An Essay on Historical Materialism (1959)

From the May 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2

The Affluent Society - Part 3

A Reply to Professor Galbraith

To read Marx, with no thought of criticising him, is bad. To criticise him with no thought of reading him is worse. In the last respect Professor Galbraith, author of The Affluent Society, follows a contemporary trend. His summing up of historical materialism is pointed, pithy, and piffling. It is a pity that in economising his phrases he has so gravely economised truth. According to him, Marx held that the economic motive was the prime mover of all individuals’ actions. Underneath the trappings of professed ideals lay the core of self-interest. Apparently Marx only repeated the cynical sophistication of the 18th century, of Chesterfield and Walpole.

Yet Professor Galbraith believes that the view he attributes to Marx, is, nevertheless, a great theory, which is a great pity, because if self-interest is the prime motive of an individual’s actions and the regulator of his conduct, then it is the businessmen, or at least the American variety who are Marxists. If historical materialism boils down to the assertion that all human activity is ultimately based on an economic motive, which, vide Professor Galbraith, is the American business man’s philosophy, then they might echo, with him, “We are all Marxists now.” Marxism becomes then a cynical worldly pragmatism. To the activity of humans whose claims are altruistic it asks the leading Marxist question, “What is their gimmick?” Marx, however, never held that self interest or the economic motive was the prime mover of all social situations. It is not Marx but Professor Galbraith who passes this excoriating judgment on a section of his countrymen—unconsciously, perhaps, the severest thing he says about them in the whole book.

So far from Marx holding that self-interest was the prime mover of history, he denied that personal motivation could account for historic development.

It is true that Adam Smith, who besides being an economist was a moral philosopher, also believed that the economic motive was the driving force of individual activity. But he at least believed that Providence had planned self-interest in such a way that each individual in seeking his own advantage was led by “an invisible hand” to promote an end which was no part of his intention. And so while his own efforts benefited himself,  they also benefited others—the community. This was an anticipation of Bentham’s utilitarianism summed up as “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” via enlightened self-interest. It is also the nearest thing the Labour Party has in the way of an official philosophy.

It would also seem, according to Professor Galbraith, that if not all Marxists are business men all simply cannot explain history in terms of individual activity based on personal motives. The range of personal motives are too enormous and complex, even for the individual himself, to constitute reliable data for establishing valid and objective historical conclusions. That is why Karl Popper and the school of anti-historicists who interpret history in terms of personal motives, declare in effect that History and mystery are synonymous terms.

It is true generically speaking that man makes history. It is not true that the individual man makes his own history. In fact, Marx is not interested in what the individual man does or does not make. Marx was concerned with the behaviour of social groups or classes and of the individual in so far that he is a member of a particular class. And since the passing of primitive society, all history has been the history of class struggle. Marx asked the question: what are the conditions which bring about this? How and why do class struggles occur and what effect it does this have on the behaviour of individuals who form these classes? Marx offers an historical principle which is empirical and verifiable, and proceeds via the mode of economic production.

Men are constantly improving the tools and instruments of production, whereby they obtain their living. The emergence of new productive forces will bring advantages which will be attempted to be utilised by the existing ruling class for their own interests. A new class which is associated with and has title to these new productive forces will, in seeking to expand them along the lines of their own interests, find themselves hampered by the political and property relations which constitute the older form of economic production. The new class which has economic power must gain political power in order to effect a change in the social organisation which makes possible the control and development of economic power. An acute class opposition of interests results between the old ruling class and the new rising class. Unless the classes go down in a common ruin as the result of class conflict, victory comes to the new class with economic power, who fight for a form of social organisation which is in line with the changes in the mode of production and thereby permits the freeing and expansion of the productive forces. Sometimes these class struggles are rapid and violent, sometimes slow, and compromises take place between the contending factions. But all class struggles centre around the ownership of the means of production and the power which such ownership gives.

It does not follow, however, that individuals as such are necessarily motivated by purely economic considerations. What does matter is that their common interests and common activity do produce an overall effect, even though this overall effect differs from what each individual of a particular class had anticipated. It is the permanent and pervasive pressure of their needs arising from their class interests which makes itself felt in the final outcome of their total activity.

The outcome and consequences then of class activity are not then necessarily deducible from the individual motives of those who constitute a particular class. As Engels points out, whatever may be the different wills and motives of individuals composing a class, in the aggregate they offset each other, or are compensated for by other variations. Thus Marxism does not maintain that Capitalists, as individuals, move along a direct path of self interest, in which all others are merely the subject matter for their personal advantage and gain. Some may, but it does not necessarily follow that all or even the majority act in this way. The individual Capitalist may be a good father, a good husband, a regular church goer, and may want to do the best he can by those he employs. His actions are limited, however, by a set of objective conditions to which he must conform or cease to be a Capitalist, i.e. he must appropriate surplus value. In short, his own actions are regulated by the interests of the class to whom he belongs and it is upon and through this class that his own status and privilege is preserved. Without the power of this class he is, as an individual, helpless.

It is true that the ruling ideas of a social order can only become effective if they serve the interests of the ruling social group. These ideas, however, express themselves in a set of volitions and attitudes which develop into systematised or institutionalised ideas—an ideology. This ideology seeks to preserve the conditions upon which economic privilege rests. In every epoch, wrote Marx, “the ruling ideas have been the ideas of the ruling class.”

To understand the activities of men we must understand the society in which they live, the values, habits, traditions and the complex of institutions which make up their culture. It is true that the ideology arising from a particular set of class interests is refracted by the prism; needs and turned upside down and is expressed as “the Common Interest, “a Way of Life,” or “the General Will,” and it is accepted by all classes until such time as the exploited class grows to self conscious maturity of its own needs.

The Capitalists accept their system as the natural and eternal order of things powerfully reinforced as they are by the ideological assumptions which are an essential part of their culture. Just as the slave owner, no matter how kindly he may have felt towards his slaves, considered slavery as a natural order of things. He would have been horrified at the idea of abolition of slavery. No doubt the Capitalist today considers that slavery was a horrible thing, he, however, is horrified at the idea of abolishing Capitalism.

What then forms the complex of class behaviour and activity from the Marxist standpoint is a far cry from the assumption that Marx held that the dynamic of society was individual motivation whereby each individual pursued a line of self interest. Less than any man did Marx make the motive of the individual as such, the outcome of social evolution and nothing is falser than to attribute to him some sort of sordid psychology of selfish motivation.

Marx’s great insight was to show that humans could not only change conditions but change themselves in the process. He wanted to do away with a social system where neither buyer nor seller is free, and replace it by a set of human conditions, “In which the free development of all is the condition for the free development of each.” He remains one of the great humanists of history.

The pity about Professor Galbraith is not that he has so much to learn from Marx, but that he has so much to unlearn.

Ted Wilmott

Action Replay: Colin Veitch – Pioneer Football Trade Unionist (2016)

Colin Veitch (22 May 1881 – 26 August 1938)

The Action Replay column from the October 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

In July Bobby Moore was honoured with an English Heritage blue plaque, but he is not the first footballer to be recognised in this way. In 2013, Heaton History Group ran a successful campaign to have Colin Veitch awarded a Newcastle City Council black plaque on his house.

Colin Veitch was born in Heaton in Newcastle in 1881. He captained Newcastle Schools in 1895. At Rutherford College, where he studied after leaving school, he played for their football team, then regarded as one of the finest amateur sides in the North East, attracting the attention of Newcastle United for whom he played as an amateur before turning professional in 1899. 

He was a versatile and talented football player who captained Newcastle United during their Edwardian heyday when the team won three Football League Championships (1905, 1907 and1909), the FA Cup in 1910 and finalists five times between 1905 -1912. A one-time schoolteacher, he introduced the idea of using a blackboard to illustrate and develop tactics diagrams in pre-match planning and post match analyses.

He was an activist in the Association Football Players Union (AFPU) set up in 1907. In November 1908 Thompson’s Weekly News announced that several leaders of AFPU including Colin Veitch would write regular articles for the paper, providing a forum for the union’s views. The AFPU began negotiations with the Football Association but in April 1909 these ended without agreement. The union threatened a strike and in June the FA ordered all players to leave the AFPU, and warned that if they did not by 1 July, their registrations as professionals would be cancelled.

Veitch resigned from the AFPU in order to carry on negotiations with the FA and led the struggle to have players reinstated. In August 1909, the FA agreed that professional players could be members of the AFPU and the dispute ended. Veitch was later the chairman of the AFPU, now the Professional Footballers Association, for a number of years. In politics he was a leftwinger and had once been asked to stand as a Labour candidate but turned this down.

He died in 1938 after contracting pneumonia while recuperating on holiday in Bern in Switzerland at the age of only 57. He is still remembered in Newcastle as one of their greatest players.

Kevin Parkin

Security At Zero (2016)

From the November 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

We consider some aspects of working-class insecurity under capitalism, including its history, recent developments and the current situation.

Being a wage worker involves being exploited, creating profits for the employer and being ordered around by bosses. Another objectionable part is the insecurity that wage labour implies. As the markets go up and down, demand slackens off, new technology is introduced, companies restructure and outsource, or unemployment increases, workers can be laid off and find themselves on the dole or forced to accept a lower wage and either shorter or longer hours, or less control over their work, both its content and amount. There are various terms used, including casual and vulnerable employment, but they all point to workers’ problems.

The Industrial Revolution is usually seen as ushering in an age of exploitation and working-class misery. But in Liberty’s Dawn Emma Griffin argues that it had many positive consequences, at least for men workers (these applied far less, if at all, to women and children). One the basis of autobiographies written by workers, she claims that ‘opportunities in the workplace were brighter for adult men in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries than they had been at any other time in the eighteenth century or before’. Before about 1750, for instance, men often suffered much unemployment and underemployment, since in pre-industrial times work was in short supply, and in agriculture it was very seasonally-based. Factory work also offered more stable and continuous earnings than cottage industry. So the Industrial Revolution supposedly made employment more secure, for some workers at least.

Yet the tough economic times of the 1830s and 1840s still led to much unemployment, though there are no reliable statistics. The social researcher Henry Mayhew, whose studies covered 1849–51, believed that ‘only about a third of the labouring people in the country were fully employed, another third were partially employed, and the remaining third wholly unemployed at any given time’ (J.F.C. Harrison: Early Victorian Britain).

The point here is not how accurate the picture presented by Griffin is, but to emphasise that the poorest part of the population have traditionally endured much insecurity in terms of employment as a result of their subordinate status. Even if this was, to some extent and for some people, allayed by the coming of industrial production, the problems and insecurity have remained since the days she was writing about.

Probably the best-known example of the use of casual labour was in the docks, where tides and weather affected the number of ships that needed loading or unloading at any time, and trade in foodstuffs in particular was subject to large seasonal fluctuations. Dock workers could be taken on for just a few hours, and were paid when the work was completed. The number of dockers needed during peak periods meant that at other times many were left idle and unpaid. Various inquiries were held, and recommendations made, and workers and unions demanded better treatment, but it was not until 1940 that much was done, when it became apparent that docks and their workers would play a crucial role in the Second World War. From 1941, under the National Dock Labour Corporation, dockers had to present themselves for work twice a day, and were paid a ‘retaining allowance’ if not actually employed. The post-war Dock Workers’ (Regulation of Employment) Act of 1946 enabled greater regularity of employment, and pay if not employed.

One of the modern-day versions of casual employment is the so-called zero-hours contract. These have no proper legal status, but the idea is that under them the worker is not guaranteed any hours of work, and can be called into their workplace to labour for whatever time the employer needs them for. They are popular with employers but not with workers, and they are illegal in many countries, France for instance. Some workers supposedly like the flexibility implied, since they can turn down any request to work and do not need to work for the employer if they do not want to (for childcare reasons, perhaps). Except, of course, that this flexibility is largely illusory, as being dependent on a wage is what defines their position in the working class: refusing work means no pay, just as not being called in for work does. And turning down work may make it less likely you will be wanted in future. This is what being on a zero-hours contract is like: not knowing how much work you will have in any week or month, so having little idea how much you will earn; the constant worry about not working and earning enough to get by.

The official line (from gov.uk) is that such contracts are appropriate in certain circumstances, such as when there are seasonal peaks in demand, for instance at Christmas, but they ‘should not be considered as an alternative to proper business planning and should not be used as a permanent arrangement if it is not justifiable.’

There has been a lot of publicity lately about the use of zero-hours contracts at Sports Direct, but they are used much more widely than this. In September the Office for National Statistics reported that just over 900,000 workers (2.9 percent of those employed) were on zero-hours contracts, over 150,000 more than a year before. Such workers only earn about two-thirds of the average for other workers. Seventy percent of over-25s on zero-hours contracts have been with the same employer for over twelve months, so they can hardly be seen as a stepping stone to full-time permanent employment. Sports Direct, like Wetherspoons and McDonald’s, have made great play of offering permanent contracts to those on zero hours, but this will take some time to put into effect, and will still leave hundreds of thousands of workers in this subordinate position.

Deborah Orr (Guardian Online, 10 September) argued that zero-hours contracts are better than a ‘job for life’, where ‘for a lot of people the reality was decade after decade of turning up like clockwork to do work they hated, and longing for retirement’. But few people truly had jobs for life, and many zero-hours contracts involve boring work that is indeed hated by those doing it. Orr was right to note the spread of zero-hours contracts, but wrong to welcome this, for they mean insecurity, low pay and being at the mercy of the employer and the market, even more so than in the case of the majority of workers.

Paul Bennett

50 Years Ago: Why Socialists Oppose the Vietcong (2018)

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

Vietnam is the latest of the leftwingers’ adopted fatherlands. Before Vietnam it was Algeria, before that it was Cuba, and so on back to Russia. This support for the Vietcong does not depend on what is actually going on in Vietnam, but is rather an expression of the leftwingers’ dissatisfaction with certain aspects of modern society. To that extent it is irrational.

Nevertheless those who support the Vietcong imagine that they are Marxists and it is in pseudo-Marxist terms that they rationalise their support for this nationalist movement whose aim is to set up a state capitalist regime in the South similar to that in the North. The Vietcong is not a socialist movement, and by no stretch of the imagination can it be said to have anything to do with Socialism. But since those who shout for “Victory for the Vietcong” have dragged in Marx and Socialism, we must at least refute their arguments and state why Socialists do not support the Vietcong. (. . . .)

It is not true that the Vietcong and workers are fighting the same enemy. The Vietcong are fighting American capitalism. The interests of workers are opposed not only to American capitalism but to capitalism everywhere including Russia and China. Victory for the Vietcong, as we have already explained, would shift the world balance of power from America to other capitalist powers. This is not something that is in the interests of workers, or something that they should support. There is no issue at stake in Vietnam worth a single worker’s life.

The Socialist Party, then, is opposed to the Vietnam war, as to all wars. We do not take sides. Nor are we hypocrites like those who cynically use all normal people’s abhorrence of the burning of women and children (as if the Vietcong did not use flame-throwers) to get them to support one

side in this war. Such people do not really want an end to the killing; they want it to go on till the side they support has won. Let them at least be honest and stop trying to fool people with their phoney anti-war sentiments.

(Socialist Standard, October 1968)

The Falklands: Doing the Bulldog Thing (1982)

From the May 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some said it was war, to others it was more like comic opera. Most people’s knowledge of the Falkland Islands was limited to what they had read in their stamp album but they were sure that it was a place worth defending against a vile foreign dictatorship. The Argentinians were rather better known, since their football team was once called “animals” by the then England team manager Alf Ramsey, who was not averse to including one or two cloggers in his own side.

The British fleet which was despatched to deal a mighty blow at the invaders of the Falklands sailed out of Portsmouth trying not to look as if it was redundant. It was led by two aircraft carriers, one of which will be sold to the Australian Navy and the other scrapped. Five hundred of the sailors preparing for battle had had notices of redundancy and so had 180 of the workers in the Portsmouth dockyards where the ships were made ready. Among the crew was Prince Andrew (“a serving officer like anyone else”) who truly is redundant but gets paid handsomely for it and who seemed liable to fly an expensive helicopter into battle. It was in a rather desperate patriotism that thousands of workers waved the fleet away: “We have to do the bulldog thing” urged the wife of one of the sailors, perhaps reasoning that a dead dog is better off than a live unemployed sailor.

There was too some bellicose relief. Capitalist powers devote an enormous amount of resources to training their people in how to kill other workers in a war. Servicemen are liable to become frustrated, if all their expensive training and equipment is allowed to atrophy for want of the nourishment of a nice, destructive war. So the Guardian could report: “The men, with their planes and missiles are, after years of war games, spoiling for the real thing”. There was also some relief at the sudden emergence of this external “enemy”, who are always useful in helping persuade workers to accept sacrifices. And sacrifices, as the dole queues get longer and prices rise and rise, are what British capitalism wants from its workers right now.

The government’s acute discomfiture at the “humiliating affront to this country” (the departing Lord Carrington’s description) was in large part due to the fact that they had based a lot of their electoral appeal on the promise to be strong on “defence”. Was the Iron Lady to be foxed by a bunch of gibbering foreigners who spend all their time turning out cans of poisoned canned beef? Would the Tories ever live it down? There was much praise and sympathy for the hugely suave, hugely wealthy, Lord Carrington. Even American Secretary of State Alexander Haig had a good word to say for him, forgetting that only recently he called him a “duplicitous bastard”. Carrington didn’t need sympathy; he retired in good order to his acres in Buckinghamshire, a green and pleasant county of which he owns a substantial amount.

There was nothing comic about the Labour Party’s nauseous frenzy to exploit the situation. It was almost as if a general election had already been called. In the Commons on March 30, Denis Healey accused the government of being “caught with its trousers down in the South Atlantic—a phrase for the connoisseurs of Healeyisms. Callaghan, pretending to be helpful, recounted how much better the interests of British capitalism had been looked after when he was responsible, In 1977, he claimed, there was a similar crisis but the Labour government resolved it secretly, with a combination of military threat and diplomatic pressure. No MP took Callaghan’s trousers down by asking why the leader of a party which once claimed to stand for international working class interests should be fishing in the murky waters of capitalist diplomacy. In fact, Carrington had been following the same policy—on this issue, as on others there is no difference between Tories and Labour—but his bad luck was that the Argentinian rulers were under pressure to call his bluff and the whole thing was played out in public.

Of course the real star of the Labour benches was Michael Foot. Belying his reputation as a doddering, ineffectual bungler, the Labour leader lashed the government for their “betrayal of those who looked to it for protection” (he was not talking about workers struggling to live on social security). “We should not”, he raged, “see foul, brutal aggression successful in our world”. (He was not attacking the record of past Labour governments on Korea, Malaysia, Biafra, Vietnam . . .) Foot’s speech was applauded by the MPs as a flag-waving, drum-banging demand for the war in which, of course, he would not personally be in the front line. It was, we remember, only a few months ago that he won an affectionate ovation at a Labour Party gathering by describing himself as “an inveterate peacemonger”.

Many Tory MPs were delighted with Foot’s performance. One sure way of winning their respect is to make a speech calling for workers to be sent off to war. One of the more effusive—or perhaps he had merely lunched well—gurgled, “For once, you truly spoke for Britain”. There was no report that Foot so much as blushed at this insulting compliment (a few days later he was calling himself “an international democratic socialist”), nor that he was perturbed by Labour MP George Foulkes’ warning that “inevitably thousands of British troops will be killed”. The Labour Party has never flinched from the prospect of workers dying in the conflicts to protect their masters’ interests, especially if an inveterate votes-monger like Foot may be able to translate their deaths into an election win.

The Conservatives, also worried about their political standing, simply tried to shelter in a measure of fantasy. Thatcher declared:

The Falkland Islands and their dependencies remain British territory , , , It is the government’s objective to see that the Islands are freed from occupation and returned to British administration at the earliest possible moment.

But in the reality of world capitalism 1982, places like the Falklands are not defensible by any available British force for any length of time. British foreign policy has been based on that reality for some time now. In historical fact the “British administration” of the Islands was itself an “occupation”. The British settlement of the Falklands was contested by France, Spain and Argentina, from the latter half of the 18th century. The Spanish were there until 1806, when the Argentinians threw them out and in 1833 a British force arrived and, politely but firmly, ejected the Argentinians. The Prime Minister of the day made it plain that the British ruling class would not allow ” . . . any other state to exercise a right as derived from Spain, which Britain had denied to Spain herself”. This has never been accepted by any Argentinian government and, at the very least, they have registered an annual protest. Children there are taught about the perfidy of the British over the Falklands, rather as British children have been taught about the Germans, French, Japanese, Argentinians . . .

In 1851 a Royal Charter—the official sanction to the exploitation of the resources and the people—was granted to the Falkland Islands Company and since then the Islands’ economy has been dominated by that company. The FIC owns nearly half the land, a third of the sheep (wool is the Islands’ only product of any significance) and employs over one sixth of the population. It controls the bank, the dock and the supermarket. In 1972, after a brief spell of ownership by an offshoot of Slater Walker, the FIC was taken over by Charrington Industrial Holdings, which has big interests in fuel distribution and was probably attracted by the FIC stake in the islands’ transport and warehousing and the possible presence of oil. Argentinian investors almost pulled off a stealthy take-over in 1977 but this was thwarted, partly by the Foreign Office. Charrington seemed shaken by the experience, and declared that they would never sell out to a foreign concern. Soon afterwards they were themselves taken over by Coalite, a company based in Derbyshire. Through all these machinations the workers of the Falklands plodded on, in the bare, windswept landscape, raising sheep and turning out the surplus value for whichever bunch of capitalists was appropriating the wealth they had produced.

Those workers are in the main descendants of the Scottish, English and Welsh who went to the Falklands after 1851. Most families are tenants of the FIC and live in tied cottages which they must leave when they are too old to be exploitable any longer. Until recently the majority of members of the Legislative Council were nominated by the British government. If the Falklanders prefer this kind of feudal paternalism it can only be because they think—with good reason—that that life under Argentinian military rule has even less to offer them. A final irony is that, if any of them tries to take refuge in Britain they will have no automatic right of entry. The Foreign Office has promised them special concessions but, although they hold British passports, they are legally excluded because they are defined as non-patrials under the 1971 Immigration Act.

Behind the feigned concern for the fate of the Falklanders is the fact that for a long time it has been British policy, under Labour and Conservative governments, to phase the Islands over to Argentine rule. As James Callaghan pointed out in the Commons on April 7, in a brief respite from his jingoism, there had already been negotiations about the British hold over the Falklands, which might have led to some sort of leaseback arrangement with Argentina. In 1971 a commercial agreement gave Argentina a near monopoly in fuel supply and air travel and the first big runway at Port Stanley was Argentinian built. The Director General of the Falkland Islands Office in London had this to say, about the British attitude to their efforts to resist this trend: “We have consistently not been getting sufficient support from the Foreign Office these last twelve years”.

Naturally a lot of publicity was given by the British media to the transparent cynicism behind the invasion. Argentina is another country in the grip of a severe recession. At the end of March a trade union demonstration against the effects of unemployment and rising prices brought some of the worst civil disorder since the military took over in 1976. But the move against the Falklands brought a miraculous change; patriotic frenzy swamped the reality of the workers’ parlous condition and of the murderous repression by which the Argentinian rulers defend their position. As the news came through there was another demonstration but this time the Argentinian workers were chanting support for Galtieri and his annexation of Los Islas Malvinas.

The hysteria and deception on both sides ensure that it will take a long time to purge the Falklands crisis of historical myth. It will be written up as an affair of honour; the Argentinians will describe it as a blow against foreign imperialism and the British as a defence of human rights. But the wars of capitalism have never protected human rights; in truth they have damaged those rights, at times destroyed them. Diplomacy—one of the practised arts of the capitalist system—cannot be an affair of honour; it must function by double-cross, concealment, treachery and lies.

So British and Argentinian servicemen went across the ocean to do battle with each other in their masters’ cause. It was another doleful example of ignorant workers being easily duped by the empty jingoism of desperate politicians. Animals do it better; at least they don’t take themselves willingly to the slaughterhouse.

Ivan

The Falklands Crisis (1982)

From the May 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

In face of the imminent threat of war over the potential wealth of the Falkland Islands the Socialist Party of Great Britain affirms:

1. That despite the wave of jingoistic hysteria in the press and its endorsement by Labour and Tory politicians alike, no working class interests in Britain, Argentina or the Falklands themselves can be served by war.
2. That neither the military junta in Buenos Aires nor the elected representatives of British capitalism, least of all the business interests of Coalite-Charringtons, can justify the shedding of a single drop of working class blood.
3. That the new-found outrage at the undemocratic and oppressive nature of the Argentine regime rings false coming from a government which was arming that regime until the eve of hostilities.
4. That the crucial role of Argentine capitalism in profitably making-up the notorious shortfall of agricultural production within the Russian Empire goes far to explain the support given to the junta by the local “Communist Party” and the muted criticism of it by the same circles who so vociferously denounce the similar dictatorship in Chile and its parallel suppression of trade unionism and free speech.

We therefore reiterate that having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow-workers of all lands the expression of goodwill and socialist fraternity and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism in all its guises and the establishment of socialism throughout the world, the only way to end war.

The Executive Committee

13 April 1982

Alternative Economic Strategy or Socialism? (1982)

From the May 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The current crisis of British capitalism has clearly demonstrated the failure of the strategy which had dominated government policies (both Labour and Conservative) since the end of the Second World War: to manage the economy for continued growth, and a steady expansion in the social and welfare services. The capitalist propagandists insisted that Keynesian policies had cracked capitalism’s biggest problem. The period of cyclical crises during which there were attacks on working class living standards had, at last, come to an end. It was, they said, uphill all the way. Ideologies (by which they meant Marxism) were a thing of the past.

Since the late 1960s, however, it has become widely accepted that Keynesian policies were not the reason for the postwar economic boom. Rather, government policies (Labour and Conservative) were riding the crest of the economic wave. It was not that government policies were controlling the economy; that was a mere illusion. On the contrary, it was only because of the economic boom that governments were able to pursue their Keynesian policies of increased state intervention. As the economic wave came crashing down, governmental attempts to bail out the economy by more and more state spending became increasingly frantic. They found that the Keynesian bucket was full of holes. The Conservative Party, in particular after the failure of the Heath government, ditched its allegiance to Keynesianism and publicly declared its conversion to what it called “monetarism”. The monetarists had a religious faith in the ability of “market forces” to direct capital to where it was most profitable. Also, they believed that this policy of allowing the “invisible hand” of the market to hold sway would result in benefits to the working class as well as the capitalists.

The Labour Party did not at first reject its Keynesian past. In 1974, Harold Wilson led them into government with a so-called radical manifesto of policies intended to bring about “a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families”. But the Labour government did nothing of the kind. Instead, the rich got richer, and it was the working class instead of the rich who were “squeezed until the pips squeak”. The Labour government imposed severe austerity measures upon workers and their families. These, we were told, were because of economic necessity. Once again, as during the 1964-1970 government, Labour had been ‘blown off course”. In response to the deepening crisis, the government cut welfare and education services and, with the collaboration of the TUC, imposed a “voluntary” wages policy which resulted in a fall in real wages. The aim of these policies was to increase the level of profits kept by the capitalists for the accumulation of capital, and to reduce the proportion of profits spent on the reproduction of labour.

Since its defeat in the 1979 election, a debate has been going on within the Labour Party as to whether its programme in office was the appropriate one, and what it will offer the working class at the next election. A large number of Labour Party members and supporters, who view the last Labour government’s policies as a betrayal by the leadership of genuine socialist policies, have increasingly been talking about an Alternative Economic Strategy (AES). Although there is more than one version of the AES it will, whatever its form, be the main plank of Labour Party and left-wing propaganda in the run-up to the next election.

The aims of the AES
The AES seeks to get British capitalism out of its present crisis whilst at the same time meeting what are considered to be the immediate needs of the working class, and to weaken the role of the profit motive in production. This is seen as providing a platform for a “socialist transformation of Britain”. Thus, the AES is not viewed as a programme that will in itself create a socialist society, but as “a strategy that can win tangible gains in the form of greater working class control over production. Moreover, rather than pursue such gains within the constraints imposed by the existing structure of economic relations, it seeks constantly to anticipate, challenge and progressively dismantle those constraints and substitute new forms of control” (Conference of Socialist Economists London Working Croup, The Alternative Economic Strategy, CSE/Labour Co-ordinating Committee, 1980, p. 7; hereafter referred to as CSE). All that lies beneath this veil of words, however, is yet another attempt by the Labour Party and its left-wing followers to pass off reforms of capitalism as socialism.

Adopting a radical Keynesian stance in opposition to the “monetarism” of the Conservatives, the AES proposes a massive increase in government spending (figures range from £6,000,000,000 to £16,000,000,000, depending on which version of the AES one reads). The argument is that it is the lack of investment which is at the root of the crisis. Capitalists, according to the left-wing, prefer to invest in property and in foreign countries (in 1980, £7,000,000,000 was invested abroad) and to indulge in conspicuous consumption. The blame for the crisis is put at the door of traditional Labour Party bogies: the City, financiers, currency speculators, foreign multinationals, the IMF, and so on. It is the inability of these institutions to invest in Britain on their own accord which necessitates their being brought under control of the nation. The interests of these individual institutions is in opposition to the interests of Britain as an economic unit distinct from other national units. Aaronovitch has stated: “The dominant forces of capital and government have sacrificed the productive base of the British economy at all critical stages (except for world wars). This has been in striking contrast with, for instance, the policies of the ruling groups of those of our main rivals who have grown faster” (Aaronovitch, The Road From Thatcherism, Lawrence and Wishart, 1981, p: 5). In other words, the Labour Party is saving British capitalism from the capitalists!

Previous attempts by Conservative and Labour governments to induce industrial growth have been based on generating increased demand in the economy through such measures as increased government spending and lower taxation. It was believed that to meet this increase in demand there would be a corresponding increase in industrial production. However, this did not happen. In order to ensure that production does increase to match demand, the AES includes policies which directly intervene in production.

The main means to achieve this is through planning agreements, based on a five-year plan, but negotiated every year with private enterprises. These will involve decisions on “investment levels and location, employment, price policy and the like” (CSE, p. 71), and would be negotiated between “management and government with trade unions playing an important role” (CSE, p. 71). These various planning agreements will be coordinated by a National Planning Commission. To ensure that the agreements will be fulfilled, the government will have the power to enforce a range of sanctions against both capitalists and trades unions. The ultimate sanction would be the nationalisation of the enterprise, which would give “a 50:50 sharing of control between labour and capital” (Labour Co-ordinating Committee, There Is An Alternative, Labour Co-ordinating Committee, 1980, p. 14).

Another important part of the AES is the proposal to ensure that finance will be available for investment. This is to be achieved through state control of the major financial institutions. The capitalists, it seems, are unable to do this by themselves. A future Labour government will utilise the pension and insurance funds as well as the revenue from North Sea oil through a National Investment Bank, comprising government, capitalist, and trades union directors. Also, there are plans to nationalise the four major Clearing Banks (Barclays, Lloyds, Midland, Natwest), and to create a State
Bank through the merging of the Bank of England and the National Savings Bank and the Girobank. These re-formed financial institutions would provide credit to industry at more favourable rates than at present. Finally, there is a proposal for an Investment Reserve Fund through which a proportion of pre-tax profits would be used for specific schemes.

According to the left-wing, the crisis is a product of Tory policies, precipitated to bring about a weakening of the industrial power of the working class. This it has achieved through allowing the “laws” of the free-market to operate unfettered. As the left-wing sees it, to overcome the present crisis and prevent a future one, requires that the market forces be tamed and brought under state control; “an essential part of the industrial strategy is to reduce the role of profit in the economy, both as a source of funds to finance investment and as a criterion that determines where investment should or should not be made” (CSE, p. 45). The policies mentioned above are supposed to achieve this. But the hope that the role of profit can be reduced is vain. The disastrous economics of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are examples of this.

Operating in a world economy in which capital flows between nations, capital is invested where it produces the highest profit. If the return on capital were lower in Britain than in other nations, capital would not be invested. If the AES were implemented foreign capital would not be invested. Furthermore, British capital would be exported to an even greater extent than at present. Any attempt to prevent the export of capital would not ensure that it was invested in Britain. Instead, it would not be invested at all. Only complete state ownership would ensure the use of this “idle” capital. Whatever policies were attempted, the likely result would be a further decline in industrial output.

In talking of reducing the role of the market, all that is meant is that there will be increased attempts at planning, and a reduction in the role of the profit criterion. It does not mean the end of production for a market in which independent producers attempt to sell their products. It does not mean the replacement of production for profit by production for need. On the contrary, the supporters of the AES are opposed to production for need: “Production only creates jobs if the products can be sold. Production for use is nothing more than a romantic fantasy unless there is some way of transforming social needs into effective demand . . .” (CSE, p. 50). Not even the most avowed supporter of capitalism would object to this Labour Party “socialism”.

Import controls
The Alternative Economic Strategy is not merely a national programme. It also has international implications. During the period of industrial re-structuring, British capitalists’ interests will have to be protected from “unfair” foreign competition, and the flooding of the British home market by cheaper imports. This flooding would have a disastrous effect on the embryonic British industries, which would be unable to sell their products even in the home market. This would mean that they would be unable to earn the profits necessary to invest in new productive plant, resulting in a further decline in competitiveness. To ensure that the new British industries are not aborted, the AES plans to nurture them behind a trade barrier. This would allow British capitalism a breathing space in which industries are tooled-up with the most advanced technology, and labour productivity increased (that is, the level of exploitation is increased), so that when the process has been completed, British capitalism will be better able to compete in the world market. That improved competitiveness is the aim of the AES’s call for import controls is made clear in the LCC pamphlet: “What we have to develop is not just a system of import controls to protect the profits of home manufacturers but a system of planned trade which seeks to develop exports” (p. 20).

The AES attempts to link the interests of the working class with the success of British capitalism in its trade war with its rivals. The aim of the import controls is to save “British” jobs by supporting British capitalism against Japanese, French, and German capitalism. To the workers however, it is irrelevant whether they are exploited by British or Japanese capital. This would result in retaliation by other nations, reducing the level of exports and consequently increasing unemployment. Furthermore, since import controls tax imports and force workers to buy more expensive home produced ones, they lead to an increase in the cost of living for the working class. The net result of import controls would be to increase unemployment among workers abroad, and to whip up hatred of “foreigners”. In other words, they would divide the working class of the world. The AES also attempts to reduce the militancy and independence of the British working class by incorporating it into the apparatus of the capitalist state, and reconciling its interests to the fortunes of British imperialism.

It is clear from the programme of the AES that the danger to “Britain” is not capitalism, but the domination of British capital by multinational and foreign capital. How else to explain the emphasis put on the failure of British capital to invest in British industry, and instead invest abroad. Capitalists who fail to invest in Britain are criticised for being “unpatriotic”, for not putting their faith in “Britain”, and not for being capitalists. Accordingly, the answer to such “unpatriotic” behaviour is for capital to be nationalised or brought under the control of the state.

Workers' control or control of workers? 
One of the main points emphasised to sell the AES to the working class is increased worker involvement in decision-making. Supporters of the AES “attach an overriding importance to the extension of workers’ power-both at the point of production and within the wider democratic process of arriving at economic and social goals” (CSE, p. 80). They appear to think that if there are workers (for them, the working class consists of the industrial workers and certain kinds of “white-collar” workers, and not all those who sell their labour-power, at whatever price) involved in making decisions about how a particular enterprise will develop, that the profitability criterion will not be so important. But is is already the working class which runs capitalism (although not all workers are involved in decision-making. However, it does not matter whether the decisions are made by capitalists, management-workers, or a combination of shop-floor workers, management-workers, share-holders, and the state. What matters is that they are making decisions in the interest of capital. It is not who plays the game which is important, but what the rules of the game are to begin with. The rule of capitalism is a simple one: No Profit, No Production. Opening the books, workers' plans, workers’ co-operatives, or worker directors will not alter this.

Supporters of the AES fear that a high rate of what they call inflation will threaten the hoped for expansion of the economy and lead to the abandonment of increased government spending. Ignorantly, they argue that control of inflation requires that workers do not demand high increases in wages. Although there is controversy on the left as to whether there should be a formal incomes policy, there is agreement that wage increases have to be controlled. Aaranovitch states that any increase in wages would have to “take into account the overall direction of the economy” (p. 44). Agreements on wages would attempt to ensure that wages would not fall, and that “consequently growth in real wages would be ensured except in the circumstances of an uncontrolled fall in the terms of trade” (CSE, p. 132, emphasis added). In other words, whenever things got bad for British capitalism, the working class would carry the burden as usual. No doubt the attack on the working class would be couched in the familiar terms of “the national interest”. If, as some have estimated, 5 million new jobs have to be created for unemployment to fall to the level of the 1960s, the Labour government, with the support of the TUC, would argue that this can be achieved only through wage restraint. Another ploy would be to make increased involvement in decision-making dependent on wage restraint. However, the experience of the last Labour government showed that “non-monetary” gains do not impress the workers in the face of reductions in living standards. As an example of a monetary compensation for wage restraint, Michael Meacher MP suggested recently: “This could be either government repayment, after say three-five years, of a proportion of workers’ income tax as index-linked savings according to the degree of pay restraint, or better still, once planning agreements were in place, a right to share in the firm’s capital appreciation tomorrow to match pay limitation today” (New Statesman, 14 August, 1981). But workers’ experience shows that such deals are not in their interests.

The socialist alternative
The AES is a bridge to state capitalism, not socialism. State capitalism is no more in the interests of the working class than free-enterprise capitalism. The state control of capital would strengthen the power of capital over the working class.

Socialists are not concerned solely with the standard of living of the working class and increased involvement in decision-making. Our opposition to capitalism strikes at the very root of the working class condition: the need to sell our ability to work to those who own and control the means of production and distribution. The only way to ensure that the interests of the working class are fulfilled is through the abolition of the working class itself. Indeed, the working class is a class whose interests are destined never to be fulfilled. This does not mean that it must give up the struggle to improve its conditions. That would be a disastrous course of action. What it does mean, however, is that in the struggle to improve its conditions, the working class will come up against the limitations of what can be achieved under capitalism. They will necessarily confront the conditions of their existence as a class. This leaves two courses of action open to the working class. First, it can work within the limitations of capitalism to obtain what it can. But the history of the working class shows that this is precious little, and there is no reason to believe that the future will hold anything different. Or it can take the second course of action: to confront the class limitations with the determination to break them down. To abolish the condition which creates and recreates the working class: the ownership of the means of production and distribution by the capitalist class.

A reformist accommodation to capitalism’s problems, disguised as an embattled militancy, not only puts off the time when capitalism will be replaced by socialism, but also postpones the discussion of why only socialism is the solution to the problems confronting the working class. But the reformist argues that something has to be done now! If this or that problem can at least be ameliorated, then this is a worthwhile goal; they cannot wait for socialism to provide a solution. When challenged to give an example of a solution to a working class problem, the reformists will be at a loss. They will even go so far as to agree with the socialist that capitalism has no solutions. But, they will retort, at least a reform will ensure that fewer people are suffering from this or that problem: something is better than nothing, isn’t it? There is a gaping hole in this argument. The justification for supporting reformist proposals is the comparison of the position before and after the reform. Before the reform, there are, say, 60,000 people living in stinking, rotten houses, whereas after the reform there are hoped to be a mere 40,000. How could the socialist deny support for the reform? Not to support it would condemn 20,000 more people to living in stinking, rotten houses than need be.

But socialists, in not supporting the reformist programme, are not advocating that nothing be done. Far from it. We are calling for the working class to unite to introduce socialism now. In comparison with living conditions possible in a socialist society, the reformist changes are bloody disaster for the working class. The choice for the working class is not between Reform or Nothing. It is Reform or Revolution.

Cardiff Group

References:
1. Aaranovitch, S. The Road From Thatcherism, Lawrence & Wishart. 1981.
2. CSE London Working Group. The Alternative Economic Strategy, CSE Hooks/ Labour Co-ordinating Committee, 1980.
3. Labour Co-ordinating Committee. There Is An Alternative, Labour Co-ordinating Committee, 1980.

The Latter Day Followers of Leon Trotsky (2018)

Book Review from the October 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Contemporary Trotskyism: Parties, Sects and Social Movements in Britain by John Kelly (Routledge 2018)

Those seeking to change the way society is organized will at some stage come across a fractured group of people with ideas about it. They are quite active and visible, though perhaps not so much as they once were. Demonstrations and picket-lines, selling papers at universities and outside tube stations is their stock-in-trade. These days they are not in the best of health and struggle to make the impact they once did. They are the followers of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.

Trotsky played a significant role in the 1917 Bolshevik takeover in Russia led by Lenin, but after Lenin’s death was squeezed out by his successor Josef Stalin, went into exile in Mexico and then was murdered there by Stalin’s agents in 1940. It is perhaps a little odd that his modern acolytes are as well-known and persistent as they are. Not unlike the splintered religious sects that offer a regimen of activity and surety of doctrine, with each one microscopically different to the other.

A new book by John Kelly called Contemporary Trotskyism (Routledge, 2018) has set out to examine this phenomenon. Perhaps surprisingly, it is the first book-length analysis of the Trotskyist movement in Britain for over 30 years. It is meticulously researched and packed with detail. ‘Left-wing train-spotters’ everywhere will cherish it dearly.

What is Trotskyism?

Political ideas – especially complex ones – often struggle to be defined coherently. Trotskyism is no exception. Kelly identifies nine ‘core elements’, though a number of these are actually beliefs held in common with Lenin and the Bolsheviks (Trotskyists see themselves as their true heirs) together with their advocates in the various ‘Communist’ parties and regimes across the world this last century or so.

One of the core elements is more fundamental than most of the others and – despite the excellence of the book in other respects – has not been brought out quite as clearly as it might have been. This is the idea that while the working class is considered to be the agent of social change – as in Marxist theory generally – it is deemed incapable of doing this while capitalist rule dominates. This was the view taken by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, including both Stalin and Trotsky, and so unites them all.

From this viewpoint much else follows. If the working class is unable to understand capitalist exploitation and overthrow the capitalist system because the dominant ideas are literally always those of the ruling class, then how can a socialist revolution ever occur? All those in the tradition of Lenin came up with an answer, based on adapting the Russian Bolshevik model of a minority political coup d’etat. This idea was to build up a political party of professional revolutionaries (the ‘vanguard’ or ‘advanced guard’ of the working class) that could overthrow the capitalist government. It could then try to create the economic and political conditions for a socialist society – including the desire of the working class for it – after the event. Rather like having the pregnancy after the birth.

But to build up the vanguard party of professional revolutionaries within capitalism there’s no point advocating socialism, as that would be to cast pearls before the proverbial swine. What is needed instead is a tactical approach that can form an ideological bridge between where we are today and where we could end up. And this, in most respects, is where Trotsky and his followers developed a set of theories – most of them really tactics – that have distinguished them from others in the tradition of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. In particular:

Transitional demands. These are reforms of capitalism advocated with the sole purpose of demonstrating that the system can’t deliver them. This creates tension with genuine reformists like those in the mainstream Labour and Social Democratic parties who know they are unattainable and unrealistic, so prefer not to pursue them. But for Trotskyists the point is to create disillusion with the system and its established leaders so that the more critical, questioning members of the working class will turn away from them and towards the leadership of the vanguard party instead.

The ‘united front’ tactic. Like advocating transitional demands, this has been a means of winning recruits from other parties as it involves putting forward specific demands and campaigns that will enable Labour, Communists, Trotskyists, etc to work together on certain issues such as anti-fascism, while enabling Trotskyists to remain critical of their partners in other respects. This is just slightly different from the old Communist Party tactic of the ‘Popular Front’ which had often involved overtly pro-capitalist parties too, like Liberals.

A critical stance towards the former Soviet Union and its satellites. This is the big issue that has created more disagreement in the Trotskyist movement than probably any other. This is because while all wish to be critical of the regime Stalin went on to build up while Trotsky was in exile, they nevertheless hold very dear to the political methods that created it in the first place. Trotsky’s own formula was to label Russia a workers’ state that had degenerated under Stalinist leadership. Some still adhere to this, while others have moved from this position over time to create greater distance, adopting the view that these countries became state capitalist, or were some other form of class society.

A ‘catastrophist’ interpretation of capitalism. Trotsky’s seminal text in 1938 was The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International and most Trotskyists believe capitalism has been in its death throes ever since, 80 years and counting. This view is not entirely exclusive to them, but they link it vigorously with the need for working class ‘leadership’ i.e themselves as the vanguard party that can rescue the working class from crisis.

The need for a ‘Fourth International’ or similar. This is as a successor to the old Third International or ‘Comintern’ associated with Stalin and the Soviet regime. It would be an international body linking and uniting Trotskyist vanguard parties across the world with common perspectives, and also under a broadly common programme and set of tactical approaches.

The idea of spreading ‘permanent revolution’. This stands in distinction to the Stalinist idea that socialism could be built in one country and by stages, as Trotsky held the view that revolutions – if they were to succeed – needed to spread and not become isolated, hence the need for a Fourth International.  Nevertheless, the idea of a socialist revolution being one where a minority vanguard party takes power and then nationalizes the economy (as in Soviet Russia and China) is the same as the conventional Leninist and Stalinist view.

Trotskyism in Britain

One of the most notable features of the Trotskyist movement in Britain and other countries has been its tendency to fragment over time. From its origins in the tiny Balham Group of former Communist Party members in the 1930s it was united for a short time towards the end of the Second World War in an organization called the Revolutionary Communist Party, but since then has been split asunder many times.

Kelly has identified seven Trotskyist ‘families’ that emerged, though this is perhaps a little over-theorized. In reality, four main tendencies surfaced in Britain in the post-war era after the split of the RCP and these were led by four dominant individuals. This is perhaps not surprising. Trotsky himself had claimed that ‘The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat’ and Trotskyist organizations (like Lenin’s Bolsheviks) are characterized by top-down structures based on the principles of what they call ‘democratic centralism’, effectively designed to ensure self-perpetuating leaderships.

The four main Trotskyist organizations that emerged in Britain from the 1950s and 60s onwards may be familiar:

The Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP), formerly the Socialist Labour League, which was founded and led by Gerry Healy until it split into myriad fragments in the mid-late 1980s. This tendency has been characterized by Kelly as Orthodox Trotskyism, and it is hard to disagree as it holds rigidly to what it sees as Trotsky’s perspectives and recommendations before his death and has been known for its extreme sectarianism and hostility to other organizations.

The Militant Tendency (really called the Revolutionary Socialist League), led by Ted Grant and which became the most well-known Trotskyist organisation through its control of Liverpool City Council in the mid 1980s and its ‘deep entryism’ inside the Labour Party, even at one stage having three Labour MPs. It split in the early 90s and its successor organizations are the Socialist Party of England and Wales (SPEW) and Socialist Appeal. Kelly calls this tendency ‘Institutional Trotskyism’ because of its adherence to supporting Labour and use of parliament, though most of its attitudes, perspectives and ingrained sectarianism are not dissimilar to the Orthodox Trotskyism of the WRP – the main difference being that the WRP/SLL in its early life used entryism into the Labour Party as a tactic (as did the other main Trotskyist tendencies) whereas Militant made it a point of principle.

The International Marxist Group (IMG) led by Tariq Ali. This became the British section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (for a while the dominant semi-official one), hence Kelly’s description of this as Mainstream Trotskyism. This is perhaps a little confusing as it was mainly noted for attempts by its international leaders Ernest Mandel and Michel Pablo to revise and update Trotsky’s ideas in an era of Third World revolts and student agitation. Again it splintered into various competing sects, some inside the Labour Party and some outside it, the most well-known survivor probably being Socialist Resistance.

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), formerly International Socialism and led until his death by Tony Cliff. This is currently the largest of them all, even though it has suffered more splits and splinters than most, including in recent years. It was originally influenced as much by the ideas of Rosa Luxemburg as by Lenin and Trotsky and its distinguishing feature is its view that the Soviet Union and its satellites became state capitalist when Stalinism took hold, adopting a standpoint previously alien to the Trotskyist movement and pioneered by non-Leninist organizations like the SPGB. Kelly categorizes the SWP and most of its offshoots as ‘Third Camp’ Trotskyism.

Upwaves and downwaves

Kelly argues with some evidence that there have so far been four distinct phases in the British Trotskyist movement: 1950-65 which were the ‘Bleak Years’ of limited growth while inside the Labour Party, the ‘Golden Age’ of membership growth and influence from the mid 60s to mid 80s while the traditional Communist Party declined, then a period of ‘Fracture and Decline’ from the mid 80s until around 2005, when a period of ‘Stasis’ has endured.

There are currently 22 separate Trotskyist organizations in the UK though their total membership is less than 10,000 – well under half of the combined peak membership of the mid 1980s. Some organizations have splintered off over time and have moved away from Trotskyism such as the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG), though these, along with Stalinist and Maoist-type groups, also have memberships that tend to be numbered in the low hundreds at best and more typically much less than that.

The commitment expected of members of Leninist organizations generally can be considerable, with many Trotskyist groups mapping out their members’ free time in any given week and expecting significant financial contributions – the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) had average annual membership contributions per head of over £330 a year in 2014 and Workers Power has effectively charged a ‘tithe’ of 10 per cent of income. This is in large part what enables Trotskyist groups to publish a very regular press and many even now are built around the sales of their newspapers and magazines. The WRP famously received funds from Libya and other Middle East states but this is exceptional – most Trotskyist organizations lurch from internal financial crisis to crisis, being repeatedly bailed out by their membership to keep their loss-making publications going. Nevertheless, the Revolutionary Communist Party of the 80s and 90s (a grandchild of the IS/SWP) and publisher of Living Marxism was bankrupted by a £1 million libel action from ITN. Today only two papers have regular print runs (not sales) of over 2,000, these being Socialist Worker (SWP) and The Socialist (SPEW), with print runs of 20,000 and 10,000 copies respectively per week. Some organizations are so small they only produce irregular magazines or concentrate on maintaining a web presence.

Staffers

One of the more intriguing details to emerge in Kelly’s book is how much activity is stimulated and supported by paid officials. During the Militant Tendency’s peak of 8,000 members it had no less than 250 full-time equivalent staff (a not dissimilar total to the entire Labour Party). More recently, SPEW has the highest number of staffers with 45 full-time equivalent workers, compared to 32.5 in the SWP. Most of these are employed in publications-related work, with some being national, regional or campaign organizers.

Given all this, and the campaigns both initiated and hijacked by Trotskyist groups (from the Anti-Nazi League in the late 70s to the Stop the War Coalition more recently), it is perhaps surprising they remain as small as they do. Even more surprising perhaps given their relentless work in the trade unions, including trying to gain positions of influence at all levels, again meticulously detailed by Kelly. Similarly, in the last couple of decades there has been a generally increased focus on election campaigns as a means of generating publicity, from Respect to the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC). This has led to some long-term sworn enemies like the SWP and SPEW temporarily bury their differences, but with little practical effect.

Prognosis

The current state of flux in the Corbyn-led Labour Party has seen a number of Trotskyist groups identify a chance to engage closely with people who could be like-minded. The paucity of Trotskyist candidates standing against Labour in the 2017 General Election was a reflection of this, reversing the trend towards greater electoral participation since the 1990s. The evidence presented by Kelly suggests that the far left tends to do better on average (both in terms of electoral support and in party membership) when Labour is in government rather than in opposition. But it still does badly, and even organizations in other countries including some Trotskyist elements within them at various stages such as Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain only succeed when they build far wider leftist coalitions, dwarfing the Trotskyist contribution to the extent that it becomes almost invisible. And almost inevitably these parties have a tendency to end up – like Syriza – being respectable parties of capitalist government.

This is interesting, because Trotskyist groups have long argued that they do this because to do anything differently, such as advocate real socialism (common ownership, production for use, the abolition of the wages system, etc) is a waste of time. In fact, most of them only pay lip-service to this as being their long term goal at very best, and most take the traditional view of the Communists (ie Stalinists and Maoists) that socialism is really a nationalized, planned economy under the control of the vanguard party. But as in Soviet Russia this leaves all the economic features of capitalism intact – such as wage labour, production for sale on markets, etc – and is really just state-run capitalism.

It all gets to the essence though of why socialists oppose the Trotskyist movement and have long warned of the dangers of being involved in it:

• they do not advocate (or in many case really believe in) socialism but actually believe in a form of state run-capitalism under their own leadership
• they are elitist organizations that are dominated by small and generally unaccountable groups of leaders who see themselves as potentially great historical figures, guiding the masses with their supposedly superior political tactics
• they are politically dishonest as they advocate demands (the ‘transitional programme’) in the full knowledge they cannot be met within capitalism and will only create disillusion – indeed that is the entire point of advocating them
• they will periodically enter and otherwise give support (however ‘critical’) to anti-socialist organizations like the Labour Party
• they have a well-known history of hijacking trade union and other struggles for their own ends.

Of course, we are well aware that they don’t have a high opinion of us either. We are usually guilty of things like ‘abstract propagandism’, which means not arguing for reforms of capitalism and they have sometimes derided us as the ‘Small Party of Good Boys’ and similar.

While we are far smaller than we would like to be and can certainly learn lessons from the last century and more, John Kelly’s book has thrown an interesting spotlight on a few things. And one of them is that despite the fact that we in the SPGB advocate the ‘maximum programme’ of socialism and nothing but – and despite all the tactical manoeuvrings and reform campaigns of the various Trotskyist groups over the years –  there are only two of them (the SWP and SPEW) that are actually bigger than us! Every other party and group from the WRP and Socialist Appeal to the AWL and Counterfire are smaller than we are. And so were former (and very visible) Trot groups like the RCP at their peak in the late 80s/early 90s.

Just think, then – if a few more of them had spent their considerable energies advocating real socialism rather than playing tactical games of footsie with the reformists, the movement for social change in this country would be a lot stronger than it is. That’s not to crow, as we of course wish we were a lot bigger than we are – but just to point out that the tactical genius of Leon Trotsky and his latter-day followers has been rather misdirected and somewhat over-rated. And that’s us trying to be polite.

Dave Perrin

Stir Crazy (1998)

From the February 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new prison has just been completed near where I live, on the site of an old psychiatric hospital. There is something remarkably symbolic and ominous about demolishing an asylum in order to put up a prison. Of course, the hospital didn’t close especially to make way for the prison (it had already become a victim of “care-in-the-community”), but the poignancy is undiminished. The unavoidable impression is that those who are dazed and confused in an incomprehensible world need not seek sanctuary, but should simply await retribution.

The philosophy of “detention” for offenders is one which is, at best, tenuous. It’s not just the incredible idea that incarcerating for long periods men and women who fall foul of the law, in a cramped and dehumanising environment, will result in them emerging as model citizens. No, there is something else which is even more incongruous about prisons. The paradox is, of course, that prisons house people, at great expense, against their will, while other “law-abiding” citizens are homeless. Those who behave themselves, follow the rules, and don’t attract the attention of the police, have no guarantee of a home; if you do get one, it’ll cost you an arm and a leg. But towards those who break the law, the state suddenly becomes very benevolent, and will give you not only a roof over your head but board too, for months or even years.

Prisons were originally conceived as places of “reform” and rehabilitation–in America they are often still referred to as “correctional” facilities–but for political and economic reasons the ethos rapidly changed to one of punishment and segregation. They are a relatively new idea, dating from the late eighteenth century, about the same time that capitalism first reared its ugly head. That is not to say that there were no sanctions employed against the dispossessed before that time; on the contrary, death and transportation were the sentences of choice, but juries were becoming reluctant to convict in capital cases and the ships bound for Australia were overflowing. With the concentration of workers in new towns and cities subordinate to the sanctity of private property, a more practical method of dealing with convicts was required. Thus, the prison was conceived.

Former Home Secretary Michael Howard, amongst others, insisted that prison works. This evaluation of course depends on what it sets out to achieve. If the intention is simply to punish the dispossessed for trying to gain a few more material goods, and act as a deterrent to potential offenders, then it could be said to be serving a purpose. However, the deterrent effect is questionable, because common-sense suggests that most criminals don’t imagine they will be caught, or they wouldn’t commit crimes in the first place. The likelihood of detection would surely be a greater deterrent. If, on the other hand, prisons are intended to rehabilitate offenders and reduce the incidence of crime, evidence shows they clearly do not work. Firstly, statistics reveal that once sent to prison, a person is far more likely to re-offend; and secondly, despite more people being imprisoned than ever before, the crime problem shows no signs of diminishing. The reason that politicians like Michael Howard, and even new Home Secretary, Jack Straw, continue to favour incarceration is that they are at a loss for solutions to the problem of crime, and there are always a few votes in “getting tough”.

Getting tough

What getting tough on crime has meant in the last decade or so is a nine percent increase in the prison population, and this is expected to continue rising from the current level of 51,000 inmates to almost 60,000 in 2004 (Home Office Statistical Bulletin, 4/96), although there is already talk of this figure being reached much sooner. As prisons are presently overcrowded, the building of several new ones will of course be necessary, financed entirely by central government. You’ll notice that there is no restriction on prison construction, unlike public housing. And when did you last hear of a prison being closed because it was no longer “economically viable”? Hospitals, of course, do not enjoy the same security. There is now even a prison ship, hastily imported because existing prisons are filling up quicker than new ones can be built. When prison ships begin weighing anchor and hauling their “cargo” off to the Antipodes, things will have gone full circle.

If Britain’s enthusiasm for locking up its citizens seems over-zealous, it is actually quite restrained compared with America, where building prisons is a major growth industry. Tougher drug laws and mandatory sentencing have combined to push up the number of inmates to almost 1.5 million, or 565 out of every 100,000 Americans (compared with about 100 in Britain). In California, spending on prisons has shot up from two percent to 10 percent of the state budget, and last year was more than expenditure on higher education. This at the same time as welfare benefits and health provision are being reduced. The US politicians have claimed that a fall in the crime rate in some areas is solely attributable to their lock-’em-up policies, but criminologists point out that other factors such as demographics and changing drug habits must also be taken into account. Even if the politicians are correct, there can only be one logical consequence of their strategy: virtually everyone will end up either an inmate in a prison, right down to those who don’t bring their library book back on time, or will be helping to run one.

If the idea of going to prison for something as trivial as failing to pay a fine seems unimaginable, then you may be surprised to discover that it is not an uncommon practice in Britain; over 22,000 people fell victim in 1994 alone. Here is another paradox, to add to the pile which accumulate around this subject. People who, for example, can’t afford a TV licence, are then fined more than the value of the licence which they couldn’t afford in the first place. When they fail to pay the fine, they end up in jail. And here’s the “double whammy” which would perplex even the Mad Hatter: the cost of imprisoning, say, a single mother for not buying a TV licence (yes, you with the blinkers on, they do put mothers of young children in prison) is likely to be forty times the cost of the licence. And they reckon that prison works?

What, then, does the convict learn from the experience of imprisonment? As illustrated above, for many the harsh lesson is that society is prepared to pay thousands of pounds to punish you, but not even a small fraction of that amount is forthcoming to prevent you turning to crime in the first place; in other words, punishing the poor for nothing more than their shortage of money. It is unlikely that many prisoners emerge from the experience with a more positive attitude to the iniquitous socio-economic system which first condemns them to a life of poverty, and then, when temptation gets the better of them, condemns them again to be punished. It’s no wonder that prison does little to discourage crime.

If all other things were equal, perhaps a case could be made for punishing transgressors, but as everyone knows, equality is not something that can be associated with capitalism. It’s bad enough that so many are trapped in a life of poverty, yet the arrogant pitiless free market has to constantly rub their noses in it. Conspicuous inequality is what leads the poor to try to obtain a little more by any means available. If politicians wanted to reduce crime within capitalism, they would establish a system to counsel, aid and attempt to rehabilitate offenders–alas, not politically popular and not many votes in it. On the other hand, if they were serious about eradicating crime, they would identify and attempt to remove the causes of crime. This, however, would raise questions about why we need private property, money, privilege, etc.–not likely to be tackled by most politicians, as the one thing they agree on is the continuance and support of a social system in which a minority owns most of the wealth and exploits the rest of us to maintain it.

The new Labour government, for all its claims to be “tough” on the causes of crime, is proving to be just as ready to cage people up in a way considered inhumane in zoos. Whichever side of the law you’re on, whether you’re in or out of jail, if you’re poor there is one sound-bite that will always ring true: Tough on you.

Nick Brunskill

Curate’s egg (2013)

Book Review from the February 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Guide to Marx’s Capital, Volumes I-III. By Kenneth Smith. Anthem Press, 2012.

Readers of Volume I of Karl Marx’s Capital may have found the early theoretical chapters difficult. In a letter to Kugelmann (30 November 1867) Marx advises him that the following chapters were the most immediately readable: ‘Working Day’ (Vol. I, Part III), ‘Co-operation’ and ‘The Division of Labour and Machinery’ (Part IV) and ‘Primitive Accumulation’ (Part VI). In a letter to Wollmann (19 March 1877) Marx explained why he did not follow his own advice and start the book with the descriptive historical material: ‘In the scientific exposition the arrangement is prescribed for the author, although some other arrangement might often be more convenient and more appropriate for the reader’.

Building on Marx’s advice to Kugelmann, Kenneth Smith’s guide presents the three volumes of Capital in a different order of reading to that in which they were published, as a more user-friendly way of reading Marx’s work. However, in the course of his exposition Smith argues that for most of the twentieth century the full development of capitalism has been undermined by the existence of a non-capitalist ‘third world’ which has caused capitalism to take on the form of a highly developed mercantile system. Mercantilism, as Smith points out, is basically ‘buying cheap in order to sell dear’, rather than the accumulation of capital in industrial enterprises. But while some sellers can profit in this way, the seller’s gain is exactly offset by the buyer’s loss. The total amount of value in existence remains unchanged. If all sell dear then they cannot buy cheap and all lose as buyers exactly what they gain as sellers. Exchange, in Smith’s interpretation, is a zero-sum game. There has undoubtedly been a growth of speculative finance, but without the surplus value provided by the accumulation of capital there would have been no growth of ‘mercantile-capital’.

Smith also repeats a few myths, such as the claim that capitalism for Marx was characterised by increasing ‘immiseration’ of the working class. Despite the usual use of quotation marks, Marx never used that term. Central to the notion of ‘immiseration’ is increasing poverty of the working class, but this is based on a misunderstanding of Marx’s discussion of paupers in mid-nineteenth century Britain. The increasing pauperism Marx mentions in Chapter 25 of Volume I refers to the then ‘lowest sediment’ of society (the unemployed, the ragged, the sick, the old, the widows and orphans), not the entire working class. This issue is important because many commentators cite this misunderstanding as proof that Marx was completely wrong. For instance, the influential economist Paul Samuelson has asserted that since ‘the immiseration of the working class’ (using quotation marks as though he is quoting Marx) ‘simply never took place’ Capital can be disregarded (‘Marxian Economics as Economics’, American Economic Review, Vol. 57, 1967). Capital still demands attention, but Smith’s guide cannot be recommended.

Lew Higgins