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A Collection of Articles by Harry Ratner

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A Collection of Articles by Harry Ratner IS THERE A FUTURE FOR SOCIALISM? A collection of articles ?by Harry Ratner INTRODUCTION ANY READERS will be familiar with Harry but have a consistent theme – the need to question Ratner’s excellent book, Reluctant what passes in Trotskyist circles for Marxist ortho- RevolutionaryM , which details the more than two doxy and face up to political reality. This is not, I decades he spent as an activist in the Trotskyist imagine, a message that will be well received in movement before breaking from it in 1960. One of some quarters. the features of the book was that, while the author Among the shibboleths Harry challenges are no longer considered himself a Trotskyist, his was the necessity for centrally planned production in a not an embittered account fuelled by personal socialist economy, the rejection of a parliamentary resentment towards the movement to which he had road to socialism, economic catastrophism, re- once committed his life. On the contrary, Harry’s ductionist views on the “class character” of the memoirs were distinguished by an admirable state, the validity of the Bolshevik revolution, both objectivity, in which he gave credit to his former in its own terms and as a model for future socialist comrades as serious and honest socialists, while struggles, and more. Even those who profoundly rejecting most of the main planks of the Trotskyist disagree with the author’s conclusions will hopefully programme. at least be provoked into re-examining their political The articles in this collection continue the assumptions. general approach of Reluctant Revolutionary, but Harry would welcome readers’ comments on in theoretical rather than autobiographical terms. the issues raised in these essays. He can be Most of them were first published in the magazines emailed at [email protected]. New Interventions and What Next? between 1991 and 2001. They cover a wide range of subjects, Bob Pitt CONTENTS Marxism and the Productive Forces (Part 1) Class, Party, Ideology and State (New Interventions Vol.2 No.1, 1991) ................1 (New Interventions Vol.7 No.1, 1996) ............. 46 Marxism and the Productive Forces (Part 2) A Programme for the Left (New Interventions Vol.2 No.2, 1991) ............... 9 (New Interventions Vol.7 No.3, 1997) ............. 55 Where Do We Go from Here? Premature and Diseased from Infancy? (New Interventions Vol.2 No.4, 1992) .............. 13 (New Interventions Vol.8 No.2, 1997-8) ........... 62 Class Consciousness and Transitional Demands Revisionist Thoughts – Reformist Conclusions (New Interventions Vol.3 No.2, 1992) .............. 16 (New Interventions Vol.8 No.3, 1998) .............. 66 State Ownership and the Transition to Socialism Bill Hunter’s Lifelong Apprenticeship – A Criticism (New Interventions Vol.4 No.1, 1993) ............. 20 (New Interventions Vol.8 No.3, 1998) ............. 72 Marxism and Determinism The Transitional Programme Reassessed (New Interventions Vol.4 No.2, 1993) ............. 26 (What Next? No.12, 1999) ............................ 76 Labour and the Economy Historical Materialism – A Critical Look at Some of (New Interventions Vol.4 No.3, 1993) ............. 34 Its Aspects (New Interventions Vol.10 No.2, 2000) ............ 81 Feasible Socialism – Market or Plan or Both? (New Interventions Vol.5 No.2, 1994) ............. 37 The Fourth International in Perspective (What Next? No.18, 2001) ............................ 89 A Balance Sheet of Trotskyism (From Reluctant Revolutionary) ..................... 44 Marxism and the Productive Forces (Part 1) Limit to Growth – Collapse? survived (as it did) the revolutionary wave Marx and Engels’ description of how capitalism unleashed by the war, its potential for economic becomes a fetter on the productive forces has been growth was at an end. This assumption was interpreted as meaning that capitalism has reached central to the theses of the first four Congresses (or will reach) a stage of decay when any further of the Third International. Any upward cyclical growth in production becomes impossible, misery fluctuations would be limited and short-lived. The increases and the working class suffers a Stalinists’ “Third Period” policies were based on permanent and generalised reduction in its the assumption that the “final crisis” was at hand, standard of living. Trotskyists generally reject the and the 1929 Wall Street crash and the ensuing crude economic reductionist view that capitalism slump seemed to confirm this. While the Trotskyist will “collapse automatically”, because of purely Opposition challenged the political aspects of this economic factors, and recognise that it will “Third Period” line – its concept of social-fascism, ultimately have to be destroyed politically by the its ultra-left “United Front from below” tactics etc working class seizure of political power. – it did not to my knowledge challenge the basic Nevertheless, many make their perspectives for economic premises. revolutionary upsurge dependent on the above Then, when capitalism survived the Second cataclysmic economic perspectives and equate World War, no one envisaged the possibility of a revolutionary situations with economic crises in new upsurge of capitalism. In 1938 Trotsky wrote: an over-simplistic manner. I think this cataclysmic “Naturally, if a new war ends only in the military theory is wrong and at the root of repeated errors victory of this or that imperialist camp; if the war and disappointments. I do not think these calls forth neither a revolutionary uprising nor a conclusions can justifiably be drawn from the victory of the proletariat ... the further, frightful model of the capitalist economy built up by Marx decomposition of capitalism will drag all people and Engels. backwards for decades to come.” (“A Fresh Marx’s model indicates that the capitalist mode Lesson”, October 1938, in Writings of Leon Trotsky of production constitutes a relative rather than an 1938-39, 1974, p.63.) absolute barrier to growth and that while cyclical The Fourth International’s post-war crises are inherent in capitalism there is nothing perspectives denying the possibility of capitalist to indicate that after such crises production stabilisation flowed from their basic economic cannot attain higher levels. The exploitation, analysis: “The decay of capitalism and the wastefulness and avoidable misery generated acuteness of class conflicts, forbids another by capitalism; the growing gap between the extended period of bourgeois democracy.... While conditions of today and the possibilities of interim bourgeois-democratic regimes may be set abundance if modern technology and the up here and there as by-products of uncompleted productive forces were rationally used for the revolutionary movements, they must, by their very benefit of society rather than for profit, provide nature, prove unstable and short-lived…. the adequate justification for its replacement by a economic preconditions for an extended period of communist society without recourse to bourgeois democracy have disappeared.” (Quoted in cataclysmic perspectives. Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson, War and the Many Marxists believed that the 1914-18 war International, 1986, p.173, my emphasis – HR.) The marked the end of the road for capitalism. Up till British Revolutionary Communist Party’s August then the advanced capitalist nations could find an 1946 Congress resolution on “The Coming outlet for their surplus capital and commodities Struggles in Industry” stated: “Despite the in colonial expansion. The 1914-18 war indicated possibility of a temporary post-war ‘boom’, lasting that the world had now been divided up, and that for one or two years ... we are now standing on any further expansion by one imperialist power the threshold of the greatest crisis yet witnessed.... could only be at the expense of others. If capitalism Those who imagine that they will return to pre- 1 1939 live in a fool’s paradise.” (RCP Conference the production and realization of profit, not by Decisions pamphlet, p.28.) As for the RCP Minority the satisfaction of social needs.” (Capital, Vol.III, (the Healy group, to which I belonged) we Chapter 15.) steadfastly refused to recognise the reality that was Note that Marx speaks of periodical – not staring us in the face. Year after year throughout permanent – overproduction. Secondly he writes: the post-war boom our perspectives documents “The capitalist mode of production ... meets with spoke of actual or imminent economic and social barriers ... which would be inadequate under different collapse. conditions” (my emphasis – HR), i.e. in relation to The boom lasted until the 1970s. All the main what could be produced under other conditions, indices of production in the capitalist world have e.g. a rationally planned economy “determined by well surpassed and are still well above pre-war social needs”. levels despite the recent recession. We were wrong Let us look in more detail how the periodical about 1914, wrong about the 1930s, wrong about overproduction Marx refers to comes about. The the post-war period. Was this because we were essential feature of capitalist production is mistaken merely in our timing, ignoring secondary encapsulated by Marx in the formula c + v + s factors which might have delayed the crisis, or which makes up the value of the commodities was it because of more serious theoretical errors? produced. As Marx points out commodities do not I think we need to re-examine Marxist economic actually sell at their value but at a “price of theory to see whether it
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