News in Review: Japan, tough competitor (1965)

The News in Review column from the July 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

You'll note that part of the third paragraph under 'Japan, tough competitor' is garbled. Obviously part of that paragraph is missing and, unfortunately, there was no correction in subsequent issues of the Standard. You'll just have to suffer  . . . just like I did.

P.S.

If you click on this link under the 'For Queen and country' column, you'll see footage of a young Tariq Ali.

Japan, tough competitor

The products of Japanese industry have always been strong competitors in the markets of the world.

In many cases, they have beaten British goods by sheer superiority in delivery, price and quality. Because many British workers regard the Japanese as inferior people, their economic victories have always been difficult to explain away. The solution to this was to popularise three stories, all of them designed to illustrate that the Japanese were treacherous little Oriental monkeys. This impression stirred up a lot of feelings which were successfully exploited after Pearl Harbour.

Briefly, the stories were: That all Japanese worker also gets a lot of what a time when British miners were continuously fighting against enforced cuts in their pay); That the Japanese were incapable of giving birth to an original idea and made up for this by simply pirating the designs of other countries (as if this was confined to the industries of only one country—international patents actions are going on all the time); That Japan was a country where only light industry could flourish—the heavier stuff had to be left to the sturdy Europeans (unemployed shipyard and steel mill workers could be excused for not appreciating the force of this point).

If there was ever any truth in these stories, there is very little in them today. Wages in Japan now compare with those in most other industrial countries; the Japanese worker also gets a lot of what are called fringe benefits—cheap housing, holidays, food and so on.

Japanese products are now becoming known for the originality of their design. They pioneered the mass production of the portable transistor radio (blast them). The Honda motor cycle now commands sixty per cent of the United States market. They have recently introduced a new car—the Daihatsu Compagno Berlina—to the British market which is notable for the number of “extras” (fog lamps, stainless steel bumpers, etc.) it has, all included in the near competitive price.

Other countries, in fact, are now stealing Japanese ideas. The plague of transistor radios is now being fed by British products. A Dutch shipbuilding firm has defied the patent on a Japanese-designed liner bow and American and West German firms have recently bought a new steel-making process from Japan.

Finally, Japanese heavy industry is booming ahead. This year, the steel industry there expects to produce thirty-nine million tons of crude steel (in 1949 production was nil—the British industry’s capacity of crude steel for 1965 was estimated in the recent White Paper at about thirty million tons.) Japanese shipyards expect to lay down the keels of two and a half million tons of shipping in 1965.

All of this means that, even after the pre-war methods have been discarded, Japan remains a strong rival in the world of capitalism. Indeed, under a powerful central control from the government, she is probably now a tougher proposition than ever.

In this process, several favourite myths have been laid low. This is not to say that, if at some time in the future Japan once more becomes involved in an international dispute, other myths, equally false, will not be concocted to explain away the immovable fact that the nations of capitalism are perpetually in dispute over the division of the spoils of exploitation.

For Queen and country

It would be better for everyone, including the young people themselves, if the antics of university students were not taken so seriously.

Universities are often among the most active units of what Peter Simple calls the Protest Industry. But when the undergraduates leave their youth behind them they usually forget the restless days of protest and fall into line with capitalism’s requirements of docility.

This is the background to the recent Queen and Country debate at the Oxford Union, which aroused such a lot of criticism, most of it based on the incorrect assumption that the motion was going to be carried.

It would be interesting to know what all those indignant letter-writers think about the Oxford students, now that they have signified that they will fight for Queen and Country.

In any case, the indignation was always misplaced. It is not uncommon for university unions to debate—and sometimes to pass—motions which sound very daring. In 1914, the Oxford Union voted against Britain being a member of the Triple Entente; in 1927 the Cambridge Union was in favour of pacifism; a few years later Oxford said that they preferred the Red Flag to the Union Jack.

And, of course, in 1933 Oxford decided that in no circumstances would they fight for King and Country.

Well, what happened? Among the supporters of that famous decision were at least two members of the present government whose present policy, as we all know, is to persuade other people to fight for Queen and Country in Malaysia, Arabia and other points East of Suez. These two are Anthony Greenwood and Michael Stewart.

It is difficult to trace what happened to most of the other 275 young people who voted for the motion. According to the proposer of this year’s motion, in 1939 they were “first in the fight against fascism.”

In other words, they did fight for King and Country after all, although perhaps under the deception that it was for some other, more worthy, motive. Apparently, they did not expect the British ruling class to try to mislead anyone about the causes of the Second World War.

In the event, the rebellious students of 1933 were as easy to deceive as any mental clodhopper who had never got within sight of the dreaming spires.

It is said that many statesmen—Hitler, Joseph Kennedy—accepted the 1933 motion as proof that the British working class would not fight in another war. If this is true, it only goes to show how badly capitalist politicians can misjudge a situation.

The 1965 debate, then, should not be given undue significance. Perhaps it was a publicity stunt, aimed at needling exactly the sort of people whose hostility was provoked. There is no reason to suppose that, if a war came, the rebellious students will not once again consign their university days to an embarrassed memory, and go dutifully out to fight for the interests of British capitalism. (Perhaps it will be in alliance with Nasser and Nkrumah, as Sir Richard Acland, who supported the motion, would like.)

Whatever the Queen and Country debate may suggest, of one thing it is innocent. It had no hint of enlightenment about the cause of capitalism’s wars, nor of determination to oppose them.

For university students and for the rest of the working class, that enlightenment is in the future.

China in Africa

An unexpected result of nuclear weapons in the hands of great powers, and the precarious Balance of Terror that has resulted, has been to increase rather than decrease the bargaining power of small nations.

Contrary to what might have been expected a decade or so ago, we have witnessed many cheeky acts of defiance by small and industrially backward nations towards great powers, which could probably overrun them in half a day without even using their nuclear weapons.

Attacking embassies and burning flags on the one hand, and nationalising the assets of some vast combine on the other, have become quite common place.

The smaller powers bank on the presumption that any move against them by one block, will bring the others hot foot to their rescue. Not, needless to say, because of any love towards the nation in question, but because they fear that an advantage may be gained by their opponents. While the giants manoeuvre for position, the little fellows nip about between their feet.

This is risky, as there is always a danger of getting trodden on. If the issue is really big enough the great powers will go ahead, and the small country is liable to become a graveyard. But in this jungle of Capitalism all methods must be used to forward the interest of the ruling class. One of the most successful ways of doing this is for a small power to try to milk a large power, or several if possible, for economic aid while committing themselves to as little as possible.

This position has been spotlighted again by the visit of the Chinese Prime Minister Chou En-lai to Africa, and his concentration on small and weak Tanzania. After all China is one of the world’s great powers and Chou En-lai is one of their top politicians. Palmerston or Bismark did not trail around, personally, to out of the way places, but times have changed and the struggle has become much more acute. No advantage, however small, can be passed over and so the visits of Heads of States, all over the place, goes on.

Chou En-lai appears to have had a rather mixed reception, as illustrated by President Kenyatta’s attack. Chou En-lai’s statement, on his last visit that “revolutionary prospects in Africa are excellent," did not go down very well with the new African leaders.

After all having just pulled off one upheaval, which has put them in the saddle, they are not likely to welcome another, which would probably put them out of it.

German visit

If it is true that history repeats itself, this is only another way of saying that capitalism’s problems are as persistent and repetitive as the ruling classes’ methods of dealing with them.

In 1904 Edward VII paid his famous visit to France, which sealed the alliance known as the Entente Cordiale, bringing to a close a century of enmity between Britain and France.

The visit was hailed as a great step towards peace—some especially wretched commentators actually went so far as to call the lewd and gluttonous King Edward the Peacemaker.

They probably were aware that the Franco-British alliance was made not in the cause of peace but as a shield against a greater and more immediate threat than the two countries offered to each other.

In 1904 the expansive menace of Germany was taking definite shape and the future was unmistakeable to the diplomats and the politicians. So the Entente was sealed, and the King packed off to France to give public, if vulgar, evidence of it.

Since then, there has been fifty years of persistent enmity between the British and German ruling classes. This situation had to end sometime, as the power line-up changed, as new markets were developed, as new weapons came on to the scene, as new threats emerged.

Both Britain and Germany are now united against the threat of Soviet Russia; both countries want to see Russian imperialism in Europe contained.

At the same time, both countries are now at odds with French ambitions, personified so aptly in the massive figure of de Gaulle, to see Europe united against both Russian and American encroachments—but under French domination.

The British ruling class are still wooing the Common Market; Germany is by no means hostile to these advances but once again the obstruction comes from Paris. (Britain is currently investigating the back alleys into Europe; witness Wilson’s recent visit to Vienna, where he pleaded for closer relations between E.E.C. and E.F.T.A.)

Thus the interests of the German and British ruling classes coincide at several important points. In addition, Germany has shown over the past twenty years that the expansionist ambitions of the first half of this century are laid to rest.

However powerful a competitor Germany may be, there is no sign of a resurgence of the explosive nationalism of 1914 and 1939. The time is ripe for another Entente Cordiale to be sealed— this time between Germany and Britain, directed partly against France. Thus history repeats itself, although the principal actors have changed their places.

This was the symbolism of last May’s visit by the Queen to Germany. She was doing there the same sordid job as her great-grandfather did in France in 1904.

Some German newspapers complained that the Queen did not smile enough at the welcoming crowds. Perhaps she was tired, or bored, or fed up with her well-paid job as the figurehead of British capitalism. But any politician could have told her (and for all we know one or two have) that she was making a serious mistake.

Capitalism's diplomacy demands that no matter how devious the bargaining, how ruthless the treachery, the leading public actors do not give way to any human feelings, but all the time smile, darn you, smile.

Sixties Man (1998)

Book Review from the December 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

1968 Marching in the streets by Tariq Ali and Susan Watkins. Bloomsbury, London 1998. £20.

Hey man, ’68 was so great! Like everything was happening all at once and everyone was groovy. Tarry tells it like it was. There was like Vietnam, man. The Cong versus the US. Sampson versus Goliath like. Ho was the man there man. Like he was never just another nationalist dictator. Yeah right. “Hell no we won’t go.” Unless it’s someone we really dislike like the Nazis. Then there was Che, man. He was like Jesus, man. And like Che had nothing to do with the repressive Cuban regime at all. And there was Czechoslovakia too. Dubcek and “state managed capitalism with a human face”. Or whatever it was. Then there was the students in Paris, man, who were like really radical and didn’t just want bigger beds and bigger grants at all. There was a real revolutionary situation there, man. Although de Gaulle did get a totally massive election victory. We all loved Meow, the Chinese cat, too. After all millions of dead red Chinese can’t be wrong. And then there was Free Love, man. Which didn’t just mean I could get laid more often. And we weren’t like just into getting stoned like today’s kids who smoke dope and do LSD all the time. Everyone was just so radical and everyone was out marching just like Enoch Powell, man. And rioting: “to loot is to liberate”. Unless it’s my shop of course. Then there was like the Blacks thing, man, and Women’s Liberation. Those things changed the world forever, man. Like Blacks aren’t discriminated against at all now and women still don’t get the shitty end of the stick. Now like everyone’s totally sold out, man, they used to be so radical and now they’re like bourgeois. Not Tarry though. Even though he’s got a job on the TV and he’s a rich man, man.

Repeat this mournful, self-indulgent, semi-Trot dirge until bored to death or organise for a real socialist revolution.

Kaz.

What’s all this Trotsky business ? (1977)

From the April 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard 

A professional revolutionary called Bronstein adopted the then fashionable idea of a nom de guerre (Ulianov became Lenin; Dugashvili, Stalin) and became the Trotsky who is now having such a mysterious rise to fame thirty years after his death at the hands of a thug employed by his former comrade Stalin. He must at least have had a sense of humour for he took his new name from his Tsarist gaoler at the beginning of this century. And before we finish with it, the new name did not quite succeed in rubbing out the old one. When he fell foul of Stalin, the latter used to see to it that '“Bronstein” used to appear in brackets after “Trotsky”. Thus, without laying himself open to the charge of anti-semitism, Stalin was able to inform ignorant readers of Pravda that his opponent’s real name was obviously Jewish. (The Trotskyists in turn used to refer to “that dog Dugashvili”. Much good it did them. The Bolsheviks inherited the anti-semitism of the Tsars. And cherish it to this day.)

At the time of the abortive 1905 revolution, Trotsky was an opponent of Lenin. In due course he changed his mind and by the time of the 1917 revolution was Lenin’s chief supporter in the seizure of power. Not of course from the Tsar. That job had been done six months before by risings in St. Petersburg and Moscow while Lenin was in Zurich (he not only had no hand in the overthrow of the Tsar; he did not believe it when they told him). The Bolsheviks overthrew Kerensky who stupidly tried to keep up the slaughter in the war with Germany. Trotsky himself never made any special mark while Lenin lived except as his faithful henchman. The only episode he stamped with his own brand was the massacre of the Red Sailors at Kronstadt — the very sailors who had enabled Lenin to smash Kerensky in the Winter Palace but had the audacity to ask: “What about some freedom and democracy now we have overthrown the Tsarist tyranny?” In opposing the modern Trotskyists, a Labour Minister called Mrs. Williams has dug up the Kronstadt story. She forgot to mention (or didn’t know) that when the anarchist Goldman tried to stir up the Labour Party about the massacre shortly after it took place, her party — the thuggish Bevin and the pacific Lansbury — turned their backs on her.

After Lenin’s death, Trotsky and Stalin fought for the crown. As to what the quarrel was about, all the pundits used to write incomprehensible twaddle about revolution in one country, permanent revolution, etc. etc. ad nauseam. The Bolshevik Stalin murdered his rival gangster in the same way that the Nazi Hitler murdered his rival Roehm in the same grisly era. And is there any real point in retelling the story now? Hardly. It is merely that when one wonders what all the Trotskyist splinter groups are doing in the current recrudescence, it is as well to see who the original Trotsky was. And then we might know the explanation of the current Trotsky epidemic? Quite the contrary. We merely know that Trotsky was just another Leninist opportunist and had no special theory to contribute to present-day thought whatever. That he twisted and turned like any Stalinist, right to the end. And that the .imbeciles who now proclaim themselves his posthumous followers (and would cheerfully murder the other Trotskyists who do likewise) have no more connection with Trotsky than they have with Socialism. They would be horrified to hear it but Stalin and Trotsky were just Tweedledumski and Tweedledeeski.

So who are the Trots? A number of groups (some a bit bigger than the Socialist Party, some a bit smaller) who seem to hate each other’s guts as much as they hate the Communists and Maoists. There was a hilarious piece in the Observer (16th Jan.) describing a meeting in Friends’ House at which Gerry Healy, of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, was denounced, in his presence, for writing a book actually accusing the leaders of the American Socialist Workers’ Party (the babble of names of all these Trotsky splinters is quite bewildering) of a crime. What crime? Why, nothing less than being accomplices in the murder of the old villain himself way back in 1940!

As the police haven’t bothered to arrest anyone and as the victims of the alleged libel don’t seem to have sued, either, one assumes that this is all some idiot game in which these fools — having nothing to contribute to Socialism — re-enact the feuds in Moscow in the ’20s. Tariq Ali was in the chair on behalf of the International Marxists (who are neither international nor Marxist) and play-acted a silly drama in which a gang of young asses marched in front of Healy so Ali couldn’t see him from the floor and the chairman then took a motion (carried? You bet!) refusing to hear the enemy. And these are the types who join in parades with banners demanding “Keep the fascists out.” What on earth do they think they are themselves? The meeting had brought over another of their stars from Belgium, Ernst Mandel, complaining that Healy was rocking the boat just when they were “getting accepted as a genuine force in the working class movement”. Were they now? Somehow one hadn’t realized it.

Phrase-mongers of the world unite. You really all stand for the same thing. Reform of capitalism. However much some of them prattle about Russia being state-socialist (but Trotsky insisted it was worth defending every acre with working-class blood right to the end), they all stand for “involvement in the workers’ day-to-day struggles” and similar claptrap. And not only is it difficult to detect the difference between the various warring groups and tendencies; it is quite impossible to see where they differ from the older gangs of capitalist reformers masquerading as socialists — the Communist Party and the Labour Party. A Guardian ignoramus called John Cunningham attempted to define the various splinters (4th Feb.) but left us groping in the dark — for which the poor devil could perhaps be excused. What was, though, quite inexcusable was that he had the nerve to state that the Trots were adopting “entryism” — more phrases — into the Labour Party even though they did not hold with Labour’s Constitution of which “the Marxist part” was Clause Four — “the common ownership of the means of production”. Now that’s Marxist right enough. But only the SPGB has ever advocated it and even the Guardian creep must know that Clause Four refers to the means of production and exchange. The last phrase is the give-away. What the devil would you want with means of exchange if all was socially owned? What these fools refuse to see is that the epitome of Clause Four has long been achieved in Russia. Which even Trots will now admit is state-capitalist and has not the remotest connection with Socialism.

Only one thing is certain. In a few years, all these groups will have joined those of times past in “the dustbin of history” (favourite phrase of all these? lefties). New insects will emerge to take their place in lousing up the working class. Large or small, the only Socialist Party will still be there. Hasten the day when the workers will start to see the wood for the trees.

L. E. Weidberg

A Siberian Winter in Trottingham (2020)

Book Review from the May 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Winter at the Bookshop. Sylvia Riley. Five Leaves. 2019

Essentially a book of short stories and anecdotes, this has been put together by the writer of Switchboard Operators, which years ago was made into the 1990s TV series The Hello Girls starring Letitia Dean.

The bookshop in question was based in the poverty-stricken St Ann’s area of Nottingham and was run by Pat Jordan. Riley was one of the volunteers who helped out. Jordan was one of the leading lights of British Trotskyism, founding the International Group which was for a time the section in Britain of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. This was the current that was linked to veteran Trotskyist writer Ernest Mandel and to Michel Pablo, who argued that the revolutionary struggle should always take as its starting point the particular situation prevailing in each country concerned. This meant in many cases an emphasis on ‘Third World’ struggles for national liberation and also student revolt, rather than the more usual Trotskyist pre-occupation with the traditional working class.

The International Group – after early dalliances with Ted Grant’s Revolutionary Socialist League (the ‘Militant Tendency’) – eventually morphed into the International Marxist Group and became dominated by Tariq Ali during the student revolts of the late 1960s, which is when the book ends. It is necessarily a highly personal account but generally well written, rather twee on some occasions and moving at others. It tells of a world of backroom duplicators and yellowing pamphlets, of student rebellion and fluid relationships. An air of grinding poverty hangs over it all, in an area long overdue for slum clearance (which happened shortly afterwards).

Nottingham at this time was known nationally as a hotbed of Trotskyist activity in a period when the so-called ‘New Left’ was making its mark as a challenger to the conventional Communist Parties. Pat Jordan and Ken Coates (later to become a Labour MEP) were the most central characters in this milieu and Sylvia Riley writes engagingly about the movement they led, the people in it – and their foibles. Let us say it doesn’t entirely align with the more glamorous image the IMG seemed to have cultivated at the time.

The IMG eventually split and its main successor organisation became ensconced in the Labour Party – with several former IMG members going on to become prominent Labour parliamentary figures, including ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling and Kate Hoey. A long way indeed from Pat Jordan’s tumbledown bookshop, with its bare light bulbs, Marvel comics and Trotskyist tracts.

DAP

Neither ‘Yes’ nor ‘No’ but World Socialism (2014)

From the September 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

In March the Scottish nationalist website Bella Caledonia interviewed ‘veteran left-winger’ Tariq Ali after he called for a ‘Yes’ vote in this month’s referendum in Scotland. We disagree.

‘Scottish Labour politicians claim they speak for internationalism, and often accuse independence supporters of parochialism and petty nationalism. As an internationalist living in London, why are you supporting independence?’

This was first question put to Tariq Ali. It is true that the supporters of Scottish formal ‘independence’ (any meaningful economic independence is impossible in today’s interdependent world) are promoting ‘petty nationalism’ but, as Tariq Ali rightly replied, the Scottish Labour politicians opposed to it are not internationalists. They are British nationalists. But then he played on the ambiguity of the word ‘internationalist’ to argue that to be one didn’t mean you had to be anti-nationalist and so there was nothing incoherent about him supporting Scottish nationalism. This is indeed one meaning of the word – an internationalist as an inter-nationalist who stands for friendly relations between ‘nations’. In other words, someone who accepts the sense and legitimacy of nations, nationalism and the nation-state. It is because of this that we prefer to call ourselves ‘world’ rather than ‘international’ socialists. In our view, the nation-state is a capitalist political form and the nationalism they cultivate divides the world working class. Bella Caledonia took up this in one of their other questions:

‘A lot of socialists would deny that there is something particularly toxic about the British state, and would say that all capitalist states are bad.’

We are not sure whether a lot of people say that all capitalist states are bad, but that’s essentially our position. Tariq Ali conceded that ‘on one level, it can be said that the capitalist economy of these states is more or less the same’ but went on to argue that different states have different peculiarities. The British state, he said, needed ‘modernisation’ by which he meant that the monarchy and the House of Lords needed to be abolished. In fact the main reason why he supports Scottish independence seems to be because he feels that a breakaway by Scotland will help achieve this (the interview is headed ‘Dismantling the British State’). This is similar to the reason Marx gave in the 1860s and 70s for supporting Irish independence but that was 150 years ago and since then the British state has been ‘modernised’, ie the political power that the landed aristocracy wielded in Marx’s day has been broken and the state is now completely controlled by the capitalist class via universal suffrage. In any event, though socialists are interested in there being political democracy, we are not interested in making any capitalist state more efficient and fit for purpose. Tariq Ali finished his answer to this question with the jibe (and non-sequitur): ‘of course, you can argue that since capitalism is now dominant everywhere, then one shouldn’t do anything. But that would be a retreat into total passivity and fatalism.’ A more logical conclusion from accepting that capitalism is now dominant everywhere would be to work for its abolition everywhere, but that’s not Tariq Ali’s view. He wants to retreat into the futility of trying to reform capitalism everywhere, as he made clear in answer to this other question.

‘What’s your views on the Nordic model and other varieties of capitalism? Can Scotland draw on these ideas?’

To which Tariq Ali replied:

  ‘Well, we’re talking about a period in which the capitalist system has triumphed, and the ideas of socialism have suffered a huge defeat globally. So we’re living in a very strange transition period, which may well last until the end of the century. One shouldn’t exclude that. So one has to operate with what exists, and see how capital in its worst aspects can be regulated, how a state can be regulated that works for the benefit of working people.’

Tariq Ali used to be a ‘revolutionary’ Trotskyist, but he’s now an open reformist. Ironically, just like the Labour Party which he rightly has no time for, he argues that the only choice today is between different varieties of capitalism. Yes, a capitalism which spent more on better education, health, housing and other services would be nice – if you could get it. But you can’t, at least not permanently. The post-war Attlee Labour government, which he praises and urges an independent Scottish government to follow, did introduce some reforms which coincided with the general capitalist interest for an educated, healthy and productive (of profit) workforce. But capitalism cannot be ‘regulated’ to work ‘for the benefit of working people’. The priority under capitalism is profit and profit-making and all governments have to accept and abide by this, as the record of all governments including Labour has shown. Some of them set out to improve things for working people but all of them ended up having to give priority to profits even when this meant making things worse for working people by, for instance, holding down wages, worsening services and cutting benefits.

Bella Caledonia did not pose a specific question about what would happen to the standard of living of workers if Scotland broke away, but Tariq Ali himself did in answer to another question:

  ‘I remember when Tony Blair came on his last tour of Scotland, and he said, If you vote for independence, every family will lose £5,000 a year. Who dreamed up that figure?’

While it is true, as Tariq Ali went on to point out, that this is an arbitrary figure and meant to scare people into voting ‘No’, it is an argument that the ‘Yes’ campaign has to face and cannot simply dismiss out of hand. People could become worse off. This is what happened in Ireland when and after it got ‘independence’. Tariq Ali’s reply was that there’s no reason living standards should decline ‘if the economy is properly handled.’ This amounts to saying that at least people wouldn’t be worse off (of course claims that people would be better off are just the usual empty politicians’ promise). That may well be true but in that case what’s all the fuss about? If it’s not going to make any difference to living standards either way why bother taking sides in the referendum? Who needs to care about the result (apart from the Scottish nationalist politicians who would like to be able to strut on the international stage)? Some (such as these same politicians) will reply that that it’s not a sordid, material question but about ‘freedom’ and ‘dignity’. To which we reply: that’s just divisive, nationalist rhetoric. It does not deflect us, and should not deflect other workers in Scotland, from talking up the position ‘Neither Yes Nor No But World Socialism’ and writing this across their ballot paper.

The Dogma of Lenin (2017)

Book Review from the December 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The Dilemmas of Lenin’, by Tariq Ali (Verso Books 2017)

Opening this book, you might expect to find a Lenin who is an open-minded, flexible, freethinker. This was not the case – and anyone who has ever met a Leninist will tell you a better title would have been ‘The Dogma of Lenin’.

In the field of so-called ‘Lenin studies’ (Lih, etc) nuanced critique is supposed to have replaced the ‘Great Man of History’ approach. So Ali writes ‘this book was written to put Lenin in his proper historical context … Lenin was a product of Russian history and the European labour movement.’ And that Lenin would have died in exile without the First World War and the events of February 1917. However, by p.2, comes something of a reversal, and a flavour of the rest of the book ‘First things first, without Lenin there would have been no socialist revolution in 1917. Of this much we can be certain.’

Worse still, it suffers from a teleological interpretation, for example; asserting ‘this [lack of revolution] is where the Bolsheviks as a party were headed strategically and tactically before April 1917.’ And ‘Lenin understood that if the moment were not seized reaction would triumph once again’.

Ali argues the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War demonstrates peasant support. Combined with urban proletariat support in the Russian Revolution, Ali concludes the Russian Revolution was not a ‘coup’. A laugh might be forgiven at the statement ‘It was only after Bolsheviks won majorities in the soviets that they set the dates for an insurrection’.

And of Bolshevik slogans ‘Land, Peace and Bread’ Ali makes the unlikely claim that ‘behind each word lay a set of ideas encompassing Bolshevik ideology.’ Later he states ‘Bolshevik slogans were not particularly if at all socialist.’

Contradictions

Also strange is that Ali claims that Lenin’s rage (at Kamenev and Zinoviev exposing his date for insurrection), was both understandable but in the end didn’t matter at all. Lenin’s peace deal with Germany was ‘shameful’ but also ‘necessary’ (and ‘compromise’ is a word reserved for opponents). ‘War communism had been necessary to win the civil war’ but in the absence of a German revolution the ‘New Economic Policy’ was then necessary (and later ‘there was no credible alternative’). With no hint of irony is written ‘contempt for political chameleons stayed with Lenin all his life’.

Later chapters include one, ostensibly on the contribution of women to the revolution, but seemingly devoted to the women in Lenin’s life. Lots of criticism is expressed for 11,000 American troops Woodrow Wilson sent to invade Russia during the Civil War, but very little by comparison for 1.4 million German troops Kaiser Wilhelm II sent Eastwards during the First World War. This can only be explained as anti-Americanism, later confirmed in a dig at American academics.

As the final chapter, the Bolshevik-Menshevik split (following whole sections on ‘dilemmas’ of ‘Terrorism and Utopia’, ‘Internationalism, Socialism, Empires and War’) is wholly inappropriate. Both chronologically and in terms of significance of ‘dilemmas’ it should have come first.

The epilogue is worse than the rest of the book, reprinting an autobiographical Lenin analogy on climbing a high mountain. This is really a ‘great man’ approach to looking at Lenin, and one we would reject.

DJW

50 Years Ago: What! No money! (2018)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Millions of viewers of the BBC programme last June on the students will have heard Tariq Ali declare “we believe in the abolition of money”. Someone pointed out that “the others looked very doubtful”.

As well they might. Even Cohn-Bendit has only called for equal wages, presumably to be paid in money.

Tariq Ali himself probably did not understand the implications of what he said. But he did break a left-wing taboo. Normally they don’t like to fly so much in the face of popular prejudice and risk being called “Utopians”.

No, normally they like to be seen as r-r-revolutionaries boldly declaring they believe in violence!

Whatever the reason for his lapse Tariq Ali did at least provoke some discussion in the papers as to whether or not it was practical to do away with money. Most people ridiculed the idea but one Guardian letter-writer pointed out that the absurdity of capitalism should be obvious every time you get on a bus and have “to exchange metal discs for a ritual rectangle of paper which an intelligent man was paid to punch”.

Of course to abolish money without making any other changes would be foolish. Capitalism produces wealth for sale on a market with a view to profit and where there is an exchange economy money is very useful. The only alternative is barter which would be cumbersome and lead to a drastic drop in trade and production.

But this is not what Socialists want. We have always stood for a change in society which would make money redundant. Once the means of wealth production are the common property of the whole community they can be used to turn out wealth directly to meet human needs. When this has been done then everybody could have free access to it and take what they felt they needed. And why not, when the resources of the world can provide plenty for all? It is not those who want to abolish money who are absurd but those who want to keep it.

[Socialist Standard, September 1968]

Trotskyism Rehashed (1973)

Book Review from the December 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tariq Ali, a leading member of the so-called International Marxist Group writes in his book The Coming British Revolution that the socialist revolution will be produced by the long dreamt-of big slump and not working-class understanding. Indeed he categorically states that the working class is incapable of ever developing a socialist consciousness on its own and must have “leaders” (guess who) to do their thinking for them. Apparently the need for workers to recognise the leaders now is crucial since British capitalism is already on the brink of collapse and only needs one more good push. And not only will the Trots provide the workers with political direction during the revolution but will also throw in the direction of military operations for good measure!

Obviously that’s a piece of romantic nonsense as Trotskyists know little or nothing of such matters, but such extravagant flights of fancy enable us to see the appeal Trotskyism can have for some youngsters by conjuring up a vision of themselves as latter-day Lenins dramatically leading the masses into world-shattering action. However, if past behaviour is anything to go by such a revolution is doomed to be an awful flop as Ali, Robin Blackburn and co. would be unable to resist the urge to get themselves arrested after five minutes.

Ali wants to see the Labour Party back in office on the grounds that it will finally (again!) disgrace itself in the eyes of the workers and so drive many of the disillusioned into the ranks of the Trots. This is what they always hope for from a period of Labour government and it should be obvious to them by now that they are on a loser. What is much more likely to happen is that disillusioned, politically ignorant workers will be driven into supporting, say, the Liberals or even Enoch Powell. So here is a blatant disregard of what has gone before, and a knowledge of Marxism must include the recognition of history’s lessons in order to avoid repeating mistakes.

And while we’re on the subject of Marxism, Ali correctly attacks anti-dialectical methods of thinking and points out that it is wrong for Trotskyists to parrot what Lenin said in 1919 or 1920 since the circumstances will be very different today. But this is exactly what they always do, especially in connection with Marx. IMG’ers are forever backing up their claim that socialists should support Irish nationalism and the various nationalist movements in the Third World by quoting what Marx said on the subject back in the middle of the 19th century (see Socialist Standard December 1972).

The point is that Marx and Engels found themselves in a very different historical situation from the one we live in today. They supported the emergent bourgeoisie of Europe in its struggle with feudal reaction because at that time the two forces were pretty evenly balanced and it was just possible that reaction could crush or at least hold back the progressive force which the bourgeoisie then represented. By the turn of the century the victory of the bourgeoisie was all but complete. All over Europe they had vanquished feudal remnants and unified dozens of tiny states into large capitalist nations.

To the founders of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in 1904 it was clear that the victorious bourgeoisie needed no help from them and had in any case, having fulfilled their historic task in increasing the productive forces, now become in turn the reaction. The task of Marxists from then on was to point this out at all times and to concentrate on propagating the case for the next stage in social development, the establishment of a worldwide production-for-use society. In dealing with the basic principles of the Marxist case (the materialist conception of history and the class struggle) Marx and Engels correctly stated in the preface to the 1872 German edition of The Communist Manifesto that

The practical application of the principles will depend, as the manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing . . . 

It is we who apply these principles within the context of the present day and not the followers of Lenin and Trotsky.

Like Trotskyists everywhere Ali sees revolution round every corner. He even thinks that the 1945 Labour government introduced the National Health Service only to stave off revolution and goes on to argue that the capitalists can no longer afford to buy-off the workers with more such reforms. Of course as even Ali should know the NHS was introduced in order to save the capitalists money by ensuring that workers didn’t spend the part of wages required to pay for medical attention on other things by having it deducted from their wages and paid into a central fund. And the most likely reason why the capitalists don’t produce other such reforms is that they can’t think of any worth their while. Perhaps Ali and other leftists could help them out by suggesting a few? Anyway, the capitalists are not under any great pressure from the workers to require buying them off.

So Ali in 1973 is as wrong about Britain in 1945 as Trotsky was in 1935. Then the man Ali describes as “a perceptive observer of the British political scene” was writing that the revolution was about to break out in Britain only a few months before the Tories were returned to power with a massive majority. Some “perceptive observer”.

Ali thinks that “large areas of the world have liberated themselves from the tyranny of the world capitalist market”. Where is this true? Russia? China? Cuba? Actually the first two are entering the world markets just as fast as they can and are busy negotiating with Nixon and other western political and business leaders to accelerate the process. And Cuba is only kept going at all by the “aid” given by Russia and China for reasons of strategy and propaganda alone.

Predictably the usual lip-service is paid to the idea that socialism means “To each according to his needs. From each according to his ability”. But is this concept any nearer realisation in Russia where Ali claims a “new set of property relations” have been established? Does the working class still not have to work for wages there? Of course Trotskyists always identify capitalism and exploitation with western-style ownership of bonds, stocks, shares, etc.; in fact capitalism as it had developed in Marx’s own lifetime under peculiarly western conditions. That the Russian form of state capitalism developed out of a different historical background with capital accumulation carried out by a dictatorial political party — the Bolsheviks — instead of private entrepreneurs has escaped them. They imagine that the capital-wage labour relationship must develop in the same way everywhere despite vastly different historical circumstances and so provide us with one more example of their ignorance of the Marxist method.

Vic Vanni

Imperial hangover (1983)

Book Review from the August 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tariq Ali: Can Pakistan Survive? (Penguin. £2.95.)

When the British ruling class decided that its continued exploitation of South Asia was best done outside a formal imperial framework, the region was divided into two states along religious lines. Thus in 1947 Pakistan came into existence, divided into two parts separated by a thousand miles of India. The history of "independent” Pakistan since that time is the subject of Tariq Ali’s latest book.

The British authorities left behind a model of repression which was enthusiastically emulated by the military rulers who took their place. In February 1946, for instance, over five hundred workers had been shot as a general strike in Bombay was put down. Post-independence Pakistan was still tied closely to the British economy, as a producer of raw materials whose small industrial sector was largely owned by British capitalists. If Pakistan as a whole remained a kind of colony, though, East Pakistan became subordinated to the politically-dominant West. Raw materials from East Pakistan brought in foreign exchange, which was used to develop West Pakistan industry, which in turn had a captive market in the East. Such conflicts of interest resulted in the break-up of Pakistan in 1971, and the establishment of Bangladesh.

The political history of Pakistan has been of a succession of military dictatorships interspersed with periods of closer approximation to capitalist democracy. The first proper general election was scheduled for March 1959, but the ruling bureaucracy was aware that it faced defeat in any free vote. Six months before the elections were due, the army took power in a coup, ushering in ten years of military dictatorship under Ayub Khan. A rigged election was held in 1965, and in 1969 Ayub, who could no longer rely on his own army officers obeying orders, resigned in favour of Yahya Khan. The long-promised elections of December 1970 showed the party of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to be the strongest in the West, while in the East the Awami League of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman received overwhelming support for a platform of an effectively autonomous Bengal. This could not be tolerated by the rulers in the West, and in March 1971 their army invaded the undefended East, killing tens of thousands. The ultimate outcome, however. was the disintegration of the country, the East becoming the separate state of Bangladesh.

In the former West Pakistan, the army handed over in December 1971 to Bhutto, as the only politician who enjoyed sufficient support to keep the country together. Despite being an elected prime minister, Bhutto showed himself to be no less repressive than the military dictatorships that preceded (and followed) him. He presided over another civil war, this time against the inhabitants of the Baluchistan Province. But this brought the Pakistani army back into the centre of politics and so paved the way for Bhutto's downfall. In 1977, after rigging the general election, he declared martial law in three cities; then in July of that year the army staged another coup and Zia-ul-Haq took over power. Bhutto was imprisoned and then executed on a trumped-up charge. The Zia dictatorship has now been in power for six years; the President has declared that elections are "un-Islamic”. The regime has been given a boost by the Russian invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan, which has enabled Reagan, Thatcher and their ilk to represent the reactionary dictatorship as a "bastion of the free world”.

Politically, then, it has been a pretty sordid third of a century. The economic and social developments have been no more attractive. Pakistan in 1947 was very underdeveloped, with industry accounting for only six per cent of total output. State subsidies and protection enabled a much larger industrial capitalist sector to establish itself, and trade unions were suppressed as a means of keeping wages down and profits up. The degree of concentration of power and wealth was remarkable: in the mid-sixties, two-thirds of the country's industrial capital was in the hands of twenty families! Bhutto nationalised a number of large companies — Ali correctly describes this as state capitalism (perhaps Trotskyists are beginning to learn something after all). What effect did this state-controlled capitalist expansion have on those whose labour produced the new wealth? Ali quotes an economist writing in 1980:

After over 30 years of high economic growth, only 29 per cent of the population has access to safe drinking water. The adult literacy rate is 21 per cent . . . Less than 30 per cent of the population has access to adequate health services or adequate shelter. About 33 per cent of the population live below the poverty line. i.e. have a level of per capita expenditure that fails to satisfy even the minimum needs of the average individual.

The ordinary workers and peasants have clearly benefitted little if at all.

Surely the lesson of all this is that "independence" is no answer to the problems of colonies and other underdeveloped countries. The appalling social conditions of Pakistan cannot be solved by any government of Pakistan, however nationalistic or radical. The problem of backwardness is a global one and requires a global solution. Tariq Ali’s plea for a “voluntary Federation of South Asian Republics" is no contribution in this regard. Readers will find his book a useful guide to Pakistan’s problems, but for a way out they will have to turn to the ideas of world socialism.

Paul Bennett

Between the Lines: 1968, the BBC & Tabloid Journalism (1988)

The Between the Lines column from the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

1968 and all that

Back in the late sixties, while thuggish cops kicked hell out of anti-Vietnam war demonstrators in Grosvenor Square and the Beatles sang "you say you wanna revolution", your reviewer was quietly tripping out on Junior Disprins, listening to John Peel on pirate Radio London and occasionally paying attention to my old man who told me that Harold Wilson was no more a socialist than Bob Dylan could sing. He was right about (Lord) Wilson, wrong about Dylan and now a lot of the Grosvenor Square victims are members of the SDP and like to recall their youthful rebel days.

World In Action (8:30 pm, ITV, January 4) was all about three of those rebels of 1968. Using film clips of the heady days when lads with duffel coats and earnest expressions were going to change the world, the programme jumped on to 1988 when Thatcher reigns supreme and young trendy lefties have turned into middle-aged, compromising bores. The first was Mike Tomkinson, then President of the LSE students' union, now a man who writes for the Digger and believes that the establishment is here to stay. Second bore was Dave Clarke (no, not the one who made bad records then and no records now) who owns his own business in Docklands publishing a local newspaper. Clarke, whose line in cliches has not changed much in twenty years, is shown in 1968 declaring that violent revolution is what we must prepare for and in 1988 admitting that Thatcher's put some good old life back into the profit system and — I bet you've never heard this one - if you're not a socialist before you're twenty you have no heart but if you're a socialist after you're forty you have no brain. Dave did not explain what you are supposed to be between twenty and forty, although he seems to have maintained a sort of permanent mindless dullness throughout the whole process.

Dave looks into the camera and declares that his heart is on the left, but his wallet is on the right. The fact is, of course, that back in 1968 Dave Clarke, then President of Manchester Student's Union, was a moralising trendy with nothing to do except sloganise in accordance with the then fashionable dogma which insisted that Vietnam should win its war. Now that Vietnam has won and millions of Vietnamese workers are living under an obscene dictatorship (just as they would have done if America had won the war) Clarke is trotting out the latest fashionable tripe about Thatcher being good for "our" industry. The false message of the programme was that Clarke had changed in twenty years; the reality is that he was a capitalism-supporting fool then and he appears to be no better now.

The third rebel chosen for ridicule by World In Action was Tariq Ali, a r-r-r-revolutionary then and an oh-so-constitutional Labourite with his own TV programme on Channel Four now. Ali is at least consistent: in 1968 he was struggling for state capitalism in Vietnam, now we are able to see from the programme that he is struggling for state capitalism in Nicaragua.

The purpose of this programme (if TV reviewers may be so arrogant as to seek such a factor) was to show that times have changed in twenty years. For conservatives this is supposed to be a reason for good cheer: all them lefty radicals have grown up at last, what!; for leftists it is supposed to show that the good old days of the late sixties, when you could start a demo faster than Harold Wilson could light his pipe, have gone and we are now in the miserable age of Thatcherism. Socialists accept neither view. The Left in 1968 never was a threat to the system. We do not doubt that many workers matured a little politically through the struggles of those active years but that maturity came from seeing through the illusions of futile reformism, not pursuing them. What is sad - very sad, in fact — is that students in 1988 who mouth the platitudes of pseudo-revolutionary leftism have not moved beyond the moralising confusion of 1968. Twenty years ago they were rolling joints and wasting their hopes in the political haze of reformism; today the dope costs more and it's mainly young Tories who smoke it. Apart from that, the task of changing society has still to be carried out

Marmaduke exposes himself

See For Yourself (8pm, BBC1, January 3) was all about how the BBC works. It was a two-hour programme which is probably like the kind of thing they show about collective farms on Bulgarian TV. "This is the BBC making a play - this is us making the news - did you know that it takes fifteen cameras to film the golf coverage?" Well, thanks for telling us, but does it really matter to the old workers who can't afford to pay the TV licence fee out of their pension?

After the programme we were invited to phone in questions to the two men who run the BBC. One was Michael Checkland, a man who looks and sounds like a banker and seems to think that the BBC would have been better off if it went into banking. The other was Marmaduke Hussey - a man who, as if not foolishly enough named already, kept on being referred to as Dukey by Checkland. Before the calls came in Marmaduke answered a question or two from the interviewer. Had he watched the two hour programme? No - well, he'd seen a bit of it. Wise man: he was probably watching ITV at the time. But what sort of Chairman of the BBC goes on TV to answer questions on a programme most of which he has never seen? Does he watch EastEnders, the BBC's most watched programme? He had seen it a few times, said Marmaduke — and then proceeded to ask a caller from Bristol what the weather was like there because he had one of his houses round that way.

One of his houses? Marmaduke probably spends so much time travelling from one home to the next that he has precious little time to watch the telly like the rest of us. I was thinking on 'phoning up and asking why BBC news tells so many lies about "Marxist" countries — or asking why EastEnders is such insulting, anti-working-class drivel, or when it was that Marmaduke was actually elected by the viewers of the BBC to be its Chairman.


The People caves in

Readers who have been following our own little soap opera about the People newspaper's published lies about comments made in this column about soap operas will be pleased to know that the People admitted in a written reply to the Press Council that it was wrong to claim that The Socialist Party was in any way connected with the Labour Party or that we stand for socialism in one country. They have published a letter from a member of the Socialist Standard Production Committee correcting their distortion. However, as their correction was several months after the original lies had been published and as our reply was given about a tenth of the space which was given to their original article, you can draw your own conclusions about so-called press freedom. One thing can be said about the BBC: they can't be accused of twisting what The Socialist Party says — they just maintain a conspiracy of silence which began in Reith's day and shows no sign of changing in the Era of old Marmaduke.

Steve Coleman

What! No Money! (1968)

From the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Millions of viewers of the BBC programme last June on the students will have heard Tariq Ali declare "we believe in the abolition of money". Someone pointed out that "the others looked very doubtful". As well they might. Even Cohn-Bendit has only called for equal wages, presumably to be paid in money. Tariq Ali himself probably did not understand the implications of what he said. But he did break a leftwing taboo. Normally they don't like to fly so much in the face of popular prejudice and risk being called "utopians". No, normally they like to be seen as r-r-revolutionaries boldly declaring they believe in violence!

Whatever the reason for his lapse Tariq did at least provoke some discussion in the papers as to whether or not it was practical to do away with money. Most people ridiculed the idea but one Guardian letter-writer pointed out that the absurdity of capitalism should be obvious every time you get on a bus and have "to exchange metal discs for a ritual rectangle of paper which an intelligent man was paid to punch".

Of course to abolish money without making any other changes would be foolish. Capitalism produces wealth for sale on a market with a view to profit and where there is an exchange economy money is very useful. The only alternative is barter which would be cumbersome and lead to a drastic drop in trade and production. But this is not what Socialists want. We have always stood for a change in society which would make money redundant. Once the means of wealth production are the common property of the whole community they can be used to turn out wealth directly to meet human needs. When this has been done then everybody could have free access to it and take what they felt they needed. And why not, when the resources of the world can provide plenty for all? It is not those who want to abolish money who are absurd but those who want to keep it.

Trotskyism (1985)

Book Review from the February 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Stalinist Legacy, edited by Tariq Ali, Penguin, £4.95

My heart sank on seeing over five hundred closely-printed pages on such a well-worn topic as Stalinism. Having persevered to the end of all twenty chapters, I can only say that my misgivings were well-founded: the view that the horrors of recent Russian history have been essentially due to the shortcomings of one man is developed here at great length and in a depressingly turgid style.

Things start badly, with Tariq Ali's introduction claiming that the book provides "a Marxist critique of Stalinism", when in fact it adopts a purely Trotskyist perspective. Ali's dismissal of the Marxist thesis that Russia is state capitalist is utterly dishonest. He claims that virtually everyone who sought to categorise Russia as neither socialist nor post-capitalist (as state capitalism or bureaucratic collectivism) "ultimately ended up as an apologist for capitalism". The fact that this is true of people like James Burnham apparently gives Ali an excuse to ignore the only consistent analysis of Russia as state capitalist—that put forward by the Socialist Party for the last sixty-five years.

One of the chapters is an essay by Trotsky in which he also attempts to counter the view that Russia is state capitalist. Again, the argument is mere sleight of hand: since the Russian system us supposedly progressive, and the kind of capitalist state'ism found in Fascist Italy and Germany is reactionary, therefore Russia cannot be state capitalist. This blithely ignores the existence there of wage labour, commodity production and class struggle.

Perhaps the worst contribution is Marcel Liebman's "Was Lenin a Stalinist?" This aims to justify the Bolsheviks' dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918, in which they formed a minority. Liebman sees all electoral procedures as paralysing social progress: "The revolutionary is a bad voter, and the voter a poor revolutionary". This just reflects Leninists' belief in their own ability to lead and manipulate ordinary working people.

The book is not completely worthless. It contains in full Khrushchev's Secret Speech to the 1956 Russian Party Congress, the one which launched "de-Stalinisation", and there are interesting selections on Albania and Czechoslovakia. There is even a bit of light relief: leading left-wing economist Ernest Mandel proclaims, presumably in all seriousness, that "it is difficult to define closely what socialism is"! Don't worry, we'll be sending him a copy of the Socialist Standard.

Paul Bennett

Gorbymania (1989)

Book Review from the June 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Revolution From Above by Tariq Ali, Hutchinson, £3.95

Trotsky argued that Russia was basically socialist because industry was nationalised but that political power had been usurped by a privileged bureaucratic caste led by Stalin; all that was required to put it back on the road to socialism again was a political revolution to remove this caste from power. The argument was flawed in two main respects. First, nationalisation is not socialism but state capitalism and, second, the ruling group in Russia is not a mere  privileged caste but a class monopolising the means of production. So what Trotsky really wanted was a less authoritarian regime for state capitalist Russia.

As Gorbachev and the reform group which currently has the upper hand in the single party that rules Russia want to move in the same direction, it was inevitable that sooner or later someone on the Trotskyist movement should argue that Gorbachev was carrying out "the political revolution" Trotsky called for. Former sixties student leader and editor of a series of Trotskyist papers (Red Mole, Socialist Challenge, etc), Tariq Ali has emerged as that someone. According to him, Gorbachev's "revolution from above" is in the process of putting Russia back on the road to "socialism". His only regret is that the Russian reformers see themselves as being inspired by Bukharin rather than Trotsky.

Ali is particularly impressed by some of the more radical supporters of Perestroika within the Russian Party, in particular Boris Yeltsin (to whom the book is dedicated), former Moscow Party chief sacked in November 1987 for going too far in trying to stamp out corruption in the local Party and city administration but elected triumphally to the Supreme Soviet in the elections last March, and Professor Yuri Afanasiev, Rector of the Moscow State Institute of Historical Archives, who wrote in a letter published in Pravda on 25 June 1988 (the full text is reproduced in an appendix):

I don't consider the society created in our country socialist, however 'deformed'. 'Deformation' touches its vital foundations, political system, relations of production and decidedly everything else.

This is indeed an amazing statement to have appeared in Pravda (which, for once, lived up to its name), even if it was spoilt by an earlier passage where he wrote "we haven't achieved socialism in the form envisaged by Lenin and the Leninist guard in the twenties". Still, it must have set some people thinking and is more radical than the orthodox Trotskyist position which sees Russia, precisely, as a "deformed Workers State". 

Yeltsin has indeed attacked some of the privileges of the nomenklatura (of which he is a member of course) and this is no doubt the cause of his popularity amongst ordinary people in Russia who clearly have no illusions about Russia having established a society without classes, but what he has called for is not the abolition of the nomenklatura but merely that some, or maybe all, of its privileges in kind (special shops, hospitals, etc) should be ended. He has no objection to them being paid high salaries. As he told the 19th Party Conference in June 1988 (also reproduced as an appendix):

My opinion is that this is what should happen: if something is in insufficient supply here, in a socialist society, then the shortage should be felt evenly by all without exception. But different contributions of work to society should be regulated by different wages. we should, at last, abolish the food 'rations' for the, so to say, 'starving nomenklatura', eradicate elitism in society . . . (our emphasis).

In other words, what Yeltsin wants is the Russian ruling class to be in the same position as the ruling class in the West: to be privileged by having more money to spend rather than by having special shops, etc. reserved for them exclusively. This is confirmed by his declarations during his election campaign: "The rouble must be the same for everyone" (Independent, 20 March) and "Everyone, from the ordinary worker to the head of state, must have equal access to food, goods and services" (Independent, 22 March). 

In any event, even if the members of the nomenklatura, as the corporate group that collectively owns and controls the main means of production in Russia, were to lead ascetic lives (as Lenin wanted) they would still remain a capitalist class as they would still be the group, in a society based on a capital and wage-labour, that carried out the function of pumping surplus value from the working class to be accumulated as profit-seeking capital.

If Gorbachev's reforms really do lead to more political democracy and less blatant privileges for the nomenklatura, welcome as this would be as giving the working class more elbow room to prosecute the class struggle it would not make Russia socialist, but a form of capitalism more similar to what we have to put up with in the West.

Adam Buick

A tale of two schisms (1982)

From the January 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The International Communist Current, which has been waiting since its inception for the working class to arm themselves and "smash the state", has recently been troubled by some internal opposition - some members decided that in the absence of the long-awaited "revolutionary war" the next best thing to smash would be the ICC. In a letter to the Socialist Party of Great Britain these ex-ICC members accuse the ICC of being "a bureaucratic sect" which "cannot accept criticisms" and uses "methods worthy of Stalinism". The ex-members have formed a new group which is publishing a duplicated journal called News of War and Revolution. In it they make two criticisms of the ICC: firstly, that "it contained a permanent elite to run the organisation and take its decisions", and secondly, that most of its predictions about "events in the real world" have been proved wrong.

It is rather odd that the ICC's "permanent elite" and undemocratic structure should be a surprise to these ex-members. After all, the ICC is an avowedly Leninist organisation which claims to admire and base itself upon the Bolshevik party. Bolshevism made no claim to be a respecter of majority decisions, but is based on the principle of rule by the vanguard. Some time ago the writer was at an ICC meeting and suggested to the speaker that the only way to achieve real socialist democracy is by democratic political organisation. The speaker's reply was that the ICC is a Leninist organisation aiming for "proletarian dictatorship" and is not interested in the niceties of democracy. Those who show contempt for the democratic process - for whatever reason - will before long degenerate into the kind of "Stalinist methods" of which the ICC is now accused. The link between Leninism and Stalinism is not an accidental one. But despite the cries of indignation from those who have left the ICC, they are no more interested in real democracy that the ICC is. It is particularly pitiful that the ICC's romantic illusions about bombs and barricades have led to the traditional allegations about certain members being police agents. (This matter is dealt with in an article in News of War and Revolution entitled "ICC Uses State Terror".)

The second criticism by the ex-ICCers is that the ICC's predictions about society are wrong. Basically, the ICC believes that since 1914 capitalism has been collapsing, and that this collapse will soon lead either to world war or armed revolution. Repeating Leninist cliches about the imminent collapse of capitalism and the need to arm the proletariat, the ICC has completely failed to understand that the old insurrectionary tactics of France in 1789 and Russia in 1917 (which were capitalist revolutions) are not applicable in 1982. The pathetic fact about the ICC - and their counterparts in the other Leninist sects - is that they are preparing to fight a violent capitalist revolution which happened long ago. Those who have been wise enough to leave the ICC would do well to learn that Leninism is completely opposed to the present-day interest of the working class. But from their literature, we suspect that the ICC breakaway group are rather slow learners.

Blind Ali

Meanwhile, another Leninist sect - the International Marxist Group - is undergoing a rather traumatic experience: its shepherd has abandoned the flock and is trying to join the Labour Party. In the May 1981 Socialist Standard we reported a debate at the Central Hall, Westminster, in which Benn and Company put the case for the Labour Party and Leninist chiefs, Paul Foot and Tariq Ali put the case against. It is worth quoting the concluding words of Tariq Ali's speech in the debate:

. . . we are opposed to Labourism, that weak, sickly and pathetic political ideology which has dominated the British working class. It must be displaced if we are to move forward.

(The Crisis and the Future of the Left, p.74, Pluto Press.)

No sooner had the masses stopped applauding Tariq's rhetoric than he had filled out an application form to join the Labour Party. Explaining his decision to resign from the IMG and join Labour in an article in City Limits (27/11/81), Ali states: "I have joined the Labour Party without renouncing my political views". Now, what are his innocent followers in the IMG to make of that? At one moment they are told to oppose "the weak, sickly and pathetic ideology" of the Labour Party and then are informed that their leader has joined the Labour Party but still holds the same views. By the same logic, Tariq might tell his followers to oppose the Tories, but then to join the Tory Party in order to demonstrate such opposition. Not all members of the IMG are convinced by their ex-leader's "tactics" and rumour has it that some of them will be proving the truth of the old saying that one Leninist is "a militant", two "a faction" and three "a schism".

Steve Coleman

Beyond the fragments (1981)

From the May 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last March, at the Central Hall, Westminster, four left wing leaders took part in what they modestly describe as the Debate of the Decade (the debate of the decayed would have been more accurate). The purpose of the event was to try once again to unite the Left into big movement rather than its present factions, each ultimately loyal to the Labour Party, but each maintaining their own petty and obscure positions (one says that Russia is a 'deformed' workers' state, another insists that is is a 'degenerate' one and a third affirms that it has been a socialist state all the time).

Leftist followers paid up to £6 a ticket to listen to the nostalgic rhetoric of the platform poseurs. Tony Benn (Labour Party) urged the assembled to elect a future leader of the Labour Party who would be honest, principled, radical . . . had he said that the best man for the job must be a lapsed aristocrat and Minister of Industry in a government under which unemployment doubled the hint might have been a little too obvious. Then there was John Cleese of the Socialist Workers' Party who did a passable impersonation of Paul Foot, and Tariq Ali of the International Marxist Group who did an embarrassing impersonation of Vladimir Illyich Ulyanov. The Leninist followers loved it all. The fourth and final fragment to address the microphone was Hilary Wainwright, co-author of a book called Beyond the Fragments (Merlin Press).

The book presents a criticism of certain aspects of the Left which socialists would not wish to argue with. Wainwright, Segal and Rowbotham have discovered (through experience) that Leninist parties are repressive, authoritarian bodies. They pointed out that their arrogant leaderships see themselves as the personification of socialist wisdom and how this tends to reduce internal party freedom of thought or action. Rowbotham seems to understand that experience is the greatest leader and perhaps we are not being over-optimistic in suggesting that she implies Lenin was wrong when he wrote that "The working class, exclusively, by its own effort is able to develop only trade union consciousness". (What Is To Be Done?)

She may well have quoted from Marx and Engels' circular letter of 1879 to the leaders of the German Socialist Workers' Party:

When the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle-cry: The emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the working class itself. We cannot therefore co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic leaders.

The fragment critics are right to reject the anti-democratic assumptions of Leninism, but we would be more convinced of their integrity had they stated at any point in their two hundred and fifty-three-page book that Lenin distorted Marx and that the place for socialists is outside the Leninist Left. Instead we get references to such enemies of the working class as the Socialist Workers' Party and the Communist Party as fellow socialists, comrades and good militants.

Secondly, the age-old Leftist of what they call 'utopianism', but which is in fact theoretical clarity, is rejected by Rowbotham:

In order to explore, we need good maps . . . We need to be able to take stock of the situation and communicate any general principles to other wanderers. We have to establish certain staging points to refuel and assess the journey. This means we have to sit back momentarily from our immediate response to the route and try to sum up the relationship of what we have travelled to the whole journey. Some of this will be from our experience, with information from other travellers' tales and from any existing maps. Some will be speculation about the way things will be likely to go. Our summation of the whole may be incomplete and imperfect, but we still need it in order to get our bearings. Even if we abandon this assessment subsequently, the attempt can still be decisive and the effort to be as accurate as we can is still vital if we are not to trundle down every dead end or take enormous detours. (pp. 54-5) 

In short, you cannot embark upon the path to socialism unless you know what socialism means. Rowbotham's discovery of this point makes it all the more disappointing that nowhere in the book is there a single definition of socialism.

Thirdly, it is argued in the book that the fragments of the Left-political factions, trade councils, tenants associations, the women's and gay movement, radical publishers - should unite. Certainly, they unite, for working class strength lies in unity. But what is to be the purpose? Once the fragments have become a patchwork what will they say, do or achieve? Beyond the fragments to where  . . . and why . . . and how . . . and when? Many questions, but our authors provide no answers which go beyond the sterile claim that we must unite to get rid of the Tory government. In December 1904 a Socialist Standard editorial applied itself to the question of 'Socialist Unity':

We are all for unity. We believe that unity of party organisation based upon unity of purpose, unity of principle and unity of method is the one thing desirable. But today we are only sure that such unity of party organisation, so far as the various groups of socialists in any country are concerned, would be at the expense of  unity of purpose, principle and method . . . Unity is an important factor in the growth of a party but it is not the most important. Better far to have a party, however small, with common principles and a common end, than a party, however large, which is bound by no tie save party interest. We, therefore, who differ from those other parties in essential principle - inasmuch as we accept the principle of class struggle while they do not - cannot consent to unite our forces with theirs. It would weaken both parties - and the weakening would be more disastrous to the uncompromising section than to the revisionist.

This is why the Socialist Party of Great Britain has preserved its independence since 1904 from all the fragments which working class discontent has thrown up. We are not hostile to them because we like being on our own or are temperamentally aggressive, but because we have a programme of uncompromising revolution which stands in total opposition to the piecemeal reform policies of the fragments. We have gone beyond the fragments. Wainwright, Segal and Rowbotham are to be applauded for having recognised the political rut which the Left is in, but the lesson which they and their fellow fragments must now learn is that until they climb out of the ditch of reformism they will never go beyond the muddy theory which obscures their political vision.

Steve Coleman