A Pamphlet which Misses its Mark (1932)

Pamphlet Review from the November 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of the very large number of pamphlets claiming to be Socialist propaganda that are published month by month, only a small number are of even passing value. In the main they deal with capitalism’s problems from the standpoint of the reformer without any real grasp of Socialist principles. Occasionally something better is attempted. Among the latter is “From Slavery to Freedom,” published by the Socialist Propaganda League. It purports to be a Socialist survey of history from the earliest times, the object being to relate the Socialist future to the past development of mankind. It fails in its essential purpose for several reasons. The first is that the treatment of social development in the pamphlet is too sketchy and disjointed, due probably to the writer or writers having tackled the job without first deciding exactly what lessons were to be drawn. The value of a knowledge of history to the workers (even a much simplified and elementary knowledge) is a severely practical one. It is necessary that the workers should realise that the social system has changed in the past, that it has changed because of material forces which are still operating, that these forces work in a manner which can be expressed in laws of social development. Learning these lessons of history the worker can discover from the past how to organise for the capture of political power as a prelude to the establishment of Socialism. But to make this clear in the space of a small pamphlet is a very difficult task. The chief difficulty is to select just enough of the main features to illustrate the course of social development without making the description read like a bewildering catalogue of unrelated facts. The worker who approaches this pamphlet without previous acquaintance with the subject is likely to find it very hard to bring away the few outstanding ideas which it should have been the aim to provide.

The writer of the pamphlet has not the same excuse for certain careless and ambiguous passages in the historical section. For example, the treatment of the State is unsatisfactory and likely to mislead. Having said (p. 9) that the early Gens, Phratry, Tribe and Confederation each had its own “political organisation,” the pamphlet fails to explain the fundamental difference between that form of organisation and the later coercive political organisation—the State. On page 13 the capitalists are described as capturing “the political institutions” from the nobility, while on page 16 reference is made to the same capitalists depending upon “the centralised official and military State.” This would make it look as if the administrative organisation of the Tribes and Gens, etc., was like the political institutions controlled by the nobility, i.e., a “centralised official and military State.”

It is also very misleading to suggest, as is done on page 9, that cannibalism was an “occasional alternative” to slavery.

On page 10 is the grossly misleading assertion that under chattel slavery “wealth was overwhelmingly produced for use and not for profit.”

The inference to be drawn from the first three paragraphs on page 11 is that Feudalism originated through drought and famine in Asia and was not the offspring of conditions within the Roman Empire.

There is a slip on page 21, where it is said to be paradoxical that an employer should introduce a machine costing less than the wages of the displaced workers. “Less” should obviously be “more.”

On page 24, line 29, “creditors” should read “debtors.”

On page 16 we are told “The lands of the Monasteries and the Gilds had already been filched by the absolute monarchy,” and on the next page, “on their accession to power the merchants and manufacturing class proceeded to dispossess the Church of its lands and territories.” The suppression of the Monasteries occurred in the 16th century, before the “merchant and manufacturing class” came into possession of political power, although the movement was born of their needs.

Leaving the historical treatment and turning to the attempted exposition of Socialist principles, we find many serious defects, a few of which are briefly noted.

On page 2 we are told that the “threat of tariffs” will “still further depreciate their [workers] exiguous standard of comfort.” No further explanation is given of this statement, and the reader is left with the impression that tariffs are a cause of a lowered standard of living, and presumably, therefore, are something the worker should resist, although on page 26 free trade is called a “capitalist nostrum.”

On page 2 also we have the familiar I.L.P.-Communist nonsense, about the catastrophic collapse of capitalism in the assertion that the development of capitalism will lead “ultimately” to a condition where “production has been brought to a standstill.” A knowledge of the working of capitalism during crises would have prevented the writer from supporting this fallacy.

Again, on page 2, there is reference to the workers responding to the call for war with “a flat refusal.” This is just sentimental claptrap. A capitalist class placed in power by a non-Socialist electorate is not going to be greatly disturbed by attempts to organise a flat refusal. The curious part is that the next page contains the assertion “we cannot give support to any movements which have for their object the removal of some particular evil arising from the system itself.” Surely war is an evil arising from the system itself ?

The treatment of trade unions is muddled, apparently being the work of two persons with opposing views. One of them, on page 26, describes the evils of bureaucratic control of trade unions and asks rhetorically if the workers are not as competent as their officials “to control and manage their own organisation, not to please capital, but themselves?” This implies that trade unions can be made useful to the workers, and it is evidently the same writer who says on page 27 that the workers should “set about the task of building up more effective industrial organisations having for their motto the abolition, not the amelioration, of the wages system.” But the other writer will not have this. He says (p. 26) that “even the most perfect control over officials, and the most willing and efficient service from them could not make of trade unions an effective instrument for improving the conditions of the workers, or even retaining their hard-won present standards.” It is pertinent to ask how these “hard-won” standards were “won,” if not by trade union organisation and action. And if the workers ought to leave the present unions (as they are told on page 27) and build up “more effective industrial organisations,” having as their aim “the abolition, not the amelioration, of the wages system,” what would be the use of this if, as we are told on the next line, “industrial action can only be applied against effects of capitalism, and cannot dislodge the cause of the workers’ slavery and poverty” ?

la short, the pamphlet rejects the case made out by Marx for trade union action (see Value, Price and Profit for example), without making any serious attempt to answer his arguments.

On page 19 an explanation of the class-struggle tells the reader that the class-struggle ensues from the conflict between employers and workers over the conditions of employment, instead of out of the private ownership of the means of life. This is unsound in theory and in practise has led to many unsound actions by those who have fallen into this error.

Lastly, the pamphlet makes some malicious assertions about the S.P.G.B., for example, that it is controlled by a “caucus” although “in form, the control … is, democratic.” Anyone who cares to look at our rules and to see our E.C. and other organs at work (all of them are open to the public) will see the silliness of this assertion, for which no kind of evidence is given, except the vague implication that “all forward movements initiated outside of their own circle” are blocked. By “forward movements” the writer doubtless means such policies as the anti-Marxian and anti-working-class attitude on trade unions expressed in the pamphlet. It does not seem to have dawned on the writer of the pamphlet that such retrograde ideas make no headway in the S.P.G.B., because the members have joined it on a basis which excludes them and, therefore, do not want any such innovation.

Without saying so explicitly the pamphlet manages to imply that members of the S.P.G.B. are allowed to belong to the Angliccan or Catholic Churches. This is utterly devoid of truth.

Reference is made to the S.P.G.B.’s attitude that a Socialist, elected to Parliament by a Socialist electorate on the Socialist platform, might be instructed by the Party to vote for certain measures that might come before Parliament, on their merits. The only argument given in the pamphlet against this sound Marxian attitude is that such votes might in certain circumstances save a capitalist Government from defeat. The attitude put in the pamphlet is that “a Socialist electorate would understand the need for opposition on each and every occasion to each and every capitalist Party.” This overlooks the point that a vote against a measure introduced by a capitalist opposition party in the House might have precisely the same effect as a vote for a measure introduced by the Government, i.e., it “might save a capitalist Government from defeat.”

Incidentally, we wonder if the writer holds that a Socialist in the House of Commons ought to vote against, say, a proposal by a capitalist party to stop a war, on the ground that the proposal emanated from a capitalist party.

Our policy of fighting elections for propaganda purposes is attacked by the pamphlet, by means of the dishonest device of implying (without saying so definitely) that our candidates run on a non-Socialist programme. The writer of the pamphlet knows this to be completely untrue.

The Socialist Propaganda League should stop and consider whether its claim to be an organisation for educating the workers and clearing away confusion does not place it under the obligation of making only those statements in support of its case for which evidence can be given. Malevolent, improvable and lying insinuations, levelled on the principle that some part of a wad of mud is sure to stick, do not help the working class movement, and it is doubtful whether in. the long run they even help those who fling them.

G. H. D.

Smashing Capitalism (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

Have you ever heard the expression: “we must smash capitalism?” It’s popular among so-called revolutionists of the Leninist variety It isn’t easy to figure exactly what they mean by it but one gets the impression that the capitalist state, in all of its ramifications, must be destroyed and something brand new — as for example a “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” — reared in its place. This attitude is consistent with the views of Lenin, all right, but is completely foreign to the system of thought developed by Marx and Engels, commonly referred to by scientific socialists as Historical Materialism.

In fact, much of Marx' and Engels' lives were taken up with the struggle against anarchist thought and growth which had a considerable development during those times and which was — to some extent — strikingly similar to the theories of Lenin that developed later. True, the anarchist spokesmen did not advocate a “proletarian dictatorship" but the point we wish to make at this time is that they did advocate a "smashing" of the state. And the basis of this theory was a refusal on their part to regard society and the state. Itself, as an evolutionary development. Never mind where it came from, why it still exists, and what should develop out of It in the future. It is here, it acts as an oppressor to the majority of mankind, so we have to smash it completely without even trying to gain control of it. That has been the anarchist position on the state.

The Marxist argument, on the other hand, is that the state developed as a result of the division of peoples into economic classes. Prior to this, society was organised on the basis of kinship, a type of tribal communism. When some individuals began to amass private means and as this became more common it was discovered that kinship had no more relevance in the councils, that the important qualification now had become property ownership. And so the state was born.

We have had different kinds of states throughout written history. There have been chattel slave states, feudal states, and capitalist states. Scientific socialists see the capitalist state as a development brought about by the contradictions of feudal society, contradictions such as the vestment of land ownership in the church and the nobility and the subjection of the serfs and peasants. Capitalism needed the breaking of feudal shackles on land and the creation of a free working class—freed from the means of a livelihood. And so the bourgeoisie ultimately gained control of the feudal states and the necessary legislation was passed.

Marx and Engels saw the working class as a potentially revolutionary class that would organise politically to gain control of the bourgeois, or capitalist state. But not for the purpose of "smashing" it and erecting another state—a one-party dictatorship—in its place. To Marx and Engels, and to the scientific socialists of today, socialism will not be a one-party system but, rather, a no-party system. Once the working class has gained control of the state, wrested it from the capitalist class, both capitalists and workers cease to exist as economic classes. The age of politics and of political parties will come to an end. The state, in its historic capacity as an instrument of a ruling class in the subjugation of ruled classes, will be no more. But it will not be smashed. It will become transformed into an administration over the affairs of man rather than a government over man, himself, as it has always been and still remains. Let's organize, then, not to smash the state but to gain control of it. In this way lies the only real brotherhood of man, world socialism.

Capitalism and the State (1957)

From the July 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Fabian myth shared by Mr. Strachey is that increasing state activity, especially on its economic side, is an important factor in changing capitalism into something which is not really capitalism. Like Communists, although for other reasons many Labourites have proclaimed that the system is on its last legs. Unfortunately for such a view, capitalism seems to be a centipede.

State Economic Activity and Capitalism

It may be pointed out that state economic intervention has been a feature of modern capitalism right from the start in the form of state funds for capital projects, subsidies, technical research, tariffs, etc. So far from state intervention being a symptom of the system’s old age. it has. on the contrary, been a means whereby the various capitalist nationals have attained a more vigorous economic life.

That there has been a great increase in state activity in the history of modern capitalism is undeniable. This is due to the fact that the state is bound up with and inseparable from the general activities of capitalism. With the vast expansion of capitalism there has gone a corresponding increase in the activities and functions of the state. Just as the development of capitalism, nationally and internationally, has led to an increase in the antagonisms and tensions not only within the national economies, but between them, this in turn has greatly added to the growth of the weight and complexity of their problems. The state thus comes increasingly to the fore as the one social institution able to cope with these problems at any adequate level.

Origin of the State

Marxists do not regard the state as part of some eternal dispensation. It can be shown that the state is an historical product and, like all other social institutions, it has an origin and growth. Marxists point out that there have been societies without states, hence society is both logically and historically prior to the state institution. The state as an organised coercive agency does not in fact emerge until the break up of early tribalism, with its primitive egalitarianism, which was brought about by the development of private property relations and its concomitant privileged and unprivileged social classes.

With the division of the community into owners and non-owners of the sources of wealth production, the state as a social power becomes the means of ensuring the continuance of this division against disruption from within, as the result of social conflicts engendered by antagonistic class relations of production and enemies from without. The state thus serves to guarantee the legal titles of those who own the means of production and gives them the right to appropriate the labour of others, be they slaves, serfs or wage workers. In the ultimate instance these legal relations can receive a physical sanction by the control of the state over the armed forces. Thus any class which is the dominant class in a given set of private property relations of production must have direct or indirect access to the state apparatus.

The Struggle for State Power

If since the passing of primitive society history has been the history of class struggles, then these struggles have centred around the attempt to preserve or win state power. Thus an established ruling class will seek to maintain its control over the state machinery in order to perpetuate a social arrangement favourable to themselves. On the other hand, a rising class which aspires to become a new ruling class, will seek to obtain control of the state in order to mould it along the lines of their own interests. This was the position in which the bourgeoisie found itself in its struggle against the old feudal order, although economic development, by placing them in the key positions of the productive process, had given them an advantage over the old class, they found the old social organisation based on an older mode of production, inadequate for a new expanding form of production of which they would be the prime beneficiaries. The need for the control of state power became essential to bring about a social arrangement more accommodating for the extension and widening of the divergent economic powers.

It can be seen then that a particular form of state organisation is the product of a social class or classes which benefit from a particular set of property relations which it is the state's obligation to enforce.

The Meaning of Private Property Relations

When Marxists say that the state is the protector of private property, they mean that it guarantees the class interests of a given set of property relations. But the significance of these property relations do not consist in the mere ownership of things like the possession of a pair of trousers or the tools of an independent craftsman. Capitalist private property relations means a social relation between men, a relation between owners of the means of production and non-owners.

The social relations of production of capitalism are linked then with a definite class interest which confers upon those who own the wealth resources the right over the disposal of the labour of others. And it is to maintain and enforce these social relations of production that constitutes the primary function of the state.

Reformist View of the State

Marxists point out that class social systems, with their corresponding state structure, are the outcome of social development. They have come and gone, and there are good historical reasons for stating that capitalism, which is the latest of such systems, will also be the last and in turn will give way to a classless and hence stateless social organisation.

While Labour and Fabian theorists accept the fact of the class structure of capitalist society, they do so on different grounds to Marxists. For them social classes and state organisation have always existed and always will. That is why Labour propaganda, although it at times makes veiled references to the injustices of a class society, never advocate the abolition of classes. For them capitalism is part of an eternal dispensation. Their theory is then unhistorical and uncritical.

If, according to such a view, there must always be a class differentation in the social structure, what purpose does the state serve? Their answer is that the function of the state is to minimise the conflict between the classes to the greatest possible extent, in order to maximise social harmony. On such an assumption the state is not a class organ but a classless agency which exists to reconcile divergent economic interests for the greatest common good. Translated into actual political practice, it is the class collaboration theory of the old political parties, whereby the state serves as a means of seeking to blunt class antagonisms.

Such a view of the state provided an opportunistic springboard for the initial high dive of the Labour Party into politics. Its case against the Tories and Liberate was that it had subverted the true function of the state to act in the interests of the whole of society by taking sides in the use of state power. The side of the rich against the poor; thus using the state for a class purpose. It did not say the rich should not be rich, but that they should not be too rich. It did not say that the poor should not be poor, but that they should not be too poor. Social reforms and taxation were to be the instruments for redressing the abuses of Tory and Liberal rule and so bring about a greater equalisation of what they considered as part of the natural order of things to be a socially unequal situation. Nevertheless, their claim that by redressing social abuses they would restore the proper social balance between the classes, compelled them to pose as champions of the under-dog, and even gave the illusion if not the reality of their being a class party, which in spite of their most strenuous denials to the contrary, they have only recently lived down.

Accepting as they did the contest between Capital and Labour as a social norm, they claimed that they would see it was fought under the Marquis of Queensbury rules. As a genuine third man in the ring, they would see the bigger opponent did not use his weight unfairly or maul in the clinches. They would on occasions even compel him to pull his punches. Nevertheless, they were only too anxious to point out that should the workers attempt to take advantage of the situation, unduly, by pressing their claims too far, it would be necessary in the general interest of society for the state to seek to restrain them. That various Labour Governments have used this pretext to employ the repressive machinery of the state to curb the demands of various sections of the working class is too well known to need recording here. In the real world of capitalism the state remains the guarantor of capitalist property relations.

The old apologists for capitalism used to explain away its class division as a division between brain and hand. Labourites refer to it as the division between intellectual and manual work. Like the old apologists, they also accept as a corollary of this that great differences in income are part of the natural order of things. Mr. Strachey in his book, Contemporary Capitalism, in spite of his pseudo Marxist language, endorses the Labour' Party’s views on all these matters.

One cannot help being struck by the identity of Labour and Tories social outlook. The Tories also accept class society as part of the eternal dispensation and the state as being the true representative of society as a whole. Thus Burke, Hegel, Comte, John Stuart Mill, and Uncle Tom Cobley and all, find their synthesis in modern political theory.

Labour Party and Social Planning

When the Labour Party speak of social planning they do not imply the controlling and harmonising of the economic resources in the interest of the whole of society. What they mean is the adoption of certain state policies for the better regulation of the forces of capitalism. Indeed, in a system where profit is the ruling motive and anarchy of production an inevitable consequence, social planning in any real sense is impossible.

In the distant past Labourites saw the hope of a socially planned capitalism in the growth of monopolies. So far, however, from monopolies eliminating the anarchy of capitalist production, as was fondly imagined, they on the contrary tend to intensify it, because monopolies seek the pursuit of certain ends, regardless of the requirements of the economy as a whole.

Labour’s Changed Views on State Capitalism

Early Fabian and Labour theorists, often ex-civil servants, dreamt bureaucratic dreams of a state directed capitalism. Present day Labourites now see it as a nightmare. They have long learned that private appropriation, the interplay of the market and individual economic calculation are the indispensable norms of world capitalism and hence British capitalism. It knows that a Whitehall capitalism so far from solving present day problems, would only complicate and intensify them. In fact, the present anarchy of production would be the essence of economic rationalism compared with the organised chaos of a vast state controlled capitalism.

Now the Labour Party and, of course, Mr. Strachey along with them, have no “plans” for taking over capital accumulation. With proper safeguards Mr. Strachey blandly assures us capital investment and the profit motive must still be the unmutated mainspring of his “mutated economy.” As Mr. Morrison once observed, the Labour criticism of capitalism was not that the capitalist makes profit, but his inefficiency in failing to make continual profit sufficient enough to justify his existence. This also, it seems, is Mr. Strachey’s views.

State Investment

For many years it was fashionable for Labour “experts” to laud state capital investment as an alternative to private investment, and that a planned economy could be achieved by a major intervention in the economic affairs of capitalism via state investment. Such an assumption was utterly unrealistic. Not only would state investment have to compete with private investment, but capital accumulation and profit making would still constitute the mainspring of the system, and the problems of capitalism would remain essentially unaltered. In point of fact, any analysis of modern capitalist countries will show that the state has never assumed any obligation to direct and control capital accumulation, and Labour Governments have been no exception to the rule. What governments have done is to devise policies which seek to aid and maintain capital accumulation. Even social reform legislation, in so for as it succeeds in blunting class antagonisms, has for this reason a bearing on facilitating the smoother path for accumulation.

If capital accumulation, as it can be incontestably shown, is the norm of capitalist society, then it follows that state economic legislation must follow the pattern of that norm. Unless we assume that state policies are designed to undermine and finally destroy this most fundamental feature of capitalist behaviour—the self-expansion of capital. There is not the remotest evidence that the reformist parties contemplate such a project The state exists then to act on behalf of the aims and objectives of capitalist society. While state policies may modify capitalism, the state can never transform capitalist society, whose creature it is. And it is only transformation that can be equated with significant change.

Whatever changes the Labour Party envisages in capitalism, it always unchangingly assumes capital in eternal control. Something for which the capitalist class no doubt feel eternally grateful.

Ted Wilmott

State and class in pre-colonial West Africa (1999)

From the May 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Was the state instituted for mutual protection or did it arise when society became divided into classes?

Long before Marx and Engels, political thinkers and philosophers had written extensively on the concept of the state. In the 1640s, Thomas Hobbes had argued that the state was essentially a contract between the individual and the government. The alternative, called by Hobbes the state of nature, was a thoroughly unpleasant life—solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

This, according to Hobbes, the state emerged to improve mankind’s lot. However, Engels, summing up his historical analysis in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, argued that the State was a product of class society: “It is an admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel.” As if to echo Engels, Marx pointed out that the state could not have arisen, let alone maintained itself, had it been possible to reconcile classes. According to Marx the state is an instrument of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another.

Marx revealed that a definite level of development of labour productivity is essential before there is real opportunity for humans to exploit other humans. If people produce only the minimum of products required to maintain their physical existence and reproduction, any systematic appropriation of someone else’s labour is out of the question. The opportunity to appropriate someone else’s labour appears only when the productive forces have developed to the level at which the quantity of goods produced somewhat exceeds the minimum required to maintain the direct producers’ lives. The question then arises: Did Africa’s labour productivity reach a level that provided the opportunity for humans to exploit their fellow human beings? The answer is both no and yes. The appropriate answer to this question would enable us to determine the original of the state in pre-colonial Africa.

But it would be absurd to think of only the level of productive forces without the relations of production. Productive forces cannot be developed in a vacuum. People produce them jointly—in groups rather than on their own. People’s relationship to the means of production determine their position and place in the production and the mode of distribution of the products. Where one group of people makes its living by appropriating the labour of the other, then society is divided into the exploiter and exploited. The need to maintain this vampiric relationship of production leads to the rise of an apparatus of coercion and conditioning to systematically brainwash the exploited into accepting their exploitation as a normal condition of life or to crush their resistance.

Before private ownership

If this analysis of state and class is anything to go by then one cannot authentically talk of the state among some of the communities in Ghana before the 14th century. The predominant principle of social relations was that of the family and kinship associated with communalism. Among the Gur social groups in the Upper East Region of Ghana, for example, every member of the society had their position defined in terms of their relationship with their mother’s or father’s family. Leadership was based on religious ties to the Tindana, or custodian of the land, who ran the affairs of the people with a committee of elders chosen from all the families and clans of the territory. This committee administered land, the major means of production not as its personal property, but as the property of all the people in Gurum-Tinga (Gur land) who had the right to till it. Hunting, fishing and grazing grounds for animals were organised in a similar manner. No-one starved whilst others stuffed themselves with food and threw the excess away or sold it for profit. The basic economic law was that of providing the members of society with the necessary means of subsistence through communal ownership of the means of production. The absence of private property in the means of production, of the division into classes and the exploitation of man by man excluded the need for a state. Production was essentially of use values; and there was no alienation of the producer from his means of production.

The fundamental flaw in the social organisation of the Gur however was that the position of the Tindana was supposedly sanctioned by the gods, and therefore permanent. This notion also applied to the elders of families and clans who served in the committee of elders. Only death could loosen their grip on authority. This meant that people occupying positions of trust could use their positions for personal gain, taking a significant share of communal property and becoming rich; indeed vestiges of private ownership of property began to rear its ugly head in the Gur community around the 16th century. However this development did not reach its fullest maturity before the violent intrusion of British colonial rule. To a very large extent, this explained why the British colonial government had to create chiefs in Gur land and use them as instruments of its policy of exploitation and dehumanisation.

It is also important to note that once African societies began to expand by internal evolution, and the instruments of labour were perfected, people obtained more means of subsistence than was essential for their survival. The restricted nature of communal property and the egalitarian distribution of products of labour that characterised people such as the Gur acted as a drag on the further development of the productive forces. The need for joint labour disappeared with the appearance of sickles, iron-tipped hoes, spears and arrows. What this meant was that the possibility of individual labour also emerged. But individual labour brought about private ownership, private ownership brought about inequality between the people; and rich and poor people emerged. In the Mali empire, for example, the dominant mode of production was feudalism even though the communal and slave modes of production had not completely died out. By the end of the 15th century there were both chattel and domestic slaves in Mali comparable to the feudal serfs in Europe. In Senegal Portuguese traders also found that there were elements in the population who worked most days for their masters and a few days per month for themselves—a budding feudalist tendency.

A cursory look at the socio-economic and political scene in Africa before colonisation does not reveal one dominant mode of production. Also it is not easy to compartmentalise the socio-economic formations and arrange them in a sequence as some writers do, because the social and economic terrain reveals considerable unevenness in development. There were social formations representing hunting bands, communalism, feudalism while other formations represented a mixture of these. It was upon these that colonialism was superimposed.

Adongo Aidan Avugma

Bourgeois Political Economy in Shambles (2010)

Pamphlet Review from the April 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bourgeois Political Economy in Shambles. By Stefan Engel. Verlag Neuer Weg, 2009

This is an English translation of a pamphlet originally published in Germany, with the subtitle “Some additions to the Marxist-Leninist crisis theory.” ‘Marxism-Leninism’ was the official political theory of the former Soviet Union and was enforced throughout most of the former Eastern European satellite governments of the twentieth century. ‘Marxism-Leninism’ is often synonymous with Stalinism.

Engel gives a reasonable account of the current global crisis of capitalism, which began in September 2008.  Crises are inevitable under capitalism because, as Karl Marx pointed out, “a rift must continually ensue between the limited dimensions of consumption under capitalism and a production which forever tends to exceed this immanent barrier” (Capital, Vol. III). German chancellor Merkel, like politicians everywhere, blamed the “financial excesses with no sense of social responsibility, the abandonment of moderation and the middle course by a number of bankers and executives” which “steered the world into this crisis”. As Engel rightly says, this way of arguing “turns attention to the – undeniable – subjective failings of bankers and executives, and distracts attention from the essentials, from the laws of the capitalist mode of production. These laws compel every capitalist, whether factory owner or manager of a stock corporation, whether privately owned or state-owned company, to act, under penalty of ruin”.

But it is the ‘Marxism-Leninist’ understanding of the state, among other things, where it falls down. Engel quotes Engels on the state:

“The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers – proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head” (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm).

This should have made Engels (and Marx’s) position abundantly clear, but Lenin stood this argument on its head and claimed that capitalism and the state could be made democratic and that this is what socialism means. Engel cites a passage from a pamphlet written by Lenin in 1917:

“… socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased be capitalist monopoly” (original emphasis, www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/11.htm).

However, the whole thrust of Marx and Engels’s critique is that capitalism and the state, whatever form they take, can never be made to serve the interests of the whole people. For the same reason, the idea of a “socialist state” is a nonsensical contradiction in terms. Lenin was never clear about the need for a “socialist state” as he knew it flouted the basics of Marxism, though it is implicit in some of his writings. Leninists have no such qualms and here we read of the need for a “socialist state of genuine democracy”. But  Leninist states have an abysmal record on democracy, preferring instead a dictatorship over the proletariat as they grapple with the contradictions of managing capitalism. In theory and in practice, ‘Marxism-Leninism’ is a shambles.

Lew Higgins

What is common ownership? (2005)

From the April 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

  John Major didn’t believe in ‘class society’, Margaret Thatcher didn’t even believe in society, but private ownership is the defining factor of both. Meanwhile the concept of common ownership has only resulted in feeble nationalisation programmes. So, the question is What is common ownership?

The basis of any society is the way its members are organised for the production and distribution of wealth. Where a section of society controls the use of the means of production, then there is a class society. Another way of putting this is that the members of this section or class own the means of production, since to be in a position to control the use of something is effectively to own it, whether or not this is accompanied by some legal title deed.

It follows that a classless society is one in which the use of the means of production is controlled by all members of society on an equal basis, and not just by a section of them to the exclusion of the rest. James Burnham put this rather well in a passage in his book The Managerial Revolution:

  “For a society to be ‘classless’ would mean that within society there would be no group (with the exception, perhaps, of temporary delegate bodies, freely elected by the community and subject always to recall) which would exercise, as a group, any special control over access to the instruments of production; and no group receiving, as a group, preferential treatment in distribution”

In a classless society every member is in a position to take part, on equal terms with every other member, in deciding how the means of production should be used. Every member of society is socially equal, standing in exactly the same relationship to the means of production as every other member. Similarly, every member of society has access to the fruits of production on an equal footing.

Once the use of the means of production is under the democratic control of all members of society, class ownership has been abolished. The means of production can still be said to belong to those who control and benefit from their use, in this case to the whole population organised on a democratic basis, and so to be “commonly owned” by them. Common ownership has been defined as:

  “A state of affairs in which no person is excluded from the possibility of controlling, using and managing the means of production, distribution and consumption. Each member of society can acquire the capacity, that is to say, has the opportunity to realise a variety of goals, for example, to consume what they want, to use means of production for the purposes of socially necessary or unnecessary work, to administer production and distribution, to plan to allocate resources, and to make decisions about short term and long term collective goals. Common ownership, then, refers to every individual’s potential ability to benefit from the wealth of society and to participate in its running” (Jean-Claude Bragard, An Investigation of Marx’s Concept of Communism, his emphasis).

Even so, to use the word “ownership” can be misleading in that this does not fully bring out the fact that the transfer to all members of society of the power to control the production of wealth makes the very concept of property redundant. With common ownership no one is excluded from the possibility of controlling or benefiting from the use of the means of production, so that with reference to them the concept of property in the sense of exclusive possession is meaningless: no one is excluded, there are no non-owners.

We could invent some new term such as “no-ownership” and talk about the classless alternative society to capitalism being a “no-ownership” society, but the same idea can be expressed without having to do this if common ownership is understood as being a social relationship and not a form of property ownership. This social relationship—equality between human beings with regard to the control of the use of the means of production—can equally accurately be described by the terms “classless society” and “democratic control” as by “common ownership” since these three terms are only different ways of describing it from different angles. The use of the term “common ownership” to refer to the basic social relationship of the alternative society to capitalism is not to be taken to imply therefore that common ownership of the means of production could exist without democratic control. Common ownership means democratic control means a classless society.

When we refer to the society based on common ownership, generally we use the term “socialism”, though we have no objection to others using “communism”, since for us these terms mean exactly the same and are interchangeable.

Not state ownership

Common ownership is not to be confused with state ownership, since an organ of coercion, or state, has no place in socialism. A class society is a society with a state because sectional control over the means of production and the exclusion of the rest of the population cannot be asserted without coercion, and so without a special organ to exercise this coercion. On the other hand, a classless society is a stateless society because such an organ of coercion becomes unnecessary as soon as all members of society stand in the same relationship with regard to the control of the use of the means of production. The existence of a state as an instrument of class political control and coercion is quite incompatible with the existence of the social relationship of common ownership. State ownership is a form of exclusive property ownership which implies a social relationship which is totally different from socialism.

Common ownership is a social relationship of equality and democracy which makes the concept of property redundant because there are no longer any excluded non-owners. State ownership, on the other hand, presupposes the existence of a government machine, a legal system, armed forces and the other features of an institutionalised organ of coercion. State-owned means of production belong to an institution which confronts the members of society, coerces them and dominates them, both as individuals and as a collectivity. Under state ownership the answer to the question “who owns the means of production?” is not “everybody” or “nobody” as with common ownership; it is “the state”. In other words, when a state owns the means of production, the members of society remain non-owners, excluded from control. Both legally and socially, the means of production belong not to them, but to the state, which stands as an independent power between them and the means of production.

The state is not an abstraction floating above society and its members; it is a social institution, and, as such, a group of human beings, a section of society, organised in a particular way. This is why, strictly speaking, we should have written above that the state confronts most members of society and excludes most of them from control of the means of production. For wherever there is a state, there is always a group of human beings who stand in a different relationship to it from most members of society: not as the dominated, nor as the excluded, but as the dominators and the excluders. Under state ownership, this group controls the use of the means of production to the exclusion of the other members of society. In this sense, it owns the means of production, whether or not this is formally and legally recognised.

Another reason why state ownership and socialism are incompatible is that the state is a national institution which exercises political control over a limited geographical area. Since capitalism is a world system, the complete state ownership of the means of production within a given political area cannot represent the abolition of capitalism, even within that area. What it does mean is the establishment of some form of state capitalism whose internal mode of operation is conditioned by the fact that it has to compete in a world market context against other capitals.

Since today capitalism is worldwide, the society which replaces capitalism can only be worldwide. The only socialism possible today is world socialism. No more than capitalism can socialism exist in one country. So the common ownership of socialism is the common ownership of the world, of its natural and industrial resources, by the whole of humanity. Socialism can only be a universal society in which all that is in and on the Earth has become the common heritage of all humankind, and in which the division of the world into states has given way to a world without frontiers with a democratic world administration as well as local and regional democracy.

Adam Buick

The Workers and the State (1946)

From the February 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world’s workers have been conscripted, categorised, rationed and regimented by the power of the State, ruthlessly should they live in dictatorship countries, by their “consent” in the democracies. In spite of this the Socialist view that the State is “the executive committee of the ruling class” is contested by many. Let us therefore take a swift survey of the evidence of history.

The Social institution called the State had its genesis in the advent of private property, and its beginning took place after thousands of years in man’s history, during which he had no concept of private property as such. From these misty eons of time we find that man, and the word includes woman, in the unequal fights against the forces of nature, banded together in tribes or clans in which all implements and provisions were the common property of the whole community, and no trace has been found by philologists of the words mine and thine in use during this immense period of primitive communism.

The tribes practised complete economic and social equality, there being therefore no classes, no law or state, only the observance of the tribal rites and customs; everyone took part in the common tasks of the day and had an equal voice in the election of officers. An injury to one was an injury to all in this democracy where the social relation was that of kinship, and the greatest punishment, banishment to the world of terrors outside the tribe.

Writers on this period of man’s development (Engels' “Origin of the Family”) describe how the “means of production” evolved and changed man from the savage hunting the animals for food armed only with crude weapons, to that of barbarian who now domesticated the animals and became a pastoralist, the period which ushers in the dawn of civilisation, and private property.

So close was man always to the edge of famine that the need for moving to new hunting grounds inevitably brought him into conflict with other occupants and during these forays captives were taken and killed; sometimes they were eaten. Man later learned that the captives could provide many meals if put to attend the pastures and cattle he had acquired.

So the enslavement of man by man aided by the increasing knowledge of agriculture begun the private ownership of the means of life.

This new method of production gave rise to wealthy families and poor families and in place of the communal family group there came the inferiority of woman as the mere “help meet” of her lord and master, for only through him could their issue inherit the family property, now protected by the law and force of the State.

The age-old tribal communism had been broken down by the needs and institutions that were set up and given the sanctity of authority by the class which owned and controlled land, cattle, money and slaves. The city states which eventually arose in the congenial Mediterranean area were based on this class ownership and were the scene of the violent class-struggles which fill the history books, and it is a sobering thought that the philosophy, architecture, and oratory of Rome and Athens were only made possible by the labours of a slave class whose toil gave the owners the comfort and leisure to pursue those studies.

The republic of Rome was organised on a military basis and had a constitution drawn up which divided the population into six classes, each class holding votes according to its property strength, whilst for defence each vote in the legislature carried the duty of providing a centurion or officer over a hundred men drawn from the populace It is a commentary on modern war that the poorest of the proletariat, having no property, were not asked to defend their “way of life”; they being classified as mere breeders by the Roman state.

Thus the possessing class held political power during the time of Rome battling against its Italian tribal neighbours and later as the centre of an empire holding the greater part of Europe and Africa in its grip. The slave system ate into the heart of the Roman state and brought ruin and decadence in its train; the slave taken in war. or made so by debt, was considered a chattel that had no legal right to properly, to marry or enter into a contract. Slaves often provided a Roman holiday as gladiators trained to fight each other in the arena, a training which served them in good stead in one of the several Servile Wars that broke out. Spartacus, joined by the gladiators' school, roused the slaves, trained them and inflicted defeats on the Roman army for four years, the revolt being finally crushed and its supporters brutally burnt or crucified in thousands by the victors.

Reform in the late days of the Empire allowed the slave to buy his freedom, or as a serf to farm a plot of the broken up estates, for work had become a degradation in the eyes of the Romans, and by now the large landowners had ruined the small owners by estates run entirely by slaves brought from the imperial wars by a paid proletarian army. Rome became filled with discharged soldiery, freed men and proletarians, demanding bread and land from a ruling class replete with the plunder and tribute of the wars and colonies. No the state gave them doles, circuses, and more wars. Furthermore, the state declared the “public ownership" of the slave's religion, Christianity, long persecuted for hinting that the slave was as good as his owner—in heaven. Yet nothing could allay the rot of such a slave economy, and Rome offered little resistance when beset by the Teutonic hordes from outside.

The fall of Rome's military power saw the splitting up of Europe into many principalities and kingdoms which owed their existence to the usurping of the tribe and clan system by the warrior and land owning class, assisted now by the spiritual inheritor of Rome's power, the Roman Church, headed by the Pope. This epoch called Feudalism was one of chronic warfare over land in which the remnants of communal society were stamped out by the lauded chiefs, and where the Church as an arbiter became a great land-owning and political force used in bemusing and enforcing class rule on the enslaved class, the serfs. The theory of the state was one of service, and pyramidic in structure; the. king holding all land in his realm and granting its ownership to his subjects under bis protection, they swearing loyalty to him and his law while providing him with arms and soldiery according to their status. The serfs farmed their lord's land not as the uneconomical slaves of Rome but with the added interest of raising their own keep on strips of land granted them by the lord of the manor. Revolts, but more the need of the state for money, later gave the serfs the liberty to rent small plots, notably in England, as peasants.

Meanwhile another class was growing, that of the merchants and manufacturers, who resented the king’s power to tax and squander money on wars whilst they had no voice in the council of barons and king, and thus arose in England the Parliament of Commoners which the king summoned as he thought fit, generally for money, or as a lever in his quarrels with the barons. The townsmen or burghers grew more insistent against the church and king as the latter were fettering their ever-growing commerce by state restrictions and the ban on usury. This clash of interests found expression in religion, and Protestantism was adopted by the merchant class from the anti-Pope doctrines of Luther of Germany. Tactically they backed Henry VIII in his quarrel with the Pope over the breaking of his marriage vows, sacred to the feudal church, a schism whereby the crown “requisitioned” the church lands and wealth, thus severing its power.

The class struggle of the rising capitalist class went on through the reigns, and finally culminated in a civil war in which the Parliamentarians recruiting the yeomanry and townsmen ended absolute monarchy by defeating the Royalists and beheading their king, Charles I, in Whitehall.

With the state in the hands of the capitalist class we enter the era of industrial capitalism, where abroad the capitalists grab colonies and roam the world for markets and raw materials, while at home their allies the capitalist landlords drive the peasants off the land and into the towns where, as "free'’ men, they enter the factories to a new slavery, wage-dom, a revolution still pursued with variations in India and Russia to-day. The new mode of production, the hiring of labour power to operate power-driven machinery, places the whole wage class in subjection to the owners by virtue of the monopoly of the means of production in their hands. Furthermore, over and above the total wage bill it leaves in their possession enormous surpluses of commodities which they must trade abroad, therefore the state increases and jealously guards the spheres of influence and foreign markets for this overplus, for out of its sale comes the new capital to repeat the process of profit making. Should an actual threat by rivals arise the state invokes its power over propaganda, arms the wage workers and with many patriotic slogans urges them to annihilate the enemy of the national interests. These wars, local at first, have increasingly involved all in misery and destruction while with the advance of science the technique of war is revolutionised by new equipment and weapons.

To-day the state, with two world wars to its credit, becomes more authoritarian by the needs of modern total war, and must even in the "peace” retain in its hands the power to regiment workers and direct industry in readiness for a possible world war 3. Hence the long view of some capitalists in favouring nationalisation plans so beloved by the "left.”

We have made a case for the class and military nature of the state. Yet is it possible to end the state and the exploitation of man by man ?

The wars and poverty of capitalism are an unnecessary contradiction which grown-up mankind should not now tolerate, in view of the titanic output of wealth possible if society was freed from profit and class rule.

Socialists advocate the democratic social ownership of all means of wealth production, a return in fact to man's earlier practice, but on a mach higher plane, his forays for example were caused by hunger, not by surpluses.

The owning class is not fitted mentally to accomplish this great social change, it must be the work of the majority the now enfranchised workers, and they must not waste precious time reforming their masters' system but grasp the need for ending it before capitalism hurls us all into another conflagration which will leave surviving mankind the inheritor of mere dust and rabble.

Frank Dawe

Letter: Mr. Dight says this is the "The Kybosh" (1920)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the Editors.

Dear Sirs,

Your correspondent's reply to my letter is, like the flowers that bloom in the spring, nothing to do with it. I could not for the life of me grasp what he was driving at till I came to that part of it where he says—

"How the quotation from the twelfth paragraph describing the Commune as 'the political form at last discovered,' etc., helps Mr. Dight, who is opposed to political action and policy, I fail to see." 

I can only conclude that J.F. was sick when he read and replied to my letter, as I certainly do not believe that he would wilfully misrepresent, and the other alternative of stupidity on J.F.'s part is very far from being manifest. If he had read my letter carefully he would not have wasted, what must be to you, your valuable space, in replying, at such great length, to something that doesn't exist, except in his own heated imagination. If he had paid more attention to my letter he would have seen that I was NOT "opposed to political action and policy," but that I was concerned with advocating ''the political form at last discovered, under which labour could work out its own economic emancipation" as opposed to your parliamentarism. To utterly ignore and dismiss the above quotation from Marx with the remark that it doesn't help me, "who is opposed to political action and policy" (J.F. says that, I don't) is on a par with the rest of his reply, namely, a shuffle.

Even though I were opposed to political action, the above quotation from Marx does not help your party, or J.F., but diametrically opposes your position, when in your Declaration of Principles you refer to "THE machinery of government" and the need for utilising "THIS machinery" as a means for achieving working-class emancipation. The British parliamentary political machine existed at the time when Marx wrote in reference to the Commune that "its true secret was this. It was essentially the government of the working class—it was the political form at last discovered, under which labour could work out its own economic emancipation." (Italics mine.) Note the words "at last discovered." For the purpose of emancipation, therefore, .Marx had apparently been seeking to discover "the political form," etc., and in spite of the existing British parliamentary political machinery, "the political form" was only "at last discovered" with the advent of the Paris Commune.

Another instance in J.F.'s reply which may be cited as one in which he attempts to set up an Aunt Sally before proceeding to knock it down, is the one in which he quotes Lenin in "contradiction" to my "attempt at a case" (as if in my letter I was in any way concerned with supporting or opposing Lenin). And how does Lenin "so flatly contradict" etc. To show how J.F. quotes as follows : "The exploited classes need political supremacy in order to abolish all exploitation," etc. Seeing that I advocate this political supremacy, I fail to see how it contradicts my position. As I have already inferred, J.F. could not have read my letter with any great care, else he would have noted my statement that "during a proletarian revolution the bourgeois State machine will not be utilised but broken and in its stead another State erected—the dictatorship of the proletariat." What J.F. fails to see (among other numerous things) is that there is a vast difference between attaining to "political supremacy" and the politically unsound attempt at capturing "the machinery of government" and utilising it as "the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege." (Your Declaration of Principles.)

With reference to the charge levelled against me of having lifted a sentence from its context and so subjecting that sentence to a different interpretation than was originally intended, I am fully aware that that has been attempted by Anarchists in the past, and I have had occasion to frustrate the attempt and to point out that Marx and Engels were not "opposed to political action and policy." But then I quoted the sentence from its context in the sense that implied the existence of the context in the same way as Marx and Engels have seen fit to do, for in the preface to the "Communist Manifesto" Marx and Engels have found it quite sufficient to quote the sentence only as being all-important in itself.

I note that my letter has been given the title of "Those Misrepresentations of Marx Turn Up Again." Now I am very much concerned about "those misrepresentations," and I contend that you are the party that has been indulging in them on the one hand, and the Anarchists on the other : for, while on the one hand the Anarchists have sought to establish the claim that Marx and Engels were opposed to any political activities on the part of the workers, you, on the other hand, claim that the working class can "simply lay hold of the ready made State machinery and wield it for its own purposes." If J.F. read my letter as he should have done, he will see it to have been an endeavour to turn those "misrepresentations" down rather than up.

How the long quotation from "The Civil War in France" goes to show "the workers' position after they have seized this power (political supremacy) I cannot see. Nor is it very clear what is meant by "the workers' position after they have seized this power." We get an inkling, however, from another source, as instance, the statement of Gilmac in this month's Socialist Standard, Says Gilmac:

  "This statement appears before Marx's summary of the development of the State and he then goes on to show why the working class cannot wield it for its own purposes. The reason is that the State is a repressive power used against a subject class. As there will be no subject class in the new society, there will be no use for a repressive power." 

The quotation by Gilmac from Engels as well as from Marx is very unfortunate for your party and supports my contention. But how does Gilmac quote Engels in support of your Declaration of Principles that the "instrument of oppression" (the State) can be "converted into the agent of emancipation"? Here is the quotation from Engels:

  "From the very outset the Commune had to recognise that the working class having once obtained supremacy in the State, could not work with the old machinery of government." (Italics mine.) 

And here is his quotation from Marx :

  "The worker must, sometime, get the political power into his own hands in order to lay the foundations of a new organisation of labour. He must overthrow the old political system that upholds the old institutions, etc." (Italics mine.) 

Marx here clearly shows my contention in my letter to have been correct, namely, that "during a proletarian revolution the bourgeois State machine will not be utilised but broken," etc. Your party is not out for the "overthrow" of the "old political system," etc., but to "convert" it "into the agent of emancipation." The position when Socialism is established is such, of course, that the State will not be needed, because of the abolition of classes, and Engels has told us that in the process of this abolition "the State will wither away." What State did Engels refer to? Did he refer to the bourgeois or the proletarian State? The Communards "overthrew the old political system" (it did not "wither away") because "they could not work with the old machinery of government," and Marx says that the workers "must overthrow the old political system." Obviously it is the proletarian State to "which Engels refers—the erection of which you should advocate if you are Marxians. I said in my letter that I was opposed to your parliamentarism and in justification of this parliamentarism J.F. quotes as follows; "The Commune was to have been a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time."

Well, of course, the proletarian State will be parliamentary in the broad sense of its meaning, and so are the Russian Soviets; but then I used the term in the limited sense, as you did some months ago when you had an article on "Parliament or Soviets," and when you advocated for Parliament as opposed to the other.

Referring to my statement that there can be no such thing as a constitutional social revolution J.F. says that in that way I have shown my "ignorance of even modern history, for Japan carried through a constitutional social revolution in 1871 when feudalism was abolished." I do not deny that Japan carried through a social revolution, but is J.F. sure that it was constitutional? I take it from his remarks on this point that he has read the constitution of feudal Japan and that he hasn't in any way found it in conflict with the political aspirations of the Japanese bourgeoisie of that time. If that is so, then I am astounded at J.F.'s merit in the analytical sense—or the lack of it. All I know is that it runs counter to the Marxian theory of the Materialist Conception of History. Fancy, a constitutional social revolution when "the economic structure of society is the real basis on which the juridical and political superstructure is raised, and to which definite social forms of thought correspond : in short, the mode of production determines the character of the social, political, and intellectual life generally." (Marx," Capital.") And again:

 "In every historical epoch the prevailing mode of production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch." (Engels, second preface to the "Communist Manifesto.") 

In conclusion, I am convinced that if Marx and Engels were living to-day, and providing you had any influence with the working class, they would ask to be saved from their "friends." Apart from commenting upon the fact that I have noticed one or two minor distortions of my letter, I think I have given you enough to ponder over.

The statement by J.F. that I haven't read the works I quoted from is not true. This is the result of his knowledge that I did not quote from the actual works which I read years ago, but which I did not possess at the time of writing my letter. I note that J.F. calls his reply "The Socks." Will you kindly permit me to call this rejoinder "The Kybosh"?

Yours faithfully, 

H. Dight

Reply:

Then What Is This? 
One can easily agree with Mr. Dight when he complains that he does not understand my reply to his first letter. The lack of understanding is certainly not limited to that reply. It extends to Marx's writings, and even to several of his (Mr. Dight's) own statements.

When a correspondent misquotes, misinterprets, and opposes the works of an author he claims to agree with, there are two explanations possible of his action. One is that he has not read that author, the other is that he is deliberately misquoting him. I gave the long quotations from Marx to show the inaccuracy of Mr. Dight's statements, and gave the charitable interpretation that he had not read Marx. Now, while claiming that he has read Marx, he states that it "was years ago," and admits that he had not the works by him when writing, thus confirming my case. But he makes a far more important admission. In quoting from Lenin's book he had omitted certain words that I pointed out altered the whole sense of the paragraph. He now admits that he omitted those words, and then says "Well, of course, the proletarian State will be parliamentary in the broad sense of its meaning." This latter statement not only shatters his whole position, but is another illustration of the lack of understanding referred to above.

Mr. Dight tries to contend that his first letter showed that he "was not opposed to political action and policy," and in support of this contention says he was "concerned with advocating 'the political form at last discovered under which labour could work out its own emancipation' as opposed to your parliamentarism." This is another case of failure to understand his own terms. Although I had, in my previous answer, given a short account of political and parliamentary actions, Mr. Dight makes not the slightest attempt to deal with that account, nor even to state what he means by "parliamentarism."

There are two, and only two, general methods of political action open to the working class. One is to use their political weapons to place the master class in Parliament—the citadel of power—and the other is to use those weapons to drive the master class out of that citadel. We, being Marxists, advocate the latter method.

Mr. Dight opposes this policy. But he does not advocate the former policy. Therefore the only attitude left open to him by his antagonism to our policy is opposition to political action.

Mr. Dight says that he "cannot see" how the long quotation from "The Civil War in France" says what it states. Most of our readers will agree as to his blindness when they are reminded of a phrase in the Manifesto of the Central Committee given in the earlier part of the quotation: "They" (the proletarians of Paris) "have understood that it is in their imperious and their absolute right to render themselves masters of their own destinies, by seizing upon the governmental power." Marx gloried in their action, which is the policy laid down in our Declaration of Principles. When I said that the quotation in full showed that the much abused phrase of Marx was referring to the workers' position after this seizure Mr. Dight retorts that I am answered by Gilmac when quoting Engels in the same issue. Doubtless it surprises Mr. Dight to find two writers in such close agreement, a crime of which our writers and speakers are commonly guilty. Gilmac's quotation says: " From the very start the Commune had to recognise that the working class having once attained supremacy in the State, could not work with the old machinery of government." Here, in language simple enough for a child to understand, Marx and Engels state that the workers must first seize political power to achieve emancipation. It is as clear as daylight that before the workers can construct a State in harmony with the common ownership of the means of life, they must have reached power, must have "attained supremacy," must have "laid hold of the State machinery," must have captured Parliament. Not until they have carried out this political action can they control the armed forces and use them as the agent of emancipation to drive the capitalist class out of possession.. Obviously those who oppose this policy are anti-Marxians, whether they call themselves Anarchists or Communists.

Mr. Dight asks if I found "the constitution of feudal Japan in conflict with the political aspirations of the Japanese bourgeoisie of that time?" And then he says: "All I know is that it runs counter to the Marxian theory of the Materialist Conception of History." Of course, he does not know anything of the sort. His statement shows first the confusion existing in his mind, secondly the lack of knowledge of the conditions by his reference to the "political aspirations" of the Japanese bourgeoisie, and thirdly his entire ignorance of the Materialist Conception of History.

That theory points out that when economic development reaches a certain stage, a more or less rapid change must take place in the superstructure of society, but, of course, says nothing at all of the change being brought about "constitutionally" or "unconstitutionally." as, clearly, this factor depends upon the circumstances prevailing at the time. In accordance with the powers given them by the constitution, the ruling class in Japan (partly capitalist partly feudal) carried through a social revolution. All Mr. Dight's "fancies" cannot touch these facts. Another illustration of what can be done "constitutionally" occurred in this country in 1914. When war broke out the Parliament—the central organ of Political Power—wiped out the whole legal basis of Private Property and Personal Right by giving the Government power to take any property and any person it desired under the notorious Defence of the Realm Acts. And this was quite "constitutional" and not in the least "Fancy," as so many found to their cost.

There is one other inaccuracy. Mr. Dight wishes to call his rejoinder "The Kybosh." Its proper title would be "The Boomerang."

Jack Fitzgerald

Socialism versus anarchism (1987)

From the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party is opposed to anarchism. Why? At a superficial level, we seem to have something in common: we both want a stateless society. However, it is precisely on this point that socialism and anarchism differ and more besides. One way of bringing out these differences is to contrast the arguments of Karl Marx and his three main anarchist opponents: the individualist anarchism of Max Stirner, the mutualist anarchism of P. J. Proudhon and the collectivist anarchism of Michael Bakunin. This is not, however, an argument over dead men's bones. Marx's criticisms of anarchism in the nineteenth century are still broadly acceptable today.

Like Marx we accept the conceptual distinction between the state and society. Human existence is necessarily social existence but the state, as the social institutions and relationships of coercion, is not a necessary feature of human life. The state, in fact, is the outcome of a historically specific form of society: private property society. Capitalism is the latest phase of private property society in which the state serves the interests of the dominant social class. Socialists contend that capitalism does not function in workers' interests and that in order to revolutionise society in their interests it is important that a majority of class conscious workers gain control of the state. Democratic socialist control of the state prior to its abolition enables workers to reorganise society in their interests: a classless, moneyless, stateless society based on common ownership. But in so far as anarchists can agree about anything, they all deny that workers should or can gain control of the state.

Stirner

Whereas socialists see the source of oppression and exploitation in the social relationships of capitalism (which includes the state), anarchists tend to see it in authority in general and the state in particular. Max Stirner opposed all authority on egotistical grounds. But he took this line of argument to its logical conclusion. In his claims for absolute egoism he rejects not only the state but society itself. This nihilistic attitude was clearly expressed in his main work, The Ego and His Own (1844):

  I, the egoist, have not at heart the welfare of this "human society". I sacrifice nothing to it. I only utilise it: but to be able to utilise it completely 1 must transform it rather into my property and my creature - i.e., I must annihilate it and form in its place the Union of Egoists.

Most of The German Ideology (1845). by Marx and Engels, is a reply to Stirner's ideas. They ridiculed Stirner's ''rebellious'' egoism and argued for a socialist revolution in which the individual and his class are liberated. Socialism will be a set of social relationships in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all; it is not an attempt to subjugate the individual to some monstrous collectivity, as Marxism is so often portrayed in anarchist caricatures. As for Stirner, his ideas would be impossible to put into practice. The required "Union” undermines his egoist viewpoint. The cooperative nature of the modern productive process is inescapable. But this doesn't stop so-called "libertarians'' today making private property a virtue in the manner of Stirner, though they would rather not spell out his conclusions. By claiming that private property and the pursuit of selfishness are the proper goals of human life they well illustrate the alienating effects of capitalism. For private property is a ''right" against society; it is, in a very real sense, anti-social and anti-human.

Proudhon

The term "anarchism" was first introduced by P. J. Proudhon in his book What is Property? (1840), in which he gave the famous reply, "Property is theft". However, he didn’t mean this phrase to be taken literally; he was in fact in favour of private ownership. Proudhon made a distinction between "property" and "possession”. He rejected property: the capitalist right to draw rent, interest and profit through owning something. He favoured possession: individuals could use land and tools on condition that they didn't live on unearned income. In Proudhon's conception of an anarchist society individuals would have an equal right to possess, based on a "mutualist" system of equivalent exchange between self-governing producers and financed by free credit. Marxian socialism, therefore, is rejected on the grounds that it would violate the right to possess by establishing common ownership.

Marx's initial reaction to Proudhon's work was favourable, calling it a "great scientific advance", making possible for the first time "a real science of political economy" (The Holy Family, 1845). Proudhon's main insight was to subject private property relationships to critical scrutiny. Nevertheless, his analysis was still inadequate; Marx wrote:

  Proudhon does not consider the further creations of private property, e.g.. wages, trade, value, price, money, etc. as forms of private property in themselves . . .

Proudhon had claimed that these forms of private property were an inevitable feature of human society and this was one of the criticisms Marx made in his own contribution to political economy in The Poverty of Philosophy (1847). Despite Proudhons insights and his interest in political economy he had failed to understand the workings of capitalism. His scheme for free credit, for example, was a complete non-starter; as Marx said:

 . . . wanting to preserve wage-labour and thus the basis of capital, as Proudhon does, and at the same time to eliminate the "drawbacks" by abolishing a secondary form of capital, reveals the novice. (Theories of Surplus Value, vol. 3).

Proudhon believed his anarchist proposals were anti-capitalist but in reality he only disliked some aspects of capitalism, the state in particular. The contradictory nature of his ideas meant that later anarcho-syndicalists. fascists and advocates of laissez-faire could all claim to derive their ideas from his. And this indicates both a strength and weakness of much anarchist thinking; the strength being its apparent anti-dogmatism and "flexibility" of thought; its weakness being a lack of rigour. A practical socialist society must be preceded by a practical socialist theory. Lacking a plausible explanation of how capitalism functions and what's wrong with it. how can anarchists propose a non-capitalist alternative?

Bakunin

Bakunin opposed authority, not from an individualist point of view, but from that of a peasant and a member of the working class. He thought that a spontaneous uprising would sweep away capitalism and the state; his belief in the "cleansing" benefits of violence was mystical:

  Let us then put our trust in the eternal spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternally creative source of all life. The lust of destruction is also a creative lust. (The Reaction in Germany, 1842).

Revolutionary violence, it is claimed, would create a new society organised on federal lines and based on an individual's income being equal to their work. Bakunin's romantic adventurism brought him into conflict with Marx in the First International (The International Working Men's Association). It ended with Bakunin being expelled in 1872. One consequence of this was that, to this day, anarchist criticism of Marxism centres on the alleged authoritarianism Marx displayed in the dispute. But the dispute was much more than a clash of personalities; in reality there were important differences of perspective on the state and society. In the first place. Bakunin shared Proudhon's distaste for all forms of political action; Marx's insistence on the need for a socialist party to gain political power was anathema. Secondly. Bakunin believed that the state must be destroyed by conspiratorial violence; Marx's proposed "dictatorship of the proletariat" was rejected on the grounds that it would result in a new form of tyranny.

Since Marx's day, however, the "dictatorship of the proletariat" has taken on a meaning which he never intended and anarchists have seized on this as proof of the authoritarian nature of Marxian socialism. But this is due to Lenin's distortion of the concept in the aftermath of the Russian revolution. If Lenin's dictatorship over the proletariat has resulted in a new form of tyranny (and it has), this is hardly surprising and doesn't show Marxism to be at fault. For Marx the "dictatorship of the proletariat " didn't mean rule by a vanguard party; it did mean democratic control of the state by a politically organised working class. He put forward this concept in the circumstances prevailing in the nineteenth century which in certain respects no longer apply. In his Conspectus of Bakunin's "Statism and Anarchy" (1874). Marx noted that, so long as a class of capitalists exists, the working class must make use of the state — "the general means of coercion" — to dispossess them of the means of production. This would be the only effective way of changing society because it minimises any violence. With a socialist working class in control of the states through their use of their socialist parties, international capitalism can be replaced by world socialism. It is of course a great irony that anarchists should condemn this proposed course of action as potentially authoritarian, given their recipe for bloody civil war by ignoring the state or waging violence against it. In this respect they are closer to the Leninists than they might realise.

Socialism not anarchism

While Bakunin did want to do away with capitalism and the state it would be incorrect to say that he and Marx agreed about the ends but differed over the means. In fact they disagreed on both the means and ends and many anarchists today would take Bakunin's view. Even with "anarcho-communists" like Kropotkin the apparent similarities between his view of anarchist society and socialism should not blind us to the differences of approach. (He supported the Bolshevik revolution until his death in 1921). For unless anarchists recognise the necessity for democratic revolutionary political action based on socialist understanding, they will never achieve a stateless society.

Lew Higgins

Notes By The Way: The Depression not Due to Gold Shortage (1933)

The Notes By The Way column from the January 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Depression not Due to Gold Shortage

It did not take long for the facts to disprove the argument that gold shortage was the cause of the depression, and each month the mounting figures of gold production confound the forecasts of a progressive decline. According to the latest figures (Evening Standard, October 21st, 1932) it is estimated that the mining output this year will exceed that of 1931 and all recent years, and will be nearly equal to the record output of 1915. In addition to the increasing output of the mines, hoards of gold are being released from India, China, Russia and Australia.

The gold stocks of 48 central banks and governments are now about £2,500,000,000, which represents an increase of 16 per cent. since August, 1928. It is obvious that if a smaller quantity of gold was sufficient to carry the vastly greater volume of trade in 1928, the present depression, which coincides with a larger quantity of gold, cannot be due to gold shortage.

On the day following the above report about gold reserves, it was announced that a new 40-mile extension of gold-bearing ground on the Witwaterrand had been discovered (Evening Standard, October 22nd), promising a further increase in gold production.

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A Useless Sacrifice

The official policy of the Communist Parties, many times re-affirmed, is that the only road to the conquest of political power is by street-fighting, leading on to civil war. The S.P.G.B. rejects that view on many grounds. One of them is the useless sacrifice it involves for those who actively adhere to it, useless to the Communist Parties and to the working class. A recent Court case is worth notice. Mr. Sidney Elias, a Communist paid official, was charged with inciting other Communists to stir up “hunger marchers” to commit acts of disorder. The jury found him guilty and he was sent to prison for two years, which means that he will be prevented for that period from assisting his party to propagate its views, and when he is released he will be physically and mentally less fit to carry on that work than he is now.

Against this the Communists will argue that the case has a propaganda value in that it enabled Elias to gain publicity for his party's principles. In fact—as usually happens in trials of Communists —instead of boldly declaring his principles he allowed his counsel to repudiate them on his behalf. He said that there was no evidence that the letters written by him actually reached the Communists who were alleged to have been incited to disorder. He denied that they were incited. He said that when he used the words "fight" and “struggle" he meant them “merely in the political sense”; and that the letters only urged demonstrations, and “demonstrating was a perfectly legitimate way of manifesting one's sense of grievance." (Report in Manchester Guardian, December 13th). In short, the propaganda effect of the trial is merely to broadcast the impression that the Communists are misrepresented people who really stand by constitutional methods. In other words, the defence put up at the trial was a repudiation of the Communist policy of street-fighting and civil war.

The whole thing is futile and regrettable, both from the point of view of Sidney Elias and from the point of view of any unfortunate workers who may have been influenced by the stupid Communist propaganda.

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A Curious Sidelight on Empire

The conflict between China and Japan produced a strange incident, which is recorded in the New Statesman (October 8th). On March 11th, the League of Nations Assembly decided to set up a negotiating committee. The British Government, whose actions had shown distinct leanings towards Japan drew up a list of governments to be members of the Committee. The smaller powers, whose sympathies are with China, drew up an alternative list, including South Africa. The two lists were voted on, and although South Africa is in the Empire and Portugal is outside, Portugal was appointed and South Africa defeated by one vote, the vote of Sir John Simon representing the British Government. The “ties of Empire" are not allowed to interfere with the economic interests of the British capitalists.

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The I.L.P. and Electoral Reform

Mr. Tom Kirk, who a year or two ago confessed that his party—the Labour Party—had never preached Socialism, and that only the S.P.G.B. had stood by Socialist principles, is now in the I.L.P. (Maxtonite). He states in the Railway Review (November 18th, 1932) that the Labour Party agreed with the Liberals and Tories to the clause in the Representation of the People Act which compels Parliamentary candidates to deposit £150, because they saw that it would hamper 'the small and poor organisations (the S.P.G.B. for example). Mr. Kirk calls this a “dirty agreement," presumably because the I.L.P. (which has now lost those of its supporters who used to donate money by the £100 and £1,000) will itself be hampered by the clause in future.

It would, however, be interesting to . know whether the I.L.P., when it had plenty of money, ever protested against the dirty agreement.

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Is the Russian State “Withering Away"?

The Marxian view of the State has caused a good deal of embarrassment to the Bolsheviks in their efforts to square the actual situation in Russia with the idealisation of it which they offer in their propaganda. Engels’ words about the State “withering away" have compelled them to indulge in all sorts of contortions. Engels wrote:

  The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society—the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society—this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not “ abolished.” It dies out.

(“Socialism, Utopian and Scientific,” by F. Engels. Swan Sonnenschein Edition, 1802. P. 76.)

The Communists claim that they are building Socialism in Russia and that they have performed the act which—in Engels' words—should prelude the withering away of the State. Some of them therefore take the logical course of claiming that the State in Russia is indeed withering away. Thus the Labour Monthly (a Communist journal) claims in its September, 1931, issue, that

   There are, in fact, in the Soviet Union to-day, with the enormous development of the initiative of the masses, of their participation in the ordering of social life, and with the advance towards abolishing the distinction between town and country, elements of this "withering away" already perceptible. (p. 588)

Unfortunately for the Labour Monthly Molotov, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, admits that this is not the case. In a thesis presented to the 17th Conference of the Russian Communist Party early in 1932, he said, concerning Russia: —

  Not only does the class struggle not end, but in some sections and at some periods it may and will become considerably sharpened

(Labour Monthly, April 1932. P. 246)

Naturally, where there is a class struggle there is no possibility of a withering away of the State, and the Labour Monthly, summarising Molotov's discussion of this further point, says: —

  The Thesis also considers the question of the “withering away” of the State, but points out that while the establishment of the Proletariat Dictatorship has already transformed the State into a semi- State, the conditions of internal and external class-struggle demand a strengthening of the State in the immediate future. . . . (P. 246.)

It is amusing to be told that the Russian State—which is a fairly faithful copy of the Czarist Government in respect of its bureaucracy, its political police, and its arbitrary use of its repressive powers—is a “semi-State," whatever that is supposed to mean. But the cream of the jest is Molotov’s further remark that the Russian State is to be strengthened in the immediate future "as a condition for its eventual ‘withering away.' " Lloyd’s George’s “war to end war" has nothing on this.

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Can the Capitalists Afford Reforms?

Mr. George Hicks, in a pamphlet, “The Struggle for Socialism,” puts forward the incorrect notion so much favoured now by the Communists and the I.L.P. that the capitalists are so poor that they cannot afford to buy off working class discontent with any more reforms. Mr. Hicks says: —

  British Capitalism, in relation to World Capitalism, is in such a fix that it is sheerly impossible for it to grant ameliorative measures to the workers. It is in a condition of stagnation and decline. It can give no reforms, make no concessions. Gradualism, Reformism, Fabianism, Lib-Labourism—all those “isms” which enabled the Labour Party hitherto to make its broad appeals—have experienced a withering at the roots.”

In spite of being widely held among the reformists, this doctrine is utterly untrue. In spite of the impressive-looking figures which represent the cost of the so-called social services—education, old age pensions, unemployment pay, etc.—the capitalists spend only a very small part of their wealth on them. The absurdity of the argument can be illustrated in another way. Since 1921 wage reductions recorded by the Ministry of Labour total something like £600 millions a year, which far exceeds the whole cost of the social services. That is to say, the amount saved to the capitalists by cutting their labour costs far exceeds their total expenditure through taxation on protecting the workers against the worst effects of exploitation.

Prophecy is dangerous, but it is safe to say that as soon as the capitalist parties find that the only way to win elections is to promise more “reforms,” they will vie with one another at it just as they have done in the years 1918 to 1929.

Already at a Midland town the Tory members of a Public Assistance Committee have found their activities so damaging to them in the local elections that they have refused to work it unless the Labour members of the local Council will sit on the P.A.C. with them.

Hardly was Mr. Hicks' pamphlet off the press when the Government announced its slight concessions over the means test.

Incidentally, if it were true, and the electors were aware, that capitalism could give no more reforms, Mr. Hicks—who got elected to Parliament by promising reforms—would stand very little chance of re-election on his reform programme.

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Lands Without Unemployment

Just at present, while the building of factories, railways and productive equipment of all kinds enables the Russians to claim that unemployment is at a minimum and that paying unemployment relief is unnecessary, the I.L.P. adds its voice to the chorus—of praise for the “land without unemployment.” Those who know the chequered history of the I.L.P. and its almost complete ignorance of the working of economic forces will be less impressed by what the I.L.P. says about Russia than by what it formerly said of America, France, Belgium, Australia, Italy and various other spots in which the I.L.P. has discovered capitalist “solutions” for the problem of unemployment.

“The Socialist Programme,” published by the I.L.P. in November, 1923, tells us that

  general unemployment has nothing to do with tariffs or free trade. It is determined by the monetary policy pursued by a country and not by its tariff-policy. (P. 26.)

So they looked round to see if they could find some countries pursuing an I.L.P. monetary policy; and sure enough they found several.

  That is shown by the facts of unemployment in the world to-day. There is none to speak of in France and Belgium, very little in Italy, nor has there been ever since the war. Why? Because the Governments and central banks of those countries have never restricted credit and thus destroyed the purchasing power of a large part of their populations. (P. 26.)

America, according to the I.L.P., was not merely perfect, it was better than perfect; not only no unemployment, but a shortage of labour—

  The banks have lent freely, and there is now an actual shortage of labour . . . There is no unemployment and no depression in the United States today. (P. 27.) (Italics ours.)

The I.L.P. was, of course, largely wrong about its facts and wholly wrong about the effects of applying its capitalist credit theories. In due course they had to admit this, and a writer in the New Leader said of the American banking system:

  I gather from some enquiries that we in England have gravely over-estimated the scientific work of this banking organisation.

(Brailsford, New Leader. Feb. 24th, 192ft.)

In the same way the I.L.P. will discover before long that they have “gravely over-estimated” the possibilities of planning Russian production and distribution in conditions which both at home and abroad are essentially capitalistic and which therefore preclude planning and preclude the solution of the unemployment problem.

In Russia some phases of the problem have been the enormous number of workers constantly in process of leaving one job and travelling elsewhere to look for a better one, and the over-population of the villages. Recently the Government has tried to check the former by imposing penalties on workers who leave their jobs, and has at the same time drastically cut down the staffs of State concerns in order to make them more profitable. In due course Russia will again have to recognise and deal with the normal capitalist problem of serious unemployment, and the I.L.P. will have to set sail for some new mythical paradise.

Edgar Hardcastle