A Reply To Jacob Richter - Part 3

The National Question

”I of course oppose nationalism, but nationalist sentiments amongst workers could be used in the short term as a two-edged sword.”

The problem with two-edged swords is that they can cut you from either side. Of course, as I have written myself, in relation to Proletarian Military Policy, I believe that the Left has ceded too much ground, to the Nationalists and Fascists, in relation to workers understandable concerns over Defence, Terrorism etc. I believe it is necessary to address those concerns rather than to simply dismiss them as being reactionary. But addressing them does not mean accommodating to them.

“Outsourcings and capital flights should be described as "ever-unpatriotic" whenever communists appeal to nationalistic workers, while the capital flight phenomenon you mentioned can even be described as a form of "economic terrorism" (terrorizing the population at large to the whims of the capital flight lobbyists).”

We can, of course, point to the fact that whilst it calls on workers to be patriotic, Capital is anything but. But, we have to be clear, in doing that, that the message we convey is that, in fact, there is nothing wrong with Capital acting in that way, that, in fact, we demand the right to act in the same way ourselves, by demanding free movement of workers across borders. Our aim is to address the concerns of those nationalistic workers by undermining their attachment to Nationalism, not simply to gain the support of such workers, Opportunistically, by subordinating our own principles to their prejudices.

Cooperatives

”You of all people should know the political weakness of cooperatives as a movement foundation.”

But, I have never suggested that Co-operatives should form the foundation of the Movement. On the contrary, I believe that the foundation of the Movement has to be the Workers' Party. Without the development of the Workers Party, and its ever more developed Programme – I mean here developed in the sense that Marx and Engels meant, that is that the first thing is to build a mass Party that mobilises ever more workers behind it, and only the second thing is to develop its Programme, on the basis of those workers themselves developing an ever more heightened class consciousness i.e. winning the battle of democracy – then neither class struggle on the industrial front, nor class struggle on the economic and social front (represented by the extent to which workers develop Co-operatives and free themselves from the domination of Capital) nor on the ideological front, can proceed. Part of the reason I believe that the position of much of the Left today is sectarian is that they fail to locate the reason for the programmatic inadequacy of the LP (and the same applies to other Workers’ Parties elsewhere) in the actual material conditions and class consciousness of the class itself. They have separated out the realm of ideas from the material realm, and believe that the solution to building a new Workers party is rather like that of the “Field of Dreams”, that if “If We Build It They Will Come”. Unfortunately, however many attempts are made by the left Sects to build it, however, much they liquidate their own politics in order to build a LP Mark Two, the workers totally refuse to come. Worse, to the extent the workers abandon the LP or other Workers Parties, they move not towards the Left, but further Right!

But, here I return to the beginning of this reply, and the reason why the Workers Parties have not so developed, and why those that have, have done so on the basis of Lassallean and Fabian ideas, and not the ideas of Marx. It is precisely because the basis of class struggle has been seen in the restricted terms of industrial or political struggle alone. At best, the former leads to a revolutionary syndicalist consciousness within the working class, the idea arising from success, particularly during periods of Long Wave Boom, in improving pay and conditions, obtaining concessions through industrial militancy, that Socialism can be obtained simply by continued such militant action, and the winning over, during such actions, of individuals and groups of militants to socialist ideas. At root this is what lies at the heart of the thinking of most of the Left sects, which was most clearly seen in Britain in the Luxemburgist SWP, but which is central to the methodology and “Party-Building” of all the others too, fused with a version of Leninism, which seeks to then convert such militants to a wider political struggle. But, necessarily, such a course is a dead-end. It hits a brick-wall once it no longer becomes possible to simply achieve any success via such militancy, and the workers, attracted to organisations, with such a perspective, melt away like snow in the Spring. Alternatively, it simply results in the development of a Reformist consciousness, simply taking the lessons of the Trade Union struggle into the political arena, the lesson of bargaining within the system. In periods of advance it might build a more Left reformism as temporarily manifested itself in the late 70’s, and early 80’s, but it remains Reformism all the same. And, by contrast, in a period of downturn and setback, such as that which set in during the late 80’s, and through the 90’s, it is reflected in a more right-wing reformism, as manifested in New Labour. But, I repeat those changes in ideas in the Workers’ Party cannot be seen as simply existing in the realm of ideas, cannot simply be put down to unscrupulous right-wing politicians within the Workers Party, but are quite simply a reflection of the change of material conditions, and class consciousness of the workers themselves, and the best place for Marxists to confront that change, to stand against it, and reduce its impact is inside the Workers party itself. Abandoning the Workers’ Party during such periods, in actual fact, amounts to nothing less than abandoning the class, of desertion from the class struggle.
And that is precisely what Lassalleanism and Fabianism are all about. It means calling on the workers not to rely on their own strength and self-activity – which at least revolutionary syndicalism does – but to rely on winning concessions from the bourgeois state, calling on the bourgeois state to act. Indeed, in Lassalle’s case it meant simply doing deals with Bismark in return for such action. As Draper puts it,

‘Lassalle organized this first German socialist movement as his personal dictatorship. Quite consciously he set about building it as a mass movement from below to achieve a Socialism-from-Above (remember Saint-Simon’s battering-ram). The aim was to convince Bismarck to hand down concessions – particularly universal suffrage, on which basis a parliamentary movement under Lassalle could become a mass ally of the Bismarckian state in a coalition against the liberal bourgeoisie. To this end Lassalle actually tried to negotiate with the Iron Chancellor. Sending him the dictatorial statutes of his organization as “the constitution of my kingdom which perhaps you will envy me,” Lassalle went on:

“But this miniature will be enough to show how true it is that the working class feels an instinctive inclination towards a dictatorship, if it can first be rightly persuaded that the dictatorship will be exercised in its interests; and how much, despite all republican views – or rather precisely because of them – it would therefore be inclined, as I told you only recently, to look upon the Crown, in opposition to the egoism of bourgeois society, as the natural representative of the social dictatorship, if the Crown for its part could ever make up its mind to the – certainly very improbable – step of striking out a really revolutionary line and transforming itself from the monarchy of the privileged orders into a social and revolutionary people’s monarchy.”

Although this secret letter was not known at the time, Marx grasped the nature of Lassalleanism perfectly. He told Lassalle to his face that he was a “Bonapartist,” and wrote presciently that “His attitude is that of the future workers’ dictator.” Lassalle’s tendency he called “Royal Prussian Government socialism,” denouncing his “alliance with absolutist and feudal opponents against the bourgeoisie.”’
It is no surprise then, that Lassalle’s statism forms the bedrock not just of Fabian, Labourite reformist statism, but also the revolutionary, but elitist, Statism of Leninism and its offspring Stalinism.

The Workers’ Party has to form the foundation of the Labour Movement, but that Party can only develop if the working class itself develops. That development CANNOT come through industrial struggle, precisely because as Marx points out such struggle is inherently reformist. At most, it can lead workers to consider the need for a political solution to their problems, when they discover that industrial struggle alone cannot resolve them. But, it cannot answer the question of what that political solution might be. Only a Workers’ Party can provide the answer to that question, but we then find ourselves in a conundrum, because this Workers’ Party cannot itself fully provide those answers to begin with – unless we are to confuse the Workers Party with the Marxists who only form a part, the Left-Wing of that Party. That is why the role of the Marxists within that Party is crucial, and why the actions of the Marxists, in their sectarian relation to the Workers’ Parties, have been so criminal.

But, as Marxists, we do not believe that ideas can simply become dominant as a result of the force of argument. They can only become so if they can be seen, by growing sections of society, and, in this case, initially, by the working class, as having some foundation within material conditions. The odd bourgeois intellectual, like Marx or Engels, could, by observation and mental power, arrive at the idea of Socialism, but the vast mass of society can never do so. It has to see Socialism in action, see that it works, see that it benefits from it, before it will embrace such ideas. That was precisely Marx’s argument in relation to the need for workers to develop Co-operatives by their own collective efforts. Only on that basis could it ever become possible to win over ever larger numbers of workers to the idea that they could provide a solution to their problems through their own collective actions, that they could produce without the need for bosses or the State, that they could do so, more efficiently and more equitably, by Co-operating rather than competing, and so on. In other words, prove, in deed rather than by argument, all of the fundamental bases of Socialist ideas, and thereby win the battle of democracy.
It is not at all necessary that such Co-operatives have to gradually replace Capitalist enterprise in their entirety, and, indeed, to do so would be impossible. Capitalist enterprises did not have to replace the feudal guilds and land ownership in their entirety, in order for bourgeois ideas to become dominant. The only had to demonstrate, in sufficient measure, their superiority over the old forms. Moreover, it was precisely the resistance of the old ruling class, to Capitalism, in order to limit its growth, which led necessarily to the bourgeoisie, and the other sections of society it drew behind it, to develop its own political forms – specifically developing within its centres of power in the towns – and, ultimately, to challenge for political power, via its own Political Party. As Marx says, in his Address to the First International, it is precisely the same kind of resistance of the bourgeoisie to the workers and their Co-operatives that must lead the workers to recognise the need to develop their own political forms, their own political Party, and to struggle for Political power itself.

“In my programmatic material, I wrote of the need to partially rehabilitate the "producer cooperatives with state aid" slogan. No, it isn't the stuff of maximum programs, but there are justifications:”

I am not, and nor were Marx and Engels opposed to the idea of the State providing aid to Co-operatives. What is crucial is the context. What I, and Marx and Engels, thoroughly oppose, is the idea of calling on this bourgeois state to act ON BEHALF of workers, i.e. to do what only the workers themselves should do. Marx opposed Lassalle’s call for the bourgeois state to take the initiative in setting up Co-operatives with State Aid, whose modern equivalent is the call for Nationalisation – albeit then and now with meaningless calls for “Workers Control” – precisely because this meant encouraging workers to place their faith in the bosses state, and to admit their own feebleness. But, that is quite different from the scenario that Engels, for instance, sets out, whereby workers faced with a factory closure, occupy it, and establish their own Co-operative production. Under those conditions, as Engels points out, there is nothing wrong with those workers demanding that they be treated the same as all other firms who receive state aid. Of course, even in raising such a demand, just as when workers raise a demand for the boss to give them a pay rise, it remains the job of Marxists to explain to the workers why the bosses and their State will resist, why their interests are fundamentally opposed, and why, therefore, it is necessary for them to win State power.

“The genuine end of “free markets” – including in unemployment resulting from workplace closures, mass sackings, and mass layoffs – by first means of non-selective encouragement of, and unconditional economic assistance (both technical and financial) for, pre-cooperative worker buyouts of existing enterprises and enterprise operations”

And my response to that is the same as that given by Marx to Lassalle. Short of a Workers’ Government in the true sense, short of a situation of dual power, who do you believe such a demand is addressed to? Is it likely that Brown or any likely Labour Government on the horizon would take up such a demand? Is it likely at any point in the foreseeable future that workers will be strong enough to force any Government to act upon it? No, of course not. If any Government acted in such a way, it would be purely for its own ends. There would be no real content of Workers Control or ownership in such a venture, the actions of workers within it, to join with other Co-operatives – which is vital if they are not to simply become Capitalist enterprises owned by workers – to engage in class struggle activities, such as providing for striking workers, would be prohibited, and so on.

The role of Marxists is to encourage workers to engage in their own collective, self-activity to resolve their problems. That is what we say to workers in the workplace, it is what we have to say to them in their communities. To the extent that workers have already reached a certain level of class -consciousness to have created their own Workers’ Party, we have to honestly attempt to assist them to build that Party, and to develop its programme to more adequately meet their needs. Our role is to be as Marx and Engels put it, the Left-Wing of that Party. It is not to act within it as parasites attempting merely to build our own sects, at its expense. Part of the means by which we do that is to turn that Party outwards to assist workers in struggle in the workplace and in the Community, not in the sense of offering to resolve workers problems, but again in the sense of encouraging them to resolve them through their own collective self-activity. The classic form of that is the establishment of the very Co-operative form that forms the fundamental basis of a Co-operative, Communist society. In doing so we both build the Workers Party, by attracting more of those workers to it, but we also fundamentally change the material conditions of the Workers existence, and thereby change the basis on which those workers ideas and class consciousness develops. In turn that change within the class is reflected within the Programme, composition, and combativity of the Workers Party itself.

Had Marxists done that over the last century, rather than engaged in sectarian adventures of attempting to build their own pure parties separated from the class, then the progress that was being made at the end of the 19th Century could have continued, and if Socialism had not already been achieved, we would have been much closer to it.