Marxism versus Maoism (1968)

Book Review from the October 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Beliefs in Society: The Problems of Ideology by Nigel Harris (Watts, 15s.)

Once you've ploughed through the first three, analytical chapters, written in the almost incomprehensible language that is associated more with New Left Review than International Socialism (which Harris edits), this is a very good book.

Harris starts his analysis front the materialist conception of history (“which identifies social classes as the product of a competitive struggle for scarce resources and a social division of labour: the most important beliefs within society are seen as related to this basic struggle, and thus to class"). Ideologies, or systems of beliefs, “relate to the arena o! social conflict, to the purposes of groups competing for scarce resources". They don’t come from nowhere and to no purpose. As examples, Harris takes British Conservatism. Russian Marxism-Leninism (so-called), and Asian, mainly Chinese, nationalism.

He shows how Marxism, originally a theory of the self-activity of the working class in the industrialized parts of the world, became “the conservative ideology of a new class society, a body of formalized doctrine designed to justify the existing nature of society and to leave complete freedom of action to its leaders". The only criticism we would have of this chapter is that Harris plays down the difference between Marx’s views of the self-emancipation of the working class and Lenin’s advocacy of a vanguard party as a necessity even in advanced capitalist states. Indeed Harris almost denies that this was a central part of Lenin’s political theory. But if it wasn’t, why did the Third International lay it down as an organizational must for all its affiliates? Despite Harris’ protests, Lenin did pave the way for Stalin.

Harris re-iterates that for Marx Socialism was not "a tactic for forced economic development under State control” but a society in which the working class will have achieved its freedom:

  Now Marxists identified the industrial proletariat as the sole agency for achieving socialism (and therefore, socialism was only an appropriate aim in developed countries where the proletariat was a majority), not just because it was poor, but because of its role within the economy, because it sustained and developed the industrial economy by its own efforts, because it was concentrated and organised in the major cultural centres, because it learned discipline and the advantages of interdependence, because by its experience it had the ability to run the economy.

Thus to be used by people, such as the Chinese Communists, working in predominantly peasant countries, with no working class to speak of, Marx’s views would have to be revised. Inevitably, in a retrograde manner. In China the result was a theory, disguised in Marxist terms, very similar to the pre-Marxist Narodnik (or Populist) revolutionaries in Russia against whom Plekhanov, Martov and Lenin had argued.

  What would this “regression" entail? A belief that the intelligentsia plus peasants could produce a revolution: that revolution could create socialism; that ‘nationalism’ completely encompassed socialism, that the ‘people’ encompassed the proletariat, and that the local national struggle was the key to the progress of mankind; that the country concerned could industrialise without undergoing capitalism; that socialism was a peasant way of life rather than an emancipated developed society.

Li Ta-chao (see review of Meisner’s book in May Socialist Standard) began this revision and Mao finished it. It is interesting to note that for Maoists Marx’s “workers of the world, unite" has become “oppressed peoples of the world, unite!"

   Mao has revised Marxism to such a degree that it cannot really be considered to be merely a local “application”: the essence has disappeared. What constitutes revolution is not the most advanced urban masses securing their own emancipation by their own efforts, but guerrilla warfare by the least advanced rural groups, operating outside the ordinary social structure over many years, in order to seize power and begin industrialisation. A would-be ruling élite, dispossessed and alienated from the status quo. within a decaying agrarian social structure, fits naturally into Maoism, although even more naturally into Castroism which was not part of Marxism-Leninism in its revolutionary phase in Cuba. Activism and populism provide the dominant themes.

“Guerrilla warfare", Harris points out. “takes us straight back to Narodnik thought, to the revolutionary minority seizing power in the name of the people—despite the people—to the traditional coup d'état rather than social revolution”.

This is exactly the analysis we in the Socialist Party have made, but we are more consistent. Such guerrillas are enemies of the international working class, to be denounced as such. Harris (though not in this book) gives them, e.g. the so-called National Liberation Front in Vietnam, “unconditional" support. Why? He’ll have to do better than say Marx supported some nationalist movements in the 19th century, for the simple reason that the 20th century is not the 19th century.

Adam Buick

Against the market? (1994)

Book Review from the May 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Against the Market: Political Economy, Market Socialism and the Marxist Critique. By David McNally. Verso. 1993.

The title of this book is wrong. David McNally is not against the market. He is only against the regulation of the production and distribution of wealth by the free play of market forces. He goes out of his way to deny that he is suggesting "that markets can be eliminated overnight" and states that "the issue of contention, therefore, is not the use of market mechanisms within the framework of socialist planning". So, despite his repudiation of so-called "market socialism" as an absurd contradiction in terms he too is one, seeing "a continuing role for some market mechanisms within a socialist society".

This sort of position only makes sense if you conceive of socialism as being the state ownership and operation of the means of production, which, as a Canadian academic who supports the SWP in Britain (he has written a pamphlet for them), McNally does. But of course this is state capitalism not real socialism.

If this is your idea of socialism then the market can be seen as one possible way of allocating consumer goods and services, and it is here that McNally sees a continuing role for the market. He is, however, informed enough to know that Marx envisaged socialism as being a society entirely without markets, money or any buying and selling, but gets round this by arguing that a "socialist" government should pursue "the logic of demarketization, decommoditization and demonetization of economic life". In other words, that these basic economic categories of capitalism should be abolished but only gradually.

What he has in mind is the progressive introduction, as economic circumstances permit, of free services such as health care, education, nurseries, water, heating, lighting, electricity, local transport and housing. In addition people are to be given coupons which they can exchange for a growing range of basic foodstuffs and clothes as well as an increasing supply of free tickets to the theatre, sports matches and long-distance transport; individuals would be able to swap with other individuals coupons they don’t want ("eg transport coupons for cultural events"). Finally, they would be paid a sum of money to purchase luxuries and non-basic items which as today would be produced for sale.

Whatever this is, it isn’t socialism and in some respects would be worse than today. Imagine the extra paperwork involved in administering the coupon system, and why give people coupons that they can only use to get certain goods? Why not give them the money to buy them? As for swapping coupons . . . 

What this is in fact is a proposal that the government, as virtually the only employer, should pay people partly in kind, partly in coupons — increasingly in kind and coupons — and partly in money. Socialism does indeed involve the disappearance of money, but not in this way, which would replace the limited choice people now have in being paid in money rather than in goods.

But it wouldn’t work anyway. Implicit in the idea of the state ownership and operation of the economy is that this is established on a national scale. Which means that the state is not at all the free agent in economic matters that McNally’s scheme assumes.

Today there is a world economy on which all parts of the world are dependent for some of their raw materials, components and consumer goods. So a national statified economy would have to purchase these; to do this it would need money and the only way to get this would be to offer some of its products for sale on the world market. But to find a buyer their prices would have to be competitive, and this could only be achieved by cutting costs through investment in the up-to-date machinery and methods of production.

In this way the world market would restrict the amount of resources the state could allocate to the consumption of its workforce and so impede McNally’s cosy image of a steadily expanding provision of free goods and services. If, alternatively, the state decided to try to isolate itself from world market conditions by trying to produce substitutes for the needed imports, this would raise its costs of production and so, once again, restrict the amount available for consumption.

The fact is that there is no way-out on a national scale. And if McNally is not convinced he should read the two latest books of his fellow (but more independent-minded) SWPer Nigel Harris (The End of The Third World and National Liberation).

Despite this, most of McNally’s book is genuinely interesting. He describes now the ruling class in Britain took measures, through enclosures and abolishing the old poor law system, to create a working class that was entirely dependent on working for an employer for their livelihood. He also discusses the views of Adam Smith (apparently he wasn’t as bad as his present-day supporters make out), Malthus (who was) and of the early 19th century critics of capitalism.

At the risk of being accused of being pedantic, we must point out that someone who presumes to give "the Marxist critique" ought not to make the elementary mistake, repeated three times, of saying that "capitalists pay the full value of labour as established on the market". What workers sell, and what capitalists normally pay the full value of, is their labour-power, which is capable of producing a greater value than its own. If capitalists paid "the full value of labour" they wouldn’t make any profits.

Adam Buick

National Liberation (1992)

Book Review from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

National Liberation by Nigel Harris. (I B Tauris, £24.95.)

Capitalism, argues Harris, has now become a single world economy in which international capital finds the frontiers which divide the world into 170 or so political states irrelevant. Governments are forced to take this economic reality into account by pursuing policies that allow the free movement of capital and commodities. 

A similar view was expressed by many in the Marxist tradition before the First World War. In fact, it was almost the mainstream Marxist view, though only a few like Rosa Luxemburg, Pannekoek and Bukharin drew the conclusion that this meant that nationalism no longer had any progressive role to play and so should be opposed by socialists. Harris, of course, is well aware of this, and his first chapter is an analysis and debunking of nationalism and its myths. He sees nationalism as we do—as a political creation imposed on people by states (and movements seeking to set up states) in the interest of the ruling class (or would-be ruling class) of those states. 

But in a sense, says Harris, the pre-First World War Marxists were proved wrong in that the war was followed by an increase in economic and political nationalism, not the decline that their theories implied. Indeed, "Marxism" itself came to be associated with economic nationalism so that today most of those in the world who call themselves "Marxists" are nationalists of one sort or another. 

Harris is a long-standing member of the SWP, but his book has been severely criticised by the leadership of that organisation who find its political implications disturbing. For if you hold that capitalism has become a single world economy in which national frontiers are irrelevant, this implies that you should also regard the nationalist programme of economic "independence" as reactionary. Harris, himself, does not explicitly argue that socialists should no longer support nationalist movements, but he does cautiously say that we can expect nationalism to slowly decline and implying that this would be a good thing: 

Thus, if politics were no more than a reflex of economics—as some of the cruder Marxists seemed to imply—the world ought to be within sight of the end of nationalism as a political force. On such a reading, it might survive as a cultural-linguistic concern, but the economic and political issue would be over for all except the economically least developed. Such an eventuality would once more restore the pre-1914 theorization. 

To adopt the pre-1914 Marxist position of opposition to nationalism as economically reactionary is the last thing the SWP leaders want, as it undermines their whole case of supporting such groups as the IRA, the Sandinistas, Pan-Arab Nationalism and the like, as well as support of countries like Iraq when at war with more powerful capitalist powers. They are forced to stand by their dogma that nationalism has some progressive role to play and that state capitalism in one country is something to be supported, so placing themselves amongst those Harris calls "the last quixotic defenders of a world of national State capitalisms, replacing the tyranny of the market with the dictatorship of the bureaucracy". 

Adam Buick

Trapped in a Blind Alley (1973)

Book Review from the August 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

World Crisis: Essays in Revolutionary Socialism by John Palmer and Nigel Harris. Hutchinson. £2.25

This book is a collection of essays by prominent members of the group known as International Socialism. The basic argument of the book is summed up by Duncan Hallas in the final essay, "The Way Forward."

Basically the case rests on the analysis of the world crisis . . . and particularly on the thesis that, in the changing conditions of capitalism, reformist policies will be less and less able to provide these partial solutions to the problems confronting the working-class that they have been able to provide in the decades since the Second World War.

In other words, the road to reform is closed; the capitalist class can no longer afford to grant the improvement in working-class conditions which it had done in the past. Does this mean, then, that IS do not include reforms in their programme, and base their support on the sole issue of establishing Socialism? Of course that would be expecting too much. Duncam Hallas, in the same essay, states clearly that "the development of a programme (includes) a detailed statement of partial and transitional aims." And the book is scattered with phrases like "connecting the concrete issues that workers face with a generalised perspective." (Higgins and Palmer, Introduction).

Why, therefore, does IS put forward demands for reforms when they believe rightly or wrongly, that these demands cannot be met, instead of putting forward  a demand for Socialism? The answer is, of course, that they believe that it is only by being led up the garden path of reforms and smashed against the brick wall of capitalism that the workers will learn "through their own experience" that capitalism cannot give them what they want. Of course we would accept that socialist ideas arise from the struggles engaged in under capitalism by the working class, but the idea of making "impossible demands" shows a definite contempt for the working-class and their ability to understand socialism.

Predictably enough, another false idea expressed was that of violent insurrection. Paul Foot devoted his energies to an analysis of "Parliamentary Socialism," concluding that democracy is all a sham and that the French workers had shown the way in May, 1968. One of his main mistakes was in assuming Parliament and the vote are inherently reformist, and that revolution must mean a bloodbath on the streets. He states, for example, that the Independent Labour Party "lost its socialist impetus through the insistence on Parliamentary priorities," and that the Communist Party had degenerated since the 1930's when it had "sustained itself . . . by a revolutionary attitude towards Parliament."

This line of argument shows a great deal of confusion. The vote can be used to maintain capitalism, to achieve certain reforms, to destroy democracy (as in the case of Nazi Germany) or to achieve Socialism, depending on the consciousness of the working-class. There is therefore no such thing as a "revolutionary attitude towards Parliament." The ILP, of course, never had a "socialist impetus."

Given the rejection of Parliament, the only alternative IS seem able to offer is syndicalism. Paul Foot writes of the need of the workers "to seize the factories and offices". Tony Cliff says the shop stewards are "the pillars on which any real revolutionary socialist policy must be" (T. Cliff, "The Class Struggle in Britain"). Such beliefs are extremely dangerous—any attempt by IS or any other group to institute "seizure" of the means of production would be suppressed by the State, no doubt at the expense of a good deal of working-class blood; IS would discover, through their own experience, where the real power lies in society.

It would be mistaken to believe that there is nothing of value in this book. Though most of the contributors seem to be trapped in a blind alley, Nigel Harris in part of his essay "Imperialism Today," comes very close to the correct socialist position. In his analysis of armed struggle in backward countries he states:

Marxism is irrelevant to success in guerrilla warfare . . . Marxism dissolves into pre-Marxist populist socialism, the closest analogies to which occur in Narodnik  thought in Tsarist Russia.

He concedes that revolutions in such circumstances are made by small minorities relying on élan and slogans, and that Fidel Castro, for example, was a radical liberal rather than a socialist. Harris therefore comes very close to our position, that groups such as the Vietcong are the equivalent of nineteenth-century bourgeois revolutionaries, seeking only to establish capitalism. We give them no support, but for Nigel Harris the dilemma remains—why does his organization give them "unconditional support"? In his fifty-page essay, he gives no answer at all, except for the pious remark that "socialists instinctively feel a warm sympathy for those struggling for national independence."

Inevitably, there are constant references throughout the book to Lenin and the Russian Revolution. Nowhere is it explained, however, why a revolution which took place fifty-five years ago in a backward, pre-industrial country in which a decaying feudal regime collapsed under the strain of war has any relevance to conditions in Britain or any advanced capitalist country to-day. All the other standard IS ideas crop up regularly—the false Lenin theory of imperialism, the equally false crypto-Keynesian theory of the "permanent economy," the peculiar obsession with productivity deals. When all is said and done, however, the IS gap still looks to the Labour Party for its philosophy. It was fitting, therefore, that Duncan Hallas, on the last page of the book, should state that "there are still genuine socialists active in the Labour Party". Needless to say, he did not name any.

Brendan Mee 

Hypocrisy of politicians (1996)

Book Review from the July 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The New Untouchables: Immigration and the New World Worker by Nigel Harris (I.B. Tauris. £25)

In its quest for profits, capitalism is prepared to look anywhere for cheap labour power. One consequence has been the massive growth in numbers of immigrant workers, who travel, (legally or illegally) to another country for the sake of employment. Nigel Harris's recent book contains a number of pertinent observations on this phenomenon.

One point he makes is the hypocrisy of politicians who demand free trade and the relaxation of market restrictions while at the same time calling for strict rules on immigration. Consistency would require a "free" market in the movement of labour just as in investment and exporting. But immigrant workers are a convenient scapegoat, and can be blamed for everything from unemployment to inner-city riots. Politicians therefore find it all too easy to play the immigrant (usually, race) card and claim to defend the national way of life.

But there is a tension in such politicking, for the simple fact is that developed capitalism needs immigrant workers. As the labour force in western capitalist countries ages, and is not replaced adequately because of low birth-rates, immigrants offer an invaluable source of new, young labour power. They may also have fewer qualms about doing unpleasant work or working anti-social hours than "indigenous" workers have. Harris quotes one witness to a US congressional committee:

"As our population becomes older, the problem will not be to find jobs for people, but people for jobs. For many years, Mexico, with its relatively young and expanding population will complement and balance our own as well as provide a formidable defence to the attack on our position in world markets."

Thus capitalism relies on immigrant labour, despite all the anti-immigrant noises its political representatives make. So hospitals in New York advertise for nurses in Irish and Philippine newspapers.

Harris also notes that migration is part and parcel of the global economic order. From the 1970s onwards, for instance, the Middle East oil industry was staffed by a multinational workforce of several millions; the massive increase in oil production would simply not have been possible without such  migration. Large companies often face the choice of importing workers or relocating production in a cheap-labour area. The wheel is now turning full circle, with production of Ronson cigarette lighters being moved to South Wales, as wages there will be lower than in South Korea (Guardian, 25 April). 

Migrant workers are often "over-qualifies" for the work they do, and usually have to endure appalling wages and conditions. In order words, they are exploited the way all workers are. The real lesson to draw is not that politicians are two-faced but that, while capitalists wish to divide workers from each other, working people, whether migrants or not, face a common enemy, the world capitalist class and their system.

Paul Bennett