Democracy and Marxism by Tony Benn (1983)

From the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

In response to our request for a contribution to this issue, Tony Benn invited us to use all or part of his "Democracy and Marxism” which was published in the May 1982 issue of the Communist Party monthly, Marxism Today. Below we print extracts from Benn’s essay, with our own response.

The term Marxist is used by the establishment to prevent it being understood. Even serious writers and broadcasters in the British media use the word Marxist as if it were synonymous with terrorism, violence, espionage, thought control, Russian imperialism and every act of bureaucracy attributable to the state machine in any country, including Britain, which has adopted even the mildest left of centre political or social reforms. The effect of this is to isolate Britain from having an understanding of. or a real influence in. the rest of the world, where Marxism is seriously discussed and not drowned by propaganda, as it is in our so-called free press. This ideological insularity harms us all . . .

Even the Labour Party, in which Marxist ideas have had a minority influence, is now described as a Marxist party, as if such a statement of itself put the party beyond the pale of civilised conduct, its arguments required no further answer, and its policies are entitled to no proper presentation to the public on the media. One aspect of this propaganda assault which merits notice is that it is mainly waged by those who have never studied Marx, and do not understand what he was saying, or why, yet still regard themselves as highly educated because they have passed all the stages necessary to acquire a university degree. For virtually the whole British establishment has been, at least until recently, educated without any real knowledge of Marxism, and is determined to see that these ideas do not reach the public. This constitutes a major weakness for the British people as a whole. 

Six Reasons why Marxism is feared 

Why then is Marxism so widely abused? In seeking the answer to that question we shall find the nature of the Marxist challenge in the capitalist democracies. The danger of Marxism is seen by the establishment to lie in the following characteristics.

First, Marxism is feared because it contains an analysis of an inherent, ineradicable conflict between capital and labour — the theory of class struggle. Until this theory was first propounded the idea of social class was widely understood and openly discussed by the upper and middle classes, as in England until Victorian times and later. . .

Second, Marxism is feared because Marx’s analysis of capitalism led him to a study of the role of state power as offering a supporting structure of administration, justice and law enforcement which, far from being objective and impartial in its dealings with the people, was, he argued, in fact an expression of the interests of the established order and the means by which it sustains itself. . .

Third, Marxism is feared because it provides the trade union and labour movement with an analysis of society that inevitably arouses political consciousness, taking it beyond wage militancy within capitalism. The impotence of much American trade unionism and the weakness of past non-political trade unionism in Britain have borne witness to the strength of the argument for a labour movement with a conscious political perspective that campaigns for the reshaping of society, and does not just compete with its own people for a larger part of a fixed share of money allocated as wages by those who own capital, and who continue to decide what that share will be.

Fourth, Marxism is feared because it is international in outlook, appeals widely to working people everywhere, and contains within its internationalism a potential that is strong enough to defeat imperialism, neo-colonialism and multi-national business and finance, which have always organised internationally. But international capital has fended off the power of international labour by resorting to cynical appeals to nationalism by stirring up suspicion and hatred against outside enemies . . .

Fifth, Marxism is feared because it is seen as a threat to the older organised religions. as expressed through their hierarchies and temporal power structures, and their close alliance with other manifestations of state and economic power. The political establishments of the West, which for centuries have openly worshipped money and profit and ignored the fundamental teachings of Jesus do, in fact, sense in Marxism a moral challenge to their shallow and corrupted values and it makes them very uncomfortable. Ritualised and mystical religious teachings, which offer advice to the rich to be good, and the poor to be patient, each seeking personal salvation in this world and eternal life in the next, are also liable to be unsuccessful in the face of such a strong moral challenge as socialism makes . . .

Sixth, Marxism is feared in Britain precisely because it is believed by many in the establishment to be capable of winning consent for radical change through its influence in the trade union movement, and then in the election of socialist candidates through the ballot box. It is indeed therefore because the establishment believes in the real possibility of an advance of Marxist ideas by fully democratic means that they have had to devote so much time and effort to the misrepresentation of Marxism as a philosophy of violence and destruction, to scare people away from listening to what Marxists have to say.

These six fears, which are both expressed and fanned by those who defend a particular social order, actually pinpoint the wide appeal of Marxism, its durability and its strength more accurately than many advocates of Marxism may appreciate. 

*****

Marx seemed to identify all social and personal morality as being a product of economic forces, thus denying to that morality any objective existence over and above the inter-relationship of social and economic forces at that moment in history. I cannot accept that analysis.

Of course the laws, customs, administration. armed forces and received wisdom in any society will tend to reflect the interests and values of the dominant class, and if class relationships change by technology, evolution or revolution, this will be reflected in a change of the social and cultural super-structure. But to go beyond that and deny the inherent rights of men and women to live, to think, to act, to argue or to obey or resist in pursuit of some inner call of conscience — as pacifists do — or to codify their relationships with each other in terms of moral responsibility, seems to me to be throwing away the child of moral teaching with the dirty bath water of feudalism, capitalism or clericalism.

In saying this I am consciously seeking to re-establish the relevance and legitimacy of the moral teachings of Jesus, whilst accepting that many manifestations of episcopal authority and ritualistic escapism have blanked out that essential message of human brotherhood and sisterhood. I say this for many reasons.

First, because without some concept of inherent human rights and moral values and obligations, derived by custom and practice out of the accumulated experience of our societies, I cannot see any valid reason why socialism should have any moral force behind it. or how socialism can relate directly to the human condition outside economic relationships; for example, as between women and men. black and white, or in the relationships within the home and in personal life.

Second, because I regard the moral pressures released by radical Christian teaching, and its humanistic offshoots, as having played a major role in developing the ideas of solidarity, democracy, equality and peace, which have contributed to the development of socialist motivation.

Third, because without the acceptance of a strong moral code the ends always can be argued to justify the means, and this lies at the root of some of the oppression which has been practised in actually existing socialist societies.

Fourth, because the teachings of Marx, like the teachings of Jesus, can also become obscured, lost, and even reversed by civil power systems established in states that proclaim themselves to be Marxist, just as many Christian kings and governors destroyed, by their actions, the faith they asserted they were sworn to defend. And if Jesus is to acquitted of any responsibility for the tortures and murders conducted by the Inquisition, so must Marx be exonerated from any charges arising from the imprisonment and executions that occurred in Stalin’s Russia.

Fifth, because without a real moral impulse and a warm human compassion. I cannot find any valid reason why Marx himself should have devoted so much of his time to works of scholarship and endless political activities, all of which were designed to achieve better conditions for his fellow creatures. That no doubt is why Marx is sometimes regarded as the last of the Old Testament prophets . . .

But having recognised that priceless analytic legacy that we owe to Marx, in one sense Marx himself was a utopian in that he appeared to believe that when capitalism had been replaced by socialism, and socialism by communism, a classless society, liberated by the final withering away of the state, would establish some sort of heaven on earth. Human experience does not. unfortunately, give us many grounds for sharing that optimism. For humanity cannot organise itself without some power structure of the state, and Marx seems to have underestimated the importance of Lord Acton’s warning that power ‘tends to corrupt’ mistakenly believing this danger would disappear under communism . . .

The constraints on capital and the gains achieved by the trade union and labour movement over the years have been formidable. It is, I believe, a major error to argue that the advocacy of reforms rather than of revolution, is synonymous with betrayal and capitulation, for it undermines the very working class confidence which is central to the success of the movement, spreading pessimism about the prospects of victory — which is what the establishment has been trying to do for centuries. Some followers of Trotsky appear to substitute a ritualistic and dogmatic recitation of slogans which cannot connect with the life experience of those they are hoping to reach, thus minimising their public influence. Moreover, by suggesting that parliamentary democracy has only a limited role to play, and by speaking vaguely of direct action to by-pass it. they seem to imply that socialism can be introduced by some industrial coup. They arc also unacceptably vague about what would follow' such an event if it ever occurred. . .

But above all, in the USSR itself, 65 years after the revolution, the maintenance of a government by state power — even when three generations have been born under communism, and only the very oldest people remember pre-revolutionary days — suggests, to outsiders, that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union does not itself believe that its leadership would receive popular endorsement. Yet the very refreshment of socialism must require at least a genuine public choice between alternative views as to how it should develop.

Socialism as a system is greatly weakened, world-wide, if it is seen to rest anywhere upon state enforcement. The forces of capital in the West have concentrated their attack upon democratic socialism — to good effect — by suggesting, quite falsely, that what is being advocated in the West involves the imposition of a Soviet-style regime upon our society and that the first election won by socialists would also be the last. They know it is not true, and it is a sign of the strength of socialist ideas that they have to pretend that they believe it.

The British labour movement not only accepts the democratic process but claims, correctly, to have created it. We will never accept a socialism that is imposed . . .

If the peoples of the world are to end exploitation, reduce the levels of violence, avoid nuclear war, and enter into their rightful inheritance at last, we must achieve a synthesis of socialism and freedom and work for it here and now.

Reply: beyond morality

The irony of Tony Benn’s position is that by dismissing as impossible Marx’s conception of a society without state or government he ends up in the same contradictory tangles as the “establishment” he seeks to criticise. This is all the more unfortunate since his only grounds for dismissing Marx’s particular contribution to the working-class movement is a warning, attributable to Lord Acton, about the effect of power on those who exercise it. Lord Acton, and even Benn himself, may be able to vouch for the dangerous effects of possessing power, but for the working class as a whole it is not a pressing problem. The democratic seizure of social power by the whole community will not be prevented by members of the privileged class who currently hold it warning us of such dangers.

The first stage of Benn’s argument is clear and correct. Defenders of capitalism distort marxism because they fear it. He lists six aspects of marxism on which such fears are based: the understanding of the class struggle, the nature of the state, social consciousness, opposition to nationalism, opposition to religion and the use of democratic channels for a revolutionary transformation of society. Defenders of capitalism, he argues, fear these strengths held by Marxism as a way of looking at society, and therefore label it as violent and anti-democratic in order to discredit it.

Taking these points in order, consider first Marx’s class analysis of society. In the world today, as in Marx's day, there are broadly speaking two social classes with conflicting interests facing one another: the buyers and the sellers of labour power. In other words, the employers and employees. Workers in Britain share a common interest with their fellow workers in other countries, and not with British bosses. Yet all of the policies ever advocated by Benn and the party of which he is a leading member are based on a denial of this first, fundamental principle of marxism. When the Labour Party speaks about "us” coming out of the EEC or having import controls or tax re-adjustments, they are talking about British employers, with their workers faithfully in tow. Such an unequal alliance is based on the nine-tenths of the population who have to work for a living (or sign for the dole) continuing to work not for each other, not for the community as a whole, but for the companies and nationalised industries which steadily accumulate the proceeds of our labour.

Next Tony Benn points to Marx’s theory of the state. You do not need to read three volumes of Capital to understand Marx's key point, that the police, army, courts and prisons do not and cannot run in the interests of all. They are the means of coercion, the violence which lies at the roots of a society in which a minority monopolises social power. Here again, we find a sad rift between marxist principles and capitalist compromise. Benn and the Labour Party offer us a “People’s state” in which we will still be beaten up, locked up and kept down, only this time it will really be in our own interest at last, because we will have voted Thatcher out and Foot in.

Thirdly, Marxism "arouses political consciousness". Marx argued that while it is highly necessary for workers to organise in democratic trade unions in order to prevent the downward pressure on wages and the worsening of work conditions, it would also be necessary to organise a political movement to abolish the wages system itself. (See his Value, Price and Profit, 1865.) Yet over the last few years, together with the politicians of all of the other parties of capitalism, Benn has been promising to increase the level of employment. He has not devoted a single line in any of his speeches to Marx’s idea that the struggle over wages and jobs should be extended into a struggle to end the very system of employment itself.

The revolutionary potential of marxist thought is indeed based on its global appeal. As the expression of the universal interest of the working class of the world, the abolition of capitalism means the end of all national boundaries. How does this relate to the cause championed by Benn. that "we British” should "get out of Europe”? His is merely a reactionary plea on behalf of British industrial interests who may profit more outside, rather than inside, the European Common Market. Getting workers to line up and take sides on such issues is in principle no different from King Edward and the Kaiser lining up "their” workers to fight their First World War.

Fifth, marxism is feared because it is anti-religious. Perhaps Marx’s main contribution to philosophical thought was to advance beyond earlier forms of atheism, to develop a coherent theory which could in itself explain the historical rise and decline of religion. It is well known that Marx described religion as the opium of the people, but what he said merits quoting more fully:

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion, as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions . . .

Marx made his criticism of all religion and idealism clear enough, one might have thought, to avoid being redrawn as the "last of the Old Testament prophets”. Benn's main concern in relation to Marx is to rehabilitate the reputation of religious morality, which he feels is missing from Marx’s materialism. He is right — it is missing, but not for the reason he thinks. Far from describing the universe as being composed solely of economic forces, Marx acknowledged the enormous forces of human consciousness in the shaping of human history. But rather than bow blind to the dictates of "reason" and “morality” and “conscience”, he sought to transcend these categories and understand how they arose.

The sixth and final feature of Marxism to which Benn refers is the possible transformation of the ballot box from an "instrument of trickery" (as Marx called it) into an "agent of emancipation”. Marx repeatedly referred to the self-emancipation of the working class, without leaders, as the necessary precondition for a socialist (that is. communist) society. Again, in this regard, the party Benn urges us to vote for was set up as a trade union pressure group in parliament and to this day continues to base its support on workers acting as followers, voting for leaders to solve the problems of capitalism without genuine, majority, democratic action.

Having warned us of those who present a distorted picture of what they oppose even though they "have never studied Marx”, Benn proceeds to caricature marxism as a mechanical economic determinism. In one sense, we are told Marx was a “utopian” because he envisaged the end of the oppressive state machine. A familiar but thread-bare dichotomy is set up between democratic, parliamentary, reformist action and violent, anti-democratic. revolutionary action. So the “establishment" distortion of marxism as terrorism is ultimately endorsed here too. The third choice, of politically conscious workers using democratic channels to institute revolutionary change, is overlooked, even though it had been referred to as one of the six strengths of marxism. Instead of opposing the religious ideology exposed by Marx. Benn writes of "inherent rights" and "moral values and obligations" as the basis of socialism, and of the need to reform the “actually existing socialist societies”.

The Russian government may call itself socialist. The Nazis also used the term. Does this mean that the description has to be accepted? There are no “actually existing socialist societies”, and the suggestion serves to fuel the pens of “the establishment" already referred to. By stating that we must always retain the state, earlier defined as "an expression of the interests of the established order". Benn gets into considerable confusion. The Russian government depends on “state enforcement” and yet it is referred to as "socialist". Morality is introduced as a comfortable compromise, for innocuous moderation to be dressed up as radical change. And yet morality has traditionally been what the ruling class call on when they want the majority who produce but do not possess wealth to pull our weight even harder. It is the denial of our self-interest as a class. The attempt to define what is "good” and what is "bad", what wc "should” or “should not" do has baffled philosophers for centuries, precisely because there are no such moral absolutes. Decisions about what is desirable and what is not are arrived at subjectively by different individuals and classes, through the constantly changing development of human history.

Religion tries to solve the problem by inventing an all-powerful force which lays down for us what we should and should not do, with the most terrible tortures threatened for those who disobey this crude, primitive, moral law. In the case of Christianity, which Benn holds up as the model morality to be adopted by socialists, those whose scientific perception made it hard for them to have blind faith and worship one of their fellows were threatened with nothing less than everlasting hell-fire. The morality Benn supports has been upholding property society for thousands of years, by consoling the poor with the virtues of thrift and hard work and the hope of receiving some charitable crumbs from the rich. Christian morality does not involve the ending of the class division between rich and poor. As long as there is a need for wealth to be "redistributed" from rich to poor, it follows that these two classes of people still exist. The Bible, which is the only source-book for the “moral teachings of Jesus", does not stop at openly defending slavery, property, profit and war. To add insult to injury, it offers the following advice to the millions who arc starving: 

Go to the sea and cast a hook, and take the first fish that comes up, and when you open its mouth you will find a coin.

(Matthew, 17.27)

Small wonder that Bakunin felt moved to write, “If God existed, it would be necessary to abolish him”.

What, then, is the Marxist theory of morality and religion? “For too long” Marx wrote “has religion explained history; let us with history explain religion." Like so many others, Benn tries to excuse his idealism according to which history is made by free-floating moral absolutes, by first painting Marx as being a crudely mechanical materialist who “seemed to identify all social and personal morality as being a product of economic forces". But this was not the case. It was Marx who found the dialectical balance to solve these contradictions. He referred to “the reciprocal action of these various sides on one another" (The German Ideology). Of course, marxism recognises that the conditions of life in society determine the modes of thought rather than the other way round, otherwise the hungry could simply think themselves full overnight and be satisfied. But it is the developing class consciousness among workers which itself becomes the material force for creating a new society:

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. . . “liberation" is an historical and not a moral act, and it is brought about by historical conditions.

The German Ideology

Having effectively dismissed Marx in both the genuine and the distorted forms, Benn finally advocates the reform of the Eastern bloc so that it appears a little more like the West, and the reform of the Western bloc so that it appears a little more like the East. What we are left with is layer after layer of compromise, with materialism softened by morality, capitalism cushioned by a paternalistic state sector, and socialism turned into the distant millenarian hope of nationalising the heartless sentiments of the world’s religions.

Clifford Slapper

Sting in the Tail: By-election Fever (1992)

The Sting in the Tail column from the January 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

By-election Fever

The Scorpion has just suffered three by-elections on one night, it was a TV extravaganza where a load of toadies tried to get their snouts Into the Westminster trough.

"Its a good result for us", says Nigel Preservative. "It proves what we always said", says Hamish McSporran. "Another nail in the government's coffin” says Trevor Lickspittle. "Its the turn of the tide", says Walter Camera-Angle.

"Its the turning of my stomach", complains Scorpion, crawling off to bed suffering from an over-dose of cliches.

A Slap Up Meal

Should you happen to be in the London area on the night of February 13 and find yourself a bit peckish here is a bit of good news for you.

Instead of going to Joe's Greasy Eats Cafe for a salmonella sandwich, go a bit up-market and visit the Park Lane Hotel. It will be a splendid affair. You will be rubbing shoulders with famous politicians, writers and the odd film director.

This dazzling nlght-out can be yours for only £500-a-head. The organisers of this gala night out? None other than those champions of the proletariat — the Labour Party!

The Mad Professor

In the May issue we reported that Professor David Marsland had won the Margaret Thatcher Foundation annual award. This genius had won this great honour for such progressive ideas as abolishing social workers, ending unemployment benefit and recruiting 11 year old kids for defence training corps in schools.

Continuing the good work the Professor has turned his cool analytical mind to solving the civil war in Yugoslavia. Writing In the New Statesman (1 November 1991) the good professor proposes that Britain should go to war with Serbia!

"British aircraft flying from Cyprus and Austria could destroy the Serbian airforce and fleet in one day. Tanks and military formation could then be wiped out at leisure from the air without much difficulty. Within a week, Croatia and freedom could be saved."

This modern day Napoleon has a day job; he is a professor of social science at the West London Institute of Higher Education. Higher Education? Scorpion is just thankful he left school at 15!

Dry Eyed Farewell

The gloom of 1991 was lifted a little by the news that Marxism Today had ceased publication. Over the years it's Marxist content was probably slightly less than the Dandy or the Beano, so it was good to see another voice of confusion silenced.

BBC2 (5 December 1991) decided to mark the death of Martin Jacques' rag in The Late Show with a slot entitled the ABC of Marxism.

Naturally it was up to the usual high standard of The Late Show. C Is for Castro ... L is for Lenin ... the usual junk.

At P is for periodicals we saw flashes of various obscure left wing journals. Of course we did not see the Socialist Standard. This journal has been consistently putting a Marxist view for only 87 years, and we don't expect the terribly well informed BBC types to have a programme about Marxism that actually deals with Marxism.

Dim Stars

Hollywood is well described as "the dream factory" but it surpassed itself recently when Oxfam America staged the "Hollywood Hunger Banquet" to promote the plight of the world's hungry.

Movie stars Mel Gibson, Cybill Shepherd, Dustin Hoffman, Whoopi Goldberg, etc., drew lots for the privilege of sitting on the floor to eat just rice and water. The luckless losers had to make do with salad, chicken, dessert and wine.

One observer of this farce said:

It's a typical manifestation of these people's blind obsession with themselves —- as If they could actually make any real difference.

The Guardian 18 November

The banquet organiser hoped the event would show . . . "that there's totally unequal distribution of food In the world and capitalism isn't working". Well stated, but pulling stunts like this does nothing to reduce world hunger and leaves intact the loathsome system which spawns It.

Lenin — Some Guy

Bonfire night on the village common, families parading with Chinese lanterns behind a Guy destined for the flames, but what's this? The Guy is wearing a fur hat and brandishing a red flag!

Organisers of the village club's fireworks party had decided to give this year's celebrations a political theme and mark the fall of Communism In Eastern Europe by burning an old-style party leader.

Maidenhead Advertiser 8 November 

When Lenin scathingly earmarked capitalism for "the dustbin of history" he little dreamt that the mighty organisation which so slavishly worshipped him would itself become history to the extent that it could be burned In effigy as a stand-in for Guy Fawkes.

Vive La Difference

Many people insist that socialism means we would all have to conform while capitalism opposes this and encourages individuality.

The visit to Britain by Jean-Marie Le Pen gave us some examples of how capitalism opposes individuality.

The Guardian (6 December) quoted some Britons who share Le Pen's desire to repatriate coloured immigrants. One said 'The point is, they don't behave the way we behave”, while another deplored ” . . . the failure of immigrants to Integrate Into the customs of the host society”.

And look at the disapproval most people show when they see youngsters with purple hair or wearing "outlandish" clothes. What chance would someone have if he / she turned up for a job Interview dressed as a Punk-Rocker? Nor does the public exactly welcome the different sexual preferences of homosexuals.

The truth is that capitalism dislikes individuality and loves conformity.

New Engels Translation (1970)

From the July 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The February 1970 issue of Marxism Today, the theoretical journal of the Communist Party, publishes in full for the first time in English Frederick Engels' Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Programme. This document, translated by Jack Cohen, is Engels' comment on the programme the German Social Democrats were to discuss at their conference in Erfurt in 1891. It is mainly a criticism of those Social Democrats who believed that the working class would be able to come to power peacefully in the undemocratic German Empire. A peaceful capture of power may be possible, says Engels, in countries “where the representative parliamentary body concentrates all power in its hands, where you can do what you please constitutionally as soon as you have the majority of the people behind you” but certainly not in Germany where the Reichstag does not control the government.

Another passage clearly explains Marx’s Theory of Increasing Misery and answers those who say it means that the workers will be reduced to paupers as capitalism progresses. Engels quotes “the numbers and the poverty of the proletariat constantly increase” from the draft programme and comments:

  Put in such an absolute and categorical way, this is not correct. The organisation of the workers, their constantly increasing resistance, will most probably act as a certain barrier against the increase of poverty. But what certainly is increasing is the uncertainty of existence. That. I would put in (Engels' emphasis).

Marxism Today can be had from the C.P.G.B, 16 King Street, London, W.C.2.

All Yuppies Now? (1987)

From the December 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Are you young — upwardly mobile — professional? Are you the sort of person who buys downtown slums and fits them out with designer furniture and hand-painted blinds? Do you drive the sort of car which people who work in car factories can never afford to drive, listen to Suzanne Vega albums on compact discs, and check the share index in both the FT and The Independent to make sure that your highly ethical investments are looking as healthy as you do after you’ve been for your six-monthly BUPA check-up? If the answer is yes – sorry, yah – to those questions it is probable that you are a member of The Class of ‘87 – the yuppies.

Under capitalism there are two classes: the capitalists who rob and the workers who are robbed. But of course, as all trendy-minded readers will know, capitalism is not what it used to be. The working class – those cloth-capped fossils who dig coal and drive trains and have dirt under their fingernails and say things like “gawd blimey, mister” and “You can’t beat ‘er Majesty and ‘arold Wilson” – has apparently vanished. The corpse has been buried by a team of sociologists-cum-undertakers who write for Marxism Today who have conducted a thorough search of the wine bars of Covent Garden and can find no trace of any horny-handed sons of toil. Even the holy trinity of the new left – Eric Hobsbawm, Ralph Miliband and Jeremy Seabrook – have announced in the columns of that robust proletarian journal, the Guardian, that the proletariat (they who work in factories and vote Labour) are missing, feared dead – or, worse still, “up North”.

Both the left and the right wings of capitalism (not to mention the centre, which constitutes the Liberals and the SDP and David Owen who singularly represents the real centre) are sure that capitalism as described by Marx and the Socialist Party is old hat. Now we all live under Thatcherism. No longer are there masters and wage slaves; these are disgusting remnants of the past, entertained only in the deranged minds of people like the present writer who, in revolutionary obstinacy, insists that everyone he ever meets is either one of the bosses or one of the bossed. But if you accept the new line – as propagated by Thatcher and swallowed by her enemies in their own haste to sound indignant about it – we now live in the age of popular capitalism. And under popular capitalism you are all in one of three classes (unless, of course, you are the Queen or one of the other aristocratic parasites, in which case you are where you always were: rich, idle and useless). But the rest of us are either in class A – people who’ve made it, or class B – people who are making it (yuppies), or class C – people who can’t make it because they are too stupid or won’t make it because they like living in squalor.

Now the object of this so-called Thatcherism is to “make it”. Needless to say, “making it” bears no relation to making anything. If you go around producing goods and services you’ll never get on in the City. “Making it” means making money. You get other people to produce goods and services and you exploit them. If you are a yuppie you are not yet in the exploiting class. (In fact – don’t tell the yuppies, now – you never will be). But you act like you are heading in that direction. You do the dirty work for the capitalists. The so-called yuppie class are simply the errand boys and girls for the capitalists. They are paid extra for taking on themselves the problems of the exploiting class.

According to the Thatcher propaganda, we are all becoming capitalists now. This is a load of old twaddle. Firstly, only 19 percent of the British population owned any shares in the week before the BP share sell-off. So even if you define all shareholders as capitalists (which is a daft definition), that means that over 80 per cent of British people are outside this new capitalist class. But it is not the case that workers who buy a few shares are capitalists. The test of whether you are a capitalist is easy: give up selling yourself for a wage or salary and see how long you can live on your share dividends – if you’re on the last can of baked beans within a fortnight you have proved that whatever you are you are not a capitalist. The capitalist class are those people who can live without having to work: they invest in the labour of others.

Secondly, if Thatcher’s policies meant that we did all become capitalists there would be no wage slaves left to produce our profits for us. If we all became the Queen, who would we have to wave at, who would there be to bring us our dinner on a silver tray? It is a necessity of class society that superiority for some can only logically exist at the expense of inferiority for most. Thirdly, there has in fact been a record number of bankruptcies under the present Conservative government. The capitalist recession is not creating vast numbers of new capitalists, as the government liars state, but squeezing out large numbers of cockroach capitalists who land with a bump into the growing ranks of the wage and salary earning class. The notion that the workers are enjoying greater prosperity than ever and that poverty is an obsolete conception is not only a myth but an unforgivable insult. Go to the Docklands area of East London – the showpiece of resplendent yuppiedom – and you will find thousands of workers without jobs or much money who are being driven out of their area because the gamblers of the City have decided to redevelop it for their own purpose.

It is not only the Tories who preach the virtues of the new yuppie vision. Nor is it confined to the Alliance (alliance?) whose dream of the new Jerusalem is everyone sending their kids to progressive “independent” (exclusive, private, fee-paying) schools and driving Volvos with push-button windows. The silly old Labour Party has decided to fall in love with the yuppies too. Bryan Gould, the genius who masterminded the Labour Party’s spectacular defeat earlier this year (next time they’re hiring a computer linked up to an opinion poll teleprinter to organise it for them), has decided that Labour needs to speak to a wider constituency. What this means is that Labour needs to work harder at convincing Tories that their shares are safe in Labour’s hand. Gould wants Labour to go for the yuppie vote. After all, Ben Elton has made a packet posing as a socialist appealing to just such an audience. As ever, the Labour Party’s tactical astuteness bears a strong relationship to a wino negotiating his way to the bus shelter. Just when the Labourites decided that there’s nothing wrong with what Thatcher says about workers getting in on the Stock Exchange, what does the old Stock Exchange do? It crashes. The opportunism of the Labour Party is boundless, as they merrily proceed to urge workers to buy council houses and invest in private medical insurance and shares – as long as they’re ethical. (Marxism Today – the theoretical organ of the Lefty Yuppie Party – is now advertising a company which will advise pseudo-Marxists with a conscience which shares they should buy if they don’t want to exploit people.)

The yuppie left has become one of the more grotesque eyesores of 1980s politics. In the good old days lefties would waste our time discussing whether Russia was a deformed workers’ state or a degenerate workers’ state or a workers’ state with minor deformities; they would quote (and often misquote) bits from Marx and insist that we Socialist Party members had failed to study our Trotsky. No longer is such rhetoric prevalent (except in Chesterfield, of course, where the whole population is currently undergoing a Collected Works of Trotsky reading course). These days the yuppie left are into “feeling Green”. If you don’t know what it is to feel Green and put yourselves in the position of a baby seal you have no right to call yourself a socialist. Coffee-picking in Nicaragua is all the rage now (even Jimmy Carter’s at it) and singing South African liberation songs at book stalls displaying pamphlets about the need for armed struggle in the Third World written by Paul Foot who lives in Hampstead. If you are a male you must become what the yuppie left calls a new man, which means that you are extremely patronising to women (who are all your sisters) and must endure the rest of your life on a permanent guilt trip for the crime of being a potential rapist. It is little wonder that most wage slaves prefer the down-to-earth callousness of Norman Tebbit and his fellow gangsters to the phony, self-righteous, condescending, half-baked outlook of the trendy yuppies who constitute the left-wing of capitalist politics.

The Socialist Party is not out to win over the yuppies. We do not appeal to the “middle class” any more than we appeal to the Wizard of Oz or the residents of Albert Square, Walford. We do not seek to trim our message to suit the prejudices of fictitious classes of people. We direct what we have to say at the working class – all workers, be they paid in wages or salaries, whether they wear overalls or carry filofaxes. Socialists do not make the leftist error of imagining that the true workers are these who live in council flats and stand on the terraces at football matches. Nor do we believe that so-called yuppies, most of whom are simply entertaining the self-delusion of privilege, are anything but workers. We have no grudge against workers who are making an extra crust out of capitalism. But they would be fools to be bought off by crusts and crumbs. The yuppies of the right who imagine that they are part of Thatcher’s new elite will find out the hard way which class they are in and yuppies of the left who feel guilty for being “privileged” people like teachers and social workers should stop boring the rest of us with the needless guilt.

Steve Coleman

End of the road (1991)

From the May 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Hungarian uprising of 1956 is generally considered to mark a watershed in the history of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Although the CPGB lost about one quarter of its members—from 33,095 in February 1956 to 26,742 by February 1957—a decline had been evident from the early 1950’s as a result of the “cold war” and the waning of the comparative popularity which had been achieved during the Second World War as anti-fascists.

Like all other minor parties, the CPGB had difficulty making progress within the British electoral system which favours the two major parties. But in the 1966 election the Communist Party candidates could only obtain 3 per cent of the votes in the seats they contested compared with 1945 when they obtained two MP’s (Willie Gallagher and Phil Piratin) and Harry Pollitt, their general secretary, nearly unseated the sitting MP at Rhondda East

Eurocommunism

In 1956 when Pollitt retired, the CPGB had to come to terms not only with the Hungarian uprising but also with Khrushchev’s revelations about Stalin and the “Cult of personality” and the growing conflict between Russia and China. Its 1977 programme sought an alliance of all sorts of reformist groups and sectional interests including consumer groups and Scottish and Welsh nationalists. This new strategy, coupled with the end of uncritical support for Russia, came to be known as “Eurocommunism”.

In the mid-1970’s the CPGB started to show divisions within its ranks over trade union strategy. In a pamphlet entitled Advanced Capitalism and Backward Socialism Bill Warren and Mike Prior demonstrated their ignorance of Marxist theory by arguing that inflation was related to wage militancy. The arguments raged over the next few years: the hardliners who had remained within the Party to fight for a return to traditional methods, and the Eurocommunists disagreed violently over trade union strategy. When Tony Lane wrote an article in Marxism Today (the Party’s theoretical journal founded in 1957 which adopted a more and more trendy stance after the appointment of Martin Jacques as editor in 1978) criticising shop stewards, Mick Costello, the CPGB’s industrial organiser, was incensed and replied with an article in the Morning Star (as the Daily Worker had been renamed in 1966), for which he was sacked and replaced by Peter Carter, a former official of UCATT, the building workers union.

During the 1985 miners’ strike the gulf between the different wings of the CPGB widened. For the first time the Party actually lost members during a campaign. Criticism of the miners’ strike, and Arthur Scargill’s leadership in particular, came from Marxism Today and Peter Carter wrote a deeply critical pamphlet of Scargill’s leadership which was suppressed for the sake of unity. Scargill, a former member of the YCL national committee in the late 1950’s, was deeply resentful of the “line” taken by Marxism Today and accused Carter of compromising with the class enemy and vilifying the NUM.

Morning Star

The group around the Morning Star has been in conflict with the CPGB since 1981 when the conference criticised the paper for failing to give sufficient prominence to the 1977 programme. This group sees the traditional emphasis on the working class and industrial strength in the trade unions as the correct way forward. Eurocommunism is seen as a liberal fad which should be dropped.

In 1983 the 38th congress of the CPGB voted to dismiss Tony Chater, the editor and David Whitfield, the assistant editor, by 155 votes to 92. They refused to relinquish their posts. In June of the following year the paper’s shareholders voted to support Chater and Whitfield in defiance of the Eurocommunist leadership. The Morning Star is not owned by the CPGB. When its forerunner, the Daily Worker was founded in 1930, an independent co-operative, the People’s Press Printing Society, was set up to avoid accusations that the paper was simply a mouthpiece for Communist Party policy. Now this strategy rebounded with a vengeance.

Following the special congress in May 1985 the Eurocommunist leadership carried out a systematic purge of borough committees, branches and industrial organisations. In less than two years 3,000 members were expelled or left because they were demoralised. Industrial stalwarts such as Ken Gill, president of TASS (now joint general secretary of MSF), Bert Ramelson and Mick Costello, former CPGB industrial organisers, and Derek Robinson, the shop steward who made news after he was sacked by Michael Edwardes at British Leyland’s Longbridge plant, were all expelled.

It is rather surprising that with all the purges and demoralisation the Morning Star group did not break away and form the Communist Party of Britain until 1988. This party is centred around the Morning Star, with Mike Hicks, an executive member of Sogat, as its general secretary and Derek Robinson as its industrial organiser. It rejects Stalinism but supports Russia, though not unconditionally. Chater had criticised the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Last year the CPGB still had about 6,000 members but its bases in the trade unions had been badly damaged. In addition Marxism Today, with a circulation of 10,000 is likely to be sold off soon. In January 1990 Nina Temple had the unenviable job of taking over from Gordon McLennan as general secretary of the CPGB. She soon stated the CPGB might be disbanded and form a club within the Labour Party. Last month the Party’s executive committee announced the end of the Communist Party and its transformation into an amorphous group to be known as the “Democratic Left”.

Disbandment was the only course open to the CPGB. It had lost all credibility. From a party of 46,000 members [56,000 members]  and two MP’s in its heyday and 60 full time workers—a much higher ratio than either the Labour or Conservative parties—it had shrunk to a rump of an organisation that only polled 0.8 per cent of the votes in each constituency that it contested.

Historians may lament the demise of the CPGB but workers should not. The CPGB has stood for every shabby compromise, has mislead generations of sincere workers, has been vanguardist, conspiratorial, undemocratic and dishonest. It has purported to oppose capitalism whilst supporting state capitalism. It has criticised imperialism whilst condoning and defending Russian imperialism. [It has supported nationalism and at times even xenophobia.] And, worst of all, by posing as Marxist it set back the cause of socialism by several decades.

Carl Pinel

British Left in Disarray (1990)

From the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now that Leninism is stewing in its own ideological juice, and the vanguard parties which bullied workers in the name of "the proletarian dictatorship" are being hissed off the world stage by the workers who detest them, the British Leninists must decide what to do. Apart from a diminishing number of left-wingers within the pro-market Labour Party who have never embraced the Leninist dogma, the vast majority of those on the British Left subscribe to the political ideology of Leninism. They may call themselves Marxist-Leninists, but in practice they stand in the tradition of Lenin, the Bolshevik leader, and not Marx whose ideas Lenin distorted.

As Leninists they believe that the workers cannot understand the case for socialism, but must be led to revolution by politically-conscious cadres. The model for such a revolution is the Bolshevik coup of November 1917 in which a minority party claimed to establish a new social order on behalf of the non-socialist masses. Leninists preach the need for a vanguard party to lead the workers. Such a party must be organised on the basis of the Leninist principle of "democratic centralism" according to which dissent from the decisions of the leadership is an act of betrayal not to be tolerated. The Leninists' contempt for our ability as workers to emancipate ourselves from capitalism is matched by their opportunist efforts to be wherever the workers are in struggle, constantly aiming to lead such struggles. The Leninists are Generals looking for an army.

In Britain the Generals have always looked rather pathetic and the workers have shown a wise unwillingness to join the Leninist army. After the Bolshevik revolution most of the British Left went over to the side of Bolshevism. They were overwhelmed by the romanticism of the historically absurd claim of a small, secretive party in backward Russia to have established socialism by force of arms. Dazed by the Bolshevik daydream, the parties of the Left swallowed Lenin’s writings as if they were the revolutionary gospel, and formed the Communist Party of Great Britain.

From the outset the CP had as its purpose to repeat in Britain what the Bolsheviks had done in Russia. Without Leninism as a dogma and "Socialist Russia" as a model, the CP had no reason to exist. As Russian state capitalism became more obviously anti-socialist in its nature, so the CP had to twist and distort more and more in order to justify itself. The CPGB of the 1930s was a party committed to the propagation of lies. Purges? But there are no purges, they said. A dictatorship ruled over by the monster Stalin? But Russia is a workers' dictatorship and Comrade Stalin is the greatest Marxist alive, they solemnly declared. Wage slavery? No, no, the Russian workers are free from capitalist exploitation. Most of them believed that what they were saying was true: some of the more cynical leaders knew they were lying, but “tactics, comrades, tactics!” They were good Leninists, and if lies were required to make workers follow them, then why let mere “bourgeois honesty” stand in the way? After 1945. as the Russian Empire expanded to take in millions of new East European subjects, the British Leninists praised the wonderful lifestyles of the new prisoners of Leninism.

Sixes and Sevens

With the collapse of East European Leninism, what is the British Left to do? It has three basic options. Firstly, it can pretend that nothing has happened and go on supporting the glorious socialist paradise of Russia, even though the rulers of Russia now admit that the paradise stinks of its own failure. Secondly, the Leninists can support reform in Eastern Europe, pretending that this is what had been necessary all along. It can enter into a love affair with perestroika, even though the current reforms embody everything that the Leninists have traditionally regarded as counter-revolution. Thirdly, the Leninist Left can hang up its boots and retire. After all, the Hungarian Communist Party has dissolved itself, and other East European CPs are due to do likewise. The Australian Communist Party, which had 20,000 members in its heydey of the 1940s, has voted by a three to one margin to close down, and in Italy the PCI (the largest in West Europe) is to change its name. The Dutch CP has joined a faction of the Greens.

In Britain there have been moves in all of these directions. The membership of the CPGB was 20,000 in 1980: it is now under 7.000—and those are just book numbers. In 1977 the CPGB split: those who left formed the New Communist Party, committed to uncritical support for the Leninist states, while those remaining began to criticise certain aspects of the Russian Empire, still insisting that it was socialist. These critics—the so-called Eurocommunists—were still committed to the basic Leninist dogma: amongst their leading thinkers was Monty Johnstone who spoke in a debate against the Socialist Party, arguing that Lenin was a good Marxist. The Eurocommunists were used by a new group within the CP, based around the party's “theoretical journal", Marxism Today and its editor-cum-guru, Martin Jacques, who wanted to advocate the policies of an important role for the market under "socialism”, electoral pacts with all anti-Thatcher forces and the rejection of any kind of class analysis. It is an irony of CP history that ten years ago Johnstone and those like him were the radical heretics within the CP, fighting against its Stalinist past: now they are the mainstream Leninists, fighting against the total abandonment of anything resembling Leninism by the new Jacques leadership.

In 1988 the CP split again: the Marxism Today loyalists retained control of the CPGB. while some of the old Leninists who could not tolerate the complete rejection of ancient doctrines formed the 1500-strong Communist Party of Britain. So, there are at least three CPs in Britain today: the Jacques-dominated CPGB. the more conventionally Leninist CPB and the incorrigibly Stalinist NCP. At its November 1989 Congress the CPGB did not vote on a motion to wind up the party—although there are plans for a referendum to close it down and form a so-called Socialist Forum which would not be a party and which anyone, including members of other parties such as the Greens, could join. It seems likely that this is what will happen eventually (so the ‘Premature Obituary which the Socialist Standard published last year was not all that premature after all). In the meantime the CPGB has voted to follow the Jacques line of celebrating the downfall of East European "Communism" (as he calls it) and of abandoning Leninist dogma for support for what they call a socialist market economy.

The future of the 200-strong New Communist Party looks very bleak. Its funding came from the traditionally Stalinist Czech Party, which is now fighting for its political life (a fight it will surely lose) and is unlikely to pay for the NCP's weekly newspaper. So. the last true advocate of unadulterated Stalinism awaits burial. The Communist Party of Britain will either go the same way or will remain a sect in which old Leninists can comfort themselves in seclusion from the rest of the world, endlessly repeating worn-out Leninist cliches to each other in public meetings which the public will regard as a club for those whose time has passed. One thing is for sure: nobody will be persuaded to join political parties which exist to support conceptions of socialism which history has shown to be detested by the workers who were forced to put up with them. A few Leninists will turn their attention to the fantasies of "socialism" in China (until that dam bursts, as it is bound to) or Cuba or Albania (for as long as that lasts). In general, the myth that socialism/communism now exists somewhere is virtually dead.

Left in a Mess

Writing in Marxism Today (a journal which must soon decide to change its name, for it is no longer Marxist even on its own terms). Martin Jacques has stated that the tradition of the Bolshevik revolution, in which Russia stood as a socialist model against the rest of the capitalist world, is no longer relevant:

That era is at an end. From now on. with gathering pace, there will be an interpenetration of the two systems. The Soviet Union, over time, will acquire markets, international firms will operate there. Soviet tourists will be a common sight in London The international communist movement is now surely at an end. (January 1990).

What Jacques means is that the old division between state and private capitalism is ending. In an Open Letter to Marxism Today, John Lloyd, a member of the Labour Party, writer for the Financial Times and advocate of the Swedish market system, has suggested that Jacques cannot continue to pay lip service to Marxism while rejecting everything that the CP has always meant by the term (New Socialist, January 1990). Lloyd is quite correct: if Jacques is to continue to accept that Leninist ideology is irrelevant and also that class analysis is redundant, then why pose as a Marxist? Why not go the whole way and admit that he and his fellow “communists" are opponents of socialism/ communism and are simply interested in trying to make the capitalist market-system work well? Incidentally, the same question can be put to Mikhail Gorbachev.

Of course, there are still the Trotskyists. These are the Leninists who want it both ways: they hold passionately to the Leninist dogma, which the CPGB has thrown overboard, but whenever the results of Leninism are pointed out to them they cry in unison, “Nothing to do with us. It was all Stalin's fault”. This is crass historical idealism: as if one man turned Russia from a home of revolutionary socialism into a police state. The fact is that Stalin did nothing that Lenin, the authoritarian statist, had not begun. Furthermore. Trotsky, who was an accomplice of Lenin and was the leader of the massacre of the Krondstadt sailors as well as the advocate of the Bolshevik policy that trade unions must be subservient to the state employers, could not have ruled the Bolshevik dictatorship in any significantly different way from Stalin. At least the now-dying New Communist Party can be credited with defending unto the last the hideous consequences of their Leninist recipe: the Socialist Workers Party and the Revolutionary Communist Party want the recipe to be used, but demand the right to spit out the cake.

All in all, the British Left is in a huge mess. It is a mess of their own design. Ever since the formation of the Communist Party in 1921 the Socialist Party has warned them of the fallacies inherent within the Leninist strategy. In the 1930s our party was called fascist by the CP because we exposed the crimes of Stalin in the pages of this journal. It was official CP policy to break up our meetings. The Leninist Left is now left with a discredited record and no future. Despite our political hostility to them, we are bound to feel some sympathy for those workers who have wasted their lives in a cause which is now so rapidly crumbling before their eyes. Some of the workers who joined the Leninist parties in the early days were conscious of the iniquities of the profit system, often well read in Marx, and frequently active in the fights over wages and conditions which wage slaves must inevitably enter. These were the deluded workers who would talk endlessly about how well-off were workers in Eastern Europe, how rumours of dissent in those countries were mere CIA propaganda and how happy workers would be here if they were governed by a Gierek or a Brezhnev. How utterly mistaken they were; what an immense dis-service to the cause of world socialism they unintentionally caused.

After Leninism

Talk of a crisis of socialist ideas is much in the air. Thatcher, in her New Year message, said that the 1980s had been the decade in which socialism was shown to have failed. What has actually failed is state capitalism and the Leninist illusion that the state can run the profit system in the interest of the class which is exploited for profit. Leninists of all descriptions are in a dizzy crisis, the seeds of which are to be found in the illusory belief that the capitalist revolution in Russia in 1917 led to the establishment of socialism.

As far as real socialists are concerned, we have no awful record of lying and self-deceiving to explain away. Far from suffering from a crisis of ideas, recent events in Eastern Europe have served to clear the air of a number of foolish illusions about “socialist countries” which we have had to waste too much of our time having to expose as false. Indeed, now that the Labour Party has come out in its indisputably capitalist colours and the Kremlin is admitting that its job is to run the market profitably, just like all the rest of the capitalist governments, the task of socialists faces fewer obstacles. We can state the case for a world society without property, classes, states or money and only the most stupid of opponents will be able to tell us that that is what the Labour or Communist parties stand for. More clearly than ever it is apparent that there is only one Socialist Party in Britain. We have always been the only ones to stand for the establishment of a genuinely socialist world community; now we are the only ones to say that that is what we stand for.

Never having been taken in by the dogmas of Leninism or the myth of “socialist nations", the Socialist Party stands with a reputation which advertises the validity of our principles. Here in the West the profit system wears the mask of freedom. While ambulances are run by cops and soldiers, because the state thinks so little of workers' health that they would rather let us die than pay the ambulance workers above the rate of inflation; while the monopolised press tells lies with impunity and BBC employees are vetted by MI5 before they are allowed to report the news; while the inner cities fall prey to the Crack Culture and the Arthur Daley business ethics; while kids sleep in cardboard boxes and fifteen million British workers can only exist on state hand-outs; while Thatcher spits out the rhetoric of militaristic jingoism and all parties relegate human needs to the good health of the Stock Exchange, the workers of Eastern Europe are being offered this bogus freedom as a prize for their struggle against their pseudo-Communist masters.

Socialists stand in hostility to the boss class of the West and the East; whether they pretend to dictate on the workers' behalf or they are undisguised legalised robbers, we are out to end their power, and to expose the ideologies which have allowed them to hold it this long. Socialism is not dead: it has not yet been tried. And now that we can bury not just the corpse of Lenin but the myths of Leninism, it is a great time to be in the struggle for a society freed from the Dictatorship of Capital.

Steve Coleman

Designer politics (1987)

From the April 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are many ways to try to persuade people to buy a magazine: from putting a picture of a glamorous celebrity on the cover to promising a "shock, horror" story inside. Other magazines and journals try to attract readers by advertising special offers and free gifts. For organisations whose main concern is profit this comes as no surprise. The competition for readers is intense not least because a large circulation will attract profitable advertising. It is little wonder that the packaging and the gimmicks become as important as the content.

So, bearing that in mind try to guess which monthly journal in a recent issue contained within its stylish covers a special offer for unisex boxer shorts ("They're stylish! They're fashionable!"); another offer for "extra strength" condoms ("Teatless for the aesthetic among us"); and a feature on what to buy and where to go on Valentine's Day? A number of possible candidates come to mind. City Limits or Time Out perhaps whose main purpose is to inform young Londoners where to go or what to see? Or one of those glossy magazines like Cosmopolitan directed at the "liberated" woman-about-town? Or a spoof article in Private Eye maybe? 

No! It was the magazine that still refers to itself as the "Theoretical and discussion journal of the Communist Party" - Marxism Today. To be fair there was an attempt to try to give the boxer shorts some political significance. The reader was offered a choice of two styles - one with the word "Proletariat" in cyrillic lettering printed all over them; the other featuring the Aeroflot logo! (No, this really wasn't a Private Eye spoof). It was perhaps slightly surprising that Marxism Today was selling boxer shorts with an apparently pro-Soviet appeal since it is the journal of the Euro-communist lot in the CP. Or maybe it was a closet gesture of support for Gorbachev, who, if the western media are to be believed, is as trendy and style-conscious as Marxism Today. It was harder to try to discern any kind of political message behind the ad for the condoms, although they are, we are told, "brought to you exclusively by Red Stripe".

The Valentine's Day feature began with an overt attempt at making a political connection by suggesting that "the obvious gift for an activist" is a telephone answering machine. "Late for meetings?" it continued, "buy them Stephen Rotholz Icon watches". Or perhaps a £650 hand-made bicycle is more up your street as a present for your "Valentine"? Or a piece of Lalique glassware costing, we are helpfully informed, from £50 to £15,000. And for that special Valentine's night out? How about dinner for two at a Burmese restaurant which will cost you £30? Marxism Today even comes up with a suggestion to fill the pregnant pauses should the after-dinner conversation begin to flag. Shares and share fluctuations, of course! And for anyone with a conscience then Marxism Today helps us off the hook by announcing that "popular capitalism may be subverted with information from Stewardship Unit Trust, who will invest your money in ventures which don't have connections with alcohol, tobacco or defence industries". Well that's okay then. Ideologically sound shares!

Marxism Today claims to be a serious political journal. It's true that in between all the trivia quoted above there were some serious political articles aimed mostly at the trendy broad left rainbow coalition of good causes. Class politics are out. Life-style politics are most definitely in. Forget about trying to change society in any meaningful way and concentrate instead on changing your image and Marxism Today will tell you how. Design, presentation and packaging are being used to disguise the emptiness of their politics in much the same way as Conservative, Labour and Alliance parties which give as much attention to the colours, logos and wrappings of their policies as they do to the content in their attempt to sell them to the punters. The idea that you can win people over to your side by the packaging rather than the content of policies is nothing new. Elections, in particular, have always been long on fine-sounding rhetoric and short on incisive political analysis. Offering their readers designer Marxism Today condoms and boxer shorts is just the 1980s' version of politicians "buying" workers' support with free beer.

Marxism Today must be totally out of touch with the lives of the majority of workers in this country for whom whether to buy Lalique glassware or an answering machine as a Valentine's Day present is not a decision that they are likely to be losing much sleep over. Most people do not lead the lives of trendy lefties giving support to a handful of "good causes" because they've received the ideologically sound seal of approval from the political "style" gurus. Trying to win support and readers with gimmicks like boxer shorts and condoms shows contempt for workers and is no substitute for sound analysis of capitalism and convincing arguments for socialism. The Communist Party has always been short of both so perhaps, after all, it's not surprising that they've given up trying to sell politics and have turned to selling "lifestyles" instead.

Janie Percy-Smith