communist review summer 2009

Theoretical and discussionjournal of the Communist Party

Number 53 • Summer 2009

Philosophy?I’M

WORKING ON IT!

Who NeedsCOMMUNIST REVIEWCR

●● Hans Heinz HolzStalin’s Philosophical and Political Testament●● Gregor GallFor Workplace Democracy in a Socialised Economy●● Peter Latham Orthodox and Marxist Theories of the State, Part 1●● Discussion●● Book Reviews●● Soul Food

★

COMMUNIST REVIEWCR★

EDITORIAL BOARDMartin Levy editorMary DavisJohn FosterMarj MayoGraham StevensonSteve SilverNick Wright

ADVISORY BOARDMichal BoñczaKenny CoyleRichard HartJohn HaylettKate HudsonJerry JonesEmily MannSteven MartinAndrew MurrayJean Turner

Advertising rates on request.Signed articles do notnecessarily reflect theviews of the editors orthe Communist Party

Printed by APRINT

KENNY COYLE is a former Deputy Editor CommunistReview, and the author of several articles and pamphlets onboth Chinese and communist history.MARY DAVIS is Women’s Organiser of the CommunistParty of Britain and former Editor of Communist ReviewGREGOR GALL is Professor of Industrial Relations at theUniversity of Hertfordshire and Director of its Centre forResearch in Employment Studies. He is a member of theScottish Socialist Party and writes a regular column in theMorning Star.DAVID GROVE is an economist and a member of theGreater Midlands District Committee of the CommunistParty of Britain.

HANS HEINZ HOLZ is a philosopher and leadingtheoretician of the German Communist Party (DKP) andco-editor of the dialectical journal Topos.PETER LATHAM is a member of the EconomicsCommittee of the CPB and was formerly Secretary of theLabour Campaign for Open Local Government. He taughthousing policy to students working in the public sectorbefore becoming a full-time official in UCU.MARTIN LEVY is a scientist and the Editor of CommunistReview.ERWIN MARQUIT is a contributing editor of theCPUSA’s online journal Political Affairs and is Editor ofNature, Society and Thought.

contents

contributors

Who Needs Philosophy?

16 Orthodox and Marxist Theories of the StatePart 1 by Peter Latham

24 Workplace Democracy in a Socialised Economyby Gregor Gall

30 Stalin's Philosophical and Political Testamentby Hans Heinz Holz

38 Discussion Contribution:Raising Consciousnessby David Grove

31, 40 Book reviewsfrom Kenny Coyle and Robert Griffiths

42 Soul Foodpoetry and literature

by Martin Levy, Mary Davisand Erwin Marquit

page 5

The Death of Socrates by Jacques-LouisDavid (1787).The painting depicts the

philosopher Socrates about to takepoison hemlock.

Theoretical and discussionjournal of the Communist Party

Number 53 • Summer 2009ISSN 1474-9246

EDITORIAL OFFICES23 Coombe Road London CR0 1BD

tel: 020 8686 1659 • fax: 020 7428 9114email: [email protected]

web: www.communist-party.org.uk

Who Needs Philosophy? The worldfinancial system is in turmoil, workersare losing jobs in their thousands, thewar in Afghanistan is intensifying, theplight of the Palestinian people hasbecome even more desperate, thepolar ice-caps are melting … and CR chooses this moment to focus onphilosophy! What is going on? Have we got our priorities right?

There is a precedent – and acreditable one at that. In September1914, just after the outbreak of theFirst World War, no less a person thanLenin took up the study of philosophy.His notes on Hegel’s Science of Logicand Lectures on the History of Philosophy,posthumously published as part of his Philosophical Notebooks, representhis attempt, at a critical moment inhistory, to reassure himself of thephilosophical foundation of his owntheory and practice.

That foundation – dialectical andhistorical materialism – explains thesource of development as thecontradiction between opposites.The First World War, therefore, did notoriginate out of the wilfulness ofdifferent rulers (idealism), but ratherbecause of the basic materialistcontradiction between the capitalistclasses of the imperialist powers, eachof which was locked in a contradictionwith its own working class.This analysis helped Lenin and theBolsheviks not only to rally oppositionto the opportunism of the SecondInternational, whose parties supportedthe War, but to identify Russia as the

weakest link in the imperialist chain,and to develop a successful strategy tobreak that link.

We face a stage in history that is noless profound. The contradictionbetween the social nature ofproduction and the privateexpropriation of surplus value hassharpened to the point that capitalismhas entered a period of unprecedentedcrisis. Furthermore, the conjunction ofthe economic, social, military andenvironmental crises of capitalismmeans that, objectively, the issue ofreplacement of this moribund form of society is on the order of the day.

Subjectively, however, the conditions

for such a revolutionary transformationhave to be created. That, as FidelCastro has remarked in My Life, was theissue for Cuba in 1953, when the 26th

July Movement was launched; and it isthe issue for us today even if the tacticsand strategy will be different. But onepoint is critical: any Marxist partyseeking to create those subjectiveconditions must have a clearunderstanding of its own basicprinciples, defend them against allbourgeois attempts to undermine them,and popularise them to a much wideraudience. It was therefore fitting thatthe first plenary session at lastOctober’s Communist University of

communist review • summer 2009 • page 1

editorialBy Martin Levy

➔

Britain was devoted to the question ofMarxist philosophy. The three speakers’contributions are reproduced here.

In the first article, the presentauthor argues that the popular fatalismso prevalent today can be turnedround, but only by facing up to thechallenges posed by the likes ofFukuyama and the postmodernists –the latter in fact posing a challenge toall progress. It is essential, he says,to defend the materialist basis ofdialectics – the unity of the opposites,interconnectedness of everything,development through contradiction,and so on – in order to groundMarxism as both an analytical tool anda guide to action. Postmodernismclaims that “grand narratives” – such asMarxism – do not work, and this viewhas taken an insidious hold in society.But there are still many single issueswhich move people to struggle – jobs,wages and conditions, peace, equality,human rights issues, the environmentalcrisis. All these are at root class issues,and can only be resolved in the finalanalysis by the revolutionarytransformation of society, by socialism.

Both Mary Davis and Erwin Marquitcaution against historical determinism.As Mary says: while postmodernistshave got it wrong in proposing the“idea” as the main motor of history,it is nonetheless “undialectical to talkabout laws by which human societydevelops.” While social beingdetermines social consciousness, andthe era of social revolution beginswhen “productive forces in societycome into conflict with the existingrelations of production”, developmentis not automatic. There is no simpleconnection between the economicbase and the political/organisationalsuperstructure. Change has to befought for.

Historical determinism, as Erwin Marquit points out, was the basicflaw of Bernstein and Kautsky, the pre-First World War leaders of Germansocial democracy, whose approach ledto the abandonment of an ideologicalstruggle for socialism. But the focus ofErwin’s argument is much more on theapplication of philosophy to problemswithin natural science itself, and on thenecessity of a philosophy of the natural

page 2 • summer 2009 • communist review

sciences because of theinterconnection with societaldevelopment. The absence of thiswider view is, he argues, the basicreason why many scientific andtechnological advances, whenintroduced into the economy, havesubsequently endangered human life.

The philosophical theme continuesin two other contributions. In the firstpart of an extended article, PeterLatham focuses on theories of the stateand local government, drawingattention to the distinction betweenappearance and reality, to theimportance of applying dialectics toanalysing changes in local government,and to class conflict as the motive forcefor those changes. Meanwhile HansHeinz Holz reappraises Stalin’s lastwritings, on Marxism and Problems ofLingustics and Economic Problems ofSocialism in the USSR. Like Mary Davis,he highlights the issue of social beingand social consciousness, or rather,base and superstructure. He drawsattention to Stalin’s remarks that thebase/superstructure relationship is notunidirectional, but dialectical; and thatlanguage furthermore is a productiveforce which is not base, superstructureor for that matter any intermediatephenomenon. This is a further warningagainst mechanical approaches.

However, as Marx said in his Theses on Feuerbach,“The philosophershave only interpreted the world invarious ways; the point is to change it.”The objective of Peter Latham’s 3-partarticle is to provide an analysis ofbourgeois and social democratictheories of the local state, in order tobe able to combat them and to defendworking class gains – a crucial issue forall the public services. But what aboutthe private sector? Gregor Gall pointsout in his article in this issue thatenormous sums of public money arebeing thrown at the financial systemwithout any stringent conditions inreturn. This remains the case despitethe recent jamboree of the G20summit. Gregor’s main point is thattrade unions should be demandingmuch more than “no redundancies” –in particular, they should be insisting onmeasures of workplace democracywhen public money is invested.

The demand for worker directors hasto be advanced, he says, as atransitional means to raising workerconsciousness and realising further andgreater workers’ control.

It is always risky to predict thefuture. In his article, written a fewmonths ago (as is normal in terms ofour production schedule), Gregorremarks that “we will not see in Britainanytime soon the kinds of factoryoccupation and takeover that havebeen witnessed in a number of LatinAmerican countries in the last decade.”Until very recently, who would havedisagreed? But at the time of thiseditorial, that is precisely what ishappening at the Visteon factories inBelfast and Enfield. It may, like theindustrial action around social dumpingat the Lindsey oil refinery, only involvesmall numbers of workers but thepotential impact of both is enormousas they have raised the issues ofautonomous collective action and ofwidespread solidarity – in short,of turning narrow trade unionconsciousness into educated classconsciousness.

It is one thing to haveconsciousness, however, and another tobe able to make change in society.Clarity is needed on the left and in thelabour movement about the realdirection of capitalist strategy and theneed for a comprehensive workingclass challenge. The Communist Partyof Britain has a programme forrevolution, Britain’s Road to Socialism,but – as noted above – the subjectiveconditions for such a socialtransformation need to be created.Two recent and ongoing labourmovement initiatives do have thepotential to start us down that path.

The No2EU-Yes to Democracyplatform for the EuropeanParliamentary elections marks asignificant step forward in placing thereal class character of the EuropeanUnion in front of the British people.Based on the RMT, Trade UnionsAgainst the EU Constitution, theCampaign Against Euro-Federalism, theCPB, Socialist Party and others, No2EUbelieves that “the time is right to offerthe peoples of Britain an alternativeview of Europe.” Full details of its

policies can be found athttp://no2eu.com/, but they includerejecting the Lisbon Treaty, opposingEU directives that privatise our publicservices, repealing anti-trade unionrulings of the European Court ofJustice, and opposing racism andfascism. At a time when the ultra-rightBritish National Party stands to makegains out of disaffection among workingclass voters, it is important that there is a clear left-wing alternative to thepro-EU policies of the mainstreamparties. But the issue goes muchdeeper than that, as adherence to theEU is central to New Labour thinking.Success in building up a massmovement in opposition to the LisbonTreaty would then open doors tomobilising around an alternativeeconomic and political strategy.

Such an alternative strategy hasbeen articulated in the Left-WingProgramme (LWP) drawn up by theCommunist Party. The People’s Charterfor Change, launched in February of thisyear, has many basic points in commonwith the LWP, but has a much broaderbase in that it has been adopted by a number of leading figures in thelabour and progressive movements.Its full text is online athttp://www.thepeoplescharter.com/ butthe main campaigning points are: a faireconomy for a fairer Britain; more andbetter jobs; decent homes for all; saveand improve our services; for fairnessand justice; a better future starts now.More long-term than the No2EUcampaign, the People’s Charter aims tocollect 1 million signatures throughworkplaces, trade union branches andcommunities. All on the left can engagein this. It is not a socialist programme,but it does start to open the door,by shifting the nature of the debate in society,

ON THE NATURE OF SOCIALISMIn CR52 we printed two other articlesby Hans Heinz Holz: The RevisionistTurning Point, an analysis of theprocesses leading to the demise ofSoviet socialism; and The Embodiment of Contradictions, a dialectical analysis ofStalin’s period in office. In his article in the current issue of this journal,


➔

Hans Heinz seeks to demonstrate thatStalin’s last writings were not onlyabout philosophy, or the esoterics oflinguistics and economics, but moreimportantly about giving the startingsignal for dismantling “consolidatedpersonal and organisational structures”– a process later called destalinisation (!)– and about “formulating a plan for thepractical matter of building socialism.”Hans Heinz argues for “a differentiatedanalysis of history, rather than the onewhich describes everything in black andwhite, ie with rigid oppositions.”

There are some parallels here withthe Theses on Socialism issued by therecent 18th Congress of theCommunist Party of Greece (KKE).As Robert Griffiths reported in theMorning Star on March 23, the Thesesanalyse the development of Sovietsociety both before and after the 20th

Congress of the CPSU in 1956, to drawconclusions about the policies andleadership needed in order to defendand advance socialism.There are claims made in the Theseswith which not everyone will agree – inparticular a tendency not to admit anycriticism of Soviet society pre-1953 –but they do demand careful study.They can be found in full athttp://inter.kke.gr/News/2008news/2008-12-thesis-socialism .

Every country must make its ownway to socialism. But, as the KKEpoints out, the subjective factor isdecisive “in the dominance,

development and supremacy of thenew social relations.” The KKE statesunequivocally that the widespread useof market mechanisms under socialismis not only theoretically alien but alsoweakens the socialist character ofsociety. Similar points were made byChe Guevara in the early days of theCuban Revolution and have beenrepeated many times since then byFidel Castro. In this 50th Anniversaryyear of the Revolution, it is worthremembering Fidel’s statement to the4th Congress of the Union of YoungCommunists in 1982 that “in thedevelopment of communist societywealth and the material base mustgrow hand in hand with consciousness,because it can even happen that aswealth increases consciousnessdiminishes”. Cuba could not havesurvived the attacks and blockade of US imperialism if it had not been for the maintenance of thatrevolutionary consciousness.

STYLE AND CONTENTThe acute reader will notice that the layout of this journal has changed.Our volunteer design team of Michal Boñcza and Birgitha Bates have

expressed the wish to step down afterserving the journal for 5 years. That isa long period, in any case, but it is fairto say that during that time thejournal has grown in content andfrequency (a measure of success),making the design and layout muchmore complex and time-consumingthan originally anticipated. We entirelyunderstand Michal’s and Birgitha’ssituation and we express our deepappreciation for all their dedication,creativity and hard work.

While the style may change,however, the content will not bediluted. Our contributors will continueto be educative and stimulating – withthe intention of provoking discussion.Already, in this issue, we print arejoinder from David Grove to aspectsof Jerry Jones’s article in CR52.Let this set a general trend. Clarity isonly achieved by discussion.

Meanwhile, work is in hand toestablish Communist Review on theworld-wide web. Step by step, weintend to upload articles from pastissues, to provide a complete archive.Check the Communist Party ofBritain’s web site, www.communist-party.org.uk, for any links. ■


■ Communist Review welcomes submission of articles (normally up to 5000 words),discussion contributions and letters – send to [email protected] will be reviewed by members of the Editorial Board and/or Advisory Board,and we reserve the right not to publish.

■

I want to join the:

Communist Party Young Communist League

Name

Address

Postcode

Phone

Email

Industry

Age

JOIN THE COMMUNIST PARTYCapitalism is in its biggest slump since1929. Britain’s banks have been bailed outto the tune of £1.3 trillion while workersare paying for the crisis with job losses,frozen pay and home repossessions.

Return to:CPB 23 Coombe Road London CR0 1BD

You may also apply directly via the web site www.communist-party.org.uk,by following the link to “Join Us”


By Martin Levy

Big philosophical questionslike these have been askedsince the dawn of the Age ofEnlightenment in theeighteenth century. They haveachieved a new intensity in the modern day, with thethreat of nuclear annihilation,the unleashing of wars, thedestruction of theenvironment, the spread of theglobal market, the dismantlingof the welfare state, and – lastbut not least – the currenteconomic crisis.

There was a period when,for the left, it seemed clearthat there was a positive vistaof human liberation andprogress opening up. The Russian, Chinese andCuban Revolutions had beensuccessful, fascism had been

crushed militarily – largelydue to the sacrifices of theSoviet people – colonies weregaining their freedom and USimperialism was defeated byone of the smaller nations inthe world, the Vietnamese.

The nineteenth-centuryGerman philosopher GeorgWilhelm Friedrich Hegelcalled history a slaughter-bench.1 He considered thatthe Absolute Spirit (God)externalised himself intonature and history. By whatHegel called “the cunning ofreason”, people who aremotivated irrationally by their passions and interests,along with individuals likeCaesar and Napoleon, causeterrific bloodshed incontributing to bringing about

the end of history – a state ofuniversal freedom.

Now, 20 years after thecollapse of socialism inEastern Europe and theUSSR, there is a loss of hopein the future, a marginalisa-tion of the left, and aresurgent (though notubiquitous) imperialism,apparently demonstrating theslaughterhouse aspect ofhistory, through the wars over Afghanistan and Iraq.

Marxists, and certainly themajority of believers in anyreligious faith, would disagreewith Hegel’s claim thathistorical forces are directed by a supreme being. But therecan still be a popular fatalismthat things are as they are,there is nothing you can doabout them.

Such fatalism does not justoriginate internally in everyhuman being – ideas like thisare part of the intellectualmilieu in which we live, amilieu which is determined by

the relations of economicpower in society. It reflects –but only in part – a lack ofunderstanding of the way inwhich the world works.

In his Prison Notebooks, theItalian communist AntonioGramsci pointed out that “allmen are ‘philosophers’”,possessing a “spontaneousphilosophy” contained inlanguage, “common sense”and “good sense”, and in“popular religion and thereforealso the entire system ofbeliefs, superstitions, opinions,ways of seeing things andacting.”2 Hence, he said,fatalism, expressed as

“‘being philosophicalabout it’ … is not tobe entirely rejected as aphrase. It is true that itcontains an invitationto resignation andpatience, but it seemsto me that the mostimportant point israther the invitation to

Where is the world going?What’s the point of life?Why are we here?

Who needsPhilosophy?

BeingPhilosophical

➔

people to reflect andrealise fully thatwhatever happens isbasically rational andmust be confronted assuch, and that oneshould apply one’spower of rationalconcentration and notlet oneself be carriedaway by instinctive andviolent impulses.”3

The present crisis presentsMarxists with a tremendousopportunity to turn thatfatalism round – ie toconvince the mass of workingpeople that there is analternative to capitalism and that it is achievable.However, to do that we shallhave to confront bourgeoisideas which threaten not onlyMarxism but all coherentphilosophies and the very ideaof human progress.

The Attack on theEnlightenmentThe Enlightenment project,which coincided with the riseof capitalism, was based onthe idea that people canunderstand nature, and gainmastery over it. As Kant saidin his famous essay4:

“Enlightenment isman’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.Immaturity is theinability to use one’sown understandingwithout the guidanceof another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause isnot lack ofunderstanding, butlack of resolution andcourage to use itwithout the guidanceof another. The mottoof enlightenment is therefore: Sapereaude! Have courage to use your ownunderstanding!”

In the present day, thatproject is under attack from anumber of sources, some evenclaiming to be of the left.

Among these are claims of an“end of history”5 (like Hegel),an “end of science”,6 an “end of ideology”7 and an “end of‘isms’”.8 There is a degree towhich these ideas simply reflectthe context in which they weregenerated – the end to the lastcentury. But in some cases atleast, their origin in capitalistsociety is rather older.

Proponents of an end toideology suggest that, with the collapse of Soviet andEastern European socialism,there has been a decline ofideological struggles and a process of universalacceptance of Western values.Such arguments originatednearly 50 years ago withDaniel Bell5 and SeymourMartin Lipset9, who claimedthat developments in Westernsocieties, particularly the USA,indicated that “fundamentalpolitical problems” had been solved, with a form ofpragmatic liberal capitalismtriumphing.10 Essentially theirargument was that capitalismand socialism wereconverging, a position whichsustained social democracyand even conservatism in themid-to-late twentieth century.

Economic circumstanceshave now changed, under-mining the basis for socialdemocracy, but the argumentof an end to ideology hascontinued to be popularised.In reality what it means is the triumph of capitalistideology – though it is our role to ensure that it isonly temporary.

The End of History?A more explicit statement ofthat ideological triumph wasgiven by Francis Fukuyama inhis work The End of Historyand the Last Man5. Withoutstating it, Fukuyama appearedto draw inspiration from neo-liberal prophet Frederick vonHayek, who argued in the1940s that both socialism and fascism representedtotalitarian systems thatdenied individual liberty,because they sought to plancentrally.11 Not only did theydislocate the market, but their

concentration of resources inthe hands of the state led to amonopoly of power and todictatorial control. For Hayekand for Fukuyama too,capitalism is founded uponindividual freedom, with aminimal role for the state, no privileges in the marketand with the individual havingthe right to choose accordingto their own values.

As John Foster has pointedout,11 the flaws in Hayek’sarguments are pretty deep. In the current crisis, capitalismclearly needs stateintervention! In fact, Hayek’smodel of liberal capitalism hasnever existed, since those whohave greater wealth will alwaysdominate the market.Likewise, his freedom remainsabstract – freedom fromhunger or disease is excluded – except that the right tocapitalist private propertyremains absolute.

Fukuyama draws on areading of Hegel’s works The Philosophy of Right12 andThe Phenomenology of Mind13

to explain why, according tohim, capitalism gives rise to“democracy”. Man, he says,differs from animals becausehe wants to be “recognised” asa human being, with a certainworth or dignity, and iswilling to risk his life to thisend. In Hegel’s terms thisdesire to be recognised drovetwo primordial combatants to seek to make the other“recognise” their humannessby staking their lives in amortal battle. When thenatural fear of death led one combatant to submit, the relationship of master and slave was born – andhence classes.

Hegel – and thusFukuyama – regarded the desire for recognition asthe motor of history. The master was not recognisedby other masters, but by slaveswhose humanity wasincomplete. Dissatisfactionwith this constituted acontradiction that engenderedfurther stages of history. It was overcome by the FrenchRevolution, which granted

universal and reciprocalrecognition. The spread of thepolitical corollary of that –liberal democracy –throughout the world meanteffectively the end of history.

However, Fukuyamasuggests that there are dangersin making mutual recognitioncompletely satisfying. He quotes the reactionarynineteenth century Germanphilosopher FriedrichNietzsche to the effect that thetypical citizen of a moderndemocracy was a “last man”who gave up prideful belief inhis own superior worth infavour of comfortable self-preservation.14 “The last manhad no desire to be recognisedas greater than others, andwithout such desire noexcellence or achievement was possible.”15 Fukuyamatherefore champions theopportunities forentrepreneurship – and thusexploitation – in the USA. He argues that the motive is neither consumption nor money, but status and reputation.

Marxists readily accept thatpeople have individualstrengths and weaknesses andthat emotions and attitudescan play a role in society whenthey are taken up by numbersof people. Wealth does not just buy material goods – butalso privilege and adulation.But to suggest that the strugglefor recognition is the motor ofhistory is a patent absurdity. It is pure idealism because itignores the material base.

Recognition in primitivesocieties was worth nothingunless it conferred certainmaterial advantages as well. Even in the modern day,very few leadingsportsmen and women,or politicians, areinvolved simply for thekudos. The fact thatmaterial benefits areto be gaineddemonstrates thatsociety is alreadyproducing a surplus.It is that whichallows some peopleto be rewarded more


than others and ultimately anelite – a ruling class – to liveoff the labour of the majority.The master-servantrelationship is reinforcedthrough ideology and, asEngels said, through a “publicauthority” consisting of“armed men, but also materialadjuncts, prisons andinstitutions of coercion of allkinds”16 – all of which aresustained through theextraction of the surplus. It isthe contradiction between theproducers and consumers ofthis surplus which driveshistory forward.

The Threat fromPostmodernismWhile Fukuyama’s ideas havegenerally not been treatedseriously in academic circles,they have maintained a certainmomentum because of theirusefulness to the ruling classtoday. Another attack onMarxism (and all coherentphilosophies) – more insidioussince many of the originatorsclaimed to be of the left – hasbeen posed by the ragbag ofphilosophical approachesknown as postmodernism.17

Three broad featuresunderpin these theories: firstly,

the claim that nature no

longer exists, only “culture”18 –an approach seen most clearlyin an attack on the validity ofscience; secondly, a scepticismabout the ability of society tosecure human rights andprovide scope for freedom – ie there is no single dominat-ing oppression or site of power(the state) but a diffuse ever-expanding network of controlmeasures (hospitals, mentalhomes, prisons etc) bringingsocial control, making thedream of freedom anillusion;19 and thirdly, theimpossibility of shaping eitherthe present or future in anygrand fashion – power isinescapable and politics canonly seek to channel it and useit constructively.20

If New Labour has anyideology, then this is it:everyone in society hasdifferent personalised interests,so “grand narratives”,21 asFrançois Lyotard calledMarxism and other coherentphilosophies, do not work,and the best that can be doneis to make use of power inorder to make things functionbetter. The resurgent Toriesmight take an approach morein line with Fukuyama, butthe convergence between thetwo lines is striking: in bothcases history is at an end, andhence there is no more pointto ideology, to “isms”, and tocampaigning and organisingfor a fundamental change insociety. This is an ideologyitself which clearly serves theinterests of the ruling class.

However, in some wayspostmodernism is even moredangerous than Fukuyamabecause implicit in it is anattack on the wholeEnlightenment project, ie theidea that humanity is capableof endless development,through increasing its powersover nature. The attack onscience here is mostimportant, and not justbecause – as the IndianMarxist T Jayaraman haspointed out22 – it has“often been presentedwith a radical veneer,”and “sought to be likened

to a version of Marxism

which is less ‘materialist’ andmore ‘dialectical’ in nature”: inpostmodernism all materialistpositions are equated to“positivism” (a position which argues that onlyphenomena are important) or “bourgeois science”, andscience is therefore regarded as mostly ideology.

Most scientists are notdialectical materialists, butsimply realists, and theywould not give sucharguments the time of day.After all, science proves itselfcontinually in its applicationas technology, and scientifictheories are being continuallytested by new discoveries.Those who engage inscientific ideology – iefraudulent results – are soonfound out. Yet the danger inthe postmodernist argumentsis that they reinforce existinganti-science trends in society,in many ways reflecting thepessimism of capitalism in itsdegenerate imperialist stage.23

Instead of the idea ofhuman progress throughscience, which accompaniedthe capitalist expansion afterthe Second World War, thereis now a scepticism about thevalue of pure science, leadingto increasing emphasis onapplied research in just a fewkey areas. There is a publicmood of anxiety about thefuture, and there arepoliticians and others who areonly too willing to blamescience for modern problems(nuclear power, theenvironmental crisis etc) or todismiss scientific evidencebecause it does not suit them(eg “It’s only an opinion/theory” applied to globalwarming, evolution orabortion rights).

The Marxist ApproachMarxists have never deniedthat scientific progress has asocial context, with newconcepts being influenced bythe society in which they aredeveloped, and in turn havingan influence on society. The Aristotelian view of theEarth as the centre of theuniverse was used to justify

social relations in feudalsociety; while the Newtonianview, which placed the sun atthe centre, nonethelessprovided a stability which wasincorporated by capitalistsociety. The creative BritishMarxist Christopher Caudwellpointed out that the capitalistsees nature as a mechanism,just like the machine he owns,and so the philosophy ofscience in the bourgeois era isdominated by mechanicalmaterialism.24 It was noaccident that the breakdownof the old certainties, underthe impact of nineteenthcentury scientific discoveries,caused a crisis in physics,because they could not berationalised in terms of the old mechanistic model. A complete philosophicalbreak was needed: as Leninhad said a quarter of a centurybefore Caudwell, “Modernphysics is in travail: it is givingbirth to dialecticalmaterialism.”25

It is worth devoting somespace here to defend dialecticalmaterialism, since this is wherepostmodernists made theirmost significant attack. They were not the first on theleft to try to separate Marxfrom Engels and Lenin, and toargue that dialectics was ahuman construct, only usefulfor analysing developments insociety. That was essentially theposition taken by GyorgyLukács in 1923, in his Historyand Class Consciousness,26 atheme later taken up by theFrankfurt School of Westernacademic Marxism. However,postmodernism made atheoretical virtue out of thefailure of “grand narratives”,that no single embracingphilosophy was universallyapplicable. UndermineMarxism’s role as such aphilosophy, and you undermineits basis as a critique of society.Hence the attack on science.

Materialism means astandpoint that the naturalworld is real and primary, andthat we get to learn about itthrough our sensations, as aresult of active engagementwith it. Our knowledge is


Francis Fukuyama

➔

therefore always partial, anapproximation to the truth:our ability to find out moreabout the world around uswill always be limited by thelevel of our technology, and by the questions which we ask,which in turn depend on ourlevel of knowledge andunderstanding.

In The Crisis in PhysicsChristopher Caudwell gaveone of the most brilliantexpositions of this Marxisttheory of knowledge and atthe same time of theunderstanding of cause andeffect in science:

“Suppose a windripples the surface of apool. Then we say thatthe wind is the ‘cause’

of the ripples. For achange has taken place;a novelty has emergedwhich is a relationbetween pool andwind. … What righthave we to [make sucha claim]? We can onlydo so as a result ofpractice. If for examplewe make ripples on thepool with a stick, andproduce an effect, andfeel the wind on ourcheek, and sustainpressure, and thenpress ourselves with astick, we imagine thewind acting in ourplace as a cause uponthe surface of the poolas object. …

“[O]ur whole field ofperception is made upof practice or the resultsof practice … If … wesee a pool lying in acrevice, we only do sobecause we have in thepast causally exploredthe surfaces of object, water, and theinterior of crevices.Thus we build up thequalities in the field ofperception bymemories of causalrelations in outerreality. Most of a baby’searly life is spent inbuilding up the field ofconsciousness in thisway. Hence all theproducts of the seenworld are products ofcausal relations withthe object …”27

This exposition alsodemonstrates one key aspectof dialectics as a feature of thereal material world: everythingin the universe is inter-connected. Wind and pool,pool and crevice – they actupon each other. We ourselvesare connected to the universe:we cannot find out about itwithout acting on it, andchanging it, but in the courseof that we are acted upon andchanged ourselves.

A second dialectical featureof the real world is that

everything is in the process of change. Caudwell’s wind,pool, ripples and crevicerepresent a snapshot in time –they will grow or disappearover different periods, and those changes are relatedto the interconnectedness of everything.

A third feature is thatmovement and change occurthrough the development ofcontradictions, sometimescalled the clash of opposites.Wind and pool may beregarded as such opposites,since the motion of one leadsto the formation of ripples inthe other. This sort ofdevelopment is whatdialecticians call negation.

Fourthly, in such struggle,opposing forces have animpact on each other – theinterpenetration of opposites.Air dissolves in water, andwater evaporates into the air.The end process of windacting on water is moisture-laden air, which can lead tomist, rain-clouds and even ahurricane – something quitenew. This illustrates a fifthaspect of dialectics, thatchanges of quantity will atsome time produce afundamental change in quality.

The final aspect ofdialectics in the material world is one which hasboggled quite a few minds: the negation of the negation.But actually it is quite straight-forward. Every majordevelopment (negation) can infact be negated itself by anotherdevelopment which includessome aspect of the originallynegated process orphenomenon. Evaporation ofwater into the air is negatedwhen the resulting cloudsproduce rain (negating theclouds), leading again to theformation of pools. But this isrelatively trivial. A much morecritical type of negation is onewhich corresponds todevelopment at a higher level(or in a particular way) – whatHegel called the determinatenegation.28 Hurricanes couldbe regarded as the determinatenegation of simple winds andstorms because they have a

more highly organisedstructure. But the realm ofbiology provides many moreobvious examples ofdeterminate negation becausedevelopment is much clearer:the seed is the determinatenegation of the flower, and thenew plant to which it gives riseis the determinate negation ofthe seed. In physics electronsand protons, which areoppositely charged, can negateeach other if they are givenenough energy to collide; but,if they are brought together at lower energy then theycombine to form atoms – thedeterminate negation.

Nature is materialist anddialectical, and the humanspecies has arisen out of it in aprocess of dialecticaldevelopment. We are a part ofnature, we depend on it, andthus the development ofhuman society must followthose same dialecticalmaterialist principles. It wasthe brilliance of Marx andEngels to discover that, and toreveal the internal and externalcontradictions – betweenclasses in society and betweensociety and nature – whichhave driven, and still drive,human development forward.For Hegel, who first applieddialectics to human society,the idea was primary and thereal world only a copy of theidea. His dialectics was, inMarx’s words, standing on itshead; it had to be turned theright way up, to be given amaterialist base.29

Those “Big Questions”So why are we here?Individually, we are all here byaccident. In scientific terms,we are here as a result of anevolutionary process whichoccurred through “naturalselection”, as Darwinexplained 150 years ago in On the Origin of Species. Indialectical materialist terms,that process involved repeateddeterminate negations. But, asthe Romans said: a singleperson is no person30 – ie asisolated individuals, we are nothuman. Humanity impliessociety, and it is only in those


François Lyotard

Christopher Caudwell

terms that we can understandthe real point of life and wherethe world is going.

“The history of all hithertoexisting society is the history ofclass struggles.” This openingsentence from the Manifesto ofthe Communist Party remainsas valid today as when it waswritten in 1848. “Freeman andslave, patrician and plebeian,lord and serf, guild-master andjourneyman, in a word,oppressor and oppressed, stoodin constant opposition to oneanother, carried on anuninterrupted, now hidden,now open fight, a fight thateach time ended, either in arevolutionary reconstitution ofsociety at large, or in thecommon ruin of thecontending classes.”31

As long as human societyexists, it will make history;but, as long as classes exist,that history will continue tobe the history of class struggle.And in modern society we stillhave classes – predominantlythe owners of labour powerand the owners of capital.

How will the strugglebetween those classes beresolved? The postmodernist

critique of “grand narratives”has taken an insidious hold insociety, with a lack of beliefthat any general alternativecan be achieved or is worthfighting for. But there aremany single issues which domove people to struggle –jobs, wages and conditions,peace, human rights issues,women’s equality, anti-racism,the environmental crisis.

A Marxist analysis showsthat all these issues are boundup with the class nature of thesociety in which we live. War isa logical outcome of capitalaccumulation, particularly inthe imperialist stage, as themajor metropolitan centresincreasingly seek to dominatemarkets and control access toraw materials. The currentenvironmental crisis is directlybound up with the drive tomaximise profit, generating –as Hegel called it – “a system ofneeds”32 at an unsustainablerate. And, as Hans HeinzHolz33 has pointed out, thegreat human rights issues are atroot class issues because theyarise from the class structure ofcapitalist society: the right tolive in peace, the preservation

of the natural conditions of lifeand nature, the elimination of poverty, the overcoming ofdiscrimination and oppression– quite apart from resistance tothe current attacks on our civilliberties, trade unions anddemocracy – all achievedthrough mass struggle.

The future, as theCommunist Manifestoindicates, must either be arevolutionary transformation,or the common ruin of societyas a whole. The latter wouldcertainly be a negation – butnot the determinate negation ofcapitalism. A revolutionarytransformation cannot just beof any kind. If production andproperty relations determinecapitalism, then its determinatenegation is the abolition ofthese relations – the passingover of private means ofproduction into socialproperty.33 This is socialism,the first stage towardscommunism, a truly classlesssociety. It will not, however,happen of its own accord. It has to be fought for,economically, politically andideologically.

The current postmodernist

approach exemplifies preciselythe “disease common toeconomics, science and art”which Caudwell wrote about inStudies in a Dying Culture.34

One of his key arguments wasthat bourgeois ideology is unableto hold together a consistentworld view. In making a virtue ofthis, postmodernismdemonstrates the utterbankruptcy of bourgeoisideology in its late, globalimperialist stage. Challengingthis position, and reasserting thepower of creative Marxism, willtherefore play a vital role in thestruggle to change society. That is the role for all on the left,but for communists and theCommunist Party in particular.

So who needs philosophy?Scientists? – yes. Workers? –yes. In fact, everyone whowants to see an end toexploitation, oppression,discrimination, war, poverty,who wants to protect theenvironment and who wantscontinuing human progress.But of all philosophies, onlycreative Marxism can providethe key to understanding theworld, and changing it for thebetter. ■


1 G W F Hegel, Reason in History,Section III.2, seehttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/introduction.htm.2 A Gramsci, Selections from thePrison Notebooks (Q Hoare and GNowell Smith, eds), Lawrence &Wishart, 1971, p323.3 Ibid, p 328.4 I Kant, An answer to the question:What is Enlightenment, in BerlinischeMonatszeitschrift, 30 September 1784;see http://eserver.org/philosophy/kant/what-is-enlightenment.txt 5 F Fukuyama, The End of Historyand the Last Man, Penguin, 1992.6 J Horgan, The End of Science,Broadway Books, New York, 1996.7 D Bell, The End of Ideology: Onthe Exhaustion of Political Ideas inthe Fifties, Harvard University Press,1962; a theme repeatedlyresurrected subsequently, cf The Endof Ideology: What’s the Left For?,plenary session at the ProgressAnnual Conference, The ProgressiveChallenge: Where Next for NewLabour?, 30 November 2008.8 A Shtromas (Ed), The End of“Isms”? Reflections on the Fate of

Ideological Politics after Communism’sCollapse (Political Studies Special Issue),Blackwell, 1994.9 S M Lipset, Political Man: TheSocial Basis of Politics, Doubleday,New York, 1960.10 P Mello, Fukuyama and “end-ism”: a critical analysis, documentV64316, http://www.grin.com(2006).11 F von Hayek, The Road toSerfdom, 1944; see J Foster, The Casefor Communism, Communist Party ofBritain, 2006.12 G W F Hegel, Philosophy of Right,see http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/pr/prconten.htm 13 G W F Hegel, Phenomenology ofMind, Harper & Row, New York,1967; seehttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/phindex.htm14 F Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra(Thus Spoke Zarathustra), 1883-5.15 Fukuyama, op cit, p xxii.16 F Engels, Origin of the Family,Private Property and the State, in KMarx and F Engels, Collected Works,Vol 26, p 270.17 For an earlier discussion see K

Coyle, CPGB and Post-Modernism, inCommunist Review, No 11 (Autumn1991), p 27 and I Jasper, Words to theWise, in Communist Review, No 15(August 1992), p 33.18 N O’Sullivan, PoliticalIntegration, the Limited State and thePhilosophy of Postmodernism, inShtromas, op cit, p 23.19 Ibid, p 24.20 Ibid, p 31.21 J-F Lyotard, The PostmodernCondition: A Report on Knowledge,Manchester University Press, 1984.22 T Jayaraman, Scientific Realism for the Contemporary Realist, in The Marxist, Vol XXIII,2007, p 1.23 J Gillott and M Kumar, Scienceand the Retreat from Reason, MerlinPress, London, 1995.24 C Caudwell, The Crisis in Physics,The Bodley Head, 1949, p 36 ff.25 V I Lenin, Materialism andEmpirio-Criticism, in Collected Works,Vol 13, p 313.26 G Lukács, History and ClassConsciousness, Merlin Press, London,1971, p 24.27 Caudwell, op cit, pp 126-7.

28 G W F Hegel, Introduction toPhenomenology of Mind, athttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phintro.htm, p79. See also Ref 33.29 K Marx, Afterword to the 2ndGerman Edition of Capital, in KMarx and F Engels, Collected Works,Vol 35, p 19.30 H H Holz, Communists Today,1995: Foreword, athttp://www.northerncommunists.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=42. 31 K Marx and F Engels, CollectedWorks, Vol 6, p 484.32 G W F Hegel, Philosophy ofRight, particularly § 189 ff, seehttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/pr/prcivils.htm.33 Holz, op cit, Chapter 8: SomeThoughts on Defining the PoliticalSituation, athttp://www.northerncommunists.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&Itemid=41 .34 C Caudwell, Studies and FurtherStudies in a Dying Culture, MonthlyReview Press, London/New York,1971, p 19.

Notes

■

• summer 2009 • communist review

IF WE SAY THAT MARX’SPHILOSOPHY IS DIALECTICALMATERIALISM, in other words, it is a way of viewing the world, then the question is: can this be applied to the development of humansociety? The conventional answer, of course, is that it can and that this is historical materialism. I think thathistorical materialism has been widelymisunderstood and I want to offer adefence of it – a defence which looksback to what Marx said – and also todeal with some of the criticisms thathave been made of it. In doing so, I aimto ensure that historical materialism isunderstood as a dialectical process andnot as something which is firm andfixed. But I suppose that the criticalquestion is: do we need it and what is it?It is all very well saying that we have ourphilosophy of the development ofhuman societies, historical materialism,and we all learn what it is, but is it really important?

Let us start with what historicalmaterialism is not. I would argue that it isnot a science in the conventional sense,nor a law, and that it is undialectical totalk about laws by which human societydevelops. Society develops in a differentsort of way, which I hope to explain. In 1843, Marx wrote a letter to Ruge inwhich he said:

“We do not confront the world ina doctrinaire way with a newprinciple: here is the truth, kneeldown before it.”1

Marx was a dialectician. He wasconstantly doing what we fail to dotoday: developing and refining a theorywhich only really had some very basicprinciples to it. In fact, it is also true tosay that historical materialism is not aneconomically determinist paradigm – thebase/superstructure model – in which the base only means the economy. It ismuch more fundamental than that.

So what is historical materialism? I think it is a theory, the only one whichenables us to understand change inhuman society, and a method ofperfecting this analysis. But – and this isthe very important “but” – Marx barelydeveloped historical materialism as anexplicit theory. He applied it throughoutbut he gave only one very concreteexpression of it, and that occurs in the1859 Preface to A Contribution to theCritique of Political Economy.2 It is onlyabout two pages long, but it is absolutelybrilliant. It starts off:

“In the social production of theirexistence, men [I’m sure he meantmen and women – MD] inevitablyenter into definite relations thatare independent of their will.”

Marx talks, first of all, about“relations of production” whichcorrespond to a definite stage of thedevelopment of material productiveforces. What does he mean by “relationsof production”? They are the way inwhich people have to relate to each otherin order to produce, because, as Marx

said, you have to produce before you canthink – a basic materialist proposition.

He goes on to say that

“the totality of these relations ofproduction constitutes theeconomic structure of society, thereal foundation, on which arises alegal and political superstructureand to which correspond definiteforms of social consciousness. The mode of production ofmaterial life conditions thegeneral process of social, politicaland intellectual life.”

The “mode of production” consists oftwo things: the forces of production andthe relations of production. It is muchmore than just the economy; it is also therelations that people enter into in orderto produce – class relations. He makesthe point that the mode of productionconditions the social, political andintellectual life processes, before going onto say that

“It is not the consciousness ofmen that determines their beingbut their social being thatdetermines their consciousness.”

Why was that so important in Marx’sday? Because it was a challenge to thedominant notion of history, positedparticularly by Hegel, that the “idea”, orman’s consciousness, determined the waythat people lived and society developed.Marx puts it exactly the opposite way

What is ...

HistoricalMaterialism?

By Mary

Davis



➔

round. It sounds so simple but actually it is so profound and important.

When we look at postmodernistideology, we can see just how wrongHegel was, because postmodernism isfundamentally idealist and that is whatHegel and his whole German School ofphilosophy were. They were idealists inthe sense that they reified the “idea” –religion or whatever happened to bearound at the time – as the main motorof history.

However, so far Marx has not yetexplained change – all that he hasuncovered is a material foundation tosociety. He goes on:

“At a certain stage ofdevelopment, the materialproductive forces in society comeinto conflict with the existingrelations of production … From forms of development ofproductive forces these relationsturn into their fetters. Thenbegins an era of social revolution.”

That is why I say that Marx is adialectician: the conflict between theforces and relations of productionproduces change. This is the dialecticalmethod – but it is not a rarefied dialecticalmethod, something which we impose onsociety. It is one which we can trace, as didthe historians in the Communist PartyHistory Group in the 1950s, in applyingit to all aspects of society. Marx applied itsomewhat himself although he was not ahistorian in the sense of the word. But what it meant was that one couldtrace certain key modes of production –the Asiatic mode, slavery, feudalism,capitalism and so on – and the way inwhich productive relations turned intothe fetters of production. It is in factnot quite that simple because modes ofproduction can co-exist alongside eachother. But the conflict between theforces and relations of production issomething which helps to explainchange. We are not revolutionariesunless we can explain change.

Now, let us consider whatMarx goes on to say:

“In studying suchtransformations it isalways necessary todistinguish between thematerial transformation ofthe economic conditions of production, which can bedetermined with the precision ofnatural science, and the legal,political, religious, artistic or

philosophic – in short, ideologicalforms in which men becomeconscious of this conflict andfight it out.”

In other words, it is not automaticallythe case that people become conscious ofthe need for change in the way that wemight hope that they would – and Marxsays that is why majority classes are notnecessarily the people who force thesechanges. The slaves were the majorityclass but they were not the ones thatmade the change to feudalism; it was thepeople who could benefit most out offeudalism, which certainly was not theslave class. It was not the serfs, themajority class, who made the changefrom feudalism to capitalism – it was themerchant bourgeoisie, the people whowere trading in towns, who did it.

In continuing this paragraph Marxmakes a most profound statement:

“Just as one does not judge anindividual by what he thinksabout himself, so one cannotjudge such a period oftransformation by itsconsciousness, but, on thecontrary, this consciousness mustbe explained from thecontradictions of material life”.

One of the reasons why this is soimportant is that there is a new school inhistory – sometimes called the linguisticturn, or “discourse theory” – which saysthat one can only judge society by whatit thinks of itself. This is almost comingback to the notion of the “idea”. It is asthough one would just have to look at

what people have said in the 17th

century (if one could possibly find outwhat they said) and then judge them andsociety by those terms – which actually isjust tracing the development oflanguage, not the development of class,class struggle or anything else. In fact thewhole postmodernist discourse is allbound up in this issue of language andculture, which actually is completelyanti-historical.

Take Chartism, for example. The people who take this sort oflinguistic turn say that there is notmuch difference between what theChartists were saying in the mid-19th

century and what English radicals weresaying in the 17th century and whatLiberals said in the later 19th century –there is one continuous development.This is rubbish: you have to understandall of those separate developments in thecontext, as Marx would say, of the forcesthat were at work at the time. There aretremendous differences between peoplewho were active in the Levellers and theDiggers, for example, operating underconditions to end feudalism, and theChartists, who were forming the firstpolitical party of the working class in anindustrial capitalist society. To make aconnection between them and theLiberals stretches credulity and makesnonsense of history.

Now, what does all this mean? To sum up: the forces and relations ofproduction, the mode of production,are not the same as the economy. They incorporate the economy but aresomething much more profound – thatthe contradiction between them leadsto different modes of production. Class struggle is the motor of historyor, as the Communist Manifesto says,“The history of all hitherto existingsociety is the history of class struggle”.3

But, as I have already explained, it isnot always the majority class, the mostexploited class, that benefits fromsocial change. Furthermore, as Marxstates in the Preface,

“No social order perishes beforeall the productive forces for whichit is sufficient have beendeveloped … Mankind thusinevitably sets itself only suchtasks as it is able to solve.”

Basically, history is acomparatively recent academicdiscipline. What Marxists havedone is to develop it from thestupid moral tales that oncepassed for it – handbooks for

rulers in which society was nothing,monarchy was everything – and fromthe whole positivist mode, involvingpeople like Baedeker in the 19th century,developing history as just a collection offacts. Marx tried to understandsomething that no school of history hadever done before – social change. And this posed a tremendous threat tobourgeois historians who still in variousways wanted to preserve the old ideathat society was as society was meant tobe. In other words, they saw all historyas development to the point at thepresent; the point at the present wasperfect, ie society as it existed wasperfect, so one did not need to studychange; all one needed to do was study development up to the present.There is now a new form of idealism inhistory writing which is exactly comingback to that: some recent studies of thehistory of imperialism are actuallysaying that Britain’s imperial past waswonderful. It is coming back to thatnonsense because it does not want toexplain or uncover the past and explainchange. The Marxist method completelyundermines that.

So how do we respond? We have to utilise Marxist general analysis andmethod. We have to break thestranglehold of positivism and

postmodernism – and, I would alsoargue, dogmatism, because those whoalways talk about “Marxist laws” miss thepoint about how sophisticated Marxistanalysis really was and how self-criticalMarx and Engels themselves were of theirown analysis. I have never come acrosssuch wonderful self-criticism as Engels’1895 Introduction to Marx’s 1848 Class Struggles in France4, where he said:

“History has proved us wrong and all who thought like us. It made it clear that the state ofeconomic development on theContinent at that time was not,by a long way, ripe for theelimination of capitalistproduction; it has proved this bythe economic revolution which,since 1848, has seized the wholeof the Continent and caused bigindustry to take root …”5

In other words, industrial capitalism had not in 1848 fully taken a foothold. So Engels and Marx werenot dogmatists.

That is why, of course, it would bewrong for us to think that capitalism isended with this present financial crisis,unfortunately – we would like it to bebut we have not seen the harbinger of

the future taking shape yet. We also needto break new ground in understandingelements of social reality not analysed byMarx, for example, the relation betweenoppression and exploitation, henceuncovering the connections between thehitherto separate spheres of race, genderand class which we have neglected. And we need to apply historicalmaterialism to looking at what wentwrong in the socialist countries, which,to be honest, I do not think we havedone in a proper historical materialistway. Without historical materialism, wecannot understand the past or thepresent. That is why we need it; that iswhy we have to defend it. First of all wedo have to understand it – and we haveto do so, free from dogmatism and thenotion that somehow there are laws. ■

Notes

1 K Marx, Letters from the Deutsch-FranzösischerJahrbücher, in K Marx and F Engels, CollectedWorks, Vol 3, p 144.2 K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works, Vol 29, p 263.3 K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works, Vol 6, p 484.4 K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works, Vol 10, p 45.5 K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works, Vol 27.


NNoott mmuucchh ddiiffffeerreennccee bbeettwweeeenn tthheeCChhaarrttiissttss aanndd tthhee LLiibbeerraallss?? The Great Chartist Meeting onKennington Common,April 10, 1848

■


➔

1. A universal logical basis

The logic of the Marxistanalysis of social developmentis based on the philosophicalsystem of dialectical andhistorical materialism.Dialectical and historicalmaterialism togetherconstitute a unitaryphilosophical system.Comprehensive philosophicalsystems, or world-views, arealways universal in character,embracing the spheres ofnature, society, and thought.In asserting the validity oftheir philosophical system,Marx and Engels felt itnecessary to demonstrate thatdialectical and historicalmaterialism provide theuniversal logical basis forunderstanding processes ofchange in the spheres ofnature and society as well as inthe thought processes bywhich this understandingcomes about. Engels stressedthis in his work on thedialectics of nature when he wrote:

“The fact that oursubjective thought andthe objective world aresubject to the samelaws, and, hence, too, that in the finalanalysis they cannotcontradict each otherin their results, butmust coincide, governsabsolutely our wholetheoretical thought. It is the unconsciousand unconditionalpremise for theoreticalthought.”1

2. Countering historicaldeterminism

By the 1870s, Marx andEngels had essentiallyestablished the law-governedrevolutionary transformativecharacter of the processleading from capitalism tosocialism. They had laid thetheoretical basis for arevolutionary politicalmovement that would beneeded in this process andparticipated actively in itsformation. Already in 1844,

Marx put forth the view:

“The weapon ofcriticism cannot, of course, replacecriticism by weapons,material force must beoverthrown by materialforce; but theory alsobecomes a materialforce as soon as it hasgripped the masses.”2

An ideologically strongrevolutionary politicalmovement is needed to bringthis material force into being. The material characterof this movement was furtherelaborated by Lenin inoutlining the organizationalcharacter of the party of a newtype in What is to be Done?

The reformist underminingof the thesis that arevolutionary movement isnecessary was based on themechanistic projection that theoperation of dialectics of naturewould inevitably bring aboutthe self-destruction ofcapitalism, making unnecessary

a class struggle oriented towardsocialism. Therefore, accordingto Bernstein, and later Kautskyand Hilferding, the task ofsocialists was to work forreforms within the capitalistsystem.3 By ignoring thenecessity of ideological strugglefor the cause of socialism, theyeffectively discarded historicaland dialectical materialism andturned dialectics of nature intoa mechanistic determinism.But the transition fromcapitalism to socialism differsfrom previous societaltransformations in that theprocess can only be broughtabout with consciousunderstanding of its nature andnecessity. Life under thematerial conditions of existenceunder capitalism serves as thesource for acquisition of thisconscious-ness among themasses, but this acquisitioncannot occur spontaneouslythrough economic struggles. The consciousness must beimparted to them by the partythat is guided by historical anddialectical materialism.

By Erwin Marquit

Why is a Philosophy of theNatural Sciences needed?

My answer to the question “Why is a philosophy of the natural sciencesneeded?” will take the form of several distinct components. Beforeenumerating them, I should point out that no separate Marxist philosophyof the natural sciences exists distinct from dialectical and historicalmaterialism. Marxist philosophy of the natural sciences is themethodological application of dialectical and historical materialism toinvestigations in the various natural sciences.



3. The relationshipbetween matter and ideas

The Hegelian Marxists, suchas Lukács, Korsch, andGramsci, argued that dialecticsis not applicable to nature andthat in fact its application tonature is the source of themechanistic determinism thatled to reformism.4 In makingthis argument, they alsorejected the Leninist reflectiontheory of knowledge as thebasis for the Marxist-Leninistconcept of the relationshipbetween the two fundamentalphilosophical categories,matter and ideas. The understanding of thisrelationship lies at the heart ofthe Marxist concept of thescientific method. The idealistcharacter of this view led to giving overriding priority tothe development of a socialistconsciousness while payinginadequate attention tostrengthening the materialorganizational basis of the class struggle. Despite thecommon idealist character oftheir philosophies, Lukács,Korsch, and Gramsci differedconsiderably in their politicalorientation. AlthoughGramsci’s philosophicalinclinations leaned towardidealism, he was in fact aLeninist in politics.5

In the latter half of thetwentieth century, theeffectively reformist attempt to deny the applicability ofdialectics to nature took theadditional form of separatingMarx from both Engels andLenin. Marx was characterizedaffectionately as a humanist,while Engels and Lenin werecharacterized as crassmaterialists. Supporters of thisview (for example, the well-known Israeli political scientistShlomo Avineri) assertunabashedly that Marx neveraccepted the applicability ofdialectics to nature, and thatwe have only Engels’ word forhis doing so. Such assertionsare made in spite of the factthat Avineri and others of that school were well aware of Marx’s letter to Kugelmanin which he wrote that “the

dialectical method” is “the method of dealing withmatter”.6

Actually it was notnecessary, of course, for Marxto state explicitly (althoughclearly he did) that dialecticsapplies to the sphere of nature.Hegel had already spelled thisout in his works, as did Marxhimself in Capital andelsewhere. Underlying theattempt to deny theapplicability of dialectics tonature is a strong anti-communism that dissociatesitself from any political,organizational forms of classstruggle. Reassertion of theintegrity of historical anddialectical materialism and its applicability to nature,society, and thoughtstrengthens the theoreticalbasis for engaging in day-to-day organized politicalstruggle essential for openingup space for the developmentof a socialist consciousness.

4. Clarity for theUnderstanding ofChange

One of the principal reasonsfor attention to dialecticalmaterialism by naturalscientists is the clarity it bringsto understanding processes ofchange in all the naturalsciences. I found it aninvaluable tool both in myteaching of physics and my research on the conceptualfoundations of physics.

In most of the twentiethcentury, the dominantphilosophy of science waslogical positivism, which gavebirth to the concept that basicproperties in any science haveto be defined by operationaldefinitions. The leadingtextbook of introductoryphysics at US universities inthe 1970s was Fundamentals ofPhysics by David Halliday andRobert Resnick. In the 1974edition, we read: “One view isthat the definition of a physicalquantity has been given whenthe procedures for measuringthat quantity are specified. Thisis called the operational point ofview because the definition is,at root, a set of laboratory

operations leading to a numberwith a unit.”7 Although thiswas presented as “one view,” noother view was presented.

Another 1970s textbook,Physics, by Chris Zafiratos, indiscussing units of time, givesan operational definition ofthe second by the swings of asimple pendulum. It con-tinues, “In this manner theromantic, philosophicquestion, ‘What is time?’ isignored in favor of a definitionso that we can get on with thestudy of motion”.8 As Leninpointed out, however, funda-mental properties cannot bedefined, because if a propertyis fundamental, there isnothing more fundamentalwith which to define it.9

In the dialectical-materialist view, fundamentalproperties in a given field areakin to philosophicalcategories, the buildingblocks of logical thought.The meaning of fundamentalproperties is determined bythe interrelationships amongthem as expressed throughthe laws of the particularscientific field invokingthem. In reality, operationaldefinitions in physics are notdefinitions at all, butprocedures for standardizingthe units in which they aremeasured. Largely as a resultof the Marxist critique oflogical positivism,operational definitions beganto fade away from physicstextbooks, as did logicalpositivism itself.

Another change in thedirection of the Marxistdialectical understanding isthe change in the textbookstatements about the subjectmatter of physics – fromcharacterizing it as the studyof invariances (that is, theunchanging character) ofmatter to the increasinglycurrent characterization as thestudy of changes in thephysical world.

Prior to the 1920s, theconcept of causality in physicswas based on the principlethat a single cause produces asingle effect. With theemergence of quantum physics

in the 1920s, this principlewas thrown into confusionbecause it turned out that a single cause could produce avariety of effects. The outcomeof a precisely establishedexperimental process couldnot be predicted uniquely, butonly statistically. This seemedto invalidate the philosophicalprinciple of determinism.Marxist physicists – PaulLangevin in France, VladimirFock in the Soviet Union, andMituo Taketani in Japan –showed that a materialistconcept of determinism wasnot locked into what wasessentially the mechanisticprinciple that a single causeproduces a single effect. They demonstrated thatacceptance of statistical laws asfundamental laws of physics isstill an expression ofdeterminism consistent with amaterialist outlook (for details,see Freire10, and Hörz et al11).

In the 1920s, the famousMarxist biochemist JosephNeedham introduced inbiology the philosophical andmethodological concept that isdesignated today as levels oforganization and integration of matter. For example, inphysics we now have fields ofspecialization calledelementary particle physics,nuclear physics, atomicphysics, molecular physics,solid-state physics, etc. In thedialectical-materialist view,each level of organization andintegration of matterrepresents a qualitativetransformation from the levelbelow it. Each level requiresstudy for its own laws ofbehavior; this is anunderstanding quite oppositeto the mechanisticreductionism that sought toexplain the sciences by seekingthe simplest parts of a physicalsystem and basing its laws onthem. The Marxist critique ofracist theories of intelligenceargues that attempts to factorout the cultural component ofintelligence from the geneticcomponent represent anincompatible mixing of thegenetic level of the humanbeing with the social level.


■

A dialectical-materialistcontent is reflected in anyprogress scientists make inmoving the theory of anatural science forward,whether or not all scientistsare conscious of it. A notableexample of this is in IsaacNewton’s concept of inertialmass. Newton’s mechanicshave long been considered theprincipal source ofmechanistic thought. Yet hequantifies the (inertial) massof a physical body by assertingits proportionality to theinertial resistance to a changein motion in the presence ofan external force. In this way,he establishes the meaning of(inertial) mass by relating it tothe interaction of twoopposing forces. In hisreasoning, he uses theAristotelian dialectic of therealization of the actual fromthe potential by asserting thatthis inertial resistance (whichhe called “vis insita, or innateforce of matter”) “only exertsthis force when another force,impressed upon it, endeavorsto change its condition”.12

5. Interconnectionwith societaldevelopment

Philosophy of the naturalsciences is also needed becauseof the interconnection between the natural sciencesand societal development. This interconnection exists, ofcourse, whether or not naturalscientists concern themselveswith it. The problem is thatnatural scientists, in theireducation and work, tend toignore this interconnection andfocus intensely and narrowly ontheir particular fields of theoryand practice, oblivious to theconsequences of their work onother fields. Consider, forexample, the Green Revolution,a development in agriculturaltechnology that increasedagricultural production inmany developing countries. Its application, however, alsocontributed to the growth ofsurplus rural populations thatmigrated to cities with no plan to absorb them, resultingin huge slums.

One can cite numerousscientific and technologicaladvances which, whenintroduced into the economy,subsequently endangeredhuman life – most notablythrough the destruction of the physical environment. In particular, inadequatelytested new materials andchemicals have been intro-duced with toxic propertiescausing tragic results. How does this come about?

Initial answers to thisquestion may be to faultregulatory agencies and to citethe absence of regulatorylegislation that would requireadequate testing before theproducts are approved for use.While regulatory legislationrequiring adequate testing isan absolute necessity, theinitiative for signaling suchtesting should be built intothe scientific methodologyemployed by the scientistsinvolved in the development.But this is not done. A majorreason for this disastrousomission is that educationaland research institutions inmost cases relegate philosophyto the social sciences, and indoing so isolate philosophy in a separate department.Philosophical research in thenatural sciences is thenperceived as a diversion fromactual sciences. Instead,philosophy should beintegrated into the individualdisciplines of the social andnatural sciences.

The failure to integratephilosophy into eachdiscipline deprives naturalscientists of intimate contactwith the conceptualfoundations of their sciences.They are left ignorant ofunderstanding the broad scopeof the interconnections oftheir fields with other fieldsunless they happen to be self-educated in the philosophicalliterature concerning theirfields as well as in philosophyin general.

The problem here is that,when research in philosophy ofphysics is carried out byphilosophers in a philosophydepartment, the tendency is to

view the results of suchresearch as a contribution tophilosophy. Benefits of thisresearch are effectively con-fined to other philosophers,who are not those doing thescience. In contrast, when aphysicist deals withphilosophical problems ofphysics, it is not in order tomake a contribution tophilosophy, but rather to applyphilosophical knowledge to theunderstanding of physics. The narrowness that isinevitably associated withmechanistic applications ofscience and technology canonly be overcome byincorporating awareness of the dialectical interconnectionsamong the sciences into the education and work ofnatural scientists.

ConclusionDialectical and historicalmaterialism came into beingas a philosophical systembecause Marx and Engelsneeded it to uncover theevolutionary process guidingsocietal transition fromcapitalism to communism.With this tool, they were ableto unravel the politicaleconomy of capitalistproduction, especially thesource of capitalist profit; andto establish the intercon-nection between the materialconditions of life and theconsciousness that arises from these conditions. They recognized thatimparting this knowledge tothe working class and its allieswould give them anindispensable weapon: theunderstanding that therevolutionary transformationfrom capitalism to socialism isconditioned on the develop-ment of an ideologically alert mass movement aware ofits historical mission. Their studies of the naturalsciences enabled them to showhow the development of thematerial forces of production(natural resources, tools, andlabor), integrated withempirical and scientificknowledge about them, lies atthe heart of societal change.

The spheres of nature,society, and thought all enterinto Marx and Engels’theoretical analyses. In layingthe foundations of dialecticaland historical materialism,Marx and Engels gave naturalscientists, as well as socialscientists, a most valuablemethodological tool forresearch in the individualdisciplines and demonstratedthe danger of ignoringinterconnections among thevarious fields of the naturaland social sciences. ■

Notes

1 F Engels, Dialectics of Nature, inK Marx and F Engels, Collected Works,Vol 25, pp 311–588. 2 K Marx, Contribution to theCritique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law,in K Marx and F Engels, CollectedWorks, Vol 3, p 129.3 B Azad, The Scientific Basis of theVanguard Party of the Proletariat, inNature, Society, and Thought 18(2005), no 4, p 504.4 B Azad, op cit, p 507, drawing onA Callinicos, Althusser’s Marxism,Pluto Press, London, 1976, p 70.5 A Gedõ, Gramsci’s Path throughthe Tension between “AbsoluteHistoricism” and Materialist Dialectics:Marxism as Historical Philosophy, inNature, Society, and Thought 6, no. 1,p 15; citing D Argeri, Gramsci e noi,in Mondoperaio, no 3 (1986), p 141.6 K Marx, Letter to Kugelman, 27June 1870, in K Marx and F Engels,Collected Works, Vol 43, p 528. 7 D Halliday and R Resnick,Fundamentals of Physics, Wiley, NewYork, revised printing, 1974, p 1. .8 C Zafiratos, Physics, Wiley, NewYork, 1976, pp 3-49 V I Lenin, Materialism andEmpirio-Criticism, in Collected Works,Vol 14, p 146.10 O Freire Jr, DialecticalMaterialism and the QuantumControversy: The Viewpoints of Fock,Langevin, and Taketani, in Nature,Society, and Thought 8 (1995), no. 3,pp 309–25.11 H Hörz, H-D Pölz, H Parthey, URöseberg, and K-F Wessel,Philosophical Problems in PhysicalScience. Marxist Educational Press,Minneapolis, 1980, pp 83-114.12 Sir Isaac Newton’s MathematicalPrinciples of Natural Philosophy(translated by A Motte, revisedtranslation by F Cajori), Univ ofCalifornia Press, Berkeley, 1934, Vol1, p 2. For a more detailed discussion,see E Marquit, A Plea for a CorrectTranslation of Newton’s Law of Inertia,in American Journal of Physics 57September, 1990), pp 867–70.

As John Kingdom states:

“Orthodox writing on Britishpolitics purports to take anobjective position without acommitment to any politicalideology. The cogs and cams ofthe system are detailed in muchthe same way as the internalcombustion engine might be.The implication of this approachis that the state itself is anapolitical machine, not favouringany particular interest withinsociety, which a governmenttakes over like the driver of a car.This belief is a central plank inthe theory of British liberaldemocracy. However, the idea ofthe neutral state, easily controlledby anyone in the driving seat,may be contested. To Marxistsand others it serves the interests of capital and wealth. Hence, writers implying it to beimpartial are actually making a

political (anti-left) statement.Rather than peeling away thefacade they are contributing tothe process of concealment.”2

This article also rejects “the widely-heldliberal view that the State is … impartial inthe conflict between workers andcapitalists”:3 because the Marxist “mode ofanalysis” – which “has seldom beenadopted in relation to the British politicalsystem” – “accords a central place to thecontainment of class conflict and pressurefrom below”.4 The exceptions until the1970s, as Ralph Miliband writing in 1984noted, were: Harold Laski’s ParliamentaryGovernment in England (1938); John Gollan’s The British Political System(1954); and James Harvey and KatherineHood’s The British State (1958).5Similarly, as Miliband also observed in1984, despite “the radical and Marxistoriented work that has been done in thelast decade or so” on local government inBritain, “prevailing orthodoxies haveremained well entrenched”.6


Orthodox and Marxist theoriesof the State and Local Government

Part 1:

“Classical” Liberal, Social-Democraticand Neoliberal Theories

This article discusses the methodological and theoretical basis ofmy forthcoming pamphlet entitled Local Democracy versus “Local Governance”.1 Part 1 outlines these methodologicalconsiderations and critically analyses orthodox non-Marxisttheories. Part 2 focuses on the state monopoly capitalist theory ofthe state and local government. Part 3 discusses other Britishradical and Marxist work on the state and local government fromthe late 1960s to New Labour. Parts 2 and 3 will be published insubsequent issues of Communist Review.

I: MethodologicalConsiderations

The key inter-related features of theMarxist method in the social sciences areas follows:

The distinction between“appearance” and “reality”According to Marx, “All science wouldbe superfluous if the outward appearanceand the essence of things directlycoincided”.7 For example, New Labour’scommunity empowerment rhetoric (the “appearance”) obscures the “reality”that US-style directly-elected mayorswith cabinets are the optimal internalmanagement arrangement for privatisedlocal government services.

DialecticsMarxist dialectics, as Bertell Ollman states,“is a way of thinking that brings into focusthe full range of changes and interactionsthat occur in the world”, of which Marxistsuse four aspects: identity/difference,interpenetration of opposites,quantity/quality and contradiction.8In what Marx calls the common senseapproach, also found in formal logic, thingsare either the same/identical or different,not both. On this model, comparisonsgenerally stop after taking note of theway(s) any two entities are either identicalor different, but for Marxists this is only thefirst step. For example, orthodox politicalscientists only describe the obviousdifferences between the old and the newsystem of local government introduced byNew Labour’s Local Government Act2000, which deprived most councillors ofany role in policy-making, by abolishingthe committee system in all except the

smallest local authorities and introducingUS-style executive mayors. Marxists, on theother hand, then go on to show how suchpolicies are crucially related to theprivatisation of services and attempts by thecentral state to restore the conditions inwhich profitable investment and capitalaccumulation can take place.

The notion of the interpenetration ofopposites stresses that nothing – noevent, institution, person or process – is simply and solely what it seems to beat a particular place and time; and thateverything is situated within a certain set of conditions. Viewed in anotherway, or by other people, or viewing themunder drastically changed conditions,may produce not only a different but theexact opposite conclusion or effect. For example, in 2001 Doncaster’scitizens voted for the new mayoralsystem because they thought it wouldhelp draw a line under the previousperiod of sleaze and corruption whenRay Stockhill – a former deputy leaderand civic mayor – was given a two-yearsuspended sentence for receiving bribestotalling more than £30,000 from localproperty developer Alan Hughes. In February 2007, the council received apetition signed by 11,000 calling for areferendum to abolish the US-styleexecutive mayoral system becauseDoncaster citizens now feel it gives oneperson too much power. However, thereferendum will not be held until 2011,because under the existing legislationanother referendum cannot be held for10 years.

Initially, movement within anyprocess takes the form of quantitativechange. Then, at a certain point – whichis different for each process studied – aqualitative transformation takes place,

indicated by a change in its appearanceand/or function. It has becomesomething else while, in terms of its mainconstituting relationships, remainingessentially the same. The history ofDoncaster’s disillusion with the mayoralsystem illustrates the latter process, whicharose out of the contradiction betweenNew Labour’s community empowermentrhetoric to justify the introduction ofsuch mayors; and the reality that thereign of their mayor has been mired incontroversy after a series of police andindependent inquiries into his conduct.

The historical-relativecharacter of social lawsAs Maurice Dobb – in his little-knownclassic statement on the matter –emphasised, a key

“feature of the Marxian methodis its insistence on the historical-relative character of social laws.From this it follows that socialanalysis should concentrate onspecial and peculiar features of aparticular form of society, ratherthan attempt to abstract certainaspects common to all forms ofsociety and on these assumptionsto erect principles of universalapplication …” 9

For example, New Labour’s local“governance” project, which is anintensification of previous Conservativepolicies to undermine local democracy inthe interests of big business, cannotadequately be explained unless it is relatedto the current crisis of British statemonopoly capitalism. The Confederationof British Industry, on behalf of monopolycapitalism, called for a review on how to


British economist,Maurice Dobb (1900 – 1976)

➔

By Peter Latham

increase privatisation – to which thegovernment immediately agreed inDecember 2007, and appointed an advisory panel in which these interestswere overwhelmingly represented. The Julius report’s key recommendationsin July 2008 – that, if fewer conditions ofa “social or environmental kind” areimposed in contracts, privatisation ofservices can be significantly increased –were instantaneously gushingly endorsed by John Hutton, thenSecretary of State for Business Enterpriseand Regulatory Reform:

“I very much welcome Dr Julius’sanalysis. I will be working withcolleagues across government overthe next few months to considerthe recommendations she hasmade and explore how they canbe translated into a tangibleprogramme of action …”10

The causal sequence isessentially from thesocioeconomic structure of agiven society to its ideologyMarx in his Afterword to the SecondGerman Edition of Volume One ofCapital stated that:

“My dialectic method is not onlydifferent from the Hegelian, butis its direct opposite. To Hegel…the real world is only the external,phenomenal form of ‘the Idea’.With me, on the contrary, theideal is nothing else than thematerial world reflected by thehuman mind, and translated intoforms of thought.”11

For example, as the origins, terms ofreference, and acceptance of the Julius

report recommendations by thegovernment again illustrates, NewLabour’s neo-liberal ideology reflects thefact that it now openly operates in theinterests of monopoly capitalism.

Class conflict as the motiveforce for changeFor Marx, as Dobb points out, themotive force for change was also “firstlyto be looked for, not in some factorexternal to a given society, but internal toit; and secondly was to be soughtprimarily in the antagonistic relationsinside the mode of production – in otherwords, in class antagonism”.12

For example, across the public sector,including local government, thegovernment pay policy and so-called“efficiency” savings are cutting real wages,jobs and services with damagingconsequences for the local economy.Hence only with the rebirth of agenuinely working class politicalmovement – through the activeinvolvement of the democraticorganisations of organised labour, trade unions and trades union councils, in wider mass campaigning and resistance in local communities and thestructures of local government – will it be possible to win the battle to reinstatelocal democracy.

The unity of theory andpracticeParticularly important is Marx’s elevenththesis on Feuerbach, with its emphasison the unity of theory and practice,which says: “The philosophers have onlyinterpreted the world in various ways; thepoint is to change it.”13 In other words, the purpose of understandingNew Labour’s local “governance” projectis to reverse it.


John Stuart Mill British philosopher, politicaleconomist, civil servant and Member ofParliament (1806 – 1873)

Thomas Hill Green English philosopher,political radical and temperance reformer(1836 – 1882)

GET COMMUNISTREVIEWCommunist Reviewexists to encourageMarxist ideas anddebate. An annualsubscription (4 issues)guarantees each issue isdelivered to your door.Please send me a subscription to Communistreview, I enclose

UK: £12 for 4 issues

EUROPE: £14 for 4 issues

OVERSEAS: £18 for 4 issues(Please pay by international money order)

Name

Address

Postcode

Country

Email

Return to: CPB 23 Coombe RoadLondon CR0 1BD

You may also subscribe via theweb site www.communist-party.org.uk, by following thelinks to “Publications” and“Magazines”.

II: ‘Classical’ LiberalTheories

J S Mill, as James Chandler reminds us,was haunted “by the Victorian fear thatdemocracy might open the way for a‘tyranny of the majority’”.14 This fearwas articulated by Robert Lowe who,when speaking in the House ofCommons in 1865, said:

“Nothing is so remarkableamong the working classes ofEngland as their intense capacityto associate and organisethemselves ... It is, I contend,impossible to believe that thesame machinery which is atpresent brought into play inconnection with strikes wouldnot be applied by the workingclasses to political purposes.Once give the men votes, andthe machinery is ready to launchthose votes in one compact massupon the institutions andproperty of this country ... noemployment [is PL] moreworthy of the philosopher andstatesman than the invention ofsafeguards against democracy.”15

Moreover, as Mill asserted in 1861,regarding local government:

“The authority which is mostconversant with principlesshould be supreme overprinciples, whilst that which ismost competent in detailsshould have details left to it.The principal business of thecentral authority should be togive instruction, of the localauthority to apply it.”16

Post-Mill, as Chandler notes, T H Green in 1883 argued that

“a right is only possible if it did not undermine what might be for the general good of all and wasconsummated in the will thatunderlay the state, it followsthat … the discretion of localgovernment must always belimited by the state.”17

Green’s successors in forwarding New Liberalism, such as BernardBosanquet – the leading exponent ofIdealism in political theory – and L THobhouse, had similar views to Mill.18

III: Social-Democratic Theories

As G D H Cole observed in 1932:

“The Fabians regarded themselvesas completing the work which he[J S Mill PL] had begun and thusfound further cause to emphasisetheir continuity with older liberalthought … Marx believes thatsocialism will come not onlybecause it is a better system thancapitalism but because there isbehind it a rising class led byeconomic conditions to achieve it.Fabian literature, on the otherhand … shows no belief at all in aclass struggle as the instrument ofchange. The Fabians are essentiallyrationalists, seeking to convince… by logical argument thatsocialism is desirable … Theyseem to believe that if only theycan demonstrate that socialismwill make for greater efficiencyand a greater sum of humanhappiness the demonstration isbound to prevail.”19

Ramsay MacDonald in the early daysof the Labour Party devoted a good dealof attention to the question of the state,and according to him:

“Socialists should think of theState and political authority notas an expression of majority ruleor of the rule of any section, butas the embodiment of the life ofthe whole community.”20

Thus MacDonald accepted theliberal theory of the neutral central stateand local government, and saw them asrepresenting the interests of the nation asa whole.

Sidney and Beatrice Webb in the1920s considered that Parliament neededto establish a national minimum ofservice provision; and that councillorsshould be paid to remove the wealthybusinessmen who dominated councils tofurther their local interests in slumproperty, building contracts and publichouses.21 But, although the Webbs alsosaw the socialist possibilities of largerauthorities such as the London CountyCouncil for securing commonownership of the means of production,like all Fabians they rejected class politicsas the means to achieve it.

Clement Attlee – when he was aStepney Borough councillor – supported

Poplar Council’s refusal to levy rates foroutside authorities in 1921: whereas thethen mayor of Stepney HerbertMorrison strongly opposed such directaction.22 However, “Poplarism” was aminority strand in Labour localgovernment; and by the 1930s Attleewas warning that a Labour governmentmight have to send in commissioners todeal with obstructive local authorities.23

He also argued that the central state andlocal government were neutral, couldeasily be controlled and did not requireany basic changes:

“The system of government andadministration in this country hasbeen evolved through thecenturies and adapted from timeto time to new conditions …With this machinery … we canmake such changes as we desire.”24

Hence the “social-democratic” theory ofthe central state and local government –with its stress on neutrality, rejection ofclass politics and struggle as aninstrument of change, responsibility,gradualism and efficiency – is essentiallyan extension of 19th century liberaltheory to the 20th century, when Labourreplaced the Liberals as the second mainparty following the gradual introductionof universal suffrage.

VI: Neoliberal ‘NewRight’Theories

As J A Chandler argues:

“The term ‘new right’ has beenused to describe a portfolio ofoverlapping, but by no meansidentical theories, that have had adominant influence in theConservative Party since the1970s. In reality it would bebetter to describe the theory asneo-liberal, since this approachrevives the beliefs in individualcompetition as a means ofprogress that were developed byclassical liberals such as Benthamand Adam Smith. They argued, inopposition to Tory traditionalism,that the government should onlyinterfere in the lives of individualsto prevent one person fromharming the happiness of othersby causing physical injury orunlawfully appropriating hisproperty… F A Hayek … RobertNozick … Milton Friedman and


➔

the public choice theorists …differ on many points … but allgenerally accept that … the statehas grown out of control …. [and should be PL] diminishedalong with self-interestedrestrictive bureaucracies that havebecome useless parasites onindividual entrepreneurship …The welfare services produced bythe state also diminish thepotential for innovation throughhigh taxation by forcing the poorinto an inescapable cycle ofservitude, as they are given noincentive to develop their livesthrough productive work.”25

On the basis of these values theThatcher and Major governmentsdeveloped and implemented the conceptof the “enabling” authority to ensurethat community services were providedby the private sector.

Some analysts saw these develop-ments as a response to a new phase ofcapitalist development, characterised bya shift from Fordist to post-Fordistproduction methods. Thus, in JerryStoker’s version of post-Fordistrestructuring, attempts to reform localgovernment were

“part of the ThatcherGovernment’s response to theseprocesses. The aim is to create alocal government compatible withthe flexible economic structures,two-tier welfare system andenterprise culture which in theThatcher vision constitute the keyto a successful future.”26

However, such theories fail to presenta convincing argument of why onesocietal mode of production ororganisational form should replace theother. For, as Allan Cochrane argues, thepurported shift from Fordism to post-Fordism is not so much a theory ofsocial change as a “juxtaposition of two typologies with little to say aboutthe dynamics of change”.27

Nicholas Ridley, Secretary of Statefor the Environment from May 1986until July 1989, said:

“The root cause of rotten localservices lies in the grip whichlocal government unions haveover those services in manyparts of the country .... Our competitive tenderingprovisions will smash that griponce and for all.”28

In academic circles, the “enabling”model quickly established itself as thenew orthodoxy; and was thegovernment’s model for localgovernment in the 1990s and into the21st century. As Chandler also stated:

“The role of a local authority inthe right wing framework wouldbe to ensure that services essentialto the community were providedefficiently by privately ownedfirms or charities and trusts. The local authority would notundertake the actual provision ofa service by, for example,employing refuse collectors andowning street cleaningequipment. Private companieswould compete amongstthemselves for contracts toprovide services awarded by thelocal authority. Thus a majorfunction of the enablingauthority would be to draw upcontracts specifying the workrequired and then to seek tendersfrom private firms to undertakethe contract.”29

Under the “enabling” model in itsextreme form, as popularised byNicholas Ridley, councils would only need to meet twice a year toexchange contracts.30

V: NNeeoolliibbeerraall NNeewwLLaabboouurr TThheeoorriieess The neo-Gramscian Stuart Hall, writingin 2003, maintained that:

“New Labour does have a long-term strategy, ‘a project’: whatAntonio Gramsci called the‘transformism’ of socialdemocracy into a particularvariant of free-market neo-liberalism …. It combineseconomic neo-liberalism with acommitment to ‘activegovernment’. More significantly,its grim alignment with thebroad, global interests and valuesof corporate capital and power –the neo-liberal project, which isin the leading position in itspolitical repertoire – is paralleledby another, subaltern programme,of a more social-democratic kind,running alongside. This is whatpeople invoke when they insist,defensively, that New Labour isnot, after all, ‘neo-liberal’. ‘The fact is that New Labour is ahybrid regime, composed of twostrands. However, one strand –the neo-liberal – is in thedominant position. The otherstrand-the social democratic – is subordinate.”31

Chandler argues that:

“The Third Way and the Blairgovernment … rather than beingparticularly new, resemble morethe values of New Liberalism andthe policies of Lloyd George. As with the New Liberals, NewLabour can similarly valuedecentralisation in theory but inpractice shows but limitedenthusiasm for local government.... Communitarian theory is abroad church but harbours somepotential for a justification oflocal government based on thevalue of freedom of action forcommunities …. However, aswith J S Mill, other aspects ofthis ideology have forestalledmuch enthusiasm for localgovernment as opposed to local


Len Duvall former Chair of

the Improve-ment and

DevelopmentAgency

governance …. In the context ofa justification for localgovernment a more substantivedirect theory in support of theinstitution would need robustsupport to overcome a stronglyingrained culture, originatingfrom Mill and embroidered byNew Liberal and socialdemocratic thought, that justifies local governmentexpedientially as an organisationserving the needs of the state insecuring stable liberal democracyled efficiently by educatedprofessionals.”32

Moreover, as Leo Panitch and ColinLeys also note:

“There were probably fewerintellectuals in the Blair leadershipteam than at any time in theparty’s history …. Instead … therewas a proliferation of new ‘thinktanks’, pools of what might becalled ‘average’ intellectual labourpower, which aimed at bringinguseful ideas from a wide variety ofsources to the attention of theLabour leadership …. By the endof the 1990s at least four suchgroups were in business: theInstitute of Public Policy

Research … and Charter 88 (both founded in 1988), Demos (established in 1993), and Nexus (formed in 1996).”33

Missing from this list is the NewLocal Government Network (NLGN),which – according to Labour’s NationalExecutive Committee member and Vice-Chair of the Local GovernmentAssociation Sir Jeremy Beecham – is “theprovisional wing of the consulting andcontracting sector.”34 The NLGN wasestablished in 1996 by a small group of senior Blairite figures in localgovernment: Lord Bassam (thenParliamentary Under-Secretary of State,Home Office); Len Duvall (now leaderof the London Assembly’s New Labourgroup and former Chair of theImprovement and Development Agencywhich trains councillors for“modernisation”); Gerry Stoker (until recently NLGN’s Chair and still amember of its Board, who is nowProfessor of Politics and Governance atthe University of Southampton and in1997 became a member of the AcademicAdvisory Group to the then Departmentof Environment, Transport and theRegions which drafted the statutoryguidance on the Local Government Act2000); and Rita Stringfellow (formerLeader of North Tyneside Council).35

NLGN is funded by the privatecontractors whose profits are boosted bythe privatisation of local governmentservices. NLGN in the financial year1999/2000 received £279,542 from“corporate partners” during the passageof the Local Government Bill 2000through Parliament.36 NLGN had 22“corporate partners” in September 2008:Aim Infrastructure, Amey, BirchamDyson Bell, Business ServicesAssociation, British Telecom,Confederation of British Industry,Centre for Public Service Partnerships,the City of London Corporation,Enterprise, Eversheds, HappoldConsultancy, HBS Business Services,Impower, Northgate Public Services,Kier Group, Mouchel, PA ConsultancyGroup, Pinnacle, Prospects, PriceWaterHouse Coopers, Rockpools, Serco,Tesco and Vertex.37

NLGN’s early lobbying success –unacknowledged in all orthodoxstudies of local government – wasreflected in Labour’s 1997 GeneralElection Manifesto. The latter includeda whole section headed “Reinvigoratethe Private Finance Initiative”, andunder the heading “Good localgovernment” stated: “We willencourage democratic innovations inlocal government, including pilots ofthe idea of elected mayors with


➔

Community and trade union protest against academy school plan in Croydon

executive powers in cities”. The otherManifesto reference to the idea is abullet point in the section headed “We will clean up politics”: viz.“Elected mayors for London and othercities”.38 NLGN’s executive includedformer Local Government MinisterHilary Armstrong’s closest advisers; and the Local Government Act 2000,which deprived most councillors of anyrole in policy-making by abolishing thecommittee system in all except thesmallest local authorities andintroducing US-style executive mayors,implemented its original agenda.

In October 2000 NLGN and theInstitute for Public Policy Researchpublished Towards a New Localism byGeoffrey Filkin, Gerry Stoker, Greg Wilkinson and John Williams,which was aimed at influencing partymanifestos on the future of localgovernment in the run up to the 2001general election.39 The paper “rejects thedominant view of local councils asprimarily producers of services”; and,despite the reference to “localism”,stated “that over a ten-year period thenumber of councillors in all principalauthorities should be reducedsignificantly” and replaced by “talentedpeople from business or the voluntarysectors to take office within a cabinet onthe invitation of the leader or themayor”. The US-style executive mayor would also have the power toappoint quangos. These proposals, if implemented, would mean the end of representative democracy in local government.

Stoker is the leading theorist/analystof New Labour’s local “governance”project, and advocate of compulsory US-style directly-elected mayors inparticular,40 and “the most referencedacademic in the field of localgovernment”.41 In the mid-1990s, when,strongly influenced by Clarence Stone,42

Stoker argued that liberal urban regime theory

“provides a new conceptualframework for analysis whichcaptures key aspects of urbangovernance at the end of thecentury. It provides a newconceptual framework and moreparticular theoretical statementsabout causal relationships andbehaviour in urban politics ….Its emphasis on theinterdependence of governmentaland non-governmental forces inmeeting economic and socialchallenges focuses attention upon

the problem of cooperation andcoordination betweengovernmental andnongovernmental actors.”43

But, as Kevin Orr points out,“regime theory’s focus on the local at theexpense of the nonlocal … has littleexplanatory power over the widerconditions in which local governmentoperates”.44 Moreover, there are similarproblems with Stoker’s recent workarguing that institutional grid-grouptheory45, which identifies “four biases insocial organisation” – hierarchy,individualism, egalitarianism andfatalism – “helps to illuminate theparticular character of New Labour’sreform strategy”.46 New Labour,according to Stoker, like theConservatives, has a “top-down,hierarchical approach” that

“has also been influenced bynostrums associated with thefatalistic quadrants of grid-grouptheory. A sense that the world isunpredictable, that reformscannot be assumed to work andthat it is difficult to know whichactors or institutions to trustpervades New Labour thinking.… The point of theinterpretation offered here is notthat New Labour’s programme isincoherent but rather that up toa point it is incoherent withreason, and for a purpose.New Labour’s policies are in partdeliberately designed to be amuddle in order both to searchfor the right reform formula andto create a dynamic for change bycreating instability but also spacefor innovation.” 47

Stoker’s latest interpretation, as Orr concludes, is therefore a

“top-down account of the driversfor change in local governance:transformations appear, in thisanalysis, always to stem from thevision and calculations of centralgovernment strategists … As hadbeen the case with his approach toregime theory, Stoker outlines afairly positivist conception of howgrid-group theory ought now tobe developed and applied …”48

The methodological and theoreticalcontradictions of Stoker’s work are alsocompounded by his political and policyinterventions via the New Local

Government Network, which – asshown above – simultaneously provideboth a justification for New Labour’slocal “governance” project to date aswell as seeking to extend it to the pointat which representative democracy iseliminated altogether (that is, total local “governance” with no directlyprovided services).

The Marxist critique of Stoker in thisarticle is also categorised by Orr as the“Stoker as ‘Judas’” interpretation becausehe states it describes

“him as an academic enemy, orbetrayer, of local governmentwhose work has given intellectualjustification to efforts toundermine it, through what havebeen seen as his attacks onrepresentative democracy,councillors and political parties.Such a reading – Stoker as anapostate – is suggested by anumber of sources. One generalline of criticism of Stoker hasfocused on his work with theNew Local Government Network(NLGN) and on its links withthe range of major corporatesponsors from which it drawssupport. This connection is takento imply, almost axiomatically,that the Network, therefore, isbound to reflect the interests of‘big business’” in making itspolicy interventions.”49

Orr correctly regards the approachthat is adopted here as one “whichpositions Stoker as a tool ofmultinationals and a betrayer of localgovernment … and assumes … that localgovernment is: (a) under attack; and (b) worth defending”.50 This is becauseStoker is the main theorist and apologistfor New Labour’s local “governance”project which, despite the grandioseexhortations throughout its recentconsultation paper to “strengthenparticipatory democracy” and “delivergenuine empowerment to local people”, issolely about making it easier to introduceUS-style executive mayors – the optimuminternal management arrangement forprivatised local government services.51

However, Orr’s claim that the approachadopted here is “also the crudest and mostundeveloped” – and “a one-dimensionalcritique which fails to articulate its ownvalue base”52– is not accepted, because itsmulti-dimensional dialecticalmethodology, theoretical framework and value base, as shown above, are allovertly articulated. ■


1. See P Latham, Local Democracy versus “LocalGovernance”: How to Defeat New Labour’s Projectfor Big Business Control, A discussion document tobe published by the Economic Committee,Communist Party of Britain, 2009.2. J Kingdom, Government and Politics inBritain: An Introduction, Polity Press, Cambridge,2003, p 17. 3. J Harvey and K Hood, The British State,Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1958, p 11.Writing at the height of the cold war Roger Simon(1913-2002) and Noreen Branson (1910-2003) –both Communist Party members – used thepseudonyms of James Harvey and Katherine Hood. 4. R Miliband, Capitalist Democracy in Britain,Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1984, p 15.5. Ibid, p 16. Harold Laski (1893-1950) was aleft-wing Professor of Political Science at theLondon School of Economics. He was elected tothe Labour Party’s National Executive Committeefrom the Constituency Section every year from1936 until 1948. John Gollan (1911-1977) authorof The British Political System, Lawrence andWishart, London, 1954, was General Secretary ofthe Communist Party of Great Britain from 1956to 1976.6. R Miliband, op cit, 1984, p 131.7. K Marx, Capital Vol 3; in K Marx and FEngels, Collected Works, Vol 37 p 804;<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm>, accessed 18 January 2009.8. See Chapter 1, The Meaning of Dialectics in BOllman, Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’sMethod, University of Illinois Press, Urbana,Chicago, 2003;<http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/dd_ch01.php>, accessed 30 December 2008.9. M Dobb, “Marxism and the Social Sciences”, inThe Modern Quarterly (new series) 3:1, Winter 1947-48, pp 5-21. This essay was first delivered as acontribution to a symposium on the topic at theUniversity of Cambridge in 1942, and then publishedin revised form in The Modern Quarterly. Dobb wasthe leading British Marxist economist of hisgeneration and a member of the Communist Party.10. J Hutton, “Foreword” to the Julius Report,Department for Business and Regulatory Reform,Understanding the Public Services Industry: How big,how good, where next? July 2008.11. K Marx, 1873 Afterword to the SecondGerman Edition of Capital Vol 1; in K Marx and FEngels, Collected Works, Vol 35 p 19;<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm>, accessed 18 January 2009.12. M Dobb, op cit. 13. K Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, in K Marx and FEngels Collected Works, Vol 5, p 5;<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/index.htm>, accessed 19 January 2009.

14. J H Chandler, “Liberal Justifications for LocalGovernment in Britain: The Triumph ofExpediency over Ethics”, Political Studies, Vol 56,2008, pp 355-373, p 360.15. Quoted in A Pratchett Martin, Life and Lettersof Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke, Vol 2,Longman, Green & Co, London, 1893, p 262.16. J S Mill, “Essay on RepresentativeGovernment”, in R Wollheim (Ed), John StuartMill: Three Essays, OUP, 1975, p 377, myemphasis.17. Chandler, 2008, op cit, p 362. See also T HGreen’s 1883 Lectures on the Principles of PoliticalObligation, B Bosanquet (Ed), Longmans, Greenand Co, London, 1931.18. See L T Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, TFisher, Unwin, London, 1904.19. Fabianism: an essay by G D H Cole From theEncyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Ed Edwin RA Seligman, 1932,<http://www.wcml.org.uk/group/fabianism.htm>,accessed 4 January, 2009.20. J R MacDonald, Socialism and Government,Vol 1, ILP, 1909, p 91.21. S Webb and B Webb, A Constitution for theSocialist Commonwealth of Great Britain,Cambridge University Press, 1975, pp 211, 244. 22. N Branson, Poplarism, 1919-1925: GeorgeLansbury and the Councillors’ Revolt, Lawrence andWishart, London, 1979, pp 53, 80.23. L Batson, Labour Local Government 1900-99in The Labour Party: A Centenary History (B Brivatiand R Heffernan, Eds), Macmillan Press,Basingstoke, 2000, pp 449-484, 454.24. C R Attlee, The Labour Party in Perspective,Victor Gollancz, London, 1937, p 169.25. J A Chandler, Local Government Today, 3rdedn, Manchester University Press, 2001, p 190.26. G Stoker, Restructuring Local Government for aPost-Fordist Society: The Thatcherite Project? in TheFuture of Local Government (J Stewart and GStoker, Eds), Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1989, pp141-171, 159.27. A Cochrane, The Changing State of LocalGovernment Restructuring for the 1990s, in PublicAdministration, Vol 69, 1991, pp 281-302, p 290.28. Cited in C Stoney, Lifting the Lid on StrategicManagement: a Sociological Narrative, in TheElectronic Journal of Radical Organisational Theory,Vol 4, No 1, 1998, pp 1-34, p 8,<http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/ejrot/ >, accessed7 January, 2009. 29. J A Chandler, Local Government Today,Manchester University Press (1st edn), 1991, p 22.30. N Ridley, The Local Right; enabling notproviding, Centre for Policy Studies, 1988.31. S Hall, New Labour’s double shuffle, inSoundings, Issue 24, Lawrence and Wishart,Summer 2003;

<http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/ReadingRoom/public/DoubleShuffle.html>, accessed 22 January 2009.32. Chandler, 2008, op cit, p 368-9, my emphasis.33. L Panitch and C Leys, The End ofParliamentary Socialism: From New Left to NewLabour, Verso, London, 1997, pp 242-243.34. Municipal Journal, 22 February 2002.35. P Latham, The Captive Local State: LocalDemocracy under Siege, Spokesman Books,Nottingham, Socialist Renewal new series,pamphlet number 6, May 2001, pp 1-30, p 18.36. New Local Government Network Report andAccounts for the year ended 31 March 2000, p 8.37. <http://www.nlgn.org.uk/public/partners/>,accessed 10 September, 2008. 38. Labour Party, New Labour: Because BritainDeserves Better, 1997. 39. G Filkin, G Stoker, G Wilkinson and JWilliams, Towards a New Localism: a discussionpaper, NLGN and the IPPR, London, 19 October2000.40. In the last 20 years Jerry Stoker has published24 books, 40 chapters to books, 39 articles and 32reports/pamphlets on local government; <http://www.ipeg.org.uk/staff/stoker/documents/gs_publications.pdf>, accessed 10 December 2008. 41. K Orr, Three versions of Stoker, in PublicAdministration, Vol 83, No 2, 2005, pp 297–321,p 297.42. See C Stone, Regime Politics: GoverningAtlanta, 1946–1988, University Press of Kansas,Lawrence, 1989. 43. G Stoker, Regime Theory and Urban Politics, inTheories of Urban Politics (D Judge, G Stoker andH Wolman, Eds), Sage, London, 1995, pp 54-71,p 54.44. K Orr, op cit, p 316. 45. See M R Thompson, R Ellis and A Wildavsky,Cultural Theory, Westview Press, Boulder, CO,1990; and C Hood The Art of the State: Culture,Rhetoric and Public Management, OUP, 2000. 46. J Stoker, Transforming Local Governance. FromThatcherism to New Labour, Palgrave Macmillan,Basingstoke, 2004, p 85.47. Ibid, pp 69, 85, my emphasis.48. K Orr, op cit, p 315. 49. Ibid, p 309. Examples of the “Judas”interpretation, according to Orr, include A Pollock,J Shaoul, D Rowland and S Player, Public servicesand the private sector. A response to the IPPR,Catalyst Working Paper, London, 2001; and PLatham, 2001 (see endnote 35 above).50. Ibid, p 316.51. See Department for Communities and LocalGovernment, Communities in control: real people,real power, Consultation, December 2008;Changing Council Governance Arrangements –Mayors and Indirectly Elected Leaders.52. K Orr, op cit, p 316.


Part 2 in the next issue of Communist Review focuses on the state monopolycapitalist theory of the state and local government. James Harvey andKatherine Hood’s path-breaking 1958 study of The British State is re-assessed.Trends in British state monopoly capitalism since 1958 – and how they relateto local government – are also reviewed. Part 3 discusses other British radicaland Marxist work on the state and local government from the late 1960s toNew Labour plus in particular the implications for strategy and tactics to winthe battle to reinstate national and local democracy.

Notes

■

For workplacedemocracy in a socialisedeconomy

e are witnessing yetanother capitalisteconomic slump, with allthe deprivation andmisery that will cause forworkers and their families.

Neo-liberalism has beenideologically holed below thewaterline and is listing badly.But it – and capitalism or the“free market” for that matter –will not be sunk of its ownaccord. We have seen massivestate intervention to savecapitalism from itself andfrom the actions inparticular of one sectionof capitalism, financecapital. This action –notwithstanding the price tobe paid by workers for a crisisnot of their own making –may stabilise in the longerterm the economic foundationof capitalism. Or it may not.

Such is the indeterminacyof capitalism and the lack ofprofundity of all existingconventional economicwisdom. Boom and bust weresupposed to have been endedbut, as the saying goes, “Allthat is solid melts into air”.1But what can be said withoutany doubt is that in theabsence of deliberate,conscious collective action onthe part of workers who areimbued with an alternativevision of how society andeconomy can be organisedfully to meet their needs andthose of humanity, capitalism– in one form or another –will continue hereafter.Indeed, the very conditions ofthe next cycle of capitalist


W

➔

boom and slump after this are being prepared within theexisting slump because of the process of theconcentration andcentralisation of capital.

The key point here is thatunions must develop themeans of turning events likethe slump into anopportunity. Recessions andslumps in themselves do notbecome opportunities unless

unions have the ideologicaland physical means,resources and wherewithalto take advantage of theseevents and set the motionof history in a different

direction. To move fromwhere workers’ consciousness

is to where it should be –where unions want and needit to be – requires that unionsoutline a strategy that is able,when implemented, to buildthe capacity andconsciousness of workers tostruggle collectively so thatthey can encroach upon thecontrol of capitalists andcapitalism as well as that ofthe capitalist state. Such astrategy can be based on ideasand activities which prefigurea socialist society by providingnot “islands of socialism” in asea of capitalism as anautarkic solution butdemonstrations of the vitalityand virtues of collectiveprovision based on need andnot profit.

It is the contention of theargument presented here thatunions can use the argumentsfor – and the creation of –

public or social ownership ofdifferent aspects of the meansof production, distributionand exchange (and thenecessary and attendantsystems of support likeeducation and health) toprovide concrete pointers asto what a future alternativesociety could look like andhow it could be arrived at.This paper will concentrateprimarily on how workerscan start to envisage thisprocess by examining theissue of “industrialdemocracy”. But beforemoving to this, a moregeneral argument can bemade which relates to thecurrent period.

The use of public or tax-payers’ money to stabilise thefinancial system in the hopeof stabilising the economyhas been carried out by thecurrent British government(and other governments)without placing any stringentconditions on the banksradically to change theirbehaviour and lendingpractices in return for thismoney. Indeed, the bail-outseffectively indemnify thebanks against the results oftheir past behaviour. Theterms of the bail-outs, morethan any other feature –given the size of the bail-outsand the nationalisation ofdebt rather than of theprofitable parts – has rankledwith people. Consequently,there is an opening forunions to make the case thatthe expenditure of public


By Gregor Gall

money on private institutionsdemands something in returnlike some form of popular(worker, public, tax-payer)control over theseinstitutions both to safeguardthe “investment” and toameliorate the worst effectsof the banks’ practices – inother words, to stop privateentities called companies andrun by private,unaccountable individualsbeing allowed to decide the fate of many others inmany important aspects oftheir lives. This could beachieved by some form ofdemocratic control.

It is not a huge jump from here to say that, whereany public monies are spent,there should be forms ofdemocratic control. For example, in health andeducation as well as therailways (because they receivehuge public subsidy), thecredible argument can bemade that there should bedirect and meaningful formsof popular control over, andinvolvement in, theseinstitutions. Obviously, thepractice of appointing layschool boards/governors doesnot meet this criterion whilethe proposal to have thedirect election of healthboards in Scotland may gosome way towards this. Themeans of direct electionsprovides an opportunity –rather than a guarantee – thatthe current monopolisation ofthe political process byestablishment political parties,the business lobby and theprofessional classes can becircumvented, or at leastturned back.

The key connection beingmade here is several-fold – an immediate demand of thetimes can be linked to anextension of popular controlover the provisions of servicesthat are manifestly importantand meaningful to their users,namely, the mass ofcitizenship. So this paper willnow turn to use the samelogic of the argument forextending popular control tothe workplace.

Industrial orworkplace democracyWorkers in Britain experienceand are subject to afundamental lack ofdemocracy in the placeswhere they work (and wherethey spend a considerableperiod of their lives). Whilethere are some limited formsof political democracythrough indirectrepresentative institutions

such as parliament, there areno corresponding bodies forproviding for “industrialdemocracy”. Moreover, thoserepresentative politicalinstitutions do not exercisemuch influence over theworkplace – they choose notto because of the voluntaristictradition of industrialrelations in Britain andbecause of the way thatparliament was fashioned toleave the economy essentiallyunder private control and inprivate ownership.Consequently there is noworkplace democracy(traditionally referred to as“industrial democracy”).

Moreover, because there isa lack of democracy at work,where goods and services are

produced, distributed andexchanged and decisions aremade over these matters,there is also an absence ofeconomic democracy.Consequently, there is asizeable democratic deficit. Ofcourse, workers havetraditionally sought interestrepresentation directly atwork through collectivebodies – labour unions – butunions are heavily dependent

upon other parties, namelyemployers and the state, foracceptance, legitimacy andrecognition, so workers haveno automatic, inalienable orinviolable rights for exercisingsome form of control overtheir working lives at work.Furthermore, labour unionpower ebbs and flows becauseof movements in labour andproduct markets as well asunion strategies.

Nonetheless, it is generallyconceded in the liberaldemocratic thought thatworkers should have a right to participate in the makingof decisions that affect theirworking lives. Two pheno-mena prevent the realisationof this. First, there is the sensein which only token

appreciation is given to thispart of the liberal democraticworld-view (which of courseis not the only world-view ofthe ruling class to hold sway).Second, and moreimportantly, is the imbalancein power between labour andcapital (with the state beingfar more a creature of capitalthan labour) where there is afundamental antagonism ofinterests between the two.Indeed, it is the fundamentalreason why tokenappreciation seldom leads to any action of substance inthis area.

In Britain, this imbalancehas historically taken thepredominant form of“voluntarism” or “collectivelaissez-faire” in theemployment relationship,where capital and labour areleft, largely unhindered, toregulate their own affairs andtheir interaction with eachother. This occurs as a resultof the employers’ and state’swishes. Employers, given theirsuperiority in power andresources and the intereststhey have, are happy to beable to manage theirorganisations, and to regulatetheir relationship with theirworkforces, as they see fit. In general, they oppose stateintervention in industrialrelations. Concomitantly, theperspective dominating statethought is keen to supportthis choice of non-regulationas a result of the belief thatinterfering with themanagerial prerogative isdetrimental to economicefficiency and wealthcreation. Traditionally, manyunions have also favoured thissystem, fearing theconsequences for theirfreedom to act as they choosefrom the actions of thecapitalist state, particularly inperiods of union strength.

Of course, there are anumber of important provisosto this characterisation ofunion perspective, concerningoverturning the Taff Valejudgement of 1901 throughthe Trade Disputes Act 1906and the demand since the late


This last point is verysignificant since the left

must favour thosemeans and mechanismsthat raise upwards thecollective aspirations,

consciousness andcapacities of workers togo beyond where theycurrently are in order

to make headwaytowards the creation of a socialist society.

1980s for a positive right tostrike. Nonetheless, thegeneral picture remains true –of voluntarism dominatingthe manner under whichindustrial relations and theemployment relationship areorganised in Britain. In essence, employers, withthe consent of the state, aregiven a free hand in how todetermine their employmentrelations. This can most easilybe seen if a comparison ismade with the correspondingsituations of other nation-based capitalisms in Germany,the Netherlands or Sweden(but that is not to suggest thatstate intervention inindustrial relations isnecessarily progressive, for themotivation and nature of theintervention are critical indetermining the outcomes).

What has brought thisissue of the abject lack ofinstitutional workplacedemocracy back into sharperrelief than at any time in thelast few years has been the de facto full or partialnationalisation of some largefinancial institutions as aresult of New Labour’sresponse to the financialcrisis of capitalism. Given thenature of nationalisation aspart of the post-war

settlement and Labour’scritical part in establishingthis, a number of aspectscome into view. Because ofLabour’s historicalassociation with the labourmovement and unions, it hasoften been assumed that i) nationalisation was – orshould have been – an aid tocreating the institutions ofworkplace democracy, and ii) subsequently Labour waspredisposed to the creationand extension of workplacedemocracy through action toestablish new institutions inthe workplace and enterprise.

This was not the case interms of worker directors –with only the Post Office andBritish Steel witnessing thesein a mild form. Neither was itthe case with the RoyalCommission on IndustrialDemocracy (the BullockReport) established in the fag-end of the 1974-1979 Labourgovernment. Labour Partypolicy may have said onething but Party leadership ingovernment did another.However it was the case interms of Party policy from1979 until the early 1990swhen the opportunity ofopposition more easilyafforded radicalism in policyand there was a relative move

to the left with the rise ofBennism. The upshot of thisis that for some now there isstill a latent sense that thesenationalisations by anominally Labourgovernment should beaccompanied by the settingup of instances of theinstitutions of workplacedemocracy. In other words,state control and state-rununits of capitalism are notassumed to be value-neutralbecause the state is held to bea tool to regulate capitalismunder a popular commonsense version of socialdemocracy.

That these actions ofextending popular democracyhave not happened shouldcome as no great surprise tothose of a critical left facultybut that does not mean theissue has no widersignificance for unions, theleft and workers. The firstpoint that needs a widerairing is that Brown andDarling’s terms for the bail-outs have not been stringent,no matter how much thebankers howl, testifying to theunderlying rationale for them– saving capitalists andcapitalism from themselves

rather than workers fromcapitalists and capitalism.(That does not imply that thestate should not have acted toprevent financial turmoil andeconomic contraction becauseworkers do suffer from thesewhen capitalists also sufferfrom them.)

So the bail-outs have notbeen “socialism for the rich”as some of the media and lefthave described the actions,but state intervention tosupport and defend marketsand neo-liberalism, which insome ways has been notdissimilar to the fundamentalbasis for the nationalisationof the post-war settlement.In this regard PeterMandelson was moreaccurate than many on theleft – like Ken Livingstonand Derek Simpson – whenhe proclaimed that thegovernment’s actions werenot a rejection of NewLabour and a return to socialdemocracy but aconfirmation of NewLabourism. The differencehas been that there has beenno need to respond toorganised popular socialdemands of the kind that ledto the establishment of the


➔

RMT has campaigned for reclaimof the railways but with workers’participation in control

welfare state in theimmediate post-war period.

The second point is themarked absence of demandsfrom the union movement forindustrial democracy to beinstituted as part of the widerquid pro quo terms of the bail-outs. Unions like Unite andthe GMB have only called for“no redundancies” or “norepossessions” and for an endto the bonus culture andoffshoring, although Unitehas been happy to supportbonuses for all staff upon therepayment of the NorthernRock loan money. Unite thenwent on to launch a SocialContract for financial servicesby which is proposed that itmust be recognised as a keystakeholder and that thereshould be job security forfinance workers, limiting ofoutsourcing and offshoring,protection of finance workers’

terms and conditions ofemployment, and giving theunion a role in a newregulatory regime viaregulatory bodies. Other unions have called for financial aid to the poor and more money forpublic services.

While these demands areappropriate in terms ofmarking out a wider agendaand for the constituencies ofparticular unions (financesector/non-finance sectors),their general timidity reflectsboth the ideological drift tothe right in the last twentyyears and tacticalconsiderations (that is,making demands from within“the tent” that are not tooextreme to be dismissed). So not one union has said, forexample: “Our price forsupporting the bail-outs isworker directors or public

representatives on the boardin each bank that takes publicmoney”. But underlying bothideological drift and tacticalconsiderations must surely bethe implicit recognition thatunions within and withoutLabour seem in little positionto enforce their demandsthrough popular mobilisa-tions. Of course, this is achicken-and-egg situation, in that, without trying tomobilise collectively, it is notclear that such attemptswould be destined to failure.

Yet if union renewal is tobegin, then such demands forworkplace democracy cannotbe junked – only to beintroduced at some later,more favourable, date in thefuture. This would be anabdication of responsibilityand indicate a poorunderstanding of the role ofunions as forms of human

agency. At a time of politicalflux, and with talk of the needamongst the ruling classes fora new financial regulatorysettlement, now is themoment for demands to startcirculating.

But the essence of thedemand for industrialdemocracy must be fashionedin a way that takes account ofthe legacy of the largelydiscredited pastnationalisation – vis-à-viseconomic inefficiency, poorservice provision, control bycivil servants and the like –and links into popular massconsciousness by being aheadof it – but not too far aheadof it. If we are to talk ofpublic ownership ornationalisation, the unionsmust be talking aboutenterprises which becomeservices – that is to say it isnot only the way that they


Ruskin House, Croydon, LondonNovember 6-8 2009International Rally

CAPITALISM – WE CAN'T AFFORD IT. HUMANITY’S FUTURE IS SOCIALISM!

Plenary Sessions on:■ MOBILISING AGAINST RACISM AND FASCISM■ THE GREAT MINERS’ STRIKE AND ITS LESSONS■ THE CRISIS OF WORKING CLASS REPRESENTATION■ ECONOMIC CRISIS — THE SUNSET FOR CAPITALISM?■ THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER AND THE STRUGGLE FOR CHANGE

For further details, and provisional registration contact:CPB, Ruskin House, 23 Coombe Road, Croydon CR0 1BD,t: 020 8686 1659, e: [email protected]

COMMUNIST UNIVERSITY OF BRITAIN

work and operate that needschanging. Change must alsoinclude the purposes of theseorganisations. In other words,the articles of association orconstitutions must also bechanged so that need and notprofit is the guiding light andrationale. If the balance ofboth leading and followingthe aspirations of workers andcitizens – that is articulating,focusing and organising ideasand sentiments – is not struck then progress will notbe made.

Unions and the left woulddo well here to study theexperiences of ASLEF and theRMT union as the leadingunions which havesuccessfully championed thedemand for a return of therailways to public ownershipwith debate on what form thisshould take. Arguably, theRMT has gone further for, ina pamphlet produced jointlywith the Scottish SocialistParty in 2005,2 a model of afuture structure of ownershipand control for the industrywas outlined, which showedsome innovative thinking interms of the role of railwayworkers and the travellingpublic. Essentially, itproposed that a third of theboard of what is Scotrailshould be comprised of railunion nominees, a third thetravelling public and a thirdlocal authorities.

Choices and optionsIn terms of what ideas anddemands to advance, we havea few to choose from. At thebottom end of the spectrum,we have the continentalEuropean version ofcompulsory consultation,where management is obligedto engage with workforcerepresentatives on issuesoutside the normal ambit ofcollective bargaining. Thisform of consultation is morethan just about giving theworkers their say and thenblithely being able to ignoreit. But consultation is notnegotiation and it is not aserious positive infringementon the right to manage in the

workplace or to makeexecutive decisions oninvestment and strategy.

Next comes co-determination or workers’participation where workershave a stronger say in howbusinesses are run at all levels.But having a say is nottantamount to having parityof influence and power.Decisions may be vetoed butthis is vetoing decisions ofcapitalists rather than takingthe initiative to take pro-active decisions on socialisingthe purpose and outcomes ofthe enterprise’s activities.

After that the next levelswould be workers’ controlwhere managers are fullyaccountable to workers orwhere workers become themanagers through self-management. In any of thesecases, it would be wise toconsider what role the citizensand consumers of these goodsand services should play sothat potential conflictbetween consumers andproducers is productively andconsensually managed.

For workers’ participationto be effective andmeaningful, its scope must beboth of considerable depthand breadth. Depth concernsthe degree or extent ofinfluence over any one issuewhile breadth refers to thearray of issues that are subjectto participation. Not onlymust this be true at the shop-floor workplace level but itmust also be true at thehigher internal levels withinorganisations such asdivisional, headquarter andparent levels. If it is not, thenworkers will find that inattempting to exercise jointcontrol over issues at theshop-floor level, they areacting within a frameworkalready set out by seniormanagement, thus reducingtheir ability to act and gainthe outcomes as they wish.Another prerequisite is thatparticipation for workers isbased on their collectiveinvolvement organisedthrough permanent,independent and democratic

collective associations. This isbecause it is only throughworkers combining with eachother that they can increasetheir power resources torepresent their interests.

Although making thechoice of what to demandmust be a matter fordemocratic and collectivediscussion within the labourmovement, two points wouldseem to be incontrovertible.First, whatever goal is chosen,it should be allied in the firstinstance to the extension ofcollective bargaining –whereas, in the banks thathave been give bail-outs,collective bargaining has beennarrowed down through theuse of performance-relatedpay, and eroded andsuperseded by consultationthrough partnership deals.Second, in order for thedemand for industrialdemocracy to strike as deep achord with as many workersas possible, it should be partof a wider vision of socialisingand democratising theeconomy through some kindof alternative economicstrategy (see below).

Building consciousnessand capacity An underlying premise of thisarticle has been that we willnot see in Britain anytimesoon the kinds of factoryoccupation and takeover thathave been witnessed in anumber of Latin Americancountries in the last decade.Consequently, the perspectivehas been one of trying toexamine the issue of gradual,encroaching control on thecapitalist economic system.Thus, the issues concerningwhat type of participation ispreferable, as well as having adose of realism about themtoo – whether for industrialdemocracy or populardemocracy in general –should focus on those whichmaximise depth and breadth,which support rather thanundermine existing workingclass organisations and whichare not self-limiting. This lastpoint is very significant since

the left must favour thosemeans and mechanisms thatraise upwards the collectiveaspirations, consciousness andcapacities of workers to gobeyond where they currentlyare in order to make headwaytowards the creation of asocialist society. In this sense,the mechanisms would have atransitional capability.Consequently, mechanismsthat are self-limiting shouldbe rejected in favour of thosethat are potentially self-expanding because the keyobjective is to developworkers’ capacity andconsciousness to strugglecollectively for greater controlover management andemployers (and thus – andthen – state and society).

Point of departure:worker directorsCurrent calls for publicownership, workers’ controlor nationalisation are all welland good on one level –mainly that of a propagandalevel. But their obviousweaknesses are several-fold.One is that the calls are madeupon the government when itis clear that the governmentwill not act in this way. Callsfor the government to do thisor that do not specify a rolefor the unions or workers interms of how to exert pressureon the government. But moreimportantly, such calls arebereft of envisaging whatform this public ownershipmight take in terms of whatan enterprise under publicownership would look likeand how it would function. It is simply not enough to saythat workers would run itbecause it begs the question“But how would they run it?”In other words, the notion ofworkers’ self-management iswoefully thought out.

So, given where workers –even the most advancedworkers – are “at” in terms oftheir consciousness, raisingthe demand of workerdirectors would seem to beappropriate for the situationat the moment. It wouldrepresent a more realistic and


➔

credible demand to be made;and one that could be madeby the unions themselvesupon employers andgovernment that couldpotentially prefigure fullerworkers’ control. But raisingsuch a demand for workerdirectors cannot be donewithout reflecting on the pastexperience and debates onworker directors in the 1970s.Employers resisted theirdevelopment but that is notenough to recommend themto unions.

The dangers of havingworker directors on the boardsof conventional capitalistcompanies are several. These include the incorpora-tion of worker representativesinto the ideology and agendaof the employer throughattitudinal restructuringwhereby a process ofsocialisation leads workers tosee “things” the way thecompany does – or at least tosee that there is no option butto run the company as thecompany suggests. But thesedangers also includerestrictions, by dint of issuesof confidentiality andcommercial sensitivity, onworker representatives’ rightsto act as mandated delegatesand to divulge information.Another is that workerrepresentatives become toodistanced from those theyrepresent by becomingpermanent workerrepresentatives or not beingheld answerable andresponsible to thoseconstituencies they representby virtue of poor systems ofdemocratic participation andaccountability.

There are ways aroundthese problems. Technical andideological support and trainingcan be put in place throughunions to inoculate workerdirectors from these dangers ascan systems of robustmandating and accountability.Thus, worker directors could berecallable, and election – ratherthan selection – can be throughmeans of direct democracy. The holding of the office ofworker director can also be

subject to mandatory rotation.If these systems are put in place,the benefits to workers ofworker directors can be realised.And, these benefits coherearound being able to open up anew front against employerswhere unions and workers arein full possession of the plansemployers have and therationales for these. Thus, unions should be able toconduct more successfulcollective bargaining andmobilise members more easilybecause they are not onlyforewarned in order to beforearmed but they are inpossession of the full range ofinformation. This isreminiscent of the old demand to “open up thecompany books”.

Of course, unless thenumber of worker directorsmoves from being a minorityto the majority on a board,then the focus of what workersand unions can do with thisinformation remains outsidethe boardroom rather thanwithin it. The limitations ofworking in a minority andwithin the confines of acapitalist enterprise highlightthe restrictions that areinherent in the currentconception of worker directors.But these can be used byunions to agitate for greaterworker rights and controlbecause the process ofestablishing and operatingworker directors can be used tohelp raise more advancedworker consciousness anddemands when they are alliedto worker struggles. In thissense, worker directors can be atransitional means to realisingfurther and greater workers’control rather than becomingthe end of a crusade for it. In other words, workerdirectors can be a means to anend – not an end in themselves.

NationalisationSocial or public ownership –rather than nationalisation –cannot be a knee-jerk reactionby the left to the currentrecession as a way to save jobs.It has to be used as a morethought-out and strategic

option. The reasons for thisare twofold. Firstly, there isthe issue of whether there is along-term viability anddesirability to some of thejobs, in terms of the industryor company in which they arefound, as well as whether thejobs are worth saving. So thereis little point in taking intopublic ownership a companythat produced something ofwhich there is a glut andwhose products (and theirusage) are environmentallydestructive. Similarly, therewould seem little point inprotecting low-paid, low-skilled jobs. Rather, theresources that would havebeen invested here can beinvested in job creation inareas that are of strategicimportance and of benefit likegreen technologies for energygeneration and transport – toprovide decent jobs, throughretraining, for those maderedundant. Second, andbecause capitalism isunplanned anduncoordinated, taking intopublic ownership thoseenterprises that go bust risksreplicating and maintainingthis unplanned nature of theeconomy. Society needs todecide in a planned andcoordinated manner whatshould be done and how –without starting from the onlypoint of what we have andwhere we currently are.

Part of a wider planCapitalism has always beensubject to booms and slumpsbecause it is characterised bythree dominant features – i) it is unplanned anduncoordinated; ii) it is aboutcompetition, not cooperation;and iii) it is based on profit,not need. This all comestogether when capitalists rushto invest in plant, machineryand so on because they thinkthere are huge profits to bemade; and then, because allcapitalists are investing,demand for all manner ofthings (concrete, steel,computer chips, finance,labour) makes the prices andcosts rise, so that the amount

of profit to be made decreases.Then demands starts toslacken, and capitalists stopinvesting – furthercompounding the contraction– because they do not thinkhigh enough profits will bemade. This is essentially howcapitalism goes from boom tobust, representing a crisis ofoverproduction. That is thestory of 1992 to 2008 inBritain, where the growinggap between the real economyand the financial economy hasbecome more marked. In essence, the deregulation ofthe economy under neo-liberalism has made all thesetendencies more pronouncedbecause there are fewer andfewer controls on capital.

In recognition of this andthe inequalities of wealth andpower that capitalism bringsforth, demands for workplacedemocracy cannot make anysignificant headway unlessthey are part of an integrated,overall plan for a socialisedeconomy. This is because therealisation of worker directorsrequires an overallmobilisation of workers withprogressive demands, as wellas the demand that workerdirectors will need supportfrom compatible mechanismsand processes outwithindividual employers andboardrooms. If unions are toinspire workers to struggle formore, they will need topresent them with an overall vision based onworkers as workers, citizensand consumers.

The current crisis of neo-liberalism and capitalismoffers the unionsopportunities to turn eventsinto advantageous situations,even if that means waging anideological struggle ratherthan a physical materialstruggle – hopefully the onecan follow the other. ■

1. K Marx and F Engels, Manifesto ofthe Communist Party, in K Marx and FEngels, Collected Works, Vol 6, p 487.2. A Combes, Reclaim our Railways,Foreword by Bob Crow, RMT andScottish Socialist Party,http://www.scottishsocialistparty.org/pdfs/railpamphlet.pdf


■


JENNY CLEGG’S newbook is a must-read foranyone interested inChina’s emerging role onthe global stage. Morespecifically, it is an essentialcounterweight to both theright-wing anti-China lobbyand the sizeable number ofconfused liberals and sadlysome misdirected leftistsfor whom China hasbecome Enemy NumberOne.

The unsuccessfulattempts to derail theBeijing Olympics last yearare a portent of muchmore to come. FromDarfur to Lhasa, from globalwarming to contaminatedfoodstuffs, there is aplethora of campaigns andcauses that target Chinaand, rather handily, take theheat off Westernimperialism’s continuingmilitary aggressions and thediscredited culture ofcorporate chaos and greed.

There is a brief butvery helpful discussion ofdebates among theWestern left aboutglobalisation andimperialism.

Clegg dispels a fair fewmyths that risk taking hold.First, she refutes the viewthat China’s growing traderelationships withdeveloping countries is thesignal of the rise of a new

imperialist power. Sheshows quite convincinglythat China’s role isconsiderably moreconstructive, moremutually beneficial andwithout the politicalstrings that come with“Western aid” or IMF-sponsored structuraladjustment programmes.

Clegg effectivelydemolishes the argument,current among manyprogressive people, thatChina is a “resourcecolonialist” or representssome kind of militarythreat to its neighbours.

If a poverty-strickenbackward country could,within the space of half acentury, establish itself as amajor imperialist power,this would surely demanda very substantialrethinking of capitalism’sdynamism or even basicMarxist assumptions aboutdevelopment andimperialism. As it stands,“socialism with Chinesecharacteristics” representsmore than enough of adebate that Clegg wiselydoes not allow to diverther from her key topic.

The second strength ofthe book is in theunderstanding of how theworld looks from theChinese perspective.China is still a poor,

developing country. Itsgovernment’s mainconcerns are to maintaincontinually rising livingstandards and to tackle theserious issues of social andregional inequality thathave arisen over the pastdecades since the opening-up reforms began in 1978.

Abandoning its earlierideologically driven foreignpolicy, China nowpromotes a steady positionof non-interference in thepolitical and social systemsof other states, provided ofcourse those states take areciprocal stand. This isespecially true when itcomes to the issue ofdiplomatic recognition ofTaiwan or the treatment ofthe Dalai Lama as somekind of exiled head of state.

Above all, the bookrejects the sneering toneof much Western writingabout China, which isalmost a reason in itselffor welcoming her work.

The book does haveone weakness, I felt -namely that it does notsufficiently look atprevious Chinese foreignpolicy strategies and thereasons why they wereprogressively altered orabandoned.

In particular, whenhandling Sino-Sovietdifferences, Clegg appears

overly sympathetic to theChinese positions, withoutsufficiently acknowledgingthat these often rancounter to both China’slong-term interests andthe more immediate needto present a united frontagainst US imperialism.Chinese positions on theSoviet role in Afghanistan,its war with Vietnam andsupport for the Pol Potforces are obviousexamples, but one couldlook further afield atChinese positions duringthe Angolan civil war andits support for “second-world” regimes in the faceof the “two superpowers”.

This is not to say thatthe Soviet Union wasblameless but some kind ofbalance sheet is necessary.After all, it was thecollapse of the SovietUnion and the Europeansocialist countries thatcreated the “unipolar”world that China muststrive to struggle against.

These marginalcriticisms aside, Clegg hasdone the British left anenormous favour inwriting a readable,accessible and solidlyresearched analysis ofChina’s “peaceful rise”.Thisis a book that should beread and promoted aswidely as possible. ■

BOOK REVIEW

China’s globalstrategy: towards amultipolar world Review by Kenny Coyle

China’s globalstrategy: towards

a multipolarworld

BY JENNY CLEGG(Pluto Press, London,

2009, 288 pp. Pbk,£17.99, ISBN 978-0-

7453-25187; hbk, £60,ISBN 978-0-

7453-25194.)


Stalin’sPhilosophicaland PoliticalTestament

By Hans Heinz Holz

Contribution to theNaples Meeting on“Problems of theTransition to Socialismin the USSR” (21-23 Nov 2003)1

above: Joseph Stalinmain photo: Hans Heinz Holzright: British Prime Minister WinstonChurchill, U.S. President Franklin D.Roosevelt, and Stalin at the TehranConference, November 1943.

LENIN ALWAYS ASSERTED thatMarxism is not a dogmatic system ofrigid propositions. On the contrary,Marxism, as a theoretical method,follows the changes of real relationshipsand thereby draws conclusions forpolitical practice. Dialectics is that formof theory which describes, in the varietyof its elements and factors, theconnectedness of totality – which in timechanges the basis of the regulardevelopment of those elements andfactors. Dialectical materialism, throughits general ontological2 suppositions, isessential for producing newinterpretations of the truth. Every theory,in fact, is an interpretation of a state ofdescribed fact.3

Stalin’s two late articles Marxism andProblems of Linguistics (1950) andEconomic Problems of Socialism in theUSSR (1952), should be examinedprecisely from this perspective. Starting with a reflection on a realcontemporary circumstance, these articleselaborate a new situation, either socio-economic or ideological and scientific-historical. Because he died in 1953,Stalin did not have the opportunity totranslate his thoughts into practice, andthus the articles turn out, so to speak, tobe his theoretical testament.

In Khrushchev’s counter-revolutionary criticism against Stalin andin the stagnation period which followedit,4 the concerns that derived from thosearticles were set aside and did not impacton the development of Marxist theory.However, I consider that the articlescontain a theoretical heritage which hasnot been refuted and which is worth re-establishing. Here I limit myself to thescientific and ideological initiativeswhich, concerning problems of Marxism,refer to linguistic science.5

It seems to me that Stalin’spropositions are defined by three keyaspects: (1) the structural description ofthe relationship between being andconsciousness – thus an expression ofMarxist ontology; (2) the destructivecriticism of certain scholastic, dominantpropositions in linguistics, belonging tothe school of Marr,6 and the re-launchingof the discussion around phenomena, ie a signal for resuming scientific researchin controversial matters; and (3) thepillorying of the bureaucratic approachwhich affects every command system, aswell as a kick-start to shaping theorganisational direction of activity,whether of the Party or the State.

In considering these aspects, I acceptas justified the supposition that it wasStalin’s intention, after the victory in the

Great Patriotic War and the stabilisationachieved in the first post-war years, toguide the Soviet Union to a new phase ofsocialist construction. His death causedthis process – divined by only a few – tosink into oblivion. As a result of the XX Congress of the CPSU, Stalin’s workswere subjected to a tacit taboo, whichcontributed, from an ideological point ofview, to the theoretical decline of relevantSoviet social sciences.

But now let us proceed to examine indetail the aspects of the argument onMarxism and linguistics.

The fundamental model of therelationship of being with consciousnessis represented in Marxist philosophy bythe relationship between base andsuperstructure. Historical materialismexplains the basic proposition “beingdetermines consciousness” as follows:7

economic relationships (or relations ofproduction, in which Man realises hisown “organic exchange with nature”, ie thereproduction of his life as an individualand species) constitute the base, whoseformal determination produces thesuperstructural forms that are adapted toit – the judicial order, the contents of theworld-view, art, morals, religion, etc – as ideal reflections, which in turn canbecome objective reality in, eg, institutesand material processes (works of art,scientific research, sporting contests, etc).Through this mediation the super-structure also has an effect on the base: infact, it is conditioned by it, and changeswith it and in dependence on it, in thevarious historical stages.8

This outline suffices as the basis of atheory of ideology and allows enoughdifferentiation for considering themultiplicity of historical phenomena.9

Given the growing importance of

science as a productive force, a majorproblem had arisen in that the contentsand forms of consciousness (eg naturalintelligence, mathematical relations,logical assumptions), which originatethrough superstructural activities andthereby often emerge contaminated with ideological representations, conservetheir value independently of changes inthe base.

The relationship between absolutetruth, relative truth and ideology inmany cases ought not to be defined vialimiting terms with a single meaning.The ontological status of a logicalprinciple (eg that of identity), amathematical regularity (eg the sum ofthe angles of a triangle) or a naturalconstant must receive its ownexplanation in a materialist system: for all these problems, the

base/superstructure relationship isinadequate for an elaborated philosophyof dialectical materialism.

In relation to these problems whichhad been accumulating, a decisive step inthe theoretical development of Marxismwas taken by Stalin when – in relation toa paradigmatic case – he called intoquestion the linearity of thebase/superstructure relationship.

At the outset, language offers theimage of historical variability and adependence on social circumstances.Vocabularies exhibit changes of meaning,which reflect variations in workprocesses, technical innovations or socialmodifications. For example, in Germanthe sense of the word Netz (net), derivingfrom the meaning of fishing-net, widensto mean a telephone network and then anetwork of interactive flows ofinformation; while the word Frau,originally meaning a lady of standing, has


passed to that of female, ie person of thefeminine gender.

There are jargons, linked to specificenvironments or professions, or indeedspecial languages. There are ways ofspeaking, strictly linked to brief temporalmoments and destined to die with them.There is cultivated language alongsidespoken language and regional dialects. In brief, we have multiple linguisticphenomena which we can count assuperstructural and which may be citedin relation to specific developments inthe production relations: this is thephenomenological basis of the linguisticconceptions of the school of Marr, ie theconception according to which languageis studied as an expression of thesuperstructure.

Given that, it is theoreticallysignificant that Stalin actually remarkedon the inadequacy of the base/superstructure scheme in the case oflinguistics. He asserted in a pithymanner:

“Every basis has its owncorresponding superstructure. …If the basis changes or iseliminated, then, following this,its superstructure changes or iseliminated; if a new basis arises,then, following this, asuperstructure arisescorresponding to it.”10

To exemplify how language differs,Stalin turned to the case of Russian:

“To a certain extent thevocabulary of the Russianlanguage has changed, in thesense that it has been replenishedwith a considerable number ofnew words and expressions,which have arisen inconnection with the riseof the new socialistproduction, theappearance of a newstate, a new socialistculture, new socialrelations and morals,and, lastly, in connectionwith the development oftechnology and science; a numberof words and expressions havechanged their meaning, haveacquired a new signification; anumber of obsolete words havedropped out of the vocabulary. As to the basic stock of words andthe grammatical system of theRussian language, whichconstitute the foundation of a

language, they, after theelimination of the capitalist basis,far from having been eliminatedand supplanted by a new basicword stock and a newgrammatical system of thelanguage, have been preserved intheir entirety and have notundergone any serious changes –they have been preserved preciselyas the foundation of the modernRussian language.”10

Stalin established four characteristicsof language which differentiate it fromthe superstructure:● constancy of the fundamentalinherited vocabulary and grammaticalstructure, going beyond the limits of theeconomic base;● language’s origin out of the wholehistorical development of society, ratherthan from one or another economic base; ● the function of language as aninstrument of comprehension, cuttingacross classes;● the immediate link of language with production.

From this it follows that, withlanguage, not only do we face aphenomenon which is distinct from thebase and the

superstructure, but also that thisphenomenon – from the logical andontic11 point of view – ought to beregarded as constituting itself out of ahistorically determined formation andundergoing self-development.

“Exchange of thoughts is aconstant and vital necessity, forwithout it, … the very existenceof social production becomesimpossible. Consequently,without a language understood by a society and common to all its members, that society mustcease to produce, mustdisintegrate and cease to exist as asociety. … Language is one ofthose social phenomena whichoperate throughout the existenceof a society.”12

The base/superstructure scheme is astructural model of social relations. In accordance with Marx, Engels andLenin, Stalin demonstrated that thismetaphor cannot be understood in thesense of a one-directional relationshipbetween levels, of a cause-and-effect typeof relationship, since in reality it alsoincludes a relation of mutual influence.13

“Further, the superstructure is aproduct of the basis but this byno means implies that it merelyreflects the basis … On thecontrary, having come into being,it becomes an exceedingly activeforce, actively assisting its basis totake shape and consolidate itself,and doing its utmost to help thenew system to finish off andeliminate the old basis and theold classes.

“It cannot be otherwise. The superstructure is created bythe basis precisely in order to serveit, to actively help it to take shapeand consolidate itself, to activelyfight for the elimination of theold, moribund basis togetherwith its old superstructure.”14

In this simplicity, in which theeffective reaction of thesuperstructure on the base issustained, there appears to be ahidden banality. But all thoseaware of the controversies over therole of the superstructure wouldhave to recognise that in Stalin’sproposition the quintessence ofthe scheme is made clear, againstall sideslips of the argument. The orthodox is self-understood.


But Stalin’s thesis goesfurther.

“In brief, language cannot be included eitherin the category of bases or in the category ofsuperstructures.

“Nor can it beincluded in the categoryof ‘intermediate’phenomena between thebasis and thesuperstructure, for such‘intermediate’ phenomenado not exist.”15

So neither base norsuperstructure and not even anintermediate category – which cannotsignify otherwise than that there issomething real which is not adequatelyexpressed by a metaphor drawn fromarchitecture. Language as a means ofexchange is seen as analogous with themeans of production. As apresupposition of social production,language as in everything is a productiveforce (mentally) which allows science tobe turned into a productive force and to function as a medium of the structuralphenomena, as the bearer of thoughts.

Intertwined with every other ambit ofthe social being, language is an idealconstruction in which material relationsare represented and which, on the otherhand, is itself a material relation, becauseof the process of constitution of theuniversal reality.16

In the functional description oflanguage, every reality, which Hegelcalled “objective spirit”,17 becomesunderstood as a “material relation”,whereas mechanistic materialism from the outset does not recognise it as amaterial activity (objective activity). This demonstrates, in relation tolanguage, an essential constituent qualityof dialectics.

At this point we should establish anindirect link with Gramsci’s criticism ofBukharin. The section of Gramsci’sPrison Notebook XI dedicated toBukharin’s Popular Manual18 constitutesan acute, and in many aspects, successfulcharge against a mechanistic approach tocausality; but at the same time representsan oration in favour of dialectics as theform of the real historical process. The central question which Gramsciposes is as follows: “how does thehistorical movement arise on thestructural base?”19

It is exactly in this sense that Stalinrescued the life of language from the

mechanical base/superstructure statementand submitted the rigid scheme to thedynamics of historical movement –without, however, diminishing theexplanatory power of the scheme in relationto the construction of the social edifice.

Gramsci criticised Bukharin,underlining how the Popular Manual“contains no treatment of any kind ofthe dialectic.”20 Marxism, he said,exhibits a philosophy which “goesbeyond both traditional idealism andtraditional materialism, philosophieswhich are expressions of past societies,while retaining their vital elements.”21

On the contrary, Bukharin placeshimself in continuity with the oldmetaphysical materialism.

It seems to me that these statements ofStalin, in Marxism and Problems ofLinguitics, may be located in the contextof an elaboration of a dialectical-materialist philosophical conception,22

which has its other nodal points in Lenin’sConspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic23 andin Gramsci’s The Study of Philosophy.24

That may suffice for philosophy.However, an adequate conception ofdialectics, which treats it not as a specialcase of logic, but rather as theconstitutive principle of a world-view –according to the correct and clearGramscian conception – is the theoreticalequivalent of correct political action; andit is in this sense that we must judgeStalin’s reflections on Dialectical andHistorical Materialism.25

Notwithstanding the ideologicalsignificance of the linguistic problems, wemay permit ourselves to wonder at thefact that Stalin would bring his authorityinto play in a discussion so politicallyperipheral. Moreover, he demonstratedthat he had no intention of entering intolinguistic territory, for which he certainlydid not have competence; rather, whatinterested him were certain fundamentalquestions of Marxism.

“I am not a linguistic expertand, of course, cannot fullysatisfy the request of thecomrades. As to Marxism inlinguistics, as in other socialsciences, this is somethingdirectly in my field.”26

With this he evidentlyreferred to the philosophicalsystem, which embraces morethan a single topic area.Nevertheless, this observationstill does not clearly explain the(perhaps for him) spectacularintervention of the head of theparty into a scientific discussion.

In reality, Stalin’spropositions do not remain simply at thelevel of an ontological system; they alsorepresent a criticism of the practice ofscientific research in the USSR and thusconcern themes of social organisation.

To understand the intention behindthis intervention in the linguisticdiscussion, we also need to bear in mindStalin’s subsequent work, EconomicProblems of Socialism in the USSR.

It is highly likely that the problemput to Stalin had been agreed with himin advance – as happens elsewhere whenpeople in positions of responsibility areinterviewed. The question about theappropriateness of an open discussion inPravda gave Stalin the opportunity ofmaking himself understood withindubitable clarity.

“The discussion … has broughtout, in the first place, that inlinguistic bodies both in thecentre and in the republics aregime has prevailed which isalien to science and men ofscience. The slightest criticism ofthe state of affairs in Sovietlinguistics, even the most timidattempt to criticise the so-called‘new doctrine’ in linguistics, waspersecuted and suppressed by theleading linguistic circles. Valuable workers and researchersin linguistics were dismissed fromtheir posts or demoted for beingcritical of N Y Marr’s heritage orexpressing the slightestdisapproval of his teachings.Linguistic scholars wereappointed to leading posts not ontheir merits, but because of theirunqualified acceptance of N YMarr’s theories.

“It is generally recognizedthat no science can develop andflourish without a battle of

It is generallyrecognized that no

science can develop andflourish without abattle of opinions,without freedom of

criticism.


opinions, without freedom ofcriticism. (emphasis HHH)But this generally recognised rulewas ignored and flouted in themost unceremonious fashion.There arose a close group ofinfallible leaders, who, havingsecured themselves against anypossible criticism, became a lawunto themselves and did whatever they pleased.”27

It was necessary to quote this text infull in order to throw light on thepotential impetus which Stalin was tryingto give to public life. The situationswhich he judged out of order werecertainly not specific to a particularscientific discipline, but rather hadspread into every area of society as aresult of bureaucratisation of State andParty activity. In the construction of thesocialist economy, which had beencompleted in an increasingly centralisedmanner and under the pressure of time, a certain degree of bureaucratisation wasprobably inevitable. The fact that thisprocess may have assumed hypertrophicproportions may be attributed to theparticular conditions in which Sovietsocialism was constructed. In this textStalin could certainly not discuss theproblems linked to that, but theynevertheless required an analysis.28

The forcefulness with which Stalinexpressed himself appears to signify thathe had understood the urgency of theproblem and that he judged the time hadcome for him to intervene in order tomodify the situation. His very choice ofwords signifies that it was not just aquestion of a collision between scientificschools. Stalin spoke of an “Arakcheyevregime”,29 referring to an official of thereactionary Russian state at the time ofthe Holy Alliance, who – analogously toMetternich but in a still harsher fashion– constructed a despotic military andpolice regime without any impediment.Clearly, it would have been out of allproportion to use the name ofArakcheyev if it were just a matter ofrelations between academic institutions.

To account, with one word, for theprovocative and somewhat embitteredtone and for the paradox, let us observethis: Stalin gave the signal in favour of aprocess of social change which, if wewished to have recourse to thejournalistic jargon promoted after the XXCongress, we could call destalinisation –an expression, however, false and deviant.

The intervention on consolidatedpersonal and organisational structures,despite the danger of deep shocks to the

still weak Soviet society in the post-warperiod, was nevertheless a favourablemeasure for smoothing out the passage toanother phase of socialist construction.By engaging in discussion in a scientificarea, marginal from the social-politicalstandpoint, Stalin was able to give astarting signal to prepare, with diligenceand consciousness, for a change ofrelationships and to provide space fornew conceptions in collective work.

I am aware that the primaryobjection with the cited texts is thatnothing subsequently happened todemonstrate their effective validity.Major historical hypotheses haveprecisely this status of conjecture. But thetext on Marxism and linguistics ought tobe judged in relation to the 1936Constitution and, with this, thehypothesis that after the tensions of theperiod of the war, forms imposed by theexceptional period had to be abandonedand that a start towards a situationcharacterised by lesser socialconfrontations should be sought.30

Such an interpretation allows adifferentiated analysis of the period,rather than the customary version, whichdescribes everything in black and white,ie with rigid oppositions.

To be conclusive, we still need toestablish the parallel between this articleand that of two years later, EconomicProblems of Socialism in the USSR.Naturally, I am not interested in makinga comparison with the economic-politicalcontent, which perhaps would be adetailed survey. However there are clearlyrecognisable signs that a new style inpublic controversies and the maturationof judgments was operating. At the firstlevel, the theme was the production of amanual of political economy – economicand socio-political conceptions andstrategies are expressed in the article’stheses. But now the problem was nolonger one of breaking institutionallyhardened forms of bureaucraticstagnation, in order to foster the prize of critical judgment.31 Rather, it was aquestion of formulating a plan,theoretically more correct andconceptually clear, for the practicalmatter of building socialism.

The polemical tone, which at timesbreaks through in the article onlinguistics, is totally lacking in theeconomic treatise. There, by contrast,Stalin stated expressly:

“During the discussion somecomrades ‘ran down’ the drafttextbook much too assiduously,berated its authors for errors and

oversights, and claimed that thedraft was a failure. That is unfair.Of course, there are errors andoversights in the textbook – theyare to be found in practicallyevery big undertaking.”32

It is only in his response to Yaroshenkothat Stalin appears ironical and violent –reproaching him harshly for havingproposed again some of Bukharin’s errors.(Anyone reading this article, but with aneye turned to subsequent historicaldevelopments, can catch in therepudiation of Yaroshenko a glimpse of adown-payment on criticism towardsKrushchev.) The observation ofcontradictions between productive forcesand relations of production also undersocialism implies an opening towards thecancellation of the differences – and in theargument there is also an open criticismon Stalin. But he observed expressly:

“I think that in order to improvethe draft textbook, it would bewell to appoint a small committeewhich would include not only theauthors of the textbook, and notonly supporters, but alsoopponents of the majority of theparticipants in the discussion,out-and-out critics of the drafttextbook.”33

A society directed from acquaintancewith scientific socialism is not born at astroke. It presupposes people whoconstantly widen and deepen theircultural horizon, in order to be able tomaintain the general interests and to takehistory into their hands. This wouldhappen if authentic democracy wereeffective for the first time. To this end letus quote Stalin again:

“It is necessary … to ensure such acultural advancement of society aswill secure for all members of


1 Translated from Il testamentofilosofico e politico di Stalin in ACatone and E Susca (Eds), Problemidella Transizione al Socialismo nell’URSS, La Cittá del Sole, Napoli,2004, and available on the web sitehttp://www.pasti.org/holz.html –Ed.2 = concerned with the nature oressence of things –Ed.3 cf A Hüllingshorst, Lenins Hegels-Interpretation: Ausblick auf einematerialisch-dialektische Interpret-ationstheorie (Lenin’s Interpretation ofHegel: View on a Dialectical MaterialistInterpretation Theory) in Topos 22:“Lenin”, 2003, p 73.4 See K Gossweiler, Die Taubenfuss-Chronik oder die Chruschtschowiade(The Pigeon-Foot Chronicle or theKhrushchev Process), Monaco 2002. 5 For the international echoes ofthese articles, it is important to notethe immediate and spontaneouspositive reaction of linguists. Withregard to Germany, one shouldremark on the positive reaction ofWerner Krauss, well-known scholar ofRoman civilisation, whose highcompetence, philosophical clarity andpolitical sensibility are certainlyirreproachable. cf W Krauss, DasWissenschaftliche Werk (ScientificWorks), Berlin, 1984.6 Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr (1865-1934), Georgian-born historian andlinguist whose Japhetic theory oflanguage, and related hypotheses,formed the dominant Soviet linguisticposition until 1950. For furtherinformation, seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Marr –Ed.7 See also M Davis, What isHistorical Materialsm?, this issue –Ed.8 On the connection between baseand superstructure, cf: O Kuusinen etal (eds), Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Lawrence & Wishart,London, 1961, p 150 ff; A Sheptulin,Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Moscow,Progress Publishers, 1978; FTomberg, Basis und Überbau,Sozialphilosophische Studien,Darmstadt/Neuwied, 1974.9 On the theme of a theory ofideology, cf: A Mazzone, Questioni diteoria dell’ideologia, Messina 1981;various authors, Erkenntnis undWahrheit (Recognition and Truth),Berlin, 1983; Topos 17, “Ideologie”,2001.10 J V Stalin, Marxism and Problemsof Linguistics, Foreign LanguagesPublishing House, Moscow, 1954, p 8. (See also http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1950/jun/20.htm – Ed.)11 In philosophy, describing what isthere, rather than its nature orproperties – Ed.12 Stalin, op cit, p 30.13 cf, in the area of bourgeoisphilosophy, the “model of levels” whichappears in N Hartman, Der Aufbau derrealen Welt (The Construction of the Real

World), Berlin, 1940, and Neue Wegeder Ontologie (New Pathways ofOntology), Stuttgart, 1947.14 Stalin, op cit, p 9.15 Stalin, op cit, p 48.16 H H Holz, Sprache und Welt:Probleme der Sprachphilosophie(Language and the World: Problems ofthe Philosophy of Language), VerlagSchulte-Bulmke, Frankfurt am Main,1953, p 30 ff.17 G W F Hegel, Philosophy ofSpirit/Mind: see Stanford Encyclopediaof Philosophy,http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/, and the Marxists Internet Archive,http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/osindex.htm –Ed.18 N Bukharin, The Theory ofHistorical Materialism: A PopularManual of Marxist Sociology, Moscow,1921 – Ed.19 A Gramsci, Selections from thePrison Notebooks (Q Hoare and GNowell Smith, eds), Lawrence &Wishart, 1973, p 431.20 Gramsci, op cit, p 434.21 Gramsci, op cit, p 435.22 On Lenin cf H H Holz, Einheitund Widerspruch (Unity andContradiction), Vol 3, Stuttgart, 1997,p 361 ff; for Stalin, cf H H Holz,Stalin als Theoretiker des Leninismus(Stalin as a Theoretician of Leninism),in Streitbarer Materialismus (MilitantMaterialism) 22, May 1998, p 21 ff.23 V I Lenin, Collected Works, Vol38, p 129 ff.24 Gramsci, op cit, p 323 ff. Holzrefers to this as Intoduction toPhilosophy –Ed.25 J V Stalin, Leninism, Lawrence &Wishart, 1940, p 591 ff.26 Stalin, Linguistics, p 9.27 Stalin, Linguistics, p 41.28 On this cf H H Holz, TheDownfall and Future of Socialism, MEPPublications, Minneapolis, 1992.29 Stalin, Linguistics, p 42.30 On the 1936 Soviet Constitution,cf H H Holz, Leitline Realismus(Guideline Realism) in Junge Welt,24.11.2006, also athttp://www.kominform.at/article.php/20061124140618988 (the authorcites instead his “contribution to theConvegno dell’Associazione CulturaleMarchigiana, 31 May 2001”, but thisis not readily available –Ed.)31 Concluding the debate inMarxism and Problems of Linguistics,Stalin attenuated his criticism of N YMarr and gave proof of his properrespect for the work of this greatresearcher (cf Stalin, op cit, p 54).Moreover Stalin attributed theresponsibility for the stagnation tothe “Arakcheyev regime”, mentioningit for the second time (p 55).32 J V Stalin, Economic Problems ofSocialism in the USSR, ForeignLanguages Publishing House,Moscow, 1952, p 52.33 Stalin, Economic Problems, p 52.34 Stalin, Economic Problems, p 76.


society the all-round developmentof their physical and mentalabilities, so that the members ofsociety may be in a position toreceive an education sufficient toenable them to be active agents ofsocial development … It would bewrong to think that such asubstantial advance in the culturalstandard of the members ofsociety can be brought aboutwithout substantial changes in thestatus of labour. For this, it isnecessary, first of all, to shortenthe working day to at least six, andsubsequently to five hours. This isneeded in order that the membersof society might have the neces-sary free time to receive an all-round education. It is necessary,further, to introduce universalcompulsory polytechnicaleducation, which is required inorder that the members of societymight be able freely to choosetheir occupations and not be tiedto some one occupation all theirlives. It is likewise necessary thathousing conditions should beradically improved, and that realwages of workers and employeesshould be at least doubled, if notmore, both by means of directincreases of wages and salaries,and, more especially, by furthersystematic reductions of prices forconsumer goods. These are thebasic conditions required to pavethe way for the transition tocommunism.”34

With an eye turned to a developedsocialist society, from whichcommunism can be generated, Stalin’stheoretical work concludes. If we wantto honour the many who have fallen inthe fight for socialism and communism,then we must not allow this heritage tobe scattered. ■

Notes

■

JERRY JONES can be reliedon to stimulate a usefuldiscussion. His article Causesof the Current Economic Crisisin issue 52 offers much matterfor controversy. In hisconcluding remarks, Jerry states that “only ananalysis based on Marx’scontribution…offers a trulycomprehensive explanation…”So it is surprising that hemakes no use of basic Marxistcategories. Paradoxically, theonly reference to the conceptof value is in connection withso-called “land values”.

Jerry describes capitalistexploitation (though hedoesn’t use the term) as “the appropriation of surpluslabour”. Marx took the phrase“surplus labour” from theEnglish pioneering economistWilliam Petty1. It is a usefulcategory because it can beapplied to any socialformation. Marx pointed outthat under slavery orfeudalism, where workers donot normally produce acommodity to be exchanged,the process of extractingsurplus labour can be readilyseen. A slave worked directlyto produce use-values for hismaster. A serf performed hissurplus labour on the lord’sland to create produce for thelord’s consumption. In bothsystems the exploitation of theworker is obvious.

Under capitalism,however, the process isconcealed. And the concept ofsurplus labour doesn’t reveal it.As Jerry says, surplus labour is

the source of capitalist profit.But they are not the same thing.The worker producescommodities (be they goodsor services) that have anexchange-value. To realise thisvalue, the capitalist has to sellthe commodities in themarket, to convert them intomoney, and then to convertthe money into capital.Surplus labour can not beaccumulated and invested;capital can be.

Marx set out to explainhow this great money trick2

comes about. Conventionalwisdom has it that the workeris not exploited because heoffers his services in a freemarket and accepts the wageoffered by the employer. Jerry says “How much surpluslabour is appropriateddepends very much onworkers’ bargaining positions,and the demand for labour”.These factors certainlyinfluence variations in wages –but there are limits to theextent of their variation.

The lower limit is the costof maintaining a worker andhis family. This according toMarx is the value of theworker’s labour-power – hisability to work for a certainnumber of hours, which iswhat he actually sells to thecapitalist. Like anycommodity, the value oflabour-power is determined bythe amount of labourembodied in it; it is equal tothe value of the commoditiesneeded to sustain andreproduce labour-power.

Creation of surplus-value But in a normal working day aworker can producecommodities of much greaterexchange-value than the valueof his labour-power. This isthe secret of the creation ofsurplus-value, the source ofthe accumulated capital thatJerry rightly sees as the basis ofthe current crisis.

Marx took over anddeveloped the labour theory ofvalue elaborated by AdamSmith, Ricardo, and others.This states that the exchange-value of a commodity reflectsthe amount of labour neededto produce it. These earlybourgeois economists did notknow how to deal with thevalue of labour, which interms of the theory is ameaningless concept. Marx solved that problem byshowing that labour-power –the ability to work – and notlabour itself is the commoditythe worker sells, and that itsvalue is determined, like thatof any other commodity, bythe amount of labourembodied in it.

The value of labour-poweris socially determined. Itcannot fall (except for a shorttime) below the value of aworker’s and his family’ssubsistence, however weak hisbargaining power. It has risenover the centuries ofcapitalism, partly as a result oftrade union and politicalaction, and partly because ofthe greater input of labourneeded to produce the skilled,

educated labour-powerrequired by developedcapitalist economies.

At the same time,increased productivity hasenabled workers to createmore value in a typicalworking day, thus ensuringthat capitalists continue toappropriate surplus-value.While organised workers canfor a time raise the price oflabour-power (wages andsalaries) above its value, theowners of capital seize everyopportunity to drive it back toits true value, ie to a sociallydetermined subsistence level.We can see this happening allover the capitalist world today,as it has been happening inthe USA for a decade.

In less developedcountries, wages are lowerthan in advanced countriesnot just because of the weakbargaining position of theworkers, as Jerry maintains,but mainly because thehistorically determinedsubsistence level is lower. This means that the exchange-value of labour-power is lower,and so the monopolies canextract more surplus-value andmake super-profits.

At the root of thistheoretical controversy isJerry’s abandonment of theconcept of value. This putshim in some dangerouscompany. He says that Marxisttheories were “crowded out ofthe study of economics incolleges and universities”. But they were not. They weredeliberately superseded by

Raising Consciousnessa partial reply to Jerry Jones


By David Grove

various brands of “marginal”economics. These have devisedever more sophisticated waysof explaining the fluctuationsof particular prices, but theyhave failed to analyse thedynamics of the turnover ofcapital, the basic law of thewhole system.

So Marshall and Keyneshave been preferred to Marxbecause their work neverraised the awkward politicalquestions about the source of profit and the nature ofexploitation. The study of“Political Economy” wasturned into mere“Economics”. Bourgeoisthinkers abandoned the labourtheory of value because inMarx’s hands it had become aweapon to be wielded by theworking class. Sadly, JerryJones seems to haveabandoned it too.

Why it matters Is this sort of polemic atheological diversion frommore pressing tasks? Is Jerrysimply dropping outdatedjargon and telling it like it isin plain English? Am I justindulging in an academiccontroversy with noimplications for revolutionary

practice? I think not.It seems to me that Jerry’s

approach broadly correspondsto trade union consciousness,the level of understanding atwhich the working class isready to fight for higherwages, better conditions,different government policies(like stricter regulation ofbanks, more generouspensions and benefits). All these are desirable gains,and they could mitigate theeffects of the economic crisis.But none of them challengesthe system that is theunderlying cause of the crisis.

To raise the level ofunderstanding to that ofpolitical, socialist consciousnessrequires Marx’s rigorous andpenetrating analysis of the lawof motion of capitalism: thecreation and appropriation ofsurplus-value, followed by the accumulation andturnover of capital.

Central to a Marxistexplanation of what ishappening today is thetendency for the rate of profitto fall. For Marx this is onlya tendency and there arecountervailing factors.But the key issue is that ofsurplus-value. Marx sees that

the tendency for the rate ofprofit to fall is a result oftechnological advance. This reduces the amount ofliving labour-power (fundedby Marx’s variable capital) –which creates surplus-value –relative to the steadilyincreasing amount of ‘dead’labour embodied in materialsand equipment (constantcapital) – which create no newexchange-values.

The only escape, as Marxoutlines in Capital Vol III, isfor capital to reduce therelative or absolute cost oflabour-power, ie to increasethe rate of exploitation, or toexport capital to regionswhere the rate of exploitationis higher, or to cut the labourreplacement cost of fixedcapital. This is why Marxsees capital as forced by itsvery nature into a continuingbattle with labour. Crisis, thesuspension of investment, willotherwise result. And forworkers there is no escapeexcept continuing struggle.When workers understandthis, they see the need to fight not just for better wagesbut for an end to the wages system.

Understanding the nature

of surplus-value and theresulting tendency for the rateof profit to decline is the firststep in analysing this crisis.As far as capital is concerned,profits are too low.Workers are consuming toomuch. The second step is anunderstanding of howmonopoly capital hasresponded. It was precisely theattempt to sustain the profitsof finance capital through agrotesque regearing of bankcapital that has brought thesystem to its knees. It is thiscrisis of profitability that ourrulers are today busilyresolving at the expense ofworking people. That is the contradiction.

What about the state?I know that not every articleon the causes of the currentcrisis can cover the wholecomplex field. But there is oneaspect Jerry omits that seemsto me vital to our grasp ofwhat is happening. In hisuseful description of thefinancial mechanisms thattriggered the crisis, Jerryrecognises the role ofgovernments in facilitating theproperty boom, encouragingthe reckless gambling of thebanks and financial houses,and permitting the escalationof debt. He says that “today’sgovernments, indoctrinated byneo-liberalism, acting asservants to the bigtransnational and financialcorporations … have allowedmicroeconomic theory todominate economic policy”.

This formulation tends toobscure two important points.It is not just that allgovernments of capitalistcountries have so far servedbig business interests, but thatthey are now effectivelyintegrated with big businessthrough the structures andpractices of the monopolycapitalist state.3 As the crisisdeepens, the issue of statepower becomes more pressing.An economic and politicalsystem that can put an end toperiodic crises will be builtonly when the working classand its allies have seized state


Perhaps I ought to join aUnion

power. Marx’s analysis ofsurplus-value is a powerfultool for winning workingpeople to this perspective and so intensifying the class struggle.

The second point is thatthe neo-liberal economictheories that Jerry rightlycastigates were not used by thestate and the monopolistsbecause they knew no better,but because at that time theywere the most relevanttheories to support their classstruggle against the workers.Neo-liberalism underpinnedprivatisation, restrictions ontrade union freedom, a“flexible” labour market, andthe worldwide free movementof capital to the mostprofitable locations, includingtax havens. To fight the battleof ideas, the ruling class alwaysneeds a theory that, whileclaiming to be rooted incontemporary reality, obscuresthe underlying truth ofcapitalist exploitation. This inrecent years has been the roleof “globalisation”.

Raising consciousness But Jerry is a socialist (thoughwith a touch of syndicalism)and says that only an economybased on common ownershipcould avoid crises like thecurrent one. To achieve this,he says, will require “a majorideological shift not only forgovernments, but also amongpeople as a whole”.

Surely Jerry has thepriorities reversed. It is only tothe extent that “people as awhole” (or, to be precise, theorganised working class and itsallies) embrace socialist ideasthat there will be governmentscommitted to fundamentalchange. And to achieve thiswill require more than a battleof ideas. It will need grassroots struggle on hundreds ofseparate but interconnectedissues, during which people inaction will begin to learn howall the challenges they facestem ultimately from thecontradictions of capitalism.

The fundamentalcontradiction, says Jerry, is“too much capital

accumulating, unable to findsuitable investmentopportunities…because toomuch surplus labour isappropriated at the expense of wages”.

This expresses a surfacetruth, one advanced by someKeynesian economists, thatthe main source of crisis isunder-consumption.Put that right, it is argued,and “managed capitalism” cancontinue to provide a highlevel of employment. Butthis by no means gets to theroots of the current crisis.Nor does it correspond toMarx’s analysis – or for thatmatter to what our ruling classis seeking to do today toresolve the crisis, that is, to cutworking class incomes and thesocial wage.

The really fundamentalcontradiction is this: on theone hand, the social characterof economic activity, requiringthe cooperation of wholesocieties; on the other hand,the appropriation of surplusvalue by individual corpora-tions, concerned only tomaximise their profits. It is theinexorable drive for profit atthe expense of the incomes(and savings) of the majority ofpeople that is the fundamentalcause of the current crisis. This is a class contradictionthat can be resolved only byclass struggle. ■

I am indebted to John Foster forreading a draft and makingseveral valuable suggestions toimprove it. A subsequent articlewill deal with Jerry Jones’s viewson George and Keynes.

Notes

1 John Foster Counting orExplaining? Surplus Labour versusSurplus Value in Communist Review 40(Spring 2004), p20.2 The phrase comes from RobertTressell’s novel The Ragged TrouseredPhilanthropists in which Frank Owengives a vivid but somewhat eccentricexplanation of surplus value to hismates on a building site.3 See John Foster’s recent pamphletThe Politics of Britain’s Economic Crisis (CPB 2008)


THIS IS KEITH BARLOW’Sauthoritative account of recent tradeunion and class relations in Britain,updated to cover the first two New Labour governments.

It is crammed with facts woventogether in a thematic narrative,informed by a Marxist understanding ofthe labour process, the economy, tradeunionism, the law and the state.As such, it provides a valuable alternativeto journalistic, class-collaborationistaccounts on the one side, and simplisticultra-left catechisms of “betrayal by thetrade union bureaucracy” on the other.

The author succeeds insubstantiating his three main theses.

Firstly, he proposes that it isquestionable – to say the least – that“Thatcherism” represented somethingentirely new or qualitatively different inBritish government policies; morespecifically, that it represented a breakfrom the post-war “Butskellite”consensus.

In fact, there is a strong case toquestion the scope and depth of thisconsensus in the 1950s, never mind thelater decades which receive Barlow’sattention. That aside, he marshals factsand analysis to demonstrate that theconsensus barely survived the growthof shop floor militancy and the strugglearound the Wilson government’s WhitePaper In Place of Strife in the 1960s.Then came the industrial battles of theearly 1970s, including two nationalminers strikes, the dockers’ andbuilding workers’ disputes, defiance ofthe 1971 Industrial Relations Act by theengineers and the train drivers and thevictorious campaign to release thePentonville Five from prison.

BOOK REVIEW

The LabourMovement inBritain fromThatcher to Blair

Review by Robert Griffiths

State-monopoly capitalism hasnever regarded any accord withorganised labour, such as the “SocialContract” of the latter half of the1970s, as anything but a temporaryexpedient. By 1977, the Labourgovernment had forsaken its goal of fullemployment, implemented cuts insocial programmes according to IMFdiktat and tried to impose a discreditedpay policy on the firefighters and localgovernment manual workers.The author insists, therefore, that theelection of the Thatcher “New Right”government in 1979 merely signalledthe formal termination of a trucealready abandoned in practice.

The Thatcher regime combinednew policies with continuation of someof the old. Barlow links the formerwith a renewed drive to restructurethe British economy at the “macro”level of whole industries and the“micro” level of key enterprises. It is inthis perspective that we can bestunderstand the role of a raft of anti-trade union laws and the revived use ofcommon law with sharply narrowed“immunities” for trade unions.

Which brings us to the second ofthe author’s theses: that, far fromreacting spontaneously to thepressures of the moment, the 1979-90Thatcher governments implemented a“long and carefully thought outstrategy” to undermine and thenconfront trade unionism and restorecorporate profitability.

From 1975, Lord Carringtonchaired a working group to considerhow to overcome trade union power.Then the infamous Ridley report,leaked in the Economist magazine in

May 1978, revealed Tory plans tocentralise and militarise the police,recruit strike-breaking lorry drivers, rigthe financial accounts of nationalisedindustries, convert coal-burning powerstations to dual oil-fire, build up coalstocks, cut off social security paymentsto strikers’ families, outlaw solidarityaction and take on public sectorworkers one section at a time,beginning with the weakest andfinishing with the coal miners.

Barlow recounts the subsequentconfrontations, exposing the lack ofpolitical consciousness, class politicsand solidarity in the labour movement’sresponses – severe deficiencies whichstill exist today at every level of themovement. His claim that a writtenconstitution might have frustratedThatcher’s programme of anti-unionlegislation is, however, unproven –there being no clear case for arguingthat Parliament or a constitutionalcourt would have adopted or defendedfar-reaching provisions for workers’and trade union rights.

The impact of British imperialismeconomically, socially and ideologically,including its role in strengtheningsectionalism and reformism, has beendeep and long-running. To ascribe theBritish labour movement’s politicalbackwardness solely or even mainly toits leadership is childish ultra-leftistexasperation, rightly shunned by theauthor. While there are strongtendencies to a reformist and class-collaborationist outlook and approachin the full-time apparatus of the tradeunion movement, and while nationalpositions should be used whereverpossible to combat such an outlookand approach, there are trade unionleaderships which do not “sell out” andwhich use their influence to supportand politicise their members. This is astrue today in, say, the railway workers’and prison officers’ unions at themoment as it was of the electricians’and firefighters’ unions in the 1950s.

Barlow’s third thesis is that theLabour Party did not have to adapt toNew Right policies in order to becomeelectable or, by implication, to stay in

office subsequently. Indeed, abandoningeconomic planning, full employment,nationalisation and unilateral nucleardisarmament did not produce victoryin the 1987 and 1992 general elections,nor did purging the party of Militantand various left-wing parliamentarycandidates. Instead, Labour ended upembracing the European Community,proclaiming the feeble “Social Charter”and backing the entry of sterling intothe European Exchange RateMechanism in 1990 - thereby disarmingthe party when ERM obligationsimmediately began to destroy industrialinvestment, manufacturing jobs andpublic services.

As opinion polls show, Labour’sforthcoming election victory hadbecome inevitable by the mid-1990s,regardless of further restrictions oninner-party democracy and scrappingthe socialist Clause Four in the party’s constitution.

In recounting and explaining allthese political, economic, social andlabour movement developments, KeithBarlow has produced an excellentreference book for academically-minded students. But the extensivespace and detail it devotes to tradeunion and employment law limits itsaccessibility. Less of an obsession withlegal cases and parliamentary statutes –important though they are – and a littlemore on the politics of the labourmovement would have made this evenmore valuable to the movement’sactivists and organic intellectuals.

For example, there is surprisinglylittle about the Communist Party andother forces on the left in the workingclass movement and no mention, either,of such bodies as the United Campaignfor the Repeal of Anti-Trade UnionLaws (although its progeny the TradeUnion Freedom Bill is deservedlyhighlighted). The chapter headings arealien in their verbosity.

At the same time, the authoridentifies himself as the person mostlikely to write the definitive politicalaccount of these significant chapters inthe history of the British labourmovement. ■


The Labour Movement in Britain from Thatcher to Blair BY KEITH BARLOW(Peter Lang, 2008, 304 pp, pbk £32.30 ISBN 978-3-631-55137-0)

JOHN LITTLEJOHN

By Charles Mackay

John Littlejohn was staunch and strong,Upright and downright, scorning wrong;He gave good weight, and paid his way,He thought for himself, and he said his say.Whenever a rascal strove to pass,Instead of silver, money of brass,He took his hammer, and said with a frown,“The coin is spurious, nail it down.”

John Littlejohn maintained the right,Through storm and shine, in the world’s despite,When fools or quacks desired his vote,Dosed him with arguments learned by rote,Or by coaxing, threats or promise, triedTo gain support to the wrongful side,“Nay, nay,” said John with an angry frown,“Your coin is spurious, nail it down.”

When told that kings had a right divine,And that the people were herds of swine,That the rich alone were fit to rule,That the poor were unimproved by school,That ceaseless toil was the proper fateOf all but the wealthy and the great,John shook his head, and swore, with a frown,“The coin is spurious, nail it down.”

SOULFOOD A regular literary selection

Notes to the Poemsand Poets

Charles Mackay (1814-1889)was a Scottish poet, journalistand songwriter, and anassociate of Charles Dickens.He made his literaryreputation in 1846 with acollection of poems, Voicesfrom the Crowd. In 1849 theMorning Chronicle decided toundertake an investigation intothe condition of the labouringclasses in England and Wales,and Mackay was given the taskof surveying Liverpool andBirmingham. The poempresented here, John Littlejohn,is taken from Spokesmen forLiberty (Jack Lindsay andEdgell Rickword, editors),Lawrence & Wishart, 1941.


GUARDS CARRYING PIGS

By Ho Chi Minh

Along the way we travel, the guardsare carrying pigs.Pigs travel on guards’ shoulders,while men are dragged in irons.Once a man is forced to surrenderhis natural human freedomThe value of a man is less than thatof a pig.

In this world the ills of man maynumber many tens of thousands,But nothing that can befall him isworse than loss of freedom.A simple word, a gesture is nolonger a man’s right.We can only submit to be drivenalong like horses or cattle!

NANNING JAIL

By Ho Chi Minh

Here is a jail built in ultra-modern style.At night the compound is brightlyflooded with electricity,But as every meal is nothing morethan a bowl of rice gruel,The stomach is in a state ofquivering protest.

Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969)was a founder of theIndochinese CommunistParty and leader of theVietnamese people’s liberationstruggle against French,Japanese and US imperialism.In 1942, during the Japaneseoccupation of Vietnam, hewas arrested in southernChina while attempting tomake contact with theChinese government onbehalf of the Vietnamesepatriots. For fourteen monthsin all, he was held in a total of30 prisons in southern China,often involving shackling bynight and 50 kilometretransfers on foot by day.Eventually he escaped fromhouse arrest and returned toVietnam after an absence oftwo years. The two poemspresented here are from hisPrison Diary (4th edition),translated by Aileen Palmer,Foreign Languages PublishingHouse, Hanoi, 1967.

Helen Fullerton (1928-2005)was a hospital orderly,postwoman, capstan operatorat Rolls Royce, Glasgow(where she became a shopsteward), a provisions vanoperator around the GlenShira hydro-electric scheme inthe Scottish Highlands, asong-collector, poet and friendof the travelling people. Later she studied for a BScand then PhD in soilchemistry at GlasgowUniversity and ultimatelybecame a farmer in Wales andan activist for Farming andLivestock Concern UK. The poem presented here istaken from her booklet, MyCountry: Songs and Poems,Lawrence & Wishart, 1957.

Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) was the unchallengedpoetic genius of the earlyyears of the Soviet Union. The poem printed here, alsoknown as Incessant MeetingSitters and Conference Crazy,was the first of Mayakovsky’sto be published in a Sovietnewspaper, appearing inIzvestia on 5 March 1922.The following day, in a speechto a meeting of theCommunist group of the All-Russia Congress ofMetalworkers, Lenin said:“Yesterday, I happened to readin Izvestia a political poem byMayakovsky. I am not anadmirer of his poetical talent,although I admit that I am nota competent judge. But I havenot for a long time readanything on politics andadministration with so muchpleasure as I read this. In hispoem he derides this meetinghabit, and taunts theCommunists with incessantlysitting in meetings. I am notsure about the poetry; but as for

the politics, I vouch for theirabsolute correctness. We areindeed in the position, and Ican vouch that it is a veryabsurd position, of peoplesitting endlessly in meetings,setting up commissions anddrawing up plans without end.”(Lenin, Collected Works, Vol33, p 223).The translation is due toHerbert Marshall andappeared in Mayakovsky andhis Poetry (Herbert MarshallEd.), The Pilot Press, 1942.Marshall states, “This poem isalmost impossible to translatebecause of the play on well-known and numerousabbreviations used in Russian.”Nonetheless, the sentiment is clear.


➔


Junk food: an irregular cartoon strip

No sooner the night turns into dawnthan everyone, whose job it is,goes to the “Firm”,to the “Co”,to the “Inc”,to the “Corp”,they all disappear into offices.Paper business pours like a torrent,no sooner than you get into the offices.Pick out from a hundred –

the most important! –employees disappear into conferences.

Then I appear and ask:“To whom can I refer?

Been here since once upon a time.”“Comrade Ivan Ivanich havei gone to confer with the People’s Commissar of Teetotal Wine.”

Crippled by countless stairs.Light barely blinks.

Again:“Asks you to come back in an hour or so.

In conference:-re the purchase of inks

for the All-In Co-op Corp & Co.”

In an hour – not a clerk,not an office boy appears …

bare!Everyone up to 22 years is at theKomsomolii conference upstairs.

Night is falling.I still climb on

to the highest floor of my temporaryhome.“Has Comrade Ivan Ivanich come in?”

“Still in conference,with the A-B-C-D-E-F-G-Com.”

Into that conference,I burst like a lava,

with savage oaths the path is strewn.And see:

people are sitting there in halves.Heavens above!

Where’ve their other halves gone?“Slaughtered!

Murdered!”Running about like mad I shout.

At such a picture I go out of my mind.Then I hear the calmest of clerks point out:“They’re in two conferences at the very same time.”Twenty conferences

we have to attend toevery day –

and more to spare.So we’re forced to split ourselves intwo!Here to the waist,

and the rest –over there.

Can’t sleep for suspense.I meet the dawn with frenzied senses.“Oh for just

one more conference

regarding the eradication of allconferences!”

IN RE CONFERENCES

By Vladimir Mayakovsky

What does the Man in the Street say?What are his views on the war,The ordinary KoreanThat we’ve been fighting for?

Why do you not answer me?What is it I have saidThat makes you smile so bitterlyAnd turn away your head?

“Because there is no such man any more.Do you not understand?Brother, there are no streetsIn our ‘liberated’ land.”

QUESTION OF A WARCORRESPONDENTIN KOREA

By Helen Fullerton

i Mayakovsky deliberately uses the plural.ii Young Communist League

Order form: Return to Communist Party, Ruskin House 23 Coombe Rd, Croydon CR0 1BD.Total payable to CPB (each pamphlet £2 + 50p p&p)

The Politics of Britain’s Economic Crisis

Tibet – colony or part of China?

Lies, damned lies and anti-communism

Workers of all Lands

Back 2 Basics

Neo-liberalism is bad for your health

Whose nation? Democracy & the national question in Britain

Introducing Marxism

‘Left-Wing’ Communism – An Infantile Disorder

The Case for Communism

Women & Class

Britain’s Road to Socialism

Name

Address

Postcode

I enclose £

OR ORDER ONLINE ATwww.communist-party.org.uk

Quality is better than quantity

53

9 771474 924000www.morningstaronline.co.uk

60p from newsagents

communist review summer 2009

Documents

editor of communistreview

communist partynumber

editor ofnature

communist history

deputy editor communistreview

literatureby martin

communistparty of britain

marxist theories