Obituary: Christopher Butler (2025)

Obituary from the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Christopher (Christy) Butler died in September at the age of 82. Born in Ireland, he was a lifelong socialist and defender of secular education. When he finally escaped from wage-earning more than 20 years ago he established himself in a small town in the rural Vienne region in south-west France. In his living room visitors would notice huge piles of leaflets for the Socialist Party which he enjoyed distributing at demonstrations in the area and occasionally in the Paris region. He had been active in the working-class movement from an early age. He joined the WSPNZ in the early 1970s, taking part in their radio broadcasts and other activities. Before that he had been in the Irish Communist Organisation. When he returned to this part of the world in 1980 he joined the Bolton branch of the SPGB. Socialist activity is sporadic in France but demonstrations on single issues can be enormous and sustained. French workers are incredibly open to political arguments on the left and Christy was always ready to discuss points at issue. And all this in French.

Christy was very well informed on the history of the party and politics in general. He could more than hold his own in any discussion of the life of James Connolly and he established links with the society which managed the Connolly archive in Ireland. He also made contacts with some of the remaining Wobblies on a trip to the United States. So he was really narked to discover that some leading intellectuals in the French Communist Party had adopted a policy of defending wage-labour (le salariat) rather than its abolition. Indeed, Christy tried to get into contact with the leading historian of Guesdisme to find out why the ‘abolish wage-labour’ motto had disappeared from membership cards of France’s militant C.G.T. union. As a direct result, we found ourselves distributing leaflets on the abolition of wage-labour alongside trade unionists who were defending le salariat.

My remaining memory of Christy is when I saw him trying to convince an Irish tourist in Spain of the importance of reading Oscar Wilde’s ‘Soul of Man under Socialism’. Although I think the young man was mainly interested in relaxing in the sunshine – I have no way of knowing – Christy was doing what he enjoyed the best: making the case for socialism wherever he went.

Our condolences to his family and especially to Clare and Francis his daughters.

M.M.

Russia and Marxian Economics (1970)

Pamphlet Review from the November 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Marxism and Market Socialism’. Irish Communist Organisation pamphlet. 5s.

“Market Socialism” is of course a contradiction in terms since the establishment of the common ownership and democratic social control of the means of production necessarily involves the abolition of the market. It is used here by a group of Maoists (they say that soon after the death of Stalin in 1953 the Russian government began a policy of “restoring capitalism” in Russia) in their criticism of the current economic doctrines of the Russian ruling class. They too see this term as contradictory but from a different angle since they accept Lenin’s false distinction between “socialism” and “communism”. Nevertheless this is an interesting pamphlet which makes some pertinent points.

“Marxist-Leninist literature”, a Russian economist Lev Leontyev has written, “has proved as entirely groundless the idea that Marx and Engels, and Lenin, pictured socialism as a natural economy without commodity-money relations”. To see why this is a distortion of Marxism we must know something of what Marx said.

Marx set out to examine how capitalism worked. Capitalism, he showed, was the most developed form of commodity production, a commodity being an article of wealth produced by separate, competing enterprises for sale on the market. The existence of commodity-production implies the existence also of private property, of private owners of commodities who buy and sell them. What prevents a complete breakdown of this unorganised system of production is the fact that commodities exchange in definite proportions depending on their value (or the amount of socially necessary labour used in producing them). It is through the impersonal workings of the market, called by Marx “the law of value”, that production is regulated under capitalism.

Socialism, by establishing the common ownership of all the means of production, brings commodity-production to an end. No longer is wealth produced by numerous separate enterprises all competing to sell their goods on the market. The law of value ceases to operate. Instead there is the planned production of useful things under the democratic control of society. This was the view of Marx and Engels and is the view of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. It was inherited also by the Bolsheviks who seized power in Russia in 1917. They proclaimed their ultimate aim as the abolition of the market and money and explained the persistence of commodity production after 1917 as a survival of capitalism which would gradually be eliminated. This is what the classic Bolshevik textbook of 1919 The ABC of Communism argues; it is also what the Irish Communist Organisation describe as “orthodox Marxism”.

In 1936 Stalin declared that Socialism had been established in Russia, despite the continued existence of commodity-production. This glaring contradiction was not resolved until 1943 when an article on “Teaching Economics in the Soviet Union” appeared in a leading Russian journal. This simply denied that Socialism involved the abolition of commodity-production and said that the law of value continued to operate under Socialism though, instead of acting blindly as under capitalism, it was consciously applied by the State. This line of thought has led today to Russian economists (just like their colleagues in the West) defending the market, and even rent, interest and profit as useful economic weapons. All this is traced and discussed in detail in this pamphlet.

In wishing to absolve Stalin from any blame for this distortion, the ICO is in a curious position. They say that the 1943 article “clearly represents revisionism at a high level of development and in an influential position in the CPSU” and imply that Stalin would not have endorsed it. This is most unlikely. So important an article could not have been written without Stalin’s knowledge or approval. Indeed it probably arose from the meeting Stalin had with leading Russian economists in 1941 which is mentioned in passing by one of the Russians quoted in this pamphlet. All the ICO have to go on to argue that Stalin held a view similar to the early Bolsheviks is some remarks in his Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, written in 1952.

It is odd that this pamphlet should be chosen as an example of the orthodox Marxist view. For it contains a very significant distortion of Marx’s view ― it argues that there will be “objective economic laws” under Socialism. An objective law is one that operates independently of the will of man. Natural laws are thus objective and so is the way capitalism works or what Marx called its laws of motion. A moment’s thought will show that there can be no such economic laws in a socialist society. For Socialism establishes full social control over the use of society’s productive resources. The production and distribution of wealth becomes purely a technical and administrative matter carried out in accordance with plans worked out and consciously implemented by human beings. Under these circumstances to talk of “objective economic laws” is nonsense. But Stalin was insistent on this point. “The laws of motion of the political economy of Socialism” he wrote, “are a reflection in the minds of men of objective laws existing outside of us”. But men could, he went on, discover what these laws were and “utilise them in the interests of society”.

In proclaiming that objective economic laws existed which could be controlled by the State in the interests of society, Stalin was paving the way for the current Russian argument that there is nothing as such wrong with commodity-production or money or the market or profits as long as they are properly controlled and not allowed to work blindly. This of course is the old impossible dream of capitalism planned to work for the good of all.

In a sense Stalin was right. The Russian economy has always been subject to economic forces that operate independently of men’s will. But that was because it is not, and never has been, socialist but a form of state capitalism.

Adam Buick

Disunited Ireland (1969)

Pamphlet Review from the October 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Economics of Partition. Irish Communist Organisation Pamphlet No. 16 (January 1969) 2s. 6d.

This pamphlet, by a group of Irish Maoists, is a surprisingly good Marxist analysis of Irish history and politics. You have got to take into account first the terminology—imperialism, the nation, democratic people’s struggle—the assumptions behind which are unacceptable. This done, what emerges is the kind of analysis we ourselves have made for years: that Partition arose out of the uneven development of capitalism in Ireland and the consequent conflict of interest between rival sections of the Irish capitalist class, mainly over tariff policy.

Up to the nineteenth century it was the North that was the backward port of Ireland while industry flourished in the South. After (though not because of, as many Irish nationalists were to assert) the 1802 Union with Britain, industry actually declined in the South while it grew in the North East. The basic reason for this was economic: the different systems of land tenure in the two parts of the country. In the South most of the peasants were tenants-at-will on short one-year leases which gave them no security of tenure nor any incentive to improve the land (since the landlord would benefit by increasing the rent). But in the North, under "Ulster custom”, the farmers had won security of tenure and, freed from oppression by rack-renting landlords, were able to accumulate the money to develop capitalist industry.

Northern industry, however, served not the “home market” of Ireland but the British and imperial markets. Northern I industry was in fact a part of British industry. The petty capitalists of the South, on the other hand, wanted protection from British competition so that they could grow bigger. The stage was thus set for a fundamental conflict of interest between the big capitalists of the North East and the smaller capitalists of the South.

When Home Rule became a big political issue because of the support given to this demand by a majority of Irish people, the Northern capitalists won the support of a majority in their area by stirring up Protestant anti-Catholic feelings ("Home Rule is Rome Rule") and threatened physical force to resist incorporation into a Home Rule Ireland. They were determined not to be cut off from the imperial markets and confined behind the tariff barriers the petty capitalists of the South wanted.

Faced with this determination the British government retreated and in 1914 proposed Partition. This was acceptable to the North, but it took until 1922, and a guerilla war, before this was accepted by most of the South.

The Border was thus just a tariff barrier between the British imperial market and the Irish home market. The Partition question is thus, say socialists (but not the ICO), of no concern to the working class. It makes no difference to them whether they are ruled from Dublin, Belfast or London. The World Socialist Party of Ireland is in fact singled out for specific criticism for its attempt to “by-pass" the Partisan issue. “Denying the fundamental importance of the Border" is denounced as a “blind alley". Of course it is important to explain why and how the Border came into being but, once you have shown that it is just a tariff barrier, it should be dear that is of no concern to the workers, that it is not something they should get worked up about or should kill and die for. We stand by what we said in 1949 and challenge the ICO to deny it:

  “the removal of 'the Border’ will not remove one social evil from which the working class suffer; and so, it is obviously not a problem which concerns the working class".

Adam Buick

Irish Partition Discussed (1970)

Party News from the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Following a lecture on Ireland on 13th August, Westminster branch members discussed Partition with members of the Irish Communist Organisation, a Maoist group. The ICO argued that Irish workers should support the abolition of Partition (i.e. the incorporation of Northern Ireland into an all-Ireland Republic) as this would, they thought, remove the cause of the sectarian division of the working class of the Irish Nation. Party members replied that the Border was irrelevant from a working class point of view since its removal would not solve any working class problem: it would just be a change of masters for the workers of Northern Ireland just as independence for the 26 counties in 1922 was for the workers of the South. Socialists in Ireland should keep off the Anti-Partition bandwagon and campaign for Socialism. Members also challenged the ICO on their concept of “the Irish Nation”, saying that like all so-called nations this was a myth. The nation was a capitalist idea that originated with their rise to political power in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Propertied groups used a common history and culture as a device to get their workers first to help them to power and then to submit to their rule. Marx had long ago pointed out that the workers had no country. This was the socialist position.

Letter: The Irish Border question (1970)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Sir,

We note your “challenge” to the Irish Communist Organisation (Socialist Standard, October) to deny that “the removal of ‘the Border’ will not remove one social evil from which the working class suffer”. Presumably not even the Socialist Party of Great Britain can deny that the working class movement in Ireland is riddled with religious sectarianism, and that the extent of this sectarianism, (the likes of which is not to be found in any other section of the working class in Europe) is due to the influence of Partition politics. Without going any deeper into the question, it is clear that the ending of Partition and its politics will also bring to an end the influence of those politics on the working class movement, especially the religious sectarianism which has paralysed the working class political movement during the past half century. The ending of religious sectarianism will certainly be the ending of a “social evil from which the working class suffer.” Even a child should be able to see that for himself.

You maintain that the ICO pamphlet on Partition “is the kind of analysis we ourselves have made for years”. The reviewer twice refers to the Border as “just a tarriff barrier”. That is certainly not the kind of analysis made by the ICO. We have shown that the uneven development of capitalism is the basis of Partition. The tarriff barrier is the economic essence of the Border. But the ICO has never, in the SPGB manner, tried to reduce the social and political superstructure to the economic base. The economy is not the superstructure, though it determines the development of the superstructure. Religious sectarianism has nothing to do with tarriff barriers as such. If the Border is “just a tarriff barrier” its social effects are unaccounted for. There have been many tarriff barriers in the world which did not have the effect of riddling the workers behind them with religious sectarianism. (And it should be noted that religious sectarianism began to to intensify in Ireland when it was rapidly dying away throughout Europe). With the absurd notion that the economy is its superstructure, and that therefore the Partition which had the effect of drowning working class politics in religious sectarianism was “irrelevant” to the working class, it is not surprising that the “World Socialist Party of Ireland” has been a non-starter in the working class movement. The “irrelevant” Partition politics of the bourgeoisie have exercised a massive negative influence on the working class. but we have noticed that that the WSPI has [not] exercised any social influence, negative or positive! As we said before, it is the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and not the Partition, which is irrelevant, and a matter of no concern, to the working class of Ireland.

Yours,

G. Golden,

Irish Communist Organisation,

London, N.19.

Reply:

The basis of Mr. Golden’s argument would seem to be that since Partition is the cause of religious sectarianism in Northern Ireland the removal of the Border would mean the end also of sectarianism.

We suggest he has got things the wrong way round: it was rather the success of the big capitalists of North East Ireland in stirring up anti-Catholic prejudices amongst their Protestant workers that gave them the mass support needed to force the British government to exclude Ulster from Home Rule. Religion was deliberately introduced into politics in order to serve the economic interests of the employers there. Had they not been able to win mass support (to the extent of obtaining pledges to take up arms if need be) for their opposition to Home Rule, then there would probably have been no Border. Sectarianism, serving the interests of a section of the Irish capitalist class, could thus be said to have given rise to the Border.

The removal of the Border would not in itself end sectarianism; indeed it might make it worse since many Protestant workers would still resist this change in their rulers with violence.

Sectarianism can only be removed, as we pointed out in the Socialist Standard in January last year, by “a sustained campaign to clear away the political and religious garbage that the working class got from its leaders of yesterday”. We went on to ask, however, “why struggle for the apple when the same effort can bring us the orchard?”

Sectarianism is not only a barrier to working class unity for Socialism, but it is also a barrier to those who want the workers’ support for an ordinary reformist party or for an all-Ireland republic. In fact it has now even become an embarrassment to those capitalists, international and local, who have considerable investments in Northern Ireland.

The World Socialist Party is thus not the only organisation campaigns, against sectarianism. This is why it important to ask what will replace it. We would not regard a change to normal non-sectarian capitalist politics (of the British or Irish variety) as much an advance. Our task of spreading socialist understanding in place of political confusion would still remain.

The I.C.O. may be opposed to sectarianism but it is not seeking to replace it with socialist understanding. Rather, with its Anti-Partition stance it is lining itself up with Irish nationalism, The ideology of that section of the Irish capitalist class that was opposed to Union with Britain. Indeed the I.C.O can be seen as basically an Irish nationalist organisation merely using the few socialist phrases that have survived mauling at the hands of their men. Lenin, Stalin and Mao.

We confess that we are not sure what point Mr. Golden is trying to make in the second part of his letter — unless he is again putting the cart before the horse and arguing that Partition is the cause of sectarianism. We will leave the matter for our readers to try and work out for themselves.

Editorial Committee