50 Years Ago: Students against democracy (2024)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Liverpool was proud of The Beatles and its connection with that Cunard Line. What the city thinks of the conference of the National Union of Students held there early April is another thing. Hundreds of delegates from universities, polytechnics etc. assembled for their annual jamboree. Over the years, this conference has endorsed some pretty queer ideas, but 1974 will go down as a vintage year.

This assembly debated students’ grants; elected a new President (a political loner we are told) by 21 votes; didn’t agree to send a delegation to Czechoslovakia to see if the Czech students’ union were democratic enough to form links with the NUS (would their journey have been really necessary?). Then came the body blow to democracy and the right of people to express their views. The outcome of this debate intimated they had a lot in common with the Communist-Party-dominated Czechoslovakia.

A majority of the delegates “voted yesterday to take whatever measures were necessary, including disruption of meetings, to prevent members of racialist or fascist organizations from speaking in colleges” (Guardian, 5th April, 1974).

(…)

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has personal experience of what happens when such a decision as that of the NUS is operative. We arranged a debate in North London against the National Front. An opportunity for the audience to weigh up the two conflicting schools of thought — socialist or nationalist. We were of the opinion that the audience would be able to judge for themselves the validity of the arguments. But our dear “lefty” types thought otherwise. They broke up the meeting. Did they consider the audience to be such a bunch of morons that they could not judge? Obviously they did, and this might just be the reason why these “revolutionaries” wish to appoint themselves as leaders of the masses. They know what is good for us — they know what we should hear.

Democracy, never a favourite word in their vocabulary, means a method of conducting affairs where a majority decision is reached on the basis of all information being readily available. Who are these self-styled dictators, who in the name of democracy, wish to decide what we shall or what we shall not hear? The suppression of “unpopular views” by violence does not eradicate these ideas. This can only be done by a free exchange of ideas.

(From the Socialist Standard, May 1974)

50 Years Ago: Eysenck at the LSE (2023)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

On Tuesday 8 May Professor Eysenck, who holds certain controversial views about the intellectual abilities of American negroes, was forcibly prevented from expressing his views at the London School of Economics. Responsibility for this political censorship was claimed by a Maoist group. Our comrade Dom Zucconi, an LSE student expressed Socialist opposition to this suppression of free speech, as the following report from the Daily Telegraph of 11 May shows:

“Tuesday’s incident was last night described as a ‘disgrace and discredit to socialism and a brief for fascism’ by Mr. D. Zucconi, a student who described himself as a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain when he proposed the motion to apologise to Professor Eysenck.

‘How does one best deal with fascism? With the butt-end of a rifle or with ideas? The political process is a battle of ideas and, unless you can rebut these concepts, you are lost’, he said.

‘In preventing him from speaking, you are resorting to the same tactics you accused fascists of using’, he told the meeting to loud cheers.”

For the record, the precise wording of the motion proposed by Comrade Zucconi and carried by a large majority at the LSE Union meeting was:

“This Union strongly deprecates the conduct of those present at Professor Eysenck’s meeting on Tuesday who appointed themselves to decide that nobody should be allowed to hear a point of view with which they disagreed. We place on record that only in the healthy atmosphere of free expression can ideas be debated, false ideas debunked and sound ideas developed. We therefore apologise to Professor Eysenck for the action of a minority in preventing him from being heard.”

The Socialist Party of course has always practised the principles expressed in this resolution. We have always been prepared to give opponents of Socialism a chance to express their views from our platform. This is because we are convinced that our views are right and that this will emerge from full and free debate—and if we are wrong we want to know, so that we can stop wasting our time.

Censorship, whether through the legalized violence of the capitalist State as enforced by the Courts or by the violence of self-appointed political guardians as displayed at the LSE, is anti-socialist and anti-working class and must be exposed whenever it rears its ugly head.

[Socialist Standard, June 1973]

Socialism, Free Speech and ‘Cancel Culture’ (2021)

From the April 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ten years ago, I found myself the recipient of several angry emails, all sent to my work email address. My crime had been to write a letter to a student newspaper in which I criticised a student’s proposal to make it compulsory for university staff to wear a red poppy. The details of this affair aren’t relevant here and my opinions about the red poppy are easy to find elsewhere (in summary: no communist or socialist should have anything to do with the thing). Presumably unaware of the irony, one outraged nationalist emailed me to say that the Second World War was justified, since it guaranteed ‘the freedoms that we enjoy today’, and also wrote to my line manager recommending that I be disciplined for asserting otherwise. For many on the right, this is what free speech really means: freedom of speech for me and for the people who agree with me.

But some – perhaps an increasing number – of those on the left of politics are also eager to no-platform or ‘cancel’ their real or supposed ideological opponents. Weaker manifestations of cancel culture include ostracism, blanking, ghosting and gossip-mongering – the tactics of an online left that often seems hellbent on plumbing the depths of infantilism, narcissism and moralism. Sometimes leftists go even further, attacking the validity of free expression itself and seeking to curtail it. In the ‘wokest’ corners of the web today, appeals to the principle of free discourse are often mockingly parsed as ‘muh freeze peach’ and the essential foundation of radical political debate – being able to write or say what you think in dialogue with (or opposition to) others – is more and more ridiculed as the outdated obsession of centrist squares, out-of-touch boomers, or, to use the argot, ‘literal fascists’.

Left-wing suspicion of free speech is nothing new. To cite a classic example, Herbert Marcuse’s essay on ‘Repressive Tolerance’ (1965) attempted to justify the denial of freedom of speech and organisation to ‘groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race or religion’. Such groups and movements are still with us, of course, and they should be countered at every turn. But we would argue that for socialists, it doesn’t make sense to suppress repellent social and political views – something Marcuse himself recognised would be ‘undemocratic’ (albeit, in his view, a necessary step towards achieving a more genuine democracy). In general terms, expressions of prejudice and hatred should be permitted, not because there exists some ideal ‘free market of ideas’, but because it is only by discussing and debating them that their vile nature can be exposed. As John Milton famously put it in his Areopagitica ‘Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing’.

We understand the appeal of cancel culture. After all, many of the most prominent free speech advocates in today’s public sphere are unpleasant conservatives such as Toby Young, who seems to pop up every five minutes on a British television channel to complain that you can’t say anything these days. But we should not embrace cancel culture just because right wingers oppose it. For one thing, free speech, as Thomas Scanlon argued long ago, is a good in itself, regardless of any consequences its exercise might have: this is because freedom of expression – including the freedom to hear others’ speech and make judgements about it – is important to us as rational, autonomous persons who can and should be able to make up our own minds about particular issues.

Moreover, it’s not clear that cancelling even works very well. The conservative and alt-right wingnuts and hatemongers who complain the loudest about being no-platformed – we’re thinking here of Young, Katie Hopkins and Tommy Robinson – are actually well-connected and powerful operators who, when cancelled, usually have little difficulty in finding alternative outlets for their opinions. Depriving such characters of their platforms is therefore generally counter-productive: all too often, it only allows them (and their deluded working-class supporters) to posture as the victims of a left-wing PC purge before trotting off to their next lucrative media gig. Cancellation does not starve these toxic edgelords of the oxygen of publicity; quite the opposite, in fact.

And what about the less elevated targets of cancel culture? Cancellation can be devastating for the less well-connected. It is becoming quite commonplace for ordinary people who offend against dominant public opinion on issues such as trans rights or Brexit to suffer reputational damage or to lose work and income . And there is little doubt that such personal and financial ruination is often intended by the cancellers. Indeed, the hostile environment created by cancellation aligns perfectly with the individualist, aggressive, competitive dynamics of contemporary capitalism – the ‘abyss of failed sociality’ as Axel Honneth has so cheerily put it – and the social sadism and ‘humilitainment’ that now mars large parts of mainstream media culture.

On social media, cancel culture often involves the vicious policing of speech, pile-ons and denials-of-service for the most minor of offences against political orthodoxy by relatively powerless individuals. As Kristina Harrison has put it , cancel culture, in its dismissal of nuance and dissent, tends to elevate ‘not debate and politics but moral absolutism, authoritarianism and hysteria, the tools of the witch-hunter’. Like the witch-hunter, the canceller moves readily between criticising the ambiguous behaviours or statements of her targets to making essentialist assertions about them, so that public figures or social media influencers who make misguided, ambiguous or problematic remarks about, say, racial or trans issues automatically become racists or transphobes. This point was made well by the late Mark Fisher in his critique of left-wing call-out culture, ‘Exiting the Vampire’s Castle ‘. Veteran BreadTuber Natalie Wynn (aka. Contrapoints), herself a prominent cancellee, makes the same and many other points in her far-reaching critique of the same.

And it should go without saying that Karl Marx himself would not have been impressed by no-platforming and cancel culture, although some leftists seem to be confused about this. A meme recently on Facebook consists of a four-panel cartoon depicting alt-lite rent-a-gob Milo Yiannopoulos moaning to Karl Marx about violations of his freedom of speech. In the final panel of the sketch, Marx silently picks up Milo and throws him over a clifftop. It’s a fun image, to be sure; but it’s also misleading. In reality, Marx fiercely defended freedom of speech. In ‘On the Freedom of the Press‘ (1842), for example, Marx, with his usual sarcasm, ventriloquised the Prussian press censors of his day, mocking their hypocrisy: ‘Freedom of the press is a fine thing. But there are also bad persons, who misuse speech to tell lies and the brain to plot. Speech and thought would be fine things if only there were no bad persons to misuse them!’ In fact, Marx opposed censorship throughout his life. And anybody suspecting Marx of capitulating to liberalism in this regard should think again. As Eric Heinze argues, Marx defended free speech not as a bourgeois right, but as something more fundamental: a foundational philosophical praxis that makes possible the very discussion of rights.

Today, we socialists make up a tiny minority of the population and we have very little political and social clout. To change this situation, we need to be able to explain to other members of the working class what socialism is and why everybody will benefit from it. Sometimes this seems like an impossible task: even in relatively ‘open’, liberal societies, the major media organisations, as well as all the other institutions of capitalism, are overwhelmingly ranged against us and communist ideas are vilified, marginalised and misrepresented in both right- and left-wing media. But we must make use of whatever relatively democratic spaces and opportunities do exist to shout about socialism. To attempt to deny free speech to our opponents simply on the grounds that they hold repellent or false views, meanwhile, would be unprincipled and counter-productive; ultimately, it would only make it even easier than it already is for those in power to silence us.

S.H.

Our GLC opponents (1977)

From the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The fact that all other parties are reformist is fundamental to the case of the SPGB. This means they seek not to abolish capitalism with its class division, wages system, state and frontiers, but to modify it a little this way or that in a futile effort to legislate away its problems and inhuman consequences. It follows that there can be only one party seeking to end capitalism and to establish democratically an entirely different world system, called Socialism. The abolition of the wages system, the end of trade, profits and frontiers follows naturally from the new basis of common ownership of the means of production and distribution. These unique principles of the SPGB can be amply demonstrated by reading the manifestos of all or any of our opponents, and then reading ours. Though our opponents may differ on what they see as most important in the continuing evils of capitalism the common approach of them all is reformist. Doctor the effects — leave the cause alone.

The Labourites

After their abysmal efforts at running capitalism they still have the audacity to present themselves to the workers and seek their votes. They were even brazen enough to charge 20p for their manifesto. This offered the usual reforms aimed at making poverty more tolerable, instead of seeking a mandate to end the system which generates poverty. In their clash with the Tories over “free” bus rides for old people they cynically exploited the poverty of the elderly to gain votes. If workers would only see the contradictory position of the Labour Party they could understand that ministering to poverty pre-supposes its continuation. After fifteen post-war years of Labour government old people still cannot afford bus fares. One of Labour’s own leaflets quotes a Mrs. Kitchener of Leatherhead on concessionary fares: “The passes are rotten value, and people can’t afford them anyway.” Can anyone imagine Wilson, Callaghan, Foot or Castle, or the head of any nationalized industry, spending their last years of life worrying about cheap bus rides in off-peak periods? These people have done quite well out of capitalism. They posed as your champions, to fight for you. Now they are well off and you are still poor and needy!

The same with housing. Where they find workers willing to be photographed smiling outside those little boxes of bricks called working-class “dwellings”, shown in the Labour candidate’s address, is hard to imagine. They called them “decent homes”. The blurb underneath should have read “good enough for workers but not fit for Labour leaders". Labour’s boast on education included:

  “We are now doing much in the education field for the training of young people for industry . . ."

Training workers for wage-slavery. Not a word about closing down teacher-training colleges, slum schools, and crowded class-rooms. No mention of the class-divide in education. The children of the ruling class are not trained “for industry”. The typical Labour leader is educated at Oxford. Lady Falkender, for example, was reported in the Daily Mirror (22nd April 1976 to be choosing Westminster public school for her two sons. The fees were £1,254 per year for a boarder and £789 for a day boy.

The Tories

With seventeen post-war years of Tory government and four years at County Hall and all the horrors of capitalism remaining to testify to their political bankruptcy, the Tories tried to counter Labour reformism. It is easy for them to make capital out of workers’ misery by saying “the GLC is probably the largest slum landlord in the world”. It was no different with them in power. In Lambeth Central the Tory candidate was Roy Hatter; he drew attention to two thousand houses in Lambeth boarded up, and seventeen thousand people on waiting lists. His claim to working-class support rested on having broken the world record by making a political speech that lasted over twenty-nine hours. If only words could build houses! Like most Tories, Mr. Hatter has the habit of calling Labourites “Socialists”. If he does not know the difference his long speech must have been painfully boring. He is himself an employee, a member of the working class, yet he embraces the system of his masters which exploits him as well as the rest of us.

The "Communists''

The election address of the so-called Communist Party followed similar reformist lines to the rest. Full of platitudes, promises and catch-phrases. A typical example was:

  "Pensions. End the scandal of poverty, neglect and deprivation for the elderly. They fought for and built London for us”.

Poverty! Neglect! Deprivation! Yes, under a government they urged workers to vote for. Poverty is produced by capitalism. It is glib and cynical nonsense to promise to end it while retaining the system.

These political commotionists can never resist the chance to pose as patriots. They might do better to ask themselves whether slums and poverty are worth fighting for? If by “us” they mean the working class, London was never built for them but for the capitalist class who own it. Much of London is so old that no elderly worker suffering poverty today had anything to do with its building.

Those former intrepid “revolutionaries” who used to train with broom-sticks for “heavy civil war” have become law-and-order men. They are now demanding that the Metropolitan Police should be under the control of the GLC instead of the Home Secretary. What relevance that has to “Communism” is impossible to conceive. They also demand “More Democracy” — a prime piece of hypocrisy for a Party built on reverence for Russian State-capitalism, the biggest and longest-running police-dictatorship in the world.

National Front

With the flag of British capitalism appropriately upside-down, the National Front leaflet, launched a tirade of bunkum about immigration. By “immigrants” they mean black people and ignorantly gloss over the fact that most immigrants are of white skin. Blaming the blacks for everything is a favourite get-out for the simple-minded. They claim that “Inner London is now a multi-racial slum”. Much of London has always been a slum. National Front only recognize slums when they are “multi-racial”. Black people did not create the slums. Many of them live in them, as do many of their “white” fellow-workers. Slums arise because capitalism produces cheap housing for workers. Overwhelmingly, slums are built as slums.

They seek to “immediately repatriate” any immigrant convicted of a crime. What an idiotic idea. Nearly half the black people in Britain were born here. If every country adopted the same policy, then all those Britons who have emigrated would be sent back here if convicted of a crime. As the emigrants outnumber the immigrants, there could well be a higher “criminal” population here at the end of the process! Their attitude betrays complete indifference to the social causes of crime.

They advocate segregated education. Anything that further confuses and divides the working class. As we have seen in dealing with the Labour Party there is already class-segregated education.

The “village pump” narrowness of the National Front is a snare for unthinking workers. Nationalism is an ideological disease. The Labourites, Tories, Liberals and “Communists” all sponsor nationalism. National Front merely carry the nonsense further.

The I.M.G.

This group makes the fraudulent claim to be Marxist and Socialist. Their manifesto sought only to outbid the others in the number and range of their reform proposals. They openly set out to gain “protest votes” from Labour. The fact that the National Front draws much of its support from disillusioned Labour voters did not seem significant to them. Such voters are politically muddled, and having despaired of the Labour Party are looking elsewhere for easy answers within capitalism. Nothing lasting or worthwhile can be built on such a base.

The IMG wants capitalism without its economic consequences. Their concentration on wages, prices and jobs shows they are void of any ideas beyond the present system of buying and selling and wage- labour. They seek to ‘nationalize all firms creating redundancies”. They have forgotten the redundancies in British Rail, state education, the mines, etc., and have yet to learn that state-capitalism works no differently from private capitalism. Far from being extreme in any way, IMG stand roughly where the Labour Party stood sixty years ago, still demanding a “national minimum wage”.

Their policy of “No platform for National Front” is absurd. False ideas cannot be banished by such methods. IMG linked up with the Communists and various Constituency Labour Parties in a group called alarm (All Lambeth Anti-Racial Movement). With each affiliated party seeking votes at the others’ expense, this can be only a very tenuous alliance. “Alarm” invited our candidate for Lambeth Central to address a meeting in support of their limited objective, jointly with the other candidates, excluding National Front. We circulated an open letter giving our reasons for not joining them to fight the effects of capitalism and arguing the need to end this system. In opposition to the platform our candidate was allowed to state the Party case from the audience. Copies of their invitation and our reply were sent to the South London Press but were not published. The Guardian also failed to publish a similar letter dealing with the rival demonstrations in North London on 30th April despite the publicity they had given the event for two days before.

The SPGB stands alone (in this country) as the one party which rejects the system the others want to reform and retain. Socialism depends upon understanding. Only a conscious majority gaining political power can achieve a world of common ownership where production will be solely for use with free access. Class rule and subjugation will then be replaced by human society.

Harry Baldwin

Students against Democracy (1974)

From the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Liverpool was proud of The Beatles and its connection with that Cunard Line. What the city thinks of the conference of the National Union of Students held there early April is another thing. Hundreds of delegates from universities, polytechnics etc. assembled for their annual jamboree. Over the years, this conference has endorsed some pretty queer ideas, but 1974 will go down as a vintage year.

This assembly debated students’ grants; elected a new President (a political loner we are told) by 21 votes; didn’t agree to send a delegation to Czechoslovakia to see if the Czech students’ union were democratic enough to form links with the NUS (would their journey have been really necessary?). Then came the body blow to democracy and the right of people to express their views. The outcome of this debate intimated they had a lot in common with the Communist-Party-dominated Czechoslovakia.

A majority of the delegates “voted yesterday to take whatever measures were necessary, including disruption of meetings, to prevent members of racialist or fascist organizations from speaking in colleges” (Guardian, 5th April, 1974). Mr. Steve Parry, the union’s Communist national secretary said: “It was all very well to talk about principles of freedom and democracy, but if people had known, in the days when Hitler was campaigning, what they know now, would they have let him speak? One or two individuals disrupting meetings was not enough. There had to be mass action.”

Another presumably intellectual and would-be working-class leader, Mr. H. Feather, wanted to drive the racialist and fascist organizations off the streets — you must pulverize them. All good emotional stuff to warrant a standing ovation, which of course it received.

But let us leave the heady atmosphere of the conference hall and look soberly at what has been suggested. Ideas not popular with students must be suppressed. At the conference these ideas are listed as fascist or racialist, but of course in reality it doesn’t stop there.

The Communist Party who now urge the working class to vote for the Labour Party took a different point of view in 1930. The following is taken from the Daily Worker 29th January, 1930:

  Workshop meetings should be called . . . and resolutions in the support of our Party should be carried, but the mere passing of resolutions is not enough. There should not be a Labour meeting held anywhere, but what the revolutionary workers in that district attend such meetings and fight against the speakers, whoever they are, so-called "left”, “right” or centre”. They should never be allowed to address the workers. This will bring us in conflict with the authorities, but this must be done. The fight can no longer be conducted in a passive manner. We must lead the masses in struggle against this Government and the time has arrived to use every conceivable means of political agitation. The 'Communist Party and its organ, the "Daily Worker" will lead the working class, fighting boldly and openly, against this government of scoundrels and agents of capitalism.

The government of "scoundrels” was the Labour government elected in 1929 whose Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald had been supported by the C.P. for many years. Is further comment necessary?

In 1943 the West Ham branch of the Socialist Party of Great Britain challenged the local branch of the Communist Party to debate the respective objects of the parties. A reply from their branch secretary dated 23rd February stated that "the Communist Party has no dealings with murderers, liars, renegades or assassins. The Communist Party of Great Britain refuses with disgust to deal with such renegades. We treat them as vipers, to be destroyed.” Methinks they protest too much but we leave our readers to form their own judgement on this outburst from the "holier than thou” brigade. Time and time again, the Communists have tried to break up our outdoor meetings — if not by violence, by concerted hooliganism.

And when it comes to the "Hitler campaign”, might we remind Mr. Parry that the Communist Party were prepared to do a deal with the Nazis in 1939? No question then of violently suppressing the Nazi ideas, but the fêting of Ribbentrop with champagne toasts. The Daily Worker (now Morning Star) had a headline of August 23rd, 1939: The German-Russian talks are A VICTORY FOR PEACE AND SOCIALISM. You could have fooled us.

During the 1939 war the Government shut down the Daily Worker for printing views which were considered to be against the war effort (during the CP spell of opposition to the war). The national press and politicians approved this suppression, and whilst the Daily Worker did nothing to enlighten the workers about Socialism (they were proud of their horse-racing tips), the Socialist Standard (Feb. 1941) stated that the SPGB has its own point of view. True to our basic principles we do not support suppression of opinion, however false we believe that opinion to be.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has personal experience of what happens when such a decision as that of the NUS is operative. We arranged a debate in North London against the National Front. An opportunity for the audience to weigh up the two conflicting schools of thought — socialist or nationalist. We were of the opinion that the audience would be able to judge for themselves the validity of the arguments. But our dear "lefty” types thought otherwise. They broke up the meeting. Did they consider the audience to be such a bunch of morons that they could not judge? Obviously they did, and this might just be the reason why these “revolutionaries” wish to appoint themselves as leaders of the masses. They know what is good for us — they know what we should hear.

Democracy, never a favourite word in their vocabulary, means a method of conducting affairs where a majority decision is reached on the basis of all information being readily available. Who are these self-styled dictators, who in the name of democracy, wish to decide what we shall or what we shall not hear? The suppression of "unpopular views” by violence does not eradicate these ideas. This can only be done by a free exchange of ideas.

It is obvious that a university education can turn out just as stupid and dangerous people as the ordinary elementary school.

C. M.

Fascism: Avoiding Anachronism (2020)

From the January 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anti-Fascism and Fascism
What is fascism? Or, more pertinently, what was fascism, since the ideology and movement of that name developed in the specific historical conditions of the period between the last century’s two world wars.

The word itself originated in Italy as the name given itself by an ultra-nationalist group opposed both to parliamentary democracy and to left-wing parties and which employed direct physical force on the streets as a deliberate tactic against its opponents. But it was not through street fighting that the fascisti came to power. They did so constitutionally when in 1922 the King, with the support of a section of the ruling class and its political representatives, appointed Mussolini Prime Minister. Once in control of political power the fascisti were able to consolidate their rule with Mussolini as dictator by dissolving parliament and banning other parties.

In Germany the similar ultra-nationalist, anti-democratic movement called itself the ‘National Socialist German Workers Party’, or Nazis, but were also conventionally called fascists at the time. They were able to gain considerable popular and electoral support (over one-third of voters) as a result of the failure of the democratic and reformist parties to solve the problems caused by capitalism, in particular the mass unemployment in the slump that followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929. They too came to power constitutionally when the German President, with the approval of other politicians, appointed Hitler as Chancellor in 1933. From this position of control of state power, the Nazis were able to ban all other parties and the trade unions and install Hitler as dictator.

One thing that Italy and Germany had in common was that they were relatively recent unified states, in 1870 and 1871 respectively. As a result, feelings of national unity were not as strong as in longer-established states such as Britain and France. The more virulent nationalism there reflected the ruling class’s need for a stronger central state that could overcome the remaining regionalist loyalties.

In the case of Germany, its attempt in 1914 to get a place in the sun commensurate with its industrial and trading strength, inevitably at the expense of Britain and France which had carved out substantial colonial empires for themselves, had failed. But the problem remained for their capitalist class and any second attempt was going to be more aggressive because more desperate.

Fascism, then, in its proper sense was an inter-world-war historical phenomenon which is not going to repeat itself because the conditions of that time are not going to. In this sense classical fascism is not a threat. So why ‘anti-fascism’ today?

Anti-fascism
Anti-fascism was the ideology under which Britain and France, aided later by the US, fought the Second World War to see off Germany’s second attempt to find a place in the sun at their expense (they succeeded but only to see the US take their place as the dominating world power). Somewhat ironically, it was also the ideology under which their ally, Russia, fought its war over which power – Germany or Russia – should dominate eastern Europe; ironically because, apart from the institutionalised anti-semitism, the Russian dictatorship was the mirror-image of the German one (leader-worship, mass rallies, concentration camps, etc).

As a result there have been two kinds of anti-fascism, one in defence of political democracy, the other in defence of the Russian dictatorship. The situation has been confused by the fact that the latter hypocritically employed the language of the former. So some anti-fascists have not really been ‘anti-fascist’ if this is defined as opposition to one-party dictatorships. But who isn’t opposed to these?

Who today wants to replace political democracy by a one-party or a one-man dictatorship? Not even most far-right parties do. There are still some classical fascist groups around but their support is negligible. All political parties with any degree of electoral support now favour governments being chosen through parliamentary and/or presidential elections.

It is an historical anachronism to describe today’s far-right parties which do have considerable support as fascist. Their ideas are still objectionable and dangerous, but they need to be opposed on some other basis than being fascist. On what basis, then, and how should they be opposed?

Anti far-right
Far-right parties have grown in recent decades as a result of two things – their opposition to immigration into their countries and the failure of conservative, liberal and social-democratic parties to solve the problems people face.

As these problems are caused by the capitalist economic system’s imperative to put profit-making ahead of meeting people’s needs, governments formed by the conventional parties are doomed to fail and always do. The far-right parties have been able to exploit this to convince considerable numbers of people that the reason the other parties fail is because they are incompetent, self-seeking and corrupt, in much the same way as the classical fascists in the inter-world-war period were able to convince people that their problems were caused by democracy not capitalism.

The main reason, however, why these parties have attracted support is their opposition to immigration. They are xenophobic, racist, nationalist parties. That’s the basis on which they should be challenged. But how?

No platform no way
Basically, what’s involved is a battle of ideas. Such battles can only be fought through discussion – and with leaflets, pamphlets, books, meetings and, nowadays, websites, podcasts and social media. That’s the only way to change ideas, not by physically fighting with those who hold them nor by taking action, legal or extra-legal, to stop people expressing or promoting them.

That is why ‘no platforming’ far-right organisations is not the way, and is even counter-productive. Stopping them holding meetings, breaking them up, and refusing to let others debate with them, are not going to change their ideas. In fact they are more likely to reinforce them. Physically confronting far-rightists, turning their demonstrations into street brawls or beating up their members is even less effective and, besides, reduces politics generally to the more primitive level of settling disagreements by fisticuffs rather than voting.

Of course, in so far as there are fringe gangs and deranged individuals who physically attack immigrants, as happens from time to time, nobody is going to object to self-defence groups, but this is a different issue to combating the broader ideology of far-right parties which don’t engage in such attacks.

So, no, the way to combat xenophobia and racism is not direct action to stop these views being expressed but to challenge and confront them as mistaken and dangerous, even in public debate with groups that advocate them. In fact refuting their mistaken and dangerous views in a public debate can be very effective.

Anti-capitalism and anti-nationalism
What should be the content of the case against far-right ideas? This has to be more than just the general case that all humans are members of the same species with the same range of abilities and should be treated equally. This has to be an essential part of course but it is not enough on its own. Opposing these ideas cannot avoid bringing up the cause of the problems ordinary people face and which the far-right wrongly identifies and to which they offer a mistaken solution. Capitalism has to be mentioned and it has to be explained that the way-out is to establish a world of common ownership, democratic control, production to directly meet people’s needs and not for profit, and distribution of goods and services in accordance of the principle ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’. In short, socialism properly understood.

The trouble is that most ‘anti-fascists’, even those calling themselves socialists (some are supporters of third-world dictatorships), are not anti-capitalism. They think that the problems ordinary people face can be solved within the profits-wages-money system that is capitalism. This is a serious weakness when it comes to making a case against the far-right since it rules out making the point that one reason for its rise in recent years is precisely the failure – impossibility in fact – of the conventional parties to solve these problems because they seek solutions within the framework of capitalism, so contributing to a situation which the far-right can benefit from. It goes without saying that of course the far-right can’t solve them either.

The other weakness is that most ‘anti-fascists’ are nationalists, that is, they accept that the world is, and should be, divided into separate national groups entitled to inhabit a part of the globe and whose members share a common interest. Nations are in fact ‘imagined communities’ whose members are divided into two antagonistic classes – the capitalists who own the means of production and who are the ruling class and the rest who work for them for wages. Nationalism is the ideology through which a national ruling class obtains and maintains the support and acquiescence of those they rule over. The ‘national interest’ is their interest.

This is a misconception that ‘anti-fascists’ share with the far-right. It means that nationalist ‘anti-fascists’ are combating the ideas of the far-right on the far right’s territory, as when it comes to arguing whether or not immigration is in the ‘national interest’. Since the national interest is that of the capitalist class within each supposed nation in some cases the far-right is able to show that immigration controls and discrimination against ‘foreigners’ are in the national capitalist interest,

Conclusion
Any campaign against the far-right views has to be waged on the level of ideas, not physical attacks or legal or extra-legal bans. It has to be based on recognising that capitalism is the cause of the problems such parties exploit to gain support and so a cause of their existence, and on a rejection of all nationalism of which xenophobia is just one end of the same spectrum. In short, the struggle against racist and xenophobic views should not be separated from the struggle for socialism as a world community without frontiers.

Adam Buick

Letters: Sinead O’Connor (1993)

Letters to the Editors from the February 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sinead O’Connor

Dear Editors,

It was wonderful to see the article on Sinead O’Connor in the January Socialist Standard. I wasn’t aware just how clearly she had come out about the money system, and it is very heartening to think that this stuff is getting discussed.

I had been more conscious of her strong feelings about the abusive upbringing of children. and your article has inspired me to set out my ideas about how the two areas relate to each other. I hope I can put this fairly succinctly.

To live under capitalism is to live for some other purpose than our own fulfilment, as Erich Fromm recognises. We strive and suffer, not to grow more fully ourselves, but to amass figures on a screen somewhere. Our lives only have meaning, and our needs will only be met, if someone else can extract some value from us.To live is to be used.

Does this not echo the reality of a child whose parents simply use her to carry their hopes and fears, and do not value her for who she is? Perhaps capitalism can be seen as a big abstract parent, telling us what we can’t have, punishing us for not being good enough. In the face of this system, our deepest needs have to be set aside as we try to satisfy its endlessly changing demands.

I have great respect for the Socialist Party’s realism in facing the fact that workers choose capitalism, that we arc often resistant to ideas of liberation, no matter how rationally argued. Perhaps our acceptance of such a punitive social system is merely our replaying in a different form our punitive childhoods. The resistance to change and new ideas certainly has a very rooted quality to it. I am conscious that you may react with suspicion to these suggestions on the grounds that 1 may appear to be saying “It’s not a matter of economics, but of personal insight”. But I’m not saying that. As long as we have a money system, leaders, coercion. countries, buying and selling and all the rest of it, then humanity will be held back from realising our true potential. and poverty and violence will remain endemic. What I am saying is that this personal dimension seems to me to be a hidden obstacle on the road to a truly free and humanistic society.

I am a parent myself, and no stranger to the pain of wondering if I’m being as supportive and respectful towards my children as they need me to be. Maybe sticking with what we know is a way of avoiding the fear of looking at who we are and how we relate to other people. Maybe the struggle towards a healthy society is connected with the struggle to become healthy individuals.

In any event, best of luck to you (and best of luck to Sinead O'Connor).

Peter Rigg

Nelson, Lancs

Reply:
Rest assured, we don't regard the ideas of Erich Fromm with suspicion. Quite the contrary, in fact—Editors.


Class War again

Dear Comrades,
It was a pleasure to read your article on “The Politics of Class War”. The subject was dealt with very sympathetically and I hope that any members of the CWF who happen to read it. take up your offer to discuss their views further.

Although the article stated that the CWF attracted the attention of the tabloids down South, I had never heard of them or seen any reference to their organization in the Scottish Press—although, admittedly, I am out of touch with political affairs.

Nonetheless, their viewpoint as stated in your article seemed familiar. About fifty years ago when 1 was active in working class politics, there was a European organization—I think they called themselves “Council Communists" or Spartacists (I can’t recall which)—whose literature was sold by a Glasgow organization the "Workers Open Forum”. The “Open Forum” was just that—an open forum which provided a platform for all shades of working class opinion. Every Sunday evening workers could go to the Open Forum and hear speakers from the SPGB. the SLP, the ILP, the CPGB, the Anarchist Federation, the RCP and the Labour Party. Its committee also organized debates between the various organizations mentioned. Literature from these organizations was sold at all these meetings. As you will appreciate there was little opposition from the “Telly" in those days and the meetings were well attended.

It was at these meetings that I obtained the literature of the Council Communists and, speaking from a somewhat snaky memory, I recollect that their views were similar to the CWF. The exponents of their case that I most remember were Anton Pannekoek, a Dutch astronomer, who dealt with philosophical and scientific matters, and Paul Mattick who dealt with economics. I remember them mostly for their articles in the Western Socialist.

I further recollect that they organized a meeting, either in Paris or Amsterdam, to which the SPGB was invited as an observer. The Executive Committee of that time (some forty or so years ago) declined the invitation. At the time I thought the EC were mistaken in their attitude but I can no longer remember the arguments.

Can it be that the CWF are the modern counterparts of the Council Communists? Whether they are nor not, I hope that your invitation to a dialogue is taken up.

Bob Russell

Glasgow

Reply:
As far as we know there is no direct connexion between the Council Communist group you mention and Class War— Editors.


Dear Editors,

Reading the October issue I thought I'd outline a few political points regarding Class War and anti-fascism, and the naive line of the Socialist Party.

I feel there is a great misunderstanding of the transformatory process, and the tasks to be carried out by the revolutionary working class. A revolution will entail new forms of power being used by the working class; both externally for the political struggle against the class enemy/counter-revolutionary forces, and internally for the control of anti-social behaviour (as I do not believe it will disappear overnight).

The sorts of working class active units I have in mind are closely related to the local workers councils or general assemblies. These decision-making bodies monitor the decisions made; and continuous action from, by and for the class is run by the local working class active units. Accountability in the struggle guides effective working class action on problems faced, and methods used in the past to see if they're working properly, and to devise new tactics if necessary.

“Punishment” may include violence if the class enemy is involved, and educative measures within the working class (historically this is the case). This does depend upon the particular situation facing the class though.

Also, no-go areas are not the only revolutionary strategy Class War has. I envisage widespread strikes, demonstrations, pickets, riots etc. Imagining that "the capitalist minority will be likely to cave in peacefully” is unrealistic, lacking historical backup, missing the range of bourgeois forces lined up against the working class, and the levels that they have dropped to and will drop to again.

You also misunderstand the nature of anti-fascist violence (back page, Socialist Standard, October), violence is only fascist if it is used with fascist ideas and intentions behind it. Anti-fascist violence is done with revolutionary working class ideas behind it, being one of the elements of revolutionary working class strategy.

Gerry Gable (bigwig of Searchlight) is against giving a (bourgeois) democratic platform to fascists; he recently said “I was in Germany recently and the coverage they were receiving was disgraceful. They would show young thugs attacking refugee hostels,' which was okay—it showed them for the mindless fools they are but then they would return to the studio and some well-dressed articulate neo- nazi would go on to justify these attacks in what some people would accept as a plausible fashion”. One of the working class anti-fascist strategies is no platform for fascists, the others being education and agitation.

Finally, I suggest Socialist Standard readers read The Coercive State by Hillyard and Smith. It’s a bit liberal but it carries lots of useful information on the "State of Democracy". Since it was published, however, things have got worse—people off the electoral register because of poll tax, etc. The message to be drawn is that we will never win on their terms.

I support Class War (and class warfare) because it is the war to end all wars!

Dave Clark

East London Class War 

London E8

Reply:
The danger in the "transformatory tasks” outlined is that the revolutionaries punishing, educating and guiding the rest of the population might well take on the authoritarian attitudes of a new ruling class. The only way to avoid this is to ensure that no revolution proceeds unless and until a majority of workers understand and want it. It is Class War’s failure to see the crucial importance of conscious majority action which could lead them, like "revolutionaries” in the past, into the rut of leadership tactics.

We do not agree that only intentionally fascist violence is fascistic. We are hostile to fascists, not least for their policy of dragging working-class politics into the mire of violence, and we shall play our part in defeating their pernicious ideology, using the force of scientific reason. (See the article "What the Fascists Need” elsewhere in this issue).

We have read the book which you recommend, which does indeed offer a piercing critique of the viciousness of the modern British state. For the record, one of its authors is a member of the Socialist Party and can therefore be expected to understand what the state is all about—Editors.

From No Platform to Safe Spaces (2016)

From the February 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

We refute two arguments for not allowing the free expression of ideas

Last year the militant atheist and ex-Muslim Maryam Namazie was initially banned by the officials of the student union at Warwick University from giving a talk to the atheist, secularist and humanist society there on “Apostasy, Blasphemy and Free Expression in the Age of ISIS”. The justification offered was that the views to be expressed would be offensive to some students, namely, those who still adhered to the Muslim religion. After protests, the student union officials backed down and she was allowed to speak.

Similarly, a petition was launched, which attracted 2500 signatures, calling for the veteran feminist Germaine Greer to be prevented from speaking at Cardiff University. This was because she had expressed the view that men who changed their sex to a woman weren’t really women, a view considered offensive to the LGBT community. This case was worse than Namazie’s as Greer was not going to speak on this but was to be banned merely because of an opinion she had expressed on another matter. In the end she too was allowed to speak.

No Platform

This argument for not allowing particular views to be expressed (or particular people to speak on any subject) differs from that invoked by the likes of the SWP for not allowing racists and fascists such as the National Front and the BNP to speak. ‘No Platform for Fascists’ was justified on the grounds that the views themselves were dangerous and so should not be allowed to be heard in case people came to accept them.

This was an elitist position in that it assumes that some people – the leftwing ‘no-platformers’ – could hear and read fascist views without being affected by them while others – the rest of us – were liable to be infected if they heard them. This was the same argument put forward by those who wanted to ban Lady’s Chatterley’s Lover as obscene and actually expressed at the trial in 1960: that educated men could read it without being corrupted but not their wife or servants.

That censorship is undemocratic and elitist as it involves a minority deciding what the majority can hear or read is the main case against it in general and why we in the Socialist Party never supported, and in fact actively opposed, the ‘No Platform’ policy,  practising what we preached and debating against the National Front and other racists (despite the no-platformers trying to break up the meetings).We took, and still take, the view that people are quite capable of deciding for themselves what to think, and so the way to deal with racists and fascists is not to prevent them expressing their views but to allow them a platform and then publicly confront and refute their arguments . We are pleased to note that this approach is now more widely accepted.

That the majority class of wage and salary workers and their dependants are capable of understanding what is in their class interest is central to the whole case that socialism can only be established if and when a majority have come to want it and to understand what it is and what it involves. To claim that people need protecting from certain views lest they be led astray is saying that the working class is not capable of coming to a socialist understanding on its own but needs to be led. Which of course is precisely what the SWP and other Leninists think.

Identity Politics

What about the argument from offence for censorship? It starts from the plausible position that people who are subject to prejudice and discrimination should have a ‘safe space’ where they can be free from this. This does tend to happen anyway as such people meet together in their own clubs, cafes or pubs. But the student union officials want to extend this to a whole university campus and to this end to ban the expression there of views considered offensive to particular such groups.

This change of argument reflects a wider change away from class politics to ‘identity politics’, a change welcomed by the authorities who prefer divide and rule to class unity (though some of them are beginning to have second thoughts as it also undermines the national unity they want). Minority groups are urged to identify themselves politically as such and to campaign to get gains and concessions only for themselves. Previously both revolutionaries and reformists had talked in terms of getting benefit for the whole wage and salary working class, irrespective of their ethnic origin, gender, language, religion, sexual orientation or whatever.

This class approach has now been abandoned (though not by us) and reformists and do-good liberals have turned to protecting ‘identity’ groups that are subject to prejudice and discrimination, seeing the setting up of ‘safe spaces’ from which the expression of views offensive to them are banned as one way to do this.

But the question remains: which is the best way to deal with people who hold racist or other prejudiced views? Is it to ban them from expressing them? Or is it to confront them in open debate and refute their views and expose them as dangerous? We see no reason to change our position of favouring the second approach.

Religion and Politics

In one respect the ‘safe spaces’ argument for censorship is proving more insidious than ‘no platform’. It has led to bans being sought on the expression not just of admittedly obnoxious views but also of views that don’t fall into this category but which, on the contrary, are helpful and necessary, namely, the criticism of religion. Ironically it has also led to the SWP being banned because of a rape scandal a few years ago, but we are magnanimous and defend them being allowed to express their views.

Nor is it clear why the ‘safe-spacers’ want to exclude Islam from such criticism when the expression of its views on women and gays could be considered offensive to such groups. In any event, suppressing a view does not change the mind of those holding it, which surely is the point as in the end changing minds is the only way to overcome prejudice and discrimination.

No doubt religious people – and not just practising Muslims – find criticism of their religion offensive but to ban the expression of such criticism because of this is to re-introduce the old blasphemy laws and extend them to all religions. Quite apart from us being against censoring views in general, this is something socialists cannot accept. Religion is a social issue, even a social problem, that needs to be discussed and debated and, like other mistaken ‘solutions’ to humanity’s situation, confronted and refuted. We cannot accept any policy which leads to the expression of anti-religious views being banned.

Fortunately, the attempts by student union officials to suppress free expression in universities have met resistance which has forced them to back down, but this has not stopped them from keeping on trying. This is why they must be opposed and exposed just as much as the Leninist ‘no-platformers’.

Adam Buick

Eysenck at LSE: Socialist Defends Free Speech (1973)

From the June 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Tuesday 8 May Professor Eysenck, who holds certain controversial views about the intellectual abilities of American negroes, was forcibly prevented from expressing his views at the London School of Economics. Responsibility for this political censorship was claimed by a Maoist group. Our comrade Dom Zucconi, an LSE student expressed Socialist opposition to this suppression of free speech, as the following report from the Daily Telegraph of 11 May shows:

“Tuesday's incident was last night described as a "disgrace and discredit to socialism and a brief for fascism" by Mr. D. Zucconi, a student who described himself as a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain when he proposed the motion to apologise to Professor Eysenck.

'How does one best deal with fascism? With the butt-end of a rifle or with ideas? The political process is a battle of ideas and, unless you can rebut these concepts, you are lost', he said.

‘In preventing him from speaking, you are resorting to the same tactics you accused fascists of using', he told the meeting to loud cheers.”

For the record, the precise wording of the motion proposed by Comrade Zucconi and carried by a large majority at the LSE Union meeting was:

“This Union strongly deprecates the conduct of those present at Professor Eysenck's meeting on Tuesday who appointed themselves to decide that nobody should be allowed to hear a point of view with which they disagreed. We place on record that only in the healthy atmosphere of free expression can ideas be debated, false ideas debunked and sound ideas developed. We therefore apologise to Professor Eysenck for the action of a minority in preventing him from being heard.”

The Socialist Party of course has always practised the principles expressed in this resolution. We have always been prepared to give opponents of Socialism a chance to express their views from our platform. This is because we are convinced that our views are right and that this will emerge from full and free debate—and if we are wrong we want to know, so that we can stop wasting our time.

Censorship, whether through the legalized violence of the capitalist State as enforced by the Courts or by the violence of self-appointed political guardians as displayed at the LSE, is anti-socialist and anti-working class and must be exposed whenever it rears its ugly head.

THE IMPORTANCE OF FREE SPEECH    

Statement by World Socialist Society at LSE

As members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain we are opposed to all censorship, whether it be through the legalized violence as enforced by the courts of the capitalist state or by the violence of self-appointed moral or political guardians. Let there be no misunderstanding of the meaning of what happened here last week. A body of people decided that the rest of us should not be allowed to hear certain views they considered objectionable; they took it upon themselves to use physical violence to achieve this end — and succeeded. In other words, they successfully censored what we should hear. But will they stop here? Will they now proceed to prevent Eysenck expressing his views in writing? And, after that, will they burn the books he has already written? And what are the prospects for those of us who disagree with them if ever they win control of political power? Will we be shot or just put into concentration camps? These are serious questions since they are the logical extensions of the policy pursued by last week's political censors.

There is a further point: all censorship — especially censorship of this kind, allegedly exercised for the benefit of the working class — is an insult to the intelligence of ordinary working men and women since it implies that they cannot be trusted to hear or read certain ideas and are incapable of making rational judgements on the merits of rival ideas. Those who favour censorship always assume that they are somehow superior to ordinary people and have the right to decide what ordinary people should or should not hear. Censorship is an elitist policy — but those who favour it here at the LSE such as the Maoists and Trotskyists have nothing but contempt for the ability of the working class to understand Socialist ideas and to establish Socialism by and for themselves.

The classic case for allowing unpopular minority views to be expressed — including those with openly anti-democratic ones like fascism AND Maoism — has never been refuted: if they are wrong then their case will perish in the course of free, rational discussion; if they are right then censorship delays discovering this. As our resolution passed by the Union last Thursday puts: "only in the healthy atmosphere of free expression can ideas be debated, false ideas debunked and sound ideas developed". We are always prepared at all our meetings to give opponents of Socialism a chance to express their views. For we are convinced that our views are right and that this will be shown in any free debate — and if we are wrong we wish to know so that we can stop wasting our time. WE STATE unambiguously that ALL censorship is anti-Socialist and anti-working class.

Last week's incident has done one thing, if nothing else. It has brought into the open those who favour censorship of political ideas: the Maoists and Trotskyists. They have placed themselves in the same camp as the fascists themselves and stand exposed as the dangerous enemies of the working class prostituting the good name of Socialism.

We stand for the common ownership of the means of production, without distinction of race or sex, organised democratically.