Lenin's Distortion of Marxism (1983)

From the January 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The greatest single movement to confuse and distort the ideas of Marxism has been Leninism. The false assertion that Russia. China, Kampuchea, Albania et al are examples of Marxism in practice is not only a distortion of the works of Marx, but is a means of discrediting the socialist objective. To support the revolutionary socialist aim of Marxism is to oppose fundamentally the Bolshevik outlook of Lenin; the absurd ideological construction of Marxist-Leninism is as meaningful as Christian-Atheism or Conservative-Radicalism.

Apart from the Socialist Party of Great Britain, virtually all of the parties, groups and factions which claim to be Marxists would also claim to be Leninists. In fact, they are Leninists and as such they are not only opponents of Marxism, but enemies of the socialist objective. Of course, most of the members have not read the forty-two volumes of Lenin's collected works — they have probably not even come across the statements from Lenin which are quoted in this article. It is not against workers who have misguidedly joined the ranks of the Leninist Left that this article is directed, but against Leninism as an anti-socialist dogma which must be rejected before working class political consciousness can be achieved.

To understand the basic opposition between Marxism and Leninism it is necessary to make clear what it means to be a Marxist. Starting from the recognition that there is nothing inevitable about the chaotic mess which the world is in. Marxists reject the myth that the horrifying social problems of capitalism, such as mass poverty and war and starvation, must always exist: the narrow conservatism which claims that there is no alternative to the perverse “civilisation” of the bomb and the dole queue is dismissed on the grounds that all things change; social arrangements, however ‘natural' they may seem to be, do not remain static. The Marxist outlook presupposes that the social problems which upset the lives of the mass of humanity today are not caused by inefficient governments or weaknesses of ‘human nature’; their cause is the social system of capitalism, where wealth is produced for sale on the market with a view to profit rather than for human needs. The Marxist analysis of capitalism points to the existence of two great classes: the capitalists, who possess but do not produce, and the workers, who produce but do not possess. Capitalism and its attendant problems can only be destroyed by conscious working class action. Marxism is a theory of class struggle: the abolition of the profit system was not posed by Marx as an appealing moral ideal, but as the only class interest of the majority class in the society — the workers. It is fundamental to Marxism that only the workers can solve our own problems:

The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class themselves. (Marx, preamble to the Rules of the First International. )

Marx had no doubt that workers could enact our own class emancipation. Allied to the struggle to end capitalism. Marxism is concerned with the struggle to establish the next stage of human history: socialism or communism. For Marx the two terms meant exactly the same thing. What do Marxists mean by socialism or communism? A system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of producing and distributing wealth — factories, offices, mines, docks, farms. Common ownership does not mean state ownership: the state is the executive committee of the capitalist class and when wealth is commonly owned there can be no classes and therefore no state. For convenience, we may summarise the principles of Marxism as follows:

1. That change is constant and present conditions (capitalism) are not inevitable.
2. That capitalism is the cause of social problems today.
3. That workers can and must emancipate ourselves by taking conscious political action to end the profit system.
4. That socialism/communism is an objective worth working for because it will mean the rational utilisation of the earth's resources for the use of the earth's inhabitants.

Marxists may be wrong in holding these principles: if so, the opponents of Marxism are keeping conspicuously quiet about it. Instead of applying their ‘‘talents" to producing a convincing critique of Marxism, the avowed opponents of Marxism spend their energies and money on the far easier task of attacking the theory of Leninism. In so doing they win millions of workers to the cause of anti-Marxism. Professional anti-Marxists refer to “Marxist Russia”. Why shouldn't they — after all, according to the Communist Party of Great Britain,

Today socialism is a reality for all to see. Countries with a population of hundreds of millions are socialist states. (The British Road to Socialism)

The media refers to a “Marxist government" in Poland which locks up trade unionists — and a “Marxist President" in Zimbabwe who has declared strikes illegal — and “Marxist" tendencies in the Labour Party which operate in secret and devote their political energies to revolutionary exercises like threatening to take the NEC to Court. The media did not invent these pseudo-Marxists. Neither did they invent Stalin or Budapest in 1956 or Prague in 1968 or Gdansk more recently. How are workers expected to respond to such examples of Leninism, presented in the name of Marxism? Understandably, for very many workers Marxism is a dirty word: talk to them about what Marxism and socialism really mean and, quite understandably, they will tell you that Marxism sounds alright in theory, but. . .

As soon as we begin to compare the ideas of Lenin the Bolshevik with those of Marx the socialist it becomes clear that Leninism has been tried and failed, while Marxism is still a method of social analysis and change which is of immense value to the working class.

It cannot be over-emphasised that for Marx socialist revolution meant working class self-emancipation. Socialism could not be established for the workers by a party or an advanced minority. Previous, capitalist revolutions could not be looked to as models for socialist revolution; as Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority in the interests of the immense majority.

Note the emphases: self-conscious — carried out by men and women who are not mere followers, but who know what they want and know how to get it; independent — a movement for workers of workers; immense majority — it must involve most workers. Lenin fundamentally rejected the idea of working class self-emancipation:

Socialist consciousness cannot exist among the workers. This can tie introduced only from without. (What Is To Be Done?)

According to Lenin, the “immense majority" simply “cannot” become “self-conscious”; they would have to wait for such consciousness to be brought to them "from without”, from the Bolshevik vanguard or the CP or the SWP or the IMG or the WRP or some other band of arrogant leaders who think that they have acquired knowledge about society which the rest of the working class “cannot” understand. Rejecting Marx’s idea of an independent movement of a majority of class conscious workers, Lenin advocated “revolutionary leadership":

If Socialism can only he developed when the intellectual development of all the people permits it. then we shall not see socialism for at least five hundred years. The Socialist political party, which is the vanguard of the working class, must not allow itself to be halted by the lack of education of the mass average, but must lead the masses . . . (Lenin at the Congress of Peasants’ Soviets, 1918)

We do not need to guess about what Marx’s response would have been to such arrogant political talk; in Marx's day there were just the same kind of would-be leaders hanging around the German Socialist Workers’ Party this is what he said of them:

We cannot . . . co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above . . . (Marx/Engels, Circular letter to German socialists, 1875.)

“People’s Tsarism”

The seizure of power by the Bolshevik minority in October 1917 turned Leninism from an ideology into a political regime. The failure of the Bolsheviks to establish socialism “from above" was inevitable because the material conditions did not exist in Russia to allow anything but capitalism to develop. The Leninists called their dictatorship of the party a dictatorship of the proletariat. The modern Leninists have followed them in this mythology; for example, a pamphlet entitled The Struggle for Socialism (sold by the Socialist Workers’ Party) misinforms its readers that

For the first time in history the majority of the population democratically ruled and working people themselves determined their own future and destiny.

If this statement were true, then it would be rather perverse that “working people", having acquired the power to determine “their own future and destiny” should have decided (democratically, no doubt) that what they would like more than anything else would be to live under a one-party dictatorship. The Bolshevik Zinoviev who, unlike the fantasists of the SWP was actually in Russia at the time, was rather more candid about the nature of "Bolshevik democracy":

We have 500,000 Party members who manage the entire state machine from top to bottom.

Half a million out of one hundred and thirty million ran Russia from top to bottom and the SWP claim that “the majority of the population democratically ruled". Lenin also was quite open about the minority revolution of the Bolsheviks:

Just as 150,000 lordly landowners under Tsarism dominated the 130 million Russian peasants, so 20,000 members of the Bolshevik party are imposing their proletarian will on the mass, but this time in the interests of the latter. (Lenin, The New International, April, 1918.)

But Tsarism did not pretend to be socialism; the massive distortion of Leninism was that it continued the undemocratic forms of Tsarism, claiming that this was socialism. So far did the distortion go that Lenin was even able to write that

There is . . . absolutely no contradiction . . . between Soviet (that is, socialist) democracy and the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals.

The Communist parties of the world, which were set up in response to the Bolshevik success, exist to defend the Leninist distortion of Marxism and socialism. Just as the Tories in Britain defend the mighty power of capital as being a "property-owning democracy", so the Russian nationalists of the CP regard the tyranny of the CPSU as being “socialism for all to see". In fact, all that they are defending is the class power of the "Communist" bureaucratic elite.

The Leninists of today are not content to defend the awful monument to Bolshevism which exists in Russia and China; they still maintain that the old Bolshevik methods of minority action present the only serious strategy for establishing socialism. According to the SWP.

the form of government adopted by the Russian workers over half a century ago has . . . been successfully applied by every revolutionary workers' movement since 1917. (The Struggle for Socialism)

The present writer wrote over three years ago to ask the SWP for information about where these successful revolutions have taken place; the “vanguard” has yet to reply.

The Leninist distortion of Marxism is not only a matter of strategy; it is often said that "you socialists are all after the same basic thing, but you go different ways about getting it”. In one sense this is true, insofar as most workers on the Left do want a society where the problems of capitalism no longer exist. But then, so do most vicars and most boy scouts and most of the workers who oppose Marxism. Unity of sentiment is one thing; unity of political consciousness is another. In fact, most Leninists would pay lip service to the Objects of the SPGB, but spend their time advocating the absurd Leninist conception of socialism. According to Lenin, socialism means capitalism run in the interest of the exploited class:

We are for . . . regulation of production and distribution in the interests of the poor, the toilers and the exploited against the exploiters.

If, under Leninist rule, the exploited are going to regulate affairs in their own class interest, “against the exploiters", then one is left wondering why those who are regulating things continue allowing the exploiters to go on exploiting their masters. If the poor are to be powerful, why are they still the poor? There are a number of workers in Russia asking just such questions. According to Lenin’s Orwellian logic, socialism is “nothing else but a monopoly of state capitalism instituted for the benefit of all the people”. (Lenin, Collected Works. Vol. 26, p-.26I.) In short, Leninists advocate state possession of the productive and distributive machinery, as opposed to common ownership and democratic control.

Leninists become very upset when their pseudo-socialist nations are exposed as being state capitalist. The Leninists should read Lenin and they would discover that capitalism was his objective:

. . . state capitalism would be a step forward . . . If in approximately six months' time state capitalism became established in our Republic, this would be a great success and a sure guarantee that within a year socialism will have gained a permanently firm hold . . . (The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It)

Leninists today advocate schemes for nationalisation in the name of Marxism. State capitalism and private capitalism are two sides of the same capitalist coin.

That Lenin distorted Marxism is beyond question. It is not with academic enthusiasm that Marxists expose this distortion; to us, political knowledge is power and confusion can serve to set the struggle back by years. Marxists are hostile to the reactionary political theory of Leninism for, by employing the rhetoric of socialism it serves as a fraudulent defence for the state capitalist tyrannies which oppress millions of workers in our age. If in the year which marks the hundredth anniversary of Marx’s death we can succeed in clearing the confusion of Leninism from the working class movement we will have achieved a major step forward in the struggle for majority socialist understanding.

Steve Coleman

Blogger's Note:

Mark Shipway, from the Council Communist group Wildcat, replied to this article in the April 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Correction (1983)

From the January 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

With reference to "added value" (in the article "Promised Land" last month) it should be pointed out that this is the total new wealth created by the workers in the productive process. This is then divided into the wages and salaries paid to workers, and the surplus value received and accumulated by the capitalist class.

Editors.

SPGB Meetings (1983)

Party News from the January 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

A recording of Eddie Grant's meeting 'Are world unity and cultural diversity compatible?' - from the SPGB's Socialism as a Practical Alternative Weekend School - is available at the following link.

A False Dawn

On this day in history a hundred years ago the Labour Party formed its first (minority) government.

Posted below are a selection of articles from the Socialist Standard from that period covering both the 1923 General Election and the duration (and aftermath) of that first Labour administration: 

• Jan 1924: After The Poll.
• Feb 1924: Editorial - A "Socialist" Government.
• Mar 1924: Editorial - Peace At Any Price!
• Apr 1924: Fake Labour Government. The puppet show.
• Jun 1924: The Fraud of Reform.
• Jul 1924: The Capitalist Housing Bill.
• Jul 1924: The Labour Party Votes for Strike-Smashing Bill.
• Aug 1924: Editorial - Labour Rules The Empire With Bombs and Bullets. 
• Sep 1924: Editorial - Reparations or Revolution.
• Nov 1924: Editorial - The Great Sham Fight at the Polls
• Dec 1924: How Labour Ruled Mespot.
• Apr 1925: A review of "The Diplomacy of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald".
• Aug 1929: Mr. Wheatley's Lapse.

Voice From The Back: Land of the Free (2008)

The Voice From The Back Column from the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Land of the Free

Behind all the bombast of “land of the free, home of the brave” national anthem in the USA lies a sinister reality. “From the 1880s to the 1960s, at least 4,700 men and women were lynched in this country. The noose remains a terrifying symbol, and continues to be used by racists to intimidate African-Americans (who made up more than 70 percent of lynching victims). In the past decade or so, only about a dozen noose incidents a year came to the attention of civil rights groups. But since the huge Sept. 20 rally in Jena, La., where tens of thousands protested what they saw as racism in the prosecution of six black youths known as the ‘Jena 6,’ this country has seen a rash of as many as 50 to 60 noose incidents. Last Tuesday, for example, a city employee in Slidell, La., was fired after being accused of hanging a noose at a job site a few days earlier. These incidents are worrying, but even more so is the social reality they reflect. The level of hate crimes in the United States is astoundingly high — more than 190,000 incidents per year, according to a 2005 Department of Justice study.” (New York Times, 25 November)

Death in a Harsh Society

The latest figures on deaths in winter make for harsh reading and illustrate the fate awaiting many British workers when they are unable to work anymore. “More than 23,000 people died of cold last winter despite it being one of the mildest recorded, according to the Office for National Statistics. Of these deaths, 19,200 were among those aged 75 and over. Charities called it a ‘national scandal’ and gave warning of more deaths this winter because of higher fuel prices and colder temperatures.” (Times, 29 November)

Heiress On The Run

She was left $12 million but it was a mixed blessing as she received threats from blackmailers and kidnappers. “Their threats forced concerned friends to bundle her onboard a private jet under a new identity and take her into hiding. Her location is a closely guarded secret but she is reportedly living somewhere in Florida under 24 hour guard.” (Times, 4 December) It is reported that her annual upkeep is $300,000 but this includes a rotating security team. Oh, did we mention she has weekly grooming visits and has to visit the vet for her liver condition? Yes, the vet! For she is a white Maltese dog called Trouble whose former owner was the hotel tycoon Leona Helmsley. Go on tell us that capitalism isn’t crazy!

Old Age Fears

In so-called primitive societies that practiced a hunting-gathering existence, the elderly were protected and respected as knowledgeable members of the group. In modern capitalism the old are looked upon as a burden as can be seen from these findings. “Britons are living in fear of growing old in a society that fails to respect the over-65s or provide adequate support for those in need, a Guardian poll reveals today. …The ICM poll found: 40% of Britons fear being lonely in their old age. Two thirds of the adult population are ‘frightened’ by the prospect of having to move into a care home; More than 90% said they knew they could not survive on the state pension and would need to rely on savings.” (Guardian, 3 December)

Promises, Promises

Back in 1999 the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair promised to halve the number of poor children in 10 years and eradicate child poverty in 20 years. “The government’s approach to tackling child poverty has lost momentum and is in ‘urgent need’ of a major rethink, a charity has said. A Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) report said there has been no sustained progress in the past three years. One in three UK children live in poverty. A report by the Treasury select committee fears the pledge to halve child poverty by 2010 is in doubt.” (BBC News, 3 December) This is typical of reformist politicians – make promises, preferably far into the future and they will probably be forgotten when the next election comes along.

The Price of Gold

About a quarter of a million mineworkers downed tools on Tuesday in South Africa, the world’s top producer of gold and platinum. “This year’s death toll has reached 200, mostly owing to rock falls and explosions in several mines. Many mines have been unchanged for decades but recently reopened, thanks to high world prices that have made them profitable again.” (Times, 5 December) The miners are concerned about the lack of safety in the mining industry which one striker described as “dripping in blood”. The average wage of a miner in South Africa is about $200 a month. None of them will be wearing gold or diamonds, that is for sure.

The nature of human nature (2008)

From the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

The cultural anthropologist Ashley Montagu once said that what cultural anthropologists were really interested in was “the nature of human nature”. So what do they think it is?

Today, all humans are members of the same species, homo sapiens. We know what our main features are: upright position freeing our hands, stereoscopic vision allowing us to see things in three dimensions, a long period of growing up, the anatomical ability to utter a wide range of sounds, and, last but not least, a powerful brain as the centre of our nervous system. These are all genetic features, inherited via our genes, and are what distinguishes us, genetically, from other animals and living things.

Before us there were other species of homo (Man) but which are now extinct. The most well-known of these was Neanderthal Man which only became extinct about 30,000 or so years ago. Then there were the likely direct ancestors of our species: homo habilis (which Richard Dawkins translates as “handy Man”) and homo erectus or upright Man. The currently available evidence suggested that the first Man, as distinct from the last Ape-Man, emerged about two million years ago.

But this is partly a question of definition since biologists distinguish the first Man from the last Ape-Man by brain size – an inevitably arbitrary, genetic distinction. Anthropologists have introduced another but non-biological distinction: the generalised making and use of tools. While the ability to make tools depends on biology (free hands, good eyesight, more powerful brain)  the actual making of the tools – and what they were and how they were used – does not; it is learned not inherited and, as such, part of what anthropologists call “culture”.

It is now generally accepted that the evolution of homo habilis  (toolmaking Man, if you don’t like Dawkins’s translation) into modern humans was not just a question of biology but also of culture; that it was a biological-cultural co-evolution. That, as Man made and used tools, natural selection favoured those with a more powerful brain and so a greater ability to learn and, crucially, to think abstractly (i.e. of something not present to the senses). Since abstract thinking and language are probably indissolubly linked, this depended on the development of the vocal cords and other parts of our speech organs. The end-result was us, some 150,000 years ago, on the savannah, or open grasslands, of East Africa.

Since then the most noticeable biological change was the development of the different varieties of our species – sometimes mis-called “races” – as isolated groups of homo sapiens adapted biologically through natural selection, over many thousands of years, to the different physical environments in which they lived.

Otherwise human adaptation has been cultural rather than biological: humans making use of their biological capacities, to build-up a social tradition so as to better adapt to their environment, which is then passed on to a new generation through teaching and learning rather than through genes.

“Cultural anthropology is concerned with the study of man’s cultures. By ‘culture’ the anthropologist understands what may be called the man-made part of the environment; the pots and pans, the laws and institutions, the art, religion, philosophy. Whatever a particular group of people living together as a functioning population have learned to do as human beings, their way of life, in short, is to be regarded as culture” (Ashley Montagu, Man: His First Million Years, 1957).

Culture allows humans to adapt to a new or changing environment much, much more rapidly than biological adaptation through natural selection ever could. Cultural adaptation is measured in decades while biological adaptation is measured in tens of thousands of years. Other animals do have a culture in the sense of a tradition of behaviour that is passed on through learning, but none can vary and develop it as humans can. So, the capacity for adaptation through cultural change can be said to be a distinguishing feature of our species. It is of course a biologically-determined capacity, dependent upon in particular a powerful brain and the capacity to speak and on the extended period of childhood during which culture can be learned.

This is “human nature”: the set of biological capacities enabling humans to learn, teach and develop culture, which is a non-biological means of adapting to the environment in which they find themselves. Faced with a new environment, humans can and do adapt their behaviour not their biological make-up. Because culture is non-biological and not fixed, the cultural anthropologists emphasised that educability, behavioural adaptability and flexibility was the key feature of human nature, what made us human:

“The most notable thing about human behaviour is that it is learned. Everything a human being does as such he has to learn from other human beings. From any dominance of  biologically or inherited predetermined reactions that may prevail in the behaviour of other animals, man has moved into a zone of adaptation in which his behaviour is dominated by learned responses. It is within the dimension of culture, the learned, the man-made part of the environment that man grows, develops, and has his being as a behaving organism” (Ashley Montagu, Man and Aggression, 1968).

This biological capacity for culture, for learning behaviour and passing on to other humans and to other generations, was clearly an adaptive advantage and it is this that has allowed our species to spread and survive in all parts of the world, despite the widely differing environments. Much less of the behaviour of other animals is learned (and what is learned is essentially repetitive from generation to generation) and much more is governed by what used to be called “instincts”.

This is a word that has long fallen out of favour in scientific circles, but it would simply denote a fixed response to a given stimulus – like the literal knee-jerk reaction in humans. Or moths flying into lights. Another, more complicated response would be squirrels reacting to the shortening of periods of daylight by going into hibernation.

What the brain does is to allow a period between the stimulus and the response. The more developed the brain the wider the range of possible behavioural responses that the organism can make on the basis of its own past experience. We are the animals with the most developed brain and it is one that allows us the greatest choice of behavioural responses. So much so, the cultural anthropologists argued, that it can be said that we don’t really have any instincts. According to Montagu, any “instincts” that might have existed in the pre-human ape-men from which we evolved would have disappeared in the course of evolution:

“Instead of leading to fixed responses to the environment, man’s evolution has been such as to make him the least behaviourally fixed and most generally educable or plastic of all living creatures. It is this very plasticity of his mental traits that confers upon man the position he occupies. The acquisition of this capacity freed man from the constraint of the limited range of biologically predetermined responses that characterises all other animals” (Human Heredity, 1963 edition)

“ . . . man is man because he has no instincts because everything he is and has become he has learned, acquired, from his culture, from the man-made part of his environment, from other human beings” (Man and Aggression).

The scientific consensus that was established in the 1940s, 50s and 60s was that it was “human nature” to be able to have a wide range of  behavioural responses to the environment; that human behaviour was learned not innate; that it was culturally not biologically determined. This was confirmation that there is nothing in the biological nature of humans that would prevent us living in the co-operative, non-hierarchical, society of self-motivated individuals that socialism would be.

Since then the biological determinists have regrouped and counter-attacked, claiming that there still are “biologically predetermined responses” in humans. They have made some headway in that biological determinism is more intellectually acceptable than it was fifty years ago. People like Konrad Lorenz, Robert Ardrey, Desmond Morris, E. O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker  – none of them anthropologists – have been able to achieve some popular success. But they have only done this by playing to the gallery, exploiting the fact that most people have a negative view of human nature – inherited from the Christian dogma of original sin and innate human depravity – and knowing that they could sell their books by pandering to this prejudice. Ardrey, Morris and Pinker also appealed to anti-intellectualism to ridicule and marginalise the scientific findings of the cultural anthropologists by painting them as an arrogant, liberal elite.

But they have failed to show how genes could determine human behaviour (as opposed to setting limits to it). Basically, genes are self-replicating codes for the production of the proteins in the cells of which we (and all other life-forms) are made. What they govern is the development and renewal of our physical, material bodies. They don’t govern behaviour – that depends, as the cultural anthropologists have established, on our social and cultural environment.

The biological determinists hoped that advances in genetics would back up their case, but it is proving to be their undoing. Molecular biologists are making huge advances in identifying and discovering the effect of individual human genes. And they are not discovering genes for any behaviour, only for how the human body develops and renews itself – and what happens when a gene is faulty or abnormal or unusual. In which case the person concerned will suffer some, usually crippling bodily defect, but which genetics holds out the hope of someday being able to correct.

The findings of the cultural anthropologists still stand. All human social behaviour has to be learned and so is culturally not biologically determined. A key distinguishing feature of our species is behavioural adaptability. Human nature is not a barrier to socialism.

Adam Buick

Cooking the Books: Bottom line building (2008)

The Cooking the Books column from the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like everyone else with an email address we get loads of spam. Most go straight into the trash can, but the subject of one – “Crack Patient Paying Problems with these Helpful Hints” – caught our eye. It turned out to be a plug for an audio-conference in America on “Tried-and-True Ways To Get Chiropractic Patients to Hand Over Their Dues”. The message began:

“Getting patients to pay their bills at your chiropractic office isn’t always the most successful part of the visit. And even a handful of patients who don’t pay their bills can start adding up – and hurting your practice’s bottom line. But you can learn less-stressful way to collect pays, deductibles and co-insurance in this 1-hour session. Your expert speaker, Marty Kotlar, DC, CHCC, CBCS, will provide strategic advice on everything from gathering patient information to forming an office policy explaining the patients’ financial obligations. Don’t miss this bottom-line-building session . . .”

Chiropractics is an “alternative medicine” that is regarded by most conventional doctors as quackery (it is based on the idea that by manipulating the spine you can deal with ailments in other parts of the body, a bit like reflexology claims for manipulating your toes). But that’s not the point since no doubt teleconferences also take place in America about how conventional doctors can boost their bottom lines too – except that it does not fit in with the caring image that “alternative medicines” seek to cultivate as a way of attracting paying customers.

In Britain NHS doctors – and patients – are freed from this stress since the doctor’s fees are paid to them directly by the government. Not a solution, we imagine, that Marty Kotlar will be proposing in his teleconference, even though chiropractors in Britain would dearly like to get in on the act and even though doctors’ practices in Britain are, with government encouragement, going the American way and converting themselves into profit-seeking businesses. Of course to the extent that they take on private patients these medical businesses do face the problem of getting patients to pay up, as do unrecognised “alternative” practitioners and NHS dentists. So perhaps, after all, they could learn something from listening in to Marty Kotlar’s “bottom-line-building session”.

Most people, in Britain at least, find it abhorrent that people should have to pay for medical treatment and health care. And they’re right; if you are ill, you should get treatment whether or not you can afford to pay for it. Socialists go further. We say the same as-of-right access to what you need should apply across the board, to housing, heating, electricity, food, clothes, transport, entertainment.

But this will only be possible once the means for producing these things have become the common property of the community as a whole instead of being, as at present, provided by profit-seeking businesses owned by rich individuals, corporations or states.

Letter: Silly ceremony (2008)

Letter to the Editors from the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

“I, […], do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that on becoming a British citizen, I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her Heirs and successors, according to law.”

The above is the Affirmation of Allegiance required to be taken by applicants for British citizenship, at one of New Labour’s more inane gifts to the nation, the Citizenship Ceremony. Any applicant for British citizenship has to attend such a ceremony within six months of their application being accepted. Failure to do so means that one’s application is deemed unsuccessful, and that the whole tortuous process must be started again.

I recently found myself attending such a ceremony as a guest, struggling to keep a straight face as the Lord Mayor of Bristol, in his full regalia, informed us, while standing in front of a picture of the Queen, that, in Britain, “No-one is above the law.”

Twenty-three new citizens, plus their guests, were present to hear the Lord Mayor eulogise about the Greatness of Britain and its democratic institutions. Tellingly, however, he opened his speech by reiterating a couple of questions from the Citizenship Test (analogous to the Theory component of a driving test), which all of the new Citizens were required to have passed before reaching this stage. Unaccountably, not one of them could remember the literal meaning of Prime Minister or how many members the Welsh Assembly has.

I took some small encouragement from the fact that slightly more citizens chose to take the Affirmation of Allegiance, rather than the Oath (which beings, “I […] swear by Almighty God). However, the overall effect reminded me of nothing more than a school assembly, with a hall full of bored students intoning words to prayers which they find more or less meaningless.

And this, of course, is the point. The whole process has less to do with “citizenship” per se than with reminding workers who have often overcome massive difficulties and obstructions in order to be allowed to settle here (admittedly not the case for the person whose guest I was) of precisely who is the boss, and showing that they are expected to be good little boys and girls.

Needless to say the proceedings ended with the playing of the National Anthem. Not wishing to embarrass my partner, I confess that I did stand up for the wretched dirge (albeit with my fingers firmly crossed throughout!).

Surely the world can be organised more sanely than this? Why should it not be the birthright of every human being to settle in any part of our planet (or even to continuously travel around it, should one so require), and be accepted as an equal member of one’s community without having to participate in silly ceremonies to prove one’s worthiness to do so? Why should we have to swear (or affirm or whatever) Allegiance to anyone? As Leon Rosselson wrote in his song “The World Turned Upside Down”, “This world was made a common treasury, for everyone to share.” However, until the world’s working class unites consciously and politically to ensure that the treasury can indeed be shared, a minority class with retain control and the rest of us will continue to be expected to be grateful when we’ve passed enough of their patronising “tests” (and, of course, have sufficient funds) to be able to relocate from one part of the planet to another.

Shane Roberts,

Bristol.

Simon the Sociobiologist (2008)

From the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Obituary: Edmund Grant (2008)

Eddie speaking from the Party platform in the 1950s.

Obituary from the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Edmund Grant, a life-long member, died, at the end of November after being incapacitated and out of circulation for the past six years. His father was a Party member and he himself joined in 1950 at the age of 16 and was a member of successive North London branches. As a conscientious objector to “national service” in the State’s killing machine, he was ordered to work instead in Colney Hatch psychiatric hospital. Partly brought up in Argentina, he was a fluent Spanish speaker and also spoke other European languages, which helped him find employment as a shipping clerk. Later he was employed by Remploy. He was a member of the Executive Committee for many years and the Party’s candidate at the 1964 and 1970 General Elections. He spoke outdoors, at Hyde Park, White Stone Pond and elsewhere, and indoors at lectures and in debates, including one against the National Front. He wrote occasionally, mainly on Spanish and Latin American affairs, for the Socialist Standard. He was an early member of the William Morris Society and of the old ASTMS trade union. Our condolences go to his wife, children and grandchildren.

                                                              ______________________________

S.C. [Steve Coleman] writes: Eddie Grant personified Oscar Wilde’s ‘soul of man under Socialism’ and served as a model as well as a mentor to many of us who had the patience to learn from him. (Eddie was not given to abridged versions of the case for Socialism – or of anything else.)

Eddie exemplified a boundless humanism: kindly, jocular, literate, cosmopolitan and never dogmatic. He hated what he called ‘narrowness’: that particular sclerosis of the intellect which characterises the true believer who knows because he knows. What made Eddie’s knowledge so remarkable was his capacity to explore the peripheries of his own experience and understanding, searching for reality in global corners too easily overlooked by others. His linguistic ability helped here, but more important was a deep and uncommon cultural sensibility to different ways of living, thinking and working. His knowledge of European and Latin American history and politics was extensive, as was his great appreciation of music, dance, fine art, literature and the theatre.

Given these broad aesthetic enthusiasms, Eddie’s life-long interest in the art and socialism of William Morris is hardly surprising. He was an active member of the William Morris Society and encouraged many others to explore and learn from Morris’s constructive approach to socialism. Indeed, like Morris, there was something about Eddie that was particularly unsuited to the absurdities of the money system; doing a job; possessing a passport; or confronting the anti-social. (I was with Eddie when he was mugged one night on the way home from the Executive Committee; his combination of genuine incomprehension and indignation so frustrated the knife-wielding muggers that in the end they jumped off the train at the next stop in search of a less verbosely recalcitrant victim.) Of course, this was nothing to compare with the legalised robbery against which Eddie fought with no less determination.

Many of us gained from Eddie an inescapable core of socialist consciousness. He gave us a foundation for seeing and making sense of history which could only have been absorbed through personal interaction with someone whose principles and behaviour were in accord. His sensitivity to both the personal and global dimensions of power inequalities led him to develop a sophisticated commitment to socialism as a mode of living as well as a system of production. Until his health finally prevented him from doing so, Eddie pursued this commitment with a vivacity and joviality that none who knew him could forget. His truly awful puns reflected a mind that could not resist mocking the absurdity of the world around him. He enjoyed laughter and refused to believe that politics must be deadly serious. Above all, Eddie inspired his fellow socialists not simply to get what they want from the world, but to want more and better from the world – a world that is poorer for his absence.

The trouble with gods (2008)

From the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those fortunate enough to live in relatively secularized societies should not underestimate global power of religion.

Gods do exist, in a certain sense (I use the word “gods” as a gender-neutral term that includes goddesses). Humans create them in their own image, though without being aware of doing so. The fact that gods are male or female in itself strongly suggests that they are creatures of the human imagination. But they infest the mind as powerful, capricious and mysterious beings who demand endless worship and praise, reverence and obedience, devotion and propitiatory sacrifice. The gods in the head of the believer thwart the development of confidence, self-respect, rational enquiry and independent judgment.

In this way the idea of domination and submission is imprinted in the psyche as a model for relationships between beings. That model is then readily applied to social relationships – to the relationship between man and woman, master and slave, and so on. The Moroccan scholar Fatna A. Sabbah has shown how this works in the case of Islam in her brilliant (pseudonymous) study Woman in the Muslim Unconscious (Pergamon Press, 1984), but her analysis applies equally well to the psychology of “God-fearing” Jews and Christians.

The imaginary world of the divine, in turn, draws its inspiration from the real world of human power structures. God is “king of the universe”, the archangels and angels are his ministers and officials, and the devil has the job of running the Gulag.  

My argument is that it is above all these psychological effects, and not specific religious dogmas and practices, which make god worship a bulwark of class society. That, surely, from the socialist point of view is the main trouble with gods.

Objections

It may be objected that some religious beliefs do not seem compatible with the division of society into classes. An obvious example is the idea that “we are all equal in the eyes of God.” Beliefs of this kind have, indeed, inspired peasant uprisings. “When Adam dwelled and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” asked John Ball in the 14th century.

This objection is not completely groundless. Submission to gods does not always and automatically translate into submission to human masters. But surveying the broad sweep of history, I still think that accepting divine authority tends to predispose people to accept human authority as well.  

Another possible objection is that belief in gods predates class society. Primitive people already feared gods who embodied the uncontrollable forces of nature. People were in thrall to gods before they were in thrall to other people. And yet this made them especially vulnerable to oppression and exploitation when other conditions were in place for the transition from primitive communism to class society.

God-kings and priestly castes

Many of the earliest rulers made the most direct use of their subjects’ belief in gods by demanding that they themselves be worshipped as gods (the Roman emperors, for instance) or – more often – as descendants or earthly manifestations of gods. Egyptian pharaohs claimed descent from the creator sun-god Atum or Re. The Inca was descended from the sun god Inti, while the Aztec king represented the fire god Xiuhtecuhtli (Bruce Trigger, Understanding Early Civilizations). The Shinto belief that the Japanese emperor was descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu held sway right up to 1946, when Hirohito renounced divine status.

Some religions directly support the class structure by sanctifying the entire ruling class. The best-known case is the sanctification of the priestly Brahmin caste in Hinduism, although the Indian caste system no longer corresponds precisely to the class structure. Judaism also has its “pure” priestly caste – the cohanim, who trace descent from Moses’ brother Aaron.

Still mighty foes

By and large, however, the mechanisms through which religion supports class society (capitalism) are nowadays indirect. It is still risky to challenge the powers that be, but — except in a few countries like Iran — it no longer counts as sacrilege. The image of God has even started to mutate from that of the irate patriarch to that of the “sympathetic” social worker.   

And yet in large parts of the world religion still occupies a very important place in people’s hearts and minds. Those fortunate enough to live in relatively secularized societies should not underestimate its global power. The gods remain mighty foes of their deluded human creators.

Stefan.

Local histories (2008)

Pamphlet Reviews from the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Class War Radical History Tour of Notting Hill by Tom Vague, Psychogeography, 2007.

Camden History Review 31, Camden History Society, 2007

The Class War pamphlet, the ‘souvenir programme’ of a recent London march maturely entitled “Bash The Rich”, is a rambling and rather unfocussed (as the doubtlessly pseudonymous author’s name would suggest) example of the local radical history writing which is currently fashionable. In this case it also is an unintended comment on the Class War organisation, which has itself become historic. Nonetheless the pamphlet might help locals gain “the sense of place in time” necessary to overcome the crazy disconnectedness of London living which makes political action in the capital so difficult to achieve nowadays.

In contrast the politics (and arts) issue of the Camden History Review is, as one might expect coming from the premier local history organisation of the capital, immaculately produced and finely focussed. The piece on Camden’s MPs is a rather old-fashioned biographical exercise, useful mainly for reference; however, the articles on the fight for a free library in Highgate and the St Pancras Civil Defence revolt of 1957-58 are prime examples of how on-the-ground-floor writing can help illuminate the real processes of history. The particular lesson to be learned from these two cases is that within capitalism every advance in the freedom of knowledge or the search for peace has to fought for tooth and nail. And how fruitless such actions, whether achieved via constitutional reform or direct action, ultimately are. The Socialist Party gets a mention fourth political essay, on the radical history of Grays Inn Road, as a radical organisation which once had its head office in the area and which pushes the solution – production for use not profit – to all capitalist problems from attacks on libraries to warmongering.

Kaz.

History writing (2008)

E. P. Thompson

Pamphlet Review from the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

All Knees and Elbows of Susceptibility and Refusal. Edited by Anthony Iles and Tom Roberts, 2007. 

 

The clumsy title comes from E. P. Thompson’s phrase to describe the difficulty of writing “history from below.” After the Second World War, a group of Communist Party historians including Thompson, Christopher Hill and Rodney Hilton set out to bring the experiences of the working class to the fore in the study of history. This was to some extent a reaction to structuralist and functionalist interpretations in which workers’ experiences and abilities to effect social change were down-played or ignored. The most famous example of “history from below” is EP Thompson’s classic The Making of the English Working Class, first published in 1963 and still worth reading. But Thompson’s concept of class is controversial in some quarters:

“If we stop history at any given point, then there are no classes but simply a multitude of individuals with a multitude of experiences. But if we watch these men over an adequate period of social change, we observe patterns in their relationships, their ideas, and their institutions. Class is defined by men as they live their own history, and in the end, this is its only definition.”

Some have seen this definition of class as being subjective, but Thompson must be right in saying that class is not simply an economic category but also an historical concept. The working class was not just the product of capitalist social relations or the industrial revolution: “The working class made itself as much as it was made,” wrote Thompson. Writing history from below means not invoking “iron laws” and ignoring the abilities of the working class to effect social change on the one hand, or getting lost in the detail and denying the importance of class on the other hand. This short pamphlet discusses these and other problems in writing history.

Lew Higgins

Clarification (2008)

From the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

The editorial in the December issue may have given the impression that we were not opposed to the “criminalisation” of racist ideas. As advocates of free speech, we are opposed to making the holding of any ideas a crime.

50 Years Ago: Upset in Accra: Dr. Nkrumah upsets his friends (2008)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1951 the Gold Coast legislature for the first time represented all the territory’s inhabitants, voting in secret ballot. The elections of 1951 and 1954 were won by the Convention People’s Party (CPP), whose leader, Dr. Nkrumah was brought from jail to fill the newly-created post of Prime Minister. The CPP stood on a programme of independence from British rule and when they won a third overwhelming victory in the 1956 elections, Whitehall agreed to the inevitable. At midnight on 5th March, 1957, the Gold Coast ceased to exist and the State of Ghana took its place. A new national anthem—Ghana Arise, by Hector Hughes, a British Labour M.P.—was substituted for God Save the Queen. ( . . .)

The first signs that Ghana was going to betray the hopes of its friends came when Dr. Nkrumah appeared to be fostering his own little personality cult, by having his head stamped on the new coinage and going to live in Christiansborg Castle which, as the old residence of Danish and British governors, is heavy with unpleasant memories. Then came the expulsions and a Special Bill to allow Mr. Edusei to deport two men without the right of appeal. The municipal councils of Accra and Kumasi were suspended and so was the chief of the 300,000 Akim Abuakwa tribe. Several members of the opposition were kidnapped and from the other side, a plot to assassinate Dr. Nkrumah was alleged. In this hysterical atmosphere, it seemed. Africa’s immaculate embryo democracy had been born a deformed dictatorship.

The truth of the matter is that last March saw the end of Nkrumah’s days of agitation and faced him with the realities of power over a country which is trying to make its way in the capitalist world. The first reality was a staggering fall in the price of cocoa, so that the first budget was chillingly austere and the Ghanaian workers were told that it would be unpatriotic to ask for higher-wages. They had expected better than this from Nkrumah ; a national transport strike was called and rioting broke out in Accra. Another difficulty is that Nkrumah is struggling to establish government on modern capitalist lines and to stamp out the old system of tribal rule.

(from article by Ivan in Socialist Standard, January 1958)