AWL Stalinism, Once More - Part 2

Third Period Ultraleftism and the Requirement For Purity and Perfection

Of course, there are parts of what the AWL say, which is correct. They are correct to point to the inadequacies of the John Lewis model, and of the Co-op. Neither of these organisations are the kind of Worker Owned Co-operative advocated by Marx and Engels. But, it is typical Stalinist, Third Period Ultraleftism to reject out of hand the experiments of the workers in this manner, simply because they do not yet conform exactly to the perfection that the sectarians demand! That is not at all the method of Marx and Engels, who argued that workers would have to make such mistakes in order to learn and progress from them. It is for that reason that in the Programme he wrote for the First International, Marx argued against being prescriptive about the forms of Co-operative the workers should establish. He wrote,

“It is the business of the International Working Men's Association to combine and generalise the spontaneous movements of the working classes, but not to dictate or impose any doctrinary system whatever. The Congress should, therefore, proclaim no special system of co-operation, but limit itself to the enunciation of a few general principles.”

But, that did not prevent him, as part of those general principles, from arguing that workers should establish productive Co-operatives rather than consumer Co-operatives. As he puts it,

“We recommend to the working men to embark in co-operative production rather than in co-operative stores. The latter touch but the surface of the present economical system, the former attacks its groundwork.”

See:- Instructions For Delegates

And of course, they are right to say that “Marx also argued that they cannot conceivably replace the capitalist economy, bit by bit.” Yet, unlike the Stalinists of the AWL, who openly argue against the building of Worker Owned Co-operatives, wherever Marx makes this statement it is combined with an open demand that workers SHOULD establish such Co-operatives. Rather than arguing that workers should not establish Co-operatives, because they cannot simply replace Capitalism, Marx argues that ultimately, this limitation will mean that workers have to struggle to win State power, and that they will be better placed to do that, the more they advance their own economic and social position, transforming themselves into becoming fit to rule in the process, and a central component of doing that will indeed involve the building of Worker Owned Co-operatives, as part of the overall class struggle. Moreover, Marx makes clear that he does see the building of such Co-operatives both as occurring within the continuation of the market, and extending nationally on a gradual basis. In Capital Vol.III, which was published by Engels near the end of his life, and without any note to say that changes had invalidated Marx's earlier argument, he writes,

“The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new, although they naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system. But the antithesis between capital and labour is overcome within them, 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 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.”

He goes on,

“The two characteristics immanent in the credit system are, on the one hand, to develop the incentive of capitalist production, enrichment through exploitation of the labour of others, to the purest and most colossal form of gambling and swindling, and to reduce more and more the number of the few who exploit the social wealth; on the other hand, to constitute the form of transition to a new mode of production. It is this ambiguous nature, which endows the principal spokesmen of credit from Law to Isaac Pereire with the pleasant character mixture of swindler and prophet.”

So, it is clear that far from arguing for nationalisation by the Capitalist State, or even by a Workers State, Marx and Engels saw the transition to Socialism being achieved by “the gradual extension of co-operative enterprises on a more or less national scale”, and this would be achieved by the use of the Credit System, which “constitute(s) the form of transition to a new mode of production.”

This conforms to Marx's statement in the Grundrisse, where he writes,

"As the system of bourgeois economy has developed for us only by degrees so too its negation, which is its ultimate result." p712.

Similarly, Engels wrote later in a letter to Bebel,

“the workers should operate the factories shut down by the factory-owners on a cooperative basis. That is the great difference. And Marx and I never doubted that in the transition to the full communist economy we will have to use the cooperative system as an intermediate stage on a large scale.”

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Why The NHS Cannot Protect Our Health - Part 5

That such a system is quite compatible with the needs of Big Capital in an economy that focusses on high end production of quality goods, and requires an educated, healthy working-class, a look at Germany proves the point.

It has high levels of welfare for its workers, as well as relatively high levels of wages, and yet its big industries are some of the most profitable in the world, and until recently it was the world's largest exporter, able to compete adequately even with the low wage economy of China. As, most of western Europe, Germany operates a system based on compulsory insurance payments, alongside employer contributions, and State subsidies with the actual provision of healthcare by private doctors and hospitals and clinics, but mainly not-for profit hospitals. It is very similar to the system in France, which has the best healthcare in the world, and at a lower cost in terms of percentage of GDP than that in the US.

Both Britain and the US will need to move towards the model of France and Germany, if the cost and quality of healthcare is to be maintained let alone if the changes brought about by developing technology are to be accommodated. But, this provides a considerable adavantage for workers in the current climate. The efficient aspect of the current Health system in the UK, is precisely the collection of insurance premiums through the Tax, and National Insurance system i.e. the payment for healthcare out of State Funds. Moreover, moving to a Co-operative Healthcare system is not something that could be likely introduced overnight.

Yet, if actual healthcare provision were to be efficient, and capable of competing with private healthcare providers, it will need to be undertaken on a large enough scale to enjoy economies of scale.

Provided, payment for services could be guaranteed from such a State scheme, however, then workers in existing Hospitals, Clinics, and other establishments could take them over as Co-operatives, in the knowledge that adequate funding would be available. Moreover, the greater efficiency of Co-operative production , would ensure that these funds went further, and could be used to both raise workers conditions, and to provide necessary investment in new equipment.

In place of the existing bureaucratic hierarchies within the NHS and Department of Health, the existing direct links that exist resulting from the Trade Union organisation in the NHS, and Department of Health, could provide the basic democratic and direct links between workers in the Health Industry to ensure efficient decision-making.

It could also be linked with existing Co-operative provision, for example, Co-op Pharmacies, the move into biotechnology by the Mondragon Co-ops and so on, in order to enjoy even further economies of scale.

In short efficient large scale provision of medical care could be developed very quickly if the workers, and the trades unions in the NHS took that initiative. But, it would still mean that control of the purse strings remained with the Capitalist State, and how tightly it drew those strings would continue to be dictated by the year to year needs of Capital in relation to its needs for the reproduction of Labour-Power. However, once a Co-operative National Health System has been established in relation to medical care, it is a fairly simple matter from there to demand the right to establish Co-operative Health Care Insurance to cover the cost of that care, with the State paying the contributions of workers that Capitalism cannot provide employment for. The advantages of such a Co-operative Insurance Scheme, managed by local elected Commissioning Boards, is obvious. It means that it is workers who become the direct purchasers and providers of their own healthcare for the first time, taking that ownership and control out of the hands of Capital and its State. Rather than that healthcare being determine by the needs of Capital it becomes determined by the needs of workers, and those worekrs will have a direct incentive to ensure that their funds are used not only in the most effective way to meet their needs for healthcare, but in the most effective way to protect their health, including campaigns against unhealthy working environments, unhealthy food, unhealthy housing, and those campaigns as part of a class struggle against Capital open up wide vsitas for joint action with Trades Unions, Tenants and Residents Associations, Co-operative Housing, and the Co-op itself in relation to Consumer Rights.

The Ombudsman's report into the NHS spoke about an ingrained culture that led to the problems of lack of basic compassion etc. For the elderly patients left to lie in their own urine and faeces etc. That is partly to do with the phenomenon described by Marx known as “The Alienation Of Labour”. In other words, those producing the commodity, in this case healthcare, have no direct personal link with those who consume the product they produce. There is a lot of nonsense spoken about the idea that those who work in the state capitalist sector are driven by a commitment to the Public. Having worked in Local Government, and been a Councillor, as well as a customer of the State Capitalist Sector I have to say I've never noticed it. And, why would workers in the State Capitalist sector be expected to be different from their comrades working in the private capitalist sector? They have no more control ove their means of production, no more direct link with those who consume their product. In fact, in many ways they have less.

In the private sector, money plays an important role. At each stage of management and, indeed down into the workforce their tends to be a direct financial incentive to perform well, to sell more, to work more productively. No such imperative exists in the State Capitalist Sector. In its place has to come other forms of control, which is why additional tiers of management, bureaucracy and measurement have to be introduced, which in turn make control over the labour process less for the ordinary worker, make the relationship with management more paternalistic and oppressive. It means that whereas in private Capitalist businesses, much more freedom and possibility for initiative is granted to workers – that was particularly the case with the neo-Fordist, and the non-continuous flow systems introduced during the 1980's – in the State Capitalist sector, all such development is squashed. In fact, as was seen in Eastern Europe, this kind of oppressive managment control tends to have the oppsoite effect. Everyone does all they can to avoid initiative that might lead to criticism or hinder their promotion, or worse. And those at the bottom respond with sullen resignation, and find other means of expression, and revolt.

That's not to say that alienation does not exist in private Capitalism. In fact, all of the things said earlier about small Capital, make it similar in that respect to State Capitalism. It is Big Capital with its greater resources, its greater scale of operation that can introduce quality circles for workers and other such techniques to counter that alienation and promote and utilise the natural inventiveness of workers. It is Big Capital, which via Oliigopolistic competition, works on the basis of competition on the basis of quality not price, and which seeks to raise profits by ever new, more efficient means of production. Small Capital and State Capital in the end also responds, but its response takes place under different conditions, it is always lagging, and as a result never achieves the benefits of first-mover advantage when new methods of production are introduced.

By comparison, as Marx pointed out in relation to the Lancashire Textile Co-ops, and as James Connolly set out in relation to the Workers Co-op at Ralahine, workers have an even greater incentive to introduce new labour-saving machinery than even Big Capital.

“To those who fear that the institution of common property will be inimical to progress and invention, it must be reassuring to learn that this community of ‘ignorant’ Irish peasants introduced into Ralahine the first reaping machine used in Ireland, and hailed it as a blessing at a time when the gentleman farmers of England were still gravely debating the practicability of the invention. From an address to the agricultural labourers of the County Clare, issued by the community on the introduction of this machine, we take the following passages, illustrative of the difference of effect between invention under common ownership and capitalist ownership: –

“This machine of ours is one of the first machines ever given to the working classes to lighten their labour, and at the same time increase their comforts. It does not benefit any one person among us exclusively, nor throw any individual out of employment. Any kind of machinery used for shortening labour – except used in a co-operative society like ours – must tend to lessen wages, and to deprive working men of employment, and finally either to starve them, force them into some other employment (and then reduce wages in that also) or compel them to emigrate. Now, if the working classes would cordially and peacefully unite to adopt our system, no power or party could prevent their success.””

Even within the Capitalist Sector, the importance of a personal relationship between producer and consumer can be seen. In contrast with the report of the NHS Ombudsman, when my Mother was in a Private Nursing Home in the last few years of her life, our experience was quite different. But, hte home, which was within our Community, also employed local workers. Unlike, the NHS Report which commented on the fact that a patient would not often see the same nurse twice, due to the employment of agency staff etc., one of the nurses at the home lived in the same road as me, and one of the carers lived in the lane, just around the corner from me. It makes a clear difference when that day to day, more or less, personal human contact occurs, when it comes to those workers seeing the person in front of them as a human being, and not just a customer.

A Co-operative system of healthcare could ensure that those advantages were utilised by ensuring such local contact and control. Local democratically elected boards of Co-operative Health Commissioning, would ensure such personal contact between the workers sitting on those Boards, and the Workers in the co-operatives producing the healthcare. Locally elected Boards of Workers Inspection, visiting each establishemnt, would deepen that personal link, and undermine any tendency towards alienation of labour. In the meantime, a direct financial incentive, and the incentive described by the workers at Ralahine above, would ensure that where possible the producers of those services would introduce whatever new innovative means were available to lighten their load, improve the quality of provision, and reduce their costs in order to increase the profits of their Co-operative. In the meantime, the workers sitting on the Commissioning Co-ops would have an incentive in trying to ensure that such savings were also shared with the workers consuming those services, and in attempting to address those things, which led to workers needing to resort to healthcare in the first place.
Healthcare would then cease being a commodity provided to individual workers, apparently arising from their individual needs, but in reality determined by the needs of Capital, and would become absorbed inthe attempt to protect workers Health. The protection of workers health would itself cease to be seen in individualistic terms, but would be considered collectively by workers themsellves nd viewed in terms of their wider needs – Health & Safety in the workplace, and communities, decent housing, decent food, decent environments in which to live and work, decent education and so on. If workers want to protect their health, they should not expect that from the Capitalist State. They have to take ownership of the means of doing that for themselves, and they should do it now.

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Why The NHS Cannot Protect Our Health - Part 4

After WWII, with a shortage of labour power resulting both from the number of adult males killed during the War, and the increased demand for Labour arising from the Post War Long Wave Boom, the importance of that became apparent. Capital was led to use a latent reserve army in the form of women workers.

As during WWI, women had been drawn into the labour force during the War. Now, on a scale unlike anything in the past, not just single women, but increasingly married women were drawn into the workforce, and their domestic labour was replaced by the introduction first of a range of new services such as commercial laundries such as that provided by the Co-op, and Laundrettes, and later by the availability of labour saving machines such as washing machines, spin dryers, vaccum cleaners, and so on, as well as the introduction of fitted carpets etc.

Additional labour power was made available by the encouragement of the Tory Government of the 1950's for immigration, particularly from the Carribean.

But, central to this strategy, and the needs of Capital, was that domestic workers who were increasingly being drawn into the more technological, new industries such as motor vehicle production, electronics, and petrochemicals – whilst the low paid, low status, unskilled jobs were assigned to the immigrants – needed to be better educated, and if that education was not to be wasted, enjoy better health. The improvements in Health and Education in the post-war period, including the raising of the school leaving age from 14 to 15, were a part of that strategy. The importance for this strategy of the State Monopoly should not be underestimated. It was important for several reasons. Firstly, as is the case with many major Public Goods – for example the provision of Motorways – the scale on which investment is required, and the uncertainty of demand means that private capital is unlikely to come forward to the required amount. Even in the US, it has to be remembered that alongside private healthcare, a substantial state run health system co-exists.

The investment required for an effective National Health System, including the amounts needed for the establishment of hospitals, the acquisition of the increasing amount of new equipment that was making its way into healthcare, and the training of thousands of nurses and other staff, would not have been done by private Capital. However, the State, not only could mobilise the Capital needed to finance that investment, but because of its legal powers of tax raising, it could ensure that the necessary minimum demand for those services could be guaranteed. In essence, workers were given no choice about the amount of healthcare they wished to purchase compared to other commodities, because the State deducted the requisite payment from their wages. If, workers chose not to visit the doctor, or the hospital etc. then the State did not lose out, because it had already received payment for those services whether they were used or not. But, by making them free, it could be pretty confident that workers would take up their entitlement.

Again, the importance of that should not be underestimated. We have seen the consequences of a total market solution for healthcare, when various charges for services have been introduced. Increases in dental charges led to a significant reduction in the number and frequency with which people visited the dentist. The same was true with opticians charges, which was significant given the number of other illnesses that can be identified by opticians looking into the eyes.

Given that Capital sought to increase the amount of available labour power, by improving workers health, and their longevity, it needed to ensure that workers would at least take up a minimum level of haelthcare, just as they were compelled to undergo a minimum number of years at school, to ensure that Labour Power was adequately reproduced. That is of course, one of the core functions of the Capitalist State.

The idea that Capital has such a strong incentive to ensure that workers health is maintained in this way, might not at first sight seem obvious, especially when we see the kinds of stories such as those at Stafford Hospital, the reports of the Patients Association or the Report of the Health Ombudsman.

But, in fact, what this shows is that in relation to Health all of the contradictions that apply to Capitalism in general operate here too.

In the 19th Century, the nature of Competition as Engels spells out meant that initially, the multitude of small businesses were led to try to make profits by driving their workers into the ground, squeezing every last penny out of them, by short-changing them wherever it could, as well as by all manner of dirty dealing in the selling of its products and relations with other Capitalists.

The Monopoly of the Truck System, meant that they could screw their workers by adulterating the products sold to them, for example. But, as Engels also points out, it was the very development of Capitalism, which created the conditions under which those “penny-pinching” methods not only became meaningless, compared to the much greater increases in profits that could be achieved by increasing relative surplus-value, through the introduction of new machinery, raising productivity etc., but were actually counter-productive. It should be remembered that a fundamental aspect of Fordism, was his recognition of the problems that arose when the workers on his production line kept leaving.

His answer was to increase their wages substantially, and to promote the idea thereby of “Company Loyalty”, with the introduction of other facilities for the worker. The increase in productivity more than covered the cost.

In the 19th Century the Retail Co-ops arose because workers were able to group together, and pool their small amounts of Capital, in order to open their own shops, and by concentrating on selling quality products at low prices were able to quickly develop a huge Retail Co-operative business, that dominated the Retail market by the end of the 19th Century, and had also developed its own Wholesaling business, as well as expanding into a whole range of other services including, Education, Healthcare, Undertaking, Holidays etc. that met all of the workers Welfare needs, decades before the Capitalists decided that they needed to undermine this workers' independent property and provision.

Once workers had been able to establish their own Co-ops, and especially after the Truck System was made illegal, workers could choose to use their own shops, and as a consequence the private Capitalists were forced to respond by raising the quality of their own products. The Co-op, developed its own scientific wing, which not only assisted in developing products for the Co-op, but was also able to test the products of private industry, and those sold in the private retail shops.

As a result it was able to organise campaigns for “Clean Milk”, for example. Although the Co-op had been producing pasteurised and sterilised milk in its own Dairies for a long time, it was not until 1949, that the Capitalist State introduced legislation that made private Dairies follow suit in order to end the damage to workers health due to brucillosis, which caused blindness. Even as late as the middle of the 20th Century, Tea sold in private retail shops was found to be being adulterated with lead filings to make up the weight!

Clearly, as Engels says, the Big Capitalists recognised the short-sightedness of such penny-pinching methods, but the continued existence of huge numbers of small businesses, didn't mean those practices didn't continue. Indeed, the more efficient the larger businesses became, the more the small businesses had to rely on those methods to stay afloat. Once more, as Engels argues the introduction of new laws and controls by the Capitalist State were not directly intended to benefit workers, but did act in the interests of Big Capital, by forcing the small capitalists to conform. In fact, this illustrates the point that Engels makes about those Big Capitalists adopting many of the demands and ideas that the workers themselves had been raising.

Particularly, after WWII, with the onset of the Long Wave Boom, it could be seen that the measures that the “Left-Wing” Attlee Labour Government had introduced, such as the introduction of the NHS, the nationalisation of those old bankrupt core industries such as Coal, Steel, Transport etc. were continued by the incoming Tory Government. In fact, this cross party agreement on these core policies continued into the 1960's, and even early 1970's, under the name “Buttskillism”, being a conflation of the names of Labour's Hugh Gaitskill, and the Tories R.A. Butler.

It was not just in Britain that this held true. In the US, similar developments occurred after WWII, and were reflected in L.B. Johnson's “Great Society”. Similar developments occurred across Europe, and a central part of the development in each case was the incorporation of the Trades Unions into the operation of the State, and of Capital. It was particularly marked in Germany, where the Trades Unions were directly incorporated via the establishment of Works Councils in which workers representatives sat alongside the bosses in discussing ways of raising productivity and profitability. Such “Company Unionism” was well established in the US, and there were attempts to introduce it into the UK too with demands for profit Sharing Schemes, the calls in the Alternative Economic Strategy and the Communist Party's “British Road To Socialism”, for the workers to join with the bosses in putting the interests of British Capital ahead of the workers international solidarity, and the calls for Workers Participation Schemes, or the regularistion of that via the State in the establishment of Planning Agreements.

It was typified by the “Social Contract” drawn up between the TUC and the Labour Government of the 1970's, by which the TUC and its union bureaucracy agreed to police their members on behalf of Capital, and to limit wage demands.

The converse of that could be seen in the early 1980's with the rise of Thatcher in the Tory Party, and the onset of the Long Wave downswing. In the 1920's, Neville Chambelain had developed all of those ideas which were to form the core of the Welfare State. But, the onset of the Long Wave downswing, most notably after the recession of 1921, and particularly in the depression of the 1930's, meant that the conditions faced by Capital, in the Capital-Labour relation were fundamentally changed. With mass unemployment, Capital did not face the problems it had previously of a lack of workers.

In parts of the country, such as in the Midlands and South-east, where new dynamic and profitable industries such as the car industry and consumer electronics were developing, the demand for labour-power remained high, and wages and conditions for workers in them, even during the 1930's improved considerably. But, these were infant industries, whose demand for labour-power was limited, and could be accommodated out of a rising population, of new better educted workers. But, there was no need for Capital to spend money in many parts of the country in improving the health and welfare of workers, when those workers were in plentiful supply. Only in 1938/9, as the preparation for War began, and capital once again found that the privations of the 1920's and 30's had again diminished the stature and physique of those it wanted to send off to die in foreign fields, did it once more begin to address that problem.

The same was true with Thatcher and the onset of the Long Wave decline that by 1980 was in full swing.

It is no wonder that during the whole period of the 1980's and 90's Tory Government, satisfaction with the NHS continued to decline. In fact, then as now, the nature of the Tory Party's membership base, and electoral base shows through.

Whereas, as Engels says, in general the Big Capitalists were happy to deal with the Trades Unions – for large firms with thousands and tens of thousands of workers it is the only rational means of conducting negotiations, and controlling the workers – it is the Small Capitalists, who are the most anti-union. They prefer to continue to squeeze the last drop of blood out of their workers, and with each firm only ever requiring a handful of workers they are always able to look to replenish workers who are not productive and profitable for whatever reason be it, ill-health, or simply a tendency to challenge management. Of course, that is not always true. Small very profitable, very dynamic firms, might treat their workers well, for the reason that they rely on their inventiveness, and hard work to develop the company. On the other hand there are companies such as Wal-Mart, who having developed from a small family business, continue to apply the principles that the family used initially. In Social Science, especially in Marxism, which emphasises the role of the dialectic – the truth is always concrete – there are no absolute laws. The Tory Party reflects that ideology of the small business, and Thatcher was its epitomy. It is no wonder that in the changed conditions that have applied since the 1970's, particularly, the Tory Party, has been the champion of the small business, that it has been at the forefront of demanding an end to all those rules and regulations that should make a civilised society – including now the demand to withdraw from the European Convention On Human Rights! - and which Big Capital has been able to accommodate, but which hits the profits of the small Capitalist.

The problem is that, especially in times such as those we are in now – of a new Long Wave Boom – those kinds of measures are problematic for Capital as a whole. The penny-pinching measures really are counter-productive for Capital as a whole. In the 3 Day Week of 1974, it was found, for example, that workers were producing as much output in 3 days, as they were previously in five.

That was not because they were being worked harder by Capital during the three days. It was down to the fact that having longer rest periods, they were able to work more productively during the other three days. The US, frequently criticises France, because where in the US there is a culture of long hours, few holidays, and work until later life, in France there is a much more relaxed attitude to work; early retirement, shorter working hours and longer holidays. But, the reality is that productivity in France is much higher than even in the US's most productive state California. That is the reality that Big Capital has been aware of for a long time, it was behind the introduction of Fordism and Taylorism and other methods of scientific management. But, it is only a reality that applies where production is undertaken on a large enough scale that this higher productivity can outweigh the costs involved.

The attempts to bring in changes into the NHS – and in the healthcare system in the US – are not about those “penny-pinching” measures to save money. There is no advantage for Big Capital in a Health Service that does not produce healthy workers, any more than it is interested in a machine that does not work. The changes are an attempt to reduce the costs that Capital faces in those countries from their existing Health Systems, especially compared with the costs faced by their European counterparts. In the US, it is a wholly privatised healthcare system, which has proved to be costly and inefficient for Big Capital, and led it to look towards some form of socialised system.

In the UK, it is the actual provision of healthcare by a huge, monopolistic, and bureaucratised NHS – as opposed to the Insurance Scheme that funds that provision – which has proved costly and inefficent for capital compared to socialised systems in Europe.

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Cuts, Inflation And Interest Rates - Part 2

In the 19th Century, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels developed the idea of Permanent Revolution. It is a direct application of the dialectical logic, the concept that all though we experience phenomena as a series of discrete events or categories, in fact, these are just moments within a process, and each of these moments is itself contradictory, containing within itself an element of the past, and an element of the future. So, within Feudal society, the elements of Capitalist Society were already present, and the struggle of those elements against the feudal elements, is what was progressive and revolutionary. Feudal society did not remain one static phenomena, but changed as the Capitalist elements became more dominant, until eventually they predominated and the society became something qualitatively different – it became Capitalist Society. They learned the political implications of that in 1848 in Germany. At that time, Germany was still ruled politically by the old feudal ruling class, even though, the Capitalist Class had become very powerful economically and socially. They expected that the German ruling class would seek to gain political power for themselves in the same way that the British Capitalists had done in a series of battles that started with the Civil War, proceeded through the Glorious Revolution, and culminated in the 19th Century with a series of victories beginning with the Reform Act of 1832, the repeal of the Corn Laws, and culminating at the end of the century with the extension of the franchise to most adult males.

But, in fact, although the German Capitalists did engage in such a confrontation along with the Capitalists of other European states at the time, ultimately, they pulled back from that fight. The reason was that as Capitalism had developed this dialectical process also brought into existence the elements of the next stage of human development – the modern working class, and socialised production based on co-operative labour. When the British Capitalists had set out to carry through their Political Revolution, the working-class was still a weak new class. The Capitalists were able to mobilise it as its foot soldiers against the Feudalists, just as it had previously mobilised sections of the peasantry. But, by the time of the Revolutions of 1848, the working-class across Europe had become much bigger, much stronger, and now was beginning to recognise its own distinct interests, and to develop its own political programme and parties, such as the Chartists in Britain. The Capitalists were torn between the need to fight against the representatives of the past, and the representatives of the future. They chose to make a compromise with the representatives of the past, who were fellow exploiters.

The lesson they learned, and which was taken up by Trotsky, in his Theory Of Permanent Revolution, in which he sets out the reasons by which, in countries where the bourgeois political revolution has not been completed – which applies both to countries with their own feudal political regime, and to countries which have a Colonial political regime – a developed, organised working-class cannot simply resolve to undertake a limited struggle for the carrying through of the bourgeois revolution – the so called “Stages Theory” advanced by the Mensheviks and other Social-Democrats, and by the Stalinists – because as Marx and Engels learned in 1848, the Capitalists at a certain point, fearing that such a process will continue, and provide the workers with the opportunity to impose themselves on it, will turn on the workers, and make a deal with either the Landlords, or the Colonial power, or both. At a point in history where the existence of large working classes, of large-scale socialised production and co-operative labour makes, the fight for Socialism possible, workers cannot limit themselves to simply fighting for the lesser-evil, of Capitalism, or even a more progressive form of Capitalism over a less progressive form, but can only achieve even these limited aims, by combining it with a struggle for its own independent interests i.e. for Socialism.

Trotsky, applied this theory, with devastating effect, to the struggle of the Chinese workers and peasants against Japanese Imperialism in the 1920's and 30's. The Stalinists argued for the Chinese workers to subordinate themselves to Chiang Kai Shek, and invited him into the Comintern. Trotsky was vilified and hounded by the Stalinists for opposing this policy, but as he predicted, the result was that Chiang and the Kuo Min Tang, turned on the workers and Chinese Communists, murdering them in their thousands. Trotsky applied the same theory in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, arguing for the need to dismantle the Officer Corps, and for the workers to keep their independence, and fight for their own independence. See: Lessons Of The Spanish Civil War. Similarly, in his A Program Of Action For France, where he was advising the French workers on how to oppose the attacks on bourgeois democracy by the French fascists, he argued that although, the French workers should obviously defend all of those aspects of bourgeois democracy – free speech, right of assembly, right to organise in Trades Unions, Universal Suffrage etc. - which facilitated the workers organisation and struggle, they should do so not by simply limiting themselves to that struggle, not by simply seeing it as a lesser-evil against fascism, but by using its own proletarian methods to defend them against the fascists, by establishing Factory Committees, by establishing Peasant Committees, by setting up Workers Defence Squads, and Militia, by demanding Workers Control and other measures that enhanced the workers position, and provided workers with a real reason to become involved and mobilised than just to defend a Capitalist System that they already recognised was not meeting their needs. In other words, the fact that the workers were on the back foot, was not a reason to adopt a purely defensive posture, but to defend by attacking, to defend the present against a return to the past, by combining it with a struggle for the future.

Just to complete the historical analogies; he took the same attitude to the Stalinist States, and the attacks upon them by Imperialism. More than anyone, Trotsky had a right to vilify the political regime of Stalinism, and did so in the most devastating manner. Yet, Trotsky argued that whether you defined these states as some form of Workers State, as some form of State Capitalism, or even as some new unknown form of society such as Bureaucratic Collectivism, Marxists should still defend them against a return to private Capitalism, which would represent a step away from the establishment of Socialism. It would be just another form of the Stages Theory, but this time suggesting that a return to private Capitalism was a stage that had to be gone through BEFORE workers could once more argue for Socialism. Instead, he argued that they should defend those States, not by keeping quiet about what was so terribly wrong, bureaucratic and oppressive about them, but precisely by highlighting precisely why those things were ultimately the reasons why they would FAIL, and result in a restoration of private Capitalism. What existed could only be defended on the basis of vigorously advocating advance from them, of counterposing the need to democratise and transform them, to push forward workers control and ownership, and alongside it, workers democracy.

The reason I have introduced this lengthy digression, is that in this method of dialectics developed by Marxists like Marx and Engels themselves, and developed by others such as Lenin and Trotsky, we see the basic method of struggle that we should advocate today on a whole range of issues whether it is advocating the completion of the bourgeois democratic revolution, of defending bourgeois democracy against fascists and other reactionary ideologies such as Political Islam, or of defending jobs or opposing cuts and privatisation. We should not oppose the Cuts and Privatisation of our own bureaucratic, inefficient and oppressive State Capitalist institutions such as the NHS, or other Public Services by presenting them as some lesser-evil to private Capitalism, we should not be shy to highlight the fact that these State Capitalist organisations ARE bureaucratic, inefficient, and oppressive – a fact that most workers who have to rely on them, and work in them already know – but should oppose the Cuts on the basis that it is by pushing forward towards workers ownership and control of these organisations that the solution can be found, and that by going back to private Capitalism we are moving in the wrong direction, creating the conditions under which a whole period of historical development will only need to be repeated.

Its rather like the response Lenin gave to Kautsky in relation to the question of Monopolies and the free market, in “Imperialism The Highest Stage of Capitalism”. Lenin quotes Hilferding approvingly,

“It is not the business of the proletariat,” writes Hilferding “to contrast the more progressive capitalist policy with that of the now bygone era of free trade and of hostility towards the state. The reply of the proletariat to the economic policy of finance capital, to imperialism, cannot be free trade, but socialism. The aim of proletarian policy cannot today be the ideal of restoring free competition—which has now become a reactionary ideal—but the complete elimination of competition by the abolition of capitalism.”

And in response to Kautsky's call for a policy of breaking up the Monopolies Lenin writes,

“Kautsky broke with Marxism by advocating in the epoch of finance capital a “reactionary ideal”, “peaceful democracy”, “the mere operation of economic factors”, for objectively this ideal drags us back from monopoly to non-monopoly capitalism, and is a reformist swindle...

Let us assume that free competition, without any sort of monopoly, would have developed capitalism and trade more rapidly. But the more rapidly trade and capitalism develop, the greater is the concentration of production and capital which gives rise to monopoly. And monopolies have already arisen—precisely out of free competition! Even if monopolies have now begun to retard progress, it is not an argument in favour of free competition, which has become impossible after it has given rise to monopoly.

Whichever way one turns Kautsky’s argument, one will find nothing in it except reaction and bourgeois reformism.”

Lenin – Imperialism

But, as both Engels in Anti-Duhring and Lenin in Imperialism set out, State Capitalism is merely the logical conclusion of this process of concentration. At its most logical conclusion it results in an economy where industry is totally statified, but where commodity production continues, and competition exists between huge state owned Trusts, and where Capital is allocated by the State to where the highest rate of profit can be made at any one time. It means the logical conclusion of the development of the Capitalist Class away from its former direct role into production, through to part-time Managers as opposed to worker-owners, to providers of private Capital whilst professional managers administer it, to ultimately becoming mere owners of Money Capital, which they lend through the Bond Markets to the State, for it to allocate, and from which they draw interest – having no other role other than that of “coupon clipping”.In fact, we see that increasingly today. Just look at the crisis in the Bond Markets we are experiencing today. But, within the context of a “mixed” economy", it operates in other ways too. In reality the Public Sector has always been used as a means of massively subsidising the private sector. Public Sector energy producers charged much lower prices to industry than they did to private consumers. The NHS has always been an easy target for private firms to treat as a milch cow. The latest example of that was shown in the Channel 4 News/British Medical Journal investigation into the way the NHS is paying around a quarter of a billion pounds more over 5 years, for insulin than it need to. NHS Spending On Insulin

Such State Capitalism like any other form of Monopoly is not in any way Socialist, it is just a more mature form of Capitalism. We do not advocate it any more than we would advocate any other form of Monopoly, but as Lenin points out, nor do we advocate or support a return to more primitive forms of Capital. Our answer to both is to advocate Socialism. And, if that is not to be just another meaningless phrase here and now, asking workers to simply wait for the revolution, it can only mean one thing, and that is what Trotsky set out. It is to fight to push things forward. It is to argue the need for Workers Control, which in reality can only be achieved either under conditions of dual power, or else by workers taking ownership of their particular means of production. A first step in that process is the Occupation, and the work-in. But, the logical conclusion of that in the short term, is the demand that those particular means of production be handed over to the workers within them, and the establishment of a Workers Co-operative, operating as one unit within a developing Co-operative Federation of Workers property.

Back To Part 1

Forward To Part 3

Victims Of Their Own Incompetence - Part 1

I haven't had time to fully study the details of the CSR yet, let alone think clearly what they mean, so I reserve the right to completely change my mind about some of the thoughts presented here. The impression I get is that although in global terms, to quote Paul Mason, Osborne didn't flinch, I think that in terms of the scheduling, and the potential for manoeuvre, he has. However, I think that in terms of the economic consequences it probably doesn't matter. For months now the Tories and the Liberal allies have been providing a narrative based upon the likelihood of economic disaster if serious action was not taken, and the conclusion of that narrative was that serious action was required IMMEDIATELY. Given the intensity of that narrative it is not surprising if consumers, firms, and other market participants took them at their word, and adjusted their plans accordingly.

For the last year, I have been arguing that although ultimately the problem of UK debt – and indeed the debt of other heavily indebted economies such as the US – had to be dealt with, that debt was a symptom of basic disproportions both within those economies and within the global economy. Deal with those underlying disproportions and over a period, growth, and inflation would itself deal with the debt. A look at the charts I provided in my blog UK Debt The Facts, demonstrates how over the last 300 years there have been many such periods, with much higher levels of debt to GDP, and they have been accommodated, and dealt with over a prolonged period by the kinds of means described above. Indeed, dealing with the debt by means of Cuts, which undermine growth could create precisely the conditions under which the potential for repaying the debt could be undermined. It might even worsen the possibility of bringing about the necessary restructuring of the economy required for dealing with those underlying disproportions. It certainly means that where that could have been achieved relatively painlessly over a number of years, if it is to happen, it will instead have to be done more quickly and brutally.

The question that arises then is why the Liberal-Tories went for this option. On the Right the argument remains simply one of apologism, maintaining the argument that there was no alternative. There are those on the Left who will agree with that diagnosis too. There has always been a strong trend within the Stalinist and Trotskyist Left, which finds it impossible to recognise any reality other than that Capitalism is continually on the brink of collapse, a collapse they hope will somehow lead to workers rising in revolt, and sweeping them to power. In fact, of course, all the evidence is that were such a collapse to occur its far more likely that the beneficiaries would be some kind of authoritarian or fascist Right. These sections of the Left, buy into the narrative that the Liberal-Tories had no alternative, because this catastrophist view leads them to believe that the current crisis is merely a symptom of a Capitalism about to collapse or at least go into convulsions. The concomitant of this view is that because the Tories are viewed as the party of Big Business, any course of action taken must be one that is being directly dictated to them by that Big Capital. This view completely blurs the distinction between Government and State, and fails to analyse concretely the social relations, the economic and other interests of the various players, and the constraints that bourgeois democracy places upon political parties and elected Governments. In other words it is not the complex and concrete analysis of all these factors, and their consequences that Marx and Engels insisted was a necessary part of their Historical materialist method (see Engels letter to Bloch, but is the method of crude economic determinism, of the kind disdained by Engels in that letter. As Engels says, their actual method can be better grasped by looking at the way they analysed concrete events e.g. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

I have argued in previous posts that, as Engels described, Big Capital by the end of the 19th Century had abandoned the penny pinching means of extracting Surplus Value. Instead, its interests were best served by the creation of conditions of stability, both economic and social stability. As Engels puts it,

“The largest manufacturers, formerly the leaders of the war against the working-class, were now the foremost to preach peace and harmony. And for a very good reason. The fact is that all these concessions to justice and philanthropy were nothing else but means to accelerate the concentration of capital in the hands of the few, for whom the niggardly extra extortions of former years had lost all importance and had become actual nuisances; and to crush all the quicker and all the safer their smaller competitors, who could not make both ends meet without such perquisites...

Of the legal enactments, placing the workman at a lower level or at a disadvantage with regard to the master, at least the most revolting were repealed. And, practically, that horrid People’s Charter actually became the political programme of the very manufacturers who had opposed it to the last. The Abolition of the Property Qualification and Vote by Ballot are now the law of the land. The Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884 make a near approach to universal suffrage, at least such as it now exists in Germany; the Redistribution Bill now before Parliament creates equal electoral districts-on the whole not more unequal than those of France or Germany; payment of members, and shorter, if not actually annual Parliaments, are visibly looming in the distance and yet there are people who say that Chartism is dead.”
See: Concessions Or Conveniences

In other words, Big Capital adopted the political programme of the working-class, and adapted it to their own ends, to create a Social-Democratic consensus. It won them the workers votes they needed to get elected; it created the conditions of economic and social stability that Big Capital needed to make its increasingly huge long-term investments, and it imposed conditions, which ensured the reproduction of the kind of Labour-Power it required, whilst disdvantaging its smaller competitors, thereby enhancing the process of concentration; and it headed off the growing tendency of workers to establish their own independent organisations that could have stood as an alternative to Capital. However, its necessary to add a slight adjustment to what Engels says. What we have seen in the 20th Century, is that, despite these attempts, Capitalism is prone not just to the usual business cycle, but also to the Long Wave. During the Long Wave downturn, with prolonged slow growth, stagnation and repeated recessions, even Big Capital, or at least sections of it, are led to resort once again to those old penny-pinching measures, and certainly to resist any big improvements in workers living standards. High unemployment means that Capital’s requirements for Labour-Power can be met more easily without the need to increase its spending on Education and Healthcare. And, as Engels also sets out it is more likely to actually welcome strikes as a means of actually saving money, and clearing excess stocks.

If this were the 1930's, or the 1980's I would be inclined to see in the actions of the Liberal-Tories a reflection of that underlying reality. The rise of fascism, and right-wing governments in the 1930's undertaking harsh measures to that effect, and of a similar trend in the 1980's in the form of Thatcher and Reagan can be understood in that context. But, as I've written elsewhere , this is not the 1930's nor the 1980's, this is not a period of Long Wave downturn, but of Long Wave Boom, the current crisis is not a symptom of a Capitalism in a state of imminent collapse, but a Capitalism going through a powerful global boom and expansion, within which a serious Financial Crisis in the West has led to a temporary economic crisis. Indeed, Big Capital can no longer within that context be viewed as national, but has to be analysed within the context of Imperialism as a global social relation. Even were these measures in the interests of Big Capital within the UK (which overall they are not), those measures, certainly when taken in combination with similar measures by some governments in Europe, are most certainly not in the interests of Big Capital as a whole, because they are likely to lead to an unnecessary global recession, a recession in which the main beneficiaries are likely to be those economies such as China, and other dynamic Asian economies, who will continue to grow, and strengthen their global power, a global power that will not just be economic, but increasingly military and political. That is why US Capital has been so vocal in opposing the austerity measures in Europe.

Forward To Part 2

Palestine And The Theory of Non-Historic Peoples

The Civil War in Gaza, between Fatah and Hamas, showed a deep rift within the Palestinian people. It has resulted in, effectively, two Palestinian proto states, in Gaza and the West Bank. The fighting, between Israel and Lebanon, was accepted by most observers as a proxy war, already, between the US and Iran, with the US backing Israel, and Iran and Syria backing, supplying and arming Hezbollah.
Similarly,the US backed Fatah in Gaza, as did its Sunni client states, who promised arms and finance to Fatah, to be supplied with the consent of Israel. As with the promises made to Sunnis, in Iraq, by the Gulf States, large amounts of finance were offered to Fatah. Similarly, Iran, and probably Syria, are reported to have backed Hamas with similar supplies of arms if not finance.

As my old man used to tell me, when I was a nipper, sitting on his knee, the first tool of the bosses is divide and rule. It is a tactic US imperialism has used successfully for most of the post war period. Often, it has been used in conjunction with dirty tricks by the CIA whose operations thrive in conditions of chaos, to play one side against another, and, when conditions are ripe, to back some local strongman to take over and establish a regime tied to the US. But the chaos in Gaza, in particular, and the division of the Palestinian people, demonstrates an argument I have put forward now for more than 20 years, it is that the demand for a two-states solution for Palestine-Israel cannot work, if not that it is, in fact, reactionary. It cannot work because the necessary conditions for nation building do not exist in the West Bank and Gaza – in fact they exist even less today than they did 20 years ago when I first raised this argument.
The West Bank has been reduced to a series of discontinuous Bantustans separated by Israeli settlements, as I forecast would happen, and the new “Security Fence” breaks up these communities even more. In Gaza, the Palestinians have shown themselves incapable of undertaking even the most basic functions of a state in maintaining order, even allowing for the actions of the Israeli state in creating conditions which made that more difficult. But, the Israeli state has been able to justify those incursions, because of continued terrorist attacks, on Israel, by those elements, within Palestine, that would never accept the existence of Israel, whatever arrangements were made for Palestinians, again as I said was obvious would happen 20 years ago.

The Palestinians simply lack the cohesion and internal resources to create their own nation state. That is why, like all such peoples in the past, they have looked to any external forces that might lend a hand in achieving their goals, only to find, as every such peoples have, in the past, that these external allies use them for their own purposes before discarding them.
And, like such peoples in the past, these external allies are always reactionary forces of one kind or another – Saddam Hussein, now Iran’s clerical-fascists, and US imperialism. The fight for national liberation can be a liberating, progressive struggle, but, even in the programme of Lenin and the Comintern, it was only such because that struggle was undertaken by revolutionary forces, and, in particular, was led by the working class dragging a revolutionary peasantry behind it. But, no such prospect exists for Palestine. Marxists believe in progressive struggles being undertaken by the working class through its own independent class action, that is the basis of the Comintern’s policy on the National Question. But, for the working class to bring about a two states solution, in Palestine-Israel, it would require the working class, in both Israel and Palestine, to be effectively at a level of class consciousness where not just a solution to the national question was on the agenda, but a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. But, then the question of two-states would become rather subordinate anyway. Without those conditions, the only possibility of a two states solution being established is if it is imposed by imperialism, which is hardly progressive in itself, and would, almost certainly, be the conditions which would mean that the solution soon fell apart into increased fighting and bloodshed.

It is not something Marxists like to address in today’s world, because there is a feeling that some nice solution has to be found for every problem in the world. Even more, to raise the idea that a people should not be entitled to nationhood, to self-determination is one that is anathema to socialists that have imbibed the notions of petit-bourgeois democracy of the type that leads to idiot anti-imperialism. In order to understand the argument, it is necessary to reach back in time, beyond the discussions of the National Question, by the Comintern, back into the 19th century, when these issues were discussed by Marx and Engels,
in relation to Europe, and their development of the idea of “Non-historic peoples”, peoples that history had by-passed, that, like the Palestinians, lacked the internal resources for nationhood, and who, like the Palestinians, ended up on the side of all kinds of reactionary forces in the revolutionary struggles of the time. Again, these writings, of Marx and Engels, are ones that many of today’s Marxists do not like to have raised. Many Marxists want their socialism to be of the pure type, which is only found in textbooks, and want the socialist heroes to be like the cowboys in the white hats, pure as driven snow, rather than real human beings, trying to deal with difficult questions, in conditions not of their choosing. There have been many attempts, by such Marxists, to massage the odd word or phrase, of Marx and Engels, to make them sound less harsh, in order to assuage the petit-bourgeois sensibilities of the milieu in which such people often operate. The case of the “Non-historic peoples” is a case in point.

The best analysis, of Marx and Engels position, is that given by Roman Rosdolsky. Rosdolsky had been a leader of the Ukrainian Communist Party, in the 1920’s. In the 1930’s, he was one of the leaders that opposed Stalin’s invasion of the Ukraine.
He first addressed the question, in the 1920’s, when he wrote his doctoral thesis on the issue, but his best known work was written in 1948, when he had moved to the US. For obvious reasons, at the time, he had difficulty in getting a publisher for the work, and wanted to maintain a low political profile. Other, émigré, Ukrainians had managed to get a Publisher, in Germany, but, when Rosdolsky found that this Publisher was linked to the Nazis, he obviously refused. In fact, given the nature of Marx and Engels writings, on the issue, and the experience of the very peoples – the Czechs and Slavs – at the hands of both Hitler and Stalin, in the previous period, it was mainly reactionary right-wing forces that were keen to utilise Marx and Engels writings whereas left-wing and liberal elements wanted to hush them up.
In the meantime, Rosdolsky filled his time usefully. He wrote one of the best accounts of Marx’s Capital – “The Making of Marx’s Capital” – utilising Marx’s notes in The Grundrisse. He corrected many of the distortions of Marx’s work, introduced by the Stalinists. For example, he demonstrated, contrary to the claim of Stalinism – but also adopted by many Trotskyists keen to foresee the kind of social crisis needed for a political revolution – that Marx did not have a theory of immiseration for the working class. Out of several hundred references, to wages, in Marx’s work, Rosdolsky said that there was only one that could possibly be interpreted in that way.

Rosdolsky’s work “Engels and the ‘Non-historic Peoples:The National Question in the revolution of 1848”, was published by Critique Books in 1986 (Critique 18-19) in an edition translated and edited by John-Paul Himka.
To illustrate the problem, referred to above, and the attitude of modern Marxists, Himka says in his introduction,to Rosdolsky's work,

“However, this book in particular posed a problem. It concerned some embarrassing statements made by Marx, and above all, Engels with regard to east European peoples. During the revolution of 1848-49 Marx and Engels had characterised most of the Slavic peoples (the outstanding exception being the Poles) and other East European peoples (such as the Romanians and Saxons of Transylvania) as nonhistoric, counter-revolutionary by nature and doomed to extinction. The statements moreover, were saturated with insulting epithets (pig-headed, barbarian,robber) and ominous sounding threats (a bloody revenge that would annihilate these reactionary peoples).”

Himka says,

“I will not try the reader’s patience with an account of the vicissitudes involved in bringing this translation into print, except to quote from one letter I received in 1980 which has the virtue of clearly expressing an attitude that I discovere to be distressingly prevalent on the English-speaking left: ‘The work as it stands could( and certainly would) be used by the opportunists to attack Marx-Engels….In the context of today’s struggles his [Rosdolsky’s] book can serve only to create confusion in the anti-imperialist movement’”

In a note, Himka says the letter was from a member of a British left-wing group.
But Rosdolsky shows that Marxists too can be subject to social pressure. As Himka himself points out, Rosdolsky’s conclusions, in the 1948 work, are almost the direct opposite of the conclusions he arrived at in his thesis of the 1920’s. In the 1920’s, he had concluded that Marx and Engels’ position was entirely vindicated by the historical materialist method. Yet, in 1948, he concludes that they had been wrong. He argues that their position was based on a too optimistic view of the potential for socialist revolution in 1848, a view which led them to ignore the class elements of the struggles of the peasants in these countries in order to retain the support of those forces – including sections of the European nobility – with which the working class was in alliance in 1848. But it seems to me that this is to turn Marx and Engels into “idiot imperialists” as a mirror image of today’s idiot anti-imperialists.

There undoubtedly was some element of chauvinism in the works of Marx and Engels, which was inevitable in the times that they were writing. It is also true that Marx and Engels themselves concluded that they had overstated the revolutionary potential of the times. In fact, as they were later to state, in 1848, Britain was the only country where capitalism was dominant, and, as they believed that socialism was impossible without capitalism first developing and socialising the productive forces, a socialist revolution was clearly impossible in 1848.
They undoubtedly also bent the stick somewhat polemically against Bakunin who, basing himself on the revolutionary potential of the peasantry, – a potential Marx and Engels showed did not exist because of the atomised nature of the peasantry (see Marx – 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte where his class theory is most clearly set out) -argued for the revolutionary nature of these struggles, but, it seems to me, that, in fact, Rosdolsky was right in the 1920’s when he argued that Marx and Engels based themselves on historical materialism, and that he is wrong in his later appraisal. Marx and Engels theory of Historical Materialism certainly does put class at the forefront of explaining historical development. It is certainly within that context that determination of which forces are progressive can be determined. But it is Economistic to think that class is the only criterion utilised by Marx and Engels in orienting themselves in the world they were in. It is quite obvious that nationality and nationalism were and are important cleavages and ideologies running through societies, as well as class, and, as I said at the beginning, struggles, based around nationality, can only be progressive if they are viewed in the context of historical reality, of who is leading those struggles, and by what means. Indeed, nationality, as a cross cutting cleavage, is one that is usually reactionary it cuts across class lines, dividing the working class, and indeed tending to unite sections of the working class with its own bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie. It is not at all surprising, to me, then, that Marx and Engels, especially at a time of heightened revolutionary activity, such as 1848, but not just at that time, should conclude that some such struggles were reactionary, that those conducting them were incapable of using their own internal resources for achieving their aims, that, in order to do so, they had to ally themselves with reactionary international forces – at that time with Tsarist Russia who Marx and Engels viewed in the same way that some Marxists today view the US i.e. a force to be opposed in all circumstances, and almost to be defeated by any means.

This is not the place, and, in any case, I do not have time, at the moment, to elaborate further on Marx and Engels theory of the “non-Historic Peoples”, but it is well worthwhile for comrades to read Rosdolsky’s work, because these writings of Marx and Engels are important works, which a lot of the modern Marxist movement has tried to sweep under the carpet. I believe that Rosdolsky’s explanation is wrong, and a reflection of the petit-bourgeois pressure that often inflicts the Marxist movement. To argue that Marx and Engels were proved wrong, because the peoples they said were non-historic eventually did achieve statehood, is facile. They dealt with reality as it was when they were writing. Neither they nor anyone else can deal with reality as it exists 100 years into the future. In the intervening period, rather important changes, which would have caused them to re-evaluate the situation, based on changed material conditions, occurred such as the break up of the old European Empires during the First World War, for one thing.

The reality is that the Palestinians are not the only people in the world that have been shown to be “non-historic” many such peoples exist without their own state. We should judge each on its merits to determine whether the struggle of any people is progressive or reactionary in the same way that Marx and Engels did e.g. in their support for the struggle of the Poles, rather than simply read off some mantra that socialists must always support the right of self-determination.
We have a duty to support all peoples against oppression. Where a people seek to argue for their own self-determination, we have a duty to support their right to put forward that case, free from intimidation and aggression from other states, but we have no absolute duty to support such a demand ourselves. On the contrary, where the interests of the working class internationally are weakened by such a struggle we should say so, and argue against it, and for workers unity across borders.

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