Sting in the Tail: Going Legit (1991)

The Sting in the Tail column from the September 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Going Legit

The Camorra of Naples now rivals the Sicilian Mafia In wealth and power.

Now their huge profits from drugs, smuggling and extortion are being invested in banking, industry, agriculture, etc., to the point where -

. . . their legal income is now greater than their illegal one.

The Guardian 25 July

This move away from illegal to legal activities is nothing new. Many of Britain’s "noblest" families began just like the Camorra and made their fortunes from land-theft, banditry and piracy. For example, Lord Home, Tory Prime Minister in 1963-4, proudly boasted that his ancestors had been border cattle thieves.

These earlier bandits have long since legitimised their operations and now legally plunder the working class through the wages system. The Camorra is only following in their footsteps.

Showing by Example

The Socialist Workers Party condemns those Labour councils which make economies by sacking workers.

It was Liverpool council's turn in Socialist Worker 27 July -

City Treasurer Phil Kelly unveiled plans which will mean real anguish for thousands of people.

To close a £10 million deficit, the council wants to push through another 155 compulsory redundancies In addition to the 160 already announced and the 460 resulting from the bins service privatisation.

The SWP insists that under no circumstances should the workers be sacked, but back in 1975 the SWP (then called The International Socialists) had to make economies. Its national committee reported that -

. . . extra efficiency will not save enough money so we considered the running of all the departments to see if they could possibly function on less workers. We decided that two should go from the printshop, one from Socialist Worker, and 2.5 from admin.

Dally Telegraph 13 March 1975

So the SWP's solution was exactly the same as the councils they condemn. A clear case of the Trotskyist pot calling the Labour kettle black.

Labour's "Socialists"

John Molyneux's column in Socialist Worker is titled "Teach Yourself Marxism" although anytime Scorpion has read it there has never been anything about Marxism in it.

That is until the issue dated 27 July when we read that Marx stood for "smashing the capitalist state". In fact he did stand for the abolition of the state but not for attacking it head on. No evidence for this "smashing" was given but it's a bit rich when someone who can write such nonsense urges anyone else to "Teach Yourself Marxism".

But Molyneux's column was mainly about the agonising time "socialists" are having in "Kinnock's Labour Party".

Who are these "socialists"and what do they get up to in an anti-socialist party? Molyneux tells us they are, among other things, "usually the most energetic canvassers and recruiters".

So here are "socialists" who devote much of their political activity to peddling Labour Party policies to workers; policies which are aimed solely at propping-up British capitalism. Some "socialists" these!

Crime and Punishment

As newspapers reveal some of the skullduggery that goes on The City, where million pound frauds are commonplace It is interesting to compare the fate in the courts of those committing these frauds with that of the working class who have been at the fiddle.

A recent example was reported in Glasgow in the local Evening Times (7 August) -

A man who stole his sister's DSS giro and cashed it has been jailed for six months . . .  He also admitted cashing it at Tormusk Post Office, Castlemilk and defrauding the DSS of £37.05.

Six months in nick for stealing £37.05! At that rate of punishment how long would those city-slickers spend in jail for their muti-million pound scams? There is a lot of truth in the old saying — never steal anything small!

Housing — the Facts

Amidst all the nonsense of the reformist political parties and their practical plans to deal with the "housing problem" it is interesting to note some of the hard facts about the so-called "housing problem". A recent issue of The Guardian provided some useful information about the present position -

• 169,000 households are classed as homeless in Britain this year.
• Between 30,000 and 40,000 people around the country are believed to sleep rough from time to time. About 5,000 sleep out in London each night.
• There are 700,000 empty homes in the country, many awaiting repair; 100,000 are owned by councils, 600,000 by private landlords.

This ghastly situation is made all the more horrendous when you realise that there is no "housing problem" only a poverty problem. One that will last as long as we have wealth produced to realise a profit instead of the socialist society where everything, including housing, will be produced to satisfy human need.

Housing — More Facts

In case anyone imagines that a cause of the "housing problem" is a physical shortage of the ability to build houses we would point out a report in The Times (5 August) -

A quarter of a million construction workers are likely to lose their jobs during the recession, according to forecasts from the Building Employers Confederation...

Using official statistics, the BEC calculates that 150,000 construction jobs have been lost since the middle of last year. The federation predicts a further 100,000 will be lost by the middle of next year.

So there you have it — 160,000 homeless households, hundreds of thousands of houses needing repairs; and at the same time a quarter of a million construction workers thrown out of a job. But that is typical of capitalism — the economics of the madhouse.

The Pope Knows It!

The notion that state interference in the day to day running of capitalism has something to do with socialism is more and more being discredited. The events in Russia and Eastern Europe are glaring examples of this but now this fallacy has been so well exposed that even the Pope knows it now.

Pope John Paul II's latest encyclical Centesimus Annus commenting on the idea that government Intervention in the market system is socialism states:

In the struggle against such a system, what is being proposed as an alternative is not the socialist system, which in fact turns out to be state capitalism . . .

Lenin rehashed (1998)

Book Reviews from the May 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Future Socialist Society by John Molyneux. SWP. £2.

For some reason, the SWP have decided to reissue this notorious pamphlet which first came out in 1987 and which exposes that what they mean by socialism is not the real thing but (as we pointed out in our review in the October 1987 Socialist Standard) a Leninist state.

One of the early measures an SWP government (which is envisaged as coming to power not through elections but as “the party which has led the revolution”) would take would be to abolish universal suffrage:

“There will not be complete universal suffrage because the nature of the system will exclude the old bourgeoisie and its main associates from the electoral process” (p. 9).

The claim is that because the new electoral process will be based on soviets, i. e. on voting at work (and not necessarily by secret ballot), capitalists as non-workers won’t have a vote. But once capitalists have been expropriated (in the SWP’s scenario, by the state) they will cease to be capitalists and so would have to work for the state in order to live. So why would they still be excluded from voting in the places where they would be working? And why would their “main associates”, identified elsewhere (p. 12) as “sections of the middle class” who would therefore have jobs, be excluded? There is only one explanation: all these people are to be disfranchised not because of their economic position but because of their political views as real or imagined opponents of the new government. The Russian Bolsheviks, on whom the SWP model themselves, also began by banning “pro-capitalist” opponents. They ended up banning all opponents.

On economic policy, whereas socialists (and Marx) envisage the abolition of the wages system, the SWP promises that “the wages of the working class, and especially the low paid, will be rapidly increased” (p. 21). So the wages system, which reflects the non-ownership of the means of production by the majority, is to continue, the only difference being that it would be administered by an SWP government that will have nationalised everything. This is state capitalism, not socialism.

Just as over depriving opponents of the right to vote so with regard to technical experts, an SWP government would follow the same policy as the Russian Bolsheviks. We are told that “if absolutely necessary they will have to perform with workers’ guns at their heads” (p. 15). It is not just the absurdity of such a proposition that is significant here–even the capitalists discovered long ago that workers can’t be coerced by guns and whips into working efficiently, and technical experts are of course workers–but the authoritarian reflex that the SWP has inherited from Lenin and Trotsky.

The good news is that there is never going to be an SWP government. Bolshevik-Leninist ideas are so discredited by what happened in Russia that there is no possibility of large numbers of workers being taken in by them again. Once bitten, twice shy.

Adam Buick

Sting in the Tail: Born in the USA (1990)

The Sting in the Tail column from the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Born in the USA

American politicians are fond of boasting that the USA is a classless society. But the truth of the matter is revealed In a Michigan newspaper The Grand Rapids Press (26 April 1990) under the headline "One Child In Five Now Lives In Poverty".

Reporting the National Commission on Children, a group established by Congress and its members appointed by the President and House and Senate leaders, It showed the real position of the working class in the USA.

Malnutrition affects nearly a half-million children, and every night an estimated 100,000 go to sleep homeless —
The poverty rate in 1987, the year the report cited, was 15% for white children but 45% for black children and 39% for Hispanic children.

In the same issue the newspaper reports:

The heirs of Edward Steichen, a pillar of New York's Museum of Modern Art, are battling the museum over an $800,000 painting by Matisse that was bequeathed to the photographer's 6 year old great- grand-daughter.

One kid stands to inherit $800,000 while 20% of US kids suffer official poverty. No class differences In the USA?

Nothing Sacred

The Anglican Church has lost 600,000 members and demolished 289 churches in the last 20 years.

But the Institute of Economic Affairs, a free market 'Think Tank", has come up with a solution. They propose according to The Guardian (16 April 1990) that the clergy be:

. . . paid on a performance basis and regarded as a 10,000 strong sales force established on prime sites throughout Britain.

What the priests would earn would depend on how successfully they could:

. . . go into the highways and byways and compel them (customers) to come in.

In other words, get bums on seats or else. 

Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto that the bourgeoisie had converted, among others, the priests into paid wage-labourers, but even they could hardly have dreamt that one day the priestly wages might be based on piece-work!

Dancing in the Street?

"If Labour Wins" was the title of John Molyneux's article in Socialist Worker for April 17,1990.

He predicts that a Tory defeat at the next general election will see "mass dancing in the streets". So much for the night before but what about the morning after when the new Labour government is faced with "economic crisis"?

Molyneux's prediction is that Labour will "turn on" and "squeeze the working class" because that is "what every Labour government has done when faced with economic crisis" and he provides chapter and verse to prove this.

We can agree with Molyneux's predictions about a future Labour government, but we can do a little predicting of our own: it is that, despite all their denunciations of Labour, Molyneux and the rest of the Socialist Workers Party will be urging workers to put their heads in the noose by voting Labour at the next general election. Any bets?

US Speak

George Orwell in his book, "1984" invented "Newspeak" a language that allowed the ruling elite to describe the Ministry of War as the Ministry of Peace.

According to the report of Time (30 April 1990) Orwell's Newspeak is in full bloom In 1990.

 The Strategic Air Command has decided to change its longtime motto 'Peace Is our Profession", to "War is our Profession - Peace Is our Product".

Boom and Bust

John Ashcroft, ex-chairman of Coloroll, was a stock market darling of the 80's.

And no wonder. Coloroll started the decade as a small wallpaper manufacturer but under Ashcroft's guidance it borrowed heavily to buy companies making glassware, ceramics, textiles, furniture and carpets.

This mad dash for expansion was fine when the economy was booming and interest rates were low, but when they shot skyward then High Street spending plunged and so did Coloroll's profits. Its shares have fallen from a peak of 383p to only 15p.

Now Coloroll's very future is in doubt and Ashcroft joins the long list of financial whlzz-kids who, despite all the evidence, believed that capitalism's booms will last forever.

The Sick Society

The Socialist view that Health, like everything else in a capitalist society, is largely decided by economic factors, has recently been vindicated by the World Health Organisation.

 If current global trends continue, an estimated 200 million persons world-wide could die prematurely from preventable Illnesses in the 1990s, according to a report on the state of world health released yesterday by the World Health Organisation.
"Disease is the most destructive force In the world", Dr. Hiroshi Najakajina, director general of WHO said in a statement . . .
"many of the world's illnesses are preventable or treatable with inexpensive vaccines, anti-blotics or oral rehydration therapy", Nakajina said. "What Is needed Is to mobilise the political will to make this a healthier world."

The Boston Globe (30 April 1990)

Dr. Nakajina's "political will" cannot solve the problem while capitalism, with its production for profit motive, remains. People are dying today simply because they cannot afford to buy the treatments that would cure them.

What could be a more powerful argument for a new society, based on production solely for use, than the next piece of Information in the WHO report?

 . . . more than 8,000 children die every day from diseases that could have been prevented by immunization, and almost 11.000 die daily of dehydration caused by diarrhoea, the report said. Further, an additional 8,000 die every day of pneumonia, WHO said. Much of the suffering can be alleviated, the report said.

Holiday Competition

The news that Thomson and Intasun, the two biggest package holiday operators, have increased their 1990 prices by around 12% and scrapped over a million holidays from their 1990 plans should surprise no one.

For years they have conducted a fierce price-war which was hailed by the free marketeers as a glorious example of the benefits which competition brings to consumers.

True, prices dropped ever lower in real terms until a holiday in Spain could be bought for a ridiculous £29. But this meant that profits in the industry almost vanished. The average profit on a holiday is now around only £1.20 and many operators have gone bust or been swallowed up.

These tiny profits have meant tiny re-investment, and the resulting decline in standards of holiday hotels and apartments has produced massive customer dissatisfaction and fewer bookings.

So besides providing rising prices and less choice for consumers, the package holiday industry has fallen into fewer and fewer hands until Thomson and Intasun have more than 60% of the market between them. Ah, the benefits of cut-throat competition!

Leninist State vs. World Socialism (1987)

From the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

What can one say about the Socialist Workers Party except that they do quite rightly respond with indignation to the iniquities of capitalism and they do understand that there is a class struggle going on—even if their idea of the working-class is hopelessly narrow, including mainly manual workers rather than all people dependent upon selling their labour power in order to survive. The SWP is a radical party, in the old sense of not liking society as it is and wanting something to be done. This "something" they call socialism but despite their claim to be a socialist party, their speakers are conspicuously silent on, and their literature notably empty of any definition of socialism.

The Socialist Party has a clear definition of socialism; it will be a society of common, not state or private, ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution; there will be democratic and not minority control of social affairs; production will be solely for use rather than for sale or profit; there will be free access by all people to all goods and services, without the fetters of the money economy. All of that is clear and anyone who cares to go back to 1904 will find all of our literature advocating the same principled and unequivocal socialist aim.

What sort of society is the SWP aiming for?

The so-called socialist aim of the SWP has always been obscure. They regard the Bolshevik coup d’état in Russia as an example of a successful socialist revolution, yet they argue that after ten years of its happening Russia had become a state capitalist country which should be opposed by socialists. They have told workers to elect Labour governments whenever elections have taken place but they argue that Labour governments are anti-socialist. They have tried the opportunist policy of supporting courses of action and then dissociating themselves from the inevitably unpopular consequences. But now, after years of refusing to tell anyone what socialism means to them, the SWP has published a pamphlet The Future Socialist Society in which all is explained. They would have done themselves a favour to have kept their confusion a secret. They have done us a favour, for now we can see quite clearly that the SWP does not stand for socialism, but for a Leninist state—which should be resisted by all workers.

The Socialist State

There will be no state in a socialist society. The state is the body which has existed for as long as property society has existed, in order to defend the propertied ruling class against the propertyless majority. Socialism will be a classless society, without exploiters and exploited, rulers and ruled, coercion and submission. Not so, according to the SWP:

. . . the working class will have to create its own state. This state, like any other, will be a centralised organisation exercising ultimate authority in society and having at its disposal decisive armed force (p.8).

There is no point in having a state unless there are people to be bullied and coerced. According to the SWP, the new state will be bullying and coercing the capitalists—the exploiters who live by robbing the working class. But if the workers can dominate the capitalists with a state, why allow them to continue exploiting and robbing the workers? Why not immediately dispossess the parasite minority? Once the capitalists have been stripped of their power to exploit workers economically there will be no need to control them with a state: there will be a classless society without the need for a body of class rule. The SWP argue the absurd case that this all-powerful workers' state will "exercise ultimate authority in society" but for the authority over the most crucial aspect of society in which the capitalists will still be having power. In order to have authority over the exploiters on behalf of the exploited—it is like a proposal for the prisoners to be given control over the screws—there will need to be a new "socialist army":

The old capitalist armed forces . . . will be replaced with organisations of armed workers—workers’ militias (p.8).

Conscription will be re-introduced:

. . . service in the militia will be on a rota basis so as to train and involve the maximum number of workers in the armed defence of their power . . . (p.9).

We do not know whether the SWP would allow conscientious objectors to refuse military service under the new state or whether such dangerous subversives would be sent to "socialist prisons". The new militia will not only be an army but a police force also—a military police, in fact:

The militia will also be in charge of everyday law and order . . . they will perform far more effectively than the capitalist police (p.9).

No more getting away with breaking state-imposed laws under the new state: the crime detection rate of the "socialist police" is already guaranteed to be better than at present. There will be officers in the militia—no doubt they will have little red stripes on their uniforms to show us that they are "socialist" super-thugs, and

All officers in the militia will be elected . . . (p.9).

So, there you have it: establish SWP-style socialism and you get to vote for the Chief Inspector at your local nick.

The new state will have a "socialist government" which will probably be run by "the party which has led the revolution"(p.9). But not everyone will be allowed to vote for the government:

There will not be complete universal suffrage because the nature of the system will exclude the old bourgeoisie and its main associates from the electoral process (p. 10).

So capitalists will not have the vote. If there are still capitalists in the SWP's "socialist society" they would not need to vote, for capitalists have economic power already and the only use which voting performs is to get hold of that power. If the capitalists are abolished as a class, then firstly there is no need for a state—because there will be no contest between classes—and secondly it would be stupidly anti-socialist to deny votes to ex-capitalists who are now equal members of a classless society. Worse still, the SWP proposes to deny votes to the "main associates" of the old capitalists. Does that mean that all previous supporters of capitalism will have no right to vote? Or will the right to vote be denied to active anti-SWPers—including The Socialist Party, which would be working actively to democratically overthrow the new state? The Socialist Party need be in no doubt about our place in this horrific new state, for we are told that political parties will only be allowed to operate freely "providing they accept the basic framework of the revolution" (p.9). Quite simply, the new state will be undemocratic—and once there is a state of such power anyone can be placed in the role of one of the enemies of the state, denied the right to vote or to oppose the regime. All too often the first people to be persecuted by new states are the ones who helped to created them. Take the example of the SWP "promise" about the freedom of artists:

There will be no repetition of the disastrous Stalinist policy of proscribing particular artistic forms or proclaiming that only one style of art . . . has validity. Apart from reserving the right to prohibit direct counter-revolutionary propaganda, the revolutionary government will promote the maximum freedom in this area (pp.33-4).

Let us consider a practical case. Suppose there is a socialist film-maker under the new state who makes a good movie about the way in which life under a militia is not freedom but just another form of oppression. At the end of the film there is a scene in which a socialist makes a speech against the new regime, pointing out that wherever the state exists there is an absence of freedom. The new state bosses might conclude—quite rightly—that such a film could turn workers against the state, make them feel unfree, make them ungrateful to the government which had led them to supposed freedom, incite revolutionary activity which the state would regard as counter-revolutionary. The film would have to be banned, or parts of it censored. These are the inevitable requirements of running a coercive state. As the SWP tell us now, before we could be foolish enough to grant them such power.

. . . it has to be frankly stated that some repression, some use of direct force, will be necessary not only to overthrow the capitalist state but also after the revolution to maintain workers’ power (p.11).

As they say of their heroes, who established a previous "socialist state": "The Bolsheviks had no choice but to introduce a highly authoritarian regime" (p.12).

All of these absurd ideas about socialism are based upon three basic errors. Firstly, that "The class struggle does not come to an end with the victory of the revolution" (p.11). For the SWP, socialism is a class society in which one class rules over another. In fact, once workers gain control of the state our one simple task will be to abolish both classes and the state by means of the immediate dispossession of the capitalist minority. This will put an end to the class struggle forever. 

Secondly, that workers can take power in one country alone. The only action a socialist majority in one country can do is to use all its might to hasten the process of developing class consciousness of workers across the world. It is not possible to do that by setting up a so-called workers' state which would be forced to run capitalism in one country—state capitalism—and in doing so would set back the development of socialist ideas in other countries as workers looked on to see the failures of the "new socialist state". The SWP states that ". . . a workers' state cannot survive indefinitely in one country" (p.17). In fact, it would be fatal for workers ever to take responsibility for running a state in any country. The sole task of the workers against whom the state is used is to use the state for one purpose and then get rid of it.

Thirdly, the SWP accepts the ideas of Lenin about revolution as an act of leaders taking the majority who are led to a new social order: such an authoritarian revolution could only be like all previous revolutions in history, ending in the domination of the leaders, forming a new state over the led. So it was that the Bolsheviks promised to set up a dictatorship of the proletariat but in fact constructed a dictatorship over the proletariat. The SWP aim to do the same thing, with their own pathetic band of leaders in the 1980s role of the Lenins, Trotskys and probably plenty of Stalins. This is not a socialist vision, but a nightmare of Leninist state dictatorship which workers should not be tempted by but should resist.

The New Economy

Most of the SWP's pamphlet is devoted to describing the role of the new state. Conspicuously little is said about the economic arrangements under "the workers' state". It is admitted that "Socialism cannot be built in one country" (p.17). But the new state will exist in one country. So we must assume that it will be running capitalism—state capitalism. There is plenty of evidence in the pamphlet to suggest that this is what the SWP has in mind. We are told that "The formal mechanism through which economic power will be established is a familiar one, namely nationalisation" (p.14). Indeed, it is all too familiar: nationalisation can be simply translated as state-run capitalism. Not all of the means of wealth production will be nationalised: ". . . the working class will immediately . . . take into its hands all the major means of production in society" (p.14). Only the major ones, included among which will be

. . . nationalisation of the banks and the imposition of strict exchange controls backed by other revolutionary measures to prevent the inevitable attempt at a flight of capital abroad (p.14).

So, there will still be banks and capital under the SWP's "socialism". But some capitalists will be spared from being taken over by the new state capitalist: "Small businesses employing only one or two workers can mostly be left to later" (p.14).

Take note of that if you are currently working in a shop or sweatshop. Workers will continue to be in the working class, selling their labour power. Therefore they will need trade unions 

and the trade unions will also retain the right to strike, since even under a workers' state sections of the working class may need to defend their interests against abuse and should keep this ultimate weapon (p.13).

Incidentally, after the so-called workers' state was formed in Russia Trotsky told the workers that their trade unions could only be used to make the state-run industries more profitable and we have no guarantees that the new state rulers would not do the same if they had power.

If you are a "technical expert" who does not support the new state the SWP has some bad news for you:

. . . they will simply work for and under the direction of the factory or industrial council just as today they work for the bosses . . . If absolutely necessary they will have to perform with workers' guns at their heads . . . (pp.15-6).

We are referring here to scientists, auditors, architects, surgeons—all  of whom are now workers—people forced to sell their labour power in order to live. They are being told that life for them will be “Just as today", working for bosses and possibly having to do so with guns pointed at their heads. Workers will still be wage slaves, dependent on wages or salaries:

. . . the supply of goods will remain limited and workers will still work for money wages which in turn they will use to purchase these goods  (p.21).

So the workers under the new state will still have to buy the goods and services which they produce. From whom will they buy them? From the state which, like any other capitalist, produces nothing and sells what the workers produce to the workers.

A socialist society, based on the common ownership of all resources by all the people, would have no resemblance to what the SWP describes. There will be no classes, no banks or exchange controls or capital, and no money—for what use could money have in a society where everything belongs to everyone? The SWP simply do not understand this conception of a moneyless society of common ownership. Instead they offer confusing notions, such as that

in order to move, people will either transfer to vacant accommodation or exchange houses instead of buying and selling them (p.22).

The SWP is proposing the establishment of a system of barter to replace the buying and selling system. But it gets worse. Rather than the abolition of wages and money, which Marx pointed out is essential to socialism, they propose the gradual abolition of wages and money:

Buying and selling will fade away. Money . . . will steadily lose its usefulness to the point where it can be dispensed with altogether (p.22).

Now, either society is based on property in which there is buying and selling and a need for money or on propertyless common ownership. The two conditions are mutually exclusive: you can no more have a bit of both than you can be a bit pregnant. The SWP pamphlet writers know, because of their reading of Marx and their knowledge of The Socialist Party, that it would be a major mistake for them to try to describe a socialist society without mentioning the abolition of money and buying and selling. But they are petrified by the thought that this would make them appear utopian. After all, they are always telling The Socialist Party that although they know we are right in stating that socialism will be a moneyless, wageless, classless society it is folly to tell the workers that because they will reject socialism. That is Leninist arrogance: only some people—the leaders who monopolise theory—can be told the truth: for the workers it is better to offer palatable nonsense. That is why the SWP , in a confused and embarrassed manner, have inserted a few words alluding to the abolition of money, buying and selling—but only the gradual abolition, with money fading away—presumably one tenpenny piece at a time.

The SWP's picture of socialism would be a joke if the future of humanity was something to laugh about. In fact, given the supreme urgency of the need for socialist transformation of society, the nonsense being sold as socialism by the SWP is an insult to the intelligence of those who read it and a sinister picture of a Leninist state under which no worker should want to live.

Steve Coleman

Leninism v Anarchism (2012)

Book Review from the February 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anarchism. A Marxist Criticism. by John Molyneux. Bookmarks. £4.

John Molyneux is the SWPer who wrote their 1987 pamphlet on The Future Socialist Society in which he stated that the first thing that would happen on the establishment of such a society would be that wages would be increased and also that engineers would be forced, if they refused to co-operate, to work with a gun at their head. Obviously, he was talking about a future state capitalist society.

His earlier pamphlet is still listed as ‘further reading’ in his new, 80-page booklet in which he criticises anarchists from an SWP viewpoint. His basic argument is that ‘through its rejection of parties in general and the Leninist party in particular anarchism merely contributes to the organisational and political disarmament of the working class’ (p. 29).

We can agree with his criticism of anarchists for their refusal to participate in elections and for their theory that it is the existence of the state rather than of capitalism that is the cause of working-class problems. But that’s about it. On the other hand, we can agree with the anarchist emphasis on the need to establish a stateless society and with their criticism of Leninism as the theory and practice of a would-be new ruling class.

Having said this – and Molyneux notes this too – some anarchists are themselves in effect vanguardists in that they seek as an ‘active minority’ to lead the working class in an assault on capitalism and the state. Molyneux appeals to such anarchists to be consistent and join a properly-structured leadership organisation.

Our appeal is to those anarchists who are committed to the concept of a self-organised majority revolution without leaders to be consistent and abandon their dogmatic opposition to the working class forming a political party to contest elections and eventually win control of political power, not to form a government but to immediately abolish capitalism and usher in the classless, stateless, moneyless, wageless society that real socialism will be.

Adam Buick