Thursday 4 October 2007

Marxists and the Workers Party

Communists and Proletarians


“In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?  The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.

They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.  They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.”

(Marx and Engels – “Manifesto of the Communist Party”)

With these words Marx and Engels set out clearly the position of Marxists in relation to the Workers Party. Yet, despite the clarity, despite the complete lack of ambiguity, set out in this position, Marxists have consistently set up parties, and more often sects, directly opposed to the real workers parties, have consistently made a fetish of their own sectarian principles as the only ones capable of shaping and moulding the proletarian movement, and have consistently placed their own interests above that of the movement as a whole.

Its no wonder that Marx himself was led to comment in the face of such “Marxists” that “if this is Marxism, then I am no Marxist.”

Enter the Working Class


From the very beginning, the socialist movement was divided amongst a rag-tag of sects, each convinced that it alone had the Philosopher’s Stone, the key that would unlock the door to proletarian revolution. Only when the working-class itself begins to enter the fray, first via the Chartist Movement, and later in the growth of mass working class parties, particularly in Germany, does this infantilism begin to be pushed to the fringes of the Movement, and the basis for the kind of fusion, envisioned by Marx and Engels, of Marxist ideas with a mass workers party begin to take hold. It is no coincidence that it is during this period that, not only are the greatest leaps forward in proletarian science to be witnessed, but alongside them a huge development of the working class movement itself.

The Sectarians


Yet, even then, there were “Marxists” who found some reason or another to stand aside from this real movement, finding solace in their own cocoon of Marxist purity, where the harsh realities of the class struggle could be ignored in favour of petit-bourgeois, romantic fantasies of some “pure” socialist movement, and revolution, just as the religious zealots are forced, time and again, to succumb to schism as one group after another discovers that only it is the defender of the true faith. Engels himself was led to comment on some of these organisations in Britain such as the SDF, which was to ossify into the Socialist Party of Great Britain, a party which has been one of the clearest examples of how “Marxists” have ignored the advice and teaching of Marx and Engels.  Engels advised his supporters, like Eleanor Marx, to avoid them like the plague, and orientate directly, instead, to the working-class masses, found in the Liberal Clubs.

What the Marxists Are


Certainly, the Marxists have to be an organised force. How else could they develop their own ideas and thereby seek to influence, educate and develop the workers movement.

“The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.”

(ibid)

But, the Marxists are precisely that a section of the workers party, its resolute Left-Wing, they are not another party standing in opposition to it, nor even, as has been the Trotskyist perspective in the Entryist tactic, another party simply masquerading as part of the Workers Party, whether for the purpose of seeking, like a cuckoo, to ultimately substitute itself for that party, or else, in its alternate variant, simply seeking to party build prior to splitting the Workers Party for its own sectarian ends.

Marxists and the Workers Parties Today


The latest example of this sectarianism has been the attitude of Marxist organisations, over the last ten years or so, to the Labour Party, but similar traits can be seen in the positions of Marxists elsewhere to Workers Parties, see the discussion in relation to Germany here.  It’s the reason no mass Workers Party in the US has developed, its closest approximation being the Democrats. 

Its true that there will be times when those parties to which the workers have, traditionally, given their allegiance become obsolete, that out of them grow new parties more closely associated with the working class, such as the development of the Labour Party effectively out of the old Liberal Party, but such developments must occur naturally, organically, as a result of the working class itself growing out of these parties, its class consciousness developing to a stage in which its ideas are no longer compatible with those of the old party. But, all too often, it has been Marxists themselves that have grown weary of the old Party, and sought to artificially create something new. The history is one which is symptomatic of the failure of Marxists to adhere to Marx and Engels advice, and the damage that has been done to the Workers Movement over the last 100 years as a consequence.

Two Types of Sectarianism


During the 1970’s, and early 1980’s, there was a revival of Marxist ideas. Indeed, the revival had begun in the 1960’s, but, by the 1970’s, it had led to the development of some sizeable organisations. Of these the “Third Campist” International Socialists (now SWP) was probably the largest. But, a consequence of the IS’s Third Camp political tradition was an innate “Economism”. Its disdain of any political organisation that did not match up to its model of political purity, that did not represent the politics only of “independent working class action” led it to oppose any involvement in the Labour Party – a party which acted in the interests of capitalism, was riddled with bourgeois ideology, which was committed to a reformist transformation of society, and, for much of the 1960’s and 70’s, was a party which was, in the majority of cases, organisationally moribund, with large paper memberships, but a largely empty shell of activists, and which, as a consequence, was extremely undemocratic, and bureaucratised. The flip side of this semi-anarchistic, syndicalist politics was its emersion in the industrial struggle, in the trades union struggle, a struggle which, by definition, is limited and reformist to the core, and, as with most organisations of the “Trostskyist” movement, also in the student movement, a movement, which, again, by definition, acts as a transmission belt of petit-bourgeois ideas into the workers movement.

The consequence of the IS’s politics was that, once again, a huge opportunity for Marxists to connect with the workers, in political struggle, was lost, and the ideological field of battle was largely surrendered, without a fight, to the right-wing leaders of that movement. The farce was that, at election times, the SWP were left, having abstained from the real political struggle of workers, inside the Labour Party, calling on workers to vote – often uncritically – for that same Labour Party, and the reality of their own relationship to the class manifested, whenever they did stand candidates, by their totally derisory number of votes.

The IS’s industrial activity was not without some objective basis. From around 1949 onwards the world economy had been in a 25 year long wave upswing. Typical of such periods, the increasing demand for labour enables, after a number of years, workers to demand and obtain higher wages, and better conditions. Such successes necessarily imbue the class with greater confidence, but also engender the idea that industrial struggle is all that is important, all that is required. A well organised group can in such conditions make headway in gaining positions within the trades unions, where very small numbers of activists often determine who is elected. 

Revolutionaries, by definition, are the most active, most militant members of the class, and it is these attributes that workers see as important, in electing their union representatives. But, the concomitant of this is that these revolutionaries replace political electoralism – a seeking of parliamentary votes – with industrial electoralism. Rather than being activist organisations geared to mobilising independent, direct action by rank and file members, the Rank and File, and Broad Left organisations developed, instead, as almost entirely electoral machines, geared to getting slates of revolutionaries elected to union positions. The other concomitant is that, having got themselves elected, the revolutionaries were then able to fool themselves into believing that this represented some sea change in class consciousness when, in fact, it was quite clear that few, if any, of the politics of the revolutionaries were shared by the rank and file members they had been elected to represent.

Of course, this type of politics, which flows, directly, from the ideas of the Shachtmanite/Burnhamite Third Camp, is fine, in periods when the working class is relatively strong, when such petit-bourgeois organisations can themselves experience some growth, and the appearance of success, but, once a conjunctural turn sets in, such organisations find themselves all the more cut adrift from the real working class, their perspectives completely disorganised, their frustration and demoralisation all the greater. Ultimately, they are forced to justify their own separate existence merely in terms of their political objectives, but now, with the force that should, for any Marxist, be at the centre of the strategy for the accomplishment of those objectives – the working class – in retreat, they are forced to simply mouth the mantras about “independent working class action”, whilst, in reality, looking to, and, at worst, allying themselves with other forces, to achieve these aims.

Without exception, those forces that have developed in the tradition of Third Campism have, in the last period of downturn, been led to abandon the centrality of the working class, in practice if not in their propaganda. In Britain, the SWP stand at one end of this spectrum allying themselves with the Islamists, at the other is the Euston Manifesto Group, allying itself, directly, with the bourgeois liberals, and, in the middle, groups like the AWL, which look to a progressive bourgeois democracy, or democratic imperialism, to provide solutions they are unable to mobilise the working class for, whilst, like Pontius Pilate, washing their hands of any responsibility for these forces, when, not unexpectedly, they fail to act progressively.

The other major organisation was the Militant Tendency, which in contrast to the IS did employ an Entryist tactic in the Labour Party. But, it was precisely that, a tactic. This was not Marxists being honest, genuine members of the Labour Party, seeking to develop that party with no separate interests of their own, as Marx and Engels had advised. This was a Party which sought to do nothing but build its own membership, to pursue its own goals, separate from those of the Party, and often at the expense of it, and the workers movement as a whole. One of the classic examples of that was the spectacle during the Miners Strike of 1984, of Militant members on marches carrying buckets to collect money not for the Miners, but for the Militant!

That is not to say that members of the Militant were not as assiduous in getting themselves elected to GC’s and other Labour Party bodies as IS militants were in getting themselves elected to trades union positions (the Militant too placed great store in such industrial work, a reflection of the fact that they remained more in the Marxist tradition than did the IS), or that, come election time, Militant members were not very active in canvassing – a good opportunity to sell papers and make contacts – and that, as a result, many individuals were held in some esteem by ordinary Leftish members of the Party.

But, as with other organisations adopting the Entryist tactic, the guiding motto had been established by Lenin long ago, at the beginning of the twentieth century, in his advice to the British Communists to “support the Labour Party like a rope supports a hanged man”. For the thousands of Labour Party members who considered this to be their party, placing its future in the hands of such executioners was, understandably, not a prospect to be cherished, and so, whatever their affinity to this or that individual, of such organisations, when it came to the crunch, the Kinnockite witch hunters were able to go about their business without a huge rebellion, though they were helped in great measure by the failure to fight, or to adopt alternative tactics by the revolutionaries, who, once again, sank back into the obscurity, and, now, near oblivion of the comfort zone of the pure microsect.

Upside Down Politics


And, having sunk back into this existence, every development can be turned to justify why it is, in fact, a principled position to adopt, why the moribund, undemocratic nature of the Labour Party, today, means that it is next to pointless for Marxists to fulfil their duty, as outlined by Marx and Engels, ignoring the work of the Marxists, in the Labour Party, in the 1960’s and 70’s, which was equally, if not more, moribund and bureaucratic.

The latest example, is the Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth, and the rule changes introduced in relation to party democracy and the conference. The response to these changes is a clear example of what is wrong with the Left. It is a repetition of that industrial electoralism of the IS of the 1960’s and 70’s, but now the focus is transferred into the Labour Party.  Instead of the focus of activity being the election of union representatives, the focus is, instead, the rather limited one, of being able to get motions discussed at party conference – presumably for no better reason than the opportunity of embarrassing the leadership if they get defeated. That’s no longer possible? Labour Party work is no longer possible, or at least worthwhile, then, concludes the sectarian.

But the whole purpose of Marxists activity in the labour movement in the trades unions, or the Workers Party, is not this. It is to work alongside the working class in ways which encourage its own self activity. Very little of that, on a day to day basis, has anything whatsoever to do with whether this or that motion is passed at Labour Party conference. In fact, it is to have an upside down view of working class politics. Getting this or that resolution passed (just as getting this or that revolutionary elected to a union position) only means anything if it is the result of a huge groundswell of support for that measure within the class, and that requires not manipulation or Leninist organisational skills to get things passed, or people elected, but the slow boring job of arguing, day after day, with ordinary real workers, and not just those activists who already in large part hold the same views as those seeking to influence them.

But how is that slow laborious work to be done unless Marxists are in the Labour Party discussing those ideas, selflessly building the party, at a rank and file level, drawing workers into it from the limited arena of industrial struggle. Yes, political discussions can be undertaken in the workplace, or in the community organisation, but, as used to be pointed out to the IS, by Marxists, once, such discussions are pointless, unless those workers can, then, be drawn into a wider political arena – and that arena cannot be some tiny sect.

A good example, was the McDonell campaign. It was almost like de ja vu all over again with Marxist organisations, largely, if not entirely, outside the Labour Party, organisations which, day after day, thrill over their depiction of the moribund nature of the Labour Party, then calling on workers to join the Labour Party and support McDonnell, whilst they remain aloof outside it!!! Talk about lions led by donkeys. With organisations that once criticised the IS for similar follies acting this way it was history repeating itself as farce.

Marx and Engels Against the Sectarians


In contrast to the sectarianism of many of the post-Marx Marxists, Marx and Engels set out their own position clearly.

“The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-Democrats against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution.

In Switzerland, they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the fact that this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois.

In Poland, they support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution as the prime condition for national emancipation, that party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846.

In Germany, they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie.”

In short, Marx and Engels description of a Workers' Party was not some dogmatic, programmatic definition, let alone the insistence, made later, by Leninists, that such a party should be some “pure” Marxist party. It was the straightforward definition of those parties which attracted the support of the working-class. In Germany, Marx and Engels, themselves, joined the Democratic Party, an openly bourgeois Party, but which attracted the support of workers, becoming, as they described it, its Left-Wing.

Later, and using this experience as his reference, along with the advice he and Marx had given in The Communist Manifesto, Engels wrote to Marxists in the US advising them on the approach they should adopt. Some Leninists claim that Marx and Engels, in later life, changed their position from that outlined in The Communist Manifesto, that they regretted their joining the Democrats in 1848. But that is the argument Leninists have to make in order to justify their Leninism (which Lenin would probably have treated in similar vein to Marx - "If this is Leninism, then, I am no Leninist!").   The fact is that, even towards the end of his life, Engels adhered to the principles previously outlined, as his letter of 1887 below makes clear.

London, January 27, 1887

”When we returned to Germany, in spring 1848, we joined the Democratic Party as the only possible means of getting the ear of the working class; we were the most advanced wing of that party, but still a wing of it. When Marx founded the International, he drew up the General Rules in such a way that all working-class socialists of that period could join it -- Proudhonists, Pierre Lerouxists and even the more advanced section of the English Trades Unions; and it was only through this latitude that the International became what it was, the means of gradually dissolving and absorbing all these minor sects, with the exception of the Anarchists, whose sudden appearance in various countries was but the effect of the violent bourgeois reaction after the Commune and could therefore safely be left by us to die out of itself, as it did. Had we from 1864, to 1873 insisted on working together only with those who openly adopted our platform where should we be to-day? I think that all our practice has shown that it is possible to work along with the general movement of the working class at every one of its stages without giving up or hiding our own distinct position and even organisation, and I am afraid that if the German Americans choose a different line they will commit a great mistake.”

Source:


Historical Materialism in Practice


Its important, again, here, to take account of the times. Marx and Engels had arrived at their theory of historical materialism around the same time that the Chartist Movement had, in fact, reached its highest level. The working class had been going through a period of defensive struggles since the beginning of the long wave downturn, which ended around 1843. It was not surprising that its activity had been forced to look for political solutions such as the Charter. It is not surprising that, in place of purely economistic, trades union solutions, it is in this period that the working class is re-armed with new political ideas such as Marxism.

Nor is it accidental that, in the period of upswing arising from 1843 that Marx and Engels have success, using the strategy they have outlined, in keying into the rising tide of militancy, the growing confidence and combativity of the working class, and forging the beginnings of the first conscious political organisations of the working-class in the shape of The First International.

It is also instructive to see how Marx and Engels' ideas about the nature of such political organisations changed during this period away from the forms such as The League of the Just, which represented a legacy of Hegelianism (the idea that social change is brought about through the discovery, the unfolding of the idea, by a select few intellectuals or advanced elements), with The Communist League occupying an intermediate position, and towards the real working class party that was, as Engels puts it, one with great latitude.

“However, the social doctrine of the League, indefinite as it was, contained a very great defect, but one that had its roots in the conditions themselves. The members, in so far as they were workers at all, were almost exclusively artisans.”

Engels is full of praise for these artisans who, given the objective reality of their petit-bourgeois nature, could not yet have formed the proletarian party, but this petit-bourgeois politics was necessarily limited, subjective and moralistic. It, basically, represented a petit-bourgeois view of the world, seen in the approach of some organisations, today, that moralises over this or that injustice, and concludes “something must be done”. An example is that of Albert Glotzer as outlined in my critique here.

“But it was also inevitable that their old handicraft prejudices should be a stumbling block to them at every moment, whenever it was a question of criticizing existing society in detail, that is, of investigating economic facts. And I do not believe there was a single man in the whole League at that time who had ever read a book on political economy. But that mattered little; for the time being “equality”, “brotherhood” and “justice” helped them to surmount every theoretical obstacle.”

But today, as Marx’s critique of this kind of petit-bourgeois socialism demonstrated, reliance on this socialist morality as a guide to action, on the principles of “equality”, “brotherhood”, and “justice”, are no longer adequate. Yet, despite the passage of more than 150 years, the conditions remain remarkably similar, the difference being that today’s petit-bourgeois socialists call themselves Marxists, and rather than their petit-bourgeois nature deriving from them being artisans, it derives from their background as students, ex-students and intellectuals, separated in large part from the real working-class.

“Meanwhile a second, essentially different Communism was developed alongside that of the League and of Weitling. While I was in Manchester, it was tangibly brought home to me that the economic facts, which have so far played no role or only a contemptible one in the writing of history, are, at least in the modern world, a decisive historical force; that they form the basis of the origination of the present-day class antagonisms; that these class antagonisms, in the countries where they have become fully developed, thanks to large-scale industry, hence especially in England, are in their turn the basis of the formation of political parties and of party struggles, and thus of all political history. Marx had not only arrived at the same view, but had already, in the Deutsche-Französische Jahrbücher (1844), generalized it to the effect that, speaking generally, it is not the state which conditions and regulates the civil society at all, but civil society which conditions and regulates the state, and, consequently, that policy and its history are to be explained from the economic relations and their development, and not vice versa. … Communism among the French and Germans, Chartism among the English, now no longer appeared as something accidental, which could just as well not have occurred. These movements now presented themselves as a movement of the modern oppressed class, the proletariat, as the more or less developed forms of its historically necessary struggle against the ruling class, the bourgeoisie; as forms of the class struggle, but distinguished from all earlier class struggles by this one thing, that the present-day oppressed class the proletariat, cannot achieve its emancipation without at the same time emancipating society as a whole from division into classes and, therefore, from class struggles. And Communism now no longer meant the concoction, by means of the imagination, of an ideal society as perfect as possible, but insight into the nature, the conditions and the consequent general aims of the struggle waged by the proletariat.”

(Engels – “History of the Communist League”)

Leninism the Highest Stage of Sectarianism


History never proceeds in a straight line. In fact, it is almost like a law of history that, just at the moment when everything seems to be moving ahead strongly, an unforeseen event arises that switches the historical tracks. By the end of the 19th century, large socialist movements existed in much of Europe. In Continental Europe, these parties were, already, largely established as parties in which the ideas of Marxism were prevalent. Partly, that was a result of their different development from the origin of the Labour Party, in Britain, which developed out of the Liberal Party, on the backs of the trades unions, and which, as a consequence, from the beginning imprinted upon it, their own reformist politics.

In Germany, the Social Democrats were a party organising hundreds of thousands of workers as activists, and gaining the support of millions more. Already, with electoral success, the steady progress of the movement engendered the idea that socialism could be brought about, gradually, through parliamentary action, at the top, once again relegating the self-activity of the class to a secondary consideration. 

It shared a common approach to the development of socialism with Leninism, a reliance on action from above, on statism, a throw back to ideas first presented in The Communist Manifesto, and retained by Lassalle, ideas that had been rejected by Marx and Engels in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, where Marx rejects such a statist approach in favour of the self activity and self reliance of the working class on its own organisations, a position Marx was to outline in Vol. III of Capital, where he sets out the role of workers co-operatives, spreading progressively throughout the economy, as the basis of the socialist transformation of society, as the basis of the real social revolution, the transformation of private into collective, co-operatively owned property.

But, it was partly in response to the spread of these revisionist, reformist ideas that Leninism arises. That Lenin should take a step back from the position arrived at by Marx and Engels, in the conception of what should constitute the proletarian revolutionary party, is not that surprising using the Marxist method.

Lenin found himself in Russia, in conditions similar to those that Marx and Engels had found themselves in, in Germany, at the time of The League of the Just. The Russian working class was very small, the forces of Marxism tiny, and, to make matters worse, there was a terrible police state in place that made any kind of legal political activity almost impossible.

Although, especially after his own brother was executed for an attempt on the life of the Tsar, Lenin made clear his opposition to such terrorist tactics, as an alternative to the building of a workers party, he also retained a strong affinity to the bravery of such people, and refused to renounce the possibility of using such tactics when appropriate. Lenin was, above all else, a revolutionary in the tradition of the revolutionaries of the Great French Revolution, a revolutionary for whom revolution is all about the mobilisation of violence for political ends, and for whom politics dominates all, the revolutionary optimist for whom everything is possible, if only sufficient political will is mustered to achieve it.

With his eye set firmly on that goal, Lenin set himself the task of building an organisation capable of bringing that end about. He admired Cromwell, and his ideas and the party that Lenin developed has many of the features that Cromwell’s New Model Army displayed. Unfortunately, history was to repeat itself once again. Cromwell and The New Model Army was necessary, because the English bourgeoisie was too immature to secure social hegemony, let alone political hegemony, for itself. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were needed because the same was true of the Russian proletariat. Cromwell’s premature revolution led to the Bonapartist regime of The Protectorate, ultimately to see the restoration of feudal aristocratic rule. Lenin’s premature revolution saw the Bonapartist regime of Stalin, and its ultimate demise and the capitalist restoration.

Lenin’s view of the Marxist theory of the Workers Party is, as a result, necessarily one sided. Time and again Lenin refers to the ideological debates of the past, the insistence on theoretical precision of Marx and Engels, yet fails to place this in the appropriate context that, at all times, for Marx and Engels, the primary focus was on the building of the Workers Party on as broad a scale as possible, on maintaining the unity of that movement almost at all costs, and not trying to force the movement to adopt positions it was not ready to accept, that, as yet, it did not understand.

Compare Lenin’s position as outlined in “What is to be Done?” with the advice given by Engels to the Marxists in the US.

"….It is far more important that the movement should spread, proceed harmoniously, take root and embrace as much as possible the whole American proletariat, than that it should start and proceed from the beginning on theoretically perfectly correct lines. There is no better road to theoretical clearness of comprehension than "durch Schaden klug tererden" [to learn by one's own mistakes]. And for a whole large class, there is no other road, especially for a nation so eminently practical as the Americans. The great thing is to get the working class to move as a class; that once obtained, they will soon find the right direction, and all who resist, H.G. or Powderly, will be left out in the cold with small sects of their own.”

Engels, here, could have been speaking about the "Leninist" organisations of the last 80 years or so that, having abandoned his and Marx’s advice, have increasingly found themselves relegated to small sects, out in the cold. It was only historical circumstance that prevented that fate accruing to Lenin himself.

Lenin quotes Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme, but leaves aside the more important point that Marx, despite his railing against the inadequacy of that programme, of the fact that the Eisenachers had made unnecessary concessions to the Lassalleans, that there were elements in the programme that would have been better simply left out, rather than accept incorrect formulations, despite all this, Marx still commented that “one step of real progress is worth a dozen Programmes.” Lenin was also heavily influenced by Engels’ “Anti-Duhring” another masterpiece of polemic. But “Anti-Duhring” was written by Engels for a specific purpose, and one that speaks against Lenin’s exclusivism.

Duhring was leading a faction in the German Party that was heading towards a split. Engels stated reason for writing Anti-Duhring was not in order to heighten the tension and division in the party, but to try to reduce the damage that such a split might cause, to try to minimise the number that Duhring might take with him.


“The following work is by no means the fruit of any "inner urge". On the contrary.

When three years ago Herr Dühring, as an adept and at the same time a reformer of socialism, suddenly issued his challenge to his age, friends in Germany repeatedly urged on me their desire that I should subject this new socialist theory to a critical examination in the central organ of the Social Democratic Party, at that time the Volksstaat. They thought this absolutely necessary if the occasion for sectarian divisions and confusions were not once again to arise within the Party, which was still so young and had but just achieved definite unity.”

(Engels original Preface to “Anti-Duhring”)

Hence, completely in line with the attitude of Marx and Engels to the development of the Workers Party, and the role of Marxists within it, previously outlined, Engels is, here, far from wanting to purify the German Workers Party, but, on the contrary, cherishes the unity that had been so recently won, even on its inadequate programmatic basis, and wishes to oppose the sectarian splitters.

But, there is another aspect of Lenin’s position that has to be taken into consideration. By the time Lenin comes to write, “What is to be Done?”, in 1903, much of these discussions are a thing of the past. The German Social Democrats that Lenin takes as his model in that work had developed rapidly, and become a mass workers party led by Marxists. It is not surprising then that he should view the task as being the development of a workers' party that is, at the same time, a Marxist Party.

But this attitude, together with his determination that this party must, at least in Russia, have its eye set firmly on the task of political revolution, even if, at first, that revolution is to be a bourgeois democratic revolution, leads him to the conclusion that this party must be highly disciplined, must not allow “freedom of criticism” that might introduce revisionist ideas, and must purge itself of such elements. It is from these beginnings that, in the context of the developments of the next decade, and particularly of the outbreak of World War I, and the collapse of the main workers parties into nationalism, that Lenin is forced to conclude that separate “pure” Communist Parties have to be built.

Historical Accident


Lenin did stick with the basic principle, outlined by Marx and Engels, that the Marxists should stick with the workers, should patiently explain to them. But, for Lenin, this was seen more as the workers being expected to stick with the Marxists, a manifestation of his revolutionary optimism that the correct politics of the communists would necessarily cause the workers to rally to their banner, a big mistake, and one recognised by Marx and Engels, earlier, who warned against trying to force the pace, of asking the workers to adopt positions they did not yet understand.

Trotsky too was to apply this method. In a clear refutation to those that now complain about the difficult conditions for work in the Labour Party, Trotsky, in the far more difficult conditions of the Russian Communist Party of the 1920’s, when the organisation dealt with criticism by beating up and shooting its critics, when Trotsky was banned from publishing various articles, when he was whistled and spat at, when trying to make speeches at party meetings etc., still maintained that Marxists had to remain within that party, in order to stick with the workers, and harshly criticised those that wanted to take the easy option of removing themselves from it.

And to be fair to Lenin, in 1917, there was some basis for making such an argument. It was not at all inconceivable that such parties could become the main workers parties supplanting the existing parties of The Second International. It was still a sectarian stance, and one that was rapidly to be shown to be false, but not entirely unreasonable. In many ways, it is unfortunate that historical accident should have given the false impression that such a development was possible, unfortunate too that at least two of the most gifted Marxists of the time should find themselves in revolutionary Russia, and, with the impetus of that great revolution, should find themselves thrust forward into the developments that would so tragically split the workers movement, to such catastrophic effect, in the years that followed.

What is unreasonable is for subsequent “Leninists” to think that their micro sects are in any way compatible with the forces that Lenin was looking to, at the beginning of the last century, that historical conditions are anything like compatible, and that they can, therefore, consider any alternative to that set out in the far more comparable circumstances, of the late 19th century, by Marx and Engels, to put all their resources into building, selflessly, the workers parties, on however an inadequate a basis, in however difficult the conditions for such work, within those parties. The most important task for Marxists, in the current period, is the political, ideological and organisational rearmament of the working class. Such political work can only be undertaken in the mass political parties of the class, however inadequate those parties might be. Indeed, it is that inadequacy that makes the importance of the work all the greater.

The Relevance of Engels Advice Today


The advice given by Engels to the US socialists from that time applies with renewed force today.

“…What the Germans ought to do is to act up to their own theory --if they understand it, as we did in 1845 and 1848--to go in for any real general working-class movement, accept its faktische starting points as such and work it gradually up to the theoretical level by pointing out how every mistake made, every reverse suffered, was a necessary consequence of mistaken theoretical views in the original programme; they ought, in the words of The Communist Manifesto, to represent the movement of the future in the movement of the present. But above all give the movement time to consolidate, do not make the inevitable confusion of the first start worse confounded by forcing down people's throats things which at present they cannot properly understand, but which they soon will learn. A million or two of workingmen's votes next November for a bona fide workingmen's party is worth infinitely more at present than a hundred thousand votes for a doctrinally perfect platform.”

“…But anything that might delay or prevent that national consolidation of the workingmen's party--no matter what platform--I should consider a great mistake…”


“…To bring about this result, the unification of the various independent bodies into one national Labour Army, with no matter how inadequate a provisional platform, provided it be a truly working-class platform — that is the next great step to be accomplished in America. To effect this, and to make that platform worthy of the cause, the Socialist Labour Party can contribute a great deal, if they will only act in the same way as the European Socialists have acted at the time when they were but a small minority of the working class. That line of action was first laid down in the “Communist Manifesto” of 1847 in the following words:

“The Communists” — that was the name we took at the time and which even now we are far from repudiating — “the Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties.”

“They have no interests separate and apart from the interests of the whole working class.

“They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and model the proletarian movement…..”

“…That is the line of action which the great founder of Modern Socialism, Karl Marx, and with him, I and the Socialists of all nations who worked along with us, have followed for more than forty years, with the result that it has led to victory everywhere, and that at this moment the mass of European Socialists, in Germany and in France, in Belgium, Holland and Switzerland, in Denmark and Sweden as well as in Spain and Portugal, are fighting as one common army under one and the same flag.”


Were Marx and Engels worried about joining a bourgeois party? No. "When we returned to Germany, in spring 1848, we joined the Democratic Party as the only possible means of getting the ear of the working class; we were the most advanced wing of that party, but still a wing of it."

Were Marx and Engels insistent upon having a party with the most pure socialist programme? No. "When Marx founded the International, he drew up the General Rules in such a way that all working-class socialists of that period could join it -- Proudhonists, Pierre Lerouxists and even the more advanced section of the English Trades Unions; and it was only through this latitude that the International became what it was, the means of gradually dissolving and absorbing all these minor sects,"

On the contrary, Marx and Engels' primary concern was to be where the workers were - not where they wanted them to be. Their attitude was based entirely on historical materialism - analysing things as they actually were, not as they wanted them to be, and, from that starting point, trying to gradually work the movement up to what they wanted it to become.

It is unfortunate that the legacy of Leninist Hegelianism has diverted Marxists from that task, has led them to forget that it is the working class which is the revolutionary agent, and, instead, has led them to try to seek shortcuts through the creation of pure revolutionary parties. It has been not just 80 years wasted, but 80 years which has resulted in the regression rather than progression of working class consciousness.

17 comments:

ajohnstone said...

As you are so fond of quotations ,this one from the 1850 Communist League Address should indicate to you that the political independence from anti-working class political parties who masquerade as acting on behalf of the proletariat should indicate that the SPGB case of hostility to non-socialistist parties has its foundations within early Marxist theory .

"...that workers' candidates are nominated everywhere in opposition to bourgeois-democratic candidates. As far as possible they should be League members and their election should be pursued by all possible means. Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention.They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers' candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled."

The ossification of the SDF you refer to seems more to be associated with the constant re-branding and the constant attempts to form electoral alliances for political opportunism and a supposed voice in decision making that has plagued the Left since Lib-Lab pacts of the turn of the century to the SWP/MAB coalition of today's RESPECT.

Compared with the political acrobatics of the Left , the steadfast politics of the SPGB has always been refreshing .

The wasted 80 years you talk about has been the cul de sac of Bernstein revisionism that permeated social democracy and came to dominate the Left - "the movement is everything, the final goal is nothing,"

Just how many self styled socialist parties place the realisation of socialism at the forefront of its programme - as does the SPGB

Anonymous said...

So, what is to be done?

Sean.

hallblithe said...

Hi!

If in the unlikely event readers do not find ajohnstone's comment convincing, here is some further evidence from a member of the SPGB:

As a true socialist I am not interested in the personal possession
of my own product and just do it as it is part of my nature, like
that of a silkworm.


To dispense with the Leninism first before we move on to the New
Labour Party; Lenin and the Bolshevik ideology of revolutionary
method did not originate with Lenin it had its origins in Blanquism
to which it was almost if not totally identical.

Fred described them, the Blanquists/Bolsheviks, well enough in;1891
Introduction by Frederick Engels, The Civil War In France.


"Brought up in the school of conspiracy, and held together by the
strict discipline which went with it, they started out from the
viewpoint that a relatively small number of resolute, well-organized
men would be able, at a given favorable moment, not only seize the
helm of state, but also by energetic and relentless action, to keep
power until they succeeded in drawing the mass of the people into
the revolution and ranging them round the small band of leaders.
this conception involved, above all, the strictest dictatorship and
centralization of all power in the hands of the new revolutionary
government."

A description of themselves that most Leninists would find hard to
refute and one that is eerily familiar to those that know them well.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-
france/postscript.htm

Fred's attitude to this political revolutionary method was laid out
in more detail in The Program of the Blanquist Fugitives from the
Paris Commune, thus;


"From Blanqui's assumption, that any revolution may be made by the
outbreak of a small revolutionary minority, follows of itself the
necessity of a dictatorship after the success of the venture. This
is, of course, a dictatorship, not of the entire revolutionary
class, the proletariat, but of the small minority that has made the
revolution, and who are themselves previously organized under the
dictatorship of one or several individuals.

We see, then, that Blanqui is a revolutionary of the preceding
generation."


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/06/26.htm


Not that he dismissed the possibility that these `men of action'
might not make a `revolution made did not in the least resemble the
one they would have liked to make' as he accurately predicted their
role in the (state) capitalist revolution in Russia. Russia's 1789,
fulfilling Trotsy's prediction in his `Our Political Tasks' that
Lenin himself was just another Maximilien Robespierre.



Engels to Vera Zasulich In Geneva in 1885



http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885/letters/85_04_23.htm



You stated that;


"The latest example of this sectarianism has been the attitude of
Marxist organisations over the last ten years or so to the Labour
Party, but similar traits can be seen in the positions of Marxists
elsewhere to Workers Parties, "

Which appears to be the general thrust of your argument, that the
labour party is the true `workers party' and that Marxist in the
true tradition of Marx and the communist manifesto should be in it
and support it. As that is where the workers are at, or whatever.

The idea that you are proclaiming is the permeation of the `Labour
Party by socialist principles as the sole life task of the
Socialists'.


There was no labour party in Britain in Fred's time but there did
exist the Fabian Society founded on 4 January 1884 in London.

Described thus;


"The Fabian Society is a British socialist intellectual movement,
whose purpose is to advance the socialist cause by gradualist and
reformist, rather than revolutionary means. It is best known for its
initial ground-breaking work beginning in the late 19th century and
then up to World War I. The society laid many of the foundations of
the Labour Party during this period."

Which went onto to form the so-called workers party that you insist
Fred would have been insisting that we participate in


"Many Fabians participated in the formation of the Labour Party in
1900, and the group's constitution, written by Sidney Webb, borrowed
heavily from the founding documents of the Fabian Society."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Society

The labour Party today is probably not much different to `Great
Liberal Party `of 1893 which the founders of the Labour Party had
supported until they felt they had been sold out and then went on to
form the labour party. This Labour Party, or its founders at least,
could perhaps be described by some as that of the `gentry',
the `overweening bourgeois' and graced with `clever lawyers, writers
and sentimental old women'.


Thus;

"Read on the front page of to-day's Workman's Times the article by
Autolycus (Burgess) about the Fabian Manifesto. These gentlemen,
after having declared for years that the emancipation of the working-
class can only be accomplished through the Great Liberal Party,
after having decried all independent election activity of the
workers in respect to Liberal candidates also as disguised Toryism
and after having proclaimed the permeation of the Liberal Party by
socialist principles as the sole life task of the Socialists, now
declare that the Liberals are traitors, that nothing can be done
with them and that in the next elections the workers should put up
candidates of their own, regardless of Liberals or Tories, with the
aid of £30,000 to be made available in the meantime by the Trade
Unions if these do the Fabians that favour, which they certainly
won't.

It is a complete confession of sins committed by these overweening
bourgeois, who would graciously deign to emancipate the proletariat
from above if it would only be sensible enough to realise that such
a raw, uneducated mass cannot alone emancipate itself and cannot
achieve anything except by the grace of these clever lawyers,
writers and sentimental old women.

And now the first attempt of these gentry, which was announced with
beating of drums and sounding of trumpets as destined to Cause the
earth to tremble, has ended in so dismal a failure that they have to
admit it themselves. That is the funny side of the story"

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1893/letters/93_11_11.htm



On the English Social Democratic Federation, it was led by Hyndman
whom Fred detested as did those members of the SDF who ultimately
left it to form the SPGB.

No doubt Fred's sometimes ambivalent attitude towards the SDF was
highly prejudiced by his personal loathing of its `Leader' Hyndman.
His attitude towards the founders of the Labour Party, Fabian
Society, was somewhat more categorical.


"Now, tell me what is your political programme?"


"Our programme is very nearly identical with that of the Social-
Democratic Federation in England, although our policy is very
different."


"More nearly approaching that of the Fabian Society, I suppose?"


"No, certainly not," replied the Herr (Fred), with great
animation. "The Fabian Society, I take to be nothing but a branch of
the Liberal Party. It looks for no social salvation except through
the means which that party supplies. We are opposed to all the
existing political parties, and we are going to fight them all.

The English Social-Democratic Federation is, and acts, only like a
small sect. It is an exclusive body. It has not understood how to
take the lead of the working-class movement generally, and to direct
it towards socialism. It has turned Marxism into an orthodoxy.
……………………….

Yet our programme is a purely socialist one. Our first plank is the
socialisation of all the means and instruments of production. Still,
we accept anything which any government may give us, but only as a
payment on account, and for which we offer no thanks. We always vote
against the Budget, and against any vote for money or men for the
Army. In constituencies where we have not had a candidate to vote
for on the second ballot, our supporters have been instructed to
vote only for those candidates who pledged to vote against the Army
Bill, any increased taxation, and any restriction on popular rights."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/media/engels/93_07.htm

That is not to say that we or anyone else should take Fred's
writings from over a hundred years ago as gospel. The present
historical conditions need to be taken into account. Thus;

Preface to The 1872 German Edition;


"The practical application of the principles will depend, as the
Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the
historical conditions for the time being existing, and,"

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-
manifesto/preface.htm


I think if Fred were alive today he would react with `great
animation' at the suggestion that workers should be participating in
and supporting what became of the Fabian Society, the New Labour
Party.

As I am sure some of the Fabian Society themselves would.

Boffy said...

Reply to A. Johnstone

Dear Comrade Johnstone,

I do not see that anything you have said here fundamentally challenges what I have said.

As I said, the Communist League suffered from the same Hegelianism as did Leninism. It represented just a stage on the development of Marx and Engels ideas and practice. Marx and Engels themselves said later that much that was in it was now out of date. It represented an Hegelianism not just in its concept of the Party as being an elitist group of intellectuals, and at best advanced workers – those that in Hegelian terms represent the unfolding or discovery of the Idea in the material world – but also in the statism contained within it. But it is the development of Historical Materialism and Marx and Engels recognition of the role of the working class as a social force that changes this. It is what convinces Marx and Engels that it is the working class that is the revolutionary agent, which must be mobilised as a whole to act as a class, and which, therefore, means that the revolution can no longer be the preserve, or be dominated by some small group of revolutionaries, that the political superstructure is a reflection of material conditions, and so there cannot be a workers state without the workers first becoming the dominant social class, and that consequently this social as opposed to political revolution can only be achieved by the working class itself, and not some state supposedly acting on behalf of that class – whether that state be a bourgeois state nationalising the means of production, or even a workers state.

That is why, in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx slams into this statism that has dominated the thought of the Left for the last 100 years. He criticises Lassalle mercilessly for what Marx describes as proposing that the workers cringe before the State for sops and subsidies to ease their plight, making clear that the working class can never get up off its knees from such a strategy. Nor can socialists call on the State to provide “Rights” that are beyond the bounds of what is economically possible for the given state of the relations of production. So he opposes calls for “Free Education” and so on, though no doubt given the massive increase in the productive capacity of capitalism since that time, he would now have changed his view somewhat on that particular example.

But Marx’s position is clear both in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, and in Capital Vol III. The route to socialism lies in the working class first regaining control over the means of production. Marx sets out that the way he sees this coming about is by the extension of workers co-ops throughout the economy, and by the use of credit to buy up Joint Stock companies. In short, true to his historial materialist method, the transformation of the objective relations of production must occur before the necessary transformation in workers consciousness can be fully accomplished. But, Marx and Engels were not mechanical materialists, and certainly not Utopian socialists. They recognised that this process could not go on in a vacuum outside the class struggle. Hence it was necessary for socialists to support workers struggles for higher wages, whilst pointing out why such Economistic struggles were limited and inadequate, why it was precisely because of that they must seek to gain control of the means of production for themselves. Nor did such a process take place outside the role of socialists and the Workers Party educating workers along the way such that these lessons were learnt, and consequently this process is not a simple organic process of transformation. At a certain stage the working class through the class struggle, through the transformation of private into co-operative property, and the lessons learned through this process and explained to them by the Party makes the necessary leap of consciousness to recognise its own interests clearly. Quantity transforms into quality, and the working class can move as a whole to transform all remaining property relations by whatever means it chooses, and now having become the ruling social class, with its interests and ideas becoming those that dominate the state, the path is clear for political revolution, for the working class to transform its social dictatorship into political rule.

But it is this concept which determines Marx and Engels determination to move away from the small select organisational form that was the Communist League and towards the more inclusive type of Workers Party that was the First International, and that runs through Engels advice in his letters to the Americans. But even at the time of the Communist League and the League of the Just Marx and Engels in practice recognised a difference between what is desirable and what is practicable. That is why they joined the Democrats in Germany despite its being an openly bourgeois Party. It is why in the Manifesto as I have quoted above they set out support for other European parties that were little better than bourgeois radical parties. It is why Engels welcomes the establishment of the Independent Labour Party. Why because these parties represented the highest stage of development of the workers consciousness at that stage in its development, and it is the job of Marxists to stick with the workers and enable them to progress to learn from their mistakes. You do not enable them to learn by lecturing them from the sidelines, but by going through the process with them in their daily lives, and through the discussions in their Party. Workers do not enter the world – even the political world – ready made Marxists. Those that wait around for workers to reach a stage where they recognise the need to join their particular insignificant sect whether it calls itself Marxist, Leninist, Trotskyist Third Campist or whatever, will have a very long wait indeed.

Boffy said...

Reply to Sean,

Sean, I wasn't sure whether your comment was addressed to me or A. Johnstone. Its the problem with this type of forum. For my part I would point you back to some of the things I have written on the AWL website, and to my comments to A. Johnstone.

Briefly let me try to answer by some examples. During the Miners Strike there were around 100 members of my LP Branch. I proposed a 50p per week levy which was agreed. Myself and a miner comrade in the Branch went round every week to collect the levy, and all members paid it. It also gave us the chance to briefly discuss with comrades what was happening in the strike etc. Now besides the fact that practically from my Branch alone the Miners got £50 a week this represented something more, a certain degree of political education. Now I'm not saying that if I as a Marxist had not been a member of that Branch someone else wouldn't have proposed it, but clearly the fact that I was meant that it could be, and should have been proposed. Had I been simply a socialist outside the LP and had gone along and asked all those people to donate 50p they would have said, "Who the bloody hell are you, piss off."

But that example can be replicated a thousand times for many different experiences of workers on a day to day basis. Problems that workers have in their community, a local strike, problems tenants have with Council or other housing and so on. ON many, many issues individual members of the LP will disagree with Marxists on the politics. ON the other hand on many of these basic issues that affect workers on a daily basis there will be many that will agree in what can and should be done in a particular instance.

I gave an ezample on one of my AWL blogs of a community campaign I was involved in relating to a toxic wasate tip. Had I not been a LP member there is no way I could have mobilised the resources to organise that campaign. And let's be clear had I gone along to local people as a member of X revolutionary Party rather than as a local Labour Party member, the vast majority would have run a mile.

Now of course there are many people inside the LP that have right-wing LP, some even reactionary views. But here's a newsflash there are millions of workers that hold the same views or worse. That was the whole point of Marx and Engels teaching. Socialist ideas do not materialise automatically within the working class, the workers have to be educated. That can only be done via a Workers Party, a party that Workers look to in the majority.

The problem is that all the self-styled revolutionary parties or Socialist Parties are in truth really not very interetsed in these day to day politics. In Leninist terms it is routinism. They are really only interested in what they consider "real politics" a strike, a big demonstration or some social movement like Environmentalism, or Anti-Globalisation. BUt they are only interested in these things because it is a venue for selling papers, and if they are lucky recruiting a few members to replace the ones they lose by natural wastage.

It is a dead end. Marxists have to follow Marx and Engels advice. Join the Workers Party warts and all. TReat it as your Party, it is the party of your class not some convenient recruiting ground for a separate organisation. Build it selflessly. Defend it against bouregois attack, whilst criticising those actions and policies that are wrong - not as the Leninist wont in the shrieking terms of denunciation and cries of class traitor, but calmly explaining to the ordinary workers what is wrong, what should have been done.

In that way the ordinary workers become educated and support the Marxists. The right become more isolated, and leave to join a Party more to their taste. Their is no reason why the Marxists should not act as an organised force in such a Party, though they have to judge how they do this tactically given the nature of the Party regime. But most of the reason for revolutioanries being isolated and expelled from workers parties has ultimately been a result of the revolutionaries themselves effectively proclaiming themselves an alternative party. IF the Marxists act honestly as members of such a Party they reduce the potential for the Party leaders to make such a charge, but where they are expelled they should not simply say in that case we will create our own party. It is always possible for Marxists to join such a party individually and to act within it, for Marxists to continue to act as though they were still members of such a Party - as the Trotskyists did in the 1920's in relation to the Communist Party in Russia - to do all they can to co-operate with and work with the ordinary workers in that Party, and to continually raise the demand for readmittance.

Revolutionaries have managed to operate in conditions of police states such as in Germany and Russia, managed to overcome anti-socialist laws and so on. It is then not beyond the wit of revolutioanries to act in such a way as to get round a few bureuacratic problems in a workers party.

Boffy said...

Reply To Hallblithe

Dear Comrade,

First I would refer you to my comments in response to A. Johnstone. In the unlikely event that you do not find that response convincing, let me turn to your own comments.

1. On Leninism. You are not the first person to identify Leninism with Blanquism. There are clearly some similarities, but I think the identification is fundamentally flawed. The Blanquists were a completely conspiratorial organisation. They had little conception of political action as such, they simply viewed revolution as revolution, the application of violence to smash the existing state with little idea of what comes next. Their concept was completely divorced from the class struggle on a day to day basis. Is that true of Leninism? No. The Leninists certainly begin with some common ground in terms of the idea of a conspiratorial organisation of professional revolutionaries. But this is partly misconception. Lenin’s model actually was the German SPD which was far from being a small conspiratorial group. His argument in favour of a secret organisation of professional revolutionaries refers only to a small section of such a party, required in the police state conditions of Tsarist Russia. He says all this plainly in “What is to be Done?” (see Vol. V Lenin’s Collected Works). It is later Leninists that have taken this argument out of context partly to justify their own existence as tint sects. But Lenin clearly was in favour of his revolutionary party being a mass party if possible. My objection to Lenin is his insistence on the purity of this party, and the necessary divisions in the workers movement that flow from it, not to mention the internal regime that such a concept leads to.

The Russian Revolution both in the February and October variants was not a revolution that was just a matter of some small group of revolutionaries seizing power. The February Revolution was a spontaneous outburst by the working class and peasantry in which the Bolsheviks played little part. The October revolution certainly was organised first as a coup, then an insurrection, and finally flowing over into revolution. But as Trotsky explains in his History of the Revolution all successful political revolutions have these elements within them. It is not as though these separate acts were not inextricably linked. The coup is the decision to organise the insurrection over the heads of the wavering parties – the Mensheviks and SR’s – the Insurrection the rising of the troops backed up by armed workers to take over the Winter Palace and other strategic buildings etc. and flows over immediately into revolution as the Soviet endorses the action and seeks to place all power in its hands. Without the almost certain possibility that these initial acts are merely a tactical means of setting the revolution off on a successful basis that minimises losses the Bolsheviks could not have seized power. I agree with you, however, that what is established is not a workers state under the political control of the working class, but a workers state under the political control from the beginning of the Bolsheviks, to whom the workers have subcontracted that function given their own weakness, and inevitable given the Bolsheviks level of organisation.

2. “State Capitalist” revolution in Russia. I know this is the position the SPGB have held since Nov 7th 1917 even before the dust had settled on the revolution. But for Marxists the term “Capital” has specific meaning. Its not just an epithet to be slung at something we don’t like. As I have argued elsewhere it is only possible to argue that what existed in the USSR was State Capitalism for the early years of the revolution, and even then only in terms of certain aspects of the economy. It certainly does not give an accurate definition of the class character of the state. And after the late 20’s with the liquidation of the exploiting classes, the collectivisation of agriculture etc. it is clear that the ruling social class is the working class with the peasantry in tow, that using Marx’s method we can only then define the state itself as a workers state, albeit one that is monstrously deformed as a result of its premature and unnatural birth.

3. On the Labour Party. True the Labour Party did not exist in Engels’ time. But Engels did support the moves to establish one, supported the efforts of Kier Hardie in that direction, despite the inadequate politics. Nor did a Labour Party exist in the US, yet as the quotes I have given from Engels to the Americans demonstrate, his position even at the end of his life was quite clear that the most important point was the establishment of such a party on “how ever inadequate a programme.”

I have to say that I am awe struck at your equation of the LP with the Fabian Society. The Fabian Society was indeed an elitist organisation that believed that socialism could only be create by its educated members over the heads of the ignorant masses. But what does that have to do with the real LP then or now, a party made up of – even now – around 200,000 workers.

4. It seems to me that you are one of those Marxists that Engels described as having made of Marxism an “orthodoxy”.

Anonymous said...

Dear Arthur

hallblithe said... post of 07 october was originally written by myself.


Starting with your point 3) on the Labour Party:

You may well have been awe struck by myself equating the new Labour Party with the Fabian society, presumably so must have the labour voting Guardian readers when they read in;


The Fabian Society: a brief history Monday August 13, 2001

“Since the 1997 general election there have been around 200 Fabian MPs in the Commons, amongst whom number nearly the entire cabinet, including Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Robin Cook, Jack Straw, David Blunkett and Clare Short. The society has pursued its role as the new Labour government's "critical friend", seeking to ask challenging questions and to stimulate public debate. “


Perhaps these Fabians are the New Fabians of the New Labour Party and thus completely different to the old gentrified Fabians that Fred was referring to. Perhaps the Labour Party, since it was founded by the Fabian Society and by the Independent Labour Party, has thrown off all its old anti working class encumbrances and now the New Labour Party and the New Fabian Society has finally become the true representatives of the working class.

No doubt there may still be some bad old gentrified Fabians still in the New Labour Party like Tony Benn perhaps. To quote from one of your own, a Leninist webb page;

“His (Benns) life has been bound up with the Labour Party and parliament ever since his childhood. In a recent interview with the Guardian he explained: “I was born at 5 to 3 on Friday April 3, 1925 at number 40 Millbank, which is absolutely on the site of the “Millbank Tower” (Labour Party HQ). Next door lived the Webbs, who drafted Clause Four [Labour's constitutional commitment to public ownership of the means of production].

So on the very same site socialist aspirations were both established and removed. The house was full of politics and I met Ramsey MacDonald in 1930 [the first Labour Prime Minister] when I was taken to the trooping of the colour.

Benn's reference to the Webbs is significant. Sidney and Beatrice Webb were the founders of the Fabian Society, which Benn has been associated with ever since joining the Labour Party in 1942. Emerging in the mid-1880s, Fabianism has largely defined the political physiognomy of the Labour Party. It advocated a type of “evolutionary collectivism” carried out primarily by enlightened sections of the bourgeoisie, in direct opposition to Marxist socialism and the class struggle ideologies that dominated the European workers' movement.

Speaking about British Fabianism, Leon Trotsky wrote: “Throughout the whole history of the British Labour movement there has been pressure by the bourgeoisie upon the proletariat through the agency of radicals, intellectuals, drawing-room and church socialists and Owenites who reject the class struggle and advocate the principle of social solidarity, preach collaboration with the bourgeoisie, bridle, enfeeble and politically debase the proletariat.” [ Writings on Britain, Volume 2, New Park, London 1974, p. 48]”

And this is another good one incidentally of another Fabian;

“Ramsay MacDonald, for one, declared that he belonged to this ‘new school’ of British socialism: ‘We have no class consciousness... our opponents are the people with class consciousness... But in place of class consciousness we want to evoke the consciousness of social solidarity’,”



But presumably according to you perhaps soon the New Labour Party will be completely rid of these old Fabians as the New Labour Party moves closer and closer to the working class party that Fred had in mind.

I was somewhat ‘awed’ myself by you making an equation between the New Labour Party and the Independent Labour Party. A New Labour Party without its original clause four and that has not used the word socialism in its manifesto since 1992.

The original objective of the Independent Labour Party was;

“the establishment of a Socialist Commonwealth, a classless society with all economic resources communally owned and controlled. Its aim was to overthrow the capitalist system in Britain and also to co-operate with workers in other countries for the same end.”

Something more in line with what Fred may have prepared to support.

Perhaps you will surprise me by revealing that the New Labour Party is full of hundreds of old ILPer’s who secretly share this original objective.

Fred in fact soon began to loose enthusiasm for the ILP and Keir Hardie;


“The Independent Labour Party is extremely indefinite in its tactics, and its leader, Keir Hardie, is a super-cunning Scot, whose demagogic tricks are not to be trusted for a minute. Although he is a poor devil of a Scottish coal miner, he has founded a big weekly, The Labour Leader , which could not have been established without considerable money, and he is getting this money from Tory or Liberal-Unionist, that is, anti-Gladstone and anti-Home Rule sources. There can be no doubt about this, and his notorious literary connections in London as well as direct reports and his political attitude confirm it.

Consequently, owing to desertions by Irish and radical voters, he may very easily lose his seat in Parliament at the 1895 general elections and that would be a stroke of good luck — the man is the greatest obstacle at present. He appears in Parliament only on demagogic occasions, in order to cut a figure with phrases about the unemployed — without getting anything done — or to address imbecilities to the Queen on the occasion of the birth of a prince, which is infinitely banal and cheap in this country, and so forth. Otherwise there are very good elements both in the Social-Democratic Federation and in the Independent Labour Party.”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_11_10.htm


To move on to your point 1) on Leninism.

You are not the first Leninist to deny that Leninism is Blanquism. Nobody is interested much in a Leninist defining what a Blanquist is, then defining what a Leninist is and then saying that there are ‘dissimilarities’.

If it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck then it is a duck. So again Fred says a Blanquist is in;1891 Introduction by Frederick Engels, The Civil War In France.


"Brought up in the school of conspiracy, and held together by the strict discipline which went with it, they started out from the
viewpoint that a relatively small number of resolute, well-organized
men would be able, at a given favorable moment, not only seize the helm of state, but also by energetic and relentless action, to keep power until they succeeded in drawing the mass of the people into the revolution and ranging them round the small band of leaders. this conception involved, above all, the strictest dictatorship and centralization of all power in the hands of the new revolutionary government."


And what would follow from this, as it did in the Bolshevik state capitalist revolution;

“ that any revolution may be made by the outbreak of a small revolutionary minority, follows of itself the necessity of a dictatorship after the success of the venture. This is, of course, a dictatorship, not of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small minority that has made the revolution, and who are themselves previously organized under the dictatorship of one or several individuals.”


The Russian Revolution in October was’ a ‘revolution that was just a matter of some small group of revolutionaries seizing power’ in a coup.

I am not much interested in what a participant, Leon ‘the windbag’ Trotsky, the noodle brained war criminal and butcher of Kronstadt has to say in justification of his quest to be a member of the newly emerging state capitalist class in Russia.

What really happened in Ruissia was, amended for accuracy ;

“that what was established was not a workers state under the political control (ownership) of the working class, but a State Capitalist state under the political control (ownership) from the beginning of the Bolsheviks (state capitalists), to whom the workers had subcontracted that function given their own weakness, and inevitable given the Bolsheviks (state capitalists) level of organisation.”

Just like in every other bourgeois capitalist revolution, with a slight ‘unnatural’ variation in this case, as the absentee orthodox capitalists were supplanted by equivalent substitutes, the Bolsheviks. To produce not a ‘monstrously deformed workers state’ but state capitalism.

To own something you need to have control over it, anything else is pure sophistry and fitting the ‘facts and intelligence’ around the ‘policy’ or lies as you could have it.

Another falsehood is that we said Russia was state Capitalist from 1917. You are probably confusing us with Lenin who said that that was his intention in The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It , written in September 1917.


As he reiterated to the Bolshevik blockheads, like Trotsky presumably, who couldn’t understand what was going on in his “Left-Wing” Childishness pamphlet of April 1918.

Our position was that socialism was not possible in Russia and whatever was going to happen it would not be that. Our State capitalism thesis came out a few years later, in the early 1920’s, as it became clearer to us what was going on. After the dust had settled.

The ruling social class in the late 1920’s was never the working class but the ruling Bolshevik class.

You stated elsewhere that;


“But Marx’s position is clear both in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, and in Capital Vol III. The route to socialism lies in the working class first regaining control over the means of production. Marx sets out that the way he sees this coming about is by the extension of workers co-ops throughout the economy, and by the use of credit to buy up Joint Stock companies.”


As they say; a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

What Karl and Fred where concerned with in the nineteenth century was that the capitalists themselves where actually running capitalism. They not only owned the factories they ran them themselves, like Engels did.

They saw as a positive development, over optimistically I think, that paid and salaried labour, and thus as they saw it the working class, would take an increasing role in the running and organisation of industrial capitalism. And that the owners of capital, the capitalists, would become increasingly parasitic and only interest or dividend bearing capitalists.


As Fred laid out in Anti-Duhring, this would, they speculated, provide the correct ‘technical’ conditions for the transition from capitalist to socialist production as the workers themselves would already be in control of industrial production.

Unlike then, in the late 1900’s.

They did quite like the idea of co-operative factories as it showed that the working class themselves could organise industrial production and demonstrated that there was no need for the capitalist class. Something that is somewhat more obvious today than it was then because, as we say capitalism is run today from almost the top to the bottom by members of the working class, even if some are well paid ones.

The passage you refer to on co-operatives as the best example of workers running industrial production is I expect at the end of chapter 27,Volume III to which we shall give a careful reading;

“The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new,”

The working class organising industrial production themselves.

“although they naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system”

It would still be capitalism.

“But the antithesis between capital and labour is overcome within them”

The conflict between the boss class and the workers within the factory itself would be removed. However without the factory, conflicts would remain particularly the necessity to provide surplus value in the form of interest to any interest bearing capitalist class that had stumped up and owned the capital by dint of credit.

And

“ if at first only by way of making the associated labourers into their own capitalist, i.e., by enabling them to use the means of production for the employment of their own labour.

They show how a new mode of production naturally grows out of an old one, when the development of the material forces of production and of the corresponding forms of social production have reached a particular stage. Without the factory system arising out of the capitalist mode of production there could have been no co-operative factories. Nor could these have developed without the credit system arising out of the same mode of production.

The credit system is not only the principal basis for the gradual transformation of capitalist private enterprises into capitalist stock companies, but equally offers the means”

Thus the possibility, that never really happened, it was a bit of crystal ball gazing on Karl’s part.

“for the gradual extension of co-operative enterprises on a more or less national scale. The capitalist stock companies, as much as the co-operative factories, should be considered as transitional forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, with the only distinction that the antagonism is resolved negatively in the one and positively in the other.”

Fred put it more clearly I think in AntiDuhring; Part III: Socialism, Theoretical


“If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies and state property shows how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose.

All the social functions of the capitalist are now performed by salaried employees. The capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first the capitalist mode of production forces out the workers. Now it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.

But the transformation, either into joint-stock companies, or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies this is obvious.”

Without a footnote on the spurious socialism of the advocates of State Capitalism also known as the Bolsheviks;

“But of late, since Bismarck went in for state-ownership”

Copied or aped later by Maximilien Lenin

“of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkeyism, that without more ado declares all state ownership, even of the Bismarckian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the state of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of socialism.”

Boffy said...

Comrade Dave,

First to deal with your historical inaccuracy. The LP was not created by the Fabian Society and ILP. The Fabian Society played no part whatsoever. In fact, the Fabian Society opposed the project preferring instead to remain a pressure group in the Liberal Party, and proclaiming the ILP “wreckers” for the project. You go into great length about Fabian MP’s and so on. But I repeat what does this have to do with the Labour PARTY. Many Government Ministers are by profession lawyers. Does this mean according to your logic that we can then equate the Labour Party with the legal profession???? Whatever the nature of MP’s or Ministers the fact remains that the PARTY is a party created by workers, and still largely composed of workers, and looked to by the majority of workers as being THEIR party. Whatever its inadequacy it is for those reasons that Marx and Engels set their principles and tactics – to be with the workers. The simple question to you is show me the Workers Party then. Show me the Party that is comprised of workers, based on the workers, and to which the Workers give their affiliation. The problem you have is the same as the other sectarians have - the Leninists and Trotskyists – the closest thing to a Workers Party after the LP is in fact not a socialist Party at all, but the BNP. And by your sectarian approach not only do you give the right-wing misleaders of the LP a free hand, but in the process you provide the basis for a further growth of organisations such as the BNP that provide workers with simple solutions as an alternative to the right-wing politics of the LP leaders. Were any of your organisations comparable say to the Communist Parties of the 1920’s and 30’s that may not be the case, but they are not, and have no prospect ever of becoming so. I read a piece on the Workers Liberty website today by Trotsky, the concluding part of which was that Trotsky rejected the idea of the Oppositionists joining the mass party, and of trying to sink the differences between various organisations, instead arguing that the Oppositionists simply had to argue all the more strongly for their position. But a fundamental tenet of Marxism is that you should learn from history. If you put forward a hypothesis, and history shows it to be false you reject the hypothesis. The fact is that the Trotskyist sects did follow this advice of Trotsky. What was histories verdict? They all became even smaller and further removed from the working class! Your organisation has basically held the same position for the last 100 years. What has been histories verdict on your position? You are as irrelevant today as you were 100 years ago. Apply your Marxism comrade, learn from what the facts teach you. Do not let your Marxism simply be an orthodoxy.

You are similarly mistaken in relation to the ILP. I did not equate the Labour Party with the ILP. And everything you say here is in fact irrelevant to the argument I have put forward. The whole point of my argument is that it is not the programme of the party which is important – certainly your points about Clause IV and socialism are irrelevant because the LP did not originally have those as its objectives, and has never seriously tried to put them into practice – but the fact that this is the Party where the workers are, and consequently using Marx and Engels dictum where the Marxists should also be. Of course, the politics are inadequate. That is the point, workers are not born Marxists they have to be educated, and the starting place for that education is the Party they create themselves. And having given your quote you fail to notice that Engels concluding remark is about the very good elements in both the ILP and SDF!!!
As for your comments in respect of Leninism, I would point to your obvious mistake – i.e. I am a Marxist not a Leninist. I argue against Leninism, both in its concept of the Party, and its concept of socialist transformation, which is inextricably linked to the former.

As far as your argument that if it walks like a duck and so on… you first have to demonstrate that in the necessary respects that is the case. Surely, as a Marxist you recognise the difference between form and content, the fact that often things that seem the same are in fact completely different, whilst things that appear different are in reality the same. That is what the scientific method of Marxism teaches us is the way to analyse complex social realities not references to aquatic birds. The reality is that Blanquism was nothing more than a revolutionary theory with no necessary connection to the working class movement as such, and certainly no concept of the necessity of organising and mobilising the working class. Whatever else, might be argued against Leninism that certainly cannot be said against it. Neither of the 1917 revolutions were revolutions made by a small group of revolutionaries, they were genuine mass revolts, in the second case mass revolts led by an organised force i.e. the Bolsheviks, but it is facile to argue as you appear to want to do that the October Revolution was, or could have been carried through by Bolsheviks alone. That of course is what the capitalists try to argue, but the facts are clearly against both them and you.

To own something you have to have control over it? Not according to Marx. He set out in Capital how the capitalists social function was increasingly becoming redundant as they handed over control of their Capital to professional managers, becoming themselves simply “coupon clippers”. Secondly, Capital is a social relationship as Marx defines it in Capital. It acts in a particular way that requires its self expansion, which is the dynamic which rives the system irrespective of its owners. Was their this requirement for self-expansion of “Capital” in the USSR? Certainly not. Nor in fact was their even the obvious signs of a drive to maximise profit through the production of a reserve army of labour to put pressure on wages. Instead there was a gross underemployment of labour with workers being retained on enterprises books way beyond what was rational or profit maximising. Nor can you demonstrate the existence of anything which in Marxist terms could be called a class – let alone capitalist class. They had no ownership of the means of production i.e. they could not pass that ownership on. They did not even have the means by which to pass control of the means of production on. Rather each new generation of bureaucrats was recruited anew from amongst the ranks of the workers and peasants. Only by completely abandoning Marxism can you define these bureaucrats as capitalists state or otherwise, only by abandoning Marxism can you define the productive relations as in any form capitalist.

You also misquote Lenin in relation to State capitalism. What Lenin proposed was that the workers state lacking the resources for the creation of socialism – which you agree with – would need to go through a period in which what existed in terms of the productive relations was essentially state capitalism. Does this mean that the Bolsheviks themselves had to be a state capitalist class. No, for many reasons. Firstly, what Lenin was talking about was only some industries. Secondly, when Marx talks in Capital about the path to socialism being via the workers establishing co-operatives, he says that this means the workers turn themselves into capitalists. But Marx does not mean by this that they become capitalists and stop being workers!!! On the contrary he means the exact opposite. He means that in order to progress the workers have to become capitalists, have to in many ways continue to operate their co-operatives as though they were capitalist enterprises, continue to operate through a market etc. But it is precisely because they are workers and not capitalists that the means exists through this process for them to go beyond capitalism, to organise co-operation with other co-operatives, to merge co-operatives together, to share information, to increasingly plan their production to meet each others needs rather than simply relying on the market etc. But workers in control of a state in similar conditions can do the same thing, or in this case the Bolsheviks could have it is their goal to do that, to recognise the need in the short term to operate according to the principles of the market etc. as the means to transcend those productive relations.

Now my personal view actually here is not too far from yours in many respects. I believe that it is possible for workers to become the ruling social class effectively by default if the other social classes are liquidated as they were in Russia. However, because I am a Marxist and not a Leninist I follow Marx in that I do not believe that workers can actually achieve full class consciousness unless the material conditions i.e. the productive relations are such that socialist ideas are automatically reproduced. That means that workers themselves must take ownership of the means of production in the way that Marx describes i.e. by the gradual extension of co-operatives, by the buying up of other Capitalist enterprises and so on. This was not possible in Russia in 1917, and it would have taken a long time to achieve. Consequently, the only consciousness that workers could rise to in their majority was a consciousness that opposed the exiting poor state of affairs, and sought some alternative.

As for your other comments in relation to Co-operatives I am not at all sure what you are trying to say here. Marx was not crystal ball gazing at all. He was influenced by the writing of Jeremy Bray, though rejected the utopianism contained in Bray’s work. Marx’s words here cannot simply be dismissed as unimportant, they are in fact the only clear statement he or Engels makes on the way they see socialist transformation taking place. Moreover, there is nothing in the quotes you give from Anti-Duhring that contradicts this thesis. Yes both men recognised that such a transformation means that for a considerable time capitalist relations continue, but what is important is the regaining of ownership of the means of production by the workers through this process that provides the basis for transcending those capitalist relations. These words have to be taken into context also with Marx’s comments in the Critique of the Gotha programme where again Marx emphasises not just the importance from this perspective of co-operatives, but in so doing also denounces any reliance on, and any calls for subsidies from the capitalist state by workers. Finally, it has to be remembered that these words contained in Vol III of Capital were put there by Engels who put together Marx’s notes for Vol’s II and III and for Theories of Surplus Value. And even in the notes, and latest editions of the work Engels saw no reason to change or to comment upon this formulation.

You are quite right in large part the working class has not created co-operatives and extended them throughout the economy, has not used its resources to buy up private capital – though given the resources in workers pension funds they could buy up considerable quantities of it if they demanded control over those funds – but does this mean that Marx and Engels were wrong in putting forward this strategy for the construction of socialism? No it does not, it simply means that Marxists have not followed the Great Teachers in this as in other things, and the working class has suffered as a consequence.

Anonymous said...

On 'what is to be done?'

I meant is it wise to associate with a separate revolutionary party or try to subvert the LP from within, or both?

The point you make, Arthur, about irrelevance of revolutionary vanguard parties to the vast majority of working class people is a valid one. Anyone who disputes this should try raising the subject of bourgeoisie oppressing the proletariat in any gathering of working people; be it a residents association, workplace, pub or whatever, and see how far it gets you.

In my life there has been a complete lack of any socialists who help working class people with the problems of life in the capitalist system. The one exception being the assistance by the SP in organising anti poll tax demos many years ago. The kind of practical stuff that you have participated in is something that I have never witnessed.

This failure to support is reflected in the lack of support from the bulk of the working class for the socialist cause. It seems to me that the image of socialism is the opposite of what socialism is. The post-modern victory of style over substance seems to be utterly lost on revolutionary sects. This victory has been heartily embraced by New Labour

Sean.

Boffy said...

Sean,

My view is that the concept of a "separate" revolutionary Party is precisely what has been wrong for the last 100 years. It goes against everything that Marx and Engels argued for, yet despite the fact that history has demonstrated time and again that they were right, and the "rrrevolutionaries" whatever they call themselves have been wrong. Marxists are supposed to lern from history to test their theories against it, yet for 100 years the idea of building a separate revolutionary party has been conclusively proved to be the wrong direction. Just once did it help to bring about a proletarian revolution - in Russia - but at the expense of Stalinism and the massive setback to the working class that has caused.

No there should be no separate revolutionary Party. The revolutionary class is the working class. Its Party IS the revolutionary Party for that reason. But it can only become so in reality when the working class ITSEL has reached the necessary level of class consciousness. That requires a number of factors. First that the productive relations become changed such that socialist consciousness, as opposed to just a working class conscioussness is reproduced. The working class can reach a level of class consciousness whereby it recognises it has separate interests to the bourgeoisie quite quickly. It did so in creating Trade Unions. But understanding the full implications of that, udnerstanding the need to create a society in which it has control, in which it owns and controls the means of production - that is soemthing else, which requires a lot of time and education, in theory and practice to properly understand.

That is why Marx speaks of the working class establishing those changed relations by setting up co-operatives, buying up private Capital etc., turning itself into the owners of Capital. The productive relations established in these Co-operatives are still capitalist, the market still dominates, but they contain the seeds of the new society precisely because they are owned by workers, because workers learn inpractice how to run and manage their own businesses, demonstrate to other workers that it can be done efficiently and democratically, that the bosses are not needed. One of the most ridiculous questions I had put to me when I was debating with Libertarians was - "Without Capitalists, where will Capital come from?" A society even udner capitalism where routinely workers not capitalists own the means of production will demonstrate for all to see better than a thousand lectures why such questions are ludicrous.

But even with such an economic transformation underway, and as I have said previously this economic transformation could take palce rapidly and substantially if workers had control of their pension funds, more would be required. Workers in other industries would still need to struggle for improvements in their conditions - hopefully to catch up with the workers in the co-operatives - and it would be necessary to explain why co-operative workers should support them = which has happened for example in Argentina. The principles that theoretically underpin the existing Co-operative Movement would need to be made real. That itself requires the conscious action of a Workers Party,a nd requires that Marxists inside that Party are allthe time as marx put it, driving it forward, explaining in a non-sectarian, non-strident way why each mistake was made, how it should be corrected and so on. IN other words there is an interrelated and dynamic process at work here.

The general level of class consciousness of the workers is raised as a result of the changing productive relations. The changed conscioussness helps the Marxists to drive the level of the Workers party forward. The Workers Party itself drives forward the workers consciousness as a function of its own intervention in the class struggle.

Should the aim be then to "subvert" the Labour Party. In my opinion no, that is the wrong formulation. It is the formulation essentially of the "Entrist" tactic. It sought to either split the LP in order to create such a separate revolutioanry Party, or else meant effectively the Militant leaching off it, acting as a separate Party within it. No Marxists certainly should seek to be an organised force in the LP, whether they can do so openly or not, depends upon the conditions of the time, but they should be organised not for the limited goal of getting this or that motion passed, this or that person elected etc. or as part of some plan to take the party over via some coup or whatever. They should be organised simply because that is the best way of being able to discuss and agree on what is the right policy to adopt, is the best way of being able to do the job Marx gave the Marxists of educating that Party, and the class. But the main focus has to be on building that Party as your own, not seeing it as something alien to which you are temporarily attached.

There are still many marxists in the LP. By and large they are respected by ordinary members provided they adopt this approach. They are ineffective not because the approach is wrong, but because the majority of Marxists have followed a different line, a sectarian stance, which reflects badly on all Marxists. A much larger number of Marxists in the LP acting as honest members, building the Party on the lines I have suggested, during the 1970's and 80's would have transformed it, and along with it the shape of the class struggle over the last 30 years.

But that approach flows over into the other points you make. I would have to say that ven in respect of the Poll Tax strike, I think the support the SP gave to individuals has to be seen in terms of that specific campaign, and their attempts to recruit people on an individual basis.

By and large the revolutionary left is uninterested in practical help to members of the class. If there is a big strike, then support committees are perhaps established and so on, even with a local strike, some help might be organised. But by and large these organisations have little interest in such activity unless it holds the prospect of potential recruits, and also are themselves way too small to be able to effectively provide much in the way of useful support. The whole ethos of such revolutionary organisations is to provide an arena of activity that is more interesting and exciting for their, mainly young, new recruits. It is a petit-bourgeois outlook, largely driven by the need to accommodate to the petit-bourgeois students they largely recruit. Even when these students take up jobs they are already wedded to a petit-bouregois outlook, as seen by the fact that many simply move to the right when they get a job, and witnessed by the type of job most of them take up.

That is why these organisations live in a continual fantasy world where the only people they talk with are people of a similar background, or at best other Trade Union militants in their union branch. Their world is filled with meetings of the same type of people, demosntrations of the same kind of people, and so on. At least for some that have proper jobs there is contact at work with regular folk, but god knows what planet some of the leaders live on that haven't had a proper job since they started.

It seems to me that no Marxist can survive without that daily interaction with the class, not just its more advanced layers, but every section of it. And if as marxists we beleive that the most important thing is the independent action of the working class, then the majority of our time should be devoted to trying to bring that about at whatever level is possible. But for the reasons I have outlined elsewhere I do not beleive that is possible via some tiny sect. It requires the machinery and authority of the LP.

Let me give a couple of examples. At the beginning of the year I was at a dance at Port Vale Social Club for the 50th Birthday of a comrade. I got chatting to another comradde who at one time had been a member of Socialst Organiser. We were discussing anti-fascist work. He is a Stoke Labour Councillor. He said he didn't particpate actively in the anti-racist group because he did all his anti-racist work through the LP. He had got his LP Branch which covers Port Vale's ground to produce a load of anti-racist material, which they then distributed in the Ground. From this they had gathered around them a group of Vale Supporters who took up the work. Now they police the ground against racists, and every so often the LP provides them with other material which they distribute etc. He says that he adopts the same approach in his other Council work, trying to act as an enabler so that local people, organise and take on responsibility for dealing with problems themselves. The nicest thing he said was that he had learned this approach from the way I dealt with things when I had been a Councillor in that Ward, and the discussions we had at the time.

The second example is from my last Branch where I was a Councillor. Two lessons. At the time I was suffering very bad depression. The Iraq war caused me to think of leaving the LP. I didn't, but resigned as Branch Chair, and we had a long discussion in the Branch over it. Contrary, to the picture that is often painted the Branch is made up of workers or ex workers - ex miners, ex pottery workers, firemen. I can't think of any member that could be described as middle class. The general level of political consciousness is low. The ideas often right-wing. But they are so not because of any embourgeoisement, buut because of the fact that these workers have been battered down, and no one has provided them with an alternative set of ideas.

The extent to which they would not consider looking to one of these rrrevolutioanry groups for such was illustrated by the discussion. One of the members = he'd been a pottery worker, but now worked part-time in the local Labour Club behind the bar - who is also a Councillor said to me, "But if you leave, where are you going to go? There's only the BNP." That is the problem these groups face. For a large swathe of the working class the next best Workers Party to the LP is not Respect, not the SWP, the SP let alone some tiny sect that can hold its Conference in a phone box, but is the BNP. Why not just because it offers easy solutions that play to pre-existing fears, but also because on the ground the BNP are actually setting up Tenants Associations etc. and getting ibnvolved in the daily lives of ordinary workers. It would only take a few thousand Marxists in the LP to begin to undertake the same kind of work to begin to seriously undermine the BNP, and to begin the task of revitalising local LP Branches, but for leninists such work is "routinism". It is liquidationism.

But the other side of the story is that this comrade's sister was also a Councillor. Her husband had been a Miner, and they lived on the local Miner's Estate. Its very run down, many of the houses were defective, and absentee landlords from London bought and sold groups of houses every few weeks, putting in anti-social tenants who helped to drive out other tenants and owners so that more properties became available for them to buy on the cheap.

Through the LP Branch we set up a Tenants and Residents Association. This comrade and his sister played a leading role in getting it organised and directing it. A number of tenants had some TU experience and helped form the Committee. Now I'm not saying they have solved the problems of the Estate, far from it. But, with the help that the LP gave they organised themselves to campaign for THEIR solutions, a campaign that didn't rely just on asking the local Council for hand-outs, but also relied on them coming together as a community. I provided some Council finance for them to buy and insure a large sit on mower, and s tore for it, so that now they maintain parts of the estate that had become derelict and so on. That is what independent working class action actually looks like. Nor am I saying that some of the right-wing and reactionary ideas that these people had have gone, but what now does exist is the knowledge that they do have the power to take back some control over their lives, and for the development of socialist consciousness that is a hell of starting point.

Anonymous said...

You make a really strong argument Arthur, I'd just like to pick you up one one point. You make the point that other than the labour party the bnp is the closest thing to a genuine working class party. My question is if the bnp surpassed the lp as the main party of the working class would your argument be for Marxists to join the bnp?

Boffy said...

To Anonymous,

You ask if the BNP surpassed the LP as representing workers would this mean that Marxists should join the BNP. I think it depends upon the circumstances.

1. If the BNP simply has more votes than the LP then clearly the main emphasis should be on building the LP. However, I think that Marxists would want to have some forces in the BNP if only to act as spies, to try to exploit the obvious contradictions within it etc.

2. If we are talking about a situation such as say Nazi germany or Mussolinis Italy it seems to me that you would definitely want to have some forces inside such an organisation for the above reasons.

3. You will note that I have made the point that in the past Workers parties have grown out of bourgeois parties i.e. the Workers have reached a stage whereby they see the need to create their own Party e.g. the LP and the Liberals. I am not saying that whatever paties exist are fixed forever, far from it.

4. A Party like the BNP is not going to become a Workers Party in the true sense because the whole basis for its existence is to serve the bourgeoisie in times of trouble, by smashing the working class. However, bad you might think the LP is it could never fulfil that role without a qualitative change in its nature.

5. The function of Marxists in the BNP would then be quite different than in the LP. It would be to exploit those contradictions that necessarily exist within it, and to drive a wedge between the working class bsae - in actual fact all analyses of fascist parties shows that by and large they draw their votes from the middle classes, their shock troops from the lower ranks of the working-class and lumpen-proletariat, and ultimately their finance from Big Capital, some good analyses in detail of this was done of the Nazis in various towns in Germany - and thereby to lay the basis for undermining them.

6. Such a process could only end in a split in such a party. A look at the fate of the Strasserites demonstrates that. Marxists hopefully forearmed would be more prepared than was Strasser.

7. It might be that at some point in the LP a split might occur, but the split ought if the Marxists act according to the principles set out by Marx and Engels be a split of the right-wing, bourgeois elements away from the working-class elements. This is quite different than the application in one of its variants of the Entrist tactic, which sets out deliberately to create a split, and is usually seen as a split of a sizeable chunk of "revolutionaries" from the Party.

That is one reason I think that even where at the beginning of the twentieth century Communist Parties in some countries - though actually not that many - quickly won over large numbers, sometimes a majority, to their banner it was still a mistake to create such a split. They should have stayed with the workers and caused the right-wing leaders to split. I think the leaders would have taken few workers with them.

In short Marxists have to stick with the workers wherever they are irrespective of how reactioanry the leadership of the workers is at any one time. The creation of any new Party ought to spring from the class conscioussness of the workers not from the desire to move on of the Marxists. The Marxists have the duty to raise the need where appropriate, but they cannot simply declare such a new party, and hope that the workers flock to it.

seanysean said...

anonymous is me btw

I appreciate the depth of your answer.

I'm currently working in social housing in a deprived area. Many of our tenants are this lower strata/lumpen proletariat and I'm witnessing first hand the conditions that make fertile ground for BNP recruitment. Lack of resources is leading many people to the mistaken belief that their problems are magnified due to excessive immigration and asylum seekers. While I would not like to join the BNP I am also uneasy about leaving the ground so open to them in the area where I work. In my opinion socialists need to fight the BNP on this ground by providing support within the communities. I find it very worrying that people can confidently spout open racist and bigoted views but socialists seem to have to take care where and to whom we voice our opinions. I would like to see some leadership from the left in the housing estates, helping people find their own solutions to very real and severe problems. Maybe more socialist should take up your point of view because otherwise I just can't see the point.

Boffy said...

Sean,

Thanks for that. Over the last couple of years or so I have tried to get involved again with my local Anti-fascist group. Unfortunately, due to my Depression I have a problem with giving consistent commitment to things, and I hate people saying they will do something and then not doing it, so I won't do it myself. But everything you say is confirmed by the experience here. Stoke is now one of the BNP's strongest areas, whereas 25 years ago when I was a City Councillor here Labour held 57 of the 60 seats. We thought Griffin was going to stand in Stoke South - once held by Cynthia Moseley, and one of Oswald Moseley's strongholds and haunts in the 1930's. They came close to winning the elected Mayor's position etc.

They now hold positions in Council estates in the City that suffer the kind of deprivation you mention, and which at one time would have been solid Labour strongholds.

There is nothing particularly new here, and the solution is not difficult either. In 1982, I put myself up against the sitting right-wing Councillor in the Ward where I lived. We were on the brink of having a majority in the Branch, but she just pipped me at the selection meeting by bringing out a load of people we'd never seen before. But, I became her election organiser, and with another comrade went out every night, and for several hours on weekends from around January knocking on every door in the Ward. Lots of people said, "We've never seen anyone from the LP before." We took notebooks and spent time with people asking them about any problems they had, and there were lots. We then detailed them and gave them to the Councillors to deal with, and asked for report backs on progress at Branch meetings. Where possible we recruited new members. I think we recruited about 10 people, including some who were already active as Trade Unionists, and in most cases we recruited them on the basis that they were unhappy about the state of the LP, and we were offering them an opportunity to get involved in changing it. That year there were LP posters in hundreds of windows throughout the Ward, the LP vote went up massively, and it was the basis of us transforming what for decades had been a moribund Party organisation into one that had around 50 active members, and that went out into the Community actively looking for problems to take on, and opportunities for promoting local communities getting themselves organised.

Unfortunately, the majority of workers are concerned with getting their immediate problems dealt with rather than some grand plan for socialism. They want people who can give them an answer to those problems. Then they will listen to the other things you have to say. It is a question of timescales here. I'm reminded of what Trotsky said about the negotiations over Brest-Litovsk.

The Germans were threatening to attack Russia. The Russians were being asked to cede territory back to Germany. Lenin argued that they should simply agree to avoid a german invasion. For Lenin holding on to power was the most important thing, and he argued that they should be prepared to retreat to the furthest reaches of Russia if necessary if it meant holding on to power. Others including the SR's argued that they should sacrifice their revolution in order to encourage a revolution in Germany by starting a revolutionary war. Trotsky held an intermediate position. He argued that they should delay in order to encourage the outbreak of a revolution in Germany. TRotsky said later that he had been wrong because he had misunderatood timescales.

The time it took for Germany to launch a military offensive against Russia was short, but the time it would take to win over and transform the class consciousness of German workers was much longer.

Its no use saying to those workers on a sink estate that need their problems resolving that the answer is socialism, offering them some solution drawn from the Transitional Programme. They need solutions now. I rmember years ago when I had first entered revolutioanry politics. My parents old terraced house had literally blown up in a gas explosion caused by a gas leak that built up gas in their cellar. The houses were due to be demolished as part of a slum clearance programme anyway, but their house was due to be paid out market value rathe than just site value. But the Gas Board refused to accept liability for the explosion, the Council said they shouldn't now pay out market value, and even the insurance company was trying to get out of paying anything saying it was the gas Board's fault.

At the time I was 20 years old, just married and at the time politically inexperienced though I'd been a shop steward for a couple of years. I mentioned it to the Branch Organiser of Workers Action a predecessor of the AWL and he said that someone from London was coming up, and perhaps my Dad could speak to him. My dad came along to the meeting, and the speaker spoke for about an hour on the nature of the State, which at the time neither of us were very interested in, and little of what he said that we listened to could we understand. But on the question of what my parents might be able to do to deal with their immediate problem - nada.

Socialists as I used to say to members of my Branch when I was a Councillor, are not social workers. But we are there to provide answers to the problems of ordinary workers, answers which have to be immediate not something only achievable years down the road. And the answers are not clever answers, but simple answers that enable workers to organise and come together to apply pressure, to campaign and resolve their own problems either through their own collective action, and taking back control directly of the particular aspect of their life, or by forcing some other agent whether it be an employer, a local Council, a business causing an environemtnal nuisance or whatever to make necessary concessions.

The experience of organisations from Sinn Fein to Hezbollah demonstrate that even for organisations that are to begin with quite small shows that this approach can build support within communities. If you read Lenin's early writings its also clear that it was one of the methods used by the Russian Social Democrats, its why they had support in Workers Districts.

But at one time we used to speak about acting as a lever. A small number of Marxists working inside a local LP Branch can as I did in 1982 mobilise many times their own number for some particular action, and that much larger number can mobilise within the community an even larger number.

No. Don't join the BNP. Join the LP Branch. Look for others in that Branch to be prepared to go out and actively look for problems and issues that can be taken up. If necessary try to bring in peoplef rom other LP branches to help. Look for people who might be prepared to help in the Community in whatever way particularly by joining the LP. Focus on the immediate problems and concerns, and don't be put off working with people on those concerns just because they expound reactionary views. Deal with the problems and work skillfully to udnermine the reactionary views in the process.

S&N said...

In general I think you make a strong case against the sects.

However, a counter argument could be made as follows:

That Marx and Engels did not, and could not, foresee the extent to which future working class parties would overwhelmingly become agents of social integration and social control: demonising militancy, extoling nationalism and parliamentarianism, promoting the ideologies of capitalism etc.

These features represent not temporary 'moments' of 'reaction' - but have become deeply ingrained into the very fabric and doctrine of their being.

Such features have become even more entrenched today in a context where the socialistic cultures of the 20th century have, in many countries, decayed, fragmented and dissolved.

The traditional workers' parties have become even more characterised by a 'taut electoralism' - where any attempts to argue socialism from within party structures are demonised as distractions from winning the support of the 'median voter'.

Of course, these trends can always be fought. Marxists in local party branches can always reach out to their communities and attempt to build autonomous forms of resistance and political action.

But, at present, to draw such communities into the logics of an electoral machine would, I suspect, serve only to drain such communities of their autonomy and sense of empowerment. The more they became active in a modern social democratic party, the more they would be compelled to suppress their distinctive politics in the name of 'defensive unity' and winning the votes of those who float between the centre-left and the centre-right.

The more they will become socialised into a form of machine politics that is profoundly antipathetic to any kind of socialist ideology and practice.

I suspect Marx and Engels would have thought such developments to be either inconceivable or highly unlikely.

Yes, the traditional workers' parties in many countries continue o attract the support of many trade unions, trade unionists and progressive-minded workers. But this is on a profoundly non-socialist basis.

The likelihood of Marxists overturning a century of pro-capitalist theory and practice seems weak. Surely, in these dark days, the argument could be made that re-building a grass-roots movement is more likely outside these decaying electoral machines than inside them.

Boffy said...

I think M&E DID recognise the rolethat such Workers Parties could play, but advocated Marxists working within them anyway. The German Democrats WERE an openly bourgeois Party, so they clearly understood they would play that role. M&E worked within it because it was the best option available at the time for speaking to the workers. Engels took the same attitude to the English Liberals. It doesn't mean you are committed to doing that if workers move to create their own separate Party, as they did in both Germany and Britain. The truth is always concrete.

I don't argue for drawing workers away from their own self-activity in the workplace, in their community in creating Co-ops etc. in favour of electoral activity. Quite the opposite. As Marx and Engels proposed, the electoral activity should arise as a necessary adjunct of the extra-Parliamentary activity of the workers, a means of legitimising it, and of drawing out more clearly the nature of the class struggle they are engaged in.

All of the experience demonstrates clearly that it is NOT easier to relate directly to workers from outside the LP, existing Workers parties. The forces of the Left - even if they merged - are simply to small to carry this work out. But, their are far, far greater forces inside the LP, who are by no means revolutionaries, or even particularly Left reformists, but who are prepared to engage in communtiy struggles/organising, basic support of workers on strike etc. such that even small numbers of Marxists can mobilise them into such actions, thereby mobilising even larger forces.

Boffy said...

Having skimmed through this post, and comments, 16 years on, its amazing, how, the "revolutionary optimism" contained in it, proved to be justified, in the success of the "Corbyn Revolution", in 2015, which totally destroyed the perspective of all those sects outside the LP, who had been claiming that no such thing was possible, leaving them high and dry, much as Engels Letter to the Americans had foretold.

Of course, the weakness of that "Corbyn Revolution", was also that it was not led or guided by Marxists either, and collapsed, because of that. On the one hand, Corbyn himself was guided by his Stalinist advisors, on the other hand, a lot of those hostile to those advisors, were again motivated by their own sectarian politics, and attempts at "electoralism", in seeking to "use their sharp elbows" to obtain leading positions on the bodies of Momentum, for example, leading to the same kinds of division seen in previous such alliances.

Even as the working-class is seeing one of its great upsurges driven by material conditions, as labour shortages strengthen the position of labour, it is not resulting in an equivalent rise in the strength of those sects. Rather it is the LP, even under the leadership of the miserable Starmer, that is the beneficiary of workers' votes.