Further discussion following meeting 4 October 2007

GB comments on JT

GB on New Marxist Party

For further discussion on the working class struggle: ‘Burma: once again the same lies!’, added 7/10/07 by CM

JT replies to GB

GB on ‘Do we need a Marxist Party?’, 11/10/07

Comments on JT’s talk

As I said at the time it was a lively and vivid presentation. The debate should help us all to develop as socialists.

1. JT says: “After Hitler took power Cominterns became antifascist fronts and allied themselves with Liberal forces” This is not quite true. From 1928 the world’s Communist Parties engaged in the Third Period ultra leftist lunacy. This denounced the Labour Party as social fascists and yet at times led to co-operation with real fascists. After Hitler took power in 1933 it took a while for the Communist International (CI) to change policy. Indeed in early 1934 The British Communist Party was still pointing to the strength of the German Communist party and the need to attack social democracy as the real enemy and not the fascists (See, R. Black, Stalinism in Britain: A Trotskyist Analysis, (1970, London, New Park) pp. 83 – 4. Noreen Branson points out that while the CP was saying this it also approached the Labour Party for affiliation. Amazingly the Labour Party was not impressed. (History of the Communist Party of Great Britain 1927 – 41 (1985, London, Lawrence and Wishart) pp. 113 - 4

1. The whole discussion of popular fronts versus united fronts is curiously outmoded. It assumes clearly organised parties co-operating with each other. Today we have small and smaller sects. Each seems to need a front of some kind. To describe the front as a united front in its pre-war sense is to join a world of fantasy. Each ‘party’ will set up or join an organisation it can control, find a non-member of the core ‘party’ to head the organisation and play puff-fish with it (pretending to be much larger than it really is).

1. I think that JT’s presentation of the Transitional Programme (TP) is a bit of a travesty. A premise of the TP is that there would be a revolutionary crisis after World War II. Given the crisis after World War I this was not entirely fanciful. It was based on the idea that once capitalism had turned to world wars between the major powers it had reached the limit of its social development. Thus, the basis was that consciousness lagged behind the objective world. The demands of the TP were designed to ensure that as workers moved into conflict over symptoms of capitalist crisis the demands opened their thoughts to the fact that the system could not deliver. The demand for opening the books for example was designed to show:

The debits and credits of society, beginning with individual business undertakings; to determine the actual share of the national income appropriated by individual capitalists and by the exploiters as a whole; to expose the behind-the-scenes deals and swindles of the banks and trusts; finally, to reveal to all members of society that unconscionable squandering of human labour which is the result of capitalist anarchy and the naked pursuit of profits. (TP, (nd., London, New Park) p. 18

Thus, the TP was more than just “a hocus-pocus demand, for example that capitalism open all its books to reveal how it makes its money; this is of course refused, which is supposed to enrage the working class to such an extent that it leads to revolution.” as JT suggests in his presentation.

It seems to me that the key weakness of the TP was its assumption that an organised Leninist party was the way forward. Trotsky, in this period, seems stuck between the ideas of Rosa Luxemburg and those of Lenin at his most bureaucratic. The brilliance of his writing often disguised the weakness of his ideas. Furthermore, transitional demands could only work if the system really was on the edge of breakdown.

1. Following World War II there was a period of deep crisis. In both France and Italy the resistance was largely led by communists and had massive support. The CPs rushed to enter coalition governments and stabilise the situation. Later, as the system stabilised Trotskyists went off in two directions. Were they to kid themselves that the revolution is really here or become radical reformers. They did a bit of each. The belief in the TP became other worldly as the Militant put chunks of it in resolutions to Labour Party conferences. All good Healyites knew that capitalism was really about to crash (whatever real life said).

1. Do we suffer immiseration? Absolute material living standards have plainly risen in the developed world. But this does not make us less miserable. The rise of social tensions outweighs more money for the developed world.

1. We all seem to agree that the battles within the Marxist movements are about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Yet they go on. My short letter (to a member of the Critique editorial board) makes some comments on this issue.

GB

A New Marxist Party?

This plan is, in my view, misguided nonsense. It misses all the points about our present situation and the nature of Marxism.

The firm statement sent out by Critique says that the party will be openly Marxist and it completely rejects the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party. However, one of the supporters of the conference, The Democratic Socialist Alliance attempted to join the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party. It also advocates the model of the SSP for party organisation, which the Critique call explicitly rejects.

What is a political Party? It is essentially a movement struggling for political power. By way of contrast, this collection of small political groupings is not a serious movement in society. Its social weight is negligible. It partially holds to the old leftist maxim that the smaller the group the more extravagant the title. It surely needs only to call itself the global or even universal party to fully carry out the maxim. A group of people coming together and making a declaration may be a necessary condition for a party but it is not a sufficient one.

The idea that a party starts from a narrow range of beliefs is another nonsense. Parties build themselves on interests not philosophical beliefs. The interest of the working class is to end class divided and oppressive society and thus to end itself. The role of the beliefs is to articulate the interests. The idea that a curious set of dogmas can create a movement is misguided.

The living movement cannot be restricted into a narrow set of beliefs. You treat the undemocratic nature of the Marxist movements of the past as if they were optional extras which can be avoided. Yet the logic of telling people that you have a Marxist party is compelling. Do they have to sign up to a full package of Marxist beliefs? If so, who sets out the party approved beliefs for members? Would an SPGB style exam be the thing here? This would suggest very few members. The other route, generally travelled by Marxist parties is to open membership up to a wide range of people who broadly agree with the practical policies but either do not agree with or claim to understand Marxism. With this approach the party is more than a discussion centre but control becomes a real problem. To retain the Marxist character of the party a group of true believers has to be in charge. The others are there as second class citizens, although with learning and support for the ideas they can enter the inner sanctum of the Marxists. The logic of this approach is the logic of undemocratic control, especially if the party has the misfortune to be successful and win a large numbers of recruits.

You have quite wisely said little about what the Marxism you are united around consists of. Once you do that you will run into trouble. The need for internal democracy suggests that there are differences about these beliefs (it is surely a premise of journals like Critique and New Interventions that these differences exist). Once you provide some sort of content for the ideas you either have to accept that people you do not consider Marxist or fully Marxist will be in your party (and could even dominate it). At any time only some members will think that the party is Marxist. You can see the worm is in the bud.

It makes far more sense for those who have been engaged in sundry failed Marxist projects to be a little more humble. We would be better off listening and learning from the actual movement of the class. This is because the collapse of the Soviet bloc and its offspring together with the collapse of social democracy has thrown the class into a deep crisis. As capital piles increasing pressures on working people the response will form itself into movements which defend and develop a new sense of what the class is for and about. The class struggle is continuously being recreated. At a time like this the recreation is an acute issue. In this sense we need to develop a sense of what we can do to support and assist the emerging movement. The last thing it needs (or will listen to) is a grouping with all the answers worked out.

By the way whatever happened to Critique’s alliance with Cliff Slaughter and the Movement for Socialism? Terry Brotherstone tells me that this initiative does not come from the editorial board at all.

To GB:

On the history of Stalinism – this is nit-picky. Yes, the immediate Stalinist response to Hitler’s assumption of power was “after Hitler, us”. However, whatever they happened to be doing in 1934, by 1936 – for instance – the CPGB press had merged with a private liberal competitor to become Lawrence & Wishart. This pattern was continuous up until the fall of the Soviet bloc, and is the most characteristically stalinist strategy.

On the TP – I did mention the predication of it on a crisis similar to that after WW1 (I think I used that exact phrase). But that clearly didn’t happen, between the Marshall Plan and good old Stalinist treachery. Europe was not in good shape after the war, but ultimately emerged intact. The point is, capitalism was not in its “death agony” any more then than it is now. The real question is – how tied to that catastrophic scenario is the method of the TP, which everybody still seems so keen to replicate? I would argue, far more so than the Trotskyist movement has been prepared to acknowledge.

Marxism, the Marxist party and the Campaign for a Marxist Party – Marxism is not a narrow set of beliefs. It is a complex intellectual assemblage encompassing theoretical analysis of society and an approach to changing society, with a dialectic going on between the two. Is the Marxist party, then, a party where you’re only allowed in if you have a theory of abstract labour? No, obviously not. The Marxist party has a Marxist programme. Are you nailed down to that? No – you are required to accept it and comply with agreed actions. You objected that there’s always factional rights – but there aren’t. Paragraph one of the SWP’s constitution – “an SWP member is one who agrees with the politics of the SWP”. Firstly, these politics are laid out nowhere, because the SWP has no programme. Secondly – if everybody agrees, how does the line ever change? As for factional rights – you are allowed a temporary faction in the run-up to conference around a specific issue. THAT IS NOT FACTIONAL RIGHTS. I don’t have a copy of the old Healyite constitution. I’m sure it doesn’t specifically require you to worship Gerry as a god, but these things are between the lines. Regarding the CMP – it is currently being bureaucratically run into the ground by members of the DSA. It is not necessarily any more a marxist party than was the decrepit Healy’s “Marxist Party” (whose Marxism by then seemed to involve crawling up Gorbachev’s arse). The point of the CPGB’s involvement in it is to make sure that it is. What is faintly hilarious is that you cite the DSA’s attempted affiliation to the CNWP as some sort of awful hypocrisy – the CMP is affiliated to the CNWP, as are the CPGB! We are fighting to win these dodgy fronts over to Marxism. We were in Scargill’s party, we’re in Respect, and so we shall continue.

What is the Marxist programme? Not a list of propositions on surplus value. It is a programme for power, a programme for a successful confrontation with the capitalist state. That simple. And we should be using this political expression of Marxism – the Party – for purposes such as pedagogy. If we did start recruiting thousands of workers, we would necessarily want to make intellectuals out of them, so to speak. However, the Party is not a school as such, nor an editorial board. A party programme has to be fully fleshed out – you cannot have one of these short lists of banal demands that anybody can sign up to, which duck all the key questions (ie, questions of power). You must know what to do with the cops and the banks and the everything else. You must know if you are revolutionary or reformist (or you will end up like the PT in Brazil, or the SSP). Nevertheless, it must be flexible. That is why we say “accept” rather than “agree”. It should be possible to wage a factional struggle without that ending in a split.

The thing is, I just don’t see anything concrete emerging from your corner at all. A party/movement is based on “interests”, not “ideology” – this seems to be based on that good old stale-as-mouldy-bread positivist distinction between fact and value. If you can call Marxism an ideology with any degree of accuracy, then you must be using it in the general sense of Weltanschauung, rather than the pejorative sense of “false consciousness” – in which case, interests are invariably coded into ideologies, and ideologies always embody interests. Facts and values contaminate each other – this is lesson number four or so of dialectics. I am of the faintly old-fashioned opinion that the long term interests of the proletariat can be discovered by Marxism – therefore, the political form most suited to the class interests of the proletariat is a Marxist Party. You seem to think that...well, what do you think? How would you have a party which was not based on an ideology – that is, a reading of the interests of a certain section of the populace? Trade-unions embody certain working class interests, and they certainly have an ideology to go with them. I am never sure if you are propagating a spontaneist theory or what – the Luxemburgian mass strike, maybe?

My argument is that we have enough troubles on the left without adding another headache. I suggested that Marx had said that he was not a Marxist and that a Marxist party is an idea with nothing in common with Dr Marx. Against this JT argued at the last meeting that when Marx said that he was no Marxist this was a criticism of particular French Marxists and not of the broad idea of a Marxist Party.

I am sure that this is wrong. Marx’s opposition to Marxism seems to have been broader and more fundamental. For example, Marx also rejected the ideas of the Marxists in Russia. Important to Marxism is the idea that there is an historical path of development which is general. Marx rejected this notion. He felt that the pattern of development outlined in Capital applied to Western Europe only. T. Shanin (Ed.), Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and “the peripheries of capitalism” (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1983) p. 100

His political preference was also clear. He liked the practical revolutionaries:

In Russia, where Capital is more read and appreciated than anywhere else, our success is even greater. On the one hand, we have the critics (mostly young university professors, some of them personal friends of mine, as well as some writers for the reviews), and on the other, the terrorist central committee, whose program secretly printed and issued in Petersburg recently, has provoked great fury among the anarchist Russians in Switzerland, who publish The Black Redistribution (this is the literal translation from the Russian) in Geneva. These persons — most (not all) of them people who left Russia voluntarily — constitute the so-called party of propaganda as opposed to the terrorists who risk their lives. (In order to carry on propaganda in Russia — they move to Geneva! What a quid pro quo!) These gentlemen are against all political-revolutionary action. Russia is to leap into the anarchist-communist-atheist millennium in one breakneck jump! In the meantime they are preparing for this leap by a tiresome doctrinairism…

Karl Marx To Sorge, November 5, 1880; Translated and Edited: by Leonard E. Mins;
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/letters/80_11_05.htm (accessed 11th October 2007)

Thus the basis of the modern Marxist tradition (from Plekhanov and his group through Lenin and on to the CPGB) was opposed by Marx from the start.

To sum up I will reply sharply to JT’s point about the closeness of ideology and interest. Ideologies do reflect interests but indirectly. They tend to turn interests into dogmas. To make progress we get as close as possible to the movement of the class not by forming an ideology which tells us in general terms what we think the class thinks but by a bit of listening and living in the movement. What the ‘Marxists’ tend to do is use the dogma as a straightjacket – sad.

I hope to hear more about why ‘tiresome doctrinairism’ is so useful.

Cheers

GB

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