A Reply To Jacob Richter - Part 1

This is a response to Jacob Richter, who has taken up some of the arguments I raised in my blog The Left And The Crisis , and in my letter to the Weekly Worker. Jacob’s comments can be found here , and on the Weekly Worker website. His comments arise also from his own work on developing a socialist programme, some of which can be read here Due to the length of the reply I have separated it into three separate posts based loosely on the three areas set out by Jacob.


Theory and Agitation

”I've written programmatic material about how boring and academic "relative immiseration" sounds, so I look back upon Lassalle's agitational skills. One should admit, first off, that between Lassalle and Marx, Lassalle was by far the superior agitator.”

The first thing I would say is that I think it is very difficult, at this point in time, to say who, 150 years ago, was the better agitator, between Marx and Lassalle. Moreover, I will seek to demonstrate that, even were it true, it is irrelevant. What I, at least, would admit is that it has been Lassalle not Marx, who has been most successful in getting his ideas taken up by Socialists, even those Socialists who genuinely believe they are actually following Marx. But, I would argue that there is a good Marxist, Historical Materialist reason for that. Marxists do not believe that ideas exist in a vacuum – though to judge by the positions of pretty much all the Left sects you could be forgiven for believing that they do – but that they are a reflection of, though react back upon, the material conditions existing in society. Where two ideas confront each other, at a point in space and time, the fact that the proponent of one argument is successful, as against the other, in mobilising the majority, even the vast majority, of opinion behind them, that does not mean that they are right. Had Einstein debated Newton, and argued that light is bent by gravity, he would have lost the argument badly. In fact, even when Einstein DID make that argument, the vast majority of Newtonian scientists rejected it. The idea could only be properly conceived, and, more importantly, only widely accepted when the material conditions had changed such that we had a better way of understanding that material reality, and means of verifying the hypothesis.

Secondly, its important to understand, as Lenin did, that in order to win the masses to a particular idea, or set of ideas, that a number of things are necessary. To begin with, Lenin accepted fully the idea, put forward by Marx, that “the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class.” From that he concluded that it would never be possible to do what Marx and Engels had argued was necessary for the creation of Socialism – win the battle of democracy i.e. win over the vast majority of the class to the idea of Socialism – within the confines of Capitalism. That is why he advocated the idea of a Vanguard of the class, and the revolutionary party as the vanguard of the vanguard. The working class would only be won over, in their majority, to the idea of Socialism, AFTER the revolution, AFTER, the Vanguard had seized State Power, and held it in the name of the whole class. Only then, as this Vanguard and its Party transformed the material conditions, would it be possible to transform the working class, and its ideas. It’s where I fundamentally disagree with Leninism.

But, in “What Is To Be Done?”, Lenin also sets out the difference between theorists, propagandists and agitators. He argues for a division of labour within the Workers Party, recognising that different people have these different skills in different measure. The job of each is different. It’s unlikely that Einstein could have conveyed his ideas effectively to school students. Yet a Physics teacher COULD convey the basic ideas. Something is clearly lost in the transmission process, but, and this is important, provided the essence of the idea is accurately conveyed, the purpose is achieved. As time goes on, the idea becomes more widely held, and more readily understood, which in turn enables an even deeper understanding of it, to be developed. That is why people in general today understand many things, quite comprehensively, that a century ago only a few people understood. Its an indictment of Marxists that Marxism is one of the few things for which that is not true, and the reason for that is not unrelated to the basis of this discussion.

The point is that someone can be a very great agitator, but for the purpose of spreading understanding of Marxism, which, ultimately, is what raising workers’ class consciousness comes down to, if that agitator actually distorts the idea, coverts it into its opposite, then rather than aiding understanding they only obscure it. And if the original theory was correct then we would expect that the conclusions that flow from it would be vindicated by experience, and from there would flow greater confidence in it, thereby facilitating its greater spread and acceptance. I would argue that Marxism was correct, and has been vindicated, but it has not been seen that way, has not received greater confidence from workers, has not been more widely accepted, precisely because those that have been its “propagandists” and “agitators”, have fundamentally misrepresented it, replaced it with its opposite, which not only was not vindicated, but which has had the most profound negative consequences for workers who were persuaded to follow it. I would argue that that is true both in the experience of Reformism, and of Stalinism, and both have their roots in those ideas of Lassalle, as opposed to those of Marx.

Relative Immiseration

I agree, that if you talk to workers in terms of “relative immiseration”, you will not get off to a very good start with workers from an agitational standpoint. But, who talks like that? Furthermore, it depends who you are talking to, and under what conditions. Going to workers at BA, at the moment, and saying to them that Capitalism raises their living standards, and working conditions, would not be likely to endear you to them! But, what kind of Marxist would do that.
Yet, it does remain the case that the statement is true, and if you are talking to workers as a whole, trying to say to them that Capitalism impoverishes them is also unlikely to endear you to them – when, for the vast majority, they can see, from their own experience, the exact opposite. In fact, if you read Marx, in the Grundrisse, in particular, he never talks about poverty in this sense. He makes a clear distinction between “affluence”, by which he means high living standards, and “poverty”, by which he means exclusion from ownership of the means of production. He does not mean, even, that workers become relatively impoverished in the sense that their wages fall as a proportion of total production – though that is undoubtedly the case – but that they become impoverished, precisely because, even as their living standards rise, their ability to own the means of production is diminished! In fact, the more affluent you become as a worker, the more you are tied to your position AS a worker, because in order to sustain that standard of affluence, the more dependent you are on staying in work. Lose your job, and you go from hero to zero very quickly.