Class War (1991)

From the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

What class you are in is defined by the position in which you stand with regard to the means of production. In capitalist society there are two basic classes: those who own and control the means of production and those who own no productive resources apart from their ability to work.

The working class in capitalist society is made up of all those who are obliged through economic necessity to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage or salary. If this is your position then you are a member of the working class. The job you do and the status it might have, the pay you receive and how you chose to spent it, are irrelevant as long as you are dependent on working for a wage or salary in order to live.

In Britain over 90 percent of the population are members of the working class. Of the rest only about 2-3 per cent are members of the exploiting, capitalist class who enjoy a privileged non-work income derived from the surplus value produced by the working class over and above what they are paid as wages and salaries.  The others are the self-employed—small shopkeepers, independent workers, professional people—whose income is derived from selling some service or other directly to the consumer rather than from selling their labour power to an employer. And many of these can be assimilated, in terms of income, to the ordinary worker.

What this means is that essentially we are living in a two-class society of capitalists and workers. But what about the "middle class”? The existence of such a middle class is one of the greatest myths of the twentieth century. In the last century, the term was used by the up-and-coming industrial section of the capitalist class in Britain to describe themselves; they were the class between the landed aristocracy (who at that time dominated political power) and the working class. Eventually, however, the middle class of industrial capitalists replaced the landed aristocracy as the ruling class and the two classes merged into the capitalist class we know today. In other words, the 19th century middle class became part of the upper class and disappeared as a “middle” class.

The term, however, lived on and came to be applied to civil servants, teachers and other such white-collar workers. But there was no justification for this, as such people were clearly workers just as much obliged by economic necessity to sell their ability to work as were factory workers, miners, engine drivers and dockers. The only difference was the type of job they were employed to do—and a certain amount of snobbery attached to it. .

It is not just the Daily Mail persists in believing that there is a middle class. So does the SWP which has come forward with a theory of the “new middle class”. This “class” is said to be composed of higher-grade white collar workers and to make up between 10 and 20 percent of the workforce (The Changing Working Class by SWP leaders Alex Callinicos and Chris Harman, p. 37). The reason given for excluding these people from the working class is that they exercise some degree of control over the use of the means of production and/or authority over other workers; in short, because they perform some managerial role.

To adopt this view is to abandon the relationship-to-the-means-of-production theory of class for one based on occupation. Socialists have always maintained that, as far as the actual production of wealth is concerned, the capitalist class are redundant. They play no part in production, which is run from top to bottom by hired workers of one sort or another. This means that all jobs, including those concerned with managing production and/or disciplining other members of the working class, are performed by members of the working class. To exclude from the working class workers with no productive resources of their own who are paid, among other things, to exercise authority of behalf of the employing class over other workers is to give more importance to the job done (occupation) than to the economic necessity  of having to sell labour power for a wage or salary which for Marxists is the defining feature of the working class.

Of course not everybody who receives an income in the form of a salary is necessarily a member of the working class. Some capitalists chose to manage their own businesses and pay themselves a “salary” for doing this. Although a part of this might correspond to the price of labour power (the part corresponding to what the capitalist would have to pay to hire a professional manager to do the same job), usually most of it is only a disguised way of distributing some of the surplus value at the expense of the other shareholders. What makes a salary-earner a member of the working class is not the mere receipt of a salary but being economically dependent on it for a living.

Having to work for an employer was not only how Marx defined the working class. It is also, and more importantly, the view of many workers who have never heard of Marx. When asked, as in a number of recent radio broadcasts, a surprising –and pleasing –number have replied that anyone who has to work for a living is a worker. Which makes them more sensible than both the Daily Mail and the SWP.

Adam Buick

Basic concepts (2010)

Book Review from the January 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Unravelling Capitalism. A Guide to Marxist Political Economy. By Joseph Choonara. Bookmarks. 2009. 150 pages. £6.99

Zombie Capitalism. Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx.  By Chris Harman. Bookmarks. 400 pages. £16.99

Choonara’s short book is a good simple-to-follow introduction to the basic concepts of Marxian economics – from commodity, value, labour, labour power, and surplus value to rate of profit, organic composition of capital and price of production.

There’s the occasional reference to Trotsky and to the Russian revolution (Bolshevik coup) as a good thing but, after all, the author is a member of the SWP and the discerning reader will be able to discount these. Even so, it is surprising to see Mike Kidron’s “permanent arms economy” (that capitalism boomed after WW2 because wasteful expenditure on arms prevented the rate of profit from falling by slowing down the rate of capital accumulation) given another airing since it was so decisively refuted by the facts (those countries that spent less on arms boomed more). But this only takes up a few pages of an otherwise useful book.

Apart from the opening two chapters which cover the same ground as Choonara’s book and in the same easy-to-follow way, Harman’s book (published only a few months before he died in November) is by contrast dominated by Kidron’s theory. In fact, Harman (the No 2 in the SWP under Tony Cliff) applies the theory much more widely than Kidron ever did, using it to attempt to explain the course of capitalist development since Marx’s day. Thus the Great Depression of the 1880s only ended because of the naval arms race that began towards the end of the 1890s; the slump that followed the 1929 Wall Street Crash was due to the fact that there was not enough wasteful arms spending in the 1920s to slow down the rate of accumulation; WW2 ended this slump and post-war arms spending avoided another one till the 1970s. Then? Well, the permanent arms economy proved to be neither permanent nor enough: “The permanent arms economy had to be supplemented by the debt economy” (p. 289).

Despite this unsatisfactory analysis Harman does make some valid points. For instance, to those who blame the banks and bankers: “Finance is a parasite on the back of a parasite, not a problem that can be dealt with in isolation from capitalism as a whole”.

Adam Buick

The myth of the permanent arms economy (2003)

From the August 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

In March this year Michael Kidron, a former editor of International Socialism, the theoretical magazine of the group of the same name that later became the Socialist Workers Party, died. In an obituary published in Socialist Review in April, Tony Cliff’s successor as leader of the SWP, Chris Harman, described Kidron as “probably the most important Marxist economist of his generation”. This is a gross exaggeration, even if Kidron does have a minor place in the history of the ideas discussed amongst Marxists for the explanation he offered for the period of capitalist expansion that followed the Second World War as being due to government spending on arms.

Kidron first expounded his ideas in an article in 1967, then incorporated them into his most widely read book Western Capitalism Since the War, published the following year. Although he can’t really have thought that this period of expansion would go on for ever, he still chose to call his theory “the permanent arms economy”. We in the Socialist Party never accepted this as an explanation for the post-war boom and, as the columns of the Socialist Standard in the 1960s bear witness, were severely critical of it. As it happened, within five years of the publication of his book, events were to prove Kidron wrong and us right. The post-war boom came to an end in 1973, despite arms spending continuing at previous levels, thus ruling it out as an explanation both for the boom and its eventual end.

Our main opposition to Kidron’s theory was that it set out to explain a non-existent problem: why capitalism’s supposed built-in tendency to collapse into permanent slump and stagnation did not manifest itself after the war. In 1932—in the middle of the great depression of the Thirties—the Socialist Party published a pamphlet Why Capitalism Will Not Collapse  which we regard as one of our contributions to Marxian economic theory. The argument put forward in this pamphlet was that, while capitalism was an unstable system in the sense that economic activity under it proceeded in fits and starts, constantly swinging between booms and slumps, there was no reason to conclude that it had some economic flaw that would cause it to some day break down permanently. No slump would be permanent, because a slump itself sooner or later created the economic conditions for a subsequent recovery. Capitalism would not collapse of its own accord; it would have to be done to death, by the conscious political action of the working class.

At the time there were others who took a different view: either that capitalism was in the process of collapsing because productive capacity had come to permanently outstrip paying demand (underconsumptionism) or because the rate of profit had irreversibly fallen to too low a level.

The Thirties depression was followed by the Second World War, which both schools of collapsists saw, for different reasons, as a direct consequence of the slump and the only way out of it under capitalism. Most of those placing themselves in the Marxist tradition (including, if the truth be told, ourselves) thought that the war would be followed by another slump, just as the First World War had been. It wasn’t. In fact, it was followed by a long period of expansion punctuated only by relatively minor recessions. How was this to be explained?

We tended to explain it in terms of the specific facts of the period, such as post-war reconstruction and the expansion of the world market through the lowering of trade barriers. The Keynesians claimed that it was due to government intervention to manage the economy on the lines their founder had advocated. The collapsists had to think up a reason why the tendency to collapse into permanent slump and stagnation that they felt was built-in to capitalism had failed to operate. One such explanation was the “permanent war economy”. The underconsumptionists argued that it was government spending on “defence” that had made up for the supposed chronic lack of purchasing power. But arms spending was also offered, strangely, as an explanation by the fallen-rate-of-profit school.

It fell to Kidron to explain, on behalf of the Trotskyoid group to which he belonged (Tony Cliff’s), precisely how state spending on arms offset and even overcame the supposed tendency for capitalism to collapse due to the rate of profit falling to too low a level. Since the state had to obtain the money to spend on arms through taxes which ultimately fell on capitalist profits and other property incomes this theory was counter-intuitive, and so Kidron’s arguments had to be pretty tortuous.

In his article, “A Permanent Arms Economy”, which appeared in International Socialism 28 (Spring 1967), and which is trumpeted by the SWP to this day, Kidron started from a collapsist position:

“Common to most explanations of western capitalism’s stability and growth since the war is the assumption that the system would collapse into over-production and unemployment were it not for some special offsetting factor… This article shares the assumption”.

He went on to argue that the special offsetting mechanism was “a permanent arms budget”. His basic thesis was that, in government arms spending, capitalism had found a way of engineering growth without this leading to the drastic fall in the rate of profit that he believed, on a misreading of Marx, should normally have occurred. Government spending on arms constituted “a net addition to the market for consumer or ‘end’ goods” while, on the supply side, arms production, as non-productive consumption, was “the key, and seemingly permanent, offset to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall”.

Marx’s argument on the rate of profit had been different: that, since living labour is the sole source of profit, if it falls as a proportion of total capital, then, mathematically, the ratio of profit to total capital, i.e. the rate of profit, will also fall, unless offset by other factors. Marx was in fact aware that there would always be such ‘other factors’, so that for him any tendency for the rate of profit to fall for this reason would only be a very long-run and by no means continuous tendency.

That the capitalist market had expanded since the end of the war was an undeniable fact. The question was whether or not this was due to government spending on arms. The Keynesians argued that it was due to government spending as such, whether on arms or anything else. On the other hand, some economists were beginning to realise that the Keynesian argument that the post-war expansion had been caused by government spending was not true: the world market was expanding anyway due to other factors. Thus the Socialist Standard noted in November 1971, in an article “The End of Full Employment”:

“An examination of the causes of low post-war unemployment in Britain was made by Professor R. C. O. Matthews, himself broadly a supporter of Keynes, and published in the Economic Journal (September 1968). His conclusion was that, starting with the stimulus given by making good war damage of all kinds, a major cause was a prolonged investment boom and that ‘the decline of unemployment as compared with 1914 is to a large extent not a Keynesian phenomenon at all’”.

In seeing a species of government spending as having saved capitalism from its supposed tendency to collapse, Kidron had placed himself within the Keynesian framework. Which is why the theory of the “permanent arms economy” is better seen as a Leftwing Keynesian rather than a Marxist theory, as in fact Kidron himself was later to recognise (this theory has been revived today under the more accurate name of “military Keynesianism”). Kidron therefore had to face fellow Labour Party reformists (he, along with Cliff, was a paid-up member of the Labour Party at this time) who, basing themselves on Keynes, argued that a “permanent social reform budget”, with government spending on housing, education, hospitals, pensions, etc., would have the same effect.

Cartoon by Phil Evans from ‘More years of the Locust’

Kidron conceded that this was theoretically possible, but argued that this was not going to happen since any state that did this would put itself at a competitive disadvantage, as it would be diverting profits from being reinvested in the more efficient and up-to-date machinery and methods of production that would allow production costs to be reduced. This was true, and is in fact one reason why reformism within the framework of a single national state is never going to work. But it equally applies to state arms spending. This, too, is a diversion from productive investment that places states which spend more than average on it at a competitive disadvantage.

Kidron tried to get round this by arguing that arms spending was different from spending on social reforms in that, if one state spent more on arms, other states were forced to follow suit, so that none of them would be at a particular disadvantage. But he never could explain satisfactorily why this should be. While it was clear that America and Russia, struggling for world domination, were involved in an arms race, and that states like Britain and France that had pretensions about playing a world role had made a political decision to spend more on arms, there was no reason why all states should get into an arms race with each other. In fact, Germany and Japan did not spend the same proportion on arms as America, Britain and France, which gave them a competitive advantage and led to them being the “economic miracles” of that period; a fact we employed at the time to help us expose the fallacious theory of “the permanent arms economy”.

Today, the SWP likes to claim that the theory of the “permanent arms economy” did not imply that capitalism had found a permanent way of avoiding big slumps, but there was nothing Kidron wrote in the 1960s that suggested that the post-war boom he then believed had been caused by arms spending was going to come to an end in the 1970s. This was something added after the post-war boom had finally come to an end in 1973 (thus proving the theory wrong)—and it was added by Cliff and Harman not Kidron himself. By 1977 Kidron had come to recognise that he had been wrong to attribute the post-war boom to government arms spending; he now attributed it to the emergence in the West of “state capitalism”, by which he meant the state acting as a single national capital. And he concluded by admitting what we had always argued, that state spending on arms was a burden on capitalist expansion not a stimulant to it:

“ . . . it is hard to sustain the view that it was the permanent arms economy that fuelled the long boom. On the contrary, such expenditure must have worked towards stagnation. And if in reality heavy spending on arms coincided with an unprecedented expansion of capital, it can only be because the effects of arms spending were overpowered by the effects of something much more fundamental.” (“Two Insights Don’t Make a Theory”) .

So, in the end, Kidron did redeem himself from going down in history as a simple Leftwing Keynesian. The same cannot be said of IS and its successor, the SWP, which still clings to this discredited theory.

Adam Buick

Blogger's Note:

Kidron's Western Capitalism Since the War was reviewed in the October 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Won’t – or can’t? (1998)

From the November 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Does the globalisation of capital mean that national governments are powerless to control capitalism or is it just that they don’t want to?

Now they tell us. When Siemens closed its semiconductors factory in North Tyneside Peter Mandelson, newly appointed as Trade and Industry Secretary, declared: “This is a product of global changes, which are completely outside our ability to control” (Soapbox, Sunday Sun, 16 August). A month later when Fujitsu announced the closure of its factory in his own constituency nearby, Blair “admitted that the Government could do little about the ‘twists and turns’ of world markets” (Times, 17 September).

For once, Mandelson is telling the truth. The government is powerless to change world market conditions. Far from governments being able to control economic conditions, it’s the other way round: governments have to tailor their policies to fit in with global economic conditions. As the moment these conditions are difficult in that competition is much fiercer than it was until the early 1970s when the world market was expanding much faster than has been since. Governments have had to take this into account and bow to world market pressures to keep costs down by cutting back on their social spending. They have had no choice. To paraphrase a mad woman who was a Prime Minister in Britain in the 1980s, you can’t buck the world market.

There are some who disagree with this—the anti-Labour Left, amongst whom are to be found some of the most incorrigible defenders of reformist political action. They think you can buck the world market. According to them, it’s just a question of political will and mass pressure

As Robin Clapp put it in an article entitled “Global Myths” in Militant’s theoretical journal:

“National governments do have the power to maintain welfare systems, vary taxes and interest rates and set economic priorities. The problem today is that capitalist governments don’t want to resist international capital, not that they are incapable of it” (Socialism Today, April 1996).

The view is echoed by the SWP. In a review, entitled “No Place Like Home”, of a book that challenged the extent and consequences of the globalisation of capital (Globalisation in Question by Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson), Chris Harman argued that radical action within a national framework could still overcome world market pressures:

“Capital may be able to shrug off attempts by government to control it using the limited techniques of ‘Keynesianism’ and social democratic intervention. But it can be challenged successfully by those prepared to take much more radical action—the sort of action open only to those who base themselves on the mass mobilisation of its workers” (Socialist Review, May 1996).

Harman may have been talking about trade union struggles as well as about reformist movements to put pressure on governments but, contrary to what he implies, trade unions have even less power to “successfully challenge” world market forces than governments. Not only have there not been any reforms, as improvements for workers brought about by government action, since the early 1970s, but all the big trade union battles in recent years have been purely defensive. Indeed, many such battles-Wapping, the Miners, P&O cross-channel ferries, the Liverpool Dockers—have ended in defeat. We are not saying that workers should not engage in such defensive, rearguard actions—there is some room to stop conditions worsening as much as the bosses would like or try on—but they should be recognised as such, as precisely battles to stop things getting worse, retreats imposed by current world market conditions.

That’s more like it

However, there does not seem to be unanimity within these organisations as to whether, and to what extent, capitalism in it current depressed sate can offer reforms.

Tony Saunois, of the secretariat of Militant’s international body the “Committee for a Workers International”, has put a somewhat different position from Clapp:

“The influence of the world market currently determines the policies pursued in each country. No country has been able to escape its influence. It has been one factor which has prevented the implementation of reformist policies. This is likely to be the case in the short to medium term.”

And.

” . . . the decisive feature is the dominance of the world market. This has rendered the application of distinct and separate polices within national boundaries impossible for any length of time. This is especially the case for policies of a reformist or left reformist character”.

And, after giving the example of the failure of the Mitterand government in France in the early 1980s and of a left-wing coalition in Venezuela in the 1990s:

“These examples illustrate the domination of the world economy and show that the material basis which allowed capitalism to implement lasting reforms in the post Second World War decades no longer exists. Temporary concessions may be given by a government threatened with massive social explosions. However, they will rapidly be taken away again because of the limitations of the resources of capitalism” (The Future for Socialism, second printing, January 1997).

This is a position we can endorse, indeed have been putting forward ourselves.

Similarly in the SWP, Peter Green (who wrote a passable pamphlet for them on The World Crisis of the 1980s) in a letter to Socialist Review (June 1996):

“We are now in a world where all talk of national reformism is fantasy—which was not true in 1945 or 1914. International socialism really is the only hope for us all.”

If international (or, as we would prefer, world) socialism is the only hope for us all—as it is—then the logical conclusion is that what we should be doing is campaigning in favour of this, not to try to pressurise governments to “maintain welfare systems, vary taxes and interest rates and set economic priorities”.

Adam Buick

No socialism (2009)

Pamphlet Review from the February 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Capitalism’s New Crisis: What Do Socialists Say?’ By Chris Harman. Socialist Workers Party, 2008. £1.50.

The author writes of capitalism “The key question is what is going to replace it . . . To finally get rid of capitalist crises, in short, you have to get rid of capitalism.”

With such promising revolutionary sentiments, you would surely expect some discussion of the socialist future, some mention (however brief) of common ownership, democratic control, production for use not profit. Not a bit of it. Harman offers instead ‘A People Before Profit Charter’, a ten-point mish-mash of reformist measures such as wage increases, more tax on big companies, less tax on the poor, no to the BNP.

The pamphlet has section headings which include free market failure, slump, boom and crisis, and the debt economy. These concepts sound familiar because they are scattered liberally in the broadsheet dailies, the weekly journals, radio and TV programmes that comment on the problems that “business” and hard-working men and women have to face. This pamphlet has some value in bringing together the various critiques of capitalism and the reforms that are offered to improve the system despite persistent past failures. It has no value at all in promoting revolutionary thought and action to change the system from capitalism to socialism.

Stan Parker

Russia: Leftists in Dispute (1976)

From the January 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1968 was published an English translation of Ernest Mandel’s monumental work of Trotskyite orthodoxy, Marxist Economic Theory. This was reviewed in International Socialism and led to an exchange of pamphlets between I.S. and Mandel’s supporters in Britain, the International Marxist Group. IMG have republished this controversy with the title Readings on State Capitalism, which has a certain interest for Socialists as discussion centres on the view that Russia is State capitalist.

Mandel, Kidron and Harman (who took over the IS banner half-way through the controversy) agree that Russian society is not Socialist. Mandel, however, maintains that Russia is a very degenerate workers’ state, which has begun a transition towards Socialism with an economy “marked by the contradictory combination of a non-capitalist mode of production and a still basically bourgeois mode of distribution”. A capitalist mode of distribution on the basis of a non-capitalist mode of production is not only contradictory but, from a Marxist point of view, an absurdity; for it is the mode of production which in the end determines the character of all other aspects of society, including the mode of distribution (i.e. the way the social product is divided).

Kidron and Harman describe Russia now as state capitalist, but think that “Russia in the 10 years after 1917 . . . was not itself capitalist”. What then was it?

Discussion about the nature of Russian society is discussion about the meaning of both capitalism and socialism, and Mandel has well grasped the nature of Socialism as a moneyless, wageless, stateless society, with the “free distribution of goods and services”, existing on a world scale: “Socialism means a classless society. It therefore presupposes not only the suppression of private property of the means of production, henceforth managed in a planned way by the associate producers themselves, but it also calls for a level of development of the productive forces which makes possible the withering away of commodity production; of money, and of the state”.

Kidron, on the other hand, describes “socialism” vaguely as “workers’ control of production”, with the implication that this could be control of the production of commodities.

So we have Mandel denying Socialism properly, but saying that a world Socialist revolution is an impossibility and that instead the working class of each country should aim at establishing “a society in transition from capitalism to socialism”, based on nationalization under workers’ control; and we have Kidron saying correctly that no transitional society between capitalism and Socialism is possible (“socialism is a total system; it cannot grow piecemeal within the interstices of a capitalist society”), but defining Socialism wrongly and meaning by it precisely the same as Mandel’s impossible “transitional society”!

If Mandel were claiming that Russia cannot be described as capitalist, but some new form of exploitative society, then his argument would be stronger. But he is claiming that Russian society is better and more progressive than what exists in the West: basically a society which workers should support. This is dangerous nonsense. To suggest that Russia, where trade-union rights like strike action and democratic rights available in the west are denied, offers a precedent for future working-class development, is to mock the sufferings of the working class there.

But the main reason for saying that Russia is capitalist is the existence of the wages system there. As Marx pointed out, wage-labour and capital presuppose each other. Wage-labourers produce value, some of which returns to them in the form of wages, the rest going to those who monopolise the means of production as surplus value; this surplus value is re-invested in production and so becomes capital, wealth invested in production with a view to profit.

That capital accumulation out of the surplus value produced by wage-labour has never ceased in Russia since 1917 should be obvious enough, but Mandel puts forward the view that what has governed production in Russia has been “the consumption desires of the bureaucracy”. He paints Russia as a society where usurpers (the bureaucracy) have come to power and live off the workers who continue to produce under non-exploitative conditions. Mandel actually says that Russian workers, though paid wages, are not exploited at the point of production as in the West; but that they are robbed as consumers by a “parasitic and pilfering” bureaucracy

Mandel says the IS view is essentially a Menshevik one. According to Mandel the Mensheviks held that “a socialist revolution in a backward country is impossible and that whatever you do, capitalism, and only capitalism, can flower there,” and that “whatever one did, capitalism was on the agenda in that country (as long as it would not have been overthrown in all or most of the industrially advanced countries of the world)”. The Mensheviks may have held these views, but the fact remains that it is an analysis and in accordance with the Marxian materialist conception of history. Socialism can only be established on a world scale and on the basis of an advanced industrial economy; in the absence of the Socialist revolution all that can develop in so-called backward countries is capitalism.

We in the Socialist Party of Great Britain have always been logical on this point. Yes, we reply; Russia is state-capitalist and, yes, the Russian revolution was not a Socialist revolution, but a seizure of power by a political party which later came to form the nucleus of a new state-capitalist ruling class. This was inevitable, given the absence at the time of Socialist consciousness amongst the majority of the workers of the world. This is what we said at the time and subsequent developments in Russia have proved the soundness of the Socialist Party’s analysis.

Adam Buick

Inside the Bolshevik Cul-de-sac (1970)

From the April 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

State Capitalism or not?
Those who still cling to the basic Bolshevik premise — that the Russian insurrection of October 1917 amounted to a Socialist revolution — are caught inside a trap of their own making. Whichever way they turn, they are landed with an uneasy antagonism between their theory and reality.

Those who faithfully follow Moscow, claiming that Russia today is Socialist, are in a ludicrous position, now that more information is available about Russia, and now that Russia is catching up with the West economically, so that East and West grow daily more similar. Therefore the British “Communist” Party is in catastrophic decline, its membership dwindling and ageing, brandishing their confusion now for all to see.

The Maoists, who assert that Russia has only recently become capitalist, are also in a fix. For it is difficult to believe that the changes in Russia’s economy since the death of Stalin are so profound as to amount to a change from Socialism to capitalism (terms which, though definitions vary, are universally held to describe diametrically opposed systems). It is also difficult to see any fundamental differences in the Russian and Chinese economies, except that China is more primitive and less centrally-directed.

Then, of course, our old friends the Trotskyists are still with us. After a bitter struggle between Stalin and Trotsky over which of them should have the privilege of directing the exploitation of the Russian workers, Stalin won. Trotsky became a fierce critic of the Stalin regime, yet he would still not admit that Russia was capitalist — which would have put a question mark over his own revolutionary career. But it wasn’t Socialist either. Instead, he came up with the formula that Russia was a “degenerated workers’ state,” basically a transitional society between capitalism and Socialism, with lots of deformities.

In practice this meant that Trotskyists always defended the Russian state against other capitalist powers, whilst at the same time criticising some of its “deformities.”

Trotsky and his followers took the view that Russia could not be described as capitalist because the bulk of Russian industry was nationalised. Overall state control, they said, was an advance on capitalism. Bolsheviks have always thought that state ownership was a step in the direction of Socialism, and have sometimes suggested that Socialism itself would be a form of state ownership.

There has long been confusion within Bolshevism on this point. Bogdanov’s Short Course of Economic Science (used by the Bolshevik government) as well as The ABC of Communism (written by two leading Bolsheviks in 1919), followed Marx and Engels in characterising Socialism or Communism as a wageless, moneyless society, and emphasising that mere nationalisation or “state socialism” really contained “no trace of Socialism.” After all, the Bolsheviks have always claimed to be Marxists.

Yet in 1917 Lenin had introduced a distinction between “Socialism” and “Communism,” which till that time all Marxists had given precisely interchangeable meanings. He also produced his famous definition of Socialism as “nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people.”

In the 1970s, nationalisation is not the thrilling issue it once was. State ownership has grown in all the western countries, and it has been brought emphatically home to the great majority of workers everywhere that being employed by the state is in no way better than being employed by a private corporation. It is not even very different. And in Russia, the extreme of centralised direction reached under Stalin is widely seen to have been merely a phase of development, now a positive hindrance to further advancement.

As a result of this it has been borne in upon many radicals and left-wingers that Russia is state capitalist. The Socialist Party of Great Britain, once almost alone in taking this view, and heartily ridiculed for it, now finds itself in numerous company. Be warned. The “sectarianism” of today is the truism of tomorrow!

The IS Group
However most of the people who have recently come round to the view that Russia is capitalist have not adjusted all of their political views accordingly, but have merely corrected this one point, failing to notice the inconsistencies which then emerge in the remainder of their ideas. For example the group known as International Socialism (IS) is basically a Trotskyist group except that it holds Russia to be state capitalist.

The growth of working-class understanding is a contradictory process. With their emphasis on violence and minority action IS are peddling dangerous deceptions. Yet these are more advanced deceptions than those marketed by the “Communist” Party 20 years ago — more advanced in the sense that they recognise the impracticability these days of equating nationalisation and Russia with Socialism. True, the incorporation of the correct view that modern Russia is capitalist into the fundamentally mistaken and anti-working-class doctrine of Bolshevism, allows this doctrine to gain greatly in immediate appeal. But only at the expense of yet more glaring inconsistencies within the doctrine itself. For instance, the IS claim that capitalism sprang into being in Russia in 1928 after 10 years of transition towards Socialism is breathtaking in its lack of connection with any kind of reality. (1)

Even the Bolshevik leaders (with the exceptions, interestingly enough, of Trotsky and Stalin), conceded that state capitalism existed in Russia following 1917.

Kidron and Mandel
There has recently been a controversy (2) between Michael Kidron (IS) and Ernest Mandel (orthodox Trotskyist) which is interesting to Socialists since it shows Kidron failing to draw reasonable conclusions from his view that Russia is capitalist (in fact failing to fully understand what this means), and Mandel taking advantage of Kidron’s confusion to discredit the whole theory of state capitalism.

Mandel points out that if they were consistent, IS would adopt a position of hostility towards the “Communist” movement. If North Vietnam is state capitalist, how can IS support the Vietcong? If the “Communist” parties are capitalist parties, the potential nuclei of future ruling classes, and if these ruling classes would not be historically progressive, why do IS cooperate politically with them? Mandel might well ask.

Of course, he regards such a position of hostility as unthinkable. But this is precisely the standpoint of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. We have at no time combined with the “Communist” Party or ceased to expose it, and we have always adopted a policy of opposition to both sides in every capitalist war. Unlike IS, we unite theory and practice.

In order to combat Mandel’s argument that Russia is a “transitional society,” Kidron says that there can be no transitional society between capitalism and Socialism. Quite correctly, he states: “The only possible transition is a sudden, revolutionary one.” This promising statement (astonishing coming from IS) is somewhat undermined by the fact that Kidron hasn’t the foggiest clue what Socialism is:

  Socialism is a total system. It cannot grow piecemeal within the interstices of a capitalist society. How does workers’ control of production coexist with control by a ruling class when the means of production in dispute are one and the same? How does self-determination and consumer sovereignty (‘production for use’) coexist with the external compulsion and blind accumulation that results from capitalist dispersal?

This is one of several instances where Mandel (who has read Marx) has a field day demolishing Kidron (a mere Keynesian-eclectic mouthing misunderstood Marxist phrases). Socialism, of course, has nothing to do with “workers’ control of production.” Socialism means a classless world society, without commodities, without the state, without frontiers. It is therefore interesting to note that Mandel realises what Socialism is, but relegates it to the distant beyond, whereas Kidron wants “Socialism” as quickly as possible, but his “Socialism” isn’t Socialism at all! Mandel’s “transitional society” is basically similar to Kidron’s “Socialism,” and both are actually models of capitalism, since both envisage the retention of the wages system.

Marx argued that wage-labour and capital were quite inseparable. And in a reply to Mandel, C. Harman of IS comments:

  Nowhere … is there a single mention of the working class or a single reference to the wage labour/capital relationship. Now this is curious. For it was not Michael Kidron but Karl Marx who wrote ‘The relation between wage labour and capital determines the entire character of the mode of production.’ And this is not an accidental aside . . .

But later we find Harman flatly contradicting this, as he must because wage-labour is to remain a feature of the “workers’ state” which is the avowed aim of IS. Harman argues that Russian industry from 1917 to 1928 was not capitalist, though presumably he would not deny that it featured wage-labour.

Neither Mandel nor Kidron seem unduly aware of modern Russian realities. Both seem to believe the Russian economy is “planned” full stop.

What then, is the situation of the Russian worker? He is free to move from factory to factory, from town to town, or occupation to occupation, in pursuit of higher wages, or under pressure of unemployment. And he is forced to do so, since he owns no means of production (except a substantial but dwindling number who have small plots of land, and indeed, need them to keep starvation at bay). He is therefore “doubly free” in Marx’s phrase. He sells his labour-power to a state enterprise for a wage which is less than the price of his product. The surplus is mostly reinvested for his further exploitation, with a small proportion going to keep his rulers in the manner to which they are accustomed. In any circumstances (except general forced labour) it would be quite impracticable for the state to plan wages with any accuracy, but this is impossible in Russia where most workers are on piece rates (described by Marx as “the form of wages most in harmony with the capitalist mode of production”). It has been a pretty constant feature of Russian state capitalism that the actual total wages bill has exceeded (sometimes vastly) the amount foreseen by the plan. In Russia, labour power is clearly a commodity.

A popular view of the Russian economy is that a plan is devised at the top, orders are issued, and enterprises promptly fulfil the plan. The goals of the plan are, first, making an overall profit, second, catching up with the West. Yet to possess any effectiveness at all, the plan must be based on reports from the enterprises, which as well as being concerned to fulfil plans, also have their own profit and loss account, with plenty of incentive to get their profits up.

In fact, the long-term (five-year and seven-year) plans are always drastically modified in practice. They are merely guidelines for the annual (and quarterly and monthly) plans. Even so, several of the long-term plans could not be decreed until long after they were supposed to have started, and one (the sixth five-year plan) had to be abandoned altogether.

In the process of adapting the long-term plan year by year, all sorts of unforeseen factors have to be taken into account, many of which are even by Mandel’s account, unambiguously the products of market forces. Much of the Russian state’s “planning” is thus a matter of anticipating, or even subsequently conforming to, these market forces. It is, however, true that they can exercise considerably “arbitrary” influences. Any capitalist state can do this to some extent (development grants, SET, etc.). The Russian state has much more power, mainly because, with the state monopoly of foreign trade functioning as a protective tariff, and with prevailing internal scarcity, the Russian capitalists have a seller’s market. In relation to the peasants they have a buyer’s market. It is exactly in such monopolistic situations that commodities can sell consistently above or below their values. (3)

But what happens as the disappearing peasant reserve strengthens the workers’ bargaining power? As consumer goods production is increased to raise the workers’ productivity? As consumers (workers and capitalists) get greater choice in their purchases, so that enterprises must become more responsive to the market, hence freer of central direction? What happens as the era of telescope development passes, so that Russian industry must imitate less and innovate more? The Russian capitalists are compelled to abandon by degrees the system of planning with material targets, which served them well as a method of rapid industrialisation, but has now outlived its usefulness.

There are many defenders of western capitalism who assert chat “Socialism” has failed in Russia, which is therefore “returning” to capitalism. Mandel plays into the hands of these people by describing the current decentralisation of profit-seeking initiative as “degeneration” when it is clearly necessitated by advancement. He also thereby gives ammunition to those who argue that “Socialism” is suitable only for backward countries.

What has failed in Russia is not “planning”, much less Socialism, but the attempt to plan a capitalist economy. It is not impossible to operate a technologically advanced society according to a common plan, but it is quite impossible to do this if there are competing economic interests, and if all those working for the plan have to be provided with a monetary incentive for everything they do. In a Socialist economy, with all work entirely voluntary and the price system abolished, it will be entirely feasible to plan all production according to democratically decided criteria.

Between capitalism and Socialism there cannot exist a stable, lengthy transitional period. This point seemed to have dimly penetrated the brain of Trotsky, who recognised the silliness of a “transitional” society which stably maintained itself for generation after generation. He therefore described Stalin’s regime as a pyramid balanced on its head, and predicted it would be toppled in a major war. When the war came, it demonstrated the Russian system to be rather a pyramid stood firmly on its base. (4)

Far from Russia being on the road to Socialism, workers there still have to win the elementary political and trade union rights already gained by western workers. Capitalism continues to exist throughout the world because workers put up with it, and can be abolished as soon as the majority of workers desire Socialism, though this is most strikingly evident in countries which, unlike Russia, have effective workers’ suffrage. It is therefore quite wrong to believe, as Mandel does, that we should support Russia or China against America. It is not worth a single worker’s life or limbs to advance the interests of the Russian rulers against their rivals. Neither does it matter whether Russian enterprises remain formally, legally state-owned or not. This has no bearing on workers’ interests and is beside the point anyway— a nationalised industry can be as free from de facto central control as some “privately-owned” firms.

Mandel’s view would have slightly more plausibility if all his “transitional societies” were politically united under one state. But they compete economically and militarily, and if the whole world were owned by them alone, the danger of our species being exterminated in a war would be no less than it is today—”transitional” indeed!

Russia must of course be seen in its international context. It is here that the IS arguments against Mandel are strongest. As Harman rightly says, there is no such thing as the “inner logic” of a plan. The goals of Russian national planning have been fixed by international competition.

But the force of the IS attack here only throws into more startling relief their .position on the national question (especially now that they have taken-to-supporting, not only the Vietcong, but also the Chinese state which they admit to be capitalist). It is no get-out to proclaim, as Harman does, that they also supported the Kenyan anti-colonial movement, or “the Cypriot struggle led by the cleric Makarios and the fascist Grivas.” That is nothing to be proud of. Neither is this justified by calling it “the Marxist position.” What conceivable excuse can there be for people who claim to be Socialists supporting the slaughter of workers which is a side-effect of the rival capitalist powers’ perennial jostling for a place in the sun?

Steele.

———-

1 In case the point is missed, this is not only an exercise in labelling the past. So long as IS maintain that the 1917 revolution was Socialist they will be unable to seriously criticise all the garbage that comes in its train, Lenin’s ignorant theory of Imperialism; the concept of the vanguard party and “transitional demands,” etc. So long as they fail to do this, they are an obstacle to the establishment of Socialism.

2 Kidron in International Socialism 36; Mandel’s pamphlet The Inconsistencies of State Capitalism; Debate between Kidron and Mandel at Hull University, 4/11/69; Harman in International Socialism 41.

3 If Mandel’s reasoning were correct, and Russia lacked some of the essential features of capitalism, this would show not that it was transitional between capitalism and Socialism, but “transitional” between Asiatic feudalism (tsarism) and capitalism. The peculiarities of Russian capitalism are the outcome of an unprecedented combination of backward peasant production and advanced industry.

4 It is revealing that Mandel doesn’t dare use Trotsky’s long-since shattered argument that a state bureaucracy cannot constitute a ruling class. Trotsky was prepared to concede that state capitalism could in theory exist provided there was individual ownership of shares in the state.

Germany, November 1918 (1998)

From the November 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The German revolution of 80 years ago was the only ever nation-wide workers' revolt in an advanced capitalist society. It overthrew the Kaiser but not capitalism. It didn't and couldn't have done this as there was no majority for socialism amongst the workers.

Last Autumn saw the spectacle of Trotskyists and other assorted Leninists remembering the 80th Anniversary of the Russian revolution with great enthusiasm. The Trotskyist "Marxist" Party held a meeting for the occasion round my way. When asked by myself at a stall promoting the revolution meeting (with some very pretty looking flyers, it must be said) what exactly their platform was, their reply was "well, you know the Russian revolution?". I indicated that I was aware of its existence. "Well, we, er, well, we think it was a good thing". Great, nice platform, well thought out, mate. Likewise our local SWP enthusiast exhorted me to come to their big meeting on the Russian revolution and "see Tony Cliff before he dies", which struck me as insufficient incentive to attend what would doubtless have been a very tedious evening.

All of this inevitably led me into numerous dog-fights with these sort of people, about quite why the Russian revolution isn't the best thing that's ever happened, including one very nasty and terrifying encounter with a bloody-thirsty professional revolutionary from the SWP head office ("The Cheka were necessary, to stop counter-revolutionaries," she said, and I contemplated suicide, despairing over the condition of a human race that produced such a "socialist"). Inevitably, whenever I elucidated the crimes of the Bolsheviks, pointed out the many failings of the revolution, demonstrated how even Nice and Shiny Mr Lenin perpetrated the sorts of crimes they normally said only started with that Evil Mr Stalin, they had one last line of defence: "The Russian Revolution turned rotten because of invasion by umpteen foreign countries, and the failure of the German Revolution."

The point about invasion largely makes a mockery of their whole support for the victorious revolution, if in fact it wasn't victorious, and so can be dismissed. But their second point is worth a closer look. It is true that Lenin was probably predicating the success of his revolution upon a successful socialist revolution in Germany as well and hoping that it would spread world-wide from there. Fine and dandy, but all this changes Lenin from instead of being a dangerous man who thought he could lead the world to socialism, to a dangerous gambler who thought he could lead the world to socialism. Further, the proponents of such a thesis seem remarkably capable of over-looking the obvious conclusion to which this line of defence points—that Russia was really the side-show, an historical footnote, to the only ever attempted workers' revolution in an advanced capitalist state; and that all their celebrations of Russia and desire to follow its model are flawed, because Germany is the real case history that bears examination.

At the time of the first world war, Germany was the second biggest industrial economy in the world. This was despite having a full third of the population still living as feudal peasantry, and still retaining a quasi-feudal government under an autocratic hereditary ruler. It also had one of the largest workers' movements in Europe (despite socialism having been a criminalised creed for many years in Germany). The Social-Democratic Party of Germany (the SPD) had over a million members and some 4½ million voters, along with numerous papers, affiliated social groups, etc.

The SPD still talked of—and reckoned itself as—being a radical socialist party, though over the years running up to the war it drifted further and further towards outright reformism, partly because it had become so institutionalised. Running its own papers and allied with unions, it was very much a part of the fabric of society. Despite this, a small section of revolutionary socialists remained within the SPD, typified by Rosa Luxemburg, and who numbered some three to four thousand.

The true colours of the SPD were shown during the war, when nearly all of its members in the Reichstag openly backed the war, and the party spread propaganda to the effect that the war was necessary to stop the threat of tyranny from Russia. This slowly led to a split in the SPD, three ways, with the eventual formation of the Independent Social-Democratic Party (USPD) within the parliamentary party and then more slowly within the membership itself. The "far-left" contingent formed themselves into the Spartakusbund (Spartacist League) with Karl Leibknecht and Rosa Luxemburg as prominent members. However, they remained within the official ranks of the USPD.

By September 1918 it was clear that Germany had already lost the war. The most the ruling class could expect was to preserve their state more or less intact. They were desperate to avert a repetition of events in Russia and the massive upheaval there. The powerful generals in the army proposed a way of saving the German state by liberalising it and bringing some of the more obliging elements of the SPD into the government. These latter accepted and joined a government under Prince Max von Baden as Chancellor.

Workers' Councils

Under this regime events deteriorated. Long suffering workers began to vent their frustration at the grind and penury they faced after four years of draconian war-time restrictions. More and more workers and disenchanted soldiers and sailors began to strike and mutiny. By late October insurrection was spreading, as workers throughout the country rose up against the government. Beginning in the northern port of Kiel workers' councils began to be formed all across the country. By 5 November, Hamburg (one of the biggest cities in the country) became subject to control by a workers' council. By the 8th so had many of the great cities of Germany, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt and even Berlin.

The outcome of the uprising was that the leader of the SPD, Erbert, took power, and his colleague Scheidemann unilaterally declared Germany a republic, in a bid to appease the rebels by ending the rule of the German aristocracy. The Kaiser went into exile. Whilst this part of the revolt was successful, it in fact merely finished the job begun by the revolutions of 1848, in establishing a fully bourgeois republic in Germany.

Very few of the German working class were revolutionary socialists. The vast majority of workers supported the SPD as a matter of course, including its general programme of the reform of capitalism. On the other hand, the revolutionary workers were tiny in number. When in February 1919 the Spartakusbund renounced its links with the USPD and formed a German Communist Party (KPD) it recognised this problem: "Socialism cannot be created by decrees; nor can it be established by any government. Socialism must be created by the masses themselves, by every proletarian". Their problem was that not enough proletarians wanted socialism. The November uprisings had been a reaction to hardship and tyranny, not a coherent wish to establish socialism. Contrary to what the SWP's Chris Harman writes in his book The Lost Revolution, in which he patronisingly claims that the workers were "confused" by the splits within the "socialist movement", what most workers wanted was for the SPD to end their hardship. The Spartacists recognised that the mass support needed to establish socialism was lacking and that socialism was not on the agenda at that time, and so they resolved to oppose the calling of a constituent assembly which they felt would help consolidate the German state and instead to try and make socialists within the workers' councils.

Some hot-headed elements of the German left (in the USPD and another group called the Socialist Shop-Stewards) were not satisfied with this reality, and 5 January 1919 mounted the misnamed Spartacist uprising ("Spartacist" within SPD circles had become was a catch-all for anyone vaguely disagreeing with the leadership, much as "Trot" has become in the modern Labour Party—the Spartacists, including Rosa Luxemburg, actually opposed an uprising, realising as they did that mass support for socialism just wasn't there). These elements led the workers of Berlin in a putsch to try and seize power, with the hope of it spreading nation-wide. It failed. Lacking any plan the workers who had followed the glorious revolutionaries stood around waiting to be told what to do, and when they were told it was a mish-mash of confused orders and muddle. On 11 January 1919 the SPD government sent in the troops, the notorious Freikorps, which very effectively crushed the abortive putsch. By 17 January both Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg had been murdered by Freikorps troops, and Berlin was under government control once more.

Crushed by the state

This was a pattern that was to be repeated in many parts of the country, as any struggles and gains by the workers were brutally crushed by military might. The workers discovered too late the danger of following leaders, and, much as the Bolsheviks crushed all independent working class activity in Russia to establish their dominance, so too did the SPD in Germany to preserve the German capitalist state. The workers discovered to their cost the impossibility of fighting against a co-ordinated and well-armed state, and if little blood was spilt in the initial revolt much was spilt when it was put down.

The workers of Germany persistently followed their old leaders, believing these would solve their problems for them, and even bring about socialism, and for a while they believed the lip-service the SPD government gave to "socialisation" of industry. In the end, however, they had to learn the hard way the folly of following leaders. The German revolution shows, not as Chris Harman believes, that if the KPD had had more discipline (read had it enacted the Leninist principle of "democratic-centralism" and obedience to the leadership) it might have controlled events more and thus been able to lead the workers to successful revolution (on Russian lines). It was that where the working class does not have the resolve to establish socialism, it will not, and trying to make socialists in the heat of an ongoing quasi-civil war is almost impossible. No amount of leadership but only a majority of socialist-minded workers could have made the revolution in Germany. The bloody defeat of the putsch and the uprisings showed how violence, especially by a minority, is suicidal against an existing organised state. History shows it is not the state that gets "smashed" but the revolutionaries and many innocent workers too.

Pik Smeet

Russia: From Workers' State to State Capitalism? (1987)

Book Review from the July 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russia: From Workers' State to State Capitalism by Peter Binns. Tony Cliff and Chris Harman. Bookmarks. £2.50.)

Most Trotskyites hold that Russia is a "degenerate workers' state". The SWP, however, of which these three authors are leading members, holds that Russia is state capitalist. So does the Socialist Party, but there is a fundamental difference between our points of view. As the title of this book shows, they hold that Russia degenerated from some sort of working class or socialist regime into state capitalism whereas we hold that capitalism was never abolished in Russia, not even in Lenin's day. and that state capitalism developed there as the leaders of the Bolshevik party responded to the pressures of material circumstances, eventually evolving into a new ruling class monopolising the means of production through the state.

The SWP deny that Russia was state capitalist before 1928. So what was it up till then? Basically, as this book — a reprint of articles originally written in the 1970s — shows, they are saying it was the "degenerate workers' state” that the more dogmatic Trotskyites still claim it to be. But this view is just as absurd in relation to pre-1928 Russia as the SWP admit it to be in relation to post-1928 Russia. The ownership of industry by a one-party state, buying and selling, the wages system, capital accumulation, international pressures, all existed just as much before, as after. 1928. The only difference was that by 1928 Trotsky had been definitively excluded from the Russian ruling élite with no hope of being able to get back into its ranks again. In other words, the SWP's explanation for the coming of state capitalism to Russia is political rather rather than economic and so on a par with the absurd Maoist view which dates the "restoration of capitalism” in Russia from the coming to power of Khrushchev after the death of Stalin.

The fact that the SWP fail to recognise the capitalist nature of the Russian economy before 1928 and in fact attribute to it some minimal "socialist” character must inevitably cast doubt on their conception of socialism. For what they are saying is that what made the pre-1928 Russian economy "non-capitalist" was the more or less acceptable nature of the then political system. This implies that another political change, both in Russia and the West, if carried out by insurrectionary means, could establish "socialism" even if the essential features of the capitalist economy — particularly wage-labour and capital accumulation — remained. That this is indeed the SWP view can be seen from their recent pamphlet The Future Socialist Society which says that one of the first things to happen after the socialist revolution is that wages will be raised. As we are also told that we shall all become employees of the state then it is clear that their alternative to Russia-type state capitalism is . . . another form of state capitalism. Their so-called "socialist revolution", then, is no more than a radical change in the political management of the wages-prices-profit system that is capitalism.

Having said this, there are still one or two useful insights in the book. For example Harman's observation that from the second quarter of the 19th century onwards all ruling classes in societies based on non-capitalist modes of exploitation were subjected by the world market to immense pressures to "change their mode of exploitation so as to subordinate everything else to the accumulation of means of production in order to accumulate other means of production" if they were not to be dominated by those states which had already adopted the capitalist mode of production.

Harman cites Japan as the only fully successful example of this in the 19th century when, in the 1860s. a section of the feudal ruling class "took control of the state and used this control to subordinate the whole of Japanese society to the development of industry on a capitalist basis". He then spoils it all by adding:

   In 1929 the Stalinist ruling stratum in Russia faced exactly the same dilemma: follow the logic of capitalism and accumulate in order to further accumulate or face subjection to international capitalism.

But. once again, what's so special about 1929? Are we to believe that this same dilemma did not present itself to the Bolshevik government right from its seizure of power in 1917? Lenin himself (who the SWP claim as one of their mentors) entertained no such illusion and openly advocated, in 1918 and again in 1921. state capitalism as the only way forward for Russia, while waiting for the world socialist revolution he mistakenly believed to have been imminent.

In the light of the Marxist perspective glimpsed by Harman, Russian Bolshevism can be seen as a reaction to the failure of the Tsarist ruling class to successfully carry out the subordination of Russian society to the capitalist imperative to accumulate capital out of the exploitation of wage-labour. In other words, the Bolsheviks — even if they did come to power through a social revolution involving a high degree of participation by the relatively small industrial working class essentially carried through the task of "the development of industry on a capitalist basis" that the old ruling class had proved unable to do. And this began under Lenin and Trotsky in 1917 and 1918, not just in 1928 and 1929 under Stalin.

Adam Buick

The New Narodniki (1968)

From the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

On June 15 a “Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation” was founded by students representing groups all over England. As might be expected at a meeting in which trotskyists (of various hues) were prominent the air was thick with such words as mobilise, orientate, perspective, programmatic, transitional and, of course, vanguard. The programme adopted in fact declared:

"Revolutionary students can play a vanguard role by detonating a wider social conflict in which the working-class becomes decisive. Students must seek to ally themselves with working-class struggles: they have also shown that they may anticipate and instigate them.”

So yet another group has appeared to liberate the working class ignoring the long-established Socialist principle that the workers must free themselves.

In Russia in the second half of the 19th century many privileged young men and women decided to “go to the people”, by working and living among the peasants whom they believed to be a revolutionary force. They were thus known as Populists or Narodniks. A similar theme dominated the meeting: only the workers could overthrow capitalism, so students should go to them by leafleting, and perhaps working, in, the factories. As one (Widgery) put it “the talk about the new Narodniki going to the factories is right”. A small minority, from the South Coast, were still in favour of “working within the Labour Party” (as they all were two years ago), but their views were not well-received.

Prominent were members of the alleged “International Socialism” Group. Also, frequently to be seen hovering in the background was Pat Jordan, the trotskyist who runs the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. The anarchists and another trotskyist group (the SLL) did not seem to be present.

The RSSF programme commits it to Student Power, Anti-Capitalist Alliance with Workers and Struggle Against Imperialism. These aims are to be achieved by so-called direct action (that is, occupying college buildings, fighting the police, preventing exams taking place, shouting down speakers). As one (Fishman) frankly put it: they are out to “seize the leadership of students as a group”.

At a meeting the previous evening a member of the Socialist Party was prevented from continuing his speech after he had criticised talk about “parliamentary rubbish” and support for the nationalist and state capitalist Vietcong. For his troubles he was called a “fascist” (“Against fascists there is only one weapon: physical force", one LSE student leader, Harman, has written). This is perhaps the shape of things to come for any who dare to stand up to this self-appointed vanguard.

International Socialists . . . the Tripe Factory (1974)

From the April 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The crisis which we have been predicting for the last 20 years is now upon us . . . Every single area of the organisation needs to be strengthened if we are to reply to Heath, Wilson and the union leaders with real Socialist answers” (Socialist Worker 5 January 1974).

Not at all a bad idea! If by “real” Socialist answers is meant sound, correct Socialist answers.

Unfortunately the International Socialists are not giving “real” Socialist answers; but very unreal mistaken ones.

Socialist Worker for 12 January includes a whole page of “replies to readers’ queries”, headlined by the statement that "the only answer” is not “Socialism” but “Workers' Control”.

Now the first point about so-called “Workers’ Control” is that there ain’t (and can’t be) any such animal. Workers’ control is a simple contradiction in terms. Those “in control” can never be the workers. Control of society comes from ownership backed by a Parliamentary majority. Even Chris Harman is forced to admit this. Lower down answering somebody else he writes: “What is needed is a mass movement of workers prepared to fight for control of every pit, dock, factory and office, replacing the present system by one run democratically by elected workers’ delegates.” But he adds (ruefully) “such a really massive movement does not yet exist. Most workers continue to take the existing system for granted and only want small gradual changes in it.” (Socialist Worker 12 January 1974).

Too true — only too true, Chris. But even supposing that friend Harman’s idea actually worked and a "massive movement” of workers fought for control of every factory — AND WON IT — WHAT THEN? Would it be Socialism? NO! On the same page we are told that the "problem of shortages” would be transformed by "dividing up the immense wealth in very few hands; enough to give the six million lower paid workers an extra ten pounds a week.”

Is this Socialism? NO! It’s the same old wages system. All it could do would be to perpetuate the same old class struggle. Even if every worker got ten pounds extra next Friday, nothing would be fundamentally changed. Capitalism would go its own sweet way and whittle away the "increases” by inflation, speed-up and all its other devices. As Tony Cliff rightly says (misquoting Lenin) "Capitalism always has a way out of the crisis if the workers are ready to pay the price” (Socialist Worker 5 January 1974).

The Socialist Worker actually writes that this "dividing up” would "pay the miners a decent wage so that they saw no reason to strike”. (What is a "decent” wage?)

This is definitely comical, seeing that the International Socialists spend most of their time fomenting strikes for political ends. Of course we are not quite so naive as not to know that the object of all the International Socialists’ hysteria about the present crisis is simply "the mixture as before”. It is a reprint of the old outmoded and discredited Communist Party tactics — calls for a Labour Government, new versions of the election of Soviets by the Trades Councils and establishment of "dual power” on the Petrograd model.

Its support of any and every strike, or potential riot, its absurd idea that any crowd breaking a few windows is preparation for the "revolutionary situation” and slavish idolatory of the Leninist “tactics” is the real reason for the formation of Rank and File (T.U.) movements, organization of fractions in the Trade Unions and factory branches. It’s all been tried before, ending with the virtual non-existence of the CPGB.

Behind the organization of strikes to overthrow Governments is the idea of seizure of power by “Workers’ Committees” backed by mutiny in favour of the workers by the armed forces! What a hope!

By their rejection of Parliamentary methods International Socialists show that they are confused on the method of establishing Socialism because they do not understand Socialism itself. Socialism is NOT control by the workers. Socialist society concerns every citizen in his capacity as a human being, not as a miner, bank clerk or whatever.

Cannot International Socialists see that if the massive movement they envisage was Socialist it would inevitably express itself politically at elections, capturing political power in the only way possible (which is not street fights or riots) by a majority vote?

By their hysterical and unthinking fomenting of disorder they discredit and besmirch Socialism, reducing it to the level of hooliganism and street brawling.

Will they never learn? It’s all been tried before and is foredoomed to disaster.

Horatio

Non-reformist reformist (1996)

Book Review from the December 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Economics of the Madhouse by Chris Harman (Bookmarks, £3.50).

This is a well-rounded and generally well-written criticism of the modern capitalist economy and the economists who are paid to defend it. It deals with exploitation, economic crises, globalisation and many other issues of interest in a manner socialists are likely to generally agree with. As might be expected from the leading economic theoretician of the SWP, there are the usual nods in the direction of the Permanent Arms Economy as an explanation for the post-war boom and towards the allegedly socialist nature of the Russian Bolshevik coup d'etat, but these are only fleeting references and therefore only appear as minor irritants.

Harman's criticism of contemporary reformism echoes much of ours, in particular his claim that today's Labour Party does not offer unlimited beneficent reforms of the system so much as "reformism without reforms". Above all, Harman makes plain that far from the Labour Party having changed the market economy, it is the market economy that has changed Labour. Now Labour doesn't even pretend to be the party of the working class and offers little if anything distinct from the Conservatives.

Given Harman's eloquent description of the failure of capitalism across the planet, readers could be forgiven for thinking he is an advocate of common ownership and production solely for use as the solution to the problems created by the market. Far from it, Harman is actually more graphic than most SWP'ers in his claim that the answer to the "economics of the madhouse" is, er . . .  more economics of the madhouse. Viz:

"The day after the socialist revolution, as the day before, the great mass of people would go to work in factories and offices, and would be paid in money for what they did . . . It will in fact take many decades for people to learn to control consciously very many of the mass of productive processes that take place in a modern society, and in the interim they will have little choice but to put up with the old market mechanisms" (pp.103-4).

This serves to blow Harman's criticisms of the Labour reformists out of the water because the SWP is here shown to be reconciled to the insanity of the market just as much as they are. The explanation offered for this—that the working class would not know how to operate and organise production without the capitalist class and their system to guide them—is simply bizarre, un-Marxist nonsense. The working class already operates capitalism from top to bottom and long ago, as Engels pointed out, capitalism reduced the bulk of the owning class to the status of economic parasites, tearing off their share coupons and gambling on the stock exchange without taking any real part in the processes of production and distribution. If Harman claims that the introduction of production for use must be held back for "decades" because of the inability of the mass of the population to operate society, he is duty bound to tell us which functions the capitalists are able to perform that the rest of us can't. He is duty bound to, but, given the SWP's reticence to debate with socialists and their evident confusion on this topic, we somehow imagine that he wont.

DAP

Egypt: Workers’ Struggles, Trade Unions and the ‘Left’ (2013)

From the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Workers’ struggles were an important aspect of the Egyptian upheaval from the start. While the world media focused on the political demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, mass protests and strikes erupted, especially in Alexandria and other provincial cities, over such everyday issues as wages, conditions of employment, managerial corruption, bread supply, shortage of housing and grossly inadequate municipal services. For example, people living in the Al-Wahat oasis in the Western Desert expressed their anger at the contrast between the huge sums being spent on tourist amenities, including a luxury hotel carved into the mountainside, and the neglect of their own needs (New Left Review 68, p. 24).

State of insurgency

This remains the pattern today. The run-up to the military takeover at the end of June saw a wave of strikes and protests. In March six cities – Port Said being worst affected – were ‘in a state of virtual insurgency, paralysed by mass civil disobedience and ongoing battles between protestors and security forces’ (Brian Slocums, thenorthstar.info, 5 March). Altogether there were some 2,000 strikes in 2012. One Egyptian activist, Hossam El-Hamalawy, argues that Morsi’s evident inability to ‘stabilise the street’ was one of the main reasons for his removal (jadaliyya.com).

Although many grievances are specific to a particular firm or locality, certain demands are being pursued across the country:

- a minimum wage of 1,200 Egyptian pounds (£120 or $180) per month

- the right to strike

- the right to organise independent unions to replace the state-controlled unions of the Egyptian Federation of Trade Unions (EFTU) inherited from the Mubarak regime

- regularisation of contracts for the many workers on insecure short-term contracts

Workers in firms privatised under Mubarak often demand their re-nationalisation. Other demands concern the special problems of workers in the ‘informal sector’ (who get no social benefits) and residents in ‘informal settlements’ – that is, officially unrecognised shanty towns (who get no municipal services). There is widespread opposition to the economic package imposed by the IMF.

Trade unions under successive regimes

There were several attempts to form independent trade unions under the old regime (in 1990 and during the strikes of 2006—2009), but only the current upheaval has made it possible openly and systematically to organise an independent trade union movement. The Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU) was established in January 2011.

In October 2011 a group of activists broke away from the EFITU to form the Egyptian Democratic Labour Congress. So there are now two groupings of independent trade unions, claiming three million members between them. The reasons for the split are unclear.

The electoral victory of the Moslem Brotherhood was a setback for this process. The military government that succeeded Mubarak had accepted the right of workers to form independent unions, but Morsi tried to reassert state control of the unions by reviving and reforming the EFTU.

Striking transport workers were accused of ‘treason’; officials of independent unions were prosecuted for ‘inciting to strike’ with five from the port workers’ union sentenced to three years in prison. The independent unions responded by joining the movement to unseat Morsi.

There is some question concerning how independent the EFITU is of the current military regime. El-Hamalawy accuses its leaders of compromising with the generals, suspending strike action and encouraging workers to increase production. He attributes this to the influence of Nasserite ideas, which make them vulnerable to ‘patriotic’ appeals.

Making sense of the Egyptian ‘left’

The last three years have seen a profusion of new and revived political organisations in Egypt. Quite a few of them claim to be ‘left-wing’. Keeping track of these groups and parties is difficult due to the speed with which they change their names, split and merge, and enter and leave alliances. To add to the confusion, in some cases several different English translations of the same Arabic name are in circulation. Moreover, differences inside a single organisation are sometimes at least as significant as differences between organisations.

That said, it seems possible and useful to make a few distinctions.

First, there is a divide between an ‘old left’ and a ‘new left’. The old left draw inspiration from the initial period of the post-colonial state, when Egypt was led by Gamal Abdel Nasser. Under the old left can be placed openly Nasserite groups like the Democratic Arab Nasserite Party and the National Progressive Unionist Party (Al-Tagammu), and also the revived Egyptian Communist Party.

The ‘new left’ groups are really ‘new’ only in the Egyptian context, as they model themselves more or less directly on ‘left-wing’ tendencies that have long existed elsewhere. The Egyptian Social Democratic Party and the Egypt Freedom Party resemble the European social democratic parties – that is, they advocate very mild reforms within capitalism in the name of ‘social justice’. The Socialist Popular Alliance Party (formerly the Socialist Party of Egypt) appears to be a more ‘left-wing’ version of the same thing – that is, the reforms they stand for are a little bolder.

There is also a Trotskyist organisation called the ‘Revolutionary Socialists’, which has close links with the Socialist Workers’ Party in Britain.

The Egyptian Popular Current, created after the 2012 presidential elections by the ‘left’ candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi, seems to be an attempt to bridge the old and the new left. It too uses ‘social democratic’ language while at the same time appealing to Nasserite nostalgia (Nasser’s son Abdel Hakim is involved with this party).

Allying against the ‘main enemy’

Another important division concerns the strategy that the ‘left’ should adopt in dealing with the other three major forces within Egyptian society:

a) the state and the military institution as its core

b) the Moslem Brotherhood and Islamists in general

c) private business and the parties that represent its interests.

The crucial questions for Egyptian ‘leftists’ are these:

1) Which of these three is our ‘main enemy’?

2) Should we seek to ally with the other forces against the ‘main enemy’?

A few purists insist that the state, the Islamists and private business are all enemies and the ‘left’ should consistently oppose them all. But most Egyptian ‘leftists’ do not consider this a realistic stance.

There is also a view that gives clear primacy to economic issues and asserts that the cultural divide between secularists and Islamists is of secondary significance. The main enemy is therefore private capital and the ‘left’ should not cooperate with pro-business liberals like the Free Egyptians Party. This too seems to be a minority view.

The ‘old left’ and especially the Egyptian Communist Party traditionally follow a line that equates Islamism with fascism. This makes the Islamists into the main enemy. The ‘old left’ is willing to support a military crackdown on the Islamists (Sabbahi publicly expressed his support on 5 July). Part of the explanation may be that the Nasserites as well as the ‘Communists’ fully identify ‘socialism’ with state capitalism. And Nasserism itself, after all, was a movement of army officers.

Much of the ‘new left’ also consider the Islamists the main enemy. However, this approach is rejected by the Trotskyite ‘Revolutionary Socialists’, who identify the state as the main enemy. Their slogan is: ‘Sometimes with the Islamists, never with the state’.

Curiously enough, this stance reflects the influence of Chris Harman of the British SWP. In his book The Prophet and the Proletariat, an Arabic edition of which was distributed in Egypt by the local Trotskyists, Harman argues that ‘socialists can take advantage of contradictions within Islamism’ and ‘on some issues we side with Islamists against imperialism and the state’ – examples of such issues being the Gulf War and the ‘struggle against racism in Britain and France’. In the current Egyptian context this means that so-called socialists must defend the Islamists against the state – and themselves against the Islamists! (Harman’s book is available online at www.marxists.de/religion/harman)

Stefan