word in this nothing. After all, if you say that such Labour leader, there was much comrades were originally suspended said, had instead “demonstrated a way completely changes its meaning, disciplinary action is misplaced then Wspeculation on the left that, over allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ disappointing level of moral and political does it? Perhaps any such usage (like you yourself might be targeted next. once the right had managed to remove (despite the fact that both are Jewish!), cowardice” in not removing the whip ‘bio’ or ‘eco’) is unacceptable. Better to go along with the action taken him and recapture the party, we would but were eventually booted out over from them. For his part, Gideon Falter Secondly, comrade Greenstein was and pretend it was all justified. That was see an abrupt end to the weaponisation totally different charges - I will return to of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism also accused of describing the rightwing what they effectively did once again last of anti-Semitism. That was, of course, a that below. said the Labour leader had shown that Labour MP, Louise Ellman, as an week. campaign that saw the Labour left, and The next day, following well crafted “his apologies are meaningless” because “apologist for Israel’s occupation forces” That is why we totally disagree with Corbyn supporters in particular, absurdly denunciations from several Zionist of his failure to take stronger action: and a “supporter of Israeli child abuse” the headline above the statement issued targeted as ‘anti-Semites’ and the groups, the story went live. The BBC “After half a decade of the Labour anti- (the latter because she had praised the by Labour Against the Witchhunt, which party itself accused of having become version (April 30) was headlined: ‘Sir Semitism crisis,” said Falter, “no MP actions of Israeli soldiers, even though reads: “Solidarity with Diane Abbott and ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’. Keir Starmer is facing calls from Jewish should need ‘reminding’ not to engage amongst those they had violently arrested Bell Ribeiro-Addy” (although at least it Well, I think the events of last week groups to take further action over two with those expelled from the party over were children). Ellman, of course, adds: “and all those unjustly expelled!”). might have knocked that one on the head. MPs who addressed a meeting that anti-Semitism.” later resigned when faced with a no LAW failed to criticise ‘comrades’ For those who have missed this story - included two expelled activists’. Of A Labour spokeswoman said confidence motion in her Constituency Abbott and Ribeiro-Addy,’ despite their relegated, of course, to the inside pages, course, terms like ‘Jewish groups’ are Abbott and Ribeiro-Addy had been Labour Party. disgraceful statement issued two days thanks to the coronavirus pandemic - the used to imply that they speak on behalf of “reminded of their responsibilities” and But comrade Greenstein was expelled earlier. latest ‘scandal’ occurred as a result of the the ‘Jewish community’. In reality there had been spoken to “in the strongest in February 2018 - basically for ‘being Solidarity means - if it means anything April 29 online meeting of a new Labour is a strong anti-Zionist current among possible terms”. After all, “The previous rude’. - unity, agreement, common action and left grouping called ‘Don’t Leave, Jewish people. For example, one of the comments made by some of the What were comrade Walker’s mutual support. Calling for solidarity Organise’, which was set up following founding organisations of Don’t Leave, individuals” attending the meeting had ‘crimes’? In 2016 she was suspended with scabs, turncoats and traitors is, to say the election of Keir Starmer as the party’s Organise is the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice been “completely unacceptable”. after a private email she had sent was the least, to foster illusions, to throw dust new (rightwing) leader. for Labour (the others being the Labour “uncovered” by the Israel Advocacy into the eyes of Labour members. We Attended by over 500 people, the Representation Committee and Red Response Movement (the name says it all). In should defend Abbott and Ribeiro-Addy meeting was addressed by, amongst Labour, Red Britain). So how did the two respond? this she pointed out that Holocaust from any attempt to discipline, suspend others, two Labour left MPs, Diane So what did the Zionists allege? Disgracefully, they issued a grovelling Remembrance Day focussed almost or expel them. But their surrender, their Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy. As Well, the Board of Deputies of British statement which said: “The MPs were exclusively on Jewish victims of cowardice, is inexcusable. And that you might expect, their contributions Jews claimed that the MPs had ‘shared not aware that any suspended or expelled genocide. But what about the thousands needs saying. focused on the recent leaked report, a platform’ with the two expellees. former members of the Labour Party of Africans who had been enslaved and While we are on the subject of which revealed how the rightwing According to BoD president Marie van might contribute as audience members. died on the other side of the Atlantic? solidarity, it is worth a brief comment Labour bureaucracy under former der Zyl, “It is completely unacceptable They did not and would not share a She had (rather clumsily) pointed to the on the May 2 ‘Statement on Salma general secretary Iain McNicol had not that Labour MPs, and even ordinary platform with them.” fact that in the slave trade some Jews, Yaqoob’ issued by the Stop the War only deliberately worked to reduce the members, should be sharing platforms This is appalling on so many levels. far from being the victims, were in fact Coalition. Yaqoob is another Labour possibility of a Labour general election with those that have been expelled from First, would you not expect that out of among the slave-owners. She wrote in member facing an investigation victory, but had sat on allegations of anti- the party for anti-Semitism.” the 500-plus there would be all sorts of the email: “... many Jews (my ancestors following a complaint by the Campaign Semitism in order to undermine Corbyn. Of course, the term, ‘share a different people, some of whom might too) were the chief financiers of the sugar Against Anti-Semitism. That despite The big problem with this line platform’, usually refers only to an express views you totally disagreed and slave trade”. She later said that what her long record of fighting racism and involves the second allegation, which event’s official speakers, not to people with? Secondly, what is wrong with she had meant was: “Jews (my ancestors other forms of prejudice. The STWC actually takes it as a given that there in the audience. But that does not bother debating with such people - even if too) were among those who financed the states: “The Campaign Against Anti- is indeed a serious problem with anti- van der Zyl, of course (nor the fact they had been expelled from Labour for sugar and slave trade.” Semitism demanded the exclusion Jewish prejudice within the party. In that comrades Walker and Greenstein legitimate reasons? Which brings me to Eventually comrade Walker was from Labour of two black women MPs, this way the soft Labour left, including were not “expelled from the party for my third, and most important, point: by reinstated, but was suspended again a few Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy, our two MPs, has attempted to turn the anti-Semitism”). She demanded that taking this disgraceful stance Abbott and months later for comments she made at an on the flimsy pretext that they addressed tables. There is not only anti-Semitic Keir Starmer take “swift and decisive Ribeiro-Addy were placing themselves “anti-Semitism training event” organised an online meeting which included racism: there is ‘institutional racism’ in action” against Abbott and Ribeiro- firmly in the camp of the witch-hunters by the Jewish Labour Movement at the expelled Labour Party members in the general (both MPs are black, of course). Addy in order to demonstrate that “this and thus aiding the right, not to mention 2016 Labour conference. Not only did audience, not on the platform” (original Much discussion ensued about black is a new era, rather than a false dawn” the anti-Labour establishment. she say, “I still haven’t heard a definition emphasis). self-organisation. following his pledge after the leadership In fact neither Tony Greenstein of anti-Semitism that I can work with.” But then it added: “Local STWC But they obviously had not reckoned election to “tear out this poison by its nor Jackie Walker had done or said But she also queried the need for special groups act autonomously in deciding on the presence of spies. A well roots”, as Labour had “failed the Jewish anything remotely anti-Semitic and the security at Jewish schools. Presumably their platforms, but we note that Tony orchestrated scandal followed. Its focus community on anti-Semitism”. disciplinary action taken against them such remarks constitute “prejudicial and Greenstein has never been asked to was not on what they (or anyone else) Then there was Euan Philipps of was completely unjustified. The initial grossly detrimental behaviour against the address a national STWC meeting. said at the meeting, but on the fact that Labour Against Anti-Semitism, who said moves against comrade Greenstein party” - the ‘offence’ for which she was STWC rejects both anti-Semitism and among the dozen or so people called that Starmer should have given a “strong had seemed to centre - at least in terms finally expelled in March 2019. abusive language in political debate.” to speak from the audience there were and unequivocal response” following of what was alleged publicly - on the What was the stance of Abbott and So, unlike Salma Yaqoob, comrade two expelled Labour members: namely this ‘outrage’ of the MPs addressing fact that he had used the term ‘Zio’ as Ribeiro-Addy in relation to such cases? Greenstein was justifiably expelled, was Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein. a meeting where a couple of expelled an abbreviation for ‘Zionist’ on social Like Corbyn himself, they said and did he? That seems to be the implication l weekly worker 1298 May 7 2020 5 STWC Where is the strategy? Support for a ‘global ceasefire’ is acceptable, argues Paul Demarty, but not if it obscures the causes of war mid the urgent and horrifying politics constitute the appropriate problems unleashed by the anti-war strategy. But truly mass A Covid-19 pandemic, one demonstrations passed into history particularly dismal prospect is its a while ago - a state of affairs that effects on the world’s multiplying war cannot be blamed on lockdown. zones. That is because, however we define The secretary general of the United ‘strategy’, doing the same thing again Nations, António Guterres, issued a and again and expecting different call for a global ceasefire, to minimise results ain’t one. the possibility of a gruesome The question of the UN, and of ‘multiplier effect’. It has got the sort international law more broadly, is of response that all such calls get - a neuralgic enough to ensure that wave of pious hypocrisy, in which essentially it is never discussed in world leaders say, ‘Yes, it is very the STWC. That is because it cleaves important that we have peace, which the leadership in half - on the one means that that lot over there should side, those of a sterner Trotskyist stop being so belligerent’ - without background know very well that lifting a finger on matters that they such institutions are dens of thieves themselves have the power to effect. and not to be trusted. On the other, It is undoubtedly the case that there are well-meaning liberals, only the purest of motives animated whose naivety on this score scarcely Guterres’s statement. He knows, as needs description; and ‘official’ do we all, that the four horsemen of communists and left Labourites, who the Book of Revelation ride together. inherit a faith in the UN that dates War, apart from combat deaths, brings from the days when the USSR was with it enormous disruption to the a superpower and so the UN was an economic infrastructure of society; arena of cold war struggle - which famine and pestilence, to use the lives on as a spectral vestige in their old language, are therefore never thinking. far behind. But, with a health crisis The result is not so even-handed. and corresponding economic slump Because the ‘default’ position of already in train, the prospect is truly official ideology is that the UN and grim. international law matters very much The British contribution to this War in Yemen: with full support of HMG (so it can be press-ganged into the misery is hardly insignificant, of service of imperialist agendas), the course. Such was the motivation consider his reaction to the murder the dispossessed multiply in London 2001, and then reached its climax liberals (and tankies) are free to for an open letter from Labour MP in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul of and elsewhere. This is, of course, one when the neoconservative faction in frame anti-war politics in a way that Claudia Webbe to the government, Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018. of the many factors exacerbating the Washington pressed their advantage envisages the UN as a kind of neutral demanding that the “huge distance Though Raab conceded that the spread and impact of Covid-19, as is and proceeded to invade Iraq. It is arbiter or even a friend of peace and between declarations and deeds” Saudi government’s explanation for - on a larger scale - the fact that our quite true that the demonstration enforcer of international law. It is noted by Guterres is closed on these how Khashoggi came to be garrotted world is pockmarked with bomb sites of one or two million in London on those who realise that this is false shores. The letter is backed by the and dismembered were not credible, and shell craters. February 15 2003 would not have who must censor themselves, so that Stop the War Coalition, of course, it was no reason for “throwing our The UN, in other words, is been so large if it had not been a the movement can remain maximally and is signed by 35 MPs - mostly hands in the air and terminating the essentially an ideological instrument. suitable outlet for those outraged at broad, and continue to keep its the usual suspects: various long-time relationship with Saudi Arabia”. After It is wielded as a weapon against the shabby treatment of the UN by the illustrious donors and patrons on Labour peace warriors like Jeremy all, you have to think about “the huge one’s political enemies, either on Americans and British (and Quakers, board. Corbyn and Diane Abbott; Caroline number of British jobs that depend the national or the world stage. The and Islamists, and 9/11 truthers, and ... Actually overcoming British Lucas of the Greens; some Scottish on it” and the fact that “if you exert trouble is that it is not a terribly ). The total focus on one demand - that militarism, however, cannot be nationalists.1 influence over your partners you need effective weapon against certain the government should not participate done like this - because it is neither The letter is copied to Dominic to be able to talk to them”.2 Stop me if adversaries. The Asian giant hornet, in military operations in Iraq - worked, reducible to a single issue (or a Raab, who - in his capacity as foreign you’ve heard this one before ... the world’s largest wasp, feeds on at least insofar as it gave birth to a succession of single issues - should secretary - formally endorsed the honeybees; and it is a ferociously demonstration of unprecedented size we go to war with Afghanistan, Iraq, ceasefire idea. It is easy enough to Limits effective predator, because its and mass reach. Libya, Syria ... ?) nor is it merely demonstrate his hypocrisy. We need In Raab’s hypocrisy, however, we carapace is thicker than a bee stinger The problems arise from the ways a matter for Britain. We confront only look at the two matters most meet the limit of Webbe and Stop is long. The capitalist world order has in which the demonstration did not instead the real structure of power in immediately at issue for British anti- the War’s politics. A follow-up its own apex predators; and the thick work. That is: Tony Blair invaded the global order, and Britain’s place war activists - Iraq and Yemen. In the email from the STWC, appealing for hide of the United States has never yet Iraq regardless. It was, at that point, within it - as a hireling of the USA former case, it is somehow still the donations, perhaps expresses the thing been penetrated by the feeble sting of inevitable that the movement would and a long-deceased hegemon; and case that British military operations most clearly: “... our government has UN censure. The US and UK blithely fragment into the positive programmes the UN’s, which we have already continue. Indeed, two days after claimed support for the UN global motored on with the invasion of Iraq offered by its component parts. The discussed. Overcoming militarism Raab’s warm reception of Guterres’s ceasefire; it is now up to us to hold it despite the disapproval of the UN; Liberal Democrats fell back into requires a state-disloyalist outlook: a plan, an RAF bombing raid took place to account and ensure words become and no meaningful distance has been ‘support our troops’ state loyalism and view that the many wars carrying on there. Joined-up government at its action.” It is, of course, correct to taken by the Atlantic powers from the griped about international law from a in the background to this pandemic finest! demand an end to all imperialist- Yemeni bloodbath - for reasons both safe distance. Divisions opened up are not an unfortunate contingency The British armed forces are not backed wars, just as it is to critically of naked greed and Washington’s between apologists for the Iranian of poor diplomacy or governance, directly involved in the Saudi war in support pro-Palestinian motions in psychotic hatred of Iran, which was theocracy and those who refused but an intrinsic feature of that global Yemen, instead sending ‘advisors’ to the UN general assembly. We need dubiously blamed for the outbreak of to let an anti-war stance silence order, of which Britain is a parasitic help the Saudis take care of maiming not have any particular illusions in civil war in the first place. criticism of the mullahs. The Socialist beneficiary. and massacring themselves; but the virtues of the UN to accept that It seems, however, that I am Workers Party, which provided the The problem, then, with the STWC the British arms industry certainly it might inadvertently embarrass refuting arguments that have not activist backbone for the operation, strategy is not - as is sometimes is. ‘Defence’ sector sales to Saudi imperialist powers when they work actually been made. Nowhere in attempted to roll it into an electoral supposed by its left critics - that an Arabia have continued throughout the themselves up into a fit of self- its communications does Stop the project, Respect, in which the SWP A-to-B protest march (or, for that appalling conflict, which has killed righteousness. War explicitly claim that the UN joined forces with George Galloway matter, a petition like the one set up hundreds of thousands of civilians Indeed, this is not even merely a provides moral leadership in general, and various dubious clientelist to support the ceasefire) cannot of through relentless bombardment, matter of war and geopolitics. A series or positively propose multilateral businessmen in Birmingham and itself stop war. No particular tactic famine and cholera (the full set of of UN officials, for example, have diplomacy as a solution to the world’s east London (the intention was to get will bring success on its own. The horsemen, even before our recent excoriated the British government massacres. The positive proposals the Muslim Association of Britain issue is rather that this subset of viral misfortune). The high court ruled for its failure to provide adequate instead amount to signing a petition - the British wing of the Muslim tactics becomes, precisely, a strategy, that granting further export licences housing for its population. One urging the British government to Brotherhood - on board, but the which prevents participants from to Saudi Arabia was unlawful last such farrago was started off by the “act on the call of United Nations MAB considered it too opportunist). discovering the kinds of analysis that June, embarrassing the government; then special rapporteur for adequate secretary-general António Guterres But Respect split, and then the SWP show up the extent of the mess we are but the licences already granted housing, Raquel Rolnik, in 2013; for a global ceasefire by withdrawing itself split soon after; the wing most in. And with the pandemic’s long-term continue to be used, with the peace- periodically the matter has resurfaced British armed forces from war zones dedicated to the STWC ‘strategy’ effects likely to be the very opposite loving shareholders of BAE Systems in the news - usually accompanied around the world” - and donating launched Counterfire. of a global ceasefire, we badly need enjoying particularly obscene profits by the furious spluttering of Tory money to a certain Stop the War to get out of this intellectual hamster from this chaos. MPs to the effect that UN officials Coalition. Hamster wheel wheel l Whither Raab? We find no evidence should stay out of politics and go So does this silence cover over Under a version of its historic of any concern about overseas back to their own countries to sort a credulous attitude to the UN and leadership - that is, the Counterfire [email protected] operations in Iraq; on top of which, for out housing there. But the special other international institutions, or top bods, ‘official’ communists, example, he vociferously defended rapporteur for housing dispatches a critical one? The answer is both. trade union bureaucrats and Labour Notes the United States assassination in no troops, and so the homelessness Stop the War was, from the outset, lefts - the STWC has never managed 1. stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-comment/3676- 35-cross-party-mps-join-calls-for-a-global- January of Iranian major general situation in Britain has deteriorated conceived as a maximally broad to reorient itself. It has held to the ceasefire-to-combat-covid-19. Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad. As alarmingly in the seven years since alliance of all those opposed to the only line that could work for it: that 2. af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/ for the Saudis in Yemen, we might Rolnik’s broadside. Encampments of retaliatory war on Afghanistan in mass demonstrations on minimal idAFKCN1MV0CU. weekly 6 May 7 2020 1298 worker STRATEGY The importance of being programmed Without a comprehensive, fully worked out programme there is no road map to socialism and beyond. Jack Conrad begins a short series of articles ocialism cannot be delivered interest in fighting capitalism and from on high. So, no realising a communist society. The Ssocialism via a so-called good instinctive struggle for improved leftwinger getting their hands onto the wages and conditions, the struggle for bureaucratic state machine, winning self-respect, the struggle for a better over trade union officialdom, lifting way of living propels, drives or at the into power a charismatic liberator or very least tends to move the working some confessional sect. Socialism is class in that direction. So, looking to an act of self-liberation by the great the future, we have every reason to be mass of the working class for the sake confident. Millions upon millions can of the great mass of humanity. The be won to the cause of communism. working class smashes the old state In 1932, Bertolt Brecht put things like machine of the bourgeoisie, constitutes this in his marvellous little poem, ‘In itself the ruling class and begins the praise of communism’: transition to the communist mode of production. A necessary precondition It’s sensible, anyone can understand being the fight for the most extensive it. democracy, a high level of class It’s easy. consciousness and, correspondingly, You’re not an exploiter, so you can organising the working class into a grasp it. disciplined political party. It’s a good thing for you, find out Though it may appear paradoxical, more about it. that party is built top-down. Does The stupid call it stupid and the that mean that the party we envisage squalid call it squalid. - its proper name being ‘Communist It’s against squalor and against Party’ - is going to consist of just a stupidity. few thousand activists, managed, The exploiters call it a crime but we controlled and directed by a self- know: perpetuating central committee or It is the end of crime. an all-knowing guru? No, not at It is not madness, but the end of all, and that is why we consider the madness. perspectives and political culture of It is not the riddle, but the solution. groups such as the Socialist Workers It is the simplest thing, so hard to Party, Socialist Party in England and achieve. Wales, Workers Revolutionary Party, Banksy: merge socialist theory with the workers’ movement etc, etc, so problematic. Yet Marxism, rightly, is spoken of as No, what I mean by ‘party’ is the sunk deep social roots in the working It is doubtless true that a party pursuit of the holy grail of ‘unity for a science. After all, another term for kind of mass organisation fought class and through tireless, often should be judged primarily by what it the sake of unity’. it is ‘scientific socialism’. Marxism for by Karl Marx. At the Hague heroic struggles managed to become does, rather than what its programme Disobeying doctor’s orders, Marx richly deserves that title, because it congress of the First International, a considerable material force in says. But a new party will be judged took to his desk to compose a furious is solidly founded, rigorously logical held in September 1872, he moved the politics of continental Europe: by its programme. And the Gotha commentary. He also offered the and painstakingly developed. a successful resolution which called an achievement which rested in no programme represented a considerable advice that, unless his alternative Marx himself had to - and did - for workers to form themselves “into small part on thoroughgoing internal retreat compared with the Eisenach formulations - or something very penetrate through the outer appearance a political party”. Otherwise the democracy, the lively, frank and programme. much like them - were adopted, then of the capitalist mode of production, “working class cannot act as a class”.1 open debate of differences, and the A little background. The Social it would be better, far better, for revealing its inner laws of motion The kind of class party Marx had in considerable autonomy allowed to Democratic Workers Party was the SDWP and the Lassalleans to and historical tendencies. It took him mind was realised, in good measure, local districts and branches. However founded at Eisenach in 1869 under remain separate organisations and a lifetime to write Capital. (In fact, by the Social Democratic Party of - and this is the main point here the leadership of August Bebel and find issues where they could engage he was unable to complete even that August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht - these parties were built around Wilhelm Liebknecht. Its programme in common action. Rather disunity study. Volume 3 was put together and Karl Kautsky. Although there were their programmes. The first point had definite shortcomings: eg, it and maintaining principle than by Engels with only a few mistakes exceptions - such as the British Labour of Lenin’s draft rules of the RSDLP demanded a free people’s state and unprincipled unity. That was the thrust and, much more problematically, Party - most parties of the Second reads: “A party member is one who universal male suffrage. But there of Marx’s criticism, and yet, despite Theories of surplus value, volume 4, International took the German party, accepts the party’s programme and were also calls for the liberation of the that, there still are those today - in the was originally compiled by Kautsky along with its Erfurt programme, supports the party both financially working class, abolition of the standing name of Marx - who seek to belittle - Capital itself being part of a much as their template. Amongst them, of and by personal participation in one army, establishing a people’s militia the importance of establishing firm bigger, multi-volumed project that course, the Russian Social Democratic of its organisations.”5 and the separation of church and state. programmatic principles. Pathetic. would encompass “landed property”, Labour Party led by Vladimir Ilyich There are, of course, those rank It also constituted the SDWP as “a “wage-labour”, “the state”, “foreign Ulyanov (aka Lenin). opportunists who know a smattering branch” of the First International - “to Unity and unity trade” and the “world market”.10) Lenin, it should be stressed, was of Marx and gleefully quote his the extent that the associational laws Without a revolutionary programme While Marx and Engels perfectly candid about the debt the famous statement: “Every step of real permit”.7 Bebel and Liebknecht, note, there can be no successful socialist undoubtedly possessed minds of the RSDLP owed to the German SDP: movement is more important than both served lengthy prison sentences revolution. This truth cannot be first order, they had to put in endless a dozen programmes.”6 But to field for membership of the International. insisted upon too strongly, especially hours of study (not forgetting their ... a few words are in order on our those words now, in a period of historic Contemporaries regarded the at a time when: (1) the numbers leading role as practical organisers attitude to the Erfurt programme defeat, organisational fragmentation SDWP as a Marxist party. So committed to building a mass and revolutionaries, which immensely ... we consider it necessary to and theoretical confusion - well, that everything the SDWP said and did in Communist Party remain tiny; (2) enriched their theory). As with … bring the programme of the is to actually hold the movement Germany reflected on the reputation single-issue, anarchistic, ephemeral Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin Russian social democrats closer to back. No less to the point, these of the Marx-Engels team in London. campaigns flourish; (3) much of the and Einstein, their genius was 99% that of the German. We are not in words of Marx are taken from the A reputation they were determined to left remains trapped in confessional sweat. Likewise, explaining finance the least afraid to say that we want letter to Wilhelm Bracke - commonly uphold. Eg, Mikhail Bakunin attacked sects; (4) that, or with the soft left capital, the permanent arms economy, to imitate the Erfurt programme: attached to his Critique of the Gotha what he called Marxism in his Statism and refugees from the confessional the ecological destruction resulting there is nothing bad in imitating programme (1875) - where Marx and anarchy, in no small part by sects, prime energies, loyalties and from production for the sake of what is good, and precisely today, eviscerates the compromising, the laying hold of the real and imagined hopes are invested in Momentum, production, the betrayal of social when we so often hear opportunist backtracking, the trading away of failings of the “duumvirate of Bebel Forward Momentum, Momentum democracy, the contradictory role of and equivocal criticism of that principled programmatic formulations and Liebknecht” and the “Jewish Internationalists, Campaign for Labour ‘official communism’, the collapse of programme, we consider it our duty by his comrades in Germany. literati behind or under them”.8 The Party Democracy, Left Unity, Labour bureaucratic socialism in the Soviet to speak openly in its favour.2 Needless to say, Marx fully Slavophile Bakunin hated Germans Left Alliance, Labour Representation Union and eastern Europe … none of appreciated the role and importance and Jews with a horrible passion. Committee, the Trade Unionist and that is “easy”. Later he advises those who want of programme - after all, he authored Anyhow, put together jointly Socialist Coalition and other such Such phenomena have to be studied, to “understand the whole of our the Manifesto of the Communist Party by Bebel and Liebknecht, on the broad-frontist organisations. grasped, in all their complexity, and programme” to and the Demands of the Communist one hand, and, on the other hand, Communists aim for nothing answers transmitted with even more Party in Germany. Then there was the followers of the state socialist, short of an explicitly Marxist party energy and imagination than displayed get hold of two pamphlets to use the International Workingman’s Ferdinand Lassalle, the programme - a mass Communist Party that is by physicists, evolutionary biologists as aids. One pamphlet is by the Association, the First International, was to be presented to the unity fit for the burning tasks of the 21st and mathematicians. I emphasise the German social democrat, Karl Marx was responsible for its rules congress of the two groups meeting century: breaking the hold of the term ‘even more’, because Marxism Kautsky, and its title is the Erfurt and fundamental documents. Marx in Gotha. After much haggling Marx’s labour bureaucracy; transforming is dedicated not merely to explaining programme. It has been translated was, in fact, a consummate writer of comrades agreed a series of rotten the trade unions; delegitimising the what is: the goal is to completely into Russian. The other pamphlet is programmes: eg, the role he played compromises. Not only the “iron existing constitution in the popular transform what is. A task which by the Russian social democrat, L in drafting the 1880 Programme law of wages”, but other Lassallean mind; securing an active majority Brecht, ending with a neat twist, called Martov, and its title is The workers’ of the Parti Ouvrier. No, far from drivel, such as “state”-financed for socialism; winning working “so hard to achieve”. cause in Russia.3 downplaying the need for a programme industry and the claim that “all other class state power and superseding So the mass Communist Party - and this is obvious with even a classes are only a reactionary body”.9 the malfunctioning, ecologically we envisage merges the working With good reason, Lars T Lih dubs cursory reading of his Critique - Marx The justification for making such destructive, historically exhausted class movement with Marxist Lenin a “Russian Erfurtian”.4 was striving to reorientate, to rescue, compromises? The opportunist dictum system of capitalism on a global scale. theory. Incidentally - and it must be The parties of social democracy the proto-SDP programmatically. of beginning where people are at and The working class has a vital emphasised - at this moment in time, weekly worker 1298 May 7 2020 7

though there are members of the main determination runs not from the of our CPGB Draft programme. There Neither Marx nor anyone standing (reformist) level of understanding, CPGB, there is no CPGB. The Weekly needs of the organisation, but from the are six sections, one logically leading in the authentic Marxist tradition but which in reality pass beyond the Worker’s ‘What we fight for’ column programme and its principles to the to the other. Form and content being has ever denied the necessity of a framework of bourgeois democracy. says that, while there are “many so- organisation and its membership. closely connected. programme. It was the revisionist, Naturally … [this is] only part (a fairly called ‘parties’”, there “exists no Our Draft programme is as short The opening section is a brief Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932), small part) of what we advocate.”22 real Communist Party”. One of those and concise as possible. Everything preamble describing the origins of the who openly scorned the maximum With the Cliffite turn away from paradoxes which exist in the real that is not essential was deliberately CPGB and the inspiration provided by programme and tried to theoretically Labour Party deep entryism in the world that causes endless confusion kept out. Passing facts, prime the October 1917 revolution. We also, justify elevating the organisation mid-1960s, economistic minimalism for those mired in formal logic. ministers, presidents, opposition rightly, touch upon the liquidation of of the party into a thing for itself. was abandoned for a heady brew While doing our best to support key leaders, demonstrations, opinion polls the CPGB by its various opportunist Unconsciously this was echoed and of eclectic Luxemburgism and the strikes and mass movements, taking a and episodic alliances have no place leaderships and conclude with the turned into dogma by the SWP’s International Socialists. Cliff sought disproportionately prominent role in in the communist programme. Engels, organised rebellion staged by the Machiavellian founder-leader, Tony distance from what then passed as all manner of unity projects on the left of course, himself urged exactly that Leninist forces and the subsequent Cliff. He routinely warned against Leninism and Trotskyism. (and not forgetting the civil war raging approach: “All that is redundant in a struggle to reforge the party. adopting a programme. Gaining It is rumoured that in the early in the Labour Party), we put the aim of programme weakens it”.16 The next section - the substantive recruits and factional advantage was 1970s Cliff’s loyal lieutenant, Chris establishing a mass Communist Party No, our Draft programme, rightly, or real starting point - outlines the his sole guide. Harman, penned a draft programme. at the centre of our work. Today that concentrates on principles and main features of the epoch: the epoch Yes, a democratically agreed Needless to say, it never saw the light means not only combining political strategy. Particular tactics, theoretical of the transition from capitalism, by programme would have created of day. From then on afterwards education with ongoing class struggles. and historical explanations - all that way of socialism, to communism. intolerable difficulties for the SWP Cliff wanted nothing to do with It means ending the debilitating should be dealt with elsewhere: party Then comes the nature of capitalism central committee and its many anything that smacked of a programme disunity of Marxists, and would-be meetings, articles in our press and in Britain and the consequences of and sudden about-turns under Cliff. - including a dishonest, severely Marxists, their instrumentalisation, on the internet, seminars, pamphlets its development. Following on from True, in the early 1950s, when his limited, truncated, “transitional” one their maltreatment, their dumbing and books. As we confidently stated here comes the economic, social Socialist Review Group was deeply (that is, until two years before his down by the countless confessional back in 1991, it should follow that and democratic measures that are ensconced in the bowels of the Labour death and the now totally forgotten sects. our programme “will therefore not of needed if the peoples of Britain are Party, Cliff agreed to a pinched, and thoroughly minimalist 1998 Instead we must secure solid, necessity need rewriting every couple to live a full and decent life. Such a 12-point programme of “transitional Action programme). worthwhile, meaningful unity in a of years, as with the programmes of minimum, or immediate programme demands”, which were meant to I shall discuss this Action viable project for a mass Communist the opportunists, let alone go out of is, admittedly, technically feasible attract and recruit “individual” programme, along with Trotsky’s Party. Of course, it is no good just date even before it has come off the within the confines of present-day Labour and trade union activists: transitional programme (The death calling for ‘unity’. It is necessary to have press, as was the case with the CPB’s capitalism. In actual fact, though, the agony of capitalism and the tasks of a definite political programme. Without version of the BRS” (ie, the British minimum section of the programme 1. The complete nationalisation the Fourth International, 1938), in the that there can only be unprincipled lash- road to socialism - the precursor of its can only be genuinely realised by way of heavy industry, the banks, second part of this article. ups, empty phrase-mongering and then, Britain’s road to socialism).17 of revolution. insurance and the land. Meanwhile, suffice to say, what usually within a very short time, the For our purposes Lenin provides a There will be those who might want 2. The renationalisation without went for Cliff went double for his inevitable floundering, break-up and pertinent back-up: to call some, or all, of the demands compensation of all de-nationalised chosen heir and successor, John bitter recriminations. contained in this section ‘transitionary’ industries. Rees, especially with his Respect The programme should leave demands. I am fine with that. The 3. Suspend interest on the national popular-front adventure. The modus Purpose questions of means open, allowing real point though is the necessity of debt. Compensation to ex-owners vivendi of Respect was, of course, to We have devoted some considerable the choice of means to the having a minimum programme. Those only as a result of an income test unite “secular socialists with Muslim time and effort to drawing up a militant organisations and to party who reject the minimum programme, administered by elected workers’ activists” on the basis of whatever Draft programme.11 Not to present congresses that determine the tactics as Rosa Luxemburg did in 1918, committees. it took to get local and national others with an ultimatum, but as a of the party. Questions of tactics, disarm the party: “socialism”, she 4. A majority of workers’ candidates elected.23 Much to the contribution, a means of provoking however, can hardly be introduced proclaimed, “this is the minimum we representatives on all nationalised discredit of the post-Rees SWP, it thought, stimulating debate and, into the programme (with the are going to secure”.20 In the midst of and area boards, subject to frequent has steadfastly refused to conduct hopefully, facilitating serious exception of the most important a revolutionary situation it is doubtless election, immediate recall, and any kind of autopsy into the Respect negotiations. Nonetheless, we are questions, questions of principle, right to raise slogans such as “all power receiving the average wage popular-front debacle. Indeed, the proud of what we have produced. such as the attitude to other fighters to workers’ and soldiers’ councils”. obtaining in the industry. SWP central committee continues There is nothing faddish, against the autocracy). Questions But if the revolutionary situation is 5. Two or more workers’ to blithely pursue an ever narrowing doctrinaire or myopic about our Draft of tactics will be discussed by the drowned in blood and becomes a representatives to sit on boards of expediency. programme. It is neither a litany of party newspaper as they arise and counterrevolutionary situation, what all private concerns employing 20 Programmatically the organisation unfulfillable Keynesian nostrums will be eventually decided at party does the party then have to say? or more people with access to all remains unencumbered - well, apart, - eg, Labour’s For the many, not congresses.18 From our minimum demands documents. that is, from its ‘What the SWP stands the few (2017) or Tusc’s May 2010 we move on to the character of the 6. Workers’ committees to control for’ column in Socialist Worker general election manifesto12 - nor Evidently, the communist programme British revolution and the position hiring and firing and working (and the slightly different ‘About is it a sectarian confession of faith: has a twofold function. On the one of the various classes and strata. conditions. us’ which appears in ‘SWP online’). eg, the Socialist Party of Great side, it presents chosen demands, Marxists, let it be noted, do not 7. Abolition of payments for Except for the most narrow-minded Britain’s Our object and declaration principles and aims. On the other side, consider non-proletarian classes to national health service and of loyalists, it is clear that this thumbnail of principles13 or the Spartacists’ it charts an overall strategic approach be one reactionary mass. Sections of private beds. sketch contains little more than a few Declaration of principles.14 Nor is to the conquest of state power, based the middle class can and must be won 8. Establishment of principle of full selected SWP shibboleths - there is no it a trite commentary that has to be on a concrete analysis of objective over. Next, again logically, comes the work or full maintenance. overall strategy l constantly updated: eg, the Morning socio-economic conditions. Naturally, workers’ government in Britain and the 9. Sliding scale of adequate Star’s Communist Party of Britain and to state what should be obvious, we worldwide transition to socialism and pensions, based on new and Notes its Britain’s road to socialism.15 seek to navigate the shortest, least communism. Here is our maximum realistic cost-of-living indices. 1. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 23, London 1988, No, the communist programme costly route from today’s cramped, programme. Finally, the necessity for 10. Interest-free housing loans to p243. 2. VI Lenin CW Vol 4, Moscow 1977, p235. stems from the needs of the real squalid socio-political conditions to a all partisans of the working class to local authorities and drastic powers 3. VI Lenin CW Vol 6, Moscow 1977, p429. movement. Hence, firstly, the truly human world. unite in a Communist Party is dealt to requisition and rent free, state- 4. LT Lih Lenin rediscovered: What is to be done? communist programme is a guide to Our programme owes nothing to with. The essential organisational owned land. in context Chicago IL 2008, p111. action: ie, how to go about organising holy script - it is not fixed, timeless principles of democracy and unity in 11. A foreign policy based on 5. VI Lenin CW Vol 6 Moscow 1977, p474. 6. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 24, London 1989, the working class into a political party. and inviolate. On the contrary, given action are stated and we underline in independence of both Washington p78. Secondly, the programme represents a major political rupture - eg, Brexit, no uncertain terms why the CPGB and Moscow. 7. ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_ the crystallisation of our principles - the break-up of the United Kingdom must combine unity in action with 12. Withdrawal of British troops id=688. spun not out of thin air, but derived and its historically unified workers’ internal democracy and the open overseas; freedom of colonial 8. libcom.org/files/statismandanarchy.pdf. from the accumulated theoretical movement, the abolition of the expression of differences. peoples and offer of economic and 9. archive.org/stream/GothaProgramme/726_ 21 socWrkrsParty_gothaProgram_231_djvu.txt. knowledge and practical experience of monarchy, etc - then various passages technical aid. 10. K Marx Theories of surplus value part one, the global working class. in our programme ought to be suitably SWP versus Marx Moscow 1969, p14. The programme is thereby the reformulated; that or new sections Though communists treat their It was Duncan Hallas who wrote and 11. CPGB Draft programme London 1995, 2011. 12. tusc.org.uk/policy.php. foundation for the Communist Party. added. programme with the utmost submitted the original “transitional 13. worldsocialism.org/spgb/our-object-and- It links the everyday work of members The programme must become the seriousness, talk to any SWP loyalist programme” to the SRG. Cliff, declaration-principles. with the goal of communism and political compass for millions. As I and I guarantee you that they will however, ensured that it was stripped, 14. icl-fi.org/english/icldop/index.html. full, collective and individual, human argued a few years back: adopt a completely dismissive, even shorn, of anything too radical: eg, the 15. Britain’s road to socialism (2020) is credited with being “up to the minute”. Therefore, almost development. To use a well rubbed a hostile attitude, if you dare suggest “overthrow of the Tory government by by definition, like all previous versions it is formula: the programme represents Every clause of the programme that it would be a good idea to adopt all the means available to the working instantly made outdated by the course of events. the dialectical unity between theory must be easily assimilated a programme. There have been, class” and “defence of socialist Take the November 1989 version. Its Labour and practice. It thereby constitutes and understood by advanced thankfully, various members of the Britain” against Washington and Party road to socialism was premised on what was supposed to be the “decisively” shifting the basis for agreed actions. It is the workers. It must be written in an SWP who have agreed with us on this Moscow. international balance of class forces. “Socialism” standard, the reference point, around accessible style, whereby passages subject. But now, of course, they are The inspiration was clearly in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and China which the unity of communists is and sentences can be used for ex-members. provided by Leon Trotsky. Here, would allow a peaceful road to national socialism built, tested and strengthened. Practice agitational purposes and even Anyway, in justifying the SWP’s though, the ‘transitional method’ is in Britain through the election of Labour, CPB and 19 progressive MPs. Needless to say, when the CPB teaches. turned into slogans. bizarre aversion to adopting any kind taken to the point where democratic rewrote its programme in 1992, though the Soviet The Communist Party - organising of rounded programme, its loyalists questions, both in the workers’ Union and the “socialist countries” in eastern the advanced part of the working We have sought to learn from the typically insist that a programme movement and society at large, go Europe had to be crudely airbrushed out, the class - formulates, agrees and adjusts best that history provides: eg, in my would be too rigid, inflexible and ignored, along with the attitude parliamentarism remained. 16. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 27, London the programme. But in many ways opinion, the Marx-Engels Manifesto constricting. Chains and manacles towards the middle classes. The tasks 1990, p220. the Communist Party is in itself an of the Communist Party, the Erfurt are even referred to. Therefore, it of the working class movement are 17. J Conrad Which road? London 1991, pp239. outgrowth of the programme. Recruits programme of the German SDP and supposedly follows, a programme is a reduced to trade union politics. As 18. Quoted in VI Lenin CW Vol 4, Moscow 1977, are attracted to its far-reaching, the first and second programmes of horrible danger that must be avoided to the “final aim” of working class p238. 19. J Conrad Which road? London 1991, pp235- inspiring, but theoretically well- Russia’s communists. Of course, we at all costs. To provide themselves rule, socialism and the transition to 36. grounded demands. Members are then have not mindlessly aped. Conditions with the sanction of ‘orthodoxy’, SWP communism, that is left to spontaneity. 20. M-A Walters Rosa Luxemburg speaks New trained, encadred, made into mass in the UK, its history, economic loyalists will, yes, invoke the ghost of Hallas explains the duplicity involved. York NY 1997, p413. leaders by the struggle to realise those peculiarities, specifics and, not least, Marx and the “Every step of the real The “programme of demands” must 21. Socialist Review Vol 1, No1, February-March 1953. goals. In that sense the programme its constitution and class structure movement” statement. That is meant be “made to appear both necessary 22. grimanddim.org/tony-cliff-biography/duncan- is responsible for generating the must be taken into account. to clinch the argument. In fact, it does and realisable to broad sections of hallas-and-the-1952-programme-for-action. Communist Party. For certain, the Let me briefly describe the structure no such thing. the workers, given their present 23. Socialist Worker November 20 2004. weekly 8 May 7 2020 1298 worker ECONOMY Prepare for the scarring After the lockdown ends we should expect the worst, warns Michael Roberts ptimism reigns in global evidence suggests that a recovery stock markets, particularly in consists only of a return of growth O the US. After falling around to its long-term expansion rate - 30% when the lockdowns to contain without a high-growth rebound the Covid-19 virus pandemic were back to the initial trend ... In imposed, the US stock market has other words, recessions can cause jumped back 30% in April. Why? permanent economic scarring.5 Well, for two reasons. The first is that the US Federal Reserve has And that does not just apply to one intervened to inject humungous economy, but also to the gap between amounts of credit through buying rich and poor economies: “Poor up bonds and financial instruments countries suffer deeper and more of all sorts. The other central banks frequent recessions and crises, each have also reacted similarly with credit time suffering permanent output injections, although nothing compares losses and losing ground.” with the Fed’s monetary impulse. The IMF paper complements As a result, the US stock market’s the view of the difference between valuation against future corporate ‘classic’ recessions and depressions earnings has rocketed up in line with that I outlined in my book of 2016, the Fed injections. If the Fed will buy The long depression. There I show any bond or financial instrument you that in depressions, the recovery hold, how can you go wrong? after a slump takes the form not of a The other reason for a stock market V-shape, but more of a square root, rally - at the same time as data for which sets an economy on new and the ‘real’ economy reveal a collapse lower trajectory. in national output, investment and I suspect that there will be plenty employment nearly everywhere Tiny virus, mega consequences of scarring of the capitalist sector (with worse to come) - is the belief from this pandemic slump. Min that the lockdowns will soon be deficit would only be “temporary”. The world is now much more economies around. However, even Ouyang, an associate professor at over; treatments and vaccines are on And Robert Reich, the supposedly integrated than it was in 2008. The they have recognised that short-run Beijing’s Tsinghua University, found their way to stop the virus, and so leftwing former labour secretary global value chain, as it is called, is economic conditions can have lasting that in past recessions the ‘scarring’ economies will leap back within three (again under Clinton), reckoned that now pervasive and large. Even if some impacts. Frozen credit markets and of entrepreneurs from the collapse of to six months and the pandemic will the crisis was not economic, but a countries are able to begin economic depressed consumer spending can cash flow outweighed the beneficial soon be forgotten. health crisis and, as soon as the health recovery, the disruption in world stop the creation of otherwise vibrant effects of forcing weak companies to For example, US treasury secretary problem was contained (presumably trade may seriously hamper the speed small businesses. Larger companies shut down and ‘cleansing’ the way for Steven Mnuchin reiterated his view, this summer), the economy would and strength of that pick-up. Take may delay or reduce spending on those who survive: expressed at the beginning of the “snap back”. China, where the economic recovery research and development. “The scarring effect of this lockdowns, that “you’re going to see You would expect the Trump from its lockdown is underway. As Jack Rasmus put it well in a recession is probably going to be more the economy really bounce back in advisors and Wall Street chiefs to Economic activity is still well below recent post on his blog, severe than of any past recessions ... July, August and September”. And proclaim a quick return to normal 2019 levels and the pace of recovery If we say that pandemics are the new White House economics advisor, (even though economists in investment seems slow - mainly because Chinese It takes a long time for both business normal, then people will be much Kevin Hassett, reckoned that by the houses mainly take a different view), manufacturers and exporters have and consumers to restore their more hesitant to take risks,” she says. fourth quarter the US economy “is but you may find it surprising that nobody to sell to. ‘confidence’ levels in the economy Households and companies would going to be really strong, and next leading Keynesians agree. I think the This is not a phenomenon of the and change ultra-cautious investing want more savings and less risk year is going to be a tremendous reason is that any Keynesian analysis virus or a health issue. Growth in and purchasing behaviour to more to protect against possible future year”. Bank of America’s chairman of recessions and slumps cannot deal world trade has been barely equal to optimistic spending-investing shutdowns, while governments and CEO, Brian Moynihan, reckoned with this pandemic. Keynesian theory growth in global GDP since 2009, and patterns. Unemployment levels hang would need to stockpile emergency that consumer spending had already starts with the view that slumps are way below its rate prior to then. Now high over the economy for some equipment and ensure they could bottomed out and would soon rise the result a collapse in ‘effective the World Trade Organisation sees no time. Many small businesses never rapidly manufacture more within their nicely again in the fourth quarter, demand’ that then leads to a fall in return to even that lower trajectory for reopen and when they do with fewer own borders. Even if the pandemic followed by double-digit growth in output and employment. But, as I have at least two years. employees and often at lower wages. turns out to be a one-off, many people gross domestic product in 2021! explained before, this slump is not the The massive public-sector spending Larger companies hoard their cash. will be reluctant to socialise once the The claim that US personal result of a collapse in ‘demand’, but (over $3 trillion) by the US Congress Banks typically are very slow to lockdown ends, extending the pain for consumption has bottomed out seems from a closure of production - both and the huge Fed monetary stimulus lend with their own money. Other companies and economies that rely on difficult to justify when you look at in manufacturing and particularly in ($4 trillion) will not stop this deep businesses are reluctant to invest tourism, travel, eating out and mass data for the first quarter. Indeed, in services.3 It is a ‘supply shock’, not slump or even get the US economy and expand, and thus rehire, given events. March, personal spending in the US a ‘demand shock’. For that matter, back to its previous (low) trend. the cautious consumer spending, And this slump will accelerate dropped 7.5% month over month - the the ‘financialisation’ theorists of Indeed, Oxford Economics reckons business hoarding and banks’ trends in capitalist accumulation that largest decline in personal spending the Minsky school are also at a loss, that there is every possibility of a conservative lending behaviour. were already underway: Lisa B Kahn, on record. because this slump is not the result second wave in the pandemic that The Fed, the central bank, can make a Yale economist, has found that But it is not just the official and of a credit crunch or financial crash, could force new lockdown measures a mass of free money and cheap after slumps companies try to replace banking voices who reckon that the although that may yet come. and keep the US economy in a slump loans available, but businesses and workers with machines and so force economic damage from the pandemic So the Keynesians think that as and in stagnation through 2023! households may be reluctant to workers returning to employment to and lockdowns will be short, if not so soon as people get back to work and But why are capitalist economies borrow, preferring to hoard their accept lower incomes or find other sweet. Many Keynesian economists start spending, ‘effective demand’ (at least in the 21st century) not cash - and the loans as well.4 jobs, which pay less.6 After all, that is in the US are making the same point. (even ‘pent-up’ demand) will shoot up jumping back to previous trends? one of the purposes of the ‘cleansing’ Previously I pointed to the claim by and the capitalist economy will return Well, as I have argued, there are process for capital: to get labour costs Keynesian guru, Larry Summers to normal. two key reasons. The first is that the Scarring down and boost profitability. It scars (former treasury secretary under Bill But, if you approach the slump profitability of capital in the major In other words, an economic recession labour for life. As US investment Clinton), that the lockdown slump from the angle of supply or economies has not returned to levels can lead to “scarring” - that is, long- advisor John Mauldin says, was just the same as businesses in production, and in particular the reached in the late 1990s, let alone lasting damage to the economy. summer tourist places closing down profitability of resuming output and in the ‘golden age’ of economic A couple of years ago, the This experience is going to leave for the winter. As soon as summer employment, which is the Marxist growth and mild recessions of the International Monetary Fund deep scars on the economy and comes along, they all open up and approach, then both the cause of the 1950s and 1960s. And the second published a paper that looked at on consumer/investor/business are ready to go just as before.1 The slump and the likelihood of a slow is that, in order to cope with this ‘scarring’. Its economists noted that sentiment. This is going to scar pandemic is thus just a seasonal thing. and weak recovery become clear. decline in profitability, companies after recessions there is not always a generation just as deeply as Now the Keynesian guru of them increased their debt levels, fuelled a V-shaped recovery to previous the great depression scarred our all, Paul Krugman, reckons that Great recession by low interest rates, either to sustain trends. Indeed, it has been often the parents and grandparents7 l this slump - so far way worse on its Let us remind ourselves of what production and/or to switch funds into case that the previous growth trend is impact on the global economy than happened after the end of the great financial assets and speculation. never re-established. Using updated Michael Roberts blogs at the 2008-09 great recession - was not recession. The stock market boomed But linked to these underlying data from 1974 to 2012, they found thenextrecession.wordpress.com. an economic crisis, but “a disaster year after year, but the ‘real’ economy factors is another: what has been that irreparable damage to output is relief situation”.2 Krugman argues of production, investment and called the scarring of the economy, not limited to financial and political Notes that this is “a natural disaster”, which workers’ incomes crawled along. or hysteresis. Hysteresis in the field crises. 1. thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2020/04/13/ “like a war is a temporary event”. Since 2009, US per capita GDP annual of economics refers to an event in the All types of recessions, on average, the-post-pandemic-slump. So the answer is that “it should be growth has averaged just 1.6%. So economy that persists into the future, lead to permanent output losses: 2. krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/ met largely through higher taxes and at the end of 2019 per capita GDP even after the factors that led to that disaster-relief-economics. 3. thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2020/03/15/ lower spending in the future rather was 13% below trend growth prior event have been removed. Hysteresis In the traditional view of the it-was-the-virus-that-did-it. than right away, which is another way to 2008. That gap was now equal to is the argument that short-term effects business cycle, a recession consists 4. jackrasmus.com/2020/04/29/the-myth-of-v- of saying that it should be paid for in $10,200 per person - a permanent loss can manifest themselves into long-term of a temporary decline in output shape-economic-recovery. large part by a temporary increase in of income. And now Goldman Sachs problems, which inhibit growth and below its trend line, but a fast 5. blogs.imf.org/2018/03/21/the-economic-scars- of-crises-and-recessions. the deficit”. Once this spending had is forecasting a drop in per capita make it difficult to ‘return to normal’. rebound of output back to its 6. nber.org/papers/w22762. done the trick, the economy would GDP that would wipe out even those Keynesians traditionally reckon initial upward trend line during the 7. mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/the- return just as before and the spending gains of the last 10 years! that fiscal stimulus will turn slump recovery phase ... In contrast, our figure-it-out-economy. weekly worker 1298 May 7 2020 9 OUR HISTORY The centrality of hegemony 150 years after his birth, how to evaluate Lenin and his ideas? Lars T Lih emphasises his consistency enin has been identified in many even in backward Russia. They could ways. His admirers might describe start enlightening and organising even L him as the father of the Soviet a nascent working class, and indeed Union, the founder of the international they had some early and encouraging communist movement or a great success in leading strikes. Russian Marxist theorist. His detractors might social democrats also had an immediate weigh in with ‘fanatical sectarian’ and/ political goal: the overthrow of tsarist or ‘supremely cynical elitist’ and/or absolutism and the conquest of political ‘demagogue supreme’ - or perhaps freedom. They could even lay claim to simply founder of the Soviet Union. a central role in Russian political life by But let us work on a new and original asserting proletarian hegemony in the plan: let us consider how Lenin himself upcoming anti-tsarist revolution. consistently defined his own political Revolutionary social democracy identity, and then try to put that identity thus offered a way out from the dead into historical context. end faced by the Russian revolutionary For most of his political career, tradition in the 1880s. An informed Lenin self-identified as a leader of British observer, writing in 1905, “revolutionary social democracy” describes the 1880s as the Russian in Russia. “Revolutionary social socialists themselves remembered it: democracy” was the name given to the left wing of international social We thus arrive at the beginning of democracy during the era of the Second the 80s. Consider the situation - the International in the decades before People’s Will Party [Narodnaya World War I. In 1917-18, Lenin rejected Volya] lying on the ground broken the label ‘social democrat’ in favour of and exhausted, reaction rampant, all ‘communist’, because he felt that the that was but a short time ago hopeful, banner of social democracy had been disheartened and embittered. Where dragged in the mud by the western shall we turn for light and guidance? European parties who supported the war To the people? It is mute. To the effort of their respective governments. working class? There is none. To the However, this name-change was not educated classes? They are all full of a rejection, but rather an anguished pessimism in the consciousness of affirmation of his political identity. their weakness. What, then, next? Is In Lenin’s mind, he was the one who all hope to be given up? Is there no remained true to the tenets of pre- salvation for Russia? At this moment war revolutionary social democracy, Lenin with Trotsky and Kamenev of darkness and despair a new and while the leaders of most other parties strange voice resounds through the in the Second International were up as a permanent campaign to instil a militant workers in turning the ideals His first major political writing ended space - a voice full of harshness and renegades who had betrayed the faith. sense of mission into the everyday life of socialism into reality. Lenin paid with the following carefully constructed sarcasm, yet vibrating with hope. As a consequence, his wartime writings of the workers. Kautsky an extravagant compliment sentence (Lenin’s emphases): That is the voice of Russian social aggressively insisted on his own when he remarked that Kautsky’s democracy. unoriginality, claiming that his case was Kautsky famous formula “reproduced the When the advanced representatives based firmly on the pre-war consensus The SPD model depended crucially foundational ideas of the Communist of this class assimilate the ideas The immediate challenge to applying of revolutionary social democracy. on the existence of some measure manifesto”. of scientific socialism, the idea of revolutionary social democracy to In order to understand Lenin’s of political freedom in society as a Kautsky also insisted (in a the historical role of the Russian Russian conditions was the complete political identity, then, we should not whole - that is, freedom of press, of formulation immediately taken up worker - when these ideas receive a lack of political freedom. How could the be too hasty and focus just on what assembly, of organisation and the like. by Russian social democrats) on the broad dissemination - when durable SPD model of a permanent campaign was individual to him alone. We should Thus another fundamental implication primordial importance of political organisations are created among the be applied without legal newspapers, start in the early 1890s, when the young of the world-historical mission of the freedom: workers that transform the present legal rallies or legal election campaigns Vladimir Ulyanov was forming his proletariat was that socialism had a vital uncoordinated economic war of - to sum up, without a legal social political identity, and look with his eyes stake in anti-absolutist ‘democratic’ These freedoms [of association, of the workers into a purposive class democratic party? The answer - as in at the socialist movement in western revolutions - a commitment that assembly, of the press] are light and struggle - then the Russian worker, Germany, one that was worked out on Europe. Marx and Engels stood out distinguished Marxists from most other air for the proletariat; he who lets elevated to the head of all democratic the ground by a long series of activists, from other socialist currents - not so 19th century socialist currents. Another them wither or withholds them - he elements, will overthrow absolutism but then given eloquent exposition in much in their conception of the nature implication became more apparent as who keeps the proletariat from the and lead the Russian proletariat Lenin’s What is to be done? (1902) of socialist society as in their conception the century progressed. In the 1840s, struggle to win these freedoms and (side by side with the proletariat - was to create an underground party of the path to socialism. While other when the Communist manifesto was to extend them - that person is one of of all countries) by the direct road that combined, to the greatest extent socialists saw socialism as something written, the bourgeoisie was given the proletariat’s worst enemies. of open political struggle to the possible, stable contacts with the mass brought to the workers to relieve their the role of leader of the anti-absolutist victorious communist revolution. worker base with protection from police suffering, Marx and Engels saw it as forces, with the proletariat as junior Finally, the idea behind hegemony - harassment and arrest. The result can something created by the workers, acting partner. But the bourgeoisie grew less proletarian leadership of the people at All of the constitutive elements of be called a konspiratsiia party, since as a class. The core of Marx’s legacy to and less interested in thorough-going large - was also set forth by Kautsky in revolutionary social democracy are the Russian word konspiratsiia does revolutionary social democracy is the democratic reform, while the proletariat the early 1890s, when he claimed that here clearly expressed and put into a not mean ‘conspiracy’ (and indeed is idea of the world-historical mission of grew out of its previously primitive state social democracy must become “the specifically Russian context: the role usually translated as something like the proletariat to achieve state power as and formed parties such as the SPD. representative not only of the industrial assigned by history to the Russian ‘secrecy’), but rather the set of rules a class and use this power to construct a As a result, the proletariat was given a wage-labourers, but of all the labouring workers, the need for enlightenment that allowed the party to escape from socialist society. new, if subsidiary, historical mission: and exploited strata - and therefore the and organisation, the imperative of the self-imposed isolation of a genuine A number of crucial implications to act as leader of the democratic great majority of the population, what is overthrowing absolutism and the conspiracy (zagovor in Russian). flowed from this vision. First, the revolution, standing at the head of the commonly known as the Volk.” proletariat’s position at the head of all Indeed, konspiratsiia can be defined as proletariat had to be made ready narod, das Volk, le peuple - that is, the All of these principles had immense democratic elements. Remarkably, ‘the fine art of not getting arrested’. for its historical mission through lower ‘democratic’ classes in society relevance for Russia, as we shall see. Lenin lived to see all of these elements The role of ‘professional enlightenment about the nature of the as a whole. In the early 20th century, And to fully grasp what Kautsky’s put into practice - but not without some revolutionaries’ was to make this mission and through organisation, the Russian social democrats gave this writings meant for Lenin, we need to bitter disappointments and significant kind of underground party workable enabling it to act as a class. The leadership role the name of hegemony, know that Kautsky not only enunciated adjustments. - Lenin put this term into general practical, concrete forms used to bring but the basic logic was part and parcel general principles, but he also played circulation, but it was adopted by the enlightenment and organisation to the of revolutionary social democracy. a direct role in working out their First decade entire socialist underground, because proletariat were worked out on the The principal spokesman of application to Russia. His contribution A useful simplification divides Lenin’s it pointed to a familiar and necessary ground by generations of activists, revolutionary social democracy was was particularly important in the case political career into three decades, each type. The common idea that Lenin particularly in Germany. The result was Karl Kautsky - a fact which explains of hegemony - and, as all factions in with its particular major focus. The invented a ‘new type of party’ that the immensely influential SPD model: his extraordinary importance in Lenin’s Russia understood, his interventions focus of the decade 1894-1904 was aimed at a conspiratorial caste of that is, the array of techniques employed outlook and writings. Of course, Lenin generally favoured the Bolsheviks. the creation of a society-wide social professional revolutionaries, recruited by the Sozialdemokratische Partei formed his own independent judgment All this explains Lenin’s titanic rage democratic party in Russia. Some solely from the intelligentsia, is the Deutschlands. The centrepiece of the on the various topics he read about in when he felt that Kautsky had betrayed observers at the time (and still today) opposite of the truth. In fact, the ideal SPD model was an enormous socialist Kautsky’s writings (Marx, the SPD his own principles after 1914: Lenin thought that Marxism - the analysis of of the konspiratsiia party and the press, with hundreds of newspapers that model, colonialism, and on and on), but obsessively contrasted the “renegade capitalism and the vision of socialism role of the professional revolutionary fostered a distinctive class identity for he almost always agreed with Kautsky’s Kautsky” to “Kautsky when he was a based on advanced industry - was were functional necessities for any the workers. Other tools featured in the take. Kautsky was able to express the Marxist”. barely applicable to tsarist Russia, underground political party (and SPD model were face-to-face agitation, essential principles of revolutionary Let us now return to the young with its backward economy and before 1905 all Russian parties were rallies, leaflets, election campaigns, social democracy in a number of pithy Russian revolutionary working out his rudimentary working class. At most, underground) and as such they were party-affiliated trade unions, all sorts of formulations. The idea of historical political identity in the early 1890s. By it seemed, Marxism promised a better fully accepted across the socialist voluntary cultural organisations, such as mission is implicit in his definition of 1894, Lenin had thoroughly assimilated society in the distant future. The logic spectrum. choral societies, and even a widespread social democracy as “the merger of the cutting-edge logic of revolutionary of revolutionary social democracy, The konspiratsiia party thus use of taverns as a meeting place. The socialism and the worker movement”: social democracy and had sketched out however, gave Russian Marxists a represented the SPD model as applied logic of the SPD model can be summed that is, the necessary role of the its application to Russia in particular. positive and uplifting role to play to the very uncongenial conditions of weekly 10 May 7 2020 1298 worker OUR HISTORY tsarist absolutism. Because of tsarist as a way of getting the peasants to join the entire work of this syndicate to a become fully possible, and - given peasants - but ignoring its previous repression, the konspiratsiia party had collective farms. genuinely democratic state, the state the aid to the workers here that will limitation to democratic revolution. to be an illegal, underground party. But, of the Soviets of Worker and Soldier come from the more advanced and Lenin more and more explicitly as far as possible, it would imitate the Third decade Deputies. experienced workers of western chose this second course and in German SPD in particular. For example, In his last decade (1914-24), Lenin Europe, … Russia’s genuine his final articles of 1923 set out a Lenin made a political newspaper - focused on socialist revolution in both In his day-to-day political message transition to socialism would be scenario of leading the peasants all Iskra - the centrepiece of his plan for a western Europe and Russia as a practical to Russian workers, soldiers and inevitable, and the success of such a the way to socialism. Russian party. Far from worrying about task. We need to proceed carefully, peasants in 1917, Lenin emphasised transition would be assured. workers and their alleged reformist as we trace the evolution of Lenin’s that he advocated only those steps ‘Rearming’ tendencies (the heart of the standard views on this topic, if only because a toward socialism, only those policies We may thus paraphrase the outlook Once more, a crucial development textbook interpretation of Lenin), his number of widespread misconceptions of state regulation, that were generally of Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks as has been obscured by a historical whole plan depended on his confidence (discussed below) hinder an accurate acknowledged to be necessary by all follows: technically speaking, the 1917 myth that we can label the rearming that the workers would respond to view. We can begin with what we can parties. Lenin argued that such ‘steps’ revolution that created a worker-peasant narrative, to use a term from Lev the social democratic message even call Lenin’s October theses: a short, were straightforward and even easy vlast is not a ‘socialist revolution’, as Trotsky, one of its originators. when the message was conveyed in a semi-official party document entitled to put into practice; furthermore, they we Marxists understand the term. But According to this narrative, the pre- hard-to-get, hard-to-read underground ‘Several theses’, issued in October would be able to gather majority support this fact is irrelevant, because events 1917 outlook of the Bolsheviks newspaper. And in fact, Iskra did 1915. After the February revolution, from the Russian population as a whole. - international revolution abroad, was completely inadequate to the become a very influential newspaper. Lenin himself endorsed his theses by He proved to be wrong about the ease steps toward socialism at home - will challenges of the post-February The near-term political goal of this claiming that they did not have to be of effectively implementing such quickly put Russia on the track of a situation, so that Lenin had to party was the revolutionary overthrow amended in any way to fit the new measures - for example, nationalisation fully-fledged socialist revolution. We ‘rearm the party’. He did so in his of absolutism in order to achieve the situation. In the October theses, Lenin of the banks - but he was justified in therefore do not have to revise our April theses of 1917, which baptised political freedom that was needed for put the upcoming Russian Revolution saying that there existed a widespread earlier conceptions about the nature of the Russian Revolution in 1917 as what Lenin’s 1894 sentence called into the following narrative framework: consensus about the need for very socialist revolution. ‘socialist’, thus providing the logical “open political struggle”. Lenin’s ambitious state regulation. As late as the end of 1918, Lenin and political underpinning necessary political programme can therefore be The task confronting the proletariat could still believe (as he put it) “things for the October victory. Among a host summarised as follows: let us build a of Russia is to bring the bourgeois- Political freedom have turned out just as we said they of other inaccuracies, the ‘rearming’ party as much like the German SPD democratic revolution to the end The other new element - or rather, the would.” The German Revolution of narrative denies the continuity with as possible under tsarist conditions, in in order to kindle the socialist conspicuous absence of a familiar November 1918 was viewed as the the previous Bolshevik outlook (the order to overthrow tsarism and build a revolution in Europe. The latter task element - is the disappearance of political prologue to a Europe-wide socialist link between the October 1915 and party even more like the German SPD. [socialist revolution] now stands freedom as an imperative goal. The topic revolution. At home, Lenin thought he the April 1917 theses, so to speak); very close to the former [democratic barely arises in State and revolution. saw the beginning of a revolutionary it falsely states that proclaiming the Second decade revolution], yet it remains a special Lenin lauded “soviet democracy” wave in the villages based on the socialist nature of the revolution was The second decade of Lenin’s career and second task, for it is a question mainly because it encouraged mass rural proletarians, thus moving the a logical and practical prerequisite for (1904-14) focused on hegemony: the of the different classes who are participation in the work of government Russian Revolution past the stage the October victory (Trotsky’s own socialist proletariat’s duty of providing collaborating with the proletariat of - certainly not because it extended of the “alliance with the whole writings from 1917 amply document political leadership to the peasants Russia. In the former task, it is the political freedom. What we do find peasantry” that was a defining feature the fact that the socialist character in Russia’s upcoming democratic petty-bourgeois peasantry of Russia in these pages is a categorical denial of a democratic revolution. And steps of the Russian Revolution was not revolution. Of course, ‘hegemony’ has who are collaborators; in the latter, it of any value whatsoever in bourgeois toward socialism, as embodied in the proclaimed); it overlooks the post- a lot of other meanings today, most is the proletariat of other countries. democracy: “Freedom in capitalist economic policies of the Soviet state, 1919 adjustment that combined of them rather negative - but in the society always [emphasis added] while certainly uninspiring to date, had continued loyalty to hegemony with Bolshevik case, it is really a synonym The two class allies correspond to the remains about the same as it was in the been started and would no doubt go a grudging reimagining of ‘socialist for leadership. According to the two aspects of the Russian socialist ancient Greek republics: freedom for further. This outlook finds expression revolution’. hegemony tactic, the peasants would working class: Russian peasants as the slave-owners.” What is the point, in The proletarian revolution and the The actual evolution of Lenin’s accept proletarian leadership, because fellow fighters for the democratic then, to fight to transform tsarism into renegade Kautsky, written during view of the path to socialism is much they were rational enough to see how revolution, and European workers democracy, or to extend democracy Lenin’s convalescence from a gunshot more accurately set out in a 1925 this leadership would help them attain as fellow fighters for the socialist where it is established? wound in late 1918. article by another top Bolshevik leader, their own aims. revolution. Coupled with such sentiments is By 1919, this hopeful scenario Nikolai Bukharin. Bukharin puts the The logic behind the hegemony The October theses also affirmed a clear foreshadowing of repressive had to be discarded, at least for the hegemony tactic at the centre of Lenin’s tactic in Russia was as follows: National continuity with the hegemony tactic that policies in the Russian civil war and foreseeable future, and a new rationale whole approach. He portrays Lenin as political leadership in the revolution defined pre-war Bolshevism: later. Any attempt by “the gentry who had to be found to justify the socialist constantly asking: what is the peasant can only be provided by urban-based wish to preserve their capitalist habits credentials of the Bolshevik revolution. saying? And parties. In practice, this leadership Only a revolutionary-democratic or by the workers who have been First, one ally, the European proletariat, role falls either to the party of the anti- dictatorship of the proletariat and thoroughly corrupted by capitalism” failed to carry out its own revolution this is no accident. On the contrary, tsarist bourgeoisie (the Constitutional the peasantry can form the social to escape from social control will be (although the Bolsheviks credited this this reveals a great revolutionary Democrats, or Kadets) or to the party content of the impending revolution accompanied by “swift and severe ally with preventing full-scale military clear-headedness that is typical of of the socialist proletariat (Social in Russia … The monarchy and the punishment, [for] the armed workers intervention in Russia). Second, the the proletarian leader [vozhd]. [Lenin Democracy). If the liberals successfully feudal-minded landowners cannot are practical men and not sentimental Bolsheviks realised that they could insists that the Bolsheviks must act] take over the leadership role, the be overthrown unless the proletariat intellectuals, and they will scarcely not rely on effective support from so that they will not to be severed revolution will fall far short of what it is supported by the peasantry. allow anyone to trifle with them”. the rural proletarians - in fact, the from the peasant base, so that they can and should achieve. Only social After the February revolution survival of the revolutionary state will rely on gradual measures to pull democratic leadership can ensure that Lenin’s slogan, ‘Revolutionary- in 1917, the Bolsheviks ran on the depended on cementing the alliance the muzhik along behind the working the revolution would be carried “to the democratic dictatorship of the platform, ‘All power to the soviets!’ with the majority of the peasants. This class. end” (do kontsa). The deeper Marxist proletariat and the peasantry’, Crucially, the goal of soviet power did realisation found expression in the 1919 logic of the hegemony tactic was the summarises the hegemony tactic: strive not imply any break with the scenario campaign to affirm a partnership with Bukharin then usefully outlines the claim that the socialist proletariat was to create a worker-peasant vlast (state outlined in the October theses of 1915 ‘the middle peasantry’ - a discursive various avatars of hegemony at different the most effective champion of partial power) that will carry the democratic about democratic revolution in Russia. category hitherto little used. This stages of the revolution: aims, such as democratic revolution, revolution “to the end” on the basis of In the revealing article, ‘A basic major Bolshevik campaign has been precisely because it saw these partial the shared interests of Russian workers question’, written in late April 1917, completely forgotten by historians and Prior to the seizure of power, the aims as means to the ultimate goal of a and peasants. Lenin makes this point in his usual replaced by a myth of a ‘Bolshevik war working class must have the support classless society. When he looked forward to the emphatic way: against the peasantry’. of the peasantry in the struggle A full democratic revolution was Russian revolution that he confidently Finally, the original logic behind against the capitalists and landlords. within reach because there existed a saw approaching, Lenin claimed that In whose hands should ‘the political steps toward socialism had been After the seizure of power, the solid “community of interest” between the proletariat and its party could vlast’ be, even from the point of view undermined. In 1917, Lenin argued in proletariat must secure for itself the worker and peasant. By the same token, play a “leadership role” if “the petty of a vulgar bourgeois democrat? effect that steps toward socialism must support of a considerable section however, the necessity of the peasant bourgeoisie [aka peasants] swing to the … In the hands of the majority of be taken now, due to the economic of the peasantry in the civil war, ally meant that a strictly socialist left at the decisive moment” (as actually the population. Do the ‘Russian crisis. But, more and more, the right up to the moment when the revolution was off the agenda - unless happened in 1917). Throughout his toiling masses’ … constitute the Bolsheviks were put on the defensive proletarian dictatorship has been an international socialist revolution wartime writings, Lenin also argued majority of the population in and forced to argue that steps toward consolidated. reshuffled the cards. The socialist that his confidence about the impending Russia? Undoubtedly they do - the socialism cannot be taken now, due to And after that? Can we really revolution could only be the work of a socialist revolution in western Europe overwhelming majority! How then, the economic crisis. As the Bolsheviks limit ourselves to regarding the proletarian party carrying out its own was based on the pre-war consensus of without betraying democracy - strove to overcome an unending peasantry only as cannon-fodder in full class interests without compromise revolutionary social democracy. even democracy as understood by a series of crises, they were forced into the fight against the capitalists and (‘dictatorship of the proletariat’). This The wartime environment added Miliukov [leader of the liberal Kadet compromise after compromise - and the large landlords? No … It must conclusion about the peasant ally two relatively new elements to Lenin’s party] - can one be opposed to the they were very aware of the fact. This be realised that the proletariat has was axiomatic for all Russian social thinking. We can conveniently discuss ‘seizure of the political vlast’ by the development has also been obscured by no choice in this. It is compelled, democrats (including Trotsky). this from the vantage point of 1917, ‘Russian toiling masses’? a myth of the historians: namely, that as it builds socialism, to carry the To jump ahead a bit: the hegemony especially State and revolution. The during so-called ‘war communism’, the peasantry with it. The proletariat tactic of proletarian class leadership economic imperatives of wartime Thus the post-February situation in Bolsheviks were filled with ‘euphoria’ must learn to do this, for, unless of the peasants, became the basis of mobilisation led to extensive state Russia did not in any way constrain at the prospect of an immediate leap it does so, it will not be able to Bolshevik victory in 1917 and during regulation, which Lenin called “steps Lenin from reaffirming the vision into full socialism. maintain its rule. the civil war. The Red Army was toward socialism”, even when they set forth in the October theses of a The Bolsheviks were thus faced with hegemony in action: a peasant army, were undertaken by ‘bourgeois’ ‘democratic’ (worker-peasant vlast) a stark challenge to their ideological Bukharin then makes explicit that fighting to protect the revolution that governments. In State and revolution, he revolution in Russia sparking off and self-definition as a de facto socialist Bolshevik loyalty to hegemony gave them land and eliminated the stated his vision of the final destination eventually merging with a Europe-wide revolution: either remain true to required serious modification of the gentry class, but taking orders from of these steps toward socialism: ‘socialist’ (proletariat-only) revolution. the pre-war axiom of revolutionary previous axioms of revolutionary an urban-based worker socialist party. The new theme of steps toward social democracy and drop the social democracy. He disingenuously And this means - to jump ahead yet The vital and burning question socialism did not change the basic claim to a socialist revolution; or portrays Lenin as rising majestically another decade - that Lenin’s attitude of present-day politics [is] the contours of Lenin’s predictive narrative, drop the axiom by declaring the above “the usual view of socialist toward the peasantry was the opposite expropriation of the capitalists, as shown by this passage from ‘A basic compatibility of socialist revolution revolution”, while failing to mention of Stalin’s forced mass collectivisation the conversion of all citizens into question’: with a worker-peasant alliance. that Lenin himself was in his day a in the 30s. In fact, during the civil war, workers and other employees of one This second claim amounted to fierce and aggressive defender of “the Lenin denounced in colourful terms any huge ‘syndicate’ - the whole state - After such measures, further steps retaining the logic of the hegemony usual view” and that his post-1919 effort by local Bolsheviks to use force and the complete subordination of towards socialism in Russia will tactic - proletarian leadership of the adjustment was made grudgingly weekly 11 worker 1298 May 7 2020 What we OBITUARY fight for under the pressure of circumstances. n Without organisation the Nevertheless, Bukharin well states the working class is nothing; with underlying issues: Transcending convention the highest form of organisation it is everything. What is the common, book-learned [knizhnyi] view of the socialist Neil Davidson: October 9 1957-May 3 2020 n There exists no real Communist revolution? It might be formulated Party today. There are many something like this: if the proletariat he death was announced on so-called ‘parties’ on the left. In is relatively small in number, May 3 of Neil Davidson, reality they are confessional sects. if it exists in a country with an perhaps the greatest historical Members who disagree with the T prescribed ‘line’ are expected to overwhelming majority of peasants sociologist of contemporary Scotland. and, consequently, with an economy It is a cliché of obituaries to write, gag themselves in public. Either based on small-scale private ‘He will be greatly missed’, but in that or face expulsion. ownership [melkoe khoziaistvo], this case we are describing a thinker n Communists operate according then this proletariat, should it come of exemplary scope, learning and to the principles of democratic to power, will never be able to cope eloquence, who is truly irreplaceable. centralism. Through ongoing debate with the enormity of the tasks, and I first met Neil at a conference we seek to achieve unity in action this proletariat will inevitably perish in Glasgow on neoliberalism, when and a common world outlook. As - one way or another. This is the he was still teaching at Strathclyde long as they support agreed actions, viewpoint that emerges from the University. I noticed his openness members should have the right to common, book-learned, schoolboy and willingness to work with others speak openly and form temporary explanation of the question of to undertake publications that would or permanent factions. socialist revolution; we have to say start to register the momentous n Communists oppose all impe- that this explanation resides - alas! - shift from a Keynesian-influenced, rialist wars and occupations but in the minds of a very wide circle of mixed-economy capitalism to constantly strive to bring to the fore the members of our own party … the financialised capitalism and the fundamental question–ending war Lenin did not see the peasantry as neoliberalism of today. From this An inquiring mind is bound up with ending capitalism. an inevitable foe intent on smashing conference he, Patricia McCafferty n Communists are internationalists. all our skulls, but as a potential ally and David Miller produced Neoliberal still all too unusual for an academic. everything he wrote, particularly Everywhere we strive for the closest who will sometimes grumble and will Scotland: class and society in a He was brought up by working class on the Stalinist counterrevolution unity and agreement of working class now and then cause the working class stateless nation (2010). The conference parents, and by grandparents who had as “state capitalist” or on political and progressive parties of all countries. some unpleasantness, but who must impressed on me that I should read been crofters near Aberdeen. After Marxism (Brenner, Post et al). But in We oppose every manifestation potentially be brought around to the more of his writing, so I started with leaving school, he went briefly to live this and subsequent books, such as of national sectionalism. It is an proletarian cause, so that it is one of his books on Scottish history, which in London, then returned to Scotland Holding fast to an image of the past internationalist duty to uphold the the component forces in our struggle seemed to me refreshingly different for an administrative job - indeed (2013), We cannot escape history principle, ‘One state, one party’. for a proletarian economic regime. from anything else I had read in that he was wittily acerbic, when one of (2014) and Nation-states (2015), he area. He had written many of his initial his critics remarked that he should went on to defend and develop his n The working class must be Another central component of Lenin’s publications on the history of Scotland have known of a particular strand of distinctive historical vision. I wrote organised globally. Without a global pre-war identity as a revolutionary - including its agrarian history - and thought about bourgeois revolutions when Holding fast came out that Communist Party, a Communist social democrat was the struggle to deservedly won the Deutscher Prize which was first introduced by Perry it was “illuminating, authoritative International, the struggle against bring political freedom to Russia. for Discovering the Scottish revolution Anderson at a Cambridge talk in 1976. and sometimes very funny …This capital is weakened and lacks In power, Lenin founded a state that (2003). He responded: “Unless you were lucky new collection fruitfully combines coordination. eliminated all political freedom, that It was a pleasure to be at his enough to attend that presentation - wide-ranging erudition with vivid n Communists have no interest is, any unfettered individual and presentation to staff when he had and sadly I was working in my first vignettes.” Indeed, this might be said apart from the working class group activity aimed at independent been shortlisted for a lectureship post-secondary school job as a clerk of all his works. as a whole. They differ only in participation in political life. He not in sociology, in the University of with the Grampian Health Board in Neil, as many will know, was a recognising the importance of only carried out (in the words of State Glasgow. Neil spoke with great fluency Aberdeen at the time - you would not long-term member of the Socialist Marxism as a guide to practice. and revolution) “suppression by force and passion about his plans for future have had access to Anderson’s thoughts Workers Party, familiar with many That theory is no dogma, but - that is, exclusion from democracy research - and what plans! In the few on the subject until it appeared in print of its leading and Scottish members. must be constantly added to and - of the exploiters and oppressors of years after his appointment he went in 1992.” After the SWP went through two enriched. the people”, but in practice he did the on to publish more books than many Neil then passed a civil service highly-divisive crises in recent years, n Capitalism in its ceaseless same for all Soviet citizens: workers, academics and writers do in a lifetime. exam to become a researcher for he left, as did many other members. search for profit puts the future peasants, intellectuals included. Reflecting subsequently on the the Scottish Executive, educating He went on to join Revolutionary of humanity at risk. Capitalism is In a thin claim for continuity it might appointment, I thought that he should himself further with a degree from Socialism in the 21st Century (RS21). synonymous with war, pollution, be argued that Lenin fought for political have been immediately upgraded to a the Open University. This early He was also a strong supporter exploitation and crisis. As a global freedom only in the case of bourgeois professorship. But at least Glasgow got formation never left him - he retained of Rise (Respect, Independence, system capitalism can only be democracy, where the socialist workers him, whilst it had notoriously failed to a strong Aberdonian accent and liked Socialism, Environmentalism) - superseded globally. were a marginalised minority. A more appoint Christopher Hill to one of the occasionally to use Scots vocabulary: the organisational offspring of the n relevant link shows itself when we history departments, when he applied thus, in his most recent, erudite Radical Independence campaign, as The capitalist class will never consider why Lenin had earlier put for a post in the late 1950s ... book, he comments on his critics’ well as of Lexit. In these respects willingly allow their wealth and such a store on the struggle for political Neil had already shown himself incompatible views: “This, in Scottish it should be pointed out that he power to be taken away by a freedom: he wanted to put into practice to be an effective teacher. He had terms, is a ‘guddle’.” became perhaps the most thoughtful parliamentary vote. the SPD model of a permanent campaign been given an award for teaching interpreter of the Scottish referendum n We will use the most militant to spread the socialist message. In power, at Strathclyde, being appreciated Revolutionary voting patterns in 2014, publishing methods objective circumstances the Bolsheviks realised that they could particularly by working class students, theory in New Left Review a memorable allow to achieve a federal republic mount even more effective state-run but by no means by them alone. In He went on from the civil service to analysis of the relation between of England, Scotland and Wales, campaigns if they used their command Glasgow, he proved also to be a highly be one of the most exciting thinkers radical independence votes and a united, federal Ireland and a over coercive resources to eliminate any collegial member of staff - giving of our time - his monumental 2012 deindustrialisation, class and gender United States of Europe. competition. The result - which might be seminar papers to the department and, book How revolutionary were the (A Scottish watershed, 2014). n Communists favour industrial called ‘state monopoly campaignism’ - more unusually, to the economics bourgeois revolutions? being an As I reflect on his contribution, unions. Bureaucracy and class was a key feature of Soviet socialism to students’ Real World Economics exhilarating analysis of the theory I see him as having been one of compromise must be fought and the very end. Society, which they had set up after the and practice of revolution - from our major Scottish - and British - the trade unions transformed into Looking back, we see that the financial crisis, as an alternative to the Harrington, Marx, Luxemburg and public intellectuals. He has written schools for communism. adjustments made by Lenin from mainstream economics of the Adam Benjamin to Trotsky and dissident extensively on the major issues of n Communists are champions of his original political identity as a Smith Society. He launched his latest followers - and encompassing in our time. Had he not got a degree the oppressed. Women’s oppression, revolutionary social democrat were books as each one appeared, opening his analysis the English, French, late, and had he been less of a combating racism and chauvinism, in aid of preserving his central and himself up to criticism by getting American and Russian revolutions. dissident voice, he would surely and the struggle for peace and unwavering loyalty to hegemony - in discussants to appraise his work, His main thesis in that book is that have been offered earlier and greater ecological sustainability are just the words of the 1894 sentence quoted sometimes critically, and responding bourgeois revolutions from below recognition. For Neil’s published as much working class questions earlier, the vision of “the Russian brilliantly, off the cuff. ceased after the American Revolution work has a scope and a capacity to as pay, trade union rights and worker, elevated to the head of all He organised a postgraduate and subsequent civil war, because transcend conventional disciplinary demands for high-quality health, democratic elements”. Thus a fitting conference on class and co-organised the dominant classes were too boundaries without - in general - ever housing and education. summary of Lenin’s view of the path to another on racism in Scotland; he frightened of these events turning into being simplistic. This is truly rare. socialism is found in the words of his participated in the Centre (now proletarian revolutions, as happened Given his capacity to blend theory n Socialism represents victory widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya, speaking Network) for Socialist Theory and in Russia. So instead societies like and empirical research, I would go so in the battle for democracy. It is at his funeral in 1924: Movements and on the University and Germany (under Bismarck), Italy far as to put him in the great traditions the rule of the working class. College Union local committee. I have (via the Risorgimento) and Japan of historians, along with Marc Socialism is either democratic or, His work [in the early 1890s] among also been at Historical Materialism (Meiji restoration) introduced Bloch, Pierre Broué, EP Thompson, as with Stalin’s Soviet Union, it the workers of Piter [St Petersburg], conferences in London, where Neil capitalism as an economic and social Christopher Hill and Eric Hobsbawm. turns into its opposite. conversations with these workers, gave papers: indeed, in 2018, as system from above, in what Gramsci Neil was also remarkable for his n Socialism is the first stage attentive listening to their speeches, many as three in a single conference! calls a “passive revolution”. He generosity of spirit and his good of the worldwide transition to gave Vladimir Ilyich an understanding The recent Uneven and Combined evaluates whether insurrectionary humour - perhaps in part because communism–a system which of the grand idea of Marx: the idea Development Conference at Glasgow events were bourgeois revolutions he was so well sustained by his knows neither wars, exploitation, that the working class is the advanced University, which he organised single- or not by whether they introduced partner, Cathie Watkins. Despite money, classes, states nor nations. detachment of all the labourers and handed in 2019, was a tour de force, capitalism, through what he terms a his formidable work routine, he Communism is general freedom that all the labouring masses, all with lectures given by the foremost “consequentialist analysis”. made time for others, not least for and the real beginning of human the oppressed, will follow it: this international scholars in this area, such This book has evoked full-length his postgraduate students, all of history. is its strength and the pledge of its as Robert Brenner, Justin Rosenberg, critical articles, to which he recently whom were devoted to him. We The Weekly Worker is licensed by victory. Only as vozhd [leader] of all Hillel Ticktin and Charles Post. It was replied in the journal, Historical have lost a modest man but one November Publications under a Creative the labourers will the working class tragic that Neil was struck down by Materialism (2019): we shall perhaps who had developed extraordinary Commons Attribution-NonCommercial l 4.0 International Licence: achieve victory … And this thought, his illness before he could deliver his come to call it ‘The Davidson abilities creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ this idea illuminated all of his later keynote paper. Debate’, just as we speak now of ‘The Bridget Fowler legalcode. ISSN 1351-0150. activity, each and every step l Neil had a background which is Brenner Debate’. I do not agree with University of Glasgow No 1298 May 7 2020 Imperial pushback against China Logic behind the madness Eddie Ford reports on the many failures of the UK and US governments coring an unwanted record, the deadly bat-derived coronaviruses (May UK now has the highest number 2). All very sinister. Sof coronavirus deaths in Europe. Everyone knows how China’s It now exceeds Italy, previously the instinctive reaction was to be less worst-hit country on the continent. But than candid about the true nature of regardless of flattening peaks and all the the viral outbreak - ingrained Stalinist rest of it, UK deaths are way beyond the habits die hard, although, of course, 20,000 which at one stage would have governments generally find it hard been judged a “good result”. to admit mistakes, as we know from There has been the controversy Britain and the US. But we are hardly last week over health secretary Matt shocked or horrified about the Wuhan Hancock’s achievement in hitting the lab studying bat viruses - we hope to target of 100,000 tests a day. There god that Imperial College London, seems to have been some statistical or a similar institute, is doing the jiggery-pokery, however, as that figure same right now. We know that bats includes multiple tests on the same are teeming with viruses, but do person and about 39,000 test kits that not get affected, making them ideal had been sent out to households and storehouses for transmission to other satellite testing locations but not yet species and from there to humans. processed. It also emerged that, of But, of course, the deliberate the 122,347 tests claimed, one third inference is that the ‘Wuhan study’ was of them - notched up in the final in order to develop biological weapons - 24-hour period before the deadline an absolutely ludicrous idea. We did not expired - were counted, even though need the current pandemic to be aware they had not been actually carried out. that the spread of such viruses cannot Ministers are facing ongoing criticism, easily be controlled and restricted to a as the number of daily tests, with the given state. But keep stirring things up pressure off, has already dropped below anyway - like the ignorant US secretary 80,000 - care home staff in particular of state, Mike Pompeo, saying on May reporting difficulties in getting home 3 that there is “enormous evidence” that kits delivered. This will all come back the coronavirus outbreak originated in a to bite the health secretary. Chinese laboratory. Not that he provided Having said that, though it is a shred of evidence. Trump himself absolutely right to question the figures, made a similar unsupported claim a few the substantial increase in the number of days earlier. He was, he said, “privy” to tests that have been carried out shows evidence of the pandemic beginning in what can be done with a concerted a Chinese lab, but was “not permitted” collective effort - the idea that the target to share it. Talk about desperation. You could be met if things were just left to would not use something like Covid-19 ‘the market’ is obviously absurd. Rather, Virus-heavy as a weapon, as it would end up killing it was a political decision requiring state your own population as well. Of course, coordination and state power. You also to transition back” to managing affairs ‘arbitrary’ coronavirus measures, which groups is to allow furloughed staff to the intelligence agencies know that - have to ask, if you can actually manage “in a more traditional manner”, because they say need to be ended as soon as work, but with a smaller state subsidy. they have informed Trump and Pompeo 100,000 virus tests a day, then why of the “tremendous progress” that has possible to ‘restore our liberties’ - Boris Figures released this week show that that there is no evidence whatsoever to can’t homelessness be tackled with the been made - an outlook terrifyingly at Johnson having promised to unveil a a total of 6.3 million workers have back up such claims. same sort of vigour? To which there odds with reality. “roadmap” for exiting the lockdown been temporarily laid off by 800,000 Clearly, given the appalling way is an obvious answer - if the political More than half the 50 states are by the end of the week. Steve Baker, companies - Boris Johnson might the virus has been handled by the US will was there, it would be sorted out now attempting to ease or escape former minister and European Research struggle to keep a lid on the situation. government, Donald Trump wants to in next to no time. As an indication of the lockdown measures, those led Group member, has branded some divert attention from home - that is why what could be done, look at the £3.2 by Republican governors wanting of the restrictions “absurd, dystopian Bats the “Chinese virus” and the Democrats’ million which magically appeared in to move more swiftly. At the same and tyrannical”. He complained that As reported before in this publication, ‘softness’ on China is going to be the emergency support for rough sleepers time we have witnessed relatively the police had begun enforcing the the right on both sides of the Atlantic line from now on. Whether that clinches - the government has pushed for the sizeable demonstrations by the far right restrictions before legislation had even is trying to demonise China over it for Trump in the election, assuming it setting up of “local coordination cells”, against the lockdown, with the aim of been passed - “stopping people on coronavirus - more driven by the goes ahead, is another matter - but for including local councils and the NHS, ‘taking back’ Michigan, New York, trains and, in one case, overturning a politics of envy than anything else, convenience sake in this period, China charged with the task of “urgently California, etc. These protests have barbecue”. given the dismal record of Britain and is going to be public enemy number procuring” accommodation for people been encouraged by Donald Trump Discontent from the right and large America on the Covid-19 question. one. on the streets and “securing access” - an extraordinary situation in many sections of business will surely grow, The latest offering, naturally enough, Trump’s behaviour may be regarded to food and medical care for rehoused respects: could you imagine previous especially if the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, appeared in The Sun, which treated us as pure irrationality and nothing else, people. Such measures were previously presidents doing such a thing? The starts to wind down the coronavirus to a “bombshell” dossier, claiming that but that would be a mistake. Behind deemed dangerously socialistic. US does show all the sign of being a furlough scheme next month - the China “lied to the world” by covering up all this is the logical imperative for an Presumably, once the epidemic is over malfunctioning state. treasury is examining several options the outbreak and laying “the foundation imperial pushback against China and or has been severely mitigated, they Then again, something not totally for tapering the scheme, including for a case” against the country for its the need to manage the relative decline will be kicked out onto the streets again dissimilar is happening in Britain, cutting the 80% wage subsidy paid by handling of the deadly disease. The of the US - he is just doing it an entirely - normal market forces restored. with increased rumbling of discontent the state to 60% and lowering the £2,500 article also claimed that a laboratory in different way from Obama l Meanwhile, the number of deaths from the Tory right and the likes of cap on monthly payments. Another Wuhan, “not far from the now infamous in the US is now over 72,000 - the Nigel Farage. They are unhappy at the idea actively promoted by employers’ wet market”, had been “studying” [email protected] highest in the world, though clearly America’s actual death rate is lower Subscribe Name:______Standing order than that in countries like the UK or 6m 1yr Inst. To ______Bank plc ______Italy, given its much higher population. 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