How Long Will We Put Up With This?

Yesterday according to BBC News yesterday &0% of NHS hospitals have suffered with pest infestations ranging from rats, to bed bugs and other insects. This is on top of the continuing problem with people going into hospital to be cured, and instead contracting MRSA or C-Difficile. Today, it is reported that NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) has ruled that drugs that could give up to 14 months of extra life to patients with kidney cancer cannot be bought on the NHS. That again comes on top of similar decisions in the past to deny breat cancer sufferers the necessary drugs. There can be litle excuse of a hospital being dirty let alone pest infested. As far as I am aware there has been no cases of MRSA in private hospitals. The argument of NICE comes down to one simply of money, they are not prepared to pay the cost of these drugs in return for saving human life.

For Marxists such a ituation should come as no surprise, but what I do find surprising is not just that the Labour mvoement continues to put up with this situation, but that most of the people on the left, including hose that call themselves Marxists have no real programme for addressing this situation so crucial to the working class. The Left continues to sow illusions in the miracles it hopes the bouregois State will undertake, investng the main source of workers oppression with some mystical power when it comes to it owning the means of production or the mans of saving life; a mystical pwoer that somehow turns it into an institution with workers best interests at heart!!! The consensus approach to the NHS is to go to that bourgeois State like a modern day Oliver Twist begging bowl in hand and ask, "Can we have some more please?"

The fact is that the bouregois State only has an interest in providing health care for workers up to a certain point. Capitalism today requires a reasonably healthy workforce, more so as birth rates decline. A semblance of a "democratic" or "Peoples Health Service plays into the bourgeois ideology of a caring capitalist society free of serious class divisions. But, as the recent NICE demonstrate the Capitalists will only fill the workers begging bowl so much, and so often. The cash nexus will determine the actions of the capitalists' state. Marxists can call on workers to simply keep going to the State begging bowl in hand, can encourage them to engage in all kinds of action designed to pressurise the capitalists into coughing up, but such actions are no better than the actions of workers repeadly to try to protect their wages and conditions through strike action, they may be necessary to prevent an immediate detrioration of the workers condition, but they are by no means sufficient to deal with the real problem - the workers lack of ownership and control of the means of production.

Marx elucidated the point in respect to Education, when the Lassalleans called for that same bouregois State to provide Eual Elementary Education. Such demands are Utopian he says, because,

“Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.”

Critique of the Gotha Programme.

“"Equal elementary education"? What idea lies behind these words? Is it believed that in present-day society (and it is only with this one has to deal) education can be equal for all classes? Or is it demanded that the upper classes also shall be compulsorily reduced to the modicum of education — the elementary school — that alone is compatible with the economic conditions not only of the wage-workers but of the peasants as well?"


(ibid)

Demanding that the bourgeois State provide equal health care for workers to that of the bouregoisie is as utopian as demanding that it provide equal education, and Marxists that pretend to the working class that it can or will are no Marxists at all. They simply mislead the working class into a view of the State s being some non-class body impartial between the classes, and as Marx put it their appeals to this State simply demonstrate not only the fact that their socialism is skin-deep, but that in so far as the working class goes along with such Oliver Twist cringeing, demonstrates that it has not yet got up off its knees, lacks a basic pride, and self-respect let alone the class conscioussness to create a new society.

“The German Workers' party — at least if it adopts the program — shows that its socialist ideas are not even skin-deep; in that, instead of treating existing society (and this holds good for any future one) as the basis of the existing state (or of the future state in the case of future society), it treats the state rather as an independent entity that possesses its own intellectual, ethical, and libertarian bases.”

"And particularly in the case of a toiling people which, through these demands that it puts to the state, expresses its full consciousness that it neither rules nor is ripe for ruling! …."

But, as I have said before Marx does set out what Marxists should be calling for as the immediate solutions to these problms that confront the workers be they problems in relation to their jobs, or problems in realation to the need for decent Education, Housing and Healthcare. Marx argues that workers get up off their knees and instead of calling on the capitalist State to come to their rescue instead, rescues itself, provides for itself, and thereby demonstrates that it can do so better than any Capitalist or Caitalist state can do. Just as his Historical materialist method led him to observe the actions of the real working class, and thereby idetify it as the revolutionary agent, just as he observed the actions of the Paris Workers and gleened from their practice the basic nature of the form of the new form of Workers State, the Commune State, so too he observed the actions of workers in establishing their own Co-operative enterprises through their own direct, self activity, and recognised it as the meas of their liberation,of them transforming the economic and social relations in society, and transforming themselves into the new ruling class i.e. the basis of the Social revolution.

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.” (emphasis added)

(Capital Vol III pp441-2)

And to emphasise the point he writes in the Critique of the Gotha Programme,

“But as far as the present co-operative societies are concerned, they are of value only insofar as they are the independent creations of the workers and not protégés either of the governments or of the bourgeois.”

Later Engels himself was to write that both he and Marx saw the use of Co-operatives on a wide scale as central to the process of transformation.

If workers want to eliminate te need to periodically have to pit their strength against the bosses just in order to gain a decent wage, if they want to avoid the repeated danger of losing their livelihood every time the capitalist economy enters one of its downturns, if they want to have decent healthcare, housing and education they cannot entrust thee things to capitalists or to the capitalists stat, they have to take responsibility for these things themselves, and provide them for themselves. They have to begin to take the means of production back into their hands by establishing co-perative ventures on a wide scale across all aspects of workers lives. For, the last 80 years or more the Leninists have rejected such an approach because they beleived that socialism could only come through some political revolution like that of 1917. In doing so they reject Marx, and his belief in the necessity of the self-activity of the working class itself to change society, reject his historical materialsm in favour of a return to the Hegelian dialectic, whereby the Idea manifested to some elitist group - in this case the Bolshevik Party - unfolds from above, from the actions of a State under the control of that elitist group. It is in essence no different from that same elitist and statist conception of the reformists of the Second International, who simply beleived that this process could be implemented piecemeal. Th one resulted in the continuance and strengthening of bouregois demcoracy, the other resulted in Stalinism, and an even greater strengthening of bouregois democracy.

Yet, the fact is that workers have tremendous strength if they choose to use it. IN Britain alone something like £500 billion is invested in wokers Pension funds. That is equivalent to the value of at least half the companies in th FTSE 100. If you consider the money that worker have paid through taxation into funds controlled by the Capitalist State, for retirement, unemployment and healthcare the sums as staggering. Yet, workers calmly hand over these huge sums to a Capitalist State which is their mortal enemy. What is worse socialists, inluding some who call themselves Marxists encourage them to do so, to bring forward schemes whose prime aim is to increase the range and power of that very institution, which Marx and Engels showed us is the very institution by which class rule is maintained!! If someone from Mars came down and witnessed this lunacy they would be sure that the entire Marxist and socialist movement had been taken over by agents of the bosses themselves.

Fortunately, there are still some of us that recognise that Marx's teachings have been buried uner a mountain of Leninist and Stalinist shit for 80 years. The task is to remove that shit and uncoer the true writings of Marx, and begin the process of returning some sense of pride and esteem to the working class, which 80 years of statism in its reformist and Leninist forms has sucked dry. In that respect I was glad to see this comment by Dick Bryan in an interview with Martin Thomas,

"But I think what finance shows us is actually how powerful labour potentially is. In part this shows through the capacity of low income mortgage borrowers to bring down some big financial institutions. Alternatively, the global pool of superannuation funds – labour’s capital – shows how critical labour is to the funding of investment. The broad political task is to move this beyond labour as capital (failed capital, in the case of the sub-prime market) and frame it as the financial form of labour’s capacity to mobilise and transform the world of capital for itself."

Quite true, but the way to do this is quite straightforward. Some years ago in Sweden a scheme was established to create a Workers Pension Fund that required companies to desposit shares into the Fund each year. Within a short time the Fund ccounted for around 7% of the value of the Swedish Stock Market. here were it seems to me a number of things wrong with this scheme. Firstly, it was a scheme which was still dependent on the bouregois State. When there was a change of Governemnt the scheme was scrapped. If workers had simply created their own Pension Scheme that could not have happened. Workers have that capability. The TU European Fund, which was a UNit Trust run by the Union Bank Unity Trust, was some years agothe best performig Unit Trust. In addition to Unity Trust, the Co-operative bank and Co-op Insurance Services have more than enough financial expertise that can be tapped by the labour Mvoement because they already provide such funds and services. Secondly, taking shares from individual companies is not the best means of achieving the goal. Some companies might be bad investments for workers to put thier funds into, and issuing share capital dilutes the value of the shares. It is better for workers instead to simply have hold of a pot of money, and use it effectively.

If workers demanded the right to have control over the vast amount of money in their pension funds on what basis would they be denied that basic democratic right to dispose of their collective property, a fundamental right even under capitalism? If a campaign were launched for such a demand, and the bosses refused the basic underlying ideology of capitalism and its supposed respect for the right of property would be shatttered, showing that it is only capitalist property that is sacrosanct. But, were such a campaign to be succesful it would provide a great infusion for a growth of democracy within the Labour Movement. Nothing motivates people more than the thought of money, even workers, and given that it would be necessary to organise a range of democratic methods of workers discussing how to utilise such vasts sums worker participation would flourish. That in itself should be welcomed by Marxists and socialists of all kinds a the means of workers discussing the wider political and economic issues that must arise in such deliberations. What better means then to encourage the same kind of democratic discussion and involvement that would be required in utilising these funds to buy up important sections of industry, and convert them into powerful workers co-operatives, combined acroiss the whole economy with other co-operatives as the basis of developing an increasing power base for the working class, and transforming society. And in so doing these funds could also be used to establish a Workers Health Service no longer at the mercy of the bouregois state, no longer ripped off by high paid Tory NHS bureaucrats, but one ownd and controlled by workers themselves, and no longer ripped off by large pharmaceutical companies for its drugs, but one which worked in tandem with similar worker owned pharmaceutical co-operatives providing drugs on the basis of need not profit, and instead using its position to squeeze remaining private hospitals and healthcare in the way the rich have previously squeezed the workers.

Such a transformation will not be easy. Even the vast sums in these pension funds are small compared to the vast resources of the Capitalists, and the Capitalists will use every means to prevent the onward march of the workers even by such peaceful and democratic means. But, the working class is large in number, and has the power to squeeze the Capitalists under the right conditions. The more economic power the workers have through their own enterprises, the less the capitalists can divide the workers and squeeze their wages and conditions. The more powerful the workers become economically the greater their confidence and combativity will become as they see that a new better society is possible. Once the huge mass of the workers begins to move as a class as Engels told us was our goal nothing could stand in the way of such a juggernaut. As Del Boy used to say, "He Who Dares Wins."

Bonjour.

Israel, Iran and Reason

The Left press and internet chatter over recent days has been full of a discussion of an article by Sean Matgamna of the AWL that we are told was intended to provoke discussion about what the left’s position should be were Israel to launch an attack on Iran. Its notable that most of the actual discussion of this issue has been in the rest of the left press, whereas the AWL have responded to criticism of the argument with their now familiar brand of bilious invective, evasion and rudeness. The AWL are an insignificant Stalinist microsect of a few dozen people, and in some ways it would be better for the left to simply ignore them, and allow them to wither away. That indeed had been my intention. But, the fact that the rest of the left has taken up this discussion makes it one worth engaging with. Moreoever, as Trotsky said about the original Stalinism it represents a syphilis in the workers movement, and so the movement needs to be protected against it by all means. Finally, the AWL does contain still some healthy elements such as Dave Broder, and socialists should try to give whatever support we can to these elements in order to protect them from that virus. Dave Broder has said that he does not intend to split from the AWL, but intends to wage a principled fight within it. Such principles are to be applauded, but the reality is that in Leninist organisations, and particularly in the deformed Stalinist version of Leninism the possibility of leading such a struggle are limited. Dave should have realised that lesson over his struggle to change the organisations position over Iraq. Were the Minority to look like they were going to overturn the leadership on such an important issue they would be expelled or the organisation would split, it is inconceivable that the leadership would themselves be content to occupy a Minority position on this issue. The danger is that the remaining healthy elements inside the AWL such as Dave Broder will rather simply become demoralised and disillusioned, especially as they can expect the same rudeness now used against non-AWL comrades to be turned on them were they to begin to have any real success within the organisation. It would be a great pity of comrades like Dave Broder were lost to the Labour Movement, and we should do everything we can to avoid that.

Having said all that I think that the focus of much of the criticism of Sean’s article has in fact been wrong. That focus has been on his statement that “Israel would have good reason to attack Iran.” If we analyse that statement is it in fact wrong? I have myself argued that given the objectives of the US it is inevitable that it will attack Iran. Is there a great deal of difference between that statement and Sean’s? You could argue that in saying its inevitable that the US will attack Iran is also to say it will do so because from the perspective of US imperialism it has good reason for undertaking such action, and generally speaking we assume that states act out of some basic rationality.

If we view things from the perspective of US imperialism then it has “good reason” to attack Iran, because in order to achieve its objectives it cannot allow a state like Iran to act as a potential focus of opposition to its plans in the region. If we look at things likewise from the perspective of Israel as a sub-imperialist power then it too for similar motives has “good reason” to attack Iran as a means of achieving its objectives – whether or not Iran has or is likely to develop nuclear weapons. The following statement by Trotsky is illuminating from this perspective.

Quoting Lenin he says,

“Imperialism camouflages its own peculiar aims – seizure of colonies, markets, sources of raw material, spheres of influence – with such ideas as “safeguarding peace against the aggressors,” “defense of the fatherland,” “defense of democracy,” etc. These ideas are false through and through. It is the duty of every socialist not to support them but, on the contrary, to unmask them before the people. “The question of which group delivered the first military blow or first declare war,” wrote Lenin in March 1915, “has no importance whatever in determining the tactics of socialists. Phrases about the defense of the fatherland, repelling invasion by the enemy, conducting a defensive war, etc., are on both sides a complete deception of the people.” “For decades,” explained Lenin, “three bandits (the bourgeoisie and governments of England, Russia, and France) armed themselves to despoil Germany. Is it surprising that the two bandits (Germany and Austria-Hungary) launched an attack before the three bandits succeeded in obtaining the new knives they had ordered?”

See:Trotsky - "Lenin and Imperialist War"

He could have said, “Didn’t Germany and Austria-Hungary have good reason to launch an attack before……” Yet good reason or not Lenin did not say would, therefore socialists take into consideration this “good reason” in determining whether they should condemn such a war or not. Trotsky goes on to explain why.

“The objective historical meaning of the war is of decisive importance for the proletariat: What class is conducting it? and for the sake of what? This is decisive, and not the subterfuges of diplomacy by means of which the enemy can always be successfully portrayed to the people as an aggressor. Just as false are the references by imperialists to the slogans of democracy and culture. “... The German bourgeoisie ... deceives the working class and the toiling masses by vowing that the war is being waged for the sake of ... freedom and culture, for the sake of freeing the peoples oppressed by czarism. The English and French bourgeoisies ... deceive the working class and the toiling masses by vowing that they are waging war ... against German militarism and despotism.” A political superstructure of one kind or another cannot change the reactionary economic foundation of imperialism. On the contrary, it is the foundation that subordinates the superstructure to itself. “In our day ... it is silly even to think of a progressive bourgeoisie, a progressive bourgeois movement. All bourgeois democracy ... has become reactionary.” This appraisal of imperialist “democracy” constitutes the cornerstone of the entire Leninist conception.”

But, that is precisely the point isn’t it? In looking at wars and deciding their attitude to them Marxists do not put themselves in the place of the bourgeoisie of the particular state, and say “Is there good reason for this war?” On that basis we could never condemn any imperialist war, because from the perspective of the bourgeoisie there is ALWAYS a good reason for their action. To begin from a position of looking at things from the perspective of the bourgeoisie is to condemn yourself to always acting as its apologist, even if as in the case of the AWL a shamefaced apologist. It is to become, what Trotsky described the AWL’s predecessors, the original Stalinists, communo-chauvinists.

It is that perspective, that methodology which has put the AWL on the wrong side of the class lines on many instances of a similar kind. Time and again they look at the National Question not from the perspective of proletarian internationalism, but of bourgeois nationalism.

That is why in trying to con us into believing that he engages in a principled search for reasons why Marxists should condemn any attack by Israel, Sean in fact gives us a duff list of arguments, whose real purpose is not to enquire whether such an attack should be condemned, but to provide the basis of an argument against those “idiot-anti imperialists” who in such an attack will give a knee jerk support to Iran. The one reason he does not give to be considered, which should be the first thing that comes to the head of a Marxist is that given by Lenin and Trotsky above,

“The objective historical meaning of the war is of decisive importance for the proletariat: What class is conducting it? and for the sake of what? This is decisive, and not the subterfuges of diplomacy by means of which the enemy can always be successfully portrayed to the people as an aggressor”.

If Israel were to launch an attack on Iran, or likewise if Iran were to launch an attack on Israel it would not be to enslave the other nation. It would be in order to constrain the power of the other, just as in general inter-imperialist wars do not intend to turn the defeated nation into a colony of the victor, not even the First World War had that perspective. It is inconceivable that Iran, even were it to obtain nuclear weapons, and there is no indication that it is anywhere near about to, and MOSSAD is a very effective intelligence gathering agency, would launch a nuclear strike against Israel. For one thing, doing so would kill tens of thousands of Palestinians and other Arabs, but secondly it would unleash a much more deadly strike from Israel, which is the world’s fifth most nuclear armed state. There is absolutely no reason then for socialists to support one state as against another, both should be condemned without question of who started the fight. The task of socialists would be to turn such a war into a Civil War, for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie in both states. That is defeatism on both sides. That as Trotsky sets out dos not mean socialists going out in their own state trying to blow things up, it siimply means conducting propaganda and activity designed to turn the guns on your own bouregoisie.

It is not quite the same in the case of an attack on Iran by the US. The US has shown quite clearly in the case of Iraq, that it is prepared not just to launch limited wars, but is prepared to deprive other states of national rights, to occupy them and so on. In any such war the actions even of a nationalist bourgeoisie to defend its nation state would have to be supported by socialists – though of course the socialists would maintain their political and organisational independence. The question here would be what is the actual motivation - is it a War of conquest.
The main task of socialists at the moment is to oppose, by independent working class action, the war drives of the imperialist and expansionist states. That means action by the working class to drive the US out of Iraq, and for the removal of its fleet from the Gulf. It means action to deny arms to the clerical-fascists. It means developing a Programme of Action for Iraq, Iran and the rest of the Middle East around which workers and peasants can be mobilised for a fight both against imperialism, and clerical-fascism, and in defence of workers interests. But, workers cannot prevent bourgeois states going to war, nor can they control or limit the actions of the armies of those states when they do so. Nor should Marxists advocate the positions of pacifism when such wars begin, for example desertion etc. The job of Marxists is to propagandise within the armed forces and within the working class and peasantry in general under such conditions rather for the guns to be turned on our respective ruling classes.

Responding to a similar lapse into social chauvinism by the Palestinian Trotskyists, Trotsky wrote,

"That policy which attempts to place upon the proletariat the unsolvable task of warding off all dangers engendered by the bourgeoisie and its policy of war is vain, false, mortally dangerous. “But fascism might be victorious!” “But the USSR is menaced!” “But Hitler’s invasion would signify the slaughter of workers!” And so on, without end. Of course, the dangers are many, very many. It is impossible not only to ward them all off, but even to foresee all of them. Should the proletariat attempt at the expense of the clarity and irreconcilability of its fundamental policy to chase after each episodic danger separately, it will unfailingly prove itself a bankrupt. In time of war, the frontiers will be altered, military victories and defeats will alternate with each other, political regimes will shift. The workers will be able to profit to the full from this monstrous chaos only if they occupy themselves not with acting as supervisors of the historical process but by engaging in the class struggle. Only the growth of their international offensive will put an end not alone to episodic “dangers” but also to their main source: the class society."


See: Trotsky - "A Step Towards Social Patriotism" March 1939

It becomes ever clearer why the AWL deleted my posts on their article on Glotzer and Israel - See: Liberty, Bah Humbug, and why they subsequently deleted my account, and why more recently they simply deleted any post I made to their site. As I showed in the responses to the Glotzer article - and indeed as I have shown in response to their collapse into new class theories of the USSR - their methodology is marked not by Marxism, but bouregois subjectivism. They do not look at Iran in class terms. Their entire argument is based instead on a characterisation of the political superstructure. It is in that regard the same as the argument put forward by the Palestinian Trotskyists above criticised by Trotsky, which failed to analyse the class basis of the contending regimes, and instead allowed itself to be blinded by the political mask - democracy and fascism. But, that same subjectivism and Opportunism can be witnessed in almost all of the AWL's politics.

Shachtman and Leninist Apologism

Shachtman’s article in Solidaity 3/80 “Stalinism and the ‘original sin’ myth” is an apologia for Leninism. It shows why generations have been lost to Marxism. Whatever the merits of Wolfe’s analysis critiqued in that article, Shachtman fails to draw out the relationship between Leninism and Stalinism, even where he hints at the real relationship, which Wolfe himself had failed to analyse. By focussing on the narrow concept of party organisation, Shachtman fails to draw the more important conclusions about the very concept of the Leninist Party as a party of professional revolutionaries, as a separate party from the workers, and what implications that has for the relationship of the party to the class, and what it says about the Leninist concept of the role of the working class as the revolutionary class, and, consequently, what it says about the Leninist concept of revolution and socialist construction. It is in these areas I believe that the roots of Stalinism are to be found.

Shachtman says that Lenin’s position on the development of class-consciousness was the same as that developed earlier by Kautsky, who he quotes.

“Many of our revisionist critics believe that Marx asserted that economic struggle create, not only the conditions for socialist production, but also, and directly, the consciousness of its necessity…In this connection socialist consciousness is presented as a necessary and direct result of the proletarian class struggle. But this is absolutely untrue.

“Of course, socialism as a theory, has its roots in a modern economic relationship in the same way as the class struggle of the proletariat has, and in the same way as the latter emerges from the struggle against the capitalist-created poverty and misery of the masses. But socialism and class struggle arise side by side and not one out of the other; each arises out of different premises.

“Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge. Indeed, modern economic science is as much a condition for socialist production as, say, modern technology, and the proletariat can create neither the one nor the other, no matter how much it may desire to do so; both arise out of the modern social process. The vehicles of science are not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia: It was out of the heads of members of this stratum that modern socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually-developed proletarians who, in their turn, introduce it into the proletarian class struggle where conditions allow that to be done.

“Thus, socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without, and not something that arose within it spontaneously. Accordingly, the old [Austrian] Hainfeld program quite rightly stated that the task of Social Democracy is to imbue the proletariat with the consciousness of its position and the consciousness of its tasks. There would be no need for this if consciousness emerged from the class struggle.” (See Solidarity 3/80 p17.)
But this is not the position adopted by Lenin. Kautsky’s position is totally compatible with that of Marx, and the need for the Communists to undertake patient persistent work within the workers movement and the workers party, to educate the workers, to analyse the workers struggles and to relate back to them the lessons of what they had done, to steadily develop within the working class, as the revolutionary class, a steadily growing and resolute class consciousness, an understanding of its class interests and historic role. Kautsky like Marx argues that socialism developed as a set of ideas developed by sections of the bourgeois intelligentsia, but, with the development of the working class, a section of this intelligentsia develops socialism as a scientific theory which analyses society and the role of the working class, recognises its revolutionary role, and thereby begins the process of educating that class and developing within it, a consciousness of its interests, and mission. The degree to which this is successful depends on economic and social relations, the clarity and significance of the Communists, and the extent to which this combines with the workers experiences in such a way that the workers develop.

But, in fact, Lenin rejects such a role. He believes that the working class as a whole can never achieve this class consciousness under capitalism, because it will continue to be dominated by bourgeois ideas, and worse, unless the Marxists form their own pure revolutionary party, they risk being pulled down into the swamp of bourgeois and reactionary ideas that riddle the workers movement. Only certain sections of the vanguard of the workers movement can be drawn into such a party, and its role, whilst conducting propaganda and organisation within the workers movement, is geared not to this long term work of consciousness building, but of preparing the ground for those rare moments when a crisis breaks out, a revolutionary situation where the workers break free of the domination of bourgeois ideas, see the light, become class conscious and throw out the old regime. Indeed, the work in the meantime can be little more for the simple reason that Lenin believes that all struggles short of the overthrow of capitalism must by definition be dominated by, not socialist consciousness, but Trade Union consciousness, reformism. The Communists can, within the context of these struggles, try to show their limitation, and thereby radicalise the workers and try to win over a few more of their vanguard, but that’s about it.

This also is the position of Shachtman.

“To this should be added: neither would there be any need for a distinct, separate political movement of socialism – a socialist party – except, perhaps to fulfil the not very useful function of passive reflector of the welter of ideological and political confusion that, to one extent or another, will always exist in the working class, at least so long as it is a class deprived of social power and therewith of the means of wiping out its own inferior position under capitalism by force – but only in the last analysis, only at times of crisis. As a rule, be it under democratic or even under fascist capitalism, the ruling class maintains or seeks to maintain itself by ideological means.

“The whole of capitalism’s ‘headfixing industry’, as one Marxist wittily called it, is directed toward keeping the working class in ignorance or confusion about its social position, or rather about the purely capitalist reasons for its position, toward concealing from the working class the emancipating historical mission it has and the road it must travel to perform it.” ( ibid P17.)

But this is “Economism” in reverse, and leads to a lot of pseudo-Marxism that has left a lot of Marxists looking ridiculous as they contort to try make their theory fit reality. Shachtman, like Lenin, seems to rule out the possibility that poor gullible workers might be capable of rejecting the “welter of ideological and political confusion” if they are actually educated by the Communists on a daily basis in their struggles and in their Party, instead of the Communists giving it up as a bad job and concentrating on a few individuals (who by the same definition tend to be bourgeois or from a bourgeois milieu such as students). It is not Lenin’s organisational concept per se which leads to Stalinism, but this rejection of Marx’s belief in the working class as the agent of revolution once combined with socialist consciousness, disdain of that prospect prior to the revolution, and the substitution, therefore, of the Party for the class.

Look at the contortions of modern day Marxists in relation to the ideological arm of the State in relation to this comment by Shachtman,

“The whole of capitalism’s…perform it.” (ibid P17.)

If that were true, then, one of the most progressive demands Marxists could raise, would be “end education for our children”. There seems no concept of dialectics here at all, any more than there is in terms of the working class achieving class consciousness as a process in general. All sorts of contortions are required to explain the role of socialist teachers within this bourgeois ideological monolith whose only function is to “confuse” the workers. There is no sense that even within this ideological arm the contradictions of capitalism are reproduced and become manifest, and it becomes itself an arena for class struggle within which the workers, far from being simply passive recipients of bourgeois ideology, can develop their own class consciousness. Shachtman here has the same elitist, and dismissive attitude to the working class as Lenin. I would actually take issue to some extent with Kautsky on this point in relation to where he says,

“Indeed, modern economic science is as much a condition for socialist production as, say, modern technology, and the proletariat can create neither the one nor the other, no matter how much it may desire to do so; both arise out of the modern social process. The vehicles of science are not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia: “

This was probably true at the time Kautsky was writing, but the fact is that today, science whether natural or economic is largely the product of workers, highly paid workers in some cases, maybe, but workers nevertheless.

“But if the bourgeois fetters upon production are thrown off and destroyed, that alone does not and cannot assure the growth of socialist production. Under capitalism, production is assured by the irrepressible tendency toward accumulation of capital which is dictated primarily, not by the will of the capitalist, but by the blindly-operating market as the automatic regulator of capitalist production. Socialist production is incompatible with market relations.

It is production for use and therefore planned production, not automatically regulated by a blind force. Given a certain level of development of the productive force available, everything then depends upon planning, that is upon the conscious organisation of production and distribution by human beings.” (ibid. P18.)

Shachtman makes this statement after quoting Lenin,

“One of the main differences between the bourgeois revolution and the socialist revolution consists in this, that for the bourgeois revolution which grows up out of feudalism the new economic organisations, which continually transform feudal society on all sides, gradually take form within the womb of the old society.” (ibid p18)

Is this necessarily true? Just as feudalism was forced to take on board aspects of capitalism, which grew within the old society, is not the same thing true in many ways with respect to socialist relations within capitalism? For example, in order to avoid repeated crises capitalism has not only been forced to adopt some of the methods of socialism, but some of these methods have developed within capitalism naturally. Competition has largely been replaced by monopoly. Whilst competition still takes place it is refracted through this lens, even without cartelisation just look at the co-operation that takes place within say the motor industry where every major company shares engines, chassis and other components with its competitors, for example the recently announced joint venture between Ford and Fiat to develop a new small car. And as the role of competition has declined, so, now these companies determine what, and how much to produce, not in response to price signals sent from the market, but on the basis of comprehensive market research, demographic models and the formulation of five year plans for production, finance, and marketing. What is the purpose of these if not in a very real sense to determine what use-values people want producing, and to organise production to achieve it? In what way would socialist planning at an enterprise level differ? The main difference here is simply the issue of workers control of this process. Given the resources of workers in the developed world in their pension funds, is it inconceivable that workers could be convinced they should have democratic control of these funds, and the companies in which they are invested. Large sectors of the economy are under government control where the production of use values such as hospitals, schools etc. dominates. Government seeks to use various methods of macro-planning to manage the economy through fiscal and monetary policy. Indeed, a number of the demands in the Communist Manifesto, such as the establishment of Central Banks, the introduction of a progressive or graduated income tax, combination of agriculture with industry and gradual abolition of the distinction between land and country, free education in Public Schools, abolition of child labour, together with some improvements not even included in the Manifesto such as free healthcare, are now a reality. How is this adoption of socialist methods under capitalism, different from the adoption of capitalist methods under feudalism? The factor lacking is not the adoption of socialist methods, but democratic workers control over those methods, and therefore, their limited scope and effectiveness.

“Until the distant day when all classes are completely abolished and socialism fully established, the conditions of production and distribution must necessarily be determined by politically associated human beings – no longer by the blind market but by the state.” (ibid P18).

Why?? If workers took control over their factories tomorrow, why would that mean the market ceased to exist? When economies were dominated by owner/producers the market existed without capitalists, and there was no need of state direction. It is perfectly conceivable, theoretically, to envisage a market economy where every enterprise is a workers co-op. It is likely that if these enterprises continued to compete against each other then some would go bust, and capitalism would reproduce itself, but it is also not beyond comprehension that the workers in these co-ops might decide, rather than competing all out against each other (at least on the basis of price), they would co-operate whilst still in a market context. Indeed, if you read Trotsky in “The New Course” he makes clear that it was never part of the Marxist conception of socialist construction to be able to go straight to a planned economy, the problems are too great, and it is necessary to learn first how to control the market, and how to bring production under planned control bit by bit. There is no reason why co-operative and collectively owned businesses, could not open their books to each other, share their information and plans, co-ordinate their activities to try to limit the possibility of overproduction, to liaise with their suppliers and customers to gradually integrate their own business plans, with those of other enterprises, and in none of that process is there any requirement for state interference or control. Only at the point where the workers have reached a stage where they have mastered control over the economy and it requires a national plan is there any requirement for a state to be involved, and such a state would be nothing like what we understand by a state now. Such a process, of independent working class socialist construction, completely removes the possibility of bureaucratism or Stalinist degeneration, but it is the antithesis of the concept of socialist construction put forward here by Shachtman or by Lenin.

Compare Shachtman’s view with that of Marx who refers in Capital to the role of Credit in socialist construction, to be used by workers in buying and accumulating capital to establish their own direct ownership of the means of production, or Marx’s discussion of the co-operatives established in Lancashire by the workers. Compare this also with Marx’s own earlier ideas, before he had begun to recognise the revolutionary nature of the working class, where his ideas were still dominated by Hegelianism and statism, for example, the demand in the Communist Manifesto for the extension of factories and instruments of labour owned by the state.

“Like the soviet, for example? Then how explain that every party in Russia, except the Bolsheviks, fought to keep the Soviets (the ‘revolutionary democracy’) from taking over all power, and worked to keep them as a more or less decorative appendage to the never-elected but self-constituted Kerensky regime?” (ibid p18.)

But according to Trotsky the Bolsheviks themselves argued these concepts right up to and beyond Lenin’s return. Why did Lenin want “All Power to the Soviets”, simple the Bolsheviks were more likely to be able to gain a majority there. But, the reality is too, as Trotskypoints out inhis "History", Lenin dropped the slogan several times in favour of the Bolsheviks basing themselves instead on the Factory Committees where they were able to win a majority. Lenin knew that in all previous revolutions the masses always continue to press forward, and those that offer the most radical solutions, in the end, win the leadership, provided they are well organised – (the problem of the Levellers against Cromwell’s disciplined organisation). But if working class consciousness had really made a great leap forward why was it not reflected in the elections to the Constituent Assembly? The standard Leninist response to this is that the Soviets were the really democratic organs, it was they that reflected the true state of affairs. But just read what Trotsky says about the Soviets in February. Talk about rotten boroughs!!!

“There were over 150,000 soldiers in Petrograd. There were at least four times as many working men and women of all categories. Nevertheless for every two worker-delegates in the Soviet there five soldiers. The rules of representation were extremely elastic (I’ll say AB), and they were always stretched to the advantage of the soldiers. Whereas the workers elected only one delegate for every thousand, the most petty military unit would frequently send two. The grey army cloth became the general ground-tone of the Soviet.

“But by no means all even of the civilians were selected by workers. No small number of people got into the Soviet by individual invitation, through pull, or simply thanks to their own penetrative ability. Radical lawyers, physicians, students, journalists, representing various problematical groups – or most often representing their own ambition. This obviously distorted character of the Soviet was even welcomed by the leaders, who were not a bit sorry to dilute the too concentrated essence of factory and barrack with the lukewarm water of cultivated Philistia. Many of these accidental crashers-in, seekers of adventure, self-appointed Messiahs, and professional bunk shooters, for a long time crowded out with their authoritative elbows the silent workers and irresolute soldiers.

“And if this was so in Petrograd, it is not hard to imagine how it looked in the provinces, where the victory came wholly without struggle.” (Trotsky – History of the Russian revolution pp234-5)

This was the real nature of the Soviet, and there is no reason to assume that its nature became more democratic once the Bolsheviks had a majority, no reason to suspect that the Bolshevik self-appointed Messiahs with their own authoritative elbows didn’t secure that majority by similar measures. Anyone who was involved in the Miners Strike of ’84 will have seen a similar phenomena where people who had nothing to do with the mining industry appeared as members of strike committees; anarchists and all kinds of people emerged out of the woodwork claiming to be “Miners Wives” etc. Or take those unions led by supposed revolutionaries, does anyone really believe that the fact that they have been elected to their positions reflects a membership committed to revolutionary ideas??? Trotsky said socialists should tell the truth. The first place to begin with that is telling the truth to yourself, and not engaging in delusion.

“Here too, the decisive test was 1917 itself. At least, you would think so, on the basis of almost universal experience in such matters. A working-class movement which is suffering from a fatal disease – opportunism, let us say, or bureaucratism – does not usually reveal it, not clearly, at any rate, in normal periods, in periods of social calm or political decay. It shows it, and most disastrously for itself and its followers, in the most critical and troubled periods of society, above all in the crisis of war and the crisis of revolution. But precisely in the critical period of 1917, the Bolshevik Party passed the test, and so well that Trotsky found it possible to abandon his early apprehensions about it.” (Solidarity 3/80 P19.)

Really? According to Trotsky, if the Bolshevik leaders in Russia demonstrated all the opportunism of the “social-patriots” before the arrival of Stalin and Kamenev, the situation became worse after their arrival, resulted in as Trotsky says a decisive move to the right!

“The struggle of parties in the Soviet was extremely peaceable in character. It was a question, almost, of mere nuances within one and the same ‘revolutionary democracy’. It is true that with the arrival of Tseretelli (Menshevik leader) from exile (March 19) the Soviet leadership took a rather sharp turn right – toward direct responsibility for the government and the war. But the Bolsheviks also toward the middle of March, under the influence of Kamenev and Stalin who had arrived from exile, swung sharply to the right, so that the distance between the Soviet majority and its left opposition had become by the beginning of April even less than it was at the beginning of March. The real differentiation occurred a little later. It is possible to set the exact date: April 4, the day after the arrival of Lenin in Petrograd.” (Trotsky – “History of the Russian Revolution” p243)

And this kind of theme echoes throughout Trotsky’s "History". Whatever the romantic vision of the Bolshevik Party that has come down to us over the years, reading Trotsky’s "History" you find time and again, that this party of professional revolutionaries, on questions of the attitude to the war, on the attitude to the government etc., in practice shared all the same positions as its Menshevik and SR opponents. Its leading members were people like Kamenev, a man that had been a member from its inception, who, if anyone knew the innermost thoughts of Lenin, it was him, because he had spent many years with Lenin in exile. True Trotsky describes Kamenev as understanding Lenin’s ideas better than anyone only to interpret them in their mildest form, but not only do we have to take this opinion in the light of subsequent events, but we also have to ask if Kamenev (who Trotsky admits was not without theoretical ability) was not up to the job, what does this say about the rest of the Bolshevik organisation. Whatever, the degree of debate and dissent within the Bolshevik ranks we are left with the picture of a party which in its great mass was little better equipped than any of the other socialist parties. The main factor was – Lenin.

Trotskyists refer to the way Stalin airbrushed Trotsky out of the picture during and after the revolution. Trotskyists airbrush Stalin out of the picture prior to the degeneration. It is a rather facile attempt. In the footnote (Solidarity 3/80 p.18) we read, “Then why the title ‘Three, Who Made a Revolution’? Up to now, only Stalinist forgers have presented Stalin as one of those who outstandingly led the revolution. The facts presented by Wolfe show this to be a falsification and the above quotation confirms it. The title he gives his book is therefore utterly misleading. It would of course be very awkward to load a book with a title like ‘Two Who Made a Revolution and One Who Made a Counter-revolution’, but one merit it would have: it would be accurate.”

But prior to Lenin’s return who were the leaders of the Bolsheviks – Kamenev and Stalin. Who were the editors of Pravda? Kamenev and Stalin, who, after Lenin’s April Thesis, continued to run editorials in the paper opposing it. Or take this quote from Trotsky,

Lenin was fuming about the fact that Kerensky’s government was putting over the war as now being a war of defence rather than an imperialist war, and that the Bolsheviks were going along with it. Trotsky quotes Lenin’s letter to Pravda.

“Our party would disgrace itself for ever, kill itself politically if it took part in such deceit…I would choose an immediate split with no matter whom in our party rather than surrender to social patriotism…” He goes on, “Kamenev must understand that a world historic responsibility rests upon him.” But Trotsky then immediately comments after this “Kamenev is named here because it is a question of political principle. If Lenin had had a practical militant problem in mind, he would have been more likely to mention Stalin.” (Trotsky – “History of the Russian Revolution” p308)

Does this suggest a Stalin that was a nonentity? And if so what kind of a well disciplined, pure, intellectually solid organisation would lift such a nonentity into its highest position even during Lenin’s lifetime, long before any bureaucracy could have become a decisive social force, long before the Lenin levy could bring in forces alien to the supposed tradition of Bolshevism.

“In 1917, most of the party leadership opposed his (Lenin’s) famous ‘April Theses’. He was not only unable to dictate to others, but did not dream of it. He won them over, one by one, partly by the pressure of the party ranks whom he convinced and partly by convincing the leaders as well.” (Solidarity 3/80 P19.)

Yes and no. According to Trotsky, many of the Party ranks were already in practice merged with the Mensheviks on a day-to-day basis. At the Conference where Lenin’s April Thesis is put forward the Mensheviks were there too, on the basis of there being the potential for a formal fusion of the two organisations, a prospect that disappeared after Lenin made his speech, but which also saw many of the Party ranks go over to the Mensheviks. In actual fact, having already threatened to split, “split with no matter whom in our party rather than surrender to social patriotism”, Lenin threatened the same course of action again. Trotsky quotes Lenin’s statement at the Congress. “’Even our Bolsheviks’, he says, narrowing the circle around his antagonists, ‘show confidence in the government. Only the fumes of the revolution can explain that. That is the death of socialism….If that’s your position, our ways part. I prefer to remain in the minority’.” And Trotsky makes clear what Lenin was saying. “That was not a mere oratorical threat; it was a clear path thought through to the end.” (Trotsky – “History of the Russian Revolution p321.)

“And it is only when the masses were exhausted or apathetic or prostrate, that is, when the revolution was succeeded by reaction, that the Stalinist counter-revolution could triumph over the masses and over the Bolshevik party.” (Solidarity 3/80 P19)

But that is the point. Revolutions are special events. They do not constitute the normal consciousness of the class, and its not surprising that during these periods the revolutionary class lifts up the most revolutionary leaders. Wolfe is right when he says “no people can live forever at fever heat.” and it is precisely when that fever heat dies down, when normal class consciousness is resumed that the Leninist conception of revolution falls apart, when it must of necessity become reactionary. It is precisely at this point, which of necessity must arise, that those leaders that reflect the consciousness, not of the most advanced elements in society, but at best the average elements, and at worst the lowest elements, are pushed forward. What is the only safeguard against such reaction? That the revolution is based, not on the revolutionary consciousness of the masses, not on the emotions thrown up in the fever heat, but is based upon a permanent sense of class consciousness within the working class, a class consciousness that exists, not just as a negative reaction against the old order, but as a positive recognition of its interests and historic role, a consciousness reflected, not just during the fever heat of revolution, but manifested day after day as it seeks to consciously replace the rule of capital with the rule of labour. Under those conditions no degeneration can occur because the social weight of the working class controls any bureaucracy they may require in socialist construction, reduces it to an insignificant social force incapable of influence.

“The first big public step, so to speak, taken by the Stalinist bureaucracy was the notorious Lenin levy organised right after Lenin’s death. Hundreds of thousands of workers were almost literally poured into the party.” (ibid P19.)

But this is to explain the cause by the effect. What was the reason for the Lenin levy suggested here, to enshrine the Stalinist bureaucracy’s power. Why did the Lenin levy occur that diluted the party, because Stalin initiated it. How was Stalin able to initiate the Lenin levy, because he had been General Secretary since 1922, two years before Lenin’s death, and had control of the Party. We are left with an explanation of Stalin’s control of the party, which is explained by something that could only occur as a result of Stalin’s control of the party!!! What has to be explained is not what happened after Lenin’s death, but how Stalin, the supposed nonentity, became General Secretary while Lenin was alive, whilst the party is still supposed to be a healthy party of professional revolutionaries, all well versed in the methods and theory of Leninism. A control which began in 1922, when, rather than a growth of bureaucracy in the country, there should actually have been a reduction due to the ending of War Communism, and commencement of NEP; when, with the ending of the Civil War, there should have been a rebuilding of workers organisations, and development of class consciousness, which, on a day to day, enterprise by enterprise basis, should have been seeing that class consciousness manifest itself in a growing awareness and development of workers control that, of itself, would have undermined any bureaucratic tendencies; would have seen even the peasants showing some kind of consciousness in organising themselves into co-operatives, or collectives. Did any of that happen? No. Why, because the necessary level of class-consciousness amongst the workers and peasants was lacking from the beginning.

“Almost to a man they could be counted on by the bureaucracy in the fight against the Opposition, against the Bolsheviks, their principles, their revolutionary and socialist democratic traditions. It was Stalin’s first and least important step in literally dissolving Lenin’s ‘machine’ in order to substitute a despotic police regime that was utterly alien to it. This first step was typical of those that followed.” ( ibid p19)

Doesn’t that demonstrate the folly of trying to carry through a socialist revolution, a revolution, which, unlike the bourgeois revolution, requires a clear class-consciousness on the part of the working class, on the basis, not of the support of the majority of the working class, but of a small minority? Doesn’t it show that the most democratic society the world has ever seen, can only be created by the active, conscious support and self-activity of the majority? Moreover, this opinion of Trotsky is in contrast to what he had written in "The New Course". There also writing that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat could ONLY exist in the form of a Dictatorship of a single Party, he wrote that the Lenin levy represnted a strengthening of the proletarian base of the Party!

This is a fundamental weakness of Trotskyism and its inheritance from Leninism. Because it is elitist, because it is essentially idealist, it focusses necessarily on the question of leadership, and puts itself in a position of necessary contradiction. This quote from Trotsky demnstrates this clearly.

In "The Meaning of the Struggle Against TRotskyism" - Writings 1938 pp42-3 Trotsky argues that the workers of the developed capitalist economies such as Britain, France and Germany had been led into the World War by the leaders of the Labour Movement. The working class of those countries had been ready to rip the head of capitalism, but were prevented from doing so by their leaders. Within the space of just a few lines he gives the explanation for the weakness of the workers in Russia, and the rise of the burueacracy. It was he says, due to the economic backwardness of Russia, and the consequent cultural backwardness of the workers.

"Had the level of technology in Russia been as high as in Germany or the UNited States, the socialist economy would from the start have produced everything needed to satisfy the everyday needs of the people. Under those circumstances, the Soviet bureaucracy would not have been able to play an important role, since a high level of technology would also mean a high cultural level, and hte workers would never hav permitted the bureaucracy to order them about."

He doesn't seem to recognise the obvious contradiction here. First of all, we have the idea that the workers are ready and able to rip the head off capitalism. Fine let us assume that is correct. Now Capitalism even at that time was an entrenched system, the Capitalists a powerful and disciplined class, with a powerful state apparatus at its disposal. What prevents the workers ffrom fulfilling their wishes? Not this powerful class and State machine, but a handful of bureaucrats that themselves are dependent on the workers for their existence!!!!! This is what is known as swallowing camels and choking on gnats. Surely, if the working class consciously WANTS to get rid of the capitalists, and is able to do so then a few bureaucrats are not going to stand in its way are they. After all that is what Trotsky tells us would have been the case in Russia if only the workers there stood at the same level as those western workers!!!

But, clealy both are wrong. It is clearly the case that a conscious working class that understands its historic role, and is confident in its power will not let a few bureaucrats stand in its way. Those bureaucrats only exist in their palces because in general they do represent the aggregate level of class conscioussness of the working class - in fact are if anything at most times slightly ahead of it. But, nor is it true that had workers in the USSR stood at the same level of culture as western workers that the bureaucracy could not have arisen. The capitalist class has allowed a bureaucracy to arise that controls its Capital - albeit as Robin Blackburn et al proved many years ago they do so probably more consistent with the interests of the Capitalists than the Capitalists would themselves - and a cultured working class in the West has allowed a bureaucracy to develop in its Labour movement. Workers in the West do not largely participate in their own organisations and control them - hence the existence of the bureaucracy - they see no need to interrupt their daily lives to do so.

It is, of course partly true that Russian workers after the Revolution did not care to spend their time in meetings etc. - its also largely true that the Bolsheviks made sure they kept control for themselves of these organisations to the exclusion of the general opinions of ordinary workers - and this is a facet of alow level of culture. But, that culture is not a simple reflection of economic development. Workers will only come to see the importance of such involvement if it is to their immediate and obvious benefit. Workers need a long period of education through co-operatives - where they HAVE TO participate in daily decision making - before they come to understand such a means of proceeding, take such activity as a natural aspect of their daily lives. A Leninist political revoluiton from above can never provide that. Once again as on so many occasions the Leninists from their top down approach fail to account for the real working class, and fail to account for the timescales involved in the process of creating class-conscioussness.

Israel and the USS Liberty

Some time ago BBC Four showed a documentary titled "Dead in the Water". It was about the USS Liberty, a US spy ship stationed off the Israeli coast at the outbreak of the six-day war. The Liberty was attacked first by Israeli jets with torpedoes, then strafed, and later it and survivors in the water were attacked by Israeli torpedo boats. The official story put out by the Israeli government and accepted by the US government is that it was an accident. Israel claimed that they thought the boat was Egyptian. The documentary showed fairly conclusively this was a load of bollocks.

Not only was the ship quite clearly marked, its name in huge letters, it was flying the US flag, it had been there for some considerable time etc., etc. but further information including from Israeli pilots (one of whom refused to attack the ship because he knew it was American) showed that its identity was known before the start of the attack.

So why did the attack take place. The documentary interviewed a number of people involved at the time, including the US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara. From these interviews a number of pieces of information came out. Firstly, the US had been flying missions from inside Israel over Egypt. This together with pictures from US spy planes and satellites provided the kind of intelligence the Israelis needed to make the decisive strike on Egyptian assets that eventually was decisive in the war. At the time, Egypt and Syria were Soviet clients in the area, and as part of the Cold War geopolitics, the US had a clear interest in the outcome. This also seems to be perhaps the reason for the attack on the Liberty. The US seems to have thought that there was a possibility of the Soviets coming in to support Egypt and Syria.

What the programme uncovered, and what is still not mentioned in many of the US sites which deal with the attack on the Liberty is that jets from the US 6th fleet had been despatched for Cairo with nuclear payloads. They had been launched to retaliate against an Egyptian attack on the Liberty. Adding, to this is the fact that having shot up the Liberty the Israelis jammed its radio transmissions. This could only be done apparently if you knew the frequencies on which the ship was transmitting. However, due to the bravery of sailors on the Liberty who climbed the masts to rig radio masts whilst being strafed by Israeli warplanes the ship was able to get out an SOS, and to transmit a message that it was under attack by Israeli warplanes. Only then when crews on the ships of the 6th fleet picked up this message did Mcnamara call back the US warplanes. The plan seemed to have been to nuke Cairo in order to frighten off the Soviets from intervening.

The incident shows just how far the US is prepared to go in creating situations which justify its imperialist ambitions.

See: Dead In The Water

and associated links.

See Also:

Attack on the USS Liberty

In recent years Israel has fought a number of wars in the region. The invaswion of Lebanon, and attacks against Hezbollah, and even its support for Fatah as against Hamas, have been recognised by most observers for what they are - proxy wars between the US and Iran. If Israel attacks Iran on the pretext of the potential of IRan developing nuclear weapons such an attack can only be seen as a continuation of that policy. It will undoubtedly be used as a pretext - once Iran responds - for a full scale attack by the US in defnce of its Israeli allies.

The working class in Israel must begin to mobilise now against any such attack by Israel, an attack which will be catastrophic for Israeli as well as Iranian workers. The world Labour Movement must mobilise to support Israeli workers in such action, but must also mobilise against the huge mobilisation of US imperialism in the Gulf, which is preparing such a War in order to maintain and develop its strategic military positions in the Region - and up through the resource rich and vitally important Central Asian republics - as it recognises the growing competition it faces with the new dynamic world economic powers in China, India and Russia - a competition frighteningly similar to that in the 20 twenty years that led up to World War I - a competition, which the increasingly sclerotic US economy is ill-prepared to win, but which its military hegemony can still secure. The strategy was set out clearly in the "Project for a New American Century". It is the reason the US invaded Iraq, and has constructed three huge fortified US enclaves there as large as small cities, it is why it has done deals with various dictators in the Stans to forge a series of strategic bases that can be used in a war against both China and Russia for the vast resources of Central Asia, it is why it has established its bases in Afghanistan, it is why it has attempted to sow nationalist discontent in Tibet, and in the Balkans where again it has established important strategic military bases and outposts.

Marxists do not concern themselves in such situations with whether one side or another in such wars between expansionist capitalist robbers - and Iran is expansionist if not imperialist, which is why the US will be forced to attack it sooner or later - but only in looking to the interests of the working class, and mobilising them against the war aims of the capitalists. But, as Trotsky pointed out workers ultimately cannot prevent capitalist powers going to war, or control the actions of capitalist armies. The best they can do is to be defeatists against their own governments, and striving to turn imperialist war in a class civil war. Only through the overthrow of the capitalist regimes in Tel Aviv, Washington and Tehran can workers snatch the control of the military out of the hands of their own immediate enemies - the capitalists - only on that basis can a guarantee against imperialist war be obtained.

What If Iran Attacks Israel?

Observant readers on the Left may recognise the following, which is intended solely to PROVOKE discussion.

An attack on Israel will most likely lead to great carnage in the Middle East, and beyond, as supporters of Israel such as the US resort to the tactics of “shock and awe” used in Iraq, in retaliation. There might well be large scale Israeli civilian “collateral” casualties. An attack would strengthen the Israeli regime and license an attempt once more to expand the borders of Israel as happened in the previous Arab-Israeli conflicts. It would strengthen the right-wing Zionist elements who would smash down on its critics, including working class critics, inside Israel, as well as fuelling the measures of the imperialists in its “War on Terror”. It would throw Iraq back into the worst chaos along with much of the Middle East.

Yet the plain fact is that nuclear bombs in the hands of a regime which came into existence by violently removing the existing population, which still violently deprives Palestinians of basic democratic rights, and which has repeatedly used its military might to invade neighbouring states as part of its overall imperialist policies – including as the Documentary “Dead in the Water” demonstrated a willingness to use nuclear weapons against its neighbours - are not something Israel’s neighbours will peacefully tolerate. Ultimately, they will seek to obtain means of defence themselves including the same nuclear weapons and chemical weapons that the Israeli state possesses. They will act to stop it while it can still be stopped including the risk of a nuclear conflict in the Middle East.
The possession of the world’s fift5h largest nuclear arsenal by Israel, and one of the largest chemical and biological arsenals, and given Isreal’s previous expansionist ambitions, it is inevitable that Iran and others will seek to defend themselves against Zionist expansion by whatever means and with or without opposition from the USA and NATO.
In the last reckoning here, Iran is no state’s puppet. It has pressing concerns of it’s own, and will act on them.

In 2007, Israel attacked a nuclear weapons site in Syria. It attacked nuclear installations in Iraq in the 1980s, when the US was backing Saddam against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, eliminating Saddam’s attempt to develop nuclear weapons. AS “Dead in the Water” demonstrated it was prepared with the knowledge of sections of the US establishment to attack the USS Liberty, and to machine gun its sailors as they attempted to save themselves in the water, merely as a pretext on which the US could blame this on the Egyptions and then launch a nuclear strike on Cairo.

In Iran’s eyes the facts and alternatives here are stark. The Israeli State has shown that it is prepared to take whatever action it sees fit irresoective of the consequences. Given the fact, that Iran has much better air defences than Egypt and other states have had in the past, that its nuclear facilities are known to be in heavily reinforced locations, and that there are many of them, plus the fact that it has threatened to block the oil routes out of the Gulf, it is no wonder that there ahs been talk of Israel launching a tactical nuclear strike against Iran to destroy these facilities and to take out command and control.

Iran and other sympathetic states will act to stop this imperialist and expansionist regime launching such an attack if at all possible.

We as socialists want the Zionist state and the Capitalist class it represents to be sent to hell not by the Iranian and other Islamic fundamentalists, but by the Israeli working class hopefully in the process linking up with Arab workers across the region for the establishment of a Socialist United States of the Middle East. We would like to see the Iranian ruling class go on the same trip as Ohlmert.

We do not advocate an Iranian attack on Israel, nor will we endorse it or take political responsibility for it. But if the Iranians and others attempt to stop Israel attacking them with a nuclear bomb, or chemical or biological weapons – which they have used in the past - in the name of what alternative would we condemn them?

*The inalienable right of every state to have nuclear weapons, and chemical and biological weapons — and here a state whose Zionist rulers, together with the religious fundamentalists both in Israel and in the Bush regime – the so called Endtimers who seek a nuclear armageddon, involving a retaliatory Israeli nuclear strike against Iran in the way a God-crazed suicide bomber sees blowing himself to pieces —? In the belief that it will bring forward the Second Coming

*Because Iran is developing nuclear weapons, and that right should only belong to Israel —?

* Because we are unconditional pacifists? We think military action is never justified, and therefore Iran has no right to attack Israel, not even to stop it using its vast arsenal of nuclear, chemical, biological and conventional weapons —?

*Because we would prefer to live in a world where such choices would not be posed, where relations between states and peoples are governed by reason, and strictly peaceful means —?

*Because for choice we would live in a world where the workers of Israel, Iran, Iraq were united in opposition to all their rulers, and strong enough to get rid of them and bring to the region an era of socialist and democratic peace and understanding —?
*Because Iran would in attacking Israel be acting in the same imperialist manner that Israel has acted for the last 60 years; and that cancels out the genuine self-defence element in pre-emptive Iranian military action against Israeli nuclear weapons —?

*Because Iran is run by clerical-fascists and therefore is undeserving of the right to exist even for the Iranian workers oppressed by those clerical-fascists, and therefore no right to defend itself—? (This will in fact be the underlying attitude of most of the Zionists and imperialists, and of the petit-bourgeois liberals and moralists.)

*Because the Israeli government, imperialist and war-mongering though it is, is a bourgeois democratic power and must be unconditionally supported against clerical-fascists, and totalitarians —?

*Because Iran refuses to accept its place as a subordiniate state and agree to being told what it can and cannot do, by its more powerful neighbour; a state where Iranians are expected to live in conditions only marginally better than their Palestinain brothers, an Arab Palestinian state in which Palestinians have no democratic rights, and therefore socialists, “anti-racists”, and anti-imperialists must be on the side of those who would conquer and destroy it, even, in this case, with nuclear, chemical, biological or conventional weapons —?

*Because we don’t deal in vulgar practical choices but in pure historical essences such as morality, democracy etc. —?

The harsh truth is that there is good reason for Iran to make a precipitate strike at Israel’s nuclear and expansionist capacity. It is that Israel has launched pre-emptive and expansionist wars several times in the past.

Socialists should not want that and can not support it. Our point of view is not that of Iranian or any other nationalism. We want Israeli, Palestinian, Iranian and other workers to unite and fight for a socialist Middle East.
However, least of all should we back Israel, which is the mian imperialist power in the region, a power which has launched previous expansionary wars, which keeps millions of Palestinians in subjection, and which is the main ally of US imperilaism which today occupies a similar role in the world to that of Russia described by Marx and Engels in the 19th century, or argue, implicitly or openly, that homicidal religious lunatics have a right to arm themselves with nuclear weapons — and that those they say they want to destroy should be condemned for refusing to stand idly by while they arm themselves to do the job.

The latter, expressed in duff socialist politics, pretend, one-sided, appeal to morality, to the sanctity of the bouregois demcoratic state, and the supposed progressive potential for imperialism in a fight against clerical-fascism”, will be the response of the kitsch Third Campists, the petit-bouregois liberals and Right Social Democrats to an Iranian attack. International socialists should have no truck with it.

The left needs to discuss these issues in advance, while a, comparitively, calm discussion may still be possible...

But, the starting point has to be proletarian politics not covert attempts to support the actions of one side under cover of pseudo Marxist rhetoric, whilst at the same time playing the role of Pontius Pilate by washing your hands in advance of the inevitable consequences of such an attack.

The above should be read with a recognition that my tongue was placed firmly in my cheek.

Marxism, Education and the State

The following is an essay I wrote in 1980 when I was studying for my Post Graduate Certificate in Education. I doubt today that the contents of such an essay would be acceptable. I am not reproducing the essay here for the purpose of vanity publishing, but because, still, today, many of the ideas contained in it are valid, and some of the facts might be unknown to younger Marxists of the current generation. There is another reason. My views on what constitutes Marxism at that time were coloured by the fact of having been a member of a Trotskyist organisation for 6 years. Those views I now believe suffered from the debilitating infection of statism, which corrupted the body of Marxism after Marx’s death and result from the role of Lasalleanism in, first the Second International, and, in its Leninist successors. I seek to purge that from the ideas contained here.

Question: Since education is concerned with changing lives of individuals it must have an ideological purpose. Discuss.

*************************************************************************************

“The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.”

(Marx, “The Communist Manifesto”, Progress Publisher edition p.70)

It is within the context of this statement, by Marx, that I intend to answer this question. I shall deal specifically with the relation, between Education and the State within British society, pointing out the way in which the education system acts as a conveyor belt for bourgeois ideas, and as a socialising agent (changing the lives of individuals as the question puts it). Within this, I shall be looking at the way in which the education system constrains the ability of radical teachers to seriously question or undermine the dominant ideas. In conclusion, I shall attempt to outline the ways in which these constraints can be broken, and the role education will play under socialism as a means of overcoming past prejudices, and of developing a society based on co-operation rather than competition.

“The Communists have not invented intervention in education, they do but seek to change the content of that intervention and to rescue it from the ruling class.”

(ibid. p72.)

To the outsider, there appears great scope for the individual teacher, within the classroom. In fact, there are a whole range of constraints placed upon the teacher which limit their freedom of action considerably. In some societies, where there is a lack of social stability, these constraints tend to be overt, reflecting the need for high-powered socialisation. In the advanced capitalist countries, though, these constraints are more subtle. The State, according to bourgeois mythology, is neutral between classes. This idea is reinforced, in advanced capitalist countries, by the existence of representative bourgeois democracy. Any overt interference, by the State, to determine the type of ideology, conveyed through the education system, would be wholly counterproductive, because it would shatter the façade of a neutral state.

In “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”, Engels illustrates the development of human society from primitive communism to capitalism. He shows how the State developed along with the change from communal to private property as a means of protecting the interests of the property owners. Engels defined the State as being “bodies of armed men”. Nowadays, the State is more than just bodies of armed men. It has, with the development of representative bourgeois democracy, created an ideological arm. It is this ideological arm to which the education system belongs.

One of the first constraints that is placed on teachers, and one that is growing in importance as education cuts bite deeper is a financial and resources constraint. “In and Against the State” (London-Edinburgh Weekend Return Group) quoted one teacher they interviewed as saying,

“They give you the absolute minimum and expect you to obtain the maximum.”

She related how teaching comprised an endless juggling of priorities just to provide kids with the basic tools they require for everyday life.

But, there is an even more blatant use of financial resources to direct education. Grants are cut to areas of Higher Education such as Social Sciences, and redirected towards those areas where Capital is short of skilled labour. Money is cut from the state sector in order to prop up the private sector, and perpetuate the elitism of the education system.

Public expenditure cuts have a more long term effect also. It is the inner city areas, which have suffered most as a result both of overall cuts in Public Spending and the shift of resources from the cities to the Shire Counties as a result of the introduction of the Block Grant. General social deprivation and higher pupil-teacher ratios already meant that achievement was held back in the Inner Cities. These further cutbacks will inevitably result in even lower levels of achievement. The result will be an outcry over poor results, and a call from those responsible for more emphasis on the 3R’s so that these kids can grow up as good obedient proletarians who do not question their masters.

The further result will be that a bigger percentage of the kids, going into Higher Education, will come from middle class homes, and will tend to take their middle class ideas and values with them, which they will, consciously or unconsciously, transmit when they take up their places as captains of industry, members of the higher Civil Service, and other state positions, and in the education system.

Most analyses show that social and political affiliation cannot be attributed to any one factor, but that as the number of reinforcing factors increases the correlation becomes stronger. As the number of people entering Higher Education continues to be dominated by those who are white, male and middle class so the number of reinforcing factors amongst the products of Higher Education will be high. Some of these people will be the ones who produce the new ideas, which will be incorporated into the State’s ideological armoury to be in turn handed down, like tablets of stone, through the education system. This is not to say that all teachers are white, male and middle class, obviously they are not. It is to say though that the higher echelons of the education system, its values, and ethos, will tend to be white, male and middle class, whiles the number of teachers who are not, and who are sufficiently class conscious to seriously challenge the system will tend to be small.
There is another aspect to the role of ideology in the education system, that of the ideological framework of exams, and the methodology within which teaching takes place. The role of exams in the education system is pernicious. It leads to a situation in which non-examined subjects tend to be low status, and to education being focussed on obtaining a piece of paper at all costs. This leads to specialisation, and the prevention of the development of wider horizons within students. Exams themselves reflect the dominant ideology based upon dog eat dog competition, and a mindless regurgitation of ideas whether they be other people’s or one’s own, as though there were one set of correct ideas, or that the ideas that one had yesterday are just as relevant today.

Such mindless memory tests are fully in keeping with the empiricist tradition of British education. Even supposedly progressive teaching methods such as discovery learning fall into the same trap, by a) ensuring that at the end of the day the information that the teacher wants to convey is what the student discovers, and b) assuming that the sources of information etc. will not reflect the dominant ideas of society.

One of the teachers quoted in “In and Against the State” said that in a system dominated by exams what one should really be teaching the kids is why they are failing. Yet the kids themselves have taken on board the values of a competitive system geared to the needs of industry. She told how she showed a film to a group of ‘O’ level students, which demonstrated that accents and dialects were not inferior to Standard English. The kids hated to hear what they were aspiring to achieve analysed in this manner.

The school itself reflects the hierarchical nature of the society of which it is a part. Another teacher quoted in “In and Against the State”, said that the delicate trust built up between teacher and students can be shattered as a result of a command from above. He related how after graffiti had been written on school walls all teachers had been instructed to search all students in their tutor groups for felt tip pens. Another teacher related the existence of cross-cutting cleavages resulting from a House and Year system, while another told how when she was interviewed the headmaster asked if she was living with the Father of her child!!!!

Since the opening of the so called “Great Debate” there has arisen a “new settlement” involving greater centralisation of power and control over the curriculum. The Great Debate arose as a result of a speech by Callaghan in 1976 decrying the lack of suitably trained school leavers for the needs of industry. The debate came to be one between the ‘progressives’ who were defending professional autonomy, and the ‘reactionaries’ who were arguing for more traditional teaching methods. As one teacher in, “In and Against the State”, points out, the threat from parents cannot be seen as the same as that from the State. But, there are contradictions involved in encouraging greater participation in education by the parents. As one teacher said, they tend to focus on exams and outmoded ideas that teachers had discarded. He said that black parents especially asked, “What can you do to stop our children under achieving like it says in the newspapers,” without questioning how achievement is measured. One has to distinguish between what is defence of autonomy in the interests of the working class, and what in the interest of profession, he said.

The style of teaching is also constrained. One teacher said that the context in which teaching takes place is an authoritarian one in which the teacher sets the students tasks which they must fulfil. If you do not then according to any Headmaster or Inspector you are simply not doing your job. Moreover, in the period of readjustment chaos reigns and the teacher is unable to convey the things they want to convey.

Just in case there are still any holes in the State’s ideological armoury there is also a back-up. Unknown to the last Labour Government the Foreign and Commonwealth Committee provided a grant of £500 for NATO to carry out an education programme. The programme was created by a NATO official who was also the founder of the European Atlantic Movement. He describes the intention of the programme in the July 1980 NATO Review. It was he said to counteract the effect of propaganda on students from supporters of authoritarian regimes. The programme who’s focus was, ‘the defence of Western democracies’ was to be carried out by introducing “real politics (with the necessary emphasis on defence)” into the classroom. In a written reply to Frank Allaun MP, Douglas Hurd confirmed that 6 institutions were in fact taking part in the programme.

If direct intervention this way does not work then there are other right-wing bodies ready to step in. In 1977 the Institute for the Study of Conflict produced a paper entitled, “The Attack on Higher Education”, which received a lot of publicity from the media. The ISC is closely related to the right-wing NAFF (National Association for Freedom) and other employers organisations. Not surprisingly, Rhodes Boyson MP is a member of ISC and NAFF, but the magazine ‘State Research’ prints a list of those academics involved in the production of “The Attack on Higher Education”, a list which takes up half a page. Clearly, the tentacles of these right-wing bodies reaches into the highest levels of the state, and educational establishment.

If this type of intervention is not enough then the overt intervention of the State can be used. In 1975, seven teachers from William Tyndale school in London went on strike. The dispute was a complex one going back to an official NUT pay dispute over London Allowances in 1974. The seven teachers took part in that dispute. One right-wing member of staff, Dolly Walker, accused the seven of being “too political” and began to stir things up amongst some of the parents and the school managers. A meeting was called in which the teachers were to explain to parents the reasons for the dispute, but quickly degenerated into charges of political indoctrination. The charges eventually led to the dispute a year later. At first, the ILEA intended to use a Schools Inspection which could have been used to gather information which could be used against the teachers, without investigating the role of the school managers who had been opposing the teachers. This led to the teachers’ strike.

As a result of the attendant publicity the ILEA eventually agreed to a wider inquiry, and the teachers went back. That the authority was more concerned with an ideological battle than the interests of the students is clear from the fact that after the chaos of using Inspectors to replace the teachers, teachers who were normally used to travel from school to school for special teaching were brought in. At the same time the number of Inspectors for Primary Schools was doubled, and the resources made available by getting rid of Careers Advisors at a time when kids leaving school were finding it difficult to get any job.

When the inquiry reported the seven were sacked. It was clear that the school had been used as a test case against progressive education as a whole from the start. Dolly Walker had received letters from Rhodes Boyson, Shadow Education Secretary, and author of the Black Papers advocating a return to authoritarian teaching methods. As Terry Ellis, Headmaster, said at the time, it was nothing to do with the particular teaching methods of the school as many others used the same methods, it was he said politically motivated. Indeed, as the Daily Mail probably put its finger on it when it wrote at the time that the teaching methods at Tyndale would undermine the status quo of capitalist society. Yet, Terry Ellis pointed out that such statements are based on a false premise that you can take nine year old kids and turn them into Red Guards for the Revolution by acting upon them for a very small part of their lives.

If the State comes down heavily on Left-wing teachers it is not so keen to do so with right-wing and extreme right-wing teachers. Andrew Bron, the new Chairman of the National Front is a lecturer in Government and Politics at Harrogate College of Further Education. An article in “The Times” described him as young, articulate and a fresh change from the thuggishness of past leaders of Britain’s Nazi parties. Quite a remarkable statement when compared with statements from letters sent by Brons to Colin Jordan’s wife (Colin Jordan was the Fuehrer of the National Socialist Movement) printed in “Searchlight” magazine. In these letters, Brons states that his only qualms about bombing synagogues is the effect it might have on Public Opinion.

The State is also prepared to intervene in vetting job applicants. In Lothian, applicants for posts in Education and Social Work are vetted by the Lothian and Borders Police. While the police provide details on applicants for social work, they merely supply a recommendation of suitable or not suitable for Education. Police also went to two schools in Eastbourne and Boxhill to ask questions about the political affiliations and activities of teachers. In neither case was it suggested that any crime had been committed.

What then can radical teachers do to undermine the dominant ideology. If Tyndale’s shows the problems for a school then “socialism in one classroom” can be seen to be even more utopian. Often teachers tend to cut themselves off. If the State ideology is to be challenged, it must be done by progressive teachers taking up their ideas far more widely in the rest of the Labour Movement. In this way too problems arising from the participation of parents can be lessened.

The role of teachers’ Trade Unions is important here, and radical teachers must campaign to make their unions more democratic with leaders prepared to fight not only for better pupil teacher ratios and capitation allowances, but also to take the ideas of radical teachers into the labour Movement. Teachers must also address themselves through the unions to the question of the Labour Party. Without a Labour party committed to reforming Education and the democratic mechanism to ensure that such policies are carried out, even limited reforms will be impossible to achieve.

The demands that teachers should strive for now are the Transitional Demands which not only undermine the present system, but which presage the type of system we will have under socialism. Thus it is important that teachers encourage the setting up of school students unions able to demand equality with teachers, and a greater say in the way schools are run.

But, whatever reforms we may achieve they will always be limited so long as they remain within the confines of the capitalist system, and will always be in danger of reversal with the next economic crisis or shift in the balance of class forces. Only when capitalism has been replaced can a start be made on replacing its constricting ideology, and building a society in which in Education as elsewhere the condition for the development of the individual is the condition for the development of all.

Our present society treats Education as a producer of Labour power, the resources for which depend on what is left over after the needs of industry and Defence etc. have been met. Only when we create a society in which Education is seen as an end in itself can the constraints of such an approach be overcome. The ideas of such a society will themselves then become transmitted through education; ideas of co-operation rather than competition, of innovation and creativity rather than plagiarism and rote.

*************************************************************************************

Much of what I wrote here in 1980 I would not change significantly. But, at that time I was influence by the Statism of Leninism/Trotskyism. A good example of the consequences of that are given in this quote by Max Shachtman. In Solidarity 3/80, the AWL carried an article by Shachtman, “Stalinism and the ‘original sin’ myth”, which is an apologia for Leninism. I wrote a blog replying to the article, at the time, however, the Stalinist censors at the AWL, who fear their new members and contacts coming into any kind of serious critique of the beloved Shachtman, have, like many more of my blogs, deleted it. I will be reproducing my response to Shachtman here shortly. Shachtman says,

“To this should be added: neither would there be any need for a distinct, separate political movement of socialism – a socialist party – except, perhaps to fulfil the not very useful function of passive reflector of the welter of ideological and political confusion that, to one extent or another, will always exist in the working class, at least so long as it is a class deprived of social power and therewith of the means of wiping out its own inferior position under capitalism by force – but only in the last analysis, only at times of crisis. As a rule, be it under democratic or even under fascist capitalism, the ruling class maintains or seeks to maintain itself by ideological means.

“The whole of capitalism’s ‘headfixing industry’, as one Marxist wittily called it, is directed toward keeping the working class in ignorance or confusion about its social position, or rather about the purely capitalist reasons for its position, toward concealing from the working class the emancipating historical mission it has and the road it must travel to perform it.” ( Solidarity 3/80 p.17.)

But this is “Economism” in reverse, and leads to a lot of pseudo-Marxism that has left a lot of Marxists looking ridiculous as they contort to try make their theory fit reality. Shachtman, like Lenin, seems to rule out the possibility that poor gullible workers might be capable of rejecting the “welter of ideological and political confusion” if they are actually educated by the Communists on a daily basis in their struggles and in their Party, instead of the Communists giving it up as a bad job and concentrating on a few individuals (who by the same definition tend to be bourgeois or from a bourgeois milieu such as students). It is not Lenin’s organisational concept per se which leads to Stalinism, but this rejection of Marx’s belief in the working class as the agent of revolution once combined with socialist consciousness, disdain of that prospect prior to the revolution, and the substitution, therefore, of the Party for the class.

Look at the contortions of modern day Marxists in relation to the ideological arm of the State in relation to this comment by Shachtman,

“The whole of capitalism’s…perform it.” (ibid P17.)

If that were true, then, one of the most progressive demands Marxists could raise, would be “end education for our children”. There seems no concept of dialectics here at all, any more than there is in terms of the working class achieving class consciousness as a process in general. All sorts of contortions are required to explain the role of socialist teachers within this bourgeois ideological monolith whose only function is to “confuse” the workers. There is no sense that even within this ideological arm the contradictions of capitalism are reproduced and become manifest, and it becomes itself an arena for class struggle within which the workers, far from being simply passive recipients of bourgeois ideology, can develop their own class consciousness. Shachtman here has the same elitist, and dismissive attitude to the working class as the Leninists.

There are, as I said in my essay, limits to that, but so too are there limits to what workers can achieve in terms of fighting for wage increases, or better conditions and so on. That is not a reason for Marxists to abstain from such struggles, to push within them up to those limits. It is rather in that process to carry out Marx’s injunction:

“We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to.”

Letter to Ruge, See:Marx to Ruge, Kreuznach, September 1843

Workers ultimately have to realise that simply fighting over and over again for pay rises does not change their basic condition. As Marx points out in the Grundrisse, even if workers become affluent as a result of high living standards they remain poor, because they remain non-owners of Capital, and only Capital constitutes real wealth. Without ownership of Capital workers remain tied and subordinated to it. They can only change that condition if they become owners of Capital, if as Marx suggests they create their own Co-operative enterprises. But, similarly they have to realise those restrictions that the bourgeois state imposes upon them in other spheres of life such as Education. The Leninist, statist view is the same essentially as it is in relation to Economic struggle. It is engage in struggle, but point out its ultimate futility and need for the vanguard, that alone can recognise that, to carry through a political revolution, and thereby bring the mass of the class along with it after the event.

But, Marx’s position is clearly different in this as in the case of the Economic struggle. Marx’s position is not that basically everything is hopeless short of this political revolution, but that the social revolution continues behind Men’s backs, that the forces that tend towards the economic and social relations of the new society continue to develop and they take the form of the Co-operative, and the Joint Stock Company. But, recognising this is not something that happens automatically it is up to the Marxists to demonstrate that this is so that this is what the workers should develop as opposed to those continued skirmishes. On the back of that consciousness and social relations change. Certainly, it is no part of Marx to argue for the role of the capitalists state in that process. In the “Critique of the Gotha Programme”, he rails mercilessly against such an approach put forward by the Lassalleans. Yet it is that statist approach that dominated the Second, Third and Fourth Internationals, including those anti-Trotsky Trotskyists of the “Third Camp” who claim to have “independent working class action” as the centrepiece of their politics. Indeed, it is these latter who more than most have collapsed into a reliance on the bourgeois state, and even into overt support for that bourgeois state.

In the same way that Marx argued against involvement of the State in resolving economic issues for the working class so he adopts the same attitude to the involvement of the State in Education. He writes,

“"Elementary education by the state" is altogether objectionable. Defining by a general law the expenditures on the elementary schools, the qualifications of the teaching staff, the branches of instruction, etc., and, as is done in the United States, supervising the fulfillment of these legal specifications by state inspectors, is a very different thing from appointing the state as the educator of the people! Government and church should rather be equally excluded from any influence on the school. Particularly, indeed, in the Prusso-German Empire (and one should not take refuge in the rotten subterfuge that one is speaking of a "state of the future"; we have seen how matters stand in this respect) the state has need, on the contrary, of a very stern education by the people.

But the whole program, for all its democratic clang, is tainted through and through by the Lassallean sect's servile belief in the state, or, what is no better, by a democratic belief in miracles; or rather it is a compromise between these two kinds of belief in miracles, both equally remote from socialism."

Critique of the Gotha Programme

But, it is clear that if the State is the “owner” of this education then it most certainly WILL interfere. And Marx makes clear that he has no illusions in that, or in the “democratic clang” of the idea that Education funded by the State could be under “democratic control”. He writes, in relation to such democratic control of state financed co-operatives,

“Instead of arising from the revolutionary process of transformation of society, the "socialist organization of the total labor" "arises" from the "state aid" that the state gives to the producers' co-operative societies and which the state, not the workers, "calls into being". It is worthy of Lassalle's imagination that with state loans one can build a new society just as well as a new railway!

From the remnants of a sense of shame, "state aid" has been put -- under the democratic control of the "toiling people"…

Second, "democratic" means in German "Volksherrschaftlich" [by the rule of the people]. But what does "control by the rule of the people of the toiling people" mean? And particularly in the case of a toiling people which, through these demands that it puts to the state, expresses its full consciousness that it neither rules nor is ripe for ruling!”

The clear solution to this problem is that in order to overcome the restrictions which bourgeois society will naturally place on the working class, and on socialist teachers, in order to break free from the stultifying hand of the bourgeois State, in order that workers can shape the education of themselves and their children, workers must themselves organise this education in the same way that the bourgeoisie organises its education. Within the confines of bourgeois State education workers can never receive “equal education”. Marx says,

“"Equal elementary education"? What idea lies behind these words? Is it believed that in present-day society (and it is only with this one has to deal) education can be equal for all classes? Or is it demanded that the upper classes also shall be compulsorily reduced to the modicum of education — the elementary school — that alone is compatible with the economic conditions not only of the wage-workers but of the peasants as well?

"Universal compulsory school attendance. Free instruction." The former exists even in Germany, the second in Switzerland and in the United States in the case of elementary schools. If in some states of the latter country higher education institutions are also "free", that only means in fact defraying the cost of education of the upper classes from the general tax receipts.”

In short, capitalist society may concede “free” education – though in reality it is paid for out of the general tax receipts, which are merely another expression of surplus value extracted from workers – especially, if a more technological capitalism requires educated workers, but it will certainly NOT be an “equal” education, and the extent to which it is “free” will really go to defray some of the costs of the bourgeoisie in educating their own children.

It is necessary then for workers to develop their own “co-operative” education system in the same way that the bourgeoisie has its private education system. The constraints of capitalist society will still mean that the education workers receive will not be “equal” to that of the bourgeoisie – as Marx points out, “Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby” – but it will be education under the ownership and control of workers not the bourgeoisie or their state. That State will undoubtedly still wish to interfere – for example in the way it did at Tyndale’s – and to an extent such interference will still be required. As Marx pointed out there is no reason why the State should not set minimum standards, but this requires a political struggle also by the working class in determining what they should be. The ability of the State, and for now at least the support in that of parents, to frame the provision of Education solely in terms of academic and specifically exam achievements, will still impose constraints on such education, yet it is clear that such an approach exploits to the full the dialectical contradiction that education for the working class within bourgeois society represents. It does not confine socialists to effectively nothing more than a resignation to the Leninist idea of revolution or nothing, with little more than guerrilla actions, and the recruitment of the vanguard in the intervening period.

Moreover, the stronger the working class becomes the greater the resources it can devote to its own educational sector, the more such education will approach an “equality” with the bourgeoisie in a way it can never do under provision by the bourgeois State. Marx hints at the way such education should be structures in what he says about child labour.

“"Prohibition of child labor." Here it was absolutely essential to state the age limit.

A general prohibition of child labor is incompatible with the existence of large-scale industry and hence an empty, pious wish. Its realization -- if it were possible -- would be reactionary, since, with a strict regulation of the working time according to the different age groups and other safety measures for the protection of children, an early combination of productive labor with education is one of the most potent means for the transformation of present-day society.”

Marx is effectively repeating in part here his comment that ““Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby”. He would have had nothing in common with those petit-bourgeois moralists of today who seek to further pauperise the workers and their children of developing economies through a ban on the employment of child labour. Rather, Marx seeks to organise a working class struggle to put such employment in appropriate conditions, to locate it as an essential aspect of class struggle. Moreover, if workers develop Co-operative industry, then as Marx argues, what better way to incorporate the class lessons learned their with the general education of the child other than through a combination of education and work. Even where children are employed in private industry what better way of developing class consciousness can there be than that the experiences gained in the workplace of the private capitalist are discussed and analysed within the school in a structured manner. How better could Marx’s argument in his letter to Ruge be accomplished, “We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to.”

We have the clear example of how such Education can develop in the form of the Workers Educational Association, and even of the development of the Trade Union Colleges such as Ruskin. But, waiting for already class conscious workers to find their way to such institutions is not enough. Marxists have to argue here and now for the basis of the new society to be developed within the old. That is true in relation to the development of the means of challenging the hegemony of bourgeois ideology as it is to challenging the hegemony of Capital, or the hegemony of the bourgeois State.