Checkmate? (2023)

Book Review from the September 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism’s Endgame. By Mark Hayes, Phillip Sutton and Lars Torvaldsson. Old Moles Collective. 2023.

This is by three writers who stand in the Left Communist tradition, the main organisations of which in the UK are the International Communist Current and the Communist Workers Organisation. They tend to agree with us that socialism or communism means a society of common ownership and free access to wealth without wages, prices, markets etc and also oppose reformism, state capitalism, nationalism and so on. Both groups are very small and they have a tendency (particularly the ICC) to express themselves using difficult, abstract terminology that found its height during the Third International period. It doesn’t make for an easy read and it’s equally easy to come to the conclusion that their minuscule size is as much to do with their inability to move beyond archaic language and formulas as it is about the substance of their political ideas.

Interestingly, this book seems to be an attempt to move a little beyond their established political positions and draws on the ideas of both groups while indicating that their previous formulations might be in need of some revision. Left Communists (like many Trotskyists) tend towards catastrophising – capitalism is forever in its death throws because of its internal contradictions and all that remains is for the proletariat to raise its combat to the level that the vanguard party can guide the revolution towards communism – indeed this is one of their key points of difference with the SPGB. The ICC has long held the view of Rosa Luxemburg that capitalism cannot meaningfully expand once it has integrated all the previously non-capitalist areas of the world economy (such as peasant economies) because in ‘pure capitalism’ the workers and capitalists combined are unable to buy back all the products of industry. This means external markets are necessary and once these have been exhausted then capitalism will enter a period of glutted markets and permanent crisis (said to have been around the time of the First World War). The authors dismiss this erroneous theory as we have done, as it simply does not correspond with the facts – and as we have demonstrated previously, it is also flawed at a theoretical level. They also take issue with the alternative theory adopted by the CWO and originally developed by Grossman and Mattick that the falling rate of profit (and eventually, falling mass of profit) due to technological innovation is the key reason why capitalism is fatally flawed, leading to the need to purge excess capital from the system in destructive wars.

To the credit of the authors, they are at least living in the real world when they realise there is a need to account for capitalism’s massive and continued expansion in recent decades and that it has not plunged humanity, as predicted, into another barbarous world war (though periodic economic crises and more localised wars have continued). They note that the genuine globalisation of capitalism (markets, financial superstructures, the labour market, etc) has underpinned periodically strong growth rates. They also note the massive and related expansion of energy usage, which has risen exponentially since the 1950s and led to a mass of climate change issues.

Indeed, it is here, more than in the pure economics, that they seem to locate capitalism’s potential ‘endgame’, as the competitive drive to accumulate profit leads to ever more environmental destruction. These sections of the book are good and worth reading. This comes with a caveat though – like many of those in the broad Marxist tradition that may be seen to be developing or applying ideas in a slightly different way, there’s a sense that they feel the need to justify everything they write with near constant reference to dead Germans and Russians. This, for instance, leads to endless poring over Marx’s German Ideology, Capital, Communist Manifesto and other texts – the sections where they have more obviously extended their reading a little beyond this tend to be the best. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the Marxist method – we sit in that tradition ourselves of course – but it’s not entirely helpful if it turns into the political equivalent of an autistic tic.

There is another caveat too. We would agree with them that capitalism is a decadent social system in that it has long outlived its usefulness. By this we mean that by creating an interconnected world-wide division of labour and raising the forces of production to unparalleled heights, capitalism has created the conditions of mass sufficiency necessary for the construction of a socialist society to replace it. The last chapter of the book is called ‘Imagining the Future’ and it could reasonably be expected that the contents would be reflected by the title, but it is a disappointing chapter and a missed opportunity, being mainly philosophical meanderings about the revolutionary process and the ‘realm of freedom’ beyond the ‘realm of necessity’. There is nothing about the recent growth of the Fully Automated Luxury Communism idea, and certainly nothing on how 3D printing, digitalisation or even AI can help underpin a society of sufficiency and free access, which seems odd. However, the authors do say another, follow-up volume is being prepared, on ‘the nature and perspective of communism’. We just hope they put down the German Ideology for a minute, reflect on their more recent reading and let their imaginations take over for a while.

DAP

Left Right, Left Right (2015)

Book Review from the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

'The Ideology of Fascism and the Far Right in Britain', by Mark Hayes. Red Quill Books. 2014

Here, Mark Hayes examines the ideological basis of fascism in Britain, seeking to learn the lessons of how it arises and how to combat it. There is much detailed discussion about the key defining categories of fascism and its variants, the genesis of fascism in the UK, and how political activists and academics alike have sought to interpret it.

Written from a particular leftist perspective the book attacks the Trotskyists who have often used ‘anti-fascism’ as a means for recruitment, and Hayes argues that anti-fascist campaigns have often been shorn of their class element, rarely addressing the underlying concerns of those who might be attracted towards fascism in the first place. In many respects he has a point here of course and there is plenty to like about this book as it takes a genuinely serious, in-depth look at the issues. However, there are deficiencies here too and they tend to stem from the same particular source. In one section, he argues that the mass murder carried out in Russia by the brutal Stalinist regime was somehow clearly and qualitatively different to that carried out by the Nazis:

‘Death was often a by-product of malevolent mistreatment in the former, while it was the inevitable consequence of the latter’s inexorable, ideologically motivated desire to eliminate whole categories of people in the name of Aryan supremacy’ (p.368).

This won’t do. Not only because a great many of the deaths in the Holocaust were caused by brutal treatment in forced labour camps just as they were in Stalinist Russia, but also because Stalinism did indeed attempt to eradicate entire categories of people, mainly its ideological and political opponents. There is nothing to be gained by such sophistry – each brutal regime killed people on a mass scale, both in a calculated fashion and as a product of general neglect and mistreatment.

Hayes also claims that the attempts to link the regimes using the concept of ‘totalitarianism’ was a politically-motivated product of  the Cold War, seeking to discredit one by association with the other, and ignoring ‘some remarkable social advances’ by the so-called  Communist regimes. In what appears to be a partial apology for repression in Soviet Russia he claims the ‘case for an identity between communist and fascist systems is very weak. Much as it might offend assiduously cultivated liberal sensitivities, it is entirely legitimate and indeed desirable to distinguish between a forced or necessary repression and a voluntary or inherent coercion’ (p.367).

It is this sort of attempted defence of the Stalinist regimes – half-hearted in some ways but noticeable enough – which undermines the credibility of the other arguments put forward here. Indeed, in line with the Communist Party’s views before the Russian regime did a deal with Hitler and signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, the main argument appears to be that ‘active resistance’ to fascists is the only way forward, implying physical force. As such, Hayes claims that for years anti-fascists have been ‘far too preoccupied with the idea of free speech and the idea that fascism should be exposed to the penetrating light of democratic debate in the hope that sensible, rational people will see through the lies and half-truths of fascist discourse’ (p.438). While he doesn’t entirely dismiss democratic and educational activities, it is odd indeed to think that this has somehow been the dominant approach on the radical left. On the contrary, most leftist organisations have long argued for ‘no platform’ for the fascists and have spent much of their time plotting to disrupt their meetings and block their marches.

In truth, few in Britain and most other advanced economies have been attracted to fascist ideas in recent decades – even the now riven BNP was a hardcore of fascists that developed a political orientation and support base that was more akin to the sort of right-wing populism now associated with UKIP. When fascist ideas have been put to the serious test in democratic debate they have always been found wanting soon enough and the defenders of authoritarian revolution on the far left have often not had much to coherently add beyond the shouting. After all – and despite all their undoubted efforts – it is difficult to meaningfully oppose authoritarian barbarity of one sort if you support (or are prepared to apologise for it) in other circumstances. That is one of the main reasons why fascist organisations may come and go, but the self-styled anti-fascists of the Stalinist and Trotskyist left remain as distrusted now as they ever have been.

DAP