SPGB Debate: "Which way to Socialism?" (1986)

 Party News from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

I've posted this notice for the debate with the CPGB separately on the blog — away from the other meetings advertised in the December 1986 Socialist Standard  — for the rather mundane reason that I only just now spotted the notice in the original PDF. It was hidden away . . . which makes you wonder how many people saw the notice at the time when the Standard originally came out?

Unfortunately, I've no idea if there is an audio recording of the above debate but there is an audio recording of an earlier debate with Monty Johnstone. It dates from November 1982; the subject of the debate was 'Did Lenin distort Marx'; and the SPGB representative in that debate was Steve Coleman.

Monty Johnstone was an interesting political figure because he was, to the best of my knowledge, the only member of the Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist Party (1944-49) who returned to the official Communist fold. Interestingly, Eric Hobsbawm doesn't mention Johnstone's lost Trotskyist weekend in his 2007 obituary for Johnstone in the Guardian. Maybe he didn't know? Or, maybe, Hobsbawm right to the very end was doing that CPGB thing of always taking the opportunity to marginalise and hide any mention of the Trots.

Letter: Socialism and the Abolition of the State (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism and the Abolition of the State

Dear Editors.

In a brief article on page 106 of the June Socialist Standard we read: "Socialists are not pacifists. If. at the time of the establishment of a socialist society, the overwhelmingly socialist majority were confronted by a recalcitrant pro-capitalist minority intent on sabotage and violence, we would have no compunction in using whatever force was necessary to suppress them"

This, however, appears to contradict the view expressed in the reply to Lynn Stabler in the April Socialist Standard. In the section headed "Counter Revolutions" we find: "Will socialism need to use the state machine to combat a counter-revolution, begun perhaps by former members of the ruling class? The answer, in a word, is no'". Apart from the fact that "Socialism", like any other abstraction, is incapable of using anything - Men make history" how. as "Marxists", do you square this latter view with Marx's own comments on the subject. as exampled in a letter to Domela Nieuwenhuis dated February 22. 1881:

One thing you can at any rate be sure of: a socialist government does not come into power in a country unless conditions are so developed that it can above all take the necessary measures for intimidating the mass of the bourgeoisie.

The working class must be in a position to dictate the terms of its own emancipation by using, if necessary, coercive force against those who would stand in its way. After all. as the Communist Manifesto proclaims, what else is political power but the power of one class to suppress another? That this transitory coercive power would recede, "wither away", as the danger of counter-revolution receded, "withered away", was. I assumed, the viewpoint of the SPGB. For instance, in the April 1979 Socialist Standard in an article reviewing, pointedly. Plekhanov's Anarchism and Socialism, we read: "The State will not be abolished; it will wither away, like an uprooted weed"

However, in a back page article in the October 1984 Socialist Standard this view was briskly dismissed: "Having gained control of the state machine for the sole purpose of democratically dispossessing the capitalist minority, the state will be abolished immediately” Before the triumphant working class could use political power, apparently.

At a meeting in September 1985 in Glasgow your speaker was emphatic that the transitory rule of the working class, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. was an outdated concept. His basic view can, justly, be summarised as follows: "If the proletariat becomes the ruling class over whom will it rule?"

Curiously enough the direct reply to this question which, of course, was raised against Marx in Statism and Anarchy by Michael Bakunin, can be found in the March 1983 Socialist Standard. Although the question is rephrased in the article, the reply to question 13 in the supposed "interview" with Marx is composed mainly of Marx's attempt to answer Bakunin. However, as the writer of the article suggests, the reader would do well to check the precise answers, in this case Fernbach's translation in The First International and After (Penguin. 1974). It will be seen that Marx's references to the proletariat's use of forcible means" (p. 333) and to "general means of coercion" (p. 335) have been omitted from his "reply" in the Socialist Standard.

In the same issue, in the article "Lenin's Legacy", you quote, correctly from a letter by Engels to van Pappen dated April 18. 1883:

With the disappearance of an exclusively wealth-possessing minority there also disappears the necessity for the power of armed suppression, or state power.

But why stop here? Why not continue with the sentence immediately following?

At the same time, however, it was always our view that in order to attain this and the other far more important aims of the future social revolution, the working class must first take possession of the organised power of the state and by its aid crush the resistance of the capitalist class and organise society anew.

And, as a rejoinder to the predecessors of the "modern" SPGB, Engels continues:

The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organisation of the state.

Engels goes on to add that the state may require "considerable alterations", then adds the vital point:

But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and in a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris Commune.

And, Engels adds, concerning the "immediate abolition of the state":

Does it require my express assurance that Marx opposed this anarchist nonsense from the first day it was put forward in its present form by Bakunin?

And. as self-professed "Marxists'. how do you explain away Marx's biting and incisively sardonic comments in the never-ending debate with the petty-bourgeois anarchists?

If the political struggle of the working class assumes violent forms and if the workers replace the dictatorship of the bourgeois class with their own revolutionary dictatorship, then they are guilty of the terrible crime of lèse-principe, for, in order to satisfy their miserable profane daily needs and to crush the resistance of the bourgeois class, they, instead of laying down their arms and abolishing the state, give to the state a revolutionary and transitory form ("Political Indifferentism", see The First International and After, p. 328)

Yours sincerely.

Davie Donaldson

Glasgow G20

Reply:

If we have understood him correctly, our correspondent is suggesting that in our attitude towards the abolition of the state we commit the heresy of departing from the sacred texts of Marx and Engels. He attributes to us the same view as that held by the anarchist Bakunin and criticised by Engels, "that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organisation of the state". But we have never expressed this view.

The passage in the October 1984 Socialist Standard — "having gained control of the state machine for the sole purpose of democratically dispossessing the capitalist minority, the state will be abolished immediately' — which our correspondent cites to back up his case does not bear such an interpretation, as he himself recognises by his comment "before the triumphant working class could use political power, apparently" This is indeed only an appearance due to the faulty grammatical construction of the sentence. Our correspondent is just as well aware as we are that the sentence means; after the state machine has been captured and used for the sole purpose of democratically dispossessing the capitalist minority, it is then immediately abolished.

Before going into the views of Marx and Engels, let us state our own position as clearly as possible. We advocate that socialism should be established by the democratic, political action of a socialist-minded working class. The establishment of socialism, as the establishment of common ownership in place of class ownership, necessarily involves depriving the capitalist class of the monopoly control they currently exercise over the means of production. As this is not something they can be expected to welcome, it will have to be imposed on them and it is in order to do this that the socialist majority must first gain control of the "general means of coercion", the "organised political power of the state". After considerably altering it. the socialist majority uses the power of the state to impose the democratically-expressed will for common ownership on the capitalist class, employing "forcible means" if necessary as a last resort. Having done this — having taken political action to dispossess the capitalist class and establish common ownership — the socialist majority then immediately abolishes the state since a society of common ownership has no need for a "power of armed suppression" but only for an unarmed democratic administration. In this sense socialism entails the immediate abolition, and not the gradual decline, of the state.

Socialism is a society without a state — without any special organ of repression — because it is a society without exploitation and class conflict. This is why the only possible answer to the question "will socialism need to use the state machine to combat a counter-revolution, begun perhaps by former members of the ruling class7" is "No, because there will no longer be any state machine in socialism" Hence our reply to the letter in this April's Socialist Standard, which of course went on to explain that it would be very unlikely, once socialism had been established, that anybody would want to return to capitalist class society, let alone be able to organise a violent conspiracy to this end

Though of course we are not bound by everything Marx and Engels may have said, they were in the same political tradition as us and. as can be seen from the quotes our correspondent cites, did take up a basically similar position to ours on this question. There is one very important difference however: being active in the relatively undeveloped political and economic conditions of the 19th century they envisaged a prolonged period before the final establishment of socialism during which the working class would be exercising political power to revolutionise society. Hence their use of terms such as "dictatorship of the proletariat", "socialist government", "revolutionary dictatorship". "working class rule" as various alternative ways of describing the exercise of political power by the working class against the capitalist class during this period. If we reject these terms today, it is not because we reject using political power against the capitalist class but because we do not believe that any prolonged period of revolutionary social reorganisation is now necessary; in fact the dispossession of the capitalist class can now be carried out as a single, short, sharp revolutionary act.

But if Marx and Engels considered that a relatively extended period of exercise of working class political power would be necessary — a position which in our view has become outdated — they were always clear that, at the end of this period when a classless society of common ownership has been established — the state would be immediately abolished or. as Engels once put it. the state would have virtually died out (absterben, sometimes also translated as "wither away") In other words, there was no question of the state continuing on into socialist society. Socialist society would be a society without a state, without a "special repressive force" as Engels put it.

The metaphor of "dying out” — which has been twisted into meaning that the state would gradually "wither away" within socialism rather than before it was established — has also become inappropriate. not that it really ever was appropriate (since it is clear that the state cannot just die out of its own accord, only the need for it can; the state machine itself has to be consciously dismantled, abolished). We never use it except when summarising the views of writers like Plekhanov

Editors.

Letter: Escape to happiness (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Escape to happiness

Comrades,

As a party member I would like to ask what purpose was served by the publication of Sputnik's article in the October Standard. As far as I can see no socialist viewpoint is advanced, rather the contrary; to suggest that "scraping the meat off the plate" is a practical attitude to vegetarians is obtuse and. in practical terms, counter effective. Further, stereotyping of the kind employed can do nothing other than alienate interested neutrals. A propagandist of experience must surely know that stereotypes are no more effective when purportedly factual than avowedly imaginary. Although this should make no difference, the article is not even funny; on my reading it did not even raise the involuntary and quickly regretted chuckle sometimes elicited by sick jokes.

If I did not know that Sputnik had published excellent articles under another name. I would suggest that he sends his next offering to Punch, a magazine long renowned for bridging the gap between seriousness and humour by eschewing both.

John Usher 

London SW4

Reply:

We have received many letters in a similar vein and note the points made

Editors.

Obituary: Dick Banks (1986)

Obituary from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Comrade Dick Banks died on 28 August. He and Doris joined the Southend Branch in 1935.

It happens that I am the one locally, who knew Dick in those early years and in particular I recall his regular attendance at the Branch meetings during the War and subsequently his involvement in Branch activities after the War, when opportunities opened for indoor meetings and propaganda on a larger scale, which led to the increased size of Southend Branch and later formation of Basildon Branch.

In later years Dick became disabled after a time of ill health, but was pleased to support and assist propaganda meetings, but in the autumn of 1985 developed a condition which was to end his life this year.

Members in Southend District extend their sympathy to Doris and family for their sad loss.

Harold Cottis

Blogger's Note:

Dick and Doris Banks were both former members of the Labour League of Youth. They both joined the SPGB in the autumn of 1935.

50 Years Ago: The King and the Slums (1986)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The publicity given to the decline in unemployment and to increasing prosperity (measured in the capitalist mind chiefly by Stock Exchange prices) is somewhat offset by the conditions in the depressed areas, at the moment in the spot-light.

Dudley Barker, in the Evening Standard (November 16th, 1936), quotes an instance of a typical town in the coal-mining and steel area in South Wales which has 60.6 per cent. of its industrial insurable population unemployed. He instances a case, again typical, of a miner who, when employed, is 6s. a week better off than when unemployed. Similar examples could be given of towns in the coal and steel districts in Durham, Northumberland and Scotland. They have been referred to and described by nearly all the capitalist newspapers. The results of the chronic depression in these industries are appalling. Wide areas are derelict, bearing all the aspects of intense poverty, drabness and malnutrition. The Daily Herald (November 6th, 1936) reported a case of a shipbuilding worker who had not worked at his trade for 16 years. Innumerable cases have been reported of men in their twenties and some nearing their thirties who have never worked. Edward VIII, after his recent visit to the depressed areas in South Wales, said, “Something will be done.” The extent to which ”something will be done,” we prophesy, will not touch the fringe of the problem.

[From an article by H. Waite, Socialist Standard December 1936.]

SPGB Meetings (1986)

Party News from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Notes:

• First mention of the SPGB Canterbury Group on the blog. 
• As there's an advert for issue 6 of the World Socialist journal included, here's a link to its contents that are currently on the blog. At the time of writing, the issue is only partially uploaded on the blog. Another thing to add to my to-do list.
• Conservative Families Campaign speaker, Graham Webster-Gardiner, was linked to the notorious Monday Club. He was the Conservative Party's parliamentary candidate in Newport East at the 1987 General Election.

The Pleasure Tendency

Their name piqued my interest so I asked about the group, the Pleasure Tendency, over at Urban75. Someone was good enough to provide the following reply:

"I'd known one them slightly when they lived in London. I dimly recall encountering the group in the context of the ill-fated Intercom project.

Don't remember a journal (although it was a long time ago). Just some pamphlets/leaflets. Think I may still have some stuff by them but not confidant I could easily put my hands on it. One text was called "Theses Against Cynicism". There's a blog post here 'adapted from it' whatever that means. Their pamphlet 'The Subversive Past' is online here. There's a leaflet by them at archive.org.

I understand some of them became involved in producing the journal 'Here and Now' (first produced in Glasgow and also involved in Intercom). (Libcom archive). There are articles by them (issue 2 for example) and issues were produced in Leeds.

ETA: at the Sparrows Nest archive there are also online copies of three more pamphlets:

- 'Life and it's replacement with a dull reflection of itself'

- 'Desire-value and the Pleasure Tendency'

- 'Return of the moral subject'

So that's all of the pamphlets that I remember seeing."