Should BNP Members Be Sacked?

The publication of the list of names of members of the BNP has raised the question in the media - "Should BNP members be sacked?". In some areas of employment such as the police or prison service membership of the BNP is prohibited. The question has also been raised about the fitness of people who hold racist views for other jobs such as teaching. The question a Marxist has to ask is - "Who would be doing the sacking?" The fact is that the sacking would be done by the Capitalist State, or in some cases individual Capitalists. Such action would in fact, be no different from a State ban on the BNP. Marxists are opposed to the State having the power of banning or censoring anything, because we know that such a ban or act of censorship, if not now then in the future will be used far more against workers and socialists. So, for a Marxist the answer has to be no we are not in favour of calling for the sacking of BNP members.

But, we have to be opposed to such demands for another reason. Not only, do Marxists oppose calls for the Capitalist State to act or for the Capitalist class to act in this way, because we know it will be used against us, we oppose such demands, because once again they encourage the working class to rely upon, and have illusions in that very Capitalist class, and its State rather than in its own direct self-activity. It is one thing to say that fascists should not be sacked, it is another to say that workers themselves should not hound them out, isolate them, shame them, expose them for the vermin they are, that parents and students should not organise boycotts of classes taught by fascist teachers and lecturers providing them with no platform from which to spew their filth.

This ought to be common ground for all Marxists, and for most it is. Yet, the vast Majority of the Left, including that section, which claims to be Marxist, finds itself in a contradiction here. For, more than a hundred years going back to Marx's time, the majority of the Left has been bound hand and foot to bourgeois ideology. That is as true for those that called and call themselves Marxists or even Revolutionary Marxists - as though in truth their could be any other - to distinguish themselves from the reformists, as for all the other variety of socialists. As the Amercian socialist Hal Draper, put it in his, "The Two Souls of Socialism", the German SPD, which at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th Century was the well-spring from which modern Marxism sprang, was in fact a poisoned well, infected with Lassallean Statism more than Marxist Libertarianism. Time and again we see so called Marxists basing themselves not on the principle of such self-activity, but on the basis of demands placed on that very bourgeois State to act.

Two related recent discussions I was having with comrades from permanent Revolution demonstrates the point. See: Manchester and Lewisham illustrate the point nicely.

Permanent Revolution adopts the traditional Trotskyist position of opposing state bans against fascists. Quite correct. It explains that position in the same terms I have used myself above. But, how can they square this with their position in the two other discussions. Exactly, the same argument applies. Let us examine it.

1. They say that it is necessary that demands to act be placed on the bourgeois State so that it cannot be allowed to get off the hook. Why is it not letting the bourgeois State off the hook demanding it act in Manchester or Lewisham, yet it can be allowed off the same hook by NOT demanding it act against fascists????

2. They say that although they know that demanding the Capitalist State will not provide solutions for workers in relation to their housing problems, it is necessary to demand it does in order that workers learn that the Capitalist State will not act in their interests. But, then why not raise the demand for the State to act against the fascists for the same reason???

3. They say that raising a demand for the State to act in relation to Housing mobilises the masses to create a movement that can bring about change. But, the same could be said about a raising a demand for the State to act against the fascists, not because we believe they will, but merely in order to mobilise the masses around such a demand, to "BUILD a MOVEMENT."

The reality is that there is NO difference in any of these cases. I don't want to pick out PR here. I am just using a recent discussion to demonstrate the point that modern Marxism is hopelessly confused and finds itself in contradictory positions like this, because, in fact it has abandoned Marx's teachings on the need to build working class self-reliance and self-activity, and his outright hostility to demands placed on the bourgeois State as expressed most clearly in his Critique of the Gotha Programme.

The sooner the Left engages in a serious self-criticism and gets back to Marx, and away from the statism and Leninism that has crippled it during the 20th century the better. The sooner can it begin to see more clearly, and the sooner can it begin to focus on raising demands that can provide real solutions to workers problems here and now through their own hands, rather than on playing games with the class, raising demands on the bourgeois State it knows can never be implemented by it, demands raised not to solve workers problems, but for the ridiculously minimal purpose of exposing the State once again in front of the workers. The reality is that workers hae already learned not to expect much from the Capitalist State just as Srfs expected little from their Lord and Master. They continue to turn to it no out of any real belief in its munificence, but simply out of the lack of any real demonstrable alternative being provided to them.