Letter: “Balanced” (2004)

Letter to the Editors from the August 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Balanced”

Dear Editors

I appreciated your balanced, if inevitably over-simplified, account of the ‘Libertarian Communism’ activists in the article ‘Getting splinters’ in the June special issue.

There was one actual inaccuracy with reference to the ‘Social Revolution’ Group and ‘Solidarity’. For the record, the ‘Social Revolution’ Group, as a whole, negotiated a merger with the ‘Solidarity’ Group on the basis of some significant changes to the Solidarity texts As we see it and As we don’t see it.

‘Wildcat’ was later formed as a local bulletin by Manchester Solidarity, members of the ICC (World Revolution) and others. Wildcat subsequently set up as a separate political group and involved comrades from Manchester, Stoke-on-Trent and London. ‘Subversion’ succeeded ‘Wildcat’ after a short break, but was dissolved a few years back.

Never the less, a consistent political and organisational line can be drawn from ‘Libertarian Communism’ right through to ‘Subversion’ covering a period of some twenty-five years.

M.B. 

Manchester

Lenin and elections (1988)

From the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

We did not mean to suggest in our reply to a letter in the April Socialist Standard that Lenin took up an anti-parliamentarist position and was opposed to participation in elections. On the contrary, he was in favour of this as a way of trying to obtain reforms and urged workers in Britain to vote Labour, though he also argued that the minority vanguard party he advocated could never get to power by electoral means but only through violence.

The Editors

Letter: Wildcat debate (1988)

Wildcat magazine.

Letter to the Editors from the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

I am writing to add a few points to the letter my comrade, MB, has already sent you in response to the article in the December Socialist Standard criticising the Wildcat pamphlet Capitalism and its Revolutionary Destruction.

Steve Coleman alleges that Wildcat "seems to think" that "revolutionaries will be in a minority at the time of the revolution". Had he read our pamphlet a little more carefully, however, he would have noticed that the sentences he quotes to supposedly support this allegation refer, not to the situation at the time of the revolution, but to the class struggle at its present-day stage. Later on we state quite clearly that the "primary aim" of revolutionaries "must be to get more and more people actively involved in the struggle", and also that "if revolution is to succeed, the great mass of the working class must become conscious communists".

To say that "No Leninist would disagree" with Wildcat's views on this issue is as foolish as stating that no Christian would disagree with the SPGB's attitude towards religion.

The question remains, however, how are the mass of the working class to become conscious communists?

One of the basic arguments of our pamphlet is that the seeds of the future struggle for communism are contained within the working class's struggle of today. Riots and strikes are part of this struggle. Steve Coleman scorns these as mere street fights and reformist sectional disputes. This dismissive concentration solely on the negative aspects of the class struggle throws the baby out with the bathwater.

Strikes, riots and other aspects of the class struggle are also an interruption in the everyday routine of capitalist "normality". In the course of these actions numerous practical problems crop up. In overcoming them, those working class people actively involved find themselves having to develop their own collective solidarity, imagination. initiative and organisation. The development of these powers — all stifled by capitalism — is essential for the working class if it is to have any hope of transforming society.

Furthermore, by changing people's immediate material conditions, collective struggle also contains the potential to alter people's perceptions of the society around them, and place in a new perspective the limited goals they originally set themselves. All of these things can be observed, to varying degrees, whenever working class people take action together to fight back against the miseries heaped on them by capitalism. The wider the struggle, the greater the potential for the development of new forms of organisation directly controlled by those involved in the struggle, and the greater the potential for the development of radical ideas not confined merely to tinkering with society as it is but with the ambition of completely transforming it.

This, then, is the revolutionary strategy proposed by Wildcat: a materialist strategy, based on the working class's pursuit of its material interests, and recognising that the source of ideas — in this case, revolutionary ideas — is material conditions — the working class's active engagement in the class struggle. By contrast, the SPGB's strategy is materialist only in the most abstract, general sense, and tends more towards idealist philosophy, seeing no connection whatsoever between the class struggle of today and the future struggle for communism, and thus abandoning the Marxist view of the class struggle as the historical motive force behind social change.

As a final point, I would like to take issue with Steve Coleman's case in favour of participation in parliamentary elections, which is that the working class must gain control of the state so that the ruling class cannot use the armed power of the state to crush the revolutionary working class. If Steve Coleman really believes that control of the armed forces is automatically guaranteed by control of state power, how does he explain desertions, mutinies and military coups? What use was control of state power to the Kerensky regime in 1917 when its cavalry refused to cut down the insurrectionary workers of Moscow and Petrograd7 What use was control of state power to the "democratically elected" Popular Front government of Spain in July 1936 when half of its troops sided with Franco's attempted coup?

Examples abound throughout history to prove that, to use an appropriate metaphor, the armed forces are not like a gun controlled by whoever has their finger on the trigger of state power. The SPGB believes that socialist ideas will spread throughout the working class, disregarding all "barriers” of nation, race, sex, occupation etc. Why then should it expect these same ideas to halt at the barrack- room door? Which is the more realistic revolutionary strategy: to appeal, as Wildcat does, to our fellow workers in uniform to fraternise with the rest of our class and turn their guns against our common enemy? Or to expect, as the SPGB seems to do, that workers in uniform will forever blindly obey the orders of the ruling class and shoot down their class brothers and sisters who are holding out the prospect of a world free for ever from war and oppression?

The SPGB should apply Steve Coleman's litmus test of what constitutes a revolutionary organisation to itself, and ponder just how "serious" its strategy for the revolutionary transformation of society really is.

Yours for socialism.

Mark Shipway 

a member of the Wildcat group

Reply to Mark Shipway (of Wildcat)

We have received this and another letter from a member of Wildcat complaining about our criticism of their pamphlet. We are pleased to read that Wildcat accepts that there can be no revolution without a majority of workers becoming conscious; why then are they so frightened of workers' support for socialism being tested electorally? Wildcat insists that "revolutionaries do not, under any circumstances, participate in . . . elections". If they accept that there can be no socialism without a socialist majority why do they state that "the revolution itself will inevitably be a bloody affair'. It is not "inevitable" that a conscious, overwhelming majority of socialists will be resisted by force. And if such a majority is so threatened, the force required to deal with a recalcitrant minority would hardly constitute "a bloody affair". Opposition to all elections and the assumption that revolutionary violence is inevitable are both classical Leninist positions.

Wildcat's support for riots and other futile struggles can be criticised on two levels. Firstly, it is improper for people calling themselves revolutionaries to urge workers to offer themselves as sacrifices to the truncheons of the police — especially as we strongly suspect that Wildcat members, on a day-to-day level, are not so foolish as to engage in riots. How has rioting ever helped workers to "develop their own collective solidarity, imagination, initiative and organisation"? How have they improved "people's immediate material conditions"? Secondly, by associating the struggle for socialism with acts of frustrated violence, Wildcat adds to the general confusion about the meaning of socialist revolution. It is wrong to suggest that our review opposed workers taking strike action. The Socialist Party supports strikes in working class interests which are conducted on sound lines but, unlike Wildcat, denies that strikes are a means to revolution.

The Socialist Party cannot be accused of ignoring the class struggle as the motive force in history. Our attitude is stated in our Declaration of Principles, written in 1904 and still valid today. Of course we are aware that some workers may learn to change history by materially engaging in class struggle. That is a different matter from riots, which are perversions of the class struggle: frequently they involve no more than one section of the working class attacking another.

We agree that workers in the armed forces will not be impervious to socialist ideas at the time of the revolution. That is all the more reason why the revolution will not "inevitably be a bloody affair". We notice that in Issue 10 of Wildcat, under a report about 16,000 attacks on policemen in the last year, there is a caption saying "KILL THE BILL". Does Wildcat regard this also as a useful means of struggle in preparation for the socialist transformation of society? Is killing cops — or just injuring them — a way of showing them that they are fellow workers in uniform? Or is this not sloganising, dangerous if taken seriously?

Steve Coleman

Feed the World: Overthrow Capitalism (2018)

From the January 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

As usual, over the Christmas period, we were bombarded with images of starving children and urged to donate money to stop a few of them dying. These are appeals to try to empty the ocean with a teaspoon, as the following – adapted from an article that appeared in Wildcat some thirty years ago – explains.

The problems of hunger and starvation are inescapable consequences of the present world system of food production but it is well within the potential power of the world’s working class to destroy this system, and replace it with a totally different one, in which such problems could soon be eradicated.

Production for Profit

Under the existing world system – capitalism – food isn’t directly produced to be eaten. Like everything else, the production of food is geared towards the realisation of profit through the sale of goods on the market. Considerations of price, profit and the market, rather than the satisfaction of basic human needs, are the factors which determine what is produced.

When we hear of record ‘surpluses’ of foodstuffs, therefore, it obviously doesn’t mean that everyone is so full-up they can’t eat another mouthful. It simply means that, in market terms, the supply of food exceeds economic demand for it to the extent that the sellers are in danger of being unable to get a profitable price for their goods.

Production for profit via the market also means that

– if there is no prospect of a profit to be made by producing something, then it simply won’t be produced.

– if goods have already been produced in the expectation of making a profit, and this expectation becomes unfounded for some reason, then these goods will not be sold, and might even be destroyed.

These absurdities are inevitable consequences of the market system itself.

Production for Use

Since mountains of ‘surplus’ food and millions of starving people exist side-by-side because under capitalism there is no direct link between the production of food and the satisfaction of basic human needs, it follows that the only way to solve the problem of world hunger is to do away with money, prices, profits and all other trappings of the market system, and replace it with a society in which everything, including food, is produced directly for use.

This will entail wrenching all means of wealth-production out of the hands of the minority which owns and controls them at present, and establishing world communism based on the common ownership and democratic control of the world’s resources. If everyone had an equal say in how the world’s resources should be used, it would be hard to imagine a majority of the world’s population voting to continue to devote resources to the production of harmful or unnecessary crops such as tobacco, for example. The basic requirements of the most needy would be the first and most urgent priority.

Rioting for reforms (1990)

From the September 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party has long been aware that there are organisations. both in Britain and other parts of the world, that share our view that capitalism is the cause of the major social problems confronting the working class and needs to be replaced by a world-wide socialist system based on common ownership, production for use and free access to wealth. However, organisations which hold this perspective with us are, unfortunately, often found to be deficient when it comes to having a credible strategy for the revolutionary transformation of capitalism into socialism. One group, Wildcat have tried to argue that rioting helps raise class consciousness In their coverage of the Poll Tax riots earlier this year, Wildcat and a similar group of "council communists" in Manchester going under the name of Subversion have displayed a contempt for sections of the working class quite inconsistent with their professed aim of a harmonious society based on co-operation and mutual solidarity

Wildcat No.15. subtitled "Long Hot Summer 1990". stated:

Trafalgar Square will go down in history It was the most politically conscious and effective riot of modern times . . .  the rioters were not mindless hooligans They were mainly very clear about why and who they were fighting. They were disciplined. responsible and class conscious (Our emphasis)

Also:

The police were the main target. They were attacked with impressive courage and brutality . . .  the impunity with which most of the rioters were able to loot, burn, smash and occasion actual bodily harm has given a great boost of confidence to the undemocratic hooligan minority.

This is rubbish. An "undemocratic hooligan minority” beating up the other members of the working class which police are has nothing whatsoever to do with class consciousness—just the reverse.

Wildcat also proudly reproduced from a. newspaper:

A poll tax assistant hanged himself rather than face one more day of abuse from an irate public. He had only one more day of house calls to go. But instead he went home and hanged himself from a beam.

But Wildcat's wrath is not reserved merely for policemen, shopworkers or local government employees. Menacingly, they warn that:

The willing assistance of the media in providing the police with films and photos (of the riot) means that cameramen will always be among the first targets of future violent protests.

Very class conscious! But who will be the next victims of this peculiar "class justice"? Ambulance crews who go to help the injured?

Judging by some of the leaflets it has issued recently, Subversion is little better. Although one of their leaflets carries the interesting headline "Down With Poll Tax— Down With All Taxes", they seem just as obsessed with rioting and other violent behaviour as do their friends from Wildcat. In their issue dealing with the 31 March Trafalgar Square riot, they declared we support the riot 100 percent"

Their view of how riots and anti-Poll Tax demonstrations can bring about socialist consciousness is confused in the extreme. One of their leaflets reproduces two articles side by side. In talking of the Trafalgar Square riot the first one states "we regard such rioting as a positive sign" but is flatly contradicted by the second article which tells us that their group opposes all movements which are based on the acceptance of capitalism and which just want to ‘modify’ it in some way". The only way to resolve this contradiction would be to argue that the rioters were not interested in the Poll Tax but were rioting against the existence of the wages system, commodity production and other features of capitalism However, we doubt whether even Subversion could seriously argue that this was the case (and even if it was it would still be futile).

What is most striking about both Subversion and Wildcat is that they seem to be looking for “short cuts" to socialism by tagging on to the most extreme examples of working class discontent with particular products of the system. Although they seem reluctant to get involved in such campaigns run by trade unions or left-wing organisations, they are nonetheless in danger of treading the well-worn path towards reformism and single-issue campaigning that the Left have been involved in for decades.

Strategies based on riot and insurrection can play no constructive part in the development of a strong socialist movement. There can be no place for such romanticising of violence when the reality is that the coercive apparatus of the state machine is used to protect the interests of the ruling class. The first act of a socialist majority must be to take this apparatus so that the capitalist class can be dispossessed as peacefully as possible—and the socialist majority will include all sections of the working class—including the police, tax collectors, cameramen, ambulance crews and anybody else who might get in the way of the immature utopian fantasies of groups like Wildcat and Subversion.

Dave Perrin

Rebellion is not enough (1987)

From the December 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

When a party, group or movement presents itself as "revolutionary" it is necessary to ask some questions about it:

• Does it possess an understanding of the capitalist system?
• Does it possess a serious conception of the socialist alternative?
• Does it propose a serious strategy for the revolutionary transformation of society?

In relation to most of the so-called revolutionary groups these questions are easily answered, always in the negative. For example, the Communist Party does not understand what capitalism is. has a wholly mistaken and misleading conception of socialism and cannot even agree within its own ranks about how to achieve revolution.

The situation was different when The Socialist Party was formed in 1904. There were groups in various parts of the world which did possess a considerable degree of understanding about what capitalism is and what socialism means. In the early days of our party it was recognised that there were others who were close to our aim and the main disagreement with them was about how to achieve a wageless, moneyless, stateless society. In the 1980s there are again some revolutionaries existing in parts of the world with whom socialists would not need to argue much about what socialism is but with whom we are in major disagreement on the question of how socialists must go about the task of working for the revolutionary transformation of society, and what “revolution" means.

Reading the new pamphlet produced by the Manchester-based group, Wildcat, it becomes clear that much of what these "council communists" have to say about capitalism and socialism is not very different from what The Socialist Party says. Their criticism of capitalism is elementary but correct, quite properly making the point that "Nothing could be further from the truth than the idea that state capitalism equals socialism, or a step towards it". (Capitalism and its Revolutionary Destruction — A Statement by Wildcat) What they say about socialism or communism — like The Socialist Party they use the words interchangeably — is reasonable enough: "A communist society such as we envisage is only possible on the basis of material abundance . . . Goods will be freely available and free of charge. Money will disappear . . . Work will be done because we want it to be done and want to do it. . ." But the most beautiful visions in the world are of no value unless they are accompanied by serious ideas and action to make them real. It is on that point that Wildcat must be criticised.

Within the first three sentences of the pamphlet there is the best and the worst of Wildcat. Sentence one: "Wildcat stands for the abolition of capitalism by communist revolution". Good. And what this means in practice is stated in sentence three: "We struggle in favour of strikes, riots and all other acts of rebellion against capitalism". But strikes are not "acts of rebellion against capitalism". In general, they are sectional efforts to obtain better wages and conditions for workers within capitalism. Neither are riots "acts of rebellion against capitalism". If Wildcat is committed to "struggle in favour of riots" we must assume that they recommend workers to have more riots — to indulge in more futile street fights in which workers always get hurt.

They also struggle for "all other acts of rebellion against capitalism". Such as assassination? Sabotage? We are sure the strikers and the rioters are waiting for further details. But why would workers, when we can take action against capitalism as a whole, waste time striking or rioting? Once enough workers understand and want socialism it will not be time to strike — stop work — but to work hard because the means of wealth production and distribution at that stage will become ours. Why riot against capitalism once you have understood that its real power will not be beaten by smashing workers' heads and workers' possessions?

According to Wildcat, the revolution will come about as a result of workers forming councils:

From the mass struggles which have occurred in East Germany '53, Hungary '56, France '68, Spain in the late Seventies, Poland '81 . . .  as well as the historical experience of the Russian and German Revolutions — we can see what the basic form of this organisation will be. It will be based around mass assemblies of everyone actively involved in the struggle, both in the workplaces and neighbourhoods, meeting daily or in permanent session. These assemblies will elect delegates to regional and inter/national assemblies to coordinate the struggle.

Firstly, it must be noted that all these examples of workers' councils were failures: they failed to oppose capitalism as a system or to prepare for socialism or to prevent themselves from being smashed by the state. Why is this? Because if you leave armed power in the hands of the state and then proceed to ignore the state by forming alternative councils (or soviets) the class which controls the state will use it to crush the councils. That is why it is vital for revolutionaries to gain control of the state — by democratic means. But Wildcat, with emphatic dogmatism, asserts that "revolutionaries do not. under any circumstances. participate in parliament or elections". Not "under any circumstances": even if there is a socialist majority which could send delegates into parliament for the single act of dispossessing the capitalist class Wildcat is opposed to such a politically wise course of action.

Furthermore, "under no circumstances" do revolutionaries participate in elections, we are told. Why not? If we are a minority we can use elections to publicise our alternative outlook and discover how many (more to the point, how few) of our fellow workers agree with us. If we are in a majority what have we to lose by winning the election? If the statement quoted is read literally and we are to assume that Wildcat is opposed to participation in any election — ever, under any circumstances — then we wonder how these "mass assemblies" will make decisions. Is voting to be rejected in principle? Can we assume that Wildcat never delegates any of its members to perform a function; if it does, do members refuse to elect such delegates? And what of the reference to electing delegates if revolutionaries, "under no circumstances" participate in elections?

Of course, there is one strong reason for opposing electoral methods and that is if it is thought that the revolutionaries will be in a minority at the time of the revolution. At times Wildcat seems to think like that:

For a while the fate of an entire struggle may depend on the courage and resolve of a small minority of militants. They need to organise themselves independently to carry out whatever actions are necessary. They are in the forefront of attempts to raise the aims and broaden the scope of the struggle.

No Leninist would disagree with that. Nor with the assertion by Wildcat that "the revolution itself will inevitably be a bloody affair". Brave talk. But who is going to spill this blood? If workers are in a majority in establishing socialism, as they must be if it is to be established, it is hardly likely that the minority which is non-socialist will last long in putting up bloody, undemocratic resistance to the revolution — even if they were foolish enough to try, which is not "inevitable". It is possible that an anti-socialist minority at the time of the revolution, seeing that they are up against a conscious majority which controls the coercive force of the state, will simply give up the struggle. Even if this recalcitrant minority does have to be contained, while The Socialist Party accepts the possible need to use force for that purpose, that is a very different matter from "a bloody affair". If, on the other hand, a minority under capitalism which has no conscious support from the working-class majority attempts to enact a revolution without winning electoral victory and gaining control of state power, we can be sure that "a bloody affair" would follow: the ruling class would crush the minority. It is all very well for Wildcat to announce that "We call for mutinies in the armed forces of all warring states" but this misses the point that wars are not commenced or directed by the workers in uniform but by the capitalist-controlled state.

The Socialist Party does not claim to have a blueprint for socialist revolution. Many of the crucial decisions regarding the transformation of society will need to be made by socialists as the movement grows to thousands, millions and then a majority. But in the late 1980s. while the world socialist movement is for the moment only a small minority, we have a responsibility to present a strategy for revolution which is credible. Maybe workers in the future will evolve better methods of transforming society but they will not look back on our Principles and accuse us of proposing a revolutionary means which is out of line with the revolutionary end. As for Wildcat and others in their tradition, their strategy amounts at best to adventurist phrase-making and at worst to a recipe for another crushed workers' rebellion.

Steve Coleman