The role of the state (2004)

Book Review from the October 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Consensus or Coercion? The State, the People and Social Cohesion in Post-War Britain. edited by Ross McKibbin (New Clarion Press. £12.95)

This is a collection of studies of various aspects of social and political life in Britain from 1945 to the end of the 1970s, covering such fields as television, immigration, housing policy, even the role of the defunct Communist Party.

   

But what is the state? To most people it will be the centralised administrative machine controlled by the government, which provides various services (health, education, social security, defence) for “the nation”. To Marxists, the modern state is indeed a centralised administrative machine controlled by the government, but one which is used to manage the common affairs of the national ruling class (today, the capitalist owners of the means of wealth production), including the provision of education, health care, etc for the subject class (the majority class of wage and salary workers), and whose ultimate weapon is force, coercion; hence Engels’s definition of the state as in the final analysis a body of armed men.

   

For the Oxford sociologist, Ross McKibbin, who has provided a foreword to this book, the state “represents the governing elites, both political and bureaucratic, but is distinguishable from (say) the ruling party and has an interest which, although influenced by party-political competition, stands above such competition”. To which the anonymous author of the introduction adds, its role is to ensure the social cohesion of the population of the “administratively defined community” that is the “nation-state”, ideally by consensus but otherwise by coercion.

   

Although Marxists see, even define, the state as a coercive institution at the service of a class, this does not mean that they are committed to the view that the ruling class rules only by coercion. That would be an absurd view since no “nationally administered political community” could survive if it was held together by coercion alone. A degree, in fact a fairly high degree, of consent is required: the subject class has to agree to being ruled by the class that controls the state. So, one of the important functions of the state is to actively promote such agreement. Obviously this wouldn’t work if the state tried to openly persuade people to be ruled by a ruling class; it has to be more subtle and is done by promoting the idea that all the subjects of a particular state form a national community and are in fact “citizens” rather than subjects. The state is then seen as the management committee, not of the ruling class which owns and controls the means of production, but of all the citizens, who elect the government.

   

Surprisingly in view of the book’s title, only two of the studies address this question directly, dealing with the question of immigration from the Caribbean and the problem this has presented the state in terms of integrating such and other “non-white” (to use the old Apartheid classification) immigrants into the British “national community”, given the previous definition of this community as being made up of “white” English-speakers. After passing racist legislation in the 1960s to stop “non-white” immigration, the British state opted for extending the definition of “British” to include “non-whites”. It appears to be working, but now their problem is the reaction of a signification minority of “white” people who don’t agree and who may well have to be coerced into accepting it.

   

A third essay, on the Labour Party’s attitude to Europe in the period 1945-50, does, it is true, touch on another such problem: how the British state is to get its subjects to agree to its policy – in the interest of its ruling class – of European integration. After having successfully inculcated the idea of a “British nation” this is now proving a barrier.

   

The other essays, even though off-subject, are still interesting in their own right, especially the one on the Labour Party’s opposition in the 1950s to the introduction of commercial television. Everything that was said would happen if this was introduced – dumbing down, commercialisation, the “idiot box” dominating the home – has come to pass, and worse. But it was always going to be a losing battle since, in a capitalist society, the capitalists are always going to get their way in the end.

   

Conspicuously lacking from the book are studies of how promotion of support for “national” sports teams and the teaching of history and civics in schools work towards sustaining the myth that all who live within the administrative boundaries of a particular state constitute a community with a common interest, whereas in fact in all states there are two classes: an owning, ruling class and the rest of us.

Adam Buick

When Adam Delved and Eve Span (2004)

Book Review from the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Adam Delved and Eve Span: A History of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. by Mark O’Brien, New Clarion Press, Cheltenham, 2004.

The publishers say that “the aim of this book is a modest one”, and there are in fact only 86 pages of text. Nevertheless, O’Brien describes the revolt, and its background and origins, in reasonable detail. Of the author, the publishers state that he is a “lifelong socialist and trade unionist”, and then give the game away by adding that “he has stood twice as a Socialist Alliance candidate in Liverpool”. And it does show in parts of his narrative.

   

By the end of the fourteenth century, feudalism was breaking down. The plague earlier in the century had decimated the population, with between a third and a half dying. Many former peasants moved into the towns. Artisans and others demanded, and often achieved, higher wages. The government attempted to keep wages down by law, but with little success. The Church was in crisis, and was corrupt. Jon Wycliffe and, to a greater extent, priests such as John Ball, preached a kind of primitive Christian communism: hence, when “Adam delved and Eve span, who was then a gentleman?” And, moreover, the Hundred Years’ War with France was crippling the English state. The government attempted to increase the poll tax by three groats. As O’Brien comments, “England was seething with unrest.”

   

By 1381, a peasants’ revolt was inevitable. All over Essex and Kent and, later, beyond the peasants and their supporters organised their army, first  taking Rochester Castle. John Ball had, for some time, been sending letters as well as travelling from town to town, preaching rebellion couched in allegorical and religious sentiments. Wat Tyler, until then unknown, organised an army of probably 30,000 peasants who, on 12 June, arrived on Blackheath, south of the Thames.

   

O’Brien details the taking of London, the capture of the Tower and the attempts of the government, and the king, to placate the peasants. A number of aristocrats and government officials were captured and then beheaded by the rebel army. The showdown between Tyler and the king and his representatives occurred on 14 June, at Mile End, when Tyler was stabbed and, shortly after, taken from St. Bartholemew’s Hospital and beheaded.

   

Meanwhile, as O’Brien writes, the revolt had been spreading throughout Kent, Essex and East Anglia. But by this time, the government had been able to cobble together a few hundred disciplined troops. There were battles in Cambridge. Rebels gathered in Billericay in Essex, but were soon forced to retreat to Colchester. As O’Brien notes, by 15 June, “the revolt was in full flow”. In Norfolk, events were proceeding apace. Incidentally, on the same day that Geoffry Lister mustered rebels on Mousehold Heath near Norwich, on 17 June, my ancestor Thomas de Newell of Craneworth in  the Hundred of Mitford, was indicted for “depriving John de Harlyngg and Adam Galyon of their goods and chattels”. He was, like many others, almost certainly hanged or beheaded.

   

Inevitably, as Mark O’Brien demonstrates, the government won the day and defeated the peasants in battle. The chronicles of the time tell of the execution of 7000 peasants “by the axe and the noose”. Reliable estimates have since reckoned the final toll to be about 2000.

   

What then was the outcome of the revolt of 1381? O’Brien says that it played a decisive role in putting an end to villeinage and the economic base of feudalism in England. It further weakened the power of the Catholic Church. In more recent times, it captured the imaginations of historians as well as writers such as William Morris, who wrote The Dream of John Ball, and whom O’Brien quotes. He also mentions a number of works written by Stalinist and Trotskyist writers, although he does not appear to be conversant with a much longer fictionalised account, English Episode, by Charles Poulsen written in 1946. For those interested further in the revolt and its background, I would recommend G.M.Trevelyan’s England in the Age of Wycliffe despite his “Whiggish prejudices”.

Peter E. Newell

Classical Leninism (2003)

Book Review from the September 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Classical Marxism. By David Renton. New Clarion Press. 2002.

There is a tradition of ideas that can be termed Classical Leninism. According to this tradition, classical Marxism was betrayed by a number of key leaders until the collapse of the Second International in the First World War, leaving the way clear for Lenin and the Bolsheviks to carry the flag of socialist revolution. This is the “Great Man” theory of history, and even though this book includes two women in its collection of biographies, the leader fixation remains the same.

Marx played a prominent role in the formation of the International Working Men's Association (1864-1876), which became better known as the First International. This was an international federation of working class organisations based on the principle that the emancipation of the working class could only be achieved by the working class itself. Renton argues that the Second International (1889-1914) was set up as an explicitly Marxist organisation but went on to distort Marx's ideas to suit their own purposes. This was the era of “classical Marxism” and Karl Kautsky was its leading theoretician. Kautsky was the “Pope” of Marxism in the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Second International. He is the main bogeyman in classical Leninism.

But there can be no doubt that Kautsky did distort Marx, in particular his support for reformism. Kautsky, Lenin and Renton are agreed that parliamentary action must be reformist. However, this is not Marx's conclusion, as he wrote in 1881 of workers' struggles being “pursued by all the means which the proletariat has at its disposal, including universal suffrage, thus transformed from the instrument of trickery which it has been up till now into an instrument of emancipation” (Link) and other writings by Marx. There is no reason why parliamentary institutions could not be used by a class-conscious socialist majority to win power for the socialist revolution, and this is the position adopted by the Socialist Party at its formation in June 1904. Delegates were sent from the Socialist Party to the Amsterdam Congress of the Second International in August 1904, but, after seeing the reformism rampant within it, soon decided to have no more to do with it. When the leaders of the SPD voted for war credits in 1914 it came as a shock to Lenin and at first he refused to believe the news. The Socialist Party, on the other hand, had long warned of SPD support for militarism (see Link).

The fact is the Second International, the Third (Leninist) International (1919-1943) and the Fourth (Trotskyite) International (1938 onwards) have all distorted Marx for their own purposes. The main, but by no means only distortion by Lenin concerns the vanguard party. Lenin argued that workers were incapable of self-emancipation and instead must be freed from above by professional revolutionaries who have the workers' best interests at heart. (Renton points out that this is similar to Kautsky's position.) But Marx and Engels profoundly disagreed, as they made clear in a circular to the SPD in 1879:

“At the founding of the International we expressly formulated the battle cry: The emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the working class itself. Hence we cannot co-operate with men who say openly that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves, and must first be emancipated from above by philanthropic members of the upper and lower middle classes” (Link).

So what is left of Marxism? Renton prefaces his book with a quote from an incredulous Trotsky: “None of those who propose to renounce Bolshevism as an historically bankrupt tendency has indicated any other course.” The Socialist Party has argued that the answer is to be found in the self-activity of the working class. For as Rosa Luxemburg wrote in Leninism or Marxism?: “Historically, the errors committed by a truly revolutionary movement are infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest Central Committee” and “The working class demands the right to make its mistakes and learn the dialectic of history”(Link).

Lew Higgins

Marx and Spencer (2003)

Book Review from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

The First Darwinian Left. Socialism and Darwinism 1859-1914. By David Stack, New Clarion Press, 2003.

This book is in part a reply to Peter Singer's A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution and Co-operation (reviewed in the April 2001 Socialist Standard) in which he agreed with those who have turned Darwinism into a theory of biological determinism and pleaded for reformists to become biological determinists too.

Stack points out that, when Darwin's theory was first making headway at the end of the 19th century, amongst its prominent advocates were Socialists and leftwing reformists. Only, what they saw in Darwin was not a theory of biological determinism but a theory of evolution that could also be applied to human society.

Reformists, such as Ramsay MacDonald of the ILP in Britain and Edouard Bernstein in Germany, saw Darwin's theory of evolution, when applied to society, as backing their case for a gradual reform of society. According to them, since society was a sort of organism it could not be changed mechanically or forcibly by a political revolution but could only change gradually, organically, through slow evolution. Hence Bernstein's agreement to call the English translation of his 1899 criticism of Marxism, sponsored by MacDonald's ILP in 1909, Evolutionary Socialism. All this is examined in detail by Stack.

But it wasn't just reformists and gradualists who were influenced by the idea that society was an organism and that it, too, evolved. In fact, this did not come from Darwin himself at all but rather, in Britain, from the philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). The early members of the Socialist Party were influenced by Spencer, as can be seen the volumes of his Principles of Sociology, inherited from an early member, lying unread today on the shelves of our party's library. There were also favourable references to Spencer in the 1910 SPGB pamphlet on religion and in early articles in the Socialist Standard: e.g., the front-page article of the December 1906 issue was entitled "Is Society an Organism?", to which the unequivocal answer was given: "Herbert Spencer and others have so firmly established the fact of the organic nature of Society that one is surprised to find it brought into question".

How did the revolutionaries refute the gradualists' arguments for evolution? Seeing society as an organism, they saw it too as having to survive by adapting to its environment (i.e., to the technological way in which its members got from the rest of nature what they needed to survive). Society in its capitalist form was based on the private ownership of the means of production, while the production process had become socialised or collective. This arrangement was ill-adapted to its environment and so society had to change, or rather had to be changed by the revolutionary action of the working class.

The view that Darwinian evolutionism did not rule out revolutionary change was given a boost, by a passage in his presidential address to the annual conference of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Cape Town in 1905, by one of Darwin's sons, Professor George Darwin:

"The physicist, like the biologist and the historian, watched the effect of slowly varying external conditions; he saw the quality of persistence or stability gradually decaying until it vanished, when there ensued what was called in politics a revolution. These considerations led him to doubt whether biologists had been correct in looking for continuous transformation of species. Judging by analogy, they should rather expect to find slight continuous changes occurring during a long period of time, followed by a somewhat sudden transformation into a new species, or by rapid extinction".

This passage was quoted on a number of occasions in the Socialist Standard. It has to added, though, that Professor Darwin was an astronomer and mathematician not a biologist himself (though he does seem to have anticipated Stephen Jay Gould's theory of 'punctuated equilibrium').

Stack makes the point that pre-WWI Marxism was hardly influenced by the ideas of Hegel. As the pun put it, it owed more to Haeckel (a German Darwinist) than to Hegel. He offers this as a criticism but it is open to question whether Hegel would have contributed anything more, or any less, useful than Spencer. (The only people in England at the time who read Hegel were a group of Idealist philosophers in Oxford.)

Stack's book throws some interesting light on the intellectual life of the period during which our party was founded and which inevitably had some influence on it. One curious omission is any reference to Anton Pannekoek's Marxism and Darwinism that was published in English by Charles Kerr in Chicago in 1908, so falling within the period.

Adam Buick