tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306084742024-03-18T03:01:39.091+00:00John MolyneuxJohn Molyneux is a socialist, activist and writer. He is a member of the Irish and British SWP.He formerly lectured at Portsmouth University,but now lives in Dublin. and writes mainly, but not exclusively,
about Marxist theory and art.John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12505576725875193235noreply@blogger.comBlogger225125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-58131554368656487992022-02-03T17:58:00.000+00:002022-02-03T17:58:16.609+00:00POKER IN THE STRAND
Poker in the Strand
by John Molyneux
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This is another old article posted for reference. It it is based on my experience as a poker player in London in the mid-sixties (when I was already a rebel but before I became a socialist). It was originally published as a contribution to ab anthology 'Players: conmen, hustlers, gamblers and scam artists', edited by Stephen hyde and Geno Zanetti, Thunders Mouth Press, New York, 2002. One of the attractions of this anthology was that contained contributions from the likes of Jorge Luis Borges, Blaise Pascal, Baudelaire, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Brecht and Saul Bellow. So on this one occasion I found myself published alongside the giant's of world literature.
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Of course, it's all different now. For a start, nowadays there are always beggars and rough sleepers in the doorways in that part of The Strand. In those days, in the mid-sixties, I had to go to New York, to the Bowery, to see such things and very shocking it was too. In those days of The Beatles and Mary Quant there was 'something in the air' in swinging London but this is not an exercise in nostalgia for that mythologised golden age, this is an exercise in nostalgia for a particular place, a particular institution, in the London of that time, which existed at a much lower, more subterranean level of sixties society.
Nor is there now any visible trace of this institution - I checked it out just the other day. The building is still there, of course; they haven't knocked down and rebuilt The Strand but from the street, there's no sign that En Passant ever existed - well, there wouldn't be, would there? But if you had passed that way when I first visited in 1965 and were not in the know, you would also have seen nothing.
I first found my way there with a chess-playing friend when I was sixteen by tagging along with (more accurately trailing along after) the chess master, Bob Wade, and some prodigious young chess players after a London chess tournament. I was still at school, just starting to find my way round London by night and had very little idea where I was going, except that it was in a vague way notorious. Anyway, we followed Wade and his disciples to a shop in The Strand, nearly opposite The Savoy and just in between The Adelphi and Vaudeville theatres. The shop sold off property lost on London Transport and had a U-shaped glass front for the display of its wares. The shop entrance set back in the center was, obviously, closed but just before the entrance, on the right hand side, was an unmarked door which, when tried, turned out to be open (permanently as I discovered later). Behind the door was a dingy bare wooden staircase, which led our band to the first floor above the shop. This turned out to be a large, minimally decorated room devoid of people or signs of life, except for several long tables with chairs and benches and, on the tables, a few chess sets. Wade and his group sat at one table, my friend and I at another. They chatted and, as serious chess players do, started to set up positions and analyse them. We, feeling very awkward, half tried to eavesdrop on their conversation and half played our own game. Soon, however, we became aware of sounds, voices, faint but quite animated, coming from above and we saw there was another staircase leading upwards. After about twenty minutes a rather nondescript man came up the stairs from the street, passed through our room without a word and disappeared upstairs to the next floor. Fifteen minutes after that, another nondescript but to us rather tough-looking guy came down the stairs and left, again without a word. No one from the Wade group made any move towards going upstairs so neither did we. After an hour or so they left and we followed with our tails between our legs.
When I came back, now three months older and three months bolder and just turned 17, with my friend from school, Chris Carvell (who went on to become a croupier at The Golden Nugget), we climbed the second set of stairs to the En Passant proper.
The En Passant was a poker club, hiding behind the very tiniest fig leaf of a chess club. Actually, this is not quite true. It was really a poker game, not a club. There was nothing one could join, no membership fee or list, no records of any kind, no entrance fee, no reception or receptionist, no doormen, no security - though the people who went there, some of them at least, were more than capable of dealing with any trouble that might present itself and capable, if they chose, of creating more trouble than any doorman or security could handle. There was just a game of poker, occasionally two games - seven or eight men sitting round a table playing cards permanently. Every now and then a player would get up and go to be replaced by someone waiting or there would be a vacant seat till the next punter arrived but the game would go on. In its heyday the poker game at the En Passant ran continuously 24 hours round the clock, one endless game of cards without beginning or end. It was also, to my knowledge, the hardest game in London at that time and by hardest, I mean the one with the highest average level of skill in which it was most difficult to be a regular winner.
In every society at given points in time, there exist unofficial places, hidden from the overwhelming majority, where intriguing social interactions take place. Such were the 'buffet flats' frequented by the likes of Bessie Smith on the black music scene in the US in the twenties, or the extra-legal raves in the 1987 'summer of love' or the squatter organized events in Hackney today. Such was the En Passant. These places are either completely unknown to the mainstream society or else radically different in reality to whatever vague public image they might have developed. The danger is that if they are not recorded, all knowledge of their existence may be lost. It may be true that 'one picture is worth a thousand words' and one may wish that Brassai could have been transported from Paris in the thirties to record the scene at the En Passant but he wasn't, so now the only recourse is to words based on memories.
I have already given some impression of the En Passant's grim physical appearance. Let me add that the second floor, the scene of the action, resembled the first in its barren dinginess. It may have been above street level rather than below it but the En Passant was a dive of the first water. With no decor or decoration worth mentioning, lighting that was adequate but on the dim side and furniture consisting only of the main card table, a couple of spares and a scattering of chairs, this was minimalism resembling that of a Carl Andre brick sculpture. In addition, there was a kitchen-cum-office, whence tea and not much else was served - no alcohol, occasionally a sandwich. There must have been a toilet and washroom - punters spent days and nights there - but I don't remember them. They could not have been very salubrious. Looking back, however, I have no doubt that this very minimalism, this absence of distractions, the 'purist' focus on the main thing, men playing poker, was one of the En Passant's attractions.
Regarding the origins and history of the En Passant, I can say very little.I encountered the place as an established fact in circumstances in which the last thing on my mind was historical research or enquiring about the past and there is no book to look things·up in. All I know is the hearsay I picked up on the poker scene, which amounts to this: the En Passant was set up and opened, l don't know when, as a bona fide chess and card club (hence its name taken from the chess move, en passant) by an emigre Russian entrepreneur known as Boris Watson. Boris, whom I played poker with and therefore got to know in the extremely limited sense one did get to know people in the poker world, closely resembled in girth, facial appearance and manner, the actor Sidney Greenstreet, who played the fat man in The Maltese Falcon. For Boris, the En Passant was one of three related business ventures, the others being The Mandrake, a drinking club in Meard Street in Soho and The Prompt Corner, a chess cafe at the corner of Pond Street and South End Green near Hampstead Heath. The Mandrake closed and The Prompt Corner was sold to a Greek Cypriot called Mr Kanou (who appeared to dislike the chess players but nevertheless tolerated them with the result that The Prompt remained an interesting place for some years). The En Passant also failed but in a peculiar way. Boris's problem was that he was a very bad but completely compulsive poker player. Over a period of time he lost so much money in his own game that he had to hand over control of the 'club' to two of the most regular and successful players, who then paid him a modest weekly rent. It was these two, Ted Iles and Colin Kennedy, who ran the game at the En Passant during all my time there. Their method was to work alternate twelve-hour shifts, organizing and running the game, playing in it and cutting the pot - taking sixpence or a shilling for the house out of every pound bet - at the same time. They were an unlikely partnership. Ted, who was clearly the dominant one of the two, was a large, thick set man, supremely solid rather than fat, in, probably, his late thirties or early forties. (I do not know his exact age or that of anyone else featured here and I don't think seventeen year olds are good at estimating the ages of their elders). He was an ex-policeman - rumour had it that he had been kicked out of the cops in disgrace following some involvement with a teenage runaway girl - but he also possessed a powerful intelligence having been a county standard chess and bridge player. Everything about Ted Iles exuded strength, hardness and there was something else, a hint of real malevolence, a touch of evil just below the surface. Colin Kennedy was about ten years younger, a gangly, rather shy, somewhat intellectual gay Irishman. By what route he arrived at the En Passant I do not know but he was something of an oddity in that environment. Although he was cool and competent in his management of the poker game, he can1e over as weak in comparison to the intimidating Ted. This was certainly Ted's view. "My partner is a wanker", he would say from time to time. Despite this, Colin Kennedy wasa formidable poker player.
There are many kinds of poker and they are played with a wide variety of rules and arrangements in different venues, clubs and parts of the world. Classic 'Draw Poker', in which each player is dealt five cards face down and then draws, i.e. exchanges one, two, three or four cards to try to improve his hand, is the form of the game most often featured in films and on TV, usually as a plot device-but in my experience it is hardly ever played, at least in clubs as opposed to private games. The same is true of 'pure' Five Card Stud - one card dealt face down, one face up, followed by three up cards with a round of betting after each - probably because, for all the legends about 'Aces-in-the-Hole' and so on, the vast majority of hands are very low, less than one pair and this is not conducive to exciting play or big pots. Today the dominant form of poker is 'Texas Hold'em' imported from Las Vegas; in the sixties it was generally Five Card Stud stripped deck, that is with cards below the seven removed, which greatly increases the size of the average hand.
At The Strand, however, the main game was Seven Card Stud - two down cards and one up card, followed by three more up cards and a final down card with five rounds of betting in all. In my opinion, Seven Card is the best, most interesting and most demanding form of poker. The five rounds of betting allow for sustained and subtle bluffing and remarkable feats of card reading (working out an opponent's hand) and from time·to time, produce a buildup to a real dramatic showdown in which everything depends on the players' correct judgement on whether to call, pass or raise.
All poker is a combination of luck and skill: luck in what cards you are dealt, skill in how you bet them. In the long run, therefore, poker is a game of skill like bridge or chess because in the long run the luck evens out. But the fact that luck plays a big part in the short run and is the main factor determining who wins each hand is what makes poker attractive to the gambler in a way that chess is not. The weak player can always tell himself he has a chance of beating even the strongest professional and, in the short run, he does have such a chance. At the same time the weak player can always tell himself, and anyone else, that the reason he lost was because he was unlucky. But the balance of luck and skill is not the same in all kinds of poker. Texas Hold'em with its high antes, heavy betting on the first two cards and its flop of three cards at once is a version that increases the element of luck. Seven Card Stud is a version that maximizes the element of skill. This was especially true of the way the game was played at the En Passant. The ante put in by the dealer and the first bet from the player showing the highest card, were very low, usually only one shilling, occasionally half a crown in a 'big' game. After that, betting was pot limit, i.e. if there was three shillings (or three pounds) in the pot, player A could bet up to three shillings (or three pounds), then player B could call that bet and raise up to nine shillings (or nine pounds). This meant that it was possible to play very tight, sitting and waiting patiently for a very good initial hand, without losing too much in antes (high antes work against this strategy). However, once a pot got going, the size of the bets could escalate rapidly, especially in the later stages. A hand that began with bets of a few shillings could end in bets of thirty, fifty or even hundreds of pounds if there. were raises and re-raises. This put a very high premium on precise judgement in certain highly pressured situations.
After Seven Card Stud, the next most popular game at The Strand was Dealer's Choice. In this, the dealer got to choose which version of poker would be played for that round (eight hands if there were seven players). Dealer's Choice was poker for aficionados. In fact, unless you were quite experienced, or very sharp, you would not be able to understand how to play the games at all, never mind how to play them well enough to cope with the sharks at the En Passant. Players chose the most weird and .won derful versions of poker imaginable and often invented new forms on the spot. Characteristic features of these Dealer's Choice games were: proliferating wild cards - not just deuces wild but leaners (adjacent cards of the same suit, 9-10 of Hearts, A-2 of Clubs etc) or jumpers (next but one cards of same suit, 6-8-10 of Spades etc) or pairs (so that Kings up, KK55, equaled four kings); hi-lo games where the pot was divided between the highest and the lowest hand; multiple rounds of betting with complex card exchanges. A typical game, therefore, might be announced by the dealer as follows, "We'll play ... Seven Card hi-lo, leaners wild, changes on the third, fifth and last cards, dealer sees the changes, simultaneous declaration". Sometimes the cards lost their usual values and were measured by their point count or some strange combination of the two, as in Seven Card Stud, eight point count and the best hand, three exchanges. In this, only cards up to eight counted for the point count side of the pot while everything counted for the best hand side. In this game what you wanted was something like 88877 - very strong for both point count and best hand. What you didn't want was AAAJ10 or KKQQ4 - no use for the point count and probably beaten for best hand. One key feature of Dealer's Choice was that players delighted in inventing games with tricky rules that gave an advantage to the dealer; an extreme example of this was 'the Tim Swindle', invented by my friend Tim, the complexities of which I shall not attempt to describe, save to say that if you understood how the Tim Swindle worked, you simply didn't play, no matter how good your cards, unless you were the dealer when you played whatever you had. Despite its giveaway name, there were many occasions on which the Tim Swindle proved an effective way of relieving mugs of their cash.
Other aspects of poker at The Strand also contributed to the game's particular atmosphere. There was the fact that it was illegal, which created an attractive frisson of danger for the middle class elements in the clientele. Legal poker was available in London at this time, at established casinos, such as Crockford's or the Victoria Sporting Club but these games, initially, were organized in a very genteel way with low stakes and restricted betting limits. They had none of the drama and tension of a pot limit game. The illicit status of the En Passant game, however, raised an interesting question. How was it possible for an illegal poker game to operate undisturbed twenty four hours a day on one of central London's main thoroughfares without even a lock or a doorman on the door? I don't know for certain but I can think of only one plausible explanation: the cops were being paid off, which, given what we know about the Met in the sixties is hardly surprising. Then there was the absence of any croupiers or dealers, the players dealing for themselves and finally, the use of actual cash instead of chips. These features, which if not absolutely unique, were at least pretty unusual, both made for a heightened feeling of gritty realism, like the use of black and white in classic film noir.
In the end, however, it was not the minimalist decor or the kind of poker, or the cash pots or any of these things that made the En Passant what it was. It was the people who went to play there. The majority of these fell into three main categories: a criminal, small gangster element from London's East and West Ends; a middle class intellectual/professional element - lawyers, journalists and the like - and the professional poker players. Each of these groups brought its own particular 'flavour' to The Strand but it was the interaction between them that was the crucial factor in the game's distinctive atmosphere.
The small gangster types all had Runyonesque nicknames: Johnny the Builder, Chills Tony, Little Art, Jumbo, Scouse Billy, Paddy George, Chrissy Doobie, Brian the Burglar and such like. By and large, these were hard men, some with that keen, hunted look in their eyes that, in my experience, goes with having been in prison. Johnny the Builder wasa small wiry man, middle aged going on old, with a harsh rasping voice that testified to chain smoking and could hardly utter a sentence without several expletives. "Fucking cards. I ain't seen a fucking pair since bloody eight o'clock". That sort of thing. Chills Tony, whose nickname certainly had the desired effect on me, was probably in his late twenties. He was lean, muscled and had a fearsome reputation. One day a newcomer to the scene, whose name I forget, got into a dispute with Chills over the table. He was a young man, early twenties, tall and broad shouldered. Either he fancied his chances or just got carried away but he wagged his finger in Tony's face, "Don't do that, son", said one of the older hands sitting next to the youngster. "He'll hit you over the head with an iron bar!" And such was the matter of fact realism of this helpful advice, that the young man realized instantly that he was making a mistake and the matter was sorted. However, the enormous Jumbo, whose soubriquet did not deceive, once told me that in his view, Chills Tony was not the hardest man at The Strand, the honour belonged to Little Art. "If I had to I could just about handle Tony", said Jumbo (I did not really believe this Jumbo was too nice), "but Little Art ... no way!" Little Art was, or had been, a stunt man on one of the first Bond films, it was said - and Little Art's strength, Jumbo explained, lay in his exceptional speed.
Interestingly, physical violence was a rarity at the poker table, despite the presence of these potentially violent men. I think the psychological aggression of the game itself worked as a kind of sublimation. In all my poker-playing days I only once saw an actual serious blow struck at or around the table. That was by Vivian, the Irish queer basher, in a dispute over a £5 bet and happened not at The Strand but at The Primrose Club in Belsize Park, an altogether safer place. 'Vivian 'earned' his living by picking up gay men (no one used this term yet), taking them to The Strand Palace Hotel or somewhere similar, bashing them and robbing them. I was told that he once turned up to play at the En Passant with notes covered in fresh blood. But Vivian was an outsider, a pariah even among the villains. On one occasion I found myself obliged to share a cab with him. He complained bitterly of the coldness of the English. "No one seems to want to be friends", he said. That this might be related to his 'profession' did not seem to occur to him.
Violence away from the table was a different matter. Paddy George, for instance, was disfigured by a large and hideous scar from the corner of his mouth to his ear - clearly the product of some knife or razor attack. George hung out with the terse and hard-bitten Scouse Billy. One day George and Billy disappeared from the scene. The word was that they were on the run. Apparently some doorman had tried to deny them entry to a late-night drinking club. With the aid of a third accomplice, they had captured the doorman, dragged him into the back of a car, cut up his face with a broken bottle and thrown him out of the car at speed. I never saw either of them again, except for one night on Greek Street I saw Scouse crossing the road towards me. "Hi Billy", I said, without thinking. He swept past me without a word and dodged into an entrance.
The most attractive personality among the viilains, to me at any rate, was Brian the Burglar. Brian was thirtyish, tall, good looking and generally charming. In a delicious irony, his real surname was Law. His nickname, however, was a simple statement of fact; he was a professional thief, a housebreaker. His method of earning a living was to go to an apartment block in a fairly well heeled area at an appropriate time - say 2pm when people were likely to be out - ring the doorbell and, on receiving no reply, effect an entry by means of a piece of plastic, like a credit card. He would then help himself to whatever cash, jewellery or other portable valuables were lying around and beat a hasty retreat. Brian's career was assisted by the unstated policy of the Metropolitan Police at that time (I don't know if it is still the same today) not to investigate house break-ins, on account of their great frequency. This meant that so long as he did not get caught in the act, he was in the clear, barring any accidents such as getting stopped and searched in a car full of stolen goods. Despite this 'indulgence', Brian, when I met him, had already been inside a couple of times and was therefore looking at a long stretch should he be convicted again.
In his personal dealings I found Brian both affable and genuinely kind. For some reason he took a liking to me and for a time, took me under his wing, which greatly assisted my transition from isolated callow youth to member of the rather louche poker scene. On occasion, after an all-night poker session, we would drive out at dawn to have breakfast at London Airport. I remember it then as deserted, eerie and vaguely exciting - now it has changed beyond recognition. The thing with Brian was that you felt that if you ever really needed help, he would go the distance for you and this I tried to reciprocate.
As poker players, the villains - with the exception of Jumbo who was definitely 'loose' and weak - were generally quite good. They were sharp, intelligent, nobody's fools and usually had plenty of bottle at the table. They were not the best however. I think this was because for them, poker was a leisure, not a work activity. They had other means of earning their living and therefore did not play with the absolute intensity and 'commitment' necessary to be a consistent winner, a real professional.
The middle-class element brought an essential ingredient to the En Passant: its money. Every poker game needs its quota of mugs or losers to supply the lubricant to keep its wheels turning smoothly. If the proportion of pots and tight players in a game gets too high, the game dries up and becomes no good to anyone. This was especially true of a game like The Strand where the House was cutting the pot. By the standards of many clubs and private games these were quite good players but by the standards of The Strand they were a weak link, inferior to both the villains and the pro-gamblers.
Typical of the middle class crowd were men like the young lawyer, Jeff Abrahams, Stewart Reuben (who was part of the chess - poker crossover and who is still around as an organizer of chess events), Charlie Gale and the journalists, Jeremy Hornsby and David Spanier. Charlie Gale lived with and off his parents in Hampstead Garden Suburb. He had been to Oxford but he preferred ducking and diving to the disciplines of a proper job or career. I knew Charlie from the Prompt Corner and it was partly through me that he got involved in poker. Often we would drive to games together in his tiny Fiat car. An interesting case was David Spanier. He was quite a prestigious journalist at The Times, who won some kind of European Journalist of the Year award for his reporting on the Common Market and who played in the 'famous' private game with Al Alvarez and Anthony Holden - famous because they were media people who publicized their own exploits. In later years, Spanier presented himself as a poker 'expert', writing a book, making the odd TV appearance etc. but at The Strand he was a mug. The news that 'David of The Times' was on his way would always raise spirits at the table since it meant that a welcome injection of cash was coming. On one occasion, I fleeced Spanier in a two-handed game of Dealer's Choice with the crude device of repeatedly choosing the Tim Swindle. David, for all his intellectual status, seemed unable to work out the fairly obvious catch. These middle class characters were, of course, drawn by the frisson of danger provided by The Strand's low life clientele but they had to pay for their thrills at the table.
From among this group there was one individual who stood out, at least from my point of view, and who is the only person from those days I'm still in touch with. This was Maurice Sumray. When I first saw Maurice at the En Passant he was a small unshaven man in his mid-forties, scruffily dressed and wearing a floppy old cordouroy hat, which made him look a down and out. "Ask him for a lift home", said Ted Iles one morning, with a psychological insight that was in a way typical of this unpleasant man. "He may look like a tramp but he has on E-type Jag parked downstairs." So I did and he agreed and this proved the start of our friendship.
Maurice was a Jewish artist who had set aside his art to make a pile of money with an engraving business. At this point in time, he was busy dissipating his fortune on wine, women and poker. He had a beautiful house in Muswell Hill with an extraordinary private art collection, including a small original Picasso(!) and other great 20th century originals. His wife, Pat, was also stunningly beautiful - in an artistic bohemian not bimboish or show business way - but there was evident strain and pain in the relationship, maybe because of Maurice's gambling and philandering. Superficially, Maurice could be cocky, cheeky, arrogant, aggressive and humorous by turns. There was always a inkle in his eye, which could be exceptionally charming to women and men alike and which is still there now that he is eighty. But the real thing about Maurice was that he had been, was, a serious artist, a real painter. He had exhibited at the Whitechapel and Gimpel Fils galleries and been described by Wyndham Lewis as one of 'the best artists in England' and knew Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and such. He therefore understood all too well the high calling of being a real artist and beneath his bluff, gruff exterior, there was a deep sadness and profound human sympathy with the downtrodden, which showed itself in his work and his half denied left wing politics (he remembered Mosley and the Battle of Cable St in the East End) and his choice of company. Like me, Maurice also played chess at the Prompt Corner and was close friends with Brian the Burglar.
The professional poker players were the kings of the En Passantand, at the same time, its humble servants and its lowly parasites. They were, of course, few in number. Apart from Ted Iles and Colin Kennedy there were only three real pros: Ray 'Doc' Joseph, Paddy Joe and Irish John Turner.
Ray Joseph was a tall, thin young man in his late twenties, with a long face and long bony fingers, which handled the cards with elegant precision. Ray had once been a student at the nearby London School of Economics but had abandoned his studies for poker. He was the extreme example of the 'scientific' player. Someone who knew all the odds and stuck strictly to them - the tightest man at the table who would wait hours for a decent hand if necessary. They called him 'the Doc' in honour of Dr. Death, the wrestler who strangled his opponents into submission. (To have someone 'strangled' is poker parlance for having a hand so strong that the other player(s) cannot possible beat it. In stud, this is not uncommon e.g. in Five Card Stud a pair of Aces has the whole table strangled if no pair is showing and there is no possible straight or flush).
Away from the game, Doc was an amiable fellow but he could be tetchy at the table, especially if things were not going well. He was married with children and found playing for a livinga strain. "I have to clear two grand a year before I start to live," he would say, referring to his domestic commitments. Certainly Doc was tight but he was also a very skillful subtle player, a good 'reader' of the cards and master of the unexpected raise and deceptive bet or check. I once asked Ray if his reputation for caution didn't make it difficult for him to get paid when he did have a hand. "Yeah," he said, "but there are compensations." "How do you mean?"I asked. "Well, you don't get people trying to bluff Jumbo out of a full house, do you!" The Doc could sit quietly, almost unnoticed, in a game for many hours but at the end of the night he was usually ahead. Sometimes he would go for a drink with other players, especially the pros but usually he would go home to his family in Blackheath.
When I first met them, John Turner and Paddy Joe were mates, two young Irishmen who had come over on the boat together when they were sixteen and graduated from snooker hustlers to poker pros. By the time I left the scenea few years later, their ways had parted as John's star rose and Joe's declined.
Paddy Joe was small, quiet of voice but intense in his feelings and concentration. He lived a life totally devoted to and within the gambling world, moving from poker game to roulette wheel to dice table and always back to poker again. Ray Joseph once said of Joe, "Sometimes he plays like a God and sometimes like a complete mug". His passion for the game enabled him to play very tight for a long time and then go absolutely fearlessly for a really big pot. Then the fearlessness could suddenly turn into reckless self-destructiveness. One night in a big five card stripped deck game, not at The Strand, Joe patiently built his last five pounds into £450. He then put the lot - a small fortune in those days - in a single bet on a pair of Queens against a showing Ten, only to be called and outdrawn with a middle pin straight on the last card. When Joe was doing well he would rent a nice flat, buy himself a good suit and watch these were the limits of his ambition. When he was broke he would give up the flat for a bedsit, pawn the watch and suit and hustle to get back in the big time. Some pro players, Ted Iles for example and I was like this too, are not really gamblers; they play a game of skill for money and have no interest in betting for its own sake. Joe was a fantastically good poker player but he was also a mad compulsive gambler. This was probably his downfall. Occasionally Joe would interrupt his gambling binges to take in a movie. The last time I saw him he had been entranced by the Woodstock film and had started smoking dope.
John Turner was the most fearsome and most feared player on our circuit. He was probably the best poker player in London at the time and certainly the best I saw. Medium to short, stockily built, barrel chested, he was the Diego Maradonna of the poker table with a personality to match. Ted Iles once said of him that John Turner managed to play more cards, drink more booze and sleep with more women than anyone else he knew.
At the table, John Turner was all energy and action. From the moment he sat down he sought and usually achieved a personal domination of the game. His method was to unleash a flurry of small bets and raises combined with a stream of mildly aggressive banter, in such a way as to make himself the center of attention. This simultaneously created the illusion - and it was an illusion - that he was basically a loose player and aroused the envy of almost every other player in the game. Unlike Ted, there was nothing seriously malicious in John Turner but he used his pugnacious personality to provoke other players to engage with him. When you played with John Turner you felt harried, got at and personally challenged so that you put your money in the middle when you shouldn't and whenever that money was substantial, you could be sure that Turner would produce the goods. This was only possible because John was a superb 'reader' of both cards and people. No player I ever saw made fewer mistakes, fewer errors of judgement in betting, calling and passing in crit ical situations. If Turner had a weakness, it was his heavy drinking but even this he could turn to his advantage. He would turn up at the table obviously the worse for wear and spread some easy money around. Then he would sober up rapidly and catch people on the rebound who thought he was still drunk. The interesting thing about John was that despite his aggressive, provocative personality and his way of getting under everyone's skin and making them play badly, almost no one bore a grudge against him or actually disliked him. On the contrary, he was generally popular, especially with the villains, who aamired his 'bottle'. What happened to him later I've no idea, but I fear that in the long run, the drinking must have taken its toll.
Naturally, not everyone at The Strand fitted into my three main types. There was, for example, Tony Tea - a rather camp youngish man, employed by Ted to make the tea. Whenever Tony could scrape together enough from his doubtless meager wages, he would chance his arm at the table - not very successfully. From time to time Tony would appear with the odd younger lad in tow, who would also do a stint in the kitchen. It was clear from the odd comment he made that Ted lies had a certain 'interest' in these young gay men but Ted was overtly straight and my guess is that his interest was 'psychological' rather than directly sexual.
Another gay guy on the En Passant scene for a time was Johnny Mew. Johnny was a somewhat rough looking, working class man in his forties, who, I was told, had had a rich sugar daddy. The sugar daddy had died and left Johnny a very considerable sum - maybe £30,000 or something like that. But Johnny was a total poker addict and the world's worst player. While he had money, Ted courted him, reserved him a seat at the table, even allowed him to stay in his flat and drip fed him credit £10 at a time. In this way, Johnny Mew, who always lost, contributed £100 or more a night to the En Passant game and the house cut until his inheritance was all gone and Ted discarded him like a used rag.
So far I have spoken only of men. Obviously in the mid sixties, the poker scene as a whole and The Strand especially, was overwhelmingly male but there were a few women players. Two that I remember were Diane and Edna. Diane, I hardly knew at all but Jumbo claimed to have had an affair with her and Brian the Burglar, from the manner of his greeting of her that I saw on one occasion, may also have had some kind of relationship with her. She was, as far as I can recall, not a bad player. Edna, I came to know very well. She was half Italian, half Irish, swarthy of complexion, plump and in her forties. Edna was sort of half professional. On the one hand, she was a very regular player who was certainly not a mug and who clearly lacked the source of income to sustain a losing poker habit. On the other hand, she clearly was not in the same league as the Doc or John Turner. Edna played sometimes at The Strand and could just about survive there but, generally, she preferred the gentler game at The Primrose, which anyway was nearer to her Kilburn home.
Both on and off the table, Edna was kind and friendly to me in a mildly maternal way. One aspect of The Strand of which I am more aware today than I was at the time, was its 'whiteness.' The poker scene as a whole was very cos mopolitan. A number of the clubs I used, including The Primrose and the Double One, were run by Asians and frequented by many Indian, Pakistani and Chinese players. There was also substantial participation from the Greek community but none of this was true of the En Passant, which remained almost exclusively white (though, as we have seen, very Jewish). Not, I hasten to add, that there was a colour bar. As far as I can recall, no one of any description was barred from The Strand, especially if they had money to lose but it seems it was just not a place black and Asian people felt drawn to.
Finally,I should say something about my own position within this scene. My main distinguishing feature was my youth. At seventeen, just out of school, as I was by some distance the youngest person around and as a result they called me Schoolboy John. By education and background, I was closest to the middle class professional/intellectual element but I was a rebel and tended to despise the respectable bourgeois types (except the bohemian Maurice). Also I had little or no money so I had to play to win like the real pros. A feat I managed in a small way most, if not all, of the time. Luckily for me I was not a gambler - games of chance held no interest for me - or an addict and when the time came for me to move on in my life,I was able to give up poker without difficulty.
Up to this point, I have not offered up what dominates most depictions of poker on the page and the screen, namely the tall poker tale or the description of the dramatic pot. This has been intended as a deliberate corrective to the way poker is usually represented. Mostly poker features in stories as a plot device, a set piece scene focusing on a single hand, leading to a gunfight or a confrontation between hero and villain. Typically, all we see is a huge pot in which the guy required by the storyline to be the winner has four Aces against the predetermined loser's four Kings, or the dramatic climax in which The Man does or does not have the Jack of Diamonds in the hole to make a straight flush. Real poker is not like that. Ninety, no ninety nine percent of the time, it is a matter of routine pots in which Two Pair beats a pair of Kings or a Straight outdraws a pair of Aces and winning at poker is basically a question of trying to ensure that when you have the Two Pair against the pair of Kings, you win more money than you lose when the hands are reversed. This is why poker is a boring game unless it is played for stakes that are high enough to hurt if you lose. You've got to really care that you have a pair of Queens and your opponent only has Jacks or Tens and you have to be very pleased that you managed to pass your Aces Up when you read the other guy for Three Fours. Only the money makes you that.
Nevertheless, there were some incidents that stood out and which I can still remember more than thirty years later. One of these involved Maurice Sumray and Ray Joseph. It was Seven Card Stud and on the fourth card, Maurice, holding a pair of Aces (showing A6 with A4 in the hole) bet the pot. The Doc, showing Q10, raised just below the maximum but strong bet. Maurice, mistakenly, called - unless it was an out and out bluff, which was unlikely, Ray would never raise in that situation unless he could beat the possible Aces. On card five, Maurice hit a four making Aces Up and the Doc drew an irrelevant seven. Maurice checked. The Doc paused, checked his hole cards, pondered some more and eventually said, "I don't believe you've got Aces Up!" He then bet the pot. The remark riled Maurice. "Is he allowed to make comments like that?" he said. "At Crockfords they'd call that 'cheating"'. Colin Kennedy, who was in charge, shrugged his shoulders. "This is not Crockfords", he said. "Right, I call", said Maurice, his dander up. On the sixth card neither player improved and Maurice checked again. The Doc bet the pot. As he leant forward to place the money in the middle, Maurice grabbed him by the wrist and looking straight in his eyes, said, "Don't worry, I'm staying to the end, whatever you bet. But if you've got the Three Queens I think you've got, you'll never get a penny of the money."
Doc never wanted trouble at the table, he already regretted his 'clever' remark but her wanted the money, badly. "Calm down, Maurice. Just play your cards," he said, extricating himself. Maurice called the bet, anything but calm. When the final down card was dealt Maurice saw that the Doc only had a few pounds left. "I set you in," he announced rather pompously. Ray Joseph called immediately. "Aces Up", said Maurice, defiantly. The Doc turned over his inevitable Three Queens. In an instant Maurice reached forward, seized the pot, comprising some £80 - £I00 in five and ten pound notes, tore the notes in half and then again into quarters and threw the whole lot high into the air.
To this day Maurice, with his artist's eye for the visual, recalls the scraps of paper money 'floating down to the table like confetti'. At that point Maurice simply got up and walked out. Anywhere else he would have been barred, probably for life; at The Strand a phone call to Ted a couple of weeks later and he was back, everything forgotten and forgiven. Apparently he and Ray Joseph had a good laugh about it in later years.
Another particularly spectacular and memorable pot, possibly the biggest ever played there, featured Brian the Burglar, flush with the proceeds of a lucrative job, Colin Kennedy running the game, an unnamed American serviceman on his first visit and Ted Iles, not playing but attending to some business in the office. The American had sat down earlier in the evening and said he would play, call or pass (i.e. cover any bet made at the table without limit). He had played quietly for several hours without being involved in any dramatic action. Brian arrived sometime in the small hours in a rather excited mood. He too announced he would play, call or pass. Normally only one person could be call or pass at one time but by this time, people had sort of forgotten the Yank and nothing was said. (Strictly speaking this was Colin's fault).
After a while the American was dealing with Brian to his left and Colin on his right. It was Seven Card and Brian showed an Ace, Colin a ten and the Yank a deuce. Brian, as high card, opened the compulsory half-crown and received three or four callers, including Colin. The Yank raised the pot, fifteen shillings. Brian just called and the others passed but Colin re raised three pounds more. The Yank called and Brian raised another tenner. Colin and the Yank called.
This was already exceptional. betting for the first of five rounds of betting. The next card made no apparent difference to anyone - a five to the Ace, a seven to the ten and a Jack lo the deuce. Brian bet forty pounds, Colin called and the Yank raised another hundred. Brian called and Colin, after a long pause, declared that he was going all in the hundred plus another hundred and twenty. The Yank, who was starting to sweat profusely, checked his money in his wallet and, with a touch of agitation in his voice said, "I call". At this point Brian rather triumphantly announced, "Well I'm raising. How much is there in the pot?" Colin counted the large pile of notes. "With your one twenty, it comes to nearly eight hundred", he said. Brian reached into his inside pocket and fetched out a huge roll of notes. "I raise five hundred", he said.
The American's face fell through the floor. Frantically he checked his wallet."I can't cover the bet", he mumbled. "Then you must fold", said Colin, with a slight smirk. "You said you were playing call or pass". "No, no. I'll go all in". "Oh no you won't", said Brian, starting to get angry. "Call or pass is call or pass". There was a general muttering of agreement round the Table. Everyone was tense - it was a huge pot by the standards of the game and the time - but everyone was on Brian's side.
The Yank was getting desperate. "I - I'll get the money", he said. 'I'll leave the hand here and I'll get the money. Give me an hour".
"Hmm ... ", Colin hesitated.
"Look mate", said Brian, who had made a decision. "I've got three Aces here and you're strangled. I'd swallow it if I were you". He flipped over his hole cards to prove his point.
"I've got over a hundred and fifty in this pot. I want to carry on. I'll get the money", the American protested.
Then a voice came from the back. It was Ted. "I have to tell you that if you get the money, we shall be cutting the deck before the hand continues".
This was decisive. Ted had rumbled that there must be a rigged deck and the Yank knew he was rumbled.
"I - I'm getting the money", he said, and rose from the table. He was running before he reached the door. Everyone knew he wasn't coming back. Colin, who had three tens back-to-back, now suggested the pot should be split. "No way", said Brian with his three Aces.
"What we will do", said Ted, taking control, "is deal out the top cards to see what would have happened, then we'll reshuffle the deck and deal again for real". Colin wasn't happy but he couldn't buck Ted. The next three cards [illegible] the absent Yank. But when they're - dealt, there was a bitter twist. Colin paired his seven to make a full house but Brian did not improve. And that was how Colin won the biggest pot in the short history of the En Passant.
"Oh well! Easy come, easy go", said Brian the Burglar. When now, from the vantage point of middle age and a new century,I reflect on the En Passant and my experience of it, two things stand out: one personal, one social. Personally, it assisted and in large part effected, my rapid transition from a socially isolated, nerdish, certainly very gauche adolescence into the adult world. In the space of a few months it enabled me to leapfrog over the 'normal' teenage scene of dances, parties, pubs, dates - from which I had largely felt excluded by the peculiarities of my sheltered upbringing. Hindsight has revealed this to bea mixed blessing but at the time I was deeply grateful.
Socially,I think it was symptomatic at a subterranean level of a trend that was evident in the higher reaches of the culture in the sixties, namely the arrival on the stage of a young non-deferential working class which challenged the hitherto uncontested cultural hegemony of the traditional middle and upper classes. In its own tiny way, therefore, the world of the En Passant was a part of the cultural wave that gave us Saturday Night and Sunday Moming, Room at the Top, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and indeed, The Beatles. And from the clear fact that John Turner was loads smarter than David Spanier and Brian the Burglar an infinitely preferable human being to Ted Iles or Jeremy Hornsby, I learned the invaluable lesson that, contrary to everything I had been taught at school, neither intelligence nor decency were linked to social status or respectability. <div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-54827469151497704272022-01-23T20:37:00.003+00:002022-01-23T20:37:16.608+00:00State Capitalism Today
State Capitalism Today
The concept of state capitalism is associated by many on the left with past debates about Russia. The argument as to whether Russia or the Soviet Union was communist, socialist, a degenerated workers’ state, some kind of bureaucratic collectivism, or state capitalist is often held up as a typical example of far-left sectarian squabbling over obscure issues of terminology, and therefore as an issue which, now that the Soviet Union is no more, we should all set aside and move on from.
However, I want to suggest that that there is much more at stake in the question of state capitalism than what label should be attached to Russia or other “communist” countries. Rather, the issue goes to the heart of our understanding of: a) the nature of capitalism; b) the Marxist critique of capitalism; and c) the essence of socialism. In this article I intend to discuss the whole matter without reference to the Soviet Union or that episode in history, important as it was, but with reference to current debates about capitalism, China, current geo-political conflicts, and ecosocialism.
Let’s start by going back to basics.
Capitalism and private property
It has long been widely assumed—in the academic world, on much of the left, and in general public discourse—that capitalism is essentially defined as a system based on private ownership of the means of production. If you google “capitalism: definition” or “the meaning of capitalism,” the following appears:
An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
Merriam-Webster offers the following definition:
An economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1976) says:
Capitalism, n.: Possession of capital or wealth; system in which private capital or wealth is used in production and distribution of goods
And Wikipedia begins its entry:
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.
The Cambridge Online dictionary concurs:
An economic, political, and social system in which property, business, and industry are privately owned, directed towards making the greatest possible profits for successful organizations and people.
In the face of such unanimity, who can argue? Surely the proposition is simply a matter of fact or else true “by definition.” Except that private ownership of the means of production cannot, in itself, be the defining characteristic of capitalism for the simple reason that it has existed in numerous non- and pre-capitalist societies. Thus, in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome the two main means of production were land and unfree labour (slaves), and both were privately owned. In European feudalism in the early Middle Ages, all the land of the kingdom was, “theoretically,” the private property of the king, and in practice most of it was the private property of the landed aristocracy and the church.
On the other hand, more or less every capitalist economy has contained some degree of state ownership of the forces of production, and in many instances that degree has been very substantial. Thus, in Germany the railways were nationalised after WW1, and during the Weimar Republic large sections of mining, banking, and shipping were taken into public ownership. In France there was a big wave of nationalisations after WW2, including the railways, Renault, the electricity and gas industries, and Credit Lyonnais and other banks. While in the UK after the War, nationalised industries included the railways, London Transport, the BBC, British Airways, British Coal, British Steel, the Bank of England, British Gas, and the Post Office.
The emergence of capitalism as the dominant economic system in the world occurred over several centuries, essentially from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. What this centrally involved was not the establishment of private property but three connected processes: the spread of commodity production (i.e. production for sale on the market rather than consumption by the producers); the transformation of labour power into a commodity (i.e. the spread of wage labour and the development of the modern working class or proletariat); the winning of state power by the bourgeoisie in a series of revolutions (the Dutch, the English, the American, the French, etc.); and the transformation of the state into an instrument of bourgeois class rule. The spread of capitalism globally occurred primarily through imperialism or the pressure exerted by imperialism, in which the state played a crucial role, militarily, politically, and economically. If capitalism in the dominant Western countries tended, as a broad generalisation, to favour laissez-faire and free trade, in countries of belated capitalist development, such as Japan or the so-called Asian Tigers, the state tended to play a larger, more active economic role.
The overall outcome of this is that capitalism exists as a global system of competitive capital accumulation in which competition rages both between giant multinational corporations (usually closely linked to particular states) and between capitalist states themselves, as in USA v China v France v Japan, etc. Hence the idea that capitalism, either in the past or today, can be seen as simply a system of private ownership, or that states and state-owned industries can be seen as somehow separate from or outside capitalism or as a non-capitalist sector in the economy, is completely unsustainable. Moreover, there is now abundant evidence that nationalised industries owned and run by capitalist states operate fundamentally on the same principles of profit and loss and exploitation of their workers as private capitalist businesses: Aer Lingus, ESB, Iarnród Éireann, and Bus Éireann are examples of this in Ireland, but other examples could be provided from around the world.
The Marxist critique of capitalism
Marx was of course against private ownership and control of production, and wanted to replace it by social ownership (of which more later), but this does not at all mean that his critique of capitalism can be reduced to a critique of private ownership.
Marx’s starting point in his critique was a profound analysis of alienation (in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 ) which showed how alienated labour (labour that is sold, i.e. wage labour) estranges humans from the products of their labour, from themselves, from their fellow human beings, and from nature. This was combined with a critique of the bureaucratic state in his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, which rejected the idea of the state as representing society as a whole. Marx developed his analysis of alienated labour into an analysis of exploitation which showed how capitalism was based on the extraction of surplus value (profit) from workers’ labour, first clearly formulated in 1847 in Wage Labour and Capital and later developed in Capital, and a historical theory of class struggle between exploiter and exploited, oppressor and oppressed, set out in The Communist Manifesto, which culminates in the struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat and, it was to be hoped, the victory of the proletariat, thus establishing a society where accumulated or dead labour serves living labour rather than vice versa and all class divisions are overcome. To depict this total critique and vision of human liberation as essentially an argument about state ownership versus private ownership is to narrow it and falsify it.
Moreover, Marx’s critical analysis of capitalist production contains an important strand, the law of the concentration and centralisation of capital, which underpins the tendency within capitalism for the state to take over more and more means of production. Competition between capitalists means, says Marx, that “one capitalist always kills many.” Capital accumulation means the “concentration of capitals already formed, destruction of their individual independence, expropriation of capitalist by capitalist, transformation of many small into few large capitals.” Thus, free market capitalism, by its own laws, becomes transformed into monopoly capitalism with the concentration of ever larger amounts of capital and production in the hands of ever fewer and larger companies. This tendency has been empirically confirmed by the development of capitalism over the last 150 years, and can be visibly observed today in the domination of global oil, gas, steel, and car production, of banking, retail, computing, and social media, by handfuls of giant corporations that have become household names—BP, Shell, Mittal, Toyota, Goldman Sachs, WallMart, Amazon, Google, etc.
Theoretically, Marx speculates, the limit of this centralisation would be ‘when the entire social capital was united in the hands of rather a single capitalist or a single capitalist company,” but in practice what is more likely is that increasing spheres of production are taken over by the state. This development was explored and predicted by Engels in his famous work Socialism: Utopian or Scientific. Engels comments on the rise in the nineteenth century of joint-stock companies and trusts, and then continues:
In any case, with trusts or without, the official representative of capitalist society—the state—will ultimately have to undertake the direction of production. This necessity for conversion into State property is felt first in the great institutions for intercourse and communication—the post office, the telegraphs, the railways…
But, the transformation—either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership—does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine—the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers—proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. [My emphasis – JM]
Nor was it just Engels who wrote on these lines. There was extensive discussion within the Marxist movement of tendencies towards state capitalism, particularly in conjunction with imperialism, long prior to the advent of Stalinist Russia: Connolly (as we shall see), Lenin, and Bukharin, among others, all used the term in various ways. This discussion cannot be reviewed here, but it is worth noting the contribution of Bukharin, who, in his study of imperialism in 1915, identified two contradictory tendencies in the development of capitalism: a tendency towards internationalisation (it would be called globalisation now) and a tendency towards statification. On one thing Bukharin, who was close to Lenin, was emphatic: the state takeover of productive forces (“nationalisation”) in no way altered the capitalist nature of either the productive relations or the state. He wrote:
With the growth of the importance of state power, its inner structure also changes. The state becomes more than ever before an “executive committee of the ruling classes”….Being a very large shareholder in the state capitalist trust, the modern state is the highest and all-embracing organisational culmination of the latter.
In response to then-fashionable talk of “state socialism” and “war socialism” regarding the state’s takeover of industries during World War I, Bukharin replied:
What is that picture of present-day "State Socialism" which appears to be a "change in principle"? From the foregoing analysis the answer seems to follow with irresistible logic: We have here the process of accelerated centralisation within the framework of a state capitalist trust, which has developed to the highest form, not of State Socialism, but of State Capitalism. By no means do we see here a new structure of production, i.e., a change in the interrelation of classes; on the contrary, we have here an increase in the potency of the power of a class that owns the means of production in quantities hitherto unheard of. To apply to such a state of affairs a terminology fit for post-capitalist relations, is not only very risky, but also highly absurd. "War Socialism" and "State Socialism" are purposely being circulated with the direct intention of misleading the people and of covering up by a "good" word a very ungainly content. The capitalist mode of production is based on a monopoly of the means of production in the hands of the class of capitalists within the general framework of commodity exchange. There is no difference in principle whatsoever whether the state power is a direct expression of this monopoly or whether the monopoly is "privately" organised. In either case there remains commodity economy (in the first place the world market) and, what is more important, the class relations between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. 22
It follows from the above that (as far as capitalism will retain its foothold) the future belongs to economic forms that are close to state capitalism.
There remains one argument which appears both within and outside Marxist circles against even the theoretical possibility of a thoroughgoing state capitalist society. It is that whatever about the nature of nationalised industries within a predominantly private capitalist country, the moment the state sector becomes dominant or total there is a qualitative shift: the economic laws of capitalism no longer apply and the society ceases to be capitalist. This argument was neatly summarised by James Burnham in his important book The Managerial Revolution.
The term “state capitalism” seems to be due to a misunderstanding….When the state owns only a part, and a minor part, of the economy, with the rest of the economy remaining capitalist private enterprise, we might correctly speak of “state capitalism” in connection with that minor state-owned part: since, as we have seen, the economy remains in its balance capitalist and even the state-owned part may be directed primarily to the benefit of the capitalist part. But the “capitalism” in “state capitalism” is derived not from the state-controlled part. When the latter disappears, or becomes negligible, then the capitalism has disappeared. There is no paradox in saying that 10 times 10% state capitalism, far from equalling 100% capitalism, equals 0% capitalism. The multiplication is of state, not of capitalism. Though the mathematics would be much more complex, it would be nearer an analogy to say that, just as 10% state capitalist economy equals only 90% capitalist economy, so 100% (or even 80% or 70%) state economy would have eliminated capitalism altogether.
This objection might be valid if the statification were in a single, global, state-run economy, because then the competition between capitals which generates and enforces the drive to maximise profit and accumulate capital, which is the central dynamic of capitalism, would be absent. However, if, as is actually case, the process of statification is accomplished in one or several separate countries which remain in economic and therefore also geo-political and military competition with other states and economies within the world market, the principle features of capitalism—the exploitation of workers to maximise profit, competitive capital accumulation and compulsion to grow, and production for profit rather than human need—will continue.
Socialism, the state and the working class
Having rejected the view that capitalism can be defined essentially as a system of private property, I want now to turn to the idea that state ownership is an essential characteristic of socialism. The equation of state ownership with socialism is even weaker than the equation of private property with capitalism.
Just as there were many pre-capitalist societies founded on private property, and many capitalist societies which included a large measure of state ownership, so there were numerous manifestly non-socialist societies based largely on state or collective property. These include various instances of what Marx called “the Asiatic mode of production” and what Karl Wittfogel called “Oriental Despotism,” such as Moghul India and imperial China, along with Pharaonic Egypt, Mamluk Egypt in the Middle Ages, and the Aztec and Incan empires.
For Marx and Engels and all revolutionary socialists before the advent of Stalinism, socialism was first and foremost the self emancipation of the working class. The idea that state ownership separate from working-class emancipation constituted socialism was ruthlessly mocked by Engels. He writes:
But of late, since Bismarck went in for State-ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious Socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkyism, that without more ado declares all State-ownership, even of the Bismarkian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the State of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of Socialism.
If the Belgian State, for quite ordinary political and financial reasons, itself constructed its chief railway lines; if Bismarck, not under any economic compulsion, took over for the State the chief Prussian lines, simply to be the better able to have them in hand in case of war, to bring up the railway employees as voting cattle for the Government, and especially to create for himself a new source of income independent of parliamentary votes—this was, in no sense, a socialistic measure, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company, the Royal porcelain manufacture, and even the regimental tailor of the army would also be socialistic institutions, or even, as was seriously proposed by a sly dog in Frederick William III's reign, the taking over by the State of the brothels.
Similarly, James Connolly in 1899 argued:
One of the most significant signs of our times is the readiness with which our struggling middle class turns to schemes of State or Municipal ownership and control, for relief from the economic pressure under which it is struggling. Thus we find in England demands for the nationalisation of the telephone system, for the extension of municipal enterprise in the use of electricity, for the extension of the parcel system in the Post Office, for the nationalisation of railways and canals. In Ireland we have our middle class reformers demanding state help for agriculture, state purchase of lands, arterial draining, state construction of docks, piers and harbours, state aid for the fishing industry, state control of the relations between agricultural tenant and landlord, and also nationalisation of railways and canals. There is a certain section of Socialists, chiefly in England, who never tire of hailing all such demands for state activity as a sign of the growth of the Socialist spirit among the middle class, and therefore worthy of all the support the working-class democracy can give.
But all this notwithstanding, we would, without undue desire to carp or cavil, point out that to call such demands “Socialistic” is in the highest degree misleading. Socialism properly implies above all things the co-operative control by the workers of the machinery of production; without this co-operative control the public ownership by the State is not Socialism—it is only State capitalism.
Therefore, we repeat, state ownership and control is not necessarily Socialism—if it were, then the Army, the Navy, the Police, the Judges, the Gaolers, the Informers, and the Hangmen, all would all be Socialist functionaries, as they are State officials—but the ownership by the State of all the land and materials for labour, combined with the co-operative control by the workers of such land and materials, would be Socialism
To the cry of the middle class reformers, “make this or that the property of the government,” we reply, “yes, in proportion as the workers are ready to make the government their property.”
This is entirely consistent with the way in which Marx and Engels always posed the abolition of capitalism and the transition to socialism. In The German Ideology they state, “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement [i.e. the movement of the proletariat – JM] which abolishes the present state of things.” In The Poverty of Philosophy, “Just as the economists are the scientific representatives of the bourgeois class, so the Socialists and Communists are the theoreticians of the proletarian class [not of state property – JM].” In The Principles of Communism, Engels makes the first principle “Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.” The Communist Manifesto begins with an account of the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat which will culminate, Marx and Engels say, in the downfall of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat. Then they continue:
We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
And in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels writes:
Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and more of the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialized, into State property, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property. [Emphasis in the original]
In all of these formulations, and in Marxism as a whole, it is the proletariat or working class that is the driving force, the key element, the subject of the historical process. The proletariat wins state power and establishes state ownership of the means of production, not the other way round; state ownership is established and this raises up the proletariat. Socialism is not a blueprint for a planned economy based on state ownership drawn up by advanced theorists who enlist the proletariat (or some other social force) to help set it up; it is the form of society the proletariat must establish in the process of liberating itself.
Yes, the proletariat requires a state and state ownership in order to take possession and control of the main means of production; it cannot do this as individuals or workplace by workplace. This a key point of difference between Marxism and anarchism. But this state is not the existing capitalist state taken over by the proletariat, For Marx this was the key lesson from the experience of the Paris Commune. “One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz. that ‘the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.’”. Instead, the capitalist state must be dismantled and replaced by “the proletariat organised as the ruling class,” which Marx called “the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
In short, for Marx and Engels and for James Connolly (and the same was true of Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin, Bukharin, Trotsky, Lukacs, Gramsci, and all the revolutionary socialists prior to Stalinism), there could be no socialism without the leading role of the working class.
Relevance today
The concept of state capitalism has vital strategic relevance for the whole socialist movement internationally. If the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism can be realised simply through state ownership, then there is no necessity for working-class revolution. On the contrary, capitalism can be overcome and socialism instituted by a variety of means. It can be achieved by the gradual extension of public ownership by a social democratic or reformist government through parliamentary legislation. For many decades this was the central strategic goal of the mainstream of social democracy, and after it was increasingly abandoned in favour of neoliberalism, it remained the defining aim of left reformists such as Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn. Substantial statification can also be realised by “modernising” nationalist military (or military-linked) political forces, such as Nasser in Egypt, or even imposed from above by a foreign army, as was done by the Russian army in much of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II.
Of course, there will be times when revolutionary socialists will call for the formation of a left government committed to major reforms, including nationalisation, and will support such a government against the right. Here an understanding of the concept of state capitalism is important because it reinforces the point that such a left government is only a stepping stone towards workers’ power and socialism, not in itself the actual inauguration of socialism.
There will also be many occasions when socialists demand the nationalisation of particular companies or industrial sectors, particularly when they are claiming bankruptcy and throwing their workforce on the dole. Again, the concept of state capitalism is a useful reminder that such nationalisation is only a reform—revolutionaries do fight for reforms—within capitalism and that nationalised firms and industries remain capitalist (i.e., they continue to operate with capitalist relations of production, and class struggle continues within them). This is important because certain types of reformist trade union leaders will try use the status of nationalisation as an argument for holding back workers’ struggle in these sectors.
Another question, growing more important by the day, where the concept of state capitalism is vital, is China. Four decades of spectacular economic growth have raised China into the world’s largest economy and made it the principal economic, political, and military rival to the United States and its informal empire. The US has responded as empires always do when faced with an emergent challenger (much as Britain responded to the rise of Germany in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century). Since Obama’s “pivot to Asia” in 2012, it has been shifting its foreign policy and military focus from the Middle East to South East Asia. Now with Biden and the recent AUKUS deal, the concentration on China is intensifying to the point where some commentators, such as John Bellamy Foster of the Monthly Review, are speaking of a new cold war.
This development lays a potential trap for the left, summed up in the phrase “My enemy’s enemy is my friend.” Since the US and its allies are lining up against China, and we know they are imperialist liars and robbers, there must be something good about China. This is a very dangerous “principle” for socialists. For example, the fact that in 1914 all the propagandists of the British Empire denounced the Kaiser’s Germany for its brutal militarism and expansionism did not mean it wasn’t brutal, militarist, and expansionist—it most certainly was—ask Rosa Luxemburg! I shall return to this later, but in the instance of China this kind of reaction can be reinforced and given a spurious Marxist gloss by arguing that China is not fully capitalist, or is even partly socialist, and not imperialist because of the size of its state sector and the key role of the state in directing the national economy. In this vein, John Bellamy Foster writes:
Even more important than external geopolitical relations in determining China’s future is the internal legacy of the Chinese revolution. The CCP retains strong support from the Chinese population. Moreover, despite the development of the various integuments of capital in China, a number of key strategic-economic variables, related to socialism, free it in part from the “antagonistic centrifugality” that accounts for capitalism’s “uncontrollability” as a system of social metabolic reproduction.11 The noncapitalist sector of the Chinese economy includes not just a large sector of state ownership, but also both state control of finance through state-owned banks and the continuing absence of the private ownership of land.
Substantial state ownership of basic infrastructure and finance has allowed for the continuation of economic planning in key areas, associated with a much higher rate of investment.
This kind of analysis misses a number of significant facts
1. The Chinese Revolution of 1949, which established the rule of the Chinese Communist Party, was not in any shape or form a workers’ revolution. It was brought about by a military conquest of the cities from the countryside by Mao’s peasant-based People’s Liberation Army. The working class did not intervene in any active way in this process, and at no point was there workers’ power, workers’ control of industry, or workers democracy (or any kind of democracy) under the Maoist regime.
2. Deng Xiaoping’s reforms from 1978 onwards, which for those who identify socialism with state ownership would be seen as a key counterrevolutionary moment, were accomplished without resistance from below and without substantial structural change in the Chinese state.
3. The Chinese economy is highly integrated into the capitalist world economy. China is the largest US merchandise trading partner, the biggest source of imports, and the third-largest US export market. China is also the largest foreign holder of US Treasury securities, which help fund the federal debt and keep US interest rates low. In addition, China’s stock markets are some of the largest in the world, with total market capitalisation reaching RMB 79 trillion (US$12.2 trillion) in 2020.
4. China has a broad, well-established and very rich bourgeoisie. According to Credit Suisse estimates, the number of dollar-millionaires residing in China totalled 5.3 million individuals, ranking second after the United States in the world. Within this, China has a very large number of super-rich. According to one estimate, China now has the largest number of billionaires, 1058, of any country in the world. Possibly more accurate is Forbes’ ranking of China as still being in second place to the US, with 698 to 724, but Forbes also comments that Beijing has added 33 billionaires in the last year and now hosts 100, beating by one New York City for the title of city with most billionaires.
5. This bourgeoisie presides over a highly unequal society. According to the World Bank, China’s Gini coefficient (the standard measure of income inequality in which 100 equals maximum inequality) stands at 38.5—more unequal than Ireland (32.8) and the UK (34.8), but slightly less unequal than the US (41.5). Most importantly, China has a massive, highly exploited working class with very poor conditions of work and no proper trade union rights but a considerable record of struggle.
In addition to this straightforward evidence demonstrating the capitalist nature of China, there is the fact that the Chinese regime is extremely authoritarian, brutal, and repressive. Amnesty International reported in 2020 that “China remained the world’s leading executioner—but the true extent of the use of the death penalty in China is unknown as this data is classified as a state secret,” and has also estimated that China carries out more executions than all other countries combined. Then there is the long-standing repression of Tibetans, Tiananmen Square dissidents, Uyghurs, and other Muslims and Hong Kong protestors. The idea that China is somehow semi-socialist leads both to a tendency to minimise this brutality and to the association of socialists with it. An understanding that China is not, and has not been, in any way socialist, but is rather state capitalist, cuts through this apologetics.
Painting China red is also an example—the most important example—of a tendency on the left known as “campism.” This is the idea that the essential division in the world is between two camps of countries: an imperialist camp headed by the US (and including its allies) and an anti-imperialist camp who oppose US hegemony. In this view, the job of the left is to solidarise with the anti-imperialist camp and not be too critical of its leaders, and certainly not to work for the overthrow of any of these allegedly anti-imperialist regimes—an activity seen as objectively (and probably subjectively) siding with US imperialism. Which regimes are considered part of this “progressive” camp varies with the current focus of US policy and the current alignment of said regimes. Thus, at different times it has included Syria, Venezuela, Libya, Cuba, Iraq, Ukraine, Putin’s Russia, Belarus, and others. Along with engaging in anti-US rhetoric, having a substantial state sector is commonly regarded as a significant qualifying characteristic for membership of the “anti-imperialist” camp.
Two major difficulties with this approach are: a) that it takes anti-imperialist rhetoric at face value when in reality it is entirely opportunistic and not matched with actions or, worse, is combined with imperialist and sub-imperialist deeds—Syria and Russia are a case in point; b) that it ignores the class struggle within the so-called anti-imperialist camp and denies the masses in these countries any right to rebel or resist their oppression. Assad, Gaddafi, and Maduro are not representatives or benefactors of the Syrian, Libyan, and Venezuelan working classes. Again, the concept of state capitalism safeguards against these dangers.
Finally there is the question of the environmental and climate crisis—the overarching global issue of our time and of the decades to come. When Marxists and ecosocialists say the problem is not human beings as such, or over population or industrialisation as such, or “the idea of economic growth,” but capitalism, many “greens” and environmentalists will simply reply, “But the Marxist/communist/ socialist countries have been an ecological disaster and just as committed to endless economic growth.” Leaving aside the terminology, they are right. China is again a key example. China overtook the US as the world’s leading carbon emitter in 2006, and now, at 2777 million tonnes per year, it emits more CO2 than the US (1442m), India (714), and Russia (458) combined. Within this, China is the world’s greatest producer of coal by a considerable margin. In 2020, China accounted for over 50 per cent of coal production worldwide. China is also by a long way the world’s largest producer of environmentally disastrous cement and of private cars. Of course, it can be said that this is because of the size of China’s population, but that doesn’t change the immense global problem it is creating. It can also be said that Xi Jinping is promising to do better, but so is everybody, and this ignores the fact that the Chinese government, like all governments, has known this crisis was looming for a long time and done nothing.
The concept of state capitalism is therefore vital to the ecosocialist case in that it explains that the commitment to environmentally damaging growth characteristic of so many of these “actually existing” socialist societies is derived not from their “Marxist” ideology but from their capitalist nature and their compulsion to compete within the world capitalist economy.
Thus we can conclude that although the theory of state capitalism was elaborated in response to the phenomenon of Stalinist Russia, it was deeply rooted in classical Marxism, set out before the Russian Revolution even occurred, and remains vital for understanding the contemporary world and for dealing with the political challenges facing socialists today.
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-77263224046702040342022-01-23T20:33:00.004+00:002022-01-23T20:33:49.846+00:00Marxism and FascismMarxism and Fascism
From Irish Marxist Review 30.
This article does not attempt to be an exhaustive survey of the Marxist literature on fascism, which is vast. Rather it is an overview of how the Marxist analysis of fascism was developed with a focus on the writings of Leon Trotsky, who contributed more than any other individual to the Marxist understanding of this phenomenon, supplemented by some thoughts on more recent developments.
The Marxist theory of fascism was developed in response to the emergence of a mass fascist movement and the threat which it posed to the workers’ movement and to socialism, i.e. it developed as a series of concrete analyses of current political phenomena, neither as a priori abstract theorising nor as historical reflection. Fascism first appeared as a significant force in Italy and Germany during the deep economic, social, and political crises that followed the First World War. Hitler founded the National Socialist German Workers Party in February 1920, and Mussolini founded the National Fascist Party in November 1921. Fascism was a new historical phenomenon, qualitatively different from previous authoritarian or autocratic regimes such as Tsarist Russia, the Kaiser’s Germany, or the absolute monarchies of the 17th and 18th centuries. Consequently there is no theory of fascism, or even the concept, in Marx and Engels or in Kautsky, Luxemburg, or Lenin.
The closest approximation to a precedent in the writings of Marx and Engels is the concept of ‘Bonapartism’, derived from analysis of the French Second Empire, the regime of Louis Napoleon III, and set out by Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and elsewhere. Louis Napoleon established his dictatorship by means of a coup d’état in December 1851, after a period as elected president following the 1848 Revolution which ended the reign of Louis-Philippe. Bonapartism was a regime characterised by a strong executive, absence of democratic rights, and repression of republicans and the left. It expressed, Marx argued, a situation where ‘the bourgeoisie had already lost, and the working class had not yet acquired the faculty of ruling the nation.’ The state achieved a certain relative autonomy balancing between the two basic classes and playing them off against each other, although ultimately acting in the interests of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie gave up its direct political power in order to preserve its social power intact. These concepts proved useful building blocks for the future analysis of fascism, but given the immense difference in scale, ferocity, and historical importance of the reaction imposed by Napoleon III and that of Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco, they could not in any way substitute for such an analysis.
Fascism in Italy: the first response
The fact that fascism first became a really threatening phenomenon in Italy meant that it fell to Italian Marxists to be the first to attempt a theoretical account of it. Unfortunately they did not acquit themselves well in this regard. The dominant Marxist in Italy at the time of the rise of Mussolini’s movement (1920-21) and his assumption of power in October 1922 was the initial leader of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), Amadeo Bordiga. Bordiga was a hardened ultraleft with an abstract propagandist conception of the party. He saw fascism as simply another aspect of bourgeois repression and drew no real distinction between fascism and bourgeois democracy, and consequently did not see the need for any specific or concrete analysis of it. As a result, the main political report, authored by Bordiga, presented to the Rome Congress of the PCI in March 1922 barely mentioned fascism. Bordiga opposed any notion of a united-front strategy against fascism and, indeed, the whole concept of the united front adopted by the Communist International in 1922, with the consequence that the PCI failed either to perceive the threat posed by Mussolini or to organise any specific resistance to his conquest of power. Gramsci was better than this in that he, probably alone among the Italian Communists, did see the possibility of the fascists taking power, but he only produced a few journalistic articles on fascism, not a rounded theoretical analysis, and he, like Bordiga and under his influence, opposed the idea of an anti-fascist united front until the mid -twenties.
Clara Zetkin
In fact it was the German Communist Clara Zetkin, close comrade of Rosa Luxemburg, who produced the first substantial Marxist analysis of fascism. This was in Zetkin’s Report to the Comintern Executive in June 1923. The first merit of Zetkin’s analysis was that she grasped the deadly serious threat posed by fascism. Her report begins:
Fascism confronts the proletariat as an exceptionally dangerous and frightful enemy. Fascism is the strongest, most concentrated, and classic expression at this time of the world bourgeoisie’s general offensive. It is urgently necessary that it be brought down. This is true not only with respect to the historic existence of the proletariat as a class, which will free humankind by surmounting capitalism. It is also a question of survival for every ordinary worker, a question of bread, working conditions, and quality of life for millions and millions of the exploited.
She also identified fascism as a symptom of the profound crisis of capitalism—‘We view fascism as an expression of the decay and disintegration of the capitalist economy’—and a product of the fact that this decay was inflicting massive impoverishment not only on workers but also on intermediate layers such as intellectuals and the lower middle classes. And she indentified a key difference between fascism and the kind of bloody counterrevolutionary terror witnessed in Hungary in 1921 under the Horthy regime as lying in the fact that whereas the Horthy terror was the work of ‘a small caste of feudal officers’, fascism had a mass base among a ‘broad social layer, broad masses’.. Zetkin saw fascism as a kind of historical punishment for the failure to carry through to victory the proletarian revolution, a failure for which the Social Democrats and even to some extent the communist parties were responsible. In a perceptive passage she noted:
Masses in their thousands streamed to fascism. It became an asylum for all the politically homeless, the socially uprooted, the destitute and disillusioned. And what they no longer hoped for from the revolutionary proletarian class and from socialism, they now hoped would be achieved by the most able, strong, determined, and bold elements of every social class. All these forces must come together in a community. And this community, for the fascists, is the nation. They wrongly imagine that the sincere will to create a new and better social reality is strong enough to overcome all class antagonisms. The instrument to achieve fascist ideals is, for them, the state. A strong and authoritarian state that will be their very own creation and their obedient tool. This state will tower high above all differences of party and class, and will remake society in accord with their ideology and program.
Zetkin rejected the predominant social democratic approach to fascism, which was to reduce it purely to violence and criminality and thus to something to be dealt with just by police measures. She noted that fascism always combines violence with ‘a sham revolutionary programme, which links up in extremely clever fashion with the moods, interests and demands of broad social masses’ and therefore must be combated politically and ideologically as well as by force. However, she insisted it was necessary to
Meet violence with violence. But not violence in the form of individual terror—that will surely fail. But rather violence as the power of the revolutionary organized proletarian class struggle.
This in turn necessitated the formation of ‘a proletarian united front … Workers must come together for struggle without distinctions of party or trade union affiliation’. Moreover, the mass united front needed to be capped by the call for a ‘workers’ and peasants’ government … [This] slogan is virtually a requirement for the struggle to defeat fascism’.
Many of the themes in Zetkin’s report were later taken up by Trotsky in his analysis of the rise of the Nazis, but, although her report was adopted by the Comintern Executive in 1923, it did not remain Comintern policy for long, being overturned in 1924. As John Riddell writes:
In his opening report to the Fifth Comintern Congress in 1924, its president, Gregory Zinoviev, abandoned Zetkin’s analysis … by claiming that … ‘The Social Democratic Party has become a wing of fascism … The Fascists are the right hand and the Social Democrats are the left hand of the bourgeoisie’. This ultra left position excluded the possibility of united action involving Communist and Social Democratic workers—the very error that had crippled resistance to Italian Fascism during its rise to power in 1921-22.
Stalin went even further with this theory of ‘social fascism’. In September 1924 he wrote:
Firstly, it is not true that fascism is only the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie. Fascism is not only a military-technical category. Fascism is the bourgeoisie’s fighting organisation that relies on the active support of Social-Democracy. Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism. There is no ground for assuming that the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of Social-Democracy. These organisations do not negate, but supplement each other. They are not antipodes, they are twins.
It is important to understand that Zinoviev and Stalin were not really moving leftwards here or taking genuinely ultra-left positions, like Bordiga for example. Rather, they were using ultra-left phrases as a cover for a rightward drift involving opportunistic alliances with forces such as Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist Kuomintang in China and the leaders of the British TUC. As we shall see, this pattern was to repeat itself with disastrous consequences in 1928-33.
Trotsky’s analysis
This brings us to the most important Marxist analysis of fascism, that of Leon Trotsky. Two preliminary remarks about this: The first is that it was made in the most difficult circumstances and it was an extraordinary achievement that it was made at all. In 1927 Trotsky was expelled from the CPSU; in 1928 he was forcibly exiled to Alma Ata on the border with China; in 1929 he was deported to the Prinkipo Islands off the coast of Turkey, where amongst many other difficulties, news from Germany took a long time to arrive. Yet in these conditions in which most mortals would have been pretty exclusively concerned with their own fate, Trotsky managed, between 1928-34, to write a series of major articles on the events in Germany as they unfolded, which collected together form a book of almost 500 pages, whilst in the same period writing a book-length study of the Third International After Lenin, his three-volume History of the Russian Revolution, his autobiography My Life, and a stream of articles on subjects ranging from unfolding events in Russia to China and Spain.
The second preliminary mark to be made is that Trotsky’s theory was not the product of a stand-alone special study or scholarly research (like ,say, his History of the Russian Revolution); rather it was developed in, and out of, a polemic and political struggle against the line on fascism of the Moscow-dominated Comintern. In 1928 the Comintern, under Stalin’s direction, adopted an intensified version of the ‘social fascism’ position of Zinoviev and Stalin in 1924 which became known as ‘Third Period Stalinism’. History since World War One was divided into three periods: 1917-24, the ‘first period’ of revolutionary upsurge; 1925-8, the ‘second period’ of capitalist stabilisation; and 1928 onwards, the ‘third period’ of the final crisis of capitalism and renewed revolutionary upsurge. The communist parties were instructed to abandon united-front work, to form breakaway ‘red’ trade unions, and to treat social democratic parties as fascist and often as the main enemy. Trotsky considered this ‘periodisation’ to be completely arbitrary and remote from the actual course of the class struggle and also extremely damaging to the struggle against fascism at precisely the moment this was becoming most acute. It was damaging because: a) by claiming that the Social Democrats and the Centre Party government of Brüning were fascist it suggested that fascism was already in power and there was nothing particular to fear from Hitler and the Nazis; and b) by labelling the Social Democrats as fascist it blocked the formation of the workers’ united front needed to stop Hitler.
The first aim of Trotsky’s polemic was to warn the German workers and communists of the terrible danger they were facing, and to this end he deployed all his considerable rhetorical powers.
It is the duty of the Left Opposition to give the alarm: the leadership of the Comintern is driving the German proletariat toward an enormous catastrophe, the essence of which is panicky capitulation before fascism!…
The coming to power of the National Socialists would mean first of all the extermination of the flower of the German proletariat, the destruction of its organizations, the eradication of its belief in itself and in its future. Considering the far greater maturity and acuteness of the social contradictions in Germany, the hellish work of Italian fascism would probably appear as a pale and almost humane experiment in comparison with the work of the German National Socialists…
Germany is now passing through one of those great historic hours upon which the fate of the German people, the fate of Europe, and in significant measure the fate of all humanity, will depend for decades…
Worker-Communists, you are hundreds of thousands, millions; you cannot leave for anyplace; there are not enough passports for you. Should fascism come to power, it will ride over your skulls and spines like a terrific tank. Your salvation lies in merciless struggle. And only a fighting unity with the Social Democratic workers can bring victory. Make haste, worker-Communists, you have very little time left!
But this was far from being just powerful rhetoric. Trotsky’s predictions and his urgency were based on a developed and concrete analysis of the fundamental nature of fascism and Nazism. Its central idea was Trotsky’s grasp of the class nature of fascism as a movement of the petty bourgeoisie, driven to despair by the acute crisis of capitalism and by the inability of the workers’ movement to resolve that crisis.
At the moment that the ‘normal’ police and military resources of the bourgeois dictatorship, together with their parliamentary screens, no longer suffice to hold society in a state of equilibrium—the turn of the fascist regime arrives. Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie, and bands of the declassed and demoralized lumpen proletariat; all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy. From fascism the bourgeoisie demands a thorough job; once it has resorted to methods of civil war, it insists on having peace for a period of years. And the fascist agency, by utilizing the petty bourgeoisie as a battering ram, by overwhelming all obstacles in its path, does a thorough job. After fascism is victorious, finance capital gathers into its hands, as in a vise of steel, directly and immediately, all the organs and institutions of sovereignty, the executive, administrative, and educational powers of the state: the entire state apparatus together with the army, the municipalities, the universities, the schools, the press, the trade unions, and the cooperatives. When a state turns fascist, it doesn’t only mean that the forms and methods of government are changed in accordance with the patterns set by Mussolini—the changes in this sphere ultimately play a minor role—but it means, primarily and above all, that the workers’ organizations are annihilated … Therein precisely is the gist of fascism.
For Trotsky it was fascism’s character as a mass movement based on the enraged petty bourgeoisie that distinguished it from other right-wing authoritarian rulers and regimes and made it such a deadly threat to the workers’ movement and to socialists. It gave fascism, both in Italy and in Germany, the ability through its combat squads to take on and smash the organisations of the workers’ movement at the base, in the communities, on the streets, and in the workplaces in a way that was not possible for an ‘ordinary’ military dictator.
The petty bourgeois social base of the fascist movement was also the key to understanding its ideology, including its virulent anti-Semitism. Standing above the proletariat but beneath the big bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie felt squeezed in conditions of extreme capitalist crisis between the two basic classes in society: on the one hand exploited and bankrupted by the power of finance capital and the banks; on the other pressured by the working class with its trade unions and its demands for decent wages and conditions. It therefore turned to a narrative which depicted the banks and the left as different wings of a conspiracy against ‘the German nation’, i.e. themselves, orchestrated, of course, by the Jews. The bankers, the Rothschilds, etc. were Jews; the communists (Marx, Luxemburg, Trotsky, etc.) were Jews, hence the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy.
The big bourgeoisie, even those who supported Hitler with money, did not consider his party theirs. The national ‘renaissance’ leaned wholly upon the middle classes, the most backward part of the nation, the heavy ballast of history. Political art consisted in fusing the petty bourgeoisie into oneness through its common hostility to the proletariat. What must be done in order to improve things? First of all, throttle those who are underneath. Impotent before big capital, the petty bourgeoisie hopes in the future to regain its social dignity through the ruin of the workers.
As Social Democracy saved the bourgeoisie from the proletarian revolution, fascism came in its turn to liberate the bourgeoisie from the Social Democracy. Hitler’s coup is only the final link in the chain of counterrevolutionary shifts.
The petty bourgeois is hostile to the idea of development, for development goes immutably against him; progress has brought him nothing except irredeemable debts. National Socialism rejects not only Marxism but Darwinism. The Nazis curse materialism because the victories of technology over nature have signified the triumph of large capital over small. The leaders of the movement are liquidating ‘intellectualism’ because they themselves possess second- and third-rate intellects, and above all because their historic role does not permit them to pursue a single thought to its conclusion. The petty bourgeois needs a higher authority, which stands above matter and above history, and which is safeguarded from competition, inflation, crisis, and the auction block. To evolution, materialist thought, and rationalism—of the twentieth, nineteenth, and eighteenth centuries—is counterposed in his mind national idealism as the source of heroic inspiration. Hitler’s nation is the mythological shadow of the petty bourgeoisie itself, a pathetic delirium of a thousand-year Reich.
In order to raise it above history, the nation is given the support of the race. History is viewed as the emanation of the race. The qualities of the race are construed without relation to changing social conditions. Rejecting ‘economic thought’ as base, National Socialism descends a stage lower: from economic materialism it appeals to zoologic materialism…
Fascism has opened up the depths of society for politics. Today, not only in peasant homes but also in city skyscrapers, there lives alongside of the twentieth century the tenth or the thirteenth. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic power of signs and exorcisms … Everything that should have been eliminated from the national organism in the form of cultural excrement in the course of the normal development of society has now come gushing out from the throat; capitalist society is puking up the undigested barbarism. Such is the physiology of National Socialism.
In order to argue for the strategy of a united front which Trotsky believed was essential for stopping the rise to power of Hitler in particular and fascism in general, he had to take on and refute in detail the theory that the Social Democrats were social fascists or that social democracy and fascism were twins. And here it must be remembered that among German communist workers at this time, memories were still fresh of the betrayal of the German Revolution of 1919–23 by the SPD and the complicity of its leaders in the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Trotsky made his case not by dropping or even softening his criticism of social democracy but on the basis of understanding how its political role and social base differed from that of fascism and arguing that the victory of fascism would mean the annihilation of social democracy along with the destruction of all forms of independent workers’ organisation.
The task of fascism lies not only in destroying the Communist vanguard but in holding the entire class in a state of forced disunity. To this end the physical annihilation of the most revolutionary section of the workers does not suffice. It is also necessary to smash all independent and voluntary organizations, to demolish all the defensive bulwarks of the proletariat, and to uproot whatever has been achieved during three-quarters of a century by the Social Democracy and the trade unions. For, in the last analysis, the Communist Party also bases itself on these achievements.
The Social Democracy has prepared all the conditions necessary for the triumph of fascism. But by this fact it has also prepared the stage for its own political liquidation. It is absolutely correct to place on the Social Democrats the responsibility for the emergency legislation of Brüning as well as for the impending danger of fascist savagery. It is absolute balderdash to identify Social Democracy with fascism.
The Social Democracy, which is today the chief representative of the parliamentary-bourgeois regime, derives its support from the workers. Fascism is supported by the petty bourgeoisie. The Social Democracy without the mass organizations of the workers can have no influence. Fascism cannot entrench itself in power without annihilating the workers’ organizations. Parliament is the main arena of the Social Democracy. The system of fascism is based upon the destruction of parliamentarism. For the monopolistic bourgeoisie, the parliamentary and fascist regimes represent only different vehicles of dominion; it has recourse to one or the other, depending upon the historical conditions. But for both the Social Democracy and fascism, the choice of one or the other vehicle has an independent significance; more than that, for them it is a question of political life or death.
Trotsky’s advocacy of an anti-fascist united front between the KPD and the SPD was ignored by both parties with the disastrous consequence, which he entirely predicted, that Hitler came to power without serious resistance in January 1933. This negative confirmation of his analysis was not, however, the end of the matter. Stalin soon realised that the establishment of a Nazi regime in Berlin posed a direct military threat to the Soviet Union. Hitler and German imperialism wanted lebensraum for an expanded Germany in the East. Stalin responded to this threat by trying to form an alliance with Britain and France, i.e. with British and French imperialism (as in the First World War), and in line with this he brought about a complete transformation in Comintern policy. In 1934, about a year after Hitler’s victory, the Comintern began a 180-degree turn from the extreme ultra-leftism of the ‘Third Period’ to the class collaborationism of the Popular Front. The policy was pioneered by the French Communist Party, which formed an anti-fascist alliance with the Socialist Party and the Radical Party (a thoroughly bourgeois party headed by Eduard Daladier, prime minister of France on several occasions). It was then adopted as an international strategy at the Comintern’s Seventh Congress in 1935. The essence of the Popular Front was the unity of all ‘democratic’ forces, including bourgeois ones, against fascism.
Trotsky was just as critical of the Popular Front strategy as he was of the preceding ultra-leftism and he developed this criticism in relation to events in France, with the formation of a Popular Front Government in 1936 under Leon Bloom, and in Spain, with the election, also in 1936, of a Popular Front Government met by Franco’s attempted fascist coup, the uprising of the Spanish working class (above all in Barcelona), and the three-year-long civil war. For Trotsky, the Popular Front represented a ‘betrayal of the proletariat for the sake of an alliance with the bourgeoisie’. It not only sabotaged the developing French and Spanish Revolutions but was also completely ineffective as a method of combating fascism. This was because the defeat of fascism required, as he had argued in relation to Germany, the united mobilisation of the working class, but this would be completely blocked and undermined by an alliance with outright bourgeois parties and forces, i.e. political formations inherently opposed to working-class action.
The theoreticians of the Popular Front do not essentially go beyond the first rule of arithmetic, that is, addition: ‘Communists’ plus Socialists plus Anarchists plus liberals add up to a total which is greater than their respective isolated numbers. Such is all their wisdom. However, arithmetic alone does not suffice here. One needs as well at least mechanics. The law of the parallelogram of forces applies to politics as well. In such a parallelogram, we know that the resultant is shorter, the more component forces diverge from each other. When political allies tend to pull in opposite directions, the resultant prove equal to zero.
A bloc of divergent political groups of the working class is sometimes completely indispensable for the solution of common practical problems. In certain historical circumstances, such a bloc is capable of attracting the oppressed petty-bourgeois masses whose interests are close to the interests of the proletariat. The joint force of such a bloc can prove far stronger than the sum of the forces of each of its component parts. On the contrary, the political alliance between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, whose interests on basic questions in the present epoch diverge at an angle of 180 degrees, as a general rule is capable only of paralyzing the revolutionary force of the proletariat.
Civil war, in which the force of naked coercion is hardly effective, demands of its participants the spirit of supreme self-abnegation. The workers and peasants can assure victory only if they wage a struggle for their own emancipation. Under these conditions, to subordinate the proletariat to the leadership of the bourgeoisie means beforehand to assure defeat in the civil war.
Once again the course of events, most tragically in Spain, was to confirm the accuracy of Trotsky’s analysis and warnings. Since 1945 there has been, thankfully, no historical experience of fascism comparable to that between the wars and no theoretical contribution on the subject comparable in importance to Trotsky’s. There has been a major debate on the nature and causation of the Holocaust to which many Marxists, including a number from the International Socialist traditional , have contributed, but I am treating that as outside the scope of this article. There have also been a series of contributions which are essentially defences, applications, or developments of Trotsky’s approach. Again, I am not going to survey this literature here. However, there are two significant changes that have occurred since the struggle in the 1930s which have strategic implications for the fight against fascism and which I want to flag up here.
The united front today
The first concerns the nature of the united front. The united front as advocated by Trotsky in the 1930s and previously by the Comintern in 1922 (including, very strongly, by Trotsky ) was essentially an agreement to form a common front between the two main political forces in the international working-class movement, the Social Democrats and the Communists. What Trotsky argued was that the leaderships of the communist parties should approach the leaderships of the social democratic parties with a view to reaching a concrete agreement for anti-fascist resistance. If such an alliance was established it would, he believed (and with good reason), mobilise millions of workers behind it. But neither in Ireland nor in most countries today is a replica of such a united workers’ front an objective possibility. On the one hand the Social Democratic or Labour parties are nowhere near the social force they were in the 1920s or ’30s, either in terms of roots in the organised working class or as physical organisations. (The SPD, for example, had significant combat groups for street fighting.) The communist parties, on the other hand, barely exist. It has been necessary, therefore, to find another route to establishing the required united front.
A useful model in this regard is provided by the Anti-Nazi League
(ANL) formed in 1977 to combat the rise of the neo-Nazi National Front (NF) in the UK. The ANL was launched by the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in alliance, not with the Labour Party as a whole, but with individual left Labour MPs (such as Neil Kinnock and Peter Hain), some trade union groups and officials (e.g. Ernie Roberts of the AEU), and various sporting figures and celebrities (Jack Charlton and Brian Clough). It worked closely with the musical movement Rock Against Racism, also launched by SWP members (David Widgery, Red Saunders, and Roger Huddle) and which was supported by many leading bands of the day such as The Clash, Steel Pulse, and the Tom Robinson Band. It operated, very successfully, through a combination of large street mobilisations against NF rallies and meetings, big music carnivals attracting up to 100,000 people, and mass leafleting campaigns when the NF stood in elections. This three-pronged approach played a major part in the political defeat and marginalisation of the NF. The ANL was then revived in the eighties to counter the rising British National Party of Nick Griffin and again met with considerable success. The fact that forty years on, Britain has not seen the emergence of a large fascist organisation, comparable to that which exists in many countries, is due, in no small measure, to the campaigning of those years. This experience stands in stark contrast to France where the far-left failed to campaign actively against the Front National, which before long became too large to be dealt with in this way. Circumstances differ in different countries and at different times, but the united front as an alliance driven by revolutionaries in conjunction with some reformists and progressive figures from civil society accompanied by mass grassroots mobilisations still seems the way to go in most cases in order to counter rising far-right movements. The key is to find the organisational form that best facilitates the active mobilisation of the maximum possible numbers on the ground.
The Far Right today
The second issue I want to raise is more complex and analytical in that it concerns the debate on the nature of the far-right parties, movements, and governments that we are currently facing. They are large in number and very varied in character, ranging from the very evidently neo-Nazi such as Golden Dawn in Greece or Jobbik in Hungary to the much milder UKIP in Britain, with many others somewhere in between such as Trump and his assorted followers, the Modi Government in India, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Victor Orban and Fidesz in Hungary, AfD in Germany, the Lega in Italy, the Swedish Democrats, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (formerly Front National), and our Irish rag bag of Yellow Vests, Irish Freedom Party, and National Party.
Some on the left deal with this problem by simply labelling all these varied right-wing forces fascist, especially if they in any way engage in racist messaging (which is effectively all of them), and some even include under the fascist label mainstream right wingers like Thatcher, Johnson, or Leo Varadkar. This is very unhelpful in that it deprives the category of fascist of any specificity and obliterates the important distinction between those politicians and parties that operate within the framework of bourgeois democracy and those prepared to move beyond it. It has the same flaw, on a lesser scale, as the Stalinist theory of social fascism in that it breeds a baleful complacency. To put it in concrete Irish terms, if Leo Varadkar and Fine Gael are fascist, why worry about the much smaller National Party.
For those basing themselves on Trotsky’s analysis, the key distinction was between, on the one hand, far-right, or racist populist or conservative nationalist parties which nevertheless remained within the limits of bourgeois parliamentary democracy in that they accepted election results and did not engage in street fighting and were therefore not fascist (UKIP in Britain being an obvious example), and on the other hand, parties that” a) came from a clearly fascist or Nazi heritage; b) were run by an inner core that subscribed to some version of Nazi ideology, e.g. the Jewish conspiracy theory; and/or c) possessed a combat or proto-paramilitary wing which were therefore judged to be definitely fascist. What was crucial about this distinction was that it was presumed that if the latter came to power they would, like Hitler, move against parliamentary democracy and establish a dictatorship and, simultaneously, smash up labour movement organisations including the trade unions.
But this distinction, real and necessary as it is, does not exhaust the matter. What the last twenty years or so has thrown up is parties and forces that seem to vacillate or hover between these two categories and possess some characteristics of each of them. Donald Trump is a case in point. Trump came to power in 2016 from outside the traditional centre of US politics but nevertheless through the vehicle of the mainstream Republican Party and without an independent street fighting force. For this reason, those of us basing ourselves on Trotsky rejected the idea that Trump was fascist. Others, notably Cornel West, Judith Butler, and John Bellamy Foster of Monthly Review, disagreed. Foster cites Trump as an instance of a wider phenomenon which he calls ‘neo-fascism’ writing of:
movements in the ‘fascist genus’ (fascism/neofascism/post-fascism), characterized by virulently xenophobic, ultra-nationalist tendencies, rooted primarily in the lower-middle class and relatively privileged sections of the working class, in alliance with monopolistic capital. This can be seen in the National Front in France, the Northern League in Italy, the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, the UK Independence Party, the Sweden Democrats, and similar parties and movements in other advanced capitalist countries.
Michael Lowy also deploys the concept of neo-fascism in a similar way but makes clear the difference between neo-fascism and the fascism of the past.
One of the most disturbing phenomena of recent years is the spectacular rise, worldwide, of far right-wing, authoritarian and reactionary governments, in some cases with neo-fascist traits: Shinzo Abe (Japan), Modi (India), Trump (USA), Orban (Hungary) and Bolsonaro (Brazil) are the best known examples…
Neofascism is not a repetition of fascism in the 1930s: it is a new phenomenon, with characteristics of the 21st century. For example, it does not take the form of a police dictatorship, but respects some democratic forms: elections, party pluralism, freedom of the press, existence of a Parliament, etc. Naturally, it tries, as far as possible, to limit these democratic freedoms as much as it is able with authoritarian and repressive measures. Nor does it rely on armed shock troops, such as the German SS or the Italian Fascists.
In a similar vein has been the use of the term ‘creeping fascism’ to describe virtually all the movements and governments of the racist right, including that of Donald Trump. This has been developed in book form, particularly in relation to Britain, by Neil Faulkner and others in Creeping Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It.
This issue of which organisations and governments should be named as fascist and where the borderline exists, if at all, between far-right or right-wing populists, etc. and actual fascists requires major discussion, including a concrete analysis of parties such the Front National/National Rally and the Italian Lega and governments such as Bolsonaro’s that is not possible here. However, I do not find the concept of neo-fascism, still less that of ‘creeping fascism’, convincing. What they both do is blur what seems to me the very important distinction, a matter of life and death, between regimes which annihilate and crush both parliamentary democracy and the organisations of the labour movement and regimes which do not. But in asserting that this distinction is vital we should not fall into the opposite trap of considering the character of parties and regimes to be fixed and immutable. The phrase ‘The leopard does not change its spots’ is not helpful here. Political leopards change their spots all the time, as the history of Social Democratic and Communist parties shows. Parties and leaders can move in different directions, moderating and/or radicalising. The Swedish Democrats had their origins in Swedish fascism; this in itself does not mean they still are fascist. Oswald Mosley began as a mainstream politician, including serving as a minister in the Labour government of 1929-31, and then became a full on fascist. Donald Trump did not run for president on a fascist basis, and his administration, for all its racist, sexist, and authoritarian awfulness, was not fascist in that it did not, for example, abolish congress, halt elections, or dismantle the trade union movement. Nevertheless, there was a moment in late 2020 after his electoral defeat when it looked as if he might try to move in an outright fascist direction. In the event, he did not, especially after the debacle of the 6 January incursion, and he remained with the framework of the Republican right. But, again, that could change in the future.
This is why there needs to be concrete analysis. At the same time, concrete analysis requires a theoretical foundation, and, I would argue, the theory developed by Trotsky in the 1930s remains the best starting point for such contemporary work.
<div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-17974751941978378122022-01-23T20:25:00.005+00:002022-01-23T20:25:47.346+00:00What Price Eco-Leninism<b></b>What price Eco-Leninism?<b></b>
This article was originally published in Rupture 4.
‘The time has come to experiment with ecological Leninism’. Andreas Malm
As a long standing Leninist and convinced ecosocialist it might be expected I would leap at the term ‘eco-leninism’ and, indeed, I strongly favour a Leninist approach to environmental issues along with the struggle for socialism as a whole. I will return to what I mean by that later in this article. But it first has to be said that when it comes to adopting political concepts and labels not only general principles but also the political context must always be taken in to account.
Marx and Engels say somewhere that in the mid-1840s they called themselves communists rather than socialists because at that time in France and Germany the term communist was favoured in the working class whereas socialist was preferred in middle class circles. In the 1870s however they were happy to call themselves both socialists and social-democrats because those terms were gaining mass appeal, especially in Germany. In the early years of the twentieth century Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky were proud Social Democrats but after the betrayal of August 1914 when most of the leaders of the Second international supported the imperialist world war Lenin argued for abandoning the tainted label of social democrat and returning to the name communist. In 1917 the Bolshevik Party as a whole and Trotsky followed suit as did Luxemburg shortly thereafter. Today no revolutionary socialist would call themselves a social democrat.
In this instance the context is Andreas Malm’s call for ‘ecological Leninism‘ in his recent book Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency (CCCE). Malm is an interesting, provocative and very prolific writer and this book merits a proper critical review in its own right which takes on board many of his valuable insights as well as discussing some of his limitations. This article, however, is not a review of the book as a whole but rather a response specifically to his notion of ‘eco-leninism’, with which I have a number of issues.
For Malm the Leninism he invokes is that of the period of ‘War Communism’ in the young Soviet state, roughly 1918 to early 1921. It involves an energetic highly interventionist state, endowed with dictatorial, draconian even, powers to mobilise and direct all of society’s resources and labour to deal with an immense crisis – in Lenin’s case the Civil War and famine, in our case the pandemic and the climate catastrophe.
First of all I’m unhappy about this presentation of the Lenin of War Communism as the essential Lenin. In general I would defend Lenin’s actions during this period but let’s be clear: it constituted only a small part of his political practice as a whole and one which was very much forced on him by immensely difficult circumstances. It is as if a doctor who devoted forty years to saving life but on one occasion shot a rabid dog who was menacing a patient was hailed and remembered as a dog killer. It is particularly unfortunate in that it chimes with and feeds into the dominant mainstream view of Lenin as an authoritarian figure who attempted to ‘impose’ socialism on the working class from above and who seized power in October 1917 in a party coup d’état rather than a workers’ revolution: a view I completely reject. Moreover the view of Leninism as essentially a certain ‘exemplary attitude to reality’ (Lukács ) or a kind of ‘gesture’ (Zizek )is often propounded by people who have abandoned the key political positions Lenin actually fought for, such as the revolutionary role of the working class, the necessity of a revolutionary party and the need to smash the capitalist state. And unfortunately this last point applies to Malm himself who says ‘the most classical Leninist gesture is the only one that can point to an emergency exit’ (CCCE p.148) while also arguing:
We have just argued that the capitalist state is constitutionally incapable of taking these steps. And yet there is no other form of state on offer. No workers’ state based on soviets will miraculously be born in the night. No dual power of the democratic organs of the proletariat seems likely to materialize anytime soon, if ever. Waiting for it would be both delusional and criminal, and so all we have to work with is the dreary bourgeois state, tethered to the circuits of capital as always. There would have to be popular pressure brought to bear on it, shifting the balance of forces condensed in it forcing apparatuses to cut the tethers and begin to move ... but this would clearly be a departure from the classical programme of demolishing the state and building another – one of several elements of Leninism that seem ripe (or over ripe) for their own obituaries.(CCCE p.151).
Thus Malm invokes the Lenin of War Communism but rejects the Lenin of The State and Revolution. This leaves us with a capitalist state as the agent, under pressure from sabotage and mass demonstrations, of making war on pandemics and climate change. This perspective seems to me both internally incoherent (the capitalist state implementing war communism?) and dangerous in that it may end up giving cover for capitalist authoritarianism, much as it echoes the view of Lenin as a top down authoeitarian. It is at least as ‘delusional’ as expecting a workers’ state based on soviets to be ‘miraculously born in the night’ [Has ANYONE ever expected such a thing?] Then the whole argument is supported by the caricature of revolutionaries (Marxists/ Leninists/Trotskyists etc ] as ‘waiting for’ the revolution, which has always been one of the lazier justifications for reformism.
All historical analogies have their limits and problems but the analogy with War Communism has so many problems as to make it very unhelpful. I will not explore them all but just make two observations. First, it was never Lenin’s or the Bolsheviks’ preferred option as to how to proceed but was forced upon them by the direst necessity – utter devastation of the country by foreign intervention and civil war – and as a very short term measure abandoned in early 1921 because the war was over and it was driving the peasantry into major revolt . Unlike winning the civil war tackling climate change cannot be a short sharp, one-off hit but will have to be sustained over decades, which War Communism could not be. Second the terrible problems of War Communism were not confined to great brutality and the alienation of the peasantry. The period also saw (through no fault of Lenin’s but as a result of the economic collapse) the virtual destruction and disappearance of the Russian working class – its ‘dislodgement from its class groove’ as Lenin put it – and this was a major factor in driving the bureaucratisation and Stalinisation of the revolution. In any event ‘War Communism’ is hardly a programme or a prospect we can hold out to the Irish or the international working class as the way forward.
This raises another important question which also has wider implications: who is Malm addressing and who should we as ecosocialists be addressing? I do not mean by this just who is the specific target readership of this particular book but the wider question of who is the target audience of the ecosocialist project as a whole which is linked to who we identify as the agent for the project’s realisation. For Malm the primary audience he seems to be addressing is a relatively small layer of environmental activists whom he hopes will pressure the bourgeois state into taking the necessary action by means of sabotage, direct action etc. For ecosocialists I believe our primary audience ought to be the working class. I do not mean by this that we should not engage with environmental activists (or students, school students etc.) – of course we should. But in doing so our aim should be win to win such people to a working class perspective because only the mass of the working class, in Ireland and globally, has the power to challenge and overthrow capitalism. Therefore our central goal is to win decisive sections of the working class to a socialist/ecosocialist and revolutionary perspective and this must never be lost sight of. In this endeavour neither the eco-Leninist label (incomprehensible to the overwhelming majority of working class people) nor the notion of War Communism are in the least suitable. Rather we have to advance a positive programme of demands, such as for free public transport, retro-fitting of homes and creation of climate jobs that link combating climate change to building a better life for the mass of ordinary people.
Which brings me back to the matter of what might be an actually Leninist approach to the environmental crisis. Here I believe that all Lenin’s core ideas – his commitment to the working class, his internationalism and opposition to imperialism and imperialist war, his insistence on the need to smash the capitalist state, his championing of the oppressed , his grasp of the need to build a revolutionary party rooted in the working class – remain crucial. In 2017 I wrote as follows:
Leave aside for the moment the political polarisation already taking place around the world and the possibility of another recession in the next couple of years, with all the incalculable political and ideological effects that will have. Leave all these things aside and we still face the scientific fact of rapidly intensifying climate change coming down the tracks. Once this reaches beyond a certain point and is grasped as an immediate reality rather than abstract speculation by millions of people, as will happen, this will tear up existing political allegiances as the great recession has done, only on a far greater scale.
At present there are a number of extremely simple one line rebuttals of socialism and revolution – you can’t change human nature, nothing ever really changes, revolutions always end in tyranny and the like – which continue to function as ‘common sense’ in Gramsci’s use of the term and which block mass support for revolutionary socialism, despite their intellectual poverty and despite our best efforts to counter them. The reality of climate change will change the terms of the debate. Whether we are talking about taking emergency action to prevent it reaching some runaway tipping point or trying to survive its onset with some measure of human decency, the abandonment of an economic system founded on production for profit will become an absolute necessity. Dealing with the immediate effects of climate change – its storms, floods, fires and desertification – will also push people towards collective action and collective solutions...
Of course there will be an ‘alternative’, at least for a period, and we can already see what that alternative will be: the Trumpian and, ultimately, Hitlerian ‘solution’ of walls and barbed wire and concentration camps and letting climate refugees starve and drown on a scale that dwarfs the carnage we have recently seen in the Mediterranean, while the rich insulate themselves in their gated communities in the uplands...
To avert the barbaric response to climate change it will be necessary, as Lenin understood with unmatched clarity, to build revolutionary workers’ parties, defeat imperialism, smash the state and establish workers’ power. That in turn means finding ways to relate these ideas to working class people where they are at now.
I think that still stands.
<div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-16217460342573419852022-01-23T19:52:00.007+00:002022-01-23T19:52:49.411+00:00Another old article for reference - Chris Bambery resignsBAMBERY RESIGNS
On Chris Bambery’s Resignation from the SWP
On Sunday 10 April Chris Bambery, former SWP National Secretary and Socialist Worker editor, resigned from both the Central Committee and the SWP. In this article I wish to comment on and respond to Bambery’s resignation letter (which is appended below).
The first and most striking feature of this letter is its low political level. The past year has developments in the class struggle of the highest importance: eight general strikes in Greece; mass struggles over pensions in France; a general strike in Spain; the government brought down in Portugal; the Icelandic government brought down and its successor defeated in two referenda on the IMF bail-out: a riot at the ballot box in Ireland involving the election of 5 United Left TDs (1 SWP) ; the great student revolt of late 2010; the biggest trade union march in history on 26 March; mass workers struggle in Wisconsin; and above all the amazing and ongoing Arab Revolutions. Together they constitute the biggest wave of working class and revolutionary struggle for at least thirty years. Yet none of these events merits even a mention in Bambery’s letter.
Does he agree or disagree with the SWP’s line in or on any of these struggles, or the line of the International Socialist Tendency (IST), of which the SWP is a leading part? We are given no indication at all. Indeed the IST is never even considered, despite the fact that its Arab supporters are currently involved in, and in some cases playing a serious role in a revolution of epic proportions. Obviously these matters are considered to be of little significance compared to the central question which is how Chris Bambery is being treated by the SWP Central Committee. To say this smacks of egotism is to put it mildly.
The second striking feature of the letter is the way it levels accusations at the CC without explaining or substantiating them. It says ‘The relentless factionalism in the organisation, driven by the leading group on the CC, shows no sign of ceasing and is doing enormous damage to the party’. But what factionalism is being talked about here? Normally in Revolutionary parties a faction is a grouping within the party organised (sometimes openly, sometimes secretly) to oppose or change the policy and/or leadership of the party in some way. Since the departure of the Left Platform (of John Rees and Lindsey German) to found Counterfire ,over a year ago, no such [open] faction has been operating in the SWP. At the SWP conference in January 2011 there was no evidence of any factional activity. Chris Bambury’s letter does not enlighten us on this score. It does not say who the faction or factions are, or what they stand for . It states that the factionalism is ‘driven by the leading group on the CC’ but does not say who constitutes this leading group or what they are factionalising about. If these issues had been raised previously this might be understandable but they have not. Consequently what we are forced to conclude is that by factionalism Bambery simply means criticism of or hostility to himself.
Unfortunately if you occupy a leading position in a political organisation and make mistakes or do not do a good job you must expect to be criticised. It’s called accountability or even democracy.
In addition to this there is a major irony in the situation. Given that, immediately following Chris Bambery’s letter of resignation, a very similar letter was received from 39 of his supporters in Scotland which also announced the formation of a new Marxist organisation in Scotland, it is absolutely clear that he, Bambery, had been organising a secret faction there. Moreover, it seems very likely that the reason he has chosen to resign now is precisely because he was confronted about his factional activity on the CC. This, I presume, is what was being referred to when he was accused at the CC of a ‘foul role in Scotland’. And on this score let’s be clear : using your position on the CC to organise a secret faction and prepare a split without once raising any of the political issues at Party Conference, or in the pre-conference discussion, or at National Committee or Party Council is a clear violation of both the formal constitution of the SWP and its long established norms of behaviour of which Bambery himself was very well aware. In truth he has played a dishonest and cowardly double game with both his fellow CC members and the membership of the SWP as a whole – cowardly in the sense that he has never been willing to advance his arguments in open debate before the members.[This repeats what he did during the argument with The Left Platform , when he never took or argued a clear position in any of the SWPs forums for debate]
Another notable feature of Bambery’s letter is that he resigns simultaneously from the CC and the SWP as a whole. Not for a second does he consider leaving the CC and becoming an ordinary rank-and-file member of the party (despite the fact that many people have done this in the past – for example, Sheila McGregor, Andy Strouthous, Phil Marfleet, John Rose, Viv Smith ). In this respect – and in others – he follows the pattern established by John Rees and Lyndsey German last year. Personally I find this arrogance, this attitude of only being part of the party if you can be a leader, extremely distasteful and unbecoming of a revolutionary but there is also a wider political point involved here that needs spelling out as part of the education of newer members.
The SWP as part of the International Socialist Tendency stands for a number of fundamental political ideas and principles. These include the classical revolutionary Marxist tradition, the self emancipation of the working class, Leninism, Trotskyism, the theory of state capitalism and deflected permanent revolution (as developed by Cliff), the critique of the trade union bureaucracy and reformism and so on. Central to these ideas was and is the project of building a mass revolutionary party. As we know from our experience in Britain and our experience internationally this is not easy to achieve. The British SWP, for all its faults and problems, has been as successful as anyone and more successful than most in holding together and building such an organisation. If one agrees with the basic ideas, which Chris Bambery (as National Secretary and SW editor) presumably did, one should not leave, still less encourage others to leave , on the basis of episodic or tactical disagreements eg disagreements about the emphasis to be put on particular campaigns or united fronts, disagreements about the analysis of the specific conjuncture, or disagreements about the composition of leading bodies. These kinds of issues which continually arise in the course of the struggle and must arise if the party is interacting with the real world, should be argued out within the party in a hard but comradely way with majority decisions being implemented in a unified fashion. Any other approach is simply irresponsible, and in this case it seems, again, highly egotistical and self regarding.
Finally it is necessary to consider the damage this defection will do to the SWP. From Dublin, where I now live, this is hard to assess but it is obvious that Bambery’s position as Secretary of the Right to Work Campaign will cause some problems, especially if he chooses to try to use it in that way, which I have to say seems likely. Given that in reality he owes that position almost entirely to the SWP he ought, in principle, to resign from that too – but I doubt that he will – so this matter will have to be resolved in some way. Beyond that, and the situation in Scotland, the effect ought to be minimal. Opponents of the SWP, especially those circling in the blogosphere, will doubtless seize on it suggest a) that Bambury is a victim of the horrible SWP leadership; b) that his ‘forced resignation’ is evidence that it is difficult to be a ‘dissident’ in the SWP; c) that his departure is symptomatic of the party’s decline and imminent demise. These suggestions are all radically false. Far from being a ‘victim’ of the CC, Bambery was indulged and protected by the CC (for too long in my opinion, but that’s a different matter). His resignations far from being ‘forced’ were entirely voluntary. Far from it being difficult to raise disagreements in the SWP it is now much easier then it was in the days when Bambery was National Secretary. And far from it being a symptom of the SWP’s decline it is rather unfinished business from the struggle against Rees/German/Bambery regime which in my opinion was the pre-condition of the party’s recovery from the severe crisis into which we were plunged by the splitting and abandonment of local branch organisation in the late nineties and early noughhties.
At present I think the British SWP and the IST are, in general, doing reasonably well . Of course it is uneven and of course there are problems but the objective situation is undoubtedly more favourable than it has been for years, so it should be possible for us to grow quantitatively and qualitatively in the coming months and years. Certainly we should not permit Bambery’s departure and machinations to deflcct us from the need to seize the time.
Appendix: Chris Bambery’s Resignation Letter
Letter to CC and SWP
10 April
Dear Charlie,
After 32 years membership of the Socialist Workers Party, during which I was National Secretary for 17 of them and editor of the Socialist Worker for five, I am resigning forthwith both from the Central Committee and the Socialist Workers Party.
The relentless factionalism in the organisation, driven by the leading group on the CC, shows no sign of ceasing and is doing enormous damage to the party . It is a cancer eating away at its heart.
At the special CC held on Friday 8 April I was told by Martin Smith I played a ‘filthy’ and ‘disgraceful’ role in the party, a ‘foul role in Scotland’ and despite the CC ‘fighting hard’ to integrate me I had ’spent the last year and a half organising against the CC.’ Such accusations were repeated by Martin’s supporters and were not refuted by yourself as National Secretary.
While not recognising the reality of such slanders, I pointed out if you believed them immediate action would be required against any CC member believed to be involved in such behaviour. None followed.
It is simply untenable to sit round a table or work with people who believe, and are spreading, such slanders.
These slanders are not just aimed at me but those who have worked closely with me in building the party and wider initiatives, particularly so in Scotland which I’ve held responsibility for since 1988 until I was asked to step aside this year to help prevent ‘factionalism’. This step was criticised at a Scottish steering committee by some members who argued my role in the significant development of the Scottish districts, particularly amongst younger members, had been important. They too have been subject to similar slanders.
The party has been afflicted by factionalism for four years and grips the leading group on the CC who seem addicted to it.
It has damaged our united front work in all the campaigns - Right to Work most obviously but in all others. Stop the War is now treated with derision by leading CC members.
In recent weeks there has been no lead or drive from the CC in turning the party towards building the growing anti-cuts movement. The current article in Socialist Review and the post 26th party notes on the way forward after 26 March both have virtually nothing to say on anti cuts campaigns.
Martin Smith has attempted to blame me personally for the weaknesses of Right to Work despite the internal arguments which have held it back from its inception and which have brought it near to derailment.
While all of us wanted to see the party grow the stress on party building has increasingly meant ‘intervening’ from the outside rather than recruiting whilst working alongside those who are building the movement.
Since Friday’s CC I have been made aware that a major factional attack was being once more orchestrated against myself.
The SWP prided itself on being free from factionalism and on its record in helping initiating and building strong and genuine united fronts. That has been damaged.
I was one of the only two remaining CC members who had worked with Tony Cliff in a leadership role. Having worked closely with him on a daily basis for many years with, I believe the CC’s current approach goes against everything he stood for. His analysis of Lenin’s ideas laid great emphasis on taking a firm grip on the ‘key link in the chain’. Its been clear for some time that the question of austerity would dominate the political scene, yet we’ve failed to position ourselves at the heart of the anti-cuts movement and our influence is not what it could of been. This is not the place to go into detail about the party’s recent history, but Right To Work was initiated in bizarre circumstances (I learned the news from Party Notes) and the CC as a whole has never applied systematic pressure to push the formal position through the party.
For all of my 32 years as a member I have given everything into building this party, even making serious financial sacrifices including loaning considerable sums of money during the financial crisis which has affected the party in recent years, money I am still owed.
A revolutionary party is an instrument for making a revolution. If it is blunted or broken another must be built. I maintain the firm conviction that a party rooted in working class struggle that fights constantly for Marxist ideas whilst building unity on the basis of action is essential for the battle for socialism. For that reason, to take this road is not an easy decision, but it is one I have been forced to take.
Yours sincerely,
Chris Bambery
<div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-55413873735479567252022-01-23T19:48:00.003+00:002022-01-23T19:48:41.063+00:00MORE old Korean ArticlesMore old Korean articles
The Fight for Abortion Rights in Ireland
From Santiago to Seoul, El Salvador and the USA to Poland and India the struggle over women’s reproductive rights is global and increasingly consciously so. In this international war the island of Ireland is one of the key front lines – both in the Southern Republic and in the still British ruled six-counties of the North.
In Ireland, as everywhere else, the question of a woman’s right to choose is a fundamental principle for socialists and feminists because without bodily autonomy it is impossible for women to achieve full equality. But in Ireland it is also a crucial faultline, a contradiction that strikes at the heart of the current social and political order and the focus of this contradiction in the Republic – the decisive issue in the overall battle – is the 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution.
This amendment, passed by referendum in 1983, states that the fetus has an equal right to life to the right to life of the mother. The effect of this is to make abortion totally illegal in all but the most restrictive of circumstances. As things stand even where pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or the embryo is afflicted with fatal fetal abnormality i.e. has no chance of survival, abortion is still not allowed.
How this came about and why it is now being so strongly challenged is the outcome of the peculiarity of Irish historical development.
For nearly one hundred and fifty years the Catholic Church held a grip on Irish society: it was Catholicism at its most conservative and the grip was cruel. It brought with it Mother and Baby homes run by religious orders where so-called ‘illegitimate’ children were taken from their mothers, sold off to America or allowed to die through neglect; it brought Magdalene Laundries where ‘fallen’ women were treated and slaves for decades and Industrial Schools where the children of the poor and the working classes were beaten and abused.
This was not always so. It was not ‘age-old’ or in the Irish DNA. Yes, the majority of Irish people were Catholic but the church did not establish this fierce hold until after the terrible trauma of the Irish Famine, the Great Hunger, of the 1840s which claimed more than a million lives by direct starvation and forced millions more into emigration, cutting the Irish population almost in half (from 8 million in 1841 to 4.5 million in 1861).The Famine altered the structure of the Irish family establishing a pattern of late marriage, based on middle aged and older men marrying younger women after extended celibacy. The Church assumed the role of policing the sexual repression on which this rested. In 1840 the ratio of priests to Catholics was 1:3023; by 1911 it had risen to 1:210. The number of nuns in Ireland increased eightfold between 1841 and 1901. In 1926 2% of all single males aged 45-54 were priests and monks and 4.9% of single women of that age were nuns and lay sisters.
The strangle hold exercised by the Catholic hierarchy was reinforced by the counter-revolution that followed the Irish Revolution of 1916 – 22. This revolution was part of the international wave that included the Russian Revolution of 1917, the German Revolution of 1918-23 and the Italian Red Years of 1919-20 . It began with the Easter Rising of 1916, led by the socialist James Connolly and Irish nationalist Padraig Pearse, and continued with mass strikes, workers occupations, formation of local soviets and the mass revolutionary War of Independence involving 100,000 people joining the Irish Republican Army. This struggle won partial independence from Britain for the 26 county ‘Free State’ in the South, but the counter-revolution led by Michael Collins, with the support of British imperialism, defeated the anti-treaty IRA, and enforced the partition of Ireland establishing two reactionary states – one Protestant, British and dominated by conservative Unionism, the other conservative, capitalist and Catholic.
The alliance of the Southern Irish Bourgeoisie and the Catholic Church was personified in the association between two men: Prime Minister (later President) Eamonn De Valera and Archbishop John Charles McQuaid who between them ruled Irish society in the 1930s and 1940s and wrote its highly religious constitution.
The Church dominated almost every aspect of civic society in the Republic: above all education and hospitals. Central to its ideology and practice was denial, hatred and repression of sex in general and women’s sexuality in particular. At the heart of this was total opposition to abortion. The persistence and strength of the Church’s hold is symbolised by the fact that only in 1978 was there even limited legalisation of contraception and divorce remained illegal until 1995!
Northern Unionism and Orangism was rabid in its sectarian opposition to ‘Rome Rule’ i.e, Irish unification, but on one thing it was always totally in accord with ‘Rome’: its conservative attitude to sex and therefore to abortion.
Ireland Changes
Ireland remained economically backward, poor and church dominated, right into the 1980s but the combination of economic development from the nineties onwards and persistent struggle has brought fundamental change. The Celtic Tiger, Ireland’s spectacular economic boom, in the nineties and early noughties, transformed the country. It brought massive urbanisation undermining the rural social structures on which Catholic Ireland rested; it brought large scale immigration turning Ireland into a multi-cultural society; crucially it feminised the workforce. By 1996 there were 488,000 women at work – an increase of 213,000 since 1971. This compares with a growth of just 23,000 in male employment over the same period. In 1996 half the female workforce was married – 241,400 married women were working outside the home, an increase of more than 600 percent since 1971. All this produced new generations of women and men, unwilling to accept the old stifling restrictions and oppression.
But, of course, change did not come by itself – mass struggle on the streets played a crucial role. In early 1992, nine years after the passing of the anti-choice 8th Amendment, there came what is known as the X-case. On 6 February the Attorney General Harry obtained an interim injunction restraining Miss X, a 14 year old girl, pregnant as a result of rape and reportedly suicidal, from travelling to Britain to obtain an abortion.. Up and down the country there was an explosion of anger. Thousands of mainly young women and men poured onto the streets to say, ‘Let her go.’ Day after day and night after night thousands of women and men took to the streets. In Dublin there were several semi-spontaneous marches of up to 10,000 people – the equivalent population-wise of over 100,000 in London. These numbers were matched proportionately in Cork, Waterford, Galway and smaller towns too. The country was convulsed. And, crucially, the Government and the High Court, terrified by this explosion, backed down.
This victory was a massive breakthrough and in the new climate the deep hypocrisy of the Catholic hierarchy started to be exposed. Ireland’s best known bishop, Eamon Casey, was revealed by his partner, to have fathered a child, Another well known priest, famous for preaching chastity, was shown to have had two sons by his ‘housekeeper’..This gave courage to people who had been abused physically and sexually by priests and nuns under the old repressive regime. As they started to talk, news came almost weekly of priests being arrested. Between 1993 and 1997 priests from all over the country were convicted of sexual abuse, including rape, of children as young as eight years old. And it emerged that church officials, having been made aware of the allegations, had typically acted, not to protect the children and bring the culprit to book, but to protect the church and let the guilty go free – often to abuse elsewhere. The moral authority of the church never recovered.
The dramatic change in attitudes that has taken place is shown in the fact that in 2015 nearly 4 out of 10 births were outside marriage and 59% of those were to cohabiting couples and above all in the resounding majority for same sex marriage in the Marriage Equality referendum in 2015 – 62.07 % to 37.93% with over 80% in favour in the Dublin working class areas radicalised by the water charges struggle.
The battle is far from over, however. Ireland’s two main establishment political parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail who have dominated Irish politics for nearly a century, try to present themselves as ‘modern’ and ‘liberal’. The new Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, is openly gay and makes a point of attending Pride Marches. But in reality both these parties still depend on their base among conservative rural farmers and business people who remain unreconstructed. Moreover, the Church retains both a lot of institutional power (it still runs most schools and many hospitals) and considerable ability to mobilise its supporters.
For these conservative forces the issue of abortion is their line in the sand and they will fight tooth and nail to keep the 8th Amendment: in a recent demonstration backed by almost every Catholic parish church in the country the so-called Pro-Lifers (i.e. Anti-choice) put at least 30,000 on the streets of Dublin. But there is also a vibrant movement for repeal. On March 8, International Women’s Day, earlier this year , thousands of mainly young women and men occupied O’Connell Bridge, the Main bridge in the centre of Dublin, and held it for several hours. Then in the evening of the same day about 30,000 marched to the Dail (parliament) demanding an immediate referendum.
As this article is being written vigorous preparations are being made for a major March for Choice in Dublin on 30 September, followed by a march in Belfast on 14 October.
At the moment it seems likely that the Government, after decades of prevarication and evasion, will be forced to hold a referendum on the 8th Amendment at some point but they seem to want to delay until the Pope comes to visit Ireland in 2018. There now seems to a solid majority in Ireland for Repeal but the real issue is likely to be what replaces the 8th. Will it be replaced by some new restrictive constitutional clause in the constitution which confines the right to abortion to a number of special cases or will it, as the left argues it should, open the way to free, safe and legal abortion for all?
The Role of Socialists
Revolutionary socialists, and in particular members of the Irish Socialist Workers Party and now People Before Profit, have played a leading role in this struggle since its inception. This is because we always a) took an absolutely principled stand for a woman’s right to choose; b) understood that this was a class issue disproportionately affecting working class women who lack resources (along with asylum seekers who are not allowed to travel) while the rich have always had access to abortion; c) argued for a ‘people power’ strategy based on mass mobilization in the streets.
We have also been able to use our parliamentary representation to assist the struggle with our Deputies , especially our woman TD Bríd Smith, acting as ‘tribunes of the people’. People Before Profit moved a bill in the Parliament to effectively decriminalise abortion by reducing the current 14 year sentence to a 1 euro fine (this was defeated by the mainstream parties) and Bríd Smith became the first Irish TD (MP) to come out as having had an abortion.
In the weeks and months ahead socialists have the particular tasks in the campaign of building its grass roots organisation in working class areas and fighting against any tendency to water down women’s demands in favour of some shoddy and unprincipled compromise which may well be the strategy of the Labour Party and Sinn Fein.
Winning women’s right to choose will be a significant blow not just to the declining power of the Catholic hierarchy but to the overall hegemony of the Irish ruling class and its main parties. Speed the day!
KOREA COLUMN 37
The Marxist Theory of Women’s Oppression
In last month’s column I argued that patriarchy theory, although very widespread in feminist circles, is unable to provide a coherent or convincing explanation of why women were and are oppressed. In contrast, however, Marxism is able to provide such an account.
A satisfactory theory of women’s oppression must be a) materialist and b) historical. By materialist I mean it must explain how the inferior or second class status of women is rooted in real material social relations which in turn are related to the level of economic development in society. It cannot simply say that is a matter of human nature, or all in the genes; nor can it just say that it is ‘cultural’ if by cultural is meant that women are oppressed because men believe themselves superior or women believe themselves inferior, without an explanation of the material causes of these beliefs.
By historical I mean it must be able to show when and how women’s oppression began, (approximately, of course – it is not a question of a blow - by- blow account), why it has continued
up to the present day, and, if it is to be a theory of women’s liberation, how circumstances have changed so as to make equality now a real possibility.
We have already seen that patriarchy theory fails all these tests; we shall now see that Marxist theory passes them.
Marxism begins by arguing that although the oppression of women has been in place for millennia, it is NOT universal or eternal. On the contrary, for hundreds of thousands of years, during the period when people were hunters and gatherers, which is how ALL humans lived prior to the development of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, women were not systematically oppressed at all. In other words for most of human history, well over ninety per cent of it, women and men lived in rough equality. Equality not oppression is thus the norm of human society. How do we know this to be the case?
We know it primarily through studies of hunter-gatherer societies that survived into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and have been investigated by anthropologists. There was the pioneering work on Native Americans by Lewis Morgan on which Frederick Engels based much of his classic Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State.(Some of this anthropological data is now considered false but the method remains valid). There is Eleanor Burke Leacock’s Myths of Male Dominance which investigated the Montagnais-Naskapi people of Canada, William Turnbull’s The Forest People on Pigmies in the Congo, and, especially, Richard Borshay Lee’s The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society which studied the so-called Kalahari bush people.
What these studies show is that in hunter-gatherer societies general material equality was guaranteed by the fact that as nomadic people (following the game) foragers were unable to accumulate more property than could be carried daily on each person’s back. Broad gender equality was a product of the fact that more than half the community’s food was supplied by gathering which was mainly done by women.
The emergence of women’s oppression, Marxism argues, was the result of two great and interlinked social transitions: from foraging to agriculture and from classless to class divided society. It is impossible to put a simple date on this process since it develops at very different times in different parts of the world. However it probably begins about 12-10 thousand years ago with the first signs of agriculture in the fertile crescent of the Middle East (from today’s Iraq to the Nile) and takes about 5-6000 thousand years to fully establish itself as the dominant form of social organisation.
The coming of agriculture, a development in the forces of production, brought with it human settlement, first villages, then towns, and the first production of a social surplus – goods over and above what was needed for day-to-day survival - and thus the possibility of wealth accumulation. However because this early surplus was very limited and insufficient to provide a comfortable life for the majority, it meant that the wealth accumulation, the private property, was concentrated in the hands of a small minority, the ‘ruling class’.These new ruling classes used their property (cattle herds, land etc) to force others to work for them – as slaves or peasants – and to construct state apparatuses (armies, castles, prisons, judges etc) which would defend their property and privileges.
The shift from foraging to agriculture also meant changing from a form of production in which women’s labour – mainly gathering – was equal in importance to that of men, to a form- ploughing and herding - where the bulk of society’s wealth was produced by men. This was because pulling the heavy plough all day and herding cattle were incompatible with nursing and rearing young children. Consequently control of the social surplus and, with it, of the state passed mainly into the hands of men
With this came the abandonment of the loose pairing and collective child rearing practices typical of hunter-gathering societies and the development of the male dominated, exclusive, religiously and legally policed family in which wives were seen as the property of their husbands and as restricted to domestic duties and rearing their own children. This type of family, which took many sub-forms (for example polygamy) in different societies, was most strongly established in and for the ruling classes. It had the economic function of securing the inheritance and non-dissolution of accumulations of property (land, herds. etc) and power but socially it meant the subordination of women to men everywhere. Engels called it ‘the world historic defeat of the female sex’.
The Marxist theory of women’s oppression therefore sees it as deriving from a definite stage in the development of the forces and relations of production. It also sees it as linked to biology (woman and man are, after all, biological categories) but only at a particular long passed moment in history, and not at all in the sense of biology determining the destiny of women now or in the future.
This raises the question of why women’s oppressive, beginning so long ago, has continued through thousands of years and still continues, albeit in moderated form, in modern capitalist society. Obviously, the whole story cannot be told here but in ancient, feudal and Asiatic or tributary type societies the function of securing property inheritance was probably the key to the survival of the male dominated family. In capitalist society this is still a factor but there are a number of other aspects of women’s oppression which benefit the system and in which the ruling class has a huge vested interest.
First, making the care of husbands and children the ‘natural’ duty of women enables the capitalist class to obtain the refreshment and reproduction of this and the next generation of its workers, for almost nothing. Second, by stressing the primacy of loyalty to the family the ruling class is able to foster a narrow conservative view of the world which cuts across wider class consciousness and class solidarity. Third, undermining the ‘ right’ of women to work, especially in leadership roles,
makes women into a second class sector of the workforce , who can be paid less and exploited more.
This vested interest of the bourgeoisie in the family and in the oppressed condition of women is why the full liberation of women requires the overthrow of capitalism through a united struggle of the working class. While the unity of the working class requires that working class men , as well as working class women, fight for women’s equality and women’s liberation.
John Molyneux
29 June 2008
KOREA COLUMN 12
What is Socialism?
So far this column has been dealing mainly with what Marxism has to say about capitalism and how it can be overthrown. But, of course, Marxism is not only against capitalism, it is also for socialism and now seems a good point to say something about the kind of society Marxists aim for and struggle to bring into being.
Interestingly, Marx wrote relatively little about the future socialist society ( though what he did say was profound and important). There are no detailed plans or instructions as to how the government should be organized, or how much people should be paid, or what forms of transport should be adopted or anything like that. But there is a good reason for this.
For Marx socialism was not a blueprint for an ideal society which he had dreamt up, it was the form of society which would necessarily emerge from the victory of the working class in the struggle against capitalism. From this it follows that the precise features of socialism cannot be foreseen, first because they will depend on the specific circumstances in which that working class victory takes place, which cannot be known in advance, and second, because these matters will, precisely, be decided by the workers of the future themselves. Moreover the workers of the socialist future will be very different from the workers – or any of us – today because they will have been profoundly changed by the process of overthrowing capitalism.
Just saying this, however, points to the fundamental feature of socialism as understood by Marx which differentiates it completely from the fake socialism of the Soviet bloc, China, North Korea etc., namely that it is a society really run by working people themselves. When Marx spoke of ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ as the transitional phase between capitalism and socialism he meant not a dictatorship over the proletariat or a dictatorship in the name of the proletariat by an individual, party or elite, well meaning or otherwise, but the rule of society by the working class as a whole, real collective workers’ power.
To rule society the working class has to create its own, new state apparatus. Marx understood this very clearly because he saw it done in practice in the Paris Commune of 1871, and today we know better than Marx what this will probably look like, not because we are cleverer than him, but because we have the additional historical experience of the early years of the Russian Revolution, and of a number of near revolutions in Germany (1918-23), Italy (1919-20), Spain (1936-37), Hungary (1956), Chile (1972) and elsewhere.
From this experience we know that it means the creation of a network of representative bodies or councils (called ‘soviets’ in the Russian Revolution ) based on the working class in struggle, above all in its workplaces, but also (depending on circumstances) reflecting the army, the community and so on. And that these workers’ councils become the core of the new state, to which the government, military forces, ministries etc. are responsible and accountable.
If the working class is really to run society this new apparatus has to genuinely reflect the collective interests and will of the working class. This means operating on highly democratic principles and again we know some of these from the experience of The Commune and the Russian Soviets, e.g. that council delegates should be immediately recallable by the bodies (mainly workplace meetings) that elected them, and that they should be paid no more than a skilled worker’s wage.
It is also clear that to sustain itself workers’ political power must rest on a firm foundation of workers’ economic power (all political power rests ultimately on economic power). To this end the working class will use its state to establish collective ownership of the major means of production, distribution and exchange which will need to be managed by the workers themselves, through democratically elected committees.
It should be noted that in this view of socialism it is workers’ power that is the basic principle from which follows the need for state ownership, not state ownership as such. State ownership by itself, without workers’ power and workers’ control, is state capitalism not socialism. We also know, both from Marxist theory and from what happened in Russia, that although workers’ power may be established first in one country it must spread internationally if it is to survive.
Achieving this will doubtless involve great struggle, but if we allow ourselves the luxury of thinking about an internationally united socialist society run by working people themselves, then certain things will necessarily follow. Production will be democratically planned to meet human need. And if the immense productive forces already developed by capitalism are made to serve people’s needs it will be possible to abolish the poverty, malnutrition and deprivation that have for so long afflicted the majority of the world’s population. No one will have four mansions, five cars and two private jets but everyone will have the necessities required for a decent life.
Indeed they will have more than just a decent life for such a society will also provide the education, leisure and, above all, the stimulating work to unleash a massive development in the intellectual life and human personality of hitherto ordinary people which in turn will feed into the further development of society.
Such a socialist society will be a society of peace because the root causes of war in the past – the struggle between lords, dynasties, corporations and states for land, resources and profits – will have disappeared.
It will also, once the remnants of the old class system fade away, become a truly classless society – like the classless societies of the hunter gatherers but with modern technology and international – because with production owned and controlled by the associated producers the very basis of class, exploitation of one group by another, will have been eliminated. This in turn will pave the way for the disappearance of the state i.e. of any special apparatus of coercive power standing over society. Real human freedom will be realized.
This still doesn’t tell us whether the people of the future will choose to live in houses that hug the ground or reach for the sky, will travel by bus, bicycle or invention as yet unknown, or will eat peaches and cream or strawberries and yogurt but it does tell us why socialism is a goal worth fighting for.
John Molyneux
November 14, 2006
KOREA COLUMN 43
The Question of Charity
About nine months ago it was suggested to me that I should write one of these columns on where socialists stand on the question of giving to charity. I never got round to it because there always seemed something more important or more pressing to write about. Right now in Britain, however, the question of one particular charity has suddenly become the hottest political topic of the day, and every socialist, every revolutionary – indeed more or less everyone engaged in politics – has had to take a position on it.
How this came about I shall deal with in a while, but the episode has convinced me that the issue of charity is worth visiting after all.
Posed in general terms the first point socialists have to make about charity is that, in most cases, it is manifestly unable to solve the very issues it is addressing. Take, for example, Oxfam, which aims to respond to world hunger and poverty. Oxfam is one the biggest, most successful and well known charities in Britain , if not the world. In the year 2007-8 it raised £299.7 million and spent £214.2 million. In itself this is quite a large sum but when it comes to solving world poverty it is no more than a drop in the ocean.
It is not that the problem of hunger is insoluble, or even very difficult to solve. It is well known that there is more than enough food in the world to provide a decent diet for everyone. It is just that when it is a matter of dealing with ANY major WORLD problem nothing is serious till we are talking about hundreds of billions not millions.
Children in Need, one of Britain’s best known charity events which receives a whole evening of BBC television coverage, raises about £20 million. The government bail-out for ONE bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland, was £20 billion (1000 times as much as Children in Need). According to Barack Obama the bonuses paid to Wall St bankers at the end of 2008 came to $20 billion. World arms spending in 2008 was $1.47 trillion with $711 billion contributed by the US, and so on.
Of course the advocates of charity have an obvious answer to this. They can simply say we know we are not solving the problem but we are doing something – every little helps. Well yes…but we wouldn’t think much of a fire service that responded to blazing buildings with water pistols ( at least they’d be doing something) or tried to tackle a forest fire with watering cans and garden hoses. And the truth is that many charitable efforts, however well intentioned, are closer to the water pistol than to proper fire engine.
And this is by no means the end of the story for there is more wrong with charity than it just not being enough. We also have to consider its political and ideological role Charity can easily be used by our rulers either to suggest they are doing something about a problem when really they are not, or even when they are actively engaged in making the problem worse. For example, the British government, which has been craven in its support for the state of Israel in general and the assault on Gaza in particular, has pledged a pathetic £20 million (20 million again) in humanitarian aid.
Charitable and ‘voluntary’ efforts can be, and often are, used by governments to excuse their failure to meet their obligations in terms of education, health and welfare services. Every time I see a hospital launching an appeal for funds for some new piece of life saving equipment I find myself asking why the military don’t need to do this. How I wonder would the ‘Trident Appeal’ fare, with only £20 or so billion (billion again) needed to renew the nuclear submarine missile system?
Another problem with many charites is that they become businesses in their own right, involving substantial administrative overheads and supporting lucrative careers for many directors, fund raisers and marketing managers. Even where there is nothing strictly illegal or underhand going on, as there sometimes is, there something obnoxious about people on $100,000 salaries appealing for the poor and needy – America’s largest charity United Way is run by Brian Gallagher, salary $973.000 p.a. This problem becomes especially acute with NGOs operating in poor countries where the NGO agents receive incomes many hundreds of times greater than those of the local people they are supposed to be helping.
Then there are the fabulously wealthy celebrity charity merchants like Paul McCartney and Bono who stage concerts and suchlike urging ordinary people to give to good causes. For example Bono’s charity RED claims on its website to have raised $100 million for Aids in Africa in two years, but the truth is he could pay that out of his own pocket and still have more money than he could spend in a lifetime.
still the ideological problems inherent in its nature that it focuses on symptoms not causes of social and humanitarian issues and it tends to depict its beneficiaries as helpless passive victims, not people capable of resistance or self liberation. For Marxists and revolutionary socialists the conviction that the fundamental problems of poverty and human degradation can only be and will only be solved by the collective struggle of working people themselves is fundamental.
But despite the validity of all these criticisms this is not the end of the story, especially when we approach the question of charity not just in theory but as a matter of concrete day to day politics. For all its faults there is in the motivation that leads ordinary people to donate to charity an impulse socialists need to relate to and encourage and certainly not to dismiss or disparage. For example if someone comes round my canteen at work with a collecting tin for the homeless my inclination would be to make a small donation but combine it with a question about why we have homeless people in a rich country like Britain.
Then, of course, there are many individuals or groups who are not able to help themselves or to wage a collective struggle and many situations where people need emergency help. In such circumstances there is no Chinese Wall between charity or aid and solidarity, which socialists enthusiastically support; moreover the question of aid, or lack of it from governments, can become an issue of political solidarity.
Thus when the tsunami struck South East Asia in December 2004 the generous response from ordinary people {in Britain] embarrassed the British government into increasing its original miserly aid donation. Socialists needed to be part of that. Then with the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans in 2005, the appalling lack of help for the city’s black and poor, became a key event undermining the political credibility of George Bush.
Which brings me to the circumstance I referred to at the beginning of this column. It is hard to think of anyone in the world at this moment more in need of emergency aid than the besieged people of Gaza. Yet the BBC, obviously under direct Zionist influence, has refused to broadcast the (standard) Disaster Emergency Committee appeal for Gaza. This blatant partiality, coming on the back of sustained pro- Israel, pro-Zionist reporting, has made aid to Gaza a matter of international solidarity of crucial political importance.
Two general points in conclusion: first socialists have and need general theory and principles but the application of those principles to immediate practice does not always follow in a simple straight line and for Marxists truth is ultimately concrete. Second in the course of the overall struggle revolutionaries have to relate both to working people’s anger and their humanity and provide a political focus for both.
John Molyneux
1 February 2009
KOREA COLUMN 40
Are the Media all Powerful?
One of the immediate problems faced by socialists everywhere is that everywhere the vast bulk of the mass media is hostile to socialism and uses its considerable power to defend the status quo i.e. capitalism.
Sometimes this bias is absolutely blatant and includes not only pro- capitalist but also pro –government propaganda as in most of the world’s dictatorships or Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News in America. Sometimes it more subtle and, as with the BBC, hidden beneath a veneer of impartiality and commitment to political neutrality and the representation of different points of view. But always the fundamental stance is the same: capitalism is the sensible, natural and inevitable way of organising production. Anyone who thinks otherwise is at best an eccentric and most likely a wicked ‘extremist’ because ‘everyone knows’ that ‘moderates’ are good and ‘extremists’ are bad and that anyone who wants to abolish capitalism is an extremist by definition.
Where television, the most important mass media, is concerned this basic stance affects not only news bulletins but also the choice of panellists on discussion programmes, the themes of and commentary on documentaries, the story lines and characters in soap operas and drama series, the nature and tone of game shows- in short the total output. And obviously it is the same with newspapers. Their pro-capitalist standpoint is reflected, first and foremost in what is and, most importantly, in what is NOT reported, as well as in how it is reported, how it is commented on in editorials, and opinion pieces, and again it runs all the way through to the cartoons and the sports coverage. Nor is the basic position any different in thefilm industry, radio or any of the other forms of mass media.
This should not surprise us. Mass media are forms of communication which enable small groups of people to communicate simultaneously with vast numbers of other people. They all involve considerable capital outlay and are therefore owned either by people with lots of capital i.e. capitalists or by states which at bottom represent the interest of the capitalist class. The pro-capitalist bias of the media is therefore, under capitalism, absolutely inevitable. It is one part of the general phenomenon of ruling class ideological dominance noted and explained by Karl Marx in 1845 (before most of the modern mass media even came into existence)
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. (The German Ideology).
The questions that arise therefore are how much does this ruling class control of the media matter, and how can it be challenged? Let’s take the second question first. It is obviously vital that socialists should develop their own means of communication - newspapers such as Counterfire or other forms such as posters, leaflets, magazines, websites, blogs, films etc – and they should also try, wherever possible, to get their ideas across in the capitalist media. However, while capitalism exists and the capitalist class remains in power, socialist media will not be able to displace the bourgeois media, and socialist ideas will not be able to obtain more than marginal representation , anymore than it is possible for socialist education to replace state schools and bourgeois universities. Thus the crucial issue becomes how strong is the grip of the bourgeois media on the minds of the majority of working people and how can that hold be broken?
Clearly the media, taken as a whole, are very influential and sometimes it seems like they can manipulate people at will, stirring up xenophobia and racism one minute, whipping up war fever the next, and always blotting out any challenge to the system. But it is important to understand there are always definite limits to the media’s power.
For a start there are always some people in society (albeit a minority) who reject the media view of the world pretty much as a whole. If you are reading this article it is likely that you are part of this minority. Moreover, we (I am part of it too) are not in any fundamental or innate way different from other people who don’t (as yet) reject the dominant view – it is simply that we have had experiences that have led us to question the system more than others.
Secondly, the vast majority of people who accept much of what the media says, nevertheless remain sceptical of some of its messages. For example, in Britain, throughout the twentieth century the large majority of newspapers supported the Conservative Party and only a small minority backed the Labour Party but this did not stop Labour winning a number of general elections. And in America today the media is overwhelmingly behind the Bush administration’s $700 million bail out of Wall St. but this doesn’t stop it being highly unpopular with the American public.
Then there are things which are so unpopular that the media themselves know they would be wasting their time trying to sell to people - for example, mass unemployment. There are times when the ruling class, privately, thinks that a dose of mass unemployment would be just the thing to undermine the unions and break working class resistance, but they know they can’t say this openly. The best they can hope for is to convince people that some scapegoat (immigrants, refugees, greedy trade unions etc) is to blame, but they always have, at least to pretend to care about unemployment.
In general it is clear that where media influence is at its weakest is when reality diverges most radically from its preferred message and especially when the issue is one which affects people directly as part of their everyday experience. One of the reasons why capitalist economic crisis creates opportunities for socialism is not just that workers are radicalised by the suffering inflicted on them but also because the crisis dramatically exposes and undermines the story the capitalist class wants to tell about itself.
However, the circumstance in which working people are particularly likely to see through and reject the lies of the media is when they are engaged in collective struggle, because then they themselves become the news and their own actions and experiences are what is being lied about. When the collective struggle is also a MASS struggle, when it starts to involve the majority of the majority of the working class in action, for instance in a general strike, then the hold of the mass media really starts to break down., especially as this is also a situation in which the working class gets a sense of its own power and develops the confidence to look for alternatives.
Combine conditions of crisis with mass struggle and one further ingredient is needed, the mass revolutionary workers party with its own media to articulate an alternative socialist worldview. Include that in the equation and we will break not only the grip of the media on the minds of working people but the power of the capitalist class as a whole including its power over the media.
John Molyneux
29 September 2008
KOREA COLUMN 38
Is Democratic Centralism anti -democratic?
Democratic centralism is a principle of party of organisation which combines democratic debate and policy making with united action by all party members to implement the policy.
Since the days of Lenin and the Bolsheviks most Marxist parties have operated, or claimed to operate, on the basis of democratic centralism.
I say ‘claimed’ because in numerical terms the big majority of so-called Marxist parties have, in fact, been Stalinist parties loyal to the Soviet Union and in such parties the centralism was overwhelming, with every party and every individual expected to toe the line decided in Moscow, while the democracy was virtually non- existent. Not surprisingly this experience has given democratic centralism a bad name.
Now, it is clear that if we reject Marxist concepts or practices on the grounds that they were used, perverted or discredited by Stalinism then we have to reject Marxism and socialism in their entirety, but it also clear that hostility to democratic centralism is not confined to its Stalinist incarnations. There are many on the left – left reformists, libertarians, autonomists, anarchists etc. - who criticise Trotskyist and other strongly anti-Stalinist parties over this issue.
For example, in Britain, the Respect MP George Galloway, attacked the Socialist Workers Party for its democratic centralism, saying its members were like ‘Russian dolls’. (If this ‘Russian doll’ metaphor is circulating on the left in South Korea it is doubtless because it was picked up from Galloway). However, leaving George Galloway aside, there is clearly a widespread view on the left, that democratic centralism is a deeply flawed, inherently anti-democratic organisational model.
Despite this I intend to argue a) that democratic centralism is ESSENTIAL for a revolutionary workers party to perform effectively as a leader of the working class in struggle; b) that far from being anti-democratic it is really the MOST democratic form of party organisation.
To grasp the importance of democratic centralism it is necessary to understand that the attempt to combine democracy and centralism is not some arbitrary organisational principle dreamt up by Lenin or any other Marxist, but is rooted, in embryonic form, in the very nature of working class struggle. The working class struggle is a struggle from below, a struggle of ‘the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority’ From its earliest days (for example, the Chartists in Britain) one of its most important demands was for political democracy, the democratic republic. When workers realised that political democracy was not enough to change society they demanded not less but more democracy, democracy extended to production and society as a whole, hence social democracy. It was therefore natural and inevitable that workers’ organisations, trade unions, associations, parties and the like adopted – at least at first – democratic constitutions and procedures.
But there is also an element of centralism inherent in workers struggle. The power of capital is by its nature highly centralised Decision making in any capitalist enterprise is top down, from the owner or the Board of Directors, and enforced with virtually military discipline. As capitalism ages and the ownership of capital becomes more concentrated, so this centralisation becomes ever more extensive and intense. If Samsung, Ford or Exxon, make a strategic decision on pricing, plant closure or dealing with an industrial dispute, they will expect that decision to be implemented by every manager in the company across the world. To assert their rights against this power, workers have no choice but to combine their forces, to agree to act together.
Consider the most basic form of the class struggle, the strike. The workers of a particular workplace, company or industry decide, democratically (ideally through voting at mass meetings) whether or not to go on strike, but that decision is then binding on everyone. If the decision is against striking and some individuals still walk out, they will almost certainly simply be sacked. But if the decision goes in favour of the strike then every worker involved is expected to come out and anyone who does not is a scab and a traitor. This is democratic centralism in embryo. And to those who rail against democratic centralism it is worth pointing out that bourgeois liberals have always denounced trade union solidarity and discipline as an infringement of the sacred rights of the individual, but have never even noticed how the centralised power of capital affects the rights of working people.
The democratic centralism of the revolutionary party is based on the democratic centralism of the astrike, but there is also a difference. In the strike it applies, and is limited, mainly to the economic struggle. In the party it applies also to the political and , to an extent, to the ideological level. This is because the revolutionary party is a voluntary, minority organisation, within the workers’ movement as a whole, whose aim is to lead the working class in the conquest of political i.e. state power and which, in order to achieve that aim must, wage a many sided ideological struggle against the dominance of bourgeois ideas in the working class and against rival political tendencies (reformism, Stalinism etc) who experience has shown, will hold back the workers’ struggle and betray it to the bourgeoisie.
The necessity of this political democratic centralism can be seen if one replaces the example of the strike with the example of a revolutionary situation i.e a situation where the masses are in action, where the old state machine has been undermined, where, perhaps, there are elements of dual power – workers’ councils, occupied workp[laces etc. – and the fateful decision has to be made, for or against insurrection. How can such a decision be taken in the middle of the most intense class warfare?. Some kind of national referendum is not possible, nor can there be a series of parliamentary style public debates, not without alerting the class enemy and inviting counter-revolutionary repression. In fact only a party with roots in every section of the working class and a strong tradition of internal democratic debate will be able to assess correctly the mood of the masses and the chances of success. But once the decision has been made it must obviously be carried out in unity (in Seoul, Gyeongju and Busan, or London, Manchester and Birmingham) if the revolution is not to be crushed.
Be that as it may, the critics will say, we are not in a revolutionary situation, and the trouble with democratic centralism is that it too easily manipulated by bad leaders in the hear and now. In fact anti - democratic manipulation is always possible, whatever the formal constitution of a party, but democratic centralism makes it more difficult not easier. This is because it disciplines not only the rank and file of the party but also the leaders.
Imagine a party with, apparently, a high level of democratic debate and discussion but very little centralism. Such a party was the old British Labour Party before Tony Blair got his hands on it. Its annual conferences were full of passionate debates, criticisms of the party leadership, and resolutions democratically proposed and voted upon. Yet it all counted for nothing . Because there was no centralism the party leadership, especially when it was in government, simply ignored the decisions of the party. Without centralism there was no democracy because the working class majority of the party had no means ensuring its views were acted upon.
At bottom the question of democratic centralism is a class question. The working class needs both democracy and centralism because it is a movement from below which can succeed only by acting together.
John Molyneux
27 July 2008
KOREA COLUMN 39
Should workers cooperate with employers to make their firms successful?
In times of economic difficulty or recession employers frequently turn to their workers and say something like this: ‘Times are hard; we all need to tighten our belts and sacrifice a bit at the moment, but if we all pull together the company will soon return to prosperity and that will benefit us all in the long run’.
This is an extremely popular argument which virtually unanimous support – among employers. In fact I doubt there is an employer on the globe that doesn’t claim to want the cooperation of its workforce.
This is hardly surprising. Oppressors through out the ages have urged their victims to cooperate. Doubtless the Egyptian Pharaohs were pleased when their slaves cooperated in hauling the vast stones that built the Pyramids. The slave owners in the Americas showed their appreciation of cooperative slaves by making the ‘house’ slaves and granting them small ‘privileges’ relative to the ‘field’ Negroes. The SS secured the Jews’ cooperation in boarding the cattle trucks by not telling them their true destination.
The problem with the ‘cooperate with company’ argument, however, is that it is widely accepted not just by bosses (and their allies in government and the media, of course) but also by many workers. Evidence for this can be seen in the way trade union officials so often bend over backwards to appear ‘reasonable’ and to stress that it is the management who are being uncooperative. Indeed the argument can be made to sound like simple ‘common sense. Let us confront it in its strongest form.
Company X, which makes widgets, is in trouble. It has just announced huge losses for the last two quarters and the management admit they are on the verge of bankruptcy. It is a multinational company and there is also the possibility it will close its operation in South Korea and shift production to the Philippines where wages are lower. If, however, the workers will accept a pay cut of 10% and a no strike deal for two years, management pledge to keep the factory open and say they are confident of winning new orders. The Government is backing the deal and there are rumours, if it is accepted, of massive investment. Besides unemployment is high and if Company X closes its workers will struggle to find new jobs. Surely, in these circumstances, it makes sense to cooperate?
There are parts of this argument, which as any decent trade union representative will know, have to be challenged immediately. How real is the threat to move production overseas? Multinationals are always trying to blackmail their workers this way, when often the costs and disadvantages of relocation are prohibitive (which is why they are in South Korea, not the Philippines, in the first place). What guarantees are there for the promises about the future? What is stop the management from coming back in six months time and saying we are very sorry, we meant what we said at the time, but things have changed and now we are closing anyway, or we want another 10% cut?
PLUS what about management salaries ETC
However these points do not really get to heart of the matter. Let us assume for the moment that the employers are, broadly speaking, telling the truth, at least as they see it and as far as they can know it (I strongly advise against making this assumption in practice). Then let us ask what Company X being ‘in trouble’ and facing closure really means. Obviously it means not making a profit or not making enough profit and the most likely reason for that is either: there is another company, Y or Z, capturing the widget market by making them better or selling them cheaper; or there is a decline in the widget market, due to other companies or the public being less willing to spend their money on widgets; or some combination or variation on both these reasons.
Now let us assume that the workers of Company X agree to the 10% pay cut demanded. This will give the profits of Company X a boost and restore its competitive edge over Company Y. Now it will be Y’s turn to be in trouble and Y’s workers turn to face redundancy. Obviously the Y management will say to their workers, the X workers over there took a wage cut, you must do the same or we will be uncompetitive. But if the Y workers follow the example of the X workers, all it means is that the relative competitive positions of Companies X and Y will be restored with both their workforces earning less. This ‘race to the bottom’ has been the essence of neo-liberal globalisation adopted by ruling classes nearly everywhere in their drive to raise profits.
If we look back over this ‘workers should cooperate argument’ it is clear that workers’ ability to see through it is bound up with their ability to see beyond themselves as workers in one isolated workplace and look also at the workplace and workers down the road and ultimately round the world. For the only real answer to the bosses’ strategy, and it is a strategy as well as an idea, is for the workers of company X to link up with the workers of Company Y (and Z etc) and together reject wage cuts and redundancy. It should also be clear that workers ability to do this is a matter not just of their intellectual understanding, their consciousness, but also of their confidence and organisation. For workers the crucial question is not just the abstract argument, but the calculation: if we here at X resist will the workers at Y and elsewhere fight with us?
This why trade union organisation is so important, so that workers in one workplace, then across different workplaces, and ultimately across the class as a whole are linked to each other and can take action together.
It is also why a revolutionary party is vital. In practice in most workplaces there will some workers whose whole inclination is to accept the bosses’ cooperation argument and others who consciously reject it. Between these two poles there will be those, probably a majority, who are unsure. What actually happens, the course of the class struggle, depends on which pole is able to win over the waverers. The revolutionary party is simply an organisation of the rejectionists, in every possible workplace, across all boundaries, to increase their ability to win the argument against the collaborators and lead the majority of the class in struggle.
Thus we see that this single argument contains in essence the whole logic of the class struggle. Either collaborate with the boss and compete with other workers, or join with other workers to fight the boss. The first road leads, in the end, to racism, nationalism, war and fascism, i.e. to barbarism. The second road leads to socialism.
John Molyneux
1 September 2008
KOREA COLUMN 41
Some Thoughts on the Crisis
This month it is very hard for a Marxist to write about anything other than the astonishing crisis that has swept through world capitalism in the last six weeks or so, especially as this crisis is now beginning to have a serious impact in South Korea. However knowing that Candlelight Resistance (along with every other newspaper) will already have been analysing this crisis I will offer only some Marxist observations on the situation rather than an overall account.
Watching the crisis unfold I have wanted both to laugh and to cry. To laugh at the contradictions and contortions the western ruling classes and their political and ideological representatives have fallen into as they have been forced to abandon all the economic doctrines they have been proclaiming with such certainty over the last twenty years or so. To cry at the misery that, without a shadow of a doubt, will be inflicted on the working people and the poor of the world as we are expected to pay up the bill for their crisis.
There has been plenty to laugh about. For example George Bush’s right wing neo- conservative neo-liberal government being forced into the biggest nationalisation in history, with the takeover of mortgage firms, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, followed by a series of other nationalisations. But isn’t that … socialism? Well actually it is state capitalism not socialism but Bush and co. would have denounced it as socialism a few months ago. In Britain it was particularly funny to see the British government complain about the Irish government guaranteeing deposits in Irish banks on one day (unfair competition you know, distorting the market i.e. people would take their money out of British banks and put it in Irish ones), only to complain equally bitterly the next day about the failure of the Icelandic government to guarantee British deposits when the Icelandic banks went bust.
Then there was Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve Bank and the Pope of the free market, admitting there was a ‘flaw’ in his ideology. In truth the whole spectacle of Lehman Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch, HBOS, Wachovia, - these giants of capitalism, masters of the universe with centuries of accumulation and exploitation behind them - falling like nine pins and going cap in hand to the state has made schadenfreude impossible to resist [if this wont translate put ‘ has afforded a degree of pleasure’]
But, of course, we know that their embarrassment is going to be followed by real suffering for ordinary people. Wage cuts and job cuts, unemployment and poverty, house repossessions and homelessness – these are the inevitable consequences of recession. Cuts in welfare benefits and social services, in health and education – these, before long, will be the responses of capitalist governments. In the poorest countries there will be famine and starvation, in the developing countries their development will falter and some will collapse, and even in the richest, most advanced countries the working class will feel the pain.
Torn between laughter and tears I am reminded of the motto of the great 17th century philosopher, Spinoza, ‘Neither laugh nor cry, but understand!’. And as a contribution to understanding this crisis I want to make three points. First it is not some natural disaster or weather calamity. Greenspan described it as ‘a once in a century tsunami’, and the media is full of phrases such as ‘economic typhoon’ or ‘hurricane’. This is nonsense: the crisis is neither natural nor an act of god but entirely man made; it was, in broad outlines, predictable and predicted for example by Marxist economists such as Chris Harman and Robert Brenner; and, pace Greenspan, these crises recur a lot more frequently than ‘once in a century’.
Second, it is not basically a crisis of confidence. The capitalist media and its commentators always try to suggest that these crises are fundamentally just a question of investors, speculators and even manufacturers’ confidence. Sometimes they try to get away with the old claim that ‘the underlying real economy is sound’. Now obviously confidence does play a role: if you are worried that a bank is going to go bust you will be tempted to take your money out of it, thus making it more likely to go bust. If you anticipate a low rate of return on your investment in a company you are likely to invest elsewhere, and if you anticipate a general recession you will probably put your money in gold, and this in turn contributes to the depth and length of the recession.
BUT this ‘confidence’ or lack of it is not arbitrary or random. It doesn’t just float into the minds of investors from the ether. It is based on evidence and experience from the real world. For example the problems in the US sub-prime mortgage market, which initiated the credit crunch, were not just problems in people’s heads, they were real problems of people who really couldn’t keep up their mortgage repayments, and from the standpoint of the mortgage lenders the real problem of not being able to sell repossessed houses profitably in a falling house market.
One of the great achievements of Marx’s economics was to show that all wealth creation depends ultimately on the application of labour to nature, and all [exchange] value rests on the expenditure of socially necessary labour time. If prices in the elevated worlds of stock exchanges, hedge funds and currency speculation depart too far from these real material values then, sooner or later, they will spring back like overstretched elastic.
Which brings me to my third point, namely that this is not just a crisis caused by greedy bankers and financiers on Wall St etc. This is not to excuse the bankers and financiers who are undoubtedly greedy, and whose greed is an important component of the dynamic of the crisis. But let’s be clear, in their relentless pursuit of maximum profits the bankers were only following the same logic that drives Exxon and Shell, Wal-Mart and Samsung and every other capitalist company in manufacturing, retail or any other sector, i.e. the inherent logic of capitalist competition. ‘Accumulation for accumulation’s sake’ as Marx put it. The over lending by banks is only a variation on the general tendency towards overproduction in booms, long ago identified by Marx.
Moreover the roots of the present crisis lie not just in the financial sector but in the so-called ‘real’ economy. In Britain figures have just been released showing that the British economy moved into recession in the July-September quarter, the quarter BEFORE the financial meltdown. Clearly it has been problems in the
KOREA COLUMN 42
The Working Class and Social Change
According to Marx the working class or proletariat is ‘the only really revolutionary class’ [The Communist Manifesto] and ‘The emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class itself’ [The Rules of the International Working Men’s Association] and between capitalism and socialism there will be a transition which ‘can only be the dictatorship of the proletariat’ [The Critique of the Gotha Programme].
This conception of the revolutionary role of the working class was described by Lenin as ‘historically the main thing in Marxism’ but it is the idea many people find hardest to accept. On the one hand there are intellectuals like Herbert Marcuse and T.W. Adorno of the Frankfurt School who identified with much of Marx’s critique of capitalism but concluded that the working class was hopelessly bought off and indoctrinated by the system. On the other hand there are ordinary people, workers themselves, who simply say, ‘It will never happen’.
This is not surprising. The notion that working class people are obviously not capable of liberating themselves and running society is an absolutely central pillar of bourgeois ideology – the capitalist view of the world that pervades the media, the education system and our whole society. It is an idea that is particularly appealing to middle class intellectuals and is reinforced by their conditions of life. It also reflects much of the life experience of working class people who, from early childhood on, are treated as subordinates and have their confidence sapped.
Nevertheless, Lenin was right; the self emancipation of the working class is the main thing, the key idea in Marxism. Without it all the economic and historical theory becomes at best a passive commentary on the world rather than a means of changing it, or, at worst, as in Stalinism and Maoism, an ideology masking the interests of a different class [typically the state capitalist bureaucracy}.So let us look at Marx’s reasons for identifying the working class as the principal agent of social change and examine whether they still apply today.
We should begin by noting that Marx’s view was NOT based on the existing consciousness of the working class. Marx was well aware that the dominant ideas in society are those of the ruling class and that most of the time most of us are subordinate to them. For the mass of workers it would not be socialist consciousness that produced revolutionary struggle, but revolutionary struggle that produced socialist consciousness. Nor was it based on workers’ suffering and oppression. Of course, workers do suffer grievously under capitalism and Marxists fight against this, but not more so than the peasants, serfs and slaves whose poverty and oppression stretch back to the dawn of civilisation and who history shows were not able to abolish class divisions or create socialism .Rather it was based on their potential power deriving from their economic position in capitalist society that made the working class the revolutionary class.
As Marx showed, workers in capitalism are not just badly paid but exploited. Wealth, Marx called it surplus value, is extracted from their labour. This surplus value is the source of all the profits of the capitalist class and of the bulk of wealth in capitalism as a whole. The bourgeoisie therefore needs the working class (not as individuals, of course, but as a class). The working class is the special product of capitalism and at the same time it is the producer of capitalism.
Exploitation also puts the working class into an antagonistic relationship to capitalism; it creates an ongoing conflict of interest between labour and capital over wages, hours, conditions, and ultimately every other issue in society and this conflict turns into industrial and political struggle which is ‘now hidden, now open’ as Marx put it. Most of the time victory in these struggles goes to the bourgeoisie, who have at their disposal both far more wealth and state power (the law, police, judiciary, army etc) but no matter how many times they defeat the working class they cannot escape their dependency on its labour. As capitalism grows so the working class grows too, until it becomes the large majority of society.
In addition to increasing its numbers capitalism also concentrates the working class in large workplaces and great cities. This gives the modern working class far greater potential political power than the scattered peasantry or the old artisans employed in small workshops.
This is not only a negative power AGAINST capitalism but also a positive force FOR socialism. The working class is, by virtue of its economic and social position, a collectivist class. It can only resist the employers and improve its conditions of labour by collective action and it can only take possession of modern industry collectively i.e. by turning it into social property. When peasants seized the land from the feudal lords they could divide it up into small farms; this cannot be done with modern industry. Moreover, political power in all modern societies is based in big cities where the key means of production are also located. The urban industrial character of the proletariat enables it to exercise political power [the dictatorship of the proletariat] while also remaining the principal producing class. In this way it fundamentally undermines the division between rulers and ruled, thus opening the way to a fully classless socialist society.
Such, in essence, was the case made by Marx more than 150 years ago. Since then there have been many actual instances of the working class playing a revolutionary role, such as the Paris Commune of 1871, the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the German Revolution of 1919-24, the Spanish Revolution of 1936, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Portuguese Revolution of 1974. However it is clear that there is now no shortage of commentators, pundits and academics eager to pronounce Marx out of date.
As an aside I have to note that when I first became a Marxist 40 years ago the academics and pundits all said Marx was out of date then. But what I’ve never been able to find is a moment when most of these thought he was in date. Nevertheless we should look at the arguments.
They say that the working class has lost its revolutionary character because it is no longer poverty stricken as it was in Marx’s day. It is true of course that living standards have risen substantially for many, though by no means all, of the international working class, including in Europe and South Korea, but what is key is not the absolute level of pay but the conflict of interests involved in securing that pay. Relatively well paid workers can be forced into collective struggle in order to defend their high wages and that struggle can lead to revolutionary action and consciousness.
They also say that with the demise of the old industries such as mining, steel and the docks, the working class in the advanced capitalist countries is fast disappearing and certainly no longer the majority. But this argument is based on a false and superficial view of the working class as defined by certain traditional forms of work In reality what counts is not the nature of the work, manual or white collar, but the relations of production. Employees of call centres, supermarkets, hospitals and schools are just as much forced to live by the sale of their labour power as miners and car workers, are also exploited and also possess great collective power. For example call centre workers and supermarket workers who went on strike could have a devastating affect on their bosses’ profits.
Finally the notion that the working class is disappearing is the reverse of what is happening in the world as a whole. In reality the second half of the 20th century saw a huge spread of the working class in the great cities of Asia, Africa and Latin America such as Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Cairo, Johannesburg, Mexico City and Sao Paulo now even further augmented by the dramatic economic growth of China (and to a lesser extent, India). The global working class is today infinitely larger, more internationally integrated and potentially more powerful than it was in either Marx or Lenin’s day. Now more than ever it is the force than can change the world.
John Molyneux
1 December 2008
<div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-68955597208966783802022-01-23T18:13:00.002+00:002022-01-23T19:41:19.695+00:00Old posts - Articles for Korean Socialist Newspaper Counterfire I am publishing/republishing a number of old articles so they are readily available online and can be referenced with links. First comes a series of columns for Counterfire in Korea under the general title: Introduction to Marxism.
<b></b>Introduction to Marxism<b></b>
<b></b>The Point is to Change it<b></b>
‘Philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways, the point however is to change it’. These words, written by the young Karl Marx, are inscribed on his grave in Highgate Cemetery in London. And rightly so, for they inspired everything he did and wrote throughout his political life.
Today, more than 150 years on, it is easy to see that the world needs changing. The horrendous and ever growing inequality within and between nations; the almost unimaginable sums spent on arms while billions lack the basic necessities of life; the proliferation of destructive wars and the hatred and racism they generate; the crude domination of the world by the big corporations and by their representatives in the US government; the powerlessness and alienation experienced by the large majority of people in their daily lives and especially in their soul destroying jobs; the continuing subordination of women ie half the human race; the hypocrisy, lies and cruelty of our politicians and rulers the world over; the criminal inaction of governments in the face of environmental and human catastrophe through global warming.
All these things, and many others, make it obvious that we, humanity, need a better society. The only people who really can’t and won’t see it are those who benefit massively from the present system, the rich and powerful. But HOW to change the world? That is the real question.
Perhaps the problem is just that the wrong people are in charge. Get rid of Bush and Blair, replace them with … Hilary Clinton and Gordon Brown ? Or maybe not. Maybe what we need is for mankind to have a collective change of heart, but how do we bring that about? Prayer? Or is the solution to try to improve things gradually,bit by bit , reform by reform, country by country? If that won’t work and we need a revolution , what does that mean? Planting bombs or plotting a coup d’etat? Indeed can the world be changed ? After all people have been trying a long time – at least since Spartacus – and don’t seem to have done very well so far.
A moment’s reflection on these questions shows that to change society we need an understanding of how it works. We need to know what causes the inequality, war, racism and other evils listed above. We need to know the system’s weak points, the fault lines along which it might fracture if the right pressure is applied. We need to know who will be our friends and potential allies in the struggle and who will be our enemies. If we are going to change this society we need to understand the principles governing the changing of society in general.
This is where Marxism, or Marxist theory, comes in. The simple fact is that of all the various critiques of the system, all the theories of reform or revolution, all the strategies for change, by far the most serious , the most worked out , the most coherent and the most effective as a guide to action is Marxism. This is why, generation after generation, the majority of the most determined fighters for a better world, whether they were intellectuals like Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg and Gramsci , or militant workers like the fighters of the Paris Commune or proletariat of Petrograd in 1917 or the student rebels of the sixties, have been drawn towards Marxism.
Sometimes the version of Marxism to which people have been drawn – that of Stalin’s Russia is the prime example – has proved to be a vicious caricature of the real thing and has betrayed them terribly. This is a real problem , a bitter legacy we have to deal with. But always the genuine Marxism of human liberation has survived .
Time and again the establishment, the media and the professors have declared Marxism dead, out of date, and superceded. Again and again Marxism has reemerged as the principal intellectual and practical challenge to the status quo.This column is the first in a fortnightly series that will introduce and explain the basic ideas of Marxism.
There are, of course, many readily available ‘introductions to Marxism’. Every serious library and bookshop will stock at least a few. Some are very good, some are very dry and academic and some are seriously misleading. What will distinguish this series from most of the rest is that it will be written , in the first place, for the activist – for that generation of young, and sometimes not so young , people who have come into politics through the struggle against authoritarian rule, neo-liberal globalisation and war and who are looking to deepen their critical understanding of the system and clarify their strategy for challenging it.
The next column, in a fortnight’s time, will discuss what is the central idea in the whole of Marxism, namely the revolutionary role of the working class.
John Molyneux
KOREA COLUMN 2
<b></b>The Revolutionary Role of the Working Class<b></b>
Today there are millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, who broadly identify with the international anti-capitalist movement and want to see a change in the system. For the most part these people do not have a clear idea as to how this change can be made or who can make it. Many look to NGOs and single issue campaigns; others put their hopes in progressive governments like Chavez in Venezuela or Morales in Bolivia. Still others, though very much a minority at present, back some form of armed struggle.
In Marx’s day there was also range of opinion among radicals. In the 1840s ,prior to Marx, two trends, both deriving from the French Revolution, dominated the left .
The first, inspired by the Jacobins, believed that a small group of enlightened individuals should seize power by means of a secret conspiracy and then enact laws to establish a just society on behalf of the masses.This would be an egalitarian republic, without inherited privilege, but still with private property.
The second, known as the Utopian Socialists, included figures such as Charles Fourier in France and Robert Owen in Britain. They were convinced that socialism ( collective ownership) was a better way to order society than capitalism and sought to bring it about by rational argument and force of example i.e. forming model communities.
In other words the revolutionaries were not socialists, while the socialists were not revolutionaries. Marx rejected, or rather transcended, both these approaches to found revolutionary socialism. The key to revolutionary socialism was the identification of the working class or proletariat as the agent of social change.
By the working class Marx meant those who live by the sale of their labour power, employed and exploited by the capitalists. – the new class was emerging from the Industrial Revolution in cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and London and, to a lesser extent, in Europe especially its north western corner.
Whereas for the conspirators and the Utopians change was to brought about from above, for Marx change was to come from below, made by the workers themselves. ‘ The emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class itself’, he wrote.
What made Marx base his politics on the working class was not its suffering but its power. The suffering and exploitation of the working class was, of course, appalling and it gave workers the motive and the interest in challenging the system, but slaves and peasants had suffered and been exploited for millennia. What distinguished the working class was a) its power actually to defeat capitalism, and b) its ability to create a new society.
The working class is the unique child of capitalism. As capitalism expands so does the working class. Capitalism can defeat the worker class in battle after battle, break its strikes, smash its unions, curtail its liberty, but it cannot do without it to produce its profits, so always the workers return to fight again.
Capitalism draws workers together in large workplaces, links them in national and global industries, and concentrates them in vast cities. This gives them massive potential political power. Without their work no train, bus, or lorry moves; no coal, iron or oil leaves the earth; no papers are printed, no TV station broadcasts, no bank or school opens. Even the armed forces of the state depend on workers in their ranks. In creating the working class, capitalism creates the most powerful oppressed class in history.
The struggle of the working class is, by its nature, a collective struggle. To take on the mill owners of the !9th century or Ford or Hyundai today, workers have to combine their efforts and act together. To take possession of Ford or Hyundai the workers cannot divide the company up between them (as peasants divided the land) but have to turn it into social property. This what makes the working class a socialist class.
Moreover, when the working class takes power it remains the producing class in society, with no class below it, which it can exploit or live off. And being concentrated in big industry and big cities at the center of economic and political power, it has the capacity to prevent any new class emerging above it; it will be able to produce and rule at the same time, thus laying the foundation for a genuinely classless society. In liberating itself the working class liberates humanity.
This, the revolutionary role of the working class, is the core of Marxism. All Marx’s philosophy, history, economics and politics starts from here. No proposition in Marx has been so roundly dismissed by academics and pundits, including those otherwise ‘sympathetic’ to Marxism. ‘ The working class has changed’, is their familiar cry.
Yes, the working class has changed, in its jobs, its clothes, its pay, its nationalities and its culture. But in its fundamental conditions of existence it remains: it is still the child of capitalism, still living by the sale of its labour power, still exploited and still struggling collectively; while in its size and potential power it has grown enormously. In Marx’s day the proletariat was more or less confined to western Europe, today it stretches and fights on all five continents, from Sau Paulo to Seoul. Therein lies the basis of socialism and the hope for humanity.
John Molyneux
KOREA COLUMN 3
<b></b>What is Capitalism ?<b></b>
Know your enemy is an old and useful maxim. The enemy of the working class movement and of millions of others round the world – peasants, students, intellectuals etc – is capitalism. Yet amongst the general public and also within the movement there is often only the vaguest of notions what capitalism is.
This is because our rulers want it that way and thus ensure that from the lowest journalism to the top universities confusion reigns on the subject. Above all they want it to appear that capitalism is practically eternal – a matter of human nature – so as to dispel any idea of getting rid of it.
Consequently they identify capitalism with a human character trait, namely ‘greed’ which, at least to some extent, has been around as long as humans, or with ‘money’ which has been around about 5000 years or with ‘private property’ which has existed for about 10,000 years. Inevitably ‘ordinary’ people are influenced by this. It doesn’t stop them disliking capitalism, especially the effects of capitalism which they experience daily. Nor does it stop them resisting capitalism, sometimes very fiercely. But it does seriously hamper any attempt to overthrow it.
It was one of the most important of Karl Marx’s many intellectual achievements that he produced a clear and precise analysis of what defines capitalism, of how it emerged historically, and of the fundamental dynamic that drives it.
The first thing to grasp is that capitalism is neither an attitude nor an idea, but a definite economic system, a way of organising production, which arose initially spontaneously and relatively recently in human history. It began to develop seriously in Europe in the late Middle Ages within the previous mode of production, feudalism.
It was, and still is, a system of commodity production (commodities are goods produced for sale on the market) in which labour power becomes a commodity and wage labour becomes the main form of labour. The system is dominated by capital ( hence its name ), which is accumulated wealth used to employ wage labour with the aim of increasing its value in competition with other capitals. The wage labour /capital relation is the fundamental social relation that defines capitalism.
In order to fully assert itself capitalism had not only to develop economically, the owners of capital, the capitalists or bourgeoisie, had also to conquer political power. This they did first in the Dutch Revolution of the 16th century and the English Revolution of the 17th century. Following the American Revolution, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution (in Britain) capitalism came to dominate the world. Today it rules virtually everywhere.
These basic features explain why capitalism was a more progressive system than feudalism. First, wage labour was an advance – in terms of human freedom, productivity and revolutionary potential – on the labour of slaves, serfs and peasants that preceded it. Second, the competition between capitalists compelled them to develop production on a scale unthinkable under the sway of the feudal lords or any previous set of rulers.
However these same basic features also contain the seeds of all the inhumanity, inequality, crises, wars and destructiveness that have characterised the history of capitalism and make its overthrow so vital today.
The development of generalised commodity production leads to a world in which everything is for sale – they would sell air if they could. The transformation of labour power into a commodity alienates workers from their labour and the products of their labour. It turns work into mindless drudgery and workers into appendages of the machine ( and the office). The employment of wage labour by capital is a process of exploitation, which grinds workers down and results in ever increasing inequality.
The relentless uncontrolled competition between capitals produces periodic crises in which businesses go bankrupt, production falls, and mass unemployment and poverty ensues. The same competition means that smaller weaker businesses are taken over by larger stronger businesses and capital and production become ever more concentrated in the hands of a few giant corporations. Competition between these corporations – for resources (oil!), markets, labour, investment outlets – leads to wars of increasing ferocity and growing destruction of the environment to the point where the survival of society is threatened.
Historically the two most important errors in the understanding of capitalism have been its identification with a) private ownership and b) the free market. In both cases the mistake has been to equate one important and sometimes dominant feature of the system with the essence of the system.
The social democrats (like the German SPD and the British Labour Party) used to believe that by expanding state ownership and state planning, by the capitalist state, it would be possible gradually to abolish capitalism or at least tame it. They were wrong. It produced not a mixture of capitalism and socialism but only a mixture of capitalism and state capitalism. The Stalinists believed that those countries where state ownership and state planning were close to total (the USSR, China etc) were therefore socialist even though the workers controlled neither production nor the state and wage labour remained and the state was in competition with the rest of world capitalism. They were wrong. Control of society by a privileged state bureaucracy was not socialism but bureaucratic state capitalist tyranny.
In today’s anti-globalisation movement there are some who identify the enemy as only neo-liberalism, not capitalism as such. Neo-liberalism is indeed an enemy , but it is only one head of the capitalist hydra. Cutting it off , which is both good and necessary, will not, however, render the other heads less deadly.
Ultimately there is only one way to abolish capitalism and achieve socialism. That is for workers themselves to take ownership and control of the process of production and to do that , like the bourgeoisie before them, they must take political power.
Rosa Luxemburg summed it all up when she wrote, ‘ Where the chains of capitalism are forged, there must they be broken ! ‘
John Molyneux
KOREA COLUMN 4
<b></b>Why Revolution ?<b></b>
‘ Marx was above all else a revolutionist’, said Engels in his speech at Marx’s graveside. But why, and why do Marxists go on about ‘ the revolution’?
Revolutions are dangerous affairs . People get killed in revolutions, especially working people. And they have a habit of going wrong : look what happened in the French Revolution and in Russia and China – all that sacrifice and they ended up with tyrants as bad or worse than before. Besides revolution doesn’t look very likely. Most of the working class people you actually meet don’t seem in the least revolutionary. They are more interested in TV and football than revolution.
So, surely, it is better and more realistic to try to change the system step by step – to work through trade unions and parliament to raise living standards and win reforms that benefit working people. Maybe that way we will eventually arrive at socialism but even if we don’t at least things will get better for us and our children.
On the face of it these are powerful arguments and my guess is that many millions of working people have reasoned like this and as a result supported ‘moderate’ politicians and trade union leaders who have promised them reforms without the risks of revolutionary struggle.
The history of what really happened in the French, Russian and other revolutions is obviously very important in this debate but space does not allow me to deal with it here. Instead I want to focus on Marx’s own answer to this question which was summed up in a single sentence written in 1845.
‘This revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but because only in a revolution can the class overthrowing it rid itself of all the muck of ages and fit itself to found society anew.’
Like so many of Marx’s sentences this one combines a number of profound ideas and repays detailed examination and explanation. Let us start by noting that Marx is a revolutionary not out impatience or bitterness or love of violence or excitement, but out of necessity, because there is no other way of fundamentally changing society. The reasons for this are both economic and political.
Let us start by noting that Marx is a revolutionary not out impatience or bitterness or love of violence or excitement, but out of necessity, because there is no other way of fundamentally changing society. The growing and profits are high, increased living growing and profits are high, increased living standards and reforms ( under pressure from below) are possible but only on condition that they do not threaten the central mechanism of accumulation. Thus, even in this most favourable scenario, reforms result only in more crumbs for the workers from the rich man’s table, while the gap between the workers and the rich grows wider and the power of the capitalists in society increases.
When accumulation is going badly and profits are falling the ruling class attacks workers’ living standards and fights to claw back reforms granted in the past. The struggle for reforms, though it has to be waged, is like the labour of Sisyphus, the character from Greek mythology condemned to push a ball up a hill only for it to roll back down again.
But if step by step reform cannot change society what about electing a socialist government committed to the overall transformation of society ? Surely that at least would be peaceful ? Unfortunately not. Faced with such a threat the capitalist class, as it has shown many times in the past, would use all its economic and political power to undermine, frustrate and destroy the government.
It would attack the currency through speculation, go on investment strike, close down factories, lock out workers and thus provoke an intense economic crisis. It would use the state apparatus, which is not neutral but tied by a thousand threads to the interests of the ruling class, to block legislation and government action, and in the final analysis it would use force, in the shape of a military or fascist coup.
The working class would only be able to resist this offensive by using its power, by occupying the factories and workplaces, by breaking up the existing state machine and taking control of society itself. In other words, far from avoiding the need for revolution, the election of a socialist government would either be a prelude to revolution or it would fail. And unless there existed within the movement an organized body of workers with a revolutionary perspective – a revolutionary party – the chances of success in this confrontation would be slim.
But this is all fantasy, our skeptic might object. The working class is never going to opt for revolution, it’s too brainwashed by the system. This is where the second part of the quote from Marx comes in, for it is true that the system , through the media, education etc. stuffs workers’ heads with reactionary ideas – nationalism, racism, sexism, deference, belief in capitalism and so on – the ‘muck of ages’ as Marx calls it.
It is often assumed that for there to be a revolution the majority of people have first to be convinced of revolutionary ideas. This is not how it happens says Marx. Revolutions begin spontaneously when large masses of workers engage in struggle, usually over a particular issue or against a particular regime. It is in the process of revolutionary struggle, above all because of the sense they get of their collective power, that the mass of workers rid themselves of their prejudices and illusions and develop revolutionary consciousness.
This is why revolution is both necessary and possible.
John Molyneux
KOREA COLUMN 5
<b></b>The Principle of Internationalism<b></b>
‘ Workers of the world, unite !’ Ever since these words brought to a close the Communist Manifesto of 1848, this has been the basic slogan of our movement.
It brings together, in the most succinct form, two fundamental ideas:1) that our movement is the movement of a definite class, the working class or proletariat; 2) that it is an international movement – the working people of all countries are our brothers and sisters. The first of these ideas I discussed earlier in this series; in this column I shall discuss the principle of internationalism.
‘ The proletariat has no fatherland’. With these words, also from the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels signaled their complete break with the ruling ideas, the ideas of the ruling class, on the question of patriotism and nationhood. Across the globe, from the cradle to the grave, we are all indoctrinated to believe that our first loyalty is to, and our basic identification is with, our nation. Education, culture, sport and politicians all contribute to this process to the point where it is made to seem almost unnatural not to support ‘our’ ( Korean, British, American, Chinese, whatever) industry, team, army, etc.
In reality there is nothing ‘natural’ at all about nationalism. For the vast bulk of human history people had no sense of nationhood whatsoever for the simple reason that there were no nations. Nationalism emerged in Europe over the last 4-500 years and in most of the world only in the last century. This is because nationalism is a product of capitalism.
Like capitalism itself, nationalism was originally progressive. It served as a rallying cry against the dynastic empires, monarchies and petty principalities of feudalism – witness its role in the French Revolution. Like capitalism it has long since become reactionary, acting as the principal ideological mechanism for obscuring the conflict of interest between the working class and the capitalist class and creating a false sense of identity between exploiters and the exploited. At the same time it works, like racism, to divide and weaken the working class by making them see foreign workers as their rivals and enemies.
Breaking with nationalism is, therefore, central to breaking with capitalist ideas and is one the key dividing lines between Marxists and reformists, who, by and large, go along with nationalism ( as they tend to go along with much of bourgeois ideology, importing it into the workers’ movement).
The question of internationalism versus nationalism comes to head in time of war. For the socialist movement the test case was the beginning of World War 1 in 1914. This led to split between the reformist leaders of most European socialist parties who supported their ‘own’ ruling classes in the imperialist slaughter and the revolutionary Marxists, such as Lenin and Trotsky in Russia and Luxemburg and Liebknecht in Germany, who opposed the war and followed Liebknecht’s maxim that ‘The main enemy is at home’.
In general terms the internationalist attitude to war is to condemn wars between big capitalist, ie imperialist, powers and to work for the overthrow of our own ruling class and the unity of the workers of the contending nations. In wars of imperialist conquest, such as the Vietnam War or the Iraq War, internationalists both condemn the war and positively support the right to self-determination of the oppressed nation , including its right to wage a war of national liberation.(Though it must be remembered that each war is different and a concrete analysis must always be made.)
Does this support for ‘national’ liberation violate the principle of internationalism? No. The support is given to the struggle against national oppression, not to nationalism. Its aim is to weaken imperialism, our common enemy, and to facilitate the voluntary unity of the working class and oppressed of all countries.
There is a further, equally important, reason why Marxists are internationalists. Capitalism is a global system and the workers’ struggle against it can only be waged successfully on an international basis. The revolution may begin in one country but to be completed it must be spread. A socialist society cannot be built in one country, because of the counter revolutionary pressure, both economic and military, that will inevitably be applied to by the rest of world capitalism.
Marx and Engels realized this from the beginning. Already in 1847 in The Principles of Communism Engels directly posed the question, ‘Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone ?’ and answered ‘No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the earth… into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others.’
The experience of Russia proved the point in practice. The adoption of the policy of ‘socialism in one country’ by Stalin in 1924 marked Stalin’s break with Marxism and produced not socialism but state capitalism. Having abandoned international revolution the Soviet bureaucracy was forced to compete with western capitalism on its own terms ie in terms of the exploitation of its working class.
Today, in the age of globalisation and global warming, internationalism is more relevant and vital than ever. It must be applied at home in defense of refugees and migrant workers, in the trade union struggle against the multinationals, in the struggle against Bush and Blair’s ‘War on Terror’, and in the international anti-capitalist and socialist movements.
Now more than ever we have a world to save and to win!
John Molyneux
KOREA COLUMN 6
<b></b>Their History and Ours<b></b>
In the first five of these columns I have set out some of Marx’s key political ideas on the working class, capitalism, revolution and internationalism. Although these ideas are important in themselves, they also form part of a wider system of thought, Marx’s theory of history which is usually called ‘historical materialism’.
Historical materialism is the backbone of Marxism as a whole. It provides an overview of the whole of human history from the Old Stone Age to the modern era and it is the method used by Marxists to analyse not only past events like the French Revolution and the Second World War, but also current developments such as the rise of China and the Lebanon War. And its not just a theory but also a guide to action.
Some people will say why bother with a theory of history at all, why not just stick to the facts. But this is an illusion. In history, indeed on any day in history, there are an infinite number of ‘facts’, of things that happen. ANY account of history, whether it admits or not, depends on a general theory in order to decide which facts are important for human development and which are not and what are the likely relations between these facts.
Mainstream history, the kind that dominates in the media and in school, is mainly based on the ‘theory’ that what shapes history is, first and foremost, the actions of powerful individuals – emperors, kings, politicians, generals and the like – particularly the battles they fought, the policies they pursued and the laws they passed. This theory, fairly obviously, expresses the standpoint of the ruling classes who naturally assume that it is they who make history.
An alternative theory, popular with intellectuals, is that history is shaped primarily by ideas – either the ideas of great philosophers like Plato, Aristotle , Confucius etc. or disembodied ideas like ‘order’, ‘nationalism’, ‘democracy’, ‘economic growth’ which mysteriously capture society at various times and express the ‘spirit of the age’. The great weakness of this approach is that it fails to explain where these ideas come from or why they arise when they do.
Then there is an approach which appeals especially to academics. It denies that history is driven by any single factor. Rather it says that history is shaped by various different ‘factors’ – a bit of economics, a bit of politics, an element of class, an element of religion and so on. In recent years ‘race’ and ‘gender’ are often added to the list. This method, sometimes called ‘pluralism’, sometimes ‘postmodernism’, suits those who do not want to make up their minds or take sides, but want to present their ideas as unbiased, sophisticated and profound. Its defect is that it explains neither how the different ‘factors’ arise nor how they interact – it simultaneously explains everything and nothing.
What unites all these approaches is that they tend to view society and history from the top down. Marx’s theory of history is quite different: it is history from below, from the standpoint of the working class, and openly acknowledges itself to be so. It does not deny that the deeds and ideas of powerful individuals play a role in history but it does not begin with them. It begins with the everyday actions, the work, of the many millions of ordinary working people struggling to make a life for themselves.
Historical materialism is not only more radical than the various mainstream, i.e. bourgeois, theories, it is also more coherent and more scientific. This is because it starts where history has to start, with real human individuals and their needs and what they do to meet those needs. ‘ The first premise of all history’, writes Marx, ‘ is that men must be in a position to live in order to “make history”. But life involves before anything else eating, drinking, clothing, a habitation and many other things.’ Of course animals also have material needs but the difference is that humans produce their means of subsistence through social labour.
Historical materialism, therefore, focuses first on production: on the technical means through which it is achieved, which Marx calls the forces of production, and the social relations between which it involves, which Marx calls the relations of production. Together the forces and relations of production form definite modes of production or economic systems, such as ancient slave society, feudalism and capitalism.
The mode of production, Marx argues, constitutes the ‘real foundation’ or economic base of society ‘on which arises a legal and political superstructure’ and which ‘conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness’.
Marx’s insight here turns upside down the way these things are usually put. To give some examples: we do not live in a capitalist society because people believe in capitalist ideas, people believe in capitalism because we live in a capitalist society (which began to develop spontaneously out of the soil of feudalism long before it was conceptualized by anyone); the Atlantic slave trade and western imperialism were not caused by racism, rather racism was caused by the slave trade and imperialism, which were part of the expansion of capitalism. Or, to be absolutely contemporary, Islamophobia is not the cause but the consequence of US imperialism’s desire to control Middle Eastern and Central Asian energy supplies.
It is important to point out that Marx was able to have these insights – so invaluable for understanding both past history and current politics – because he had already grasped the revolutionary potential of the working class. How he developed them into a full blown theory of social change and revolution will be discussed in the next column.
John Molyneux
KOREA COLUMN 7
<b></b>How Society Changes<b></b>
As I explained in the last column Marx’s theory of history centred on production. The way a society organizes the production of the necessities of life constitutes its mode of production, the economic base which shapes its superstructure- its law, politics, religion, philosophy, morality, art etc.
But how does one mode of production change into another? For Marx, himself, and for us today, for everyone who is anti-capitalist, i.e. wants to get rid of the capitalist mode of production, this is the crucial question.
To answer it we must go back to the fact that Marx distinguished two aspects of production: the forces and relations of production. It is the interaction and conflict between these which lays the basis for fundamental social change.
The forces of production are the capacity of a society to produce goods: its resources, labour, knowledge and technology. Examples include: the spears and bows and arrows of stone age hunters; the ox or horse drawn ploughs of the medieval farmer; the textile mills, spinning jennies and steam trains of the industrial revolution; the production lines, power stations and computers of modern industry.
The relations of production are the social relation people enter into in the process of producing. They range from the primitive communist clan of hunters and gatherers, to slave owners and slaves of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, to landlords and serfs or peasants, to capitalist employers and wage workers today.
Marx argues that it is the level of development of the forces of production that shapes the relations of production. ‘ The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam mill society with the industrial capitalist’. The forces of production, however, tend to grow, by no means evenly or at a uniform rate, but over time they tend to advance as human beings discover ways to produce more effectively. At a certain stage in their development the forces of production come into conflict with the existing relations of production (which are also society’s property relations). While at first these relations had assisted the growth of the productive forces, they now become an obstacle, a ‘ fetter’ on their further development. Then , says Marx, ‘ there begins an epoch of social revolution’.
When this contradiction sets in the whole of society is thrown into prolonged crisis. The old ways of doing things no longer work. The old ideas and established institutions start to lose their authority. New critical and revolutionary ideas start to emerge. The crisis is only resolved when a new mode of production with new relations of production is established and society is able to move forward.
This, in essence, was what happened in the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe and is what lies behind the general crisis of capitalism today, now operating on a world scale. It is why, despite the existence of productive forces easily capable of supplying everyone on the planet with a decent living, thousands of millions suffer poverty, malnutrition and homelessness. It is why we are beset with endless conflict and wars and why we are threatened with environmental catastrophe. It is a crisis that will be ended only with the establishment of a new mode of production – socialism.
Put just like this ( and, for various reasons, Marx did sometimes put it this way) the whole process can sound mechanical and automatic – economically determined and independent of human action. But nothing could be further from the truth and nothing further from Marx’s real meaning. This is because the conflict between the forces and relations of production is also a conflict between social classes.
Ever since the end of primitive communist hunter-gatherer society, the relations of production have been, at the same time, class relations, relations of exploitation and oppression in which one class ( the class which owns and controls the main means of production) is the dominant or ruling class – in Ancient Society the slave owners, in feudalism the landed aristocracy, in capitalism the bourgeoisie. This class has a vested interest in the existing order which is the basis of its power and privileges. Faced with a challenge from developing productive forces it does not at all say ‘ Our time is up. Let us vacate the stage gracefully’. On the contrary it fights bitterly to defend the status quo - ‘ our way of life’ or ‘ civilisation as we know it’, as they say.
The developing forces of production are also linked to and produce a definite class – under feudalism the growth of manufacture and trade gave rise to the bourgeoisie, under capitalism modern industry gives birth to the working class or proletariat. The resolution of the crisis, and the fate of humanity, depends on the outcome of the struggle between the old ruling class and the new rising class.
This is anything but pre-determined.. In Europe the failure of the bourgeois revolution in Italy and Germany in the 16th century set those countries back three hundred years – they did not even achieve national unification until the 19th century. In China ( and by extension Korea) the old imperial order was able to suppress the development of capitalism with the consequence that they entered the 20th century as deeply impoverished, perennial victims of imperialism. The defeat of the workers’ revolution in Germany in 1918-23 led to the rise of Stalin and Hitler and was paid for in blood by more than 70 million people.
The ruling class has much on its side, wealth, tradition, ideology and in particular state power, which has been fashioned specifically for the purpose of holding down the oppressed classes. The struggle of the revolutionary class has to be both an economic and a political struggle, a struggle for state power. Victory in the struggle depends on political consciousness, mobilization and organization. A significant part of that is what we, as activists, do now.
John Molyneux
19 August 2006
KOREA COLUMN 8
<b></b>The Meaning of Class<b></b>
As we saw in the last of these columns the concept of class struggle played a crucial role in Marx’s theory of history. For Marx class struggle was the main driving force in history and the means by which one mode of production is transformed into another, for example feudalism into capitalism or capitalism into socialism. But what is meant by class?
In modern capitalist society this question has become very confused, and not accidentally so. On the one hand the term is very widely used – in the media, in literature and in daily life – because the existence of layers of people with very unequal amounts of wealth, and widely differing life styles and opportunities is so obvious that it cannot be denied. On the other hand our rulers have a massive interest in ensuring that people, especially working people, do not develop a clear understanding of it, do not, in other words, develop class consciousness.
Consequently, for more than a century, the ruling class has been happy to fund academics (particularly sociologists) and pundits to come up with a variety of theories and concepts of class. They have not minded very much about the content of these theories on one condition – that they disputed and ‘refuted’ the Marxist theory of class, the only one they really feared.
The principal strategy in this ideological mystification has been to treat class as essentially a subjective matter, a question of how people see their own and others’ position in the social structure and how they define their own class identity. Max Weber, the early 20th century sociologist who is the key intellectual figure in much of this debate, focused primarily on ‘status’ and ‘status groups’, rather than economic class, as being the main factors in social action, with status defined as prestige in the eyes of others.
Even when class is defined by occupation, as is the case in many governmental and sociological statistics, which appears to be an objective criterion, the ranking of the occupations – for example teachers as middle class, mechanics as working class – is done on the subjective basis of presumed status.
Treating class as subjective makes the concept highly unstable, varying from year to year, decade to decade, country to country, and also opens the door to regular claims that class divisions have disappeared or are no longer important, and that viewing politics in class terms is out of date.
By contrast Marxism, though obviously concerned with class consciousness, insists that class divisions are objective – they exist in the structure of society independently of people’s awareness or conception of them. For Marx, class divisions derive from and are based on the relations of production in society. Often this is expressed in the phrase ‘class is defined by relationship to the means of production’, usually with the rider that ‘it is a question of ownership or non- ownership’. But, although it points in the right direction, this formulation is inadequate and can be misleading. Slave owners, feudal lords and capitalists are all owners of the means of production but they are three different classes. Similarly, in modern society, neither a middle manager in Samsung nor a shop floor worker are owners of the means of production but they are not both members of the same class.
A fuller understanding of the Marxist theory of class requires a grasp of three points. First, that the relations of production of society form a totality, a definite system of production, and classes are defined by the roles they play in the system as a whole. It is necessary to start from the system as a whole, not from individual cases.
Second, that classes are a matter not only of relations between people and things (means of production – land, machines, factories etc.) but also of social relations between people; classes are formed in conflict with one another.
Third, that what drives the conflict is not envy or different life styles or even just inequality, but exploitative relations of production, that is the systematic extraction of a surplus (profit) by one group of people from the labour of another group. Class struggle derives from exploitation in the process of production and from there extends to every aspect of social life.
It is the concept of exploitation ( to be explained further in my next column) which differentiates the Marxist theory of class and which is absent from all the bourgeois, liberal and sociological accounts. Exploitation creates an objective conflict of interests – first over pay, hours of work, conditions etc. and then over housing, health, education, law and order, foreign policy (warfare versus welfare) and so on.
Apply this analysis to modern capitalist society and, with some important local variations, we find essentially the same class structure in all developed countries.
At the top, stands the ruling or capitalist class, which owns or controls the major means of production, and lives on the profits it makes from the employment of wage labour. Not every member of the ruling class, e.g .some top politicians and state officials, is personally involved in the employment and profit making, but they are all tied into it and depend on it.
In opposition to them stands the majority, the working class, who live by the sale of their labour power and are exploited by the capitalist class. The working class includes both manual and white collar workers – nurses and teachers as well as dockers and car workers. If people live primarily by the sale of their labour power they are part of the working class whether they work in mines and factories or call centers and colleges.
Between these two main classes stand various intermediate strata, commonly called the middle class, who shade into the ruling class at their upper levels and the working class at their lower levels. There are two strands in the middle class, both hierarchically organized. On the one hand, small business owners, the petty bourgeoisie, who are either self employed or employ a few workers. On the other, managers. Managers may appear to be working class in that they do not own the means of production and are paid wages or salaries, but in fact they are not paid to work as such and are not exploited, they are paid to manage and enforce the exploitation of the workers under their control. Such managers exist not only in private companies, but also in schools, hospitals, and the state bureaucracy.
It is the struggle between the capitalist class and the working class that shapes the basic political terrain in modern society. The middle classes play an important role – the ruling class cannot run society without them – but politically they tend to vacillate between the two main classes according to which is exerting the stronger ‘gravitational pull’.
In many less developed countries there is another large class, the peasantry, which plays a significant role in production and politics, but even where the peasantry are still a majority, it is usually the battle between capitalists and workers which is decisive. And on a world scale it is absolutely clear that it is the struggle between the international bourgeoisie and the international proletariat that will determine the fate of humanity,
John Molyneux
September 13, 2006
KOREA COLUMN 9
<b></b>How Workers are Exploited<b></b>
In my last column I showed how for Marx classes and class struggle are created and shaped by exploitation. This reverses the way the matter is usually seen – that first classes exist and then, every now and again, one class exploits the other. It is also the case that Marx’s concept of exploitation differs fundamentally from what it is the dominant conception in our society.
According to the dominant conception exploitation is either mainly a thing of the past – eg child labour was exploited in the Industrial Revolution – or exists today only by way of exception , practiced by rogue employers who pay especially low wages. For Marx, however, exploitation is the norm not the exception. Even relatively well paid workers employed by so-called ‘good’, even ‘generous’ employers are, nevertheless , exploited. Exploitation is inherent in the capitalist wage labour relation.
‘How can this be?’ cry the employers and their supporters with one voice. ‘When we employ workers it is a fair exchange, wages for work, and a voluntary contract freely entered into by both parties. Indeed they should be grateful to us for providing them with work and if they don’t like it, let them go and work somewhere else.’
In reality this argument is false from beginning to end. Capitalists do not ‘provide work’ or ‘create jobs’. There was work before capitalism and there will be work after capitalism. Jobs, i.e. tasks that require performing, arise from human needs, and with 6 billion people on the planet, who all need feeding, clothing, housing, educating etc. etc. there is absolutely no shortage of work for those 6 billion to do. What the capitalists actually do, through their ownership and control of the means of production, is make it impossible for most people to work except by working for them. Nor, of course, do they employ people out of charity or civic duty, but in order to make a profit i.e. expand the value of their capital.
But how is this profit made? Where does it come from? Obviously by not paying the workers enough. But how are the capitalists able to get away with this daylight robbery, day after day, year after year, decade after decade and why does it all look so fair on the surface? It was one of Marx’s greatest intellectual achievements to answer all these questions and to demonstrate that beneath the façade of a ‘fair exchange’ lay the systematic extraction of unpaid labour from the workers.
The starting point of Marx’s answer is that under capitalism workers’ ability to work, their labour power, is sold as a commodity like every other commodity. The value of a commodity ( value is not the same as price but is the underlying point around which actual prices oscillate) is determined, Marx says, by the amount of socially necessary labour time required to produce it. The reason a loaf of bread sells for $1, while a shirt sells for $20 and a car for $10,000 is, in the final analysis, that it takes 10,000 times as many hours of labour (with current levels of technology) to make a car, and 20 times as many to make a shirt, as it does to make a loaf of bread.
Not surprisingly, bourgeois economists deny this ‘labour theory of value’, but in practice all capitalists know it, if only by instinct. Consider a capitalist who consistently sold his products below their value – he would run at a loss and soon go out of business. Now consider one who tried to sell his products above their value – sooner or later a rival capitalist would be able to undersell him and he would again go out of business. Competition, therefore, forces capitalists to sell their products at prices which fluctuate around their value measured in labour time.
Now apply this to the commodity of labour power and it follows that the value of labour power – its wages- is determined by the amount of labour time socially necessary to produce it, i.e. to rear, feed, clothe, train etc. the worker so that s/he is able to work. But if labour power is bought and sold like any other commodity, there is one vital respect in which it differs from all other commodities: it is creative – in action it produces more value than was required to produce it. The difference, this surplus value as Marx called it, is pocketed by the capitalist and is the ultimate source of all profit.
What it means is that the worker who works 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, and is paid $40 dollars a day, $200 dollars a week, produces goods or services equal to their wages in say, 5 hours a day, 25 hours a week and in reality works 3 hours a day, 15 hours a week, unpaid. Unpaid labour – exploitation in its strictest sense – is, therefore, alive and well under capitalism today, just as much as it was under slavery or feudalism or in the early Industrial Revolution.
Marx’s theory of surplus value is of immense significance. It exposes the ideological, self – serving nature of the capitalist view of wage labour and opens the door to the scientific analysis of the laws of motion of the capitalist economy. But it does something else as well: it shows that at the heart of capitalist production lies a direct and irreconcilable conflict of interest. The longer the working day the greater the proportion of unpaid labour and of surplus value for the capitalist. The shorter the working day the lower the proportion of unpaid labour. The lower the level of wages, the higher the level of profit. The higher the wages, the lower the profits. Wages and profits, therefore :
…stand in inverse ratio to each other. Capital’s exchange value, profit, rises in the same proportion as labour’s share, wages, falls, and vice versa. Profit rises to the extent that wages fall; it falls to the extent that wages rise… the interests of capital and the interests of wage labour are diametrically opposed . (Karl Marx, Wage Labour and Capital)
This is how Marx’s theory of exploitation underpins his theory of class and class struggle.
John Molyneux
KOREA COLUMN 10
<b></b>How They Rule Us<b></b>
Capitalism, as we have seen, is a class divided society based on exploitation. Under capitalism a tiny highly privileged minority rules over the large majority and lives off their labour. How do they get away with it ?
The answer, as the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci pointed out, is by a combination of force and consent. In reality force and consent are very closely intertwined and mutually reinforce each other, but for the moment I shall discuss them separately.
The element of force is primarily exercised by the state, that network of interlocking institutions – armed forces, police, judiciary, prisons, government bureaucracies etc – which stands over society and claims general authority, including a monopoly of legitimate force.
This state apparatus claims, at every level of its operation, to represent society as a whole – the so-called national or public interest. Hence the perennial assertion by police, judges, generals and so on that they are politically neutral. But the idea of a common national or public interest is a myth. The nation consists of classes, exploiters and exploited with opposed interests, and the society which the state represents is not society as such but specifically capitalist society, based on capitalist property relations and capitalist relations of production. The first duty of the state is to secure the preservation of this capitalist order. and since this order embodies the supremacy of the capitalist class, the state is, in the words of Marx ‘ but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’.
The class character of the state is reflected in its composition. The upper ranks of the military, the police, the judiciary and the civil service are drawn overwhelmingly from the bourgeoisie and retain economic, family and social ties with that class. But the intrusion into this milieu of the occasional individual from the lower orders changes nothing. On the one hand the actual class position of such an individual is changed by the fact of their promotion and their outlook will tend to change accordingly. On the other hand acceptance of the capitalist mode of operation of the state is the condition of such promotion.
The consequence of the capitalist nature of the state is that force, or the threat of force, underpins almost every aspect of daily life. Consider some examples: a worker goes to work and makes some products. At the end of the day he or she tries to take all or some of them home. The worker will, of course, be forcibly arrested and forcibly detained in a police cell. Or the workers at a factory decide to go on strike, but only ninety per cent of them come out while ten per cent try to continue working. The law, in the shape of a substantial number of police, will immediately arrive at the factory to ensure the scabs’ ‘right to work’. But if the factory bosses decide to close down and make all the workforce redundant, the police will also arrive, this time to ensure that everyone goes home and no amount of appeals to the ‘right to work’ will move them in the slightest.
In all these cases the police will say they are ‘only doing their job’, but that is the point – their job is the enforcement of capitalist exploitation. The examples I have given may seem slightly strange precisely because they are so obvious, so taken for granted, but that is also the point. Capitalist exploitation would not last five minutes without state law, backed by state force, to sustain it.
Most of the time state force remains as far as possible low key and in the background but it comes to the fore the moment there is a real challenge to the interests of the capitalist class. If the challenge comes from abroad this takes the form of war; if the challenge is internal it is met with repression. If the challenge comes from an elected government it can take the form of organizing a military or fascist coup, as happened, for example, with General Pinochet in Chile in 1973 or as has been attempted recently against the Chavez government in Venezuela.
This last point – the potential use of state power on behalf of the bourgeoisie and against the government of the day – is very important. First it completely undermines the official constitutional view (and the view promulgated by political science and taught in the education system) that the state apparatus is subordinate to the elected government. Secondly it raises a key issue in Marxist theory which was ignored or distorted by most supposedly socialist or Marxist parties in the twentieth century.
The strategy of these organizations, beginning with German Social Democracy before the First World War, was to win ‘power’ by means of parliamentary elections, thus acquiring control of the state apparatus which would then be used to construct socialism. But Marx, on the basis of the experience of the Paris commune, had argued that it was not possible for the working class to take over the existing state machine and use it for its own purposes. The existing state was organically tied to the bourgeoisie and could not be used for socialism; rather it had to be broken up – smashed – and replaced by a new state apparatus created by the working class.
Marx’s genuine theory of the state was rediscovered and vigorously reasserted by Lenin in his great book, The State and Revolution. More than that it was put into practice in the Russian Revolution by means of soviet power, i.e. the power of workers’ councils. Later, however, the international communist movement, under the direction of Stalinism reverted to the idea of a parliamentary road to socialism and taking over the existing state apparatus.
But, the objection is often raised, the modern state, with its armies, tanks, bombs, planes etc is too powerful to be smashed, even by the largest mass movement of the working class. This, however, leaves out of the equation the crucial weakness of the state and of all the power of the ruling class which is the fact that for all its operations it depends on the collaboration of a section of the working class. Every gun needs a soldier to carry it, every tank a driver, every plane a team of mechanics. Almost the entire apparatus of the state is staffed, at its lower levels by workers and what happens in a mass revolution is that the pressure of the working leads to many or most of these workers breaking from their officers and joining the people. This is how the state is broken.
What this makes clear however is that the final analysis the rule of the bourgeoisie depends not just on force but also on consent. How that consent is maintained and how it is lost will be the subject of the next column.
John Molyneux
13 October 2006
KOREA COLUMN 13
<b></b>The Roots of Alienation<b></b>
An aspect of Marxism which I have not yet covered in this series is Marx’s theory of alienation. This is not because it is not important - on the contrary it is central to the whole of Marxism – but because, like dialectics which I shall tackle next, it can seem ‘philosophical’ and ‘difficult’, although as I will try to show, it relates directly to all our everyday experience.
One part of the difficulty in explaining Marx’s concept of alienation accurately is that the word ‘alienation’ has a well established usage in everyday language, where it means feeling ‘fed up’, ‘outcast’ or ‘estranged’, and that Marx’s concept , while related to the everyday meaning, is also significantly different.
Another problem is that there is a long standing philosophical usage of the term which was prevalent in Marx’s youth (particularly in the work of Hegel) and again Marx’s concept is related to this usage but also profoundly different. To this must be added the fact that many of the academic commentaries on this subject fail to understand these differences and consequently to grasp Marx’s real meaning.
Marx ‘s first and most comprehensive presentation of his theory of alienation was in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 which was one of the early works in which he worked out his ideas in relation to existing philosophical, economic and social theories.
In the existing philosophical usage man’s alienation ( I’m using the masculine language of the time) signified that he was cut off, separated from ‘God’, from ‘the true meaning of life’, or from his own ‘true nature’. For Hegel it was all three, but it was fundamentally a mental problem, a problem of our false consciousness and insufficient understanding (a problem which Hegel’s philosophy would remedy).
Marx was profoundly aware of this but he approached the matter differently. He showed that alienation was not just a ‘feeling’ or a problem of consciousness but a material and economic fact. Using the political economy of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, he showed that under capitalism it was a fact that workers were alienated from the products of their own labour, i.e. they neither owned nor controlled the goods which they made with their own hands, but which formed a world of ‘things’ set against them and dominating them. And the harder workers worked, the more they produced, the more they increased the power of this alien, hostile world.
‘It is true’, says Marx, ‘ that labour produces for the rich wonderful things – but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces – but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty – but for the worker, deformity’.
But then Marx takes the analysis a further crucial step. He argues that if workers are alienated from the products of their labour this can only be because they are alienated in the act of production, in the labour process itself. ‘The product is after all but the summary of the activity of production’. What then makes labour alienated?
First, says Marx, the fact that labour is external to the worker, ‘ it does not belong to his essential being; that in his work therefore he does not affirm himself but denies himself’. It is not voluntary but forced labour and as soon as no compulsion exists ‘it is shunned like the plague.’ Above all it is the fact that the labour is not the worker’s own, but someone else’s and ‘that in it he belongs not to himself but to another’. A moment’s reflection makes clear that this is an exact description of capitalist wage labour in which the workers can survive only by selling their labour power to the employers.
Why this is so important is because labour is fundamental to being human. It is through labour that humanity makes itself and creates its history and society. The alienation of labour, therefore, means the alienation, the estrangement, of the producers from the whole material world which they produce; from their humanity , individually and collectively; from themselves and from society and also from nature since it is first and foremost through labour that humans relate to nature. Alienation thus pervades the whole of our society. Even the capitalists do not escape alienation for they too are locked into the same process; they merely constitute the conservative side of the same alienated relationship.
The theory of alienation thus contains in embryonic form the entire Marxist critique of capitalism. It shows why capitalism is a fundamentally inhumane and dehumanizing system; why it subordinates living labour to dead labour, people to profit.; why even when workers living standards rise their lives are still deformed by wage labour; why even the most intimate personal relations are so often damaged and distorted; why people, the oppressors but also the oppressed are capable of such barbaric treatment of each other; why capitalism is ultimately a system out of control even of the capitalists themselves and why, under capitalism, every human advance in production, technology and science threatens to turn against us and destroy us. The threat of nuclear annihilation, the industrial mass murder of the Nazi Holocaust, and the potential disaster of global warming are all extreme examples of a world based on alienated labour.
And although alienation is a profound philosophical concept it is also something every worker feels in his or her bones – it is the reality of their daily lives in the factory, the call center, the supermarket and the kitchen. Every strike, every trade union struggle, whether over wages, hours or conditions is, in part, a rebellion against alienated labour.
But the theory of alienation also has revolutionary implications. Neither improvements in wages and conditions, nor advances in welfare, nor any kind of parliamentary legislation can overcome alienation. Nor can any change in consciousness or attitude.Only a qualitative transformation in the relations of production, only workers’ power in society and workers’ control in the workplace can make workers masters of their own labour and thus end alienation, opening the way for the real development of humanity.
NOTE: It is impossible in the space of a column to do justice to the richness and complexity of Marx’s analysis of alienation. Interested readers are strongly ureged to consult the original source. The key text is Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 especially the section on ‘Estranged Labour’. It can be difficult but is immensely rewarding.
John Molyneux
December 2006
KOREA COLUMN 14
<b></b>The Marxist Dialectic<b></b>
As was said at the very beginning of this series the starting point of Marxism was not an abstract philosophy but a determination to change the world and an identification of and with the working class as the agent of that change. Nevertheless from that point of departure Marx developed, very rapidly, a coherent philosophical outlook which both built on all previous philosophy and transcended it. This outlook is usually called dialectical materialism ( though Marx, himself, did not use the term)
It is materialist in that it asserts the objective existence of the material world and the priority of matter over mind, so that, fundamentally, it is the material conditions of life that shape human consciousness and ideas rather than ideas which determine material conditions. But it is not at all a mechanical materialism or fatalistic determinism which treats human history as working like clockwork towards a predetermined outcome. Rather it is dialectical in that it deals always with complex interactions and contradictions.
Dialectics is an old philosophical term dating back to Ancient Greece where it signified the idea that truth can be arrived at through dialogue, the clash of opposing arguments. At the end of the eighteenth century, Hegel, inspired by the French Revolution, used a much advanced dialectical method to attempt an account of the whole history of human consciousness and thought as developing through internal contradictions, but in Hegel the dialectic remained confined to the realm of ideas.
Marx took over and transformed the Hegelian dialectic, giving it a materialist foundation. For Marx the driving force of history, both human and natural, was not conflict between opposed ideas or concepts but conflict between opposed material and social forces.
The philosophical starting point of dialectics is that everything, everything in the universe, is moving and changing. This is now established scientific fact and it has profound political implications – think how often you hear people say ‘You will never change such and such’ or ‘ There will always be…racism, inequality, rulers or whatever’ – but it also has philosophical implications because dialectics is the logic of change.
This matters because the dominant mode of thinking, based on the logic developed by Aristotle, is not founded on the principle of universal change, rather it deals with fixed states or ‘things’. Its basic axioms are that A = A (a thing is equal to itself) and A does not = non-A ( a thing is not equal to something other than itself), from which are derived sequences of sound reasoning known as syllogisms. For example:
All birds have feathers
A swan is a bird
Therefore a swan has feathers
This formal logic was, and is, all well and good and very necessary for practical human affairs but it is limited – it excludes change. Dialectical logic moves beyond formal logic by starting not with ‘things’ but with processes, processes of coming into being and passing out of being. The moment processes of change are fed into the equation it becomes necessary to deal with contradiction. If state A (e.g. day) changes into state B (night) it passes through a phase of A not being A or being both A and B (twilight).
From this insight Marx and Engels developed certain principles of dialectics to reflect (and analyse) processes of change.
First, every existing ‘thing’ or ‘state’ is both a unity and a conflict of opposites, i.e. it is a temporary balance or moment of equilibrium between the forces that brought that state into being and maintain it and the forces that will bring about its dissolution or transformation. Second, every process of change involves an accumulation of gradual or quantitative changes within an existing state, which at a certain point turn into a qualitative change in which the nature of that state is transformed. Third, in every process of change the ‘negative’ or revolutionary force which brings about the change is itself transformed or ‘negated’ so that a new state, a new unity of opposites, emerges ( Engels called this ‘the negation of the negation’).
Obviously all this sounds very abstract but, in fact, it is extremely useful for analyzing and effecting processes of social change and especially revolutionary change. The whole of Marx’s theory of history is an example of applied dialectics. History consists of a series of modes of production (ancient society, feudalism, capitalism etc.) each of which may last for centuries and, on the surface, appear very stable but in reality is a unity of opposites, a balance between the forces and relations of production and antagonistic classes. Gradual quantitative changes in the forces of production bring them into conflict with the relations of production and the balance of the class struggle shifts to the point where it explodes in revolution. The old order is overthrown and a new form of society emerges.
Another important example is Lenin’s response to the First World War. Profoundly shocked at the support for the war by German Social Democracy and other European Socialist parties, Lenin re-read Hegel. His study of the Hegelian dialectic then played a major part in his analysis of imperialism ( Imperialism – the Highest Stage of Capitalism) which showed that capitalism had entered a new phase in which the contradictions of the system were intensified and lead inexorably to war. Lenin’s deep grasp of dialectical contradictions is also evident in his support for national liberation movements against imperialism. He was an internationalist but he understood that the road to workers’ international unity lay through the struggle against national oppression.
But dialectics is not something just for the great theoreticians of the movement. It is immensely useful for every trade union and political activist who has to grapple with the dynamics of a strike or campaign, with its rapid twists and turns and decisive moments when victory or defeat hang in the balance and for every socialist worker who has to deal, on a daily basis with the consciousness of his or her fellow workers, for consciousness also develops dialectically, i.e. through contradictions.
One final point needs to be made, for it is often not understood. Dialectics reflects and expresses the logic of natural and social change but it is not a magic key to history. In itself dialectics cannot prove that any particular change has happened or will happen. Only a dialectical analysis of the real world can do that. And, like Marxism as a whole, dialectics is not a dogma but a guide to action.
John Molyneux
21 December, 2006
KOREA COLUMN 15
<b></b>The Contradictions of Capitalism<b></b>
My last column, on dialectics, showed that for Marx all change takes place through contradictions. To nothing does this apply more strongly than the development of capitalism. Capitalism is a mass of interlocking contradictions.
First there is the contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production. Capitalism has developed the forces of production to a degree inconceivable under any previous economic system but because they are based on alienated labour the more they develop the more they turn into forces of destruction, either in the form of weapons of unimaginable power or through the destruction of the environment on which our survival depends.
As capitalism drives the productive forces forward, so the need becomes ever more urgent for the social ownership and democratic planning of the economy – one thing capitalism, by its nature, cannot deliver.
Then there is the contradiction between the capitalist class and the working class rooted in the exploitation that takes place in every capitalist workplace. This class conflict has accompanied capitalism from its birth. For centuries the bourgeoisie has used all its economic, ideological and political power to incorporate, divert and repress working class resistance. Time and again it has been successful, inflicting on the working class numerous grievous defeats, and time and again its ideologists have proclaimed the end of the class struggle.
But to no avail. The fact is capitalism cannot do without the working class; it needs it to produce its profits. And the more capitalism grows and expands, the more it is compelled to increase the size and potential power of its mortal enemy. The bourgeoisie can win battle after battle but it cannot win, or end, the war. The class struggle can end only with the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the abolition of capitalism.
A further contradiction is that between the capitalists themselves. Capitalist production is organized on the basis of competition between rival capitals. This competition permeates the whole system from the level of the smallest corner shop to the biggest super market, from the most humble workshop to the mightiest multinational corporation, and, because the state is the instrument of capital, it produces competition between states which in turn leads to imperialism, arms races and wars.
Capitalist competition is competition to accumulate capital through the exploitation of labour. Any capitalist business that falls behind in the race risks bankruptcy or take over by its more profitable rivals. Every capitalist is therefore compelled to attempt to increase the exploitation of their workforce and the sum of their profits, thus intensifying the contradiction between the classes. Free market competition turns into its opposite, monopoly, as unsuccessful businesses are swallowed up by successful ones, but competition is not ended, it breaks out anew between the monopolies.
Competition drives capitalism forward and accounts for its historic dynamism, but it also undermines it, preventing it ever achieving stability or equilibrium, and pitches it into crisis.
Competition pushes the capitalists, especially when the system is booming, to produce more and more, but because workers are always paid less than the value of the goods they produce there can arise a crisis of overproduction.. More goods are produced than the workers can afford to buy with their wages. This leads to some businesses being unable to sell their goods and making their workers redundant. This further diminishes the purchasing power of the workers and leads to more cutbacks in production and more workers being made unemployed. A vicious circle develops in which the economic boom turns into recession or slump.
The tendency to overproduction can be overcome but only by means that exacerbate other contradictions in the system. The government can intervene with a programme of public spending which employs workers on various state projects. This puts money in the pockets of workers and stimulates demand thus reversing the downward spiral into slump. But this method known as Keynesianism ( after the British economist Maynard Keynes) has the effect of generating inflation, caused by too much money chasing too many goods, and this fuels the industrial struggle as workers fight for wage demands to keep up with rising prices.
Overproduction can also be avoided by the capitalist class itself buying up the surplus which the workers can’t afford, either as luxury goods for its own consumption or as means of production ( new machinery for its factories etc.) If the capitalists of one country opt for consumption then that country’s economy will grow more slowly and fall behind countries where they opt for investment in new means of production. But opting for investment feeds into another fundamental contradiction of the system, namely the tendency of the rate of profit to decline.
This tendency derives from the fact that the source of all profit is the exploitation of workers, of living labour, but the trend of capitalist production is to combine ever greater amounts of machinery, technology etc i.e. dead labour, with relatively smaller quantities of living labour thus reducing the rate of profit as a proportion of the capitalists’ outlay. If the rate of return on investment declines so too does the willingness of the capitalists to invest, causing the economy as a whole to go into crisis.
But if this is the case, why do the capitalists concentrate their investment in machinery rather than in living labour? The answer is because there is a contradiction between the mass of profits and the rate of profit and the interests of each individual capitalist business and the interests of the system as a whole. Each individual capitalist unit is driven by competition to try to increase its mass of profit and its share of the total profit in the system. It can do this by investing in new technology which enables it produce more efficiently and sell more cheaply thus, at least temporarily, stealing a march on its rivals. But once the use of the new technology is generalized the temporary advantage is wiped out and the overall rate of profit is reduced.
The tendency of the rate of profit to decline is only a tendency. It too can be countered or offset in various ways - by increasing the rate of exploitation, by imperialism, arms spending and war – but each of these methods generates resistance and sharpens the other contradictions in the system.
None of these contradictions by itself, nor even all of them taken together, guarantees the victory of socialism but they do make the system, for all its immense power, vulnerable. The question is can the working class overthrow it before its contradictions destroy us all.
John Molyneux
3 Jan 2007
KOREA COLUMN 16
<b></b>Marxism and Oppression<b></b>
One of the most common criticisms of Marxism, especially in university circles, is that it is inadequate when it comes to issues of oppression such as racism, sexism and homophobia. The charge is either that Marxism has neglected these questions or has ‘reduced’ them to them to the issue of class, suggesting that blacks, women, gays etc should ‘subordinate’ their struggles to the class struggle, or simply wait for the socialist revolution to solve their problems.
Before responding to these arguments theoretically it is worth pointing out that the historical record shows that, far from neglecting these issues, Marxists and Marxist organizations have played a leading role in the struggles against all forms of racial and sexual oppression.
On the question of slavery, Marx and Engels not only strongly supported the North in the American Civil War, but also plated a significant part in ensuring that this position was adopted by the British workers’ movement despite the dependence of many British workers’ jobs on cotton from the Southern states. ‘ Labour with a white skin cannot be free’, Marx insisted, ‘while labour with a black skin is in chains’. Similarly Marx and Engels took up the question of anti- Irish racism (of crucial importance in 19th century Britain) and far from telling the Irish to wait for socialism argued that a necessary condition of revolution in England was the prior separation and independence of Ireland.
The theme of women’s emancipation appeared in Marx and Engels’ writings from the very beginning. ‘ Everyone who knows anything of history’, wrote Marx, ‘knows that great social revolutions are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress may be measured precisely by the social position of women’. In 1884 Engels, working from Marx’s notes, wrote The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State which opened the way to understanding the roots of women’s oppression. Eleanor Marx, Marx’s daughter, both organized working class women in the East End of London and wrote the important pamphlet ‘ The Women Question’.
In Germany before the First World War the Marxist Clara Zetkin organized a mass working class women’s organization that fought for equality and socialism, while Alexandra Kollontai pursued similar aims in Russia.. The Russian Revolution established complete legal equality for women and also legalized homosexuality. At this time women in Britain had still not got the vote.
The most important achievement of the US Communist Party, despite its Stalinism, was its role in the fight against racism in Harlem and in the South in the 1930s and Marxists played significant roles in the black and women’s movements of the sixties and seventies. The Jewish Marxist, Abram Leon, a victim of the Nazi Holocaust, wrote The Jewish Question, which remains the crucial book on the causes and history of anti-semitism. The tradition continues to this day with Marxists round the world taking up the fight against the new racism of Islamophobia.
This historical record, of which the above is only the briefest overview, has a political and theoretical underpinning. The political aim of Marxism is the self- emancipation of the working class for which its unity, nationally and internationally, is essential. Marxists therefore have an absolute duty to combat all forms of structural and ideological oppression , such as racism, sexism and homophobia, which weaken or threaten that unity.
Theoretically Marxism does not ‘reduce’ other forms of oppression to class but it does show how their fundamental roots lie in the division of society into classes, which is quite a different matter.
Marxism argues that the second class status of women derives from the structure of the family which makes childcare and housework primarily the responsibility of women and either cuts women off from paid employment and public life or, if they do go out to work, saddles them with a double burden. In the aforementioned Origins of the Family Engels showed that the male dominated family developed with the transition from hunting and gathering to herding and agriculture and the emergence of private property and class divisions, with the family ensuring the inheritance of property and the wife being treated as the property of the husband.
The form of the family has undergone many changes but still today it remains the prime site of child rearing and domestic labour and the principal factor underlying the subordination of women. The capitalist class, for all its lip service to equality, has a massive vested interest in this state of affairs: it provides them with the reproduction of labour power at minimum cost, a source of cheap labour and an entrenched division in the ranks of the working class. Homosexuality is stigmatized because it is seen as a deviation from, and threat to, the family.
Marxism sees racism towards non- white peoples as the ideological reflection and justification of the slave trade which transported millions of Africans to labour on the cotton, tobacco and sugar plantations of the Americas, and the primitive accumulation of capital (looting) in the colonies, which played a crucial part in the development of capitalism back in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Racism was further refined and consolidated by capitalism’s imperialist phase in the late 19th and early 20th century when the European powers took over most of the rest of the world.
Today we live with the legacy of this history ‘modified’ to focus on the supposed threat posed by immigrants and refugees, who provide capitalism with ideal scapegoats for the failures of the system and another mechanism of divide and rule. On top of this we have Islamophobia as the accompaniment of Western imperialism’s ‘war on terror’ – in reality its struggle to control the energy supplies of the Middle East and Central Asia and prepare for the challenge of China.
The advantage of this Marxist analysis is that it avoids two pitfalls into which other approaches commonly fall. The first is the superficial and complacent view that racism, sexism etc are merely prejudices based on ignorance which will be overcome, in due time, simply by education. The second is the opposite, but often complimentary, view that bigotry is ‘natural’ and therefore inevitable. Both these positions weaken the fight against oppression, the Marxist materialist approach strengthens it.
Marxism does indeed argue that the complete eradication of racism, sexism and homophobia requires the overthrow of capitalism but it never tells the oppressed to wait for the revolution. On the contrary it sees the struggle against all forms of oppression as essential to the struggle for socialism.
John Molyneux
20 Jan 2007
KOREA COLUMN 17
<b></b>Marxism and Religion<b></b>
The very first article that Marx wrote as a Marxist, i.e. as an advocate of workers’ revolution, began with a discussion of religion. Moreover that article, (‘The Introduction’ to ‘ A Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’, 1843) contains what is probably Marx’s best known single line, namely ‘ Religion is the opium of the people’
Despite this Marx’s real attitude towards religion has remained largely unknown or misrepresented. There were times and places, for example Europe in the sixties, when this didn’t seem to matter very much because religion appeared to be a declining force in society. But the rise of Islam as a political issue , first in the eighties with the influence of the Iranian Revolution, and then with 9/11 and the ‘War on Terror’ changed all that . The world political situation became such that leftists and would be Marxists - and there were many – who failed to understand Marx’s analysis of religion, were likely to be blown completely off course.
The most common mistakes were: 1) the belief that Marx and Marxists were hostile to religion in the sense of wanting to ban or suppress it, as it was imagined had happened in Stalinist Russia; 2) the idea that Marxism regarded all religious ideas as simply stupid, backward and to be treated with contempt; 3) the notion that Marxists saw all religions and religious ideas as invariably allies or tools of reaction and the ruling class.
It is true of course that Marx was an atheist who rejected religious explanations of the world or events. This was part and parcel of his materialist philosophy and theory of history, which I have already discussed in this series. For Marx it was not consciousness that determined social being, but social being that determined social consciousness, not primarily ideas that shaped history but history that shaped ideas, and this applied to religion too. ‘Man makes religion, religion does not make man’, wrote Marx. But it was precisely this materialist approach that led Marx to produce a much more complex, rounded and , in a sense, sympathetic analysis of religion than is so often attributed to him.
If people make religion, they do so because religion meets, or appears to meet, real human needs. When religion was first developed in pre- class hunter-gatherer societies, human beings lived in close interaction with, and complete dependence on animal and natural forces, which, in one sense, they knew well, but of which they lacked any scientific understanding. In this situation religion tended to take the form of ‘pantheistic animism’. Rivers, winds, mountains, the sun and the moon, wolves, bears, monkeys, elephants etc were seen as endowed with gods or spirits. In other words religion provided emotional expression for feelings of dependency and an ‘explanation’ for the ups and downs of life, when no rational account was possible.
With the transition, 5000 or so years ago, to class divided, male dominated, state ruled societies, dependency on nature remained, but to it was added inequality, exploitation, slavery, dependence on, and domination by, social forces which were also outside people’s control and beyond their understanding – in a word, alienation. Religion reflected this. Gods ceased to be nature spirits and started to become powerful male authority figures like Zeus, Jehovah, and Allah while at the same time religion started to offer consolation to the downtrodden in the promise of an afterlife in which virtue not wealth is rewarded.
Marx puts it this way:
Religion is… the self consciousness and self awareness of man who either has not yet attained to himself or has already lost himself again… This state, this society, produces religion’s inverted attitude to the world because they are an inverted world themselves. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point of honour, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, its universal basis for consolation and justification.
Thus religion comes in many different shapes and sizes and performs many different functions, depending always on the specific social conditions in which it is operating. There are versions of religion which serve to justify the position of the ruling class to itself ( even kings and dictators, bosses and generals need self justification); there are versions which justify the ruling class to the masses by preaching that the social order is God’s order and urging passivity and respect for authority ( ‘Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s’). There are also versions which give expression to the misery of the oppressed, to their hopes for a better world and even to their outright rebellion. Religion, says Marx,
…. is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless circumstances
One of the characteristics of the so called ‘great’ religions ( Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc) which have survived thousands of years, is that they are sufficiently adaptable to have played all these different roles in different times and places, while maintaining an appearance of continuity. Thus in seventeenth century Europe there was a feudal counterrevolutionary Christianity (Catholicism) and bourgeois revolutionary Christianity ( Calvinism); in the US in the sixties, there was White racist religion and Black anti-racist religion; in Latin America there is a Catholicism of the dictators and Yankee imperialism and a Catholicism of the poor and in the Middle East there is the pro – imperialist Islam of the Saudi royals and the anti- imperialist Islam of Hamas and Hizbollah.
From this analysis flow a number of political conclusions which contradict the stereotype often attributed to Marx. First, Marxists are completely opposed to any attempt to ban religion ( before or after the revolution). On the contrary they defend the principle of freedom of religious belief and worship for all. The only way religion can be ‘abolished’ is by abolishing the conditions of alienation and exploitation that give rise to it. Second, because socialist revolution is the act of the mass of workers themselves, it is inevitable and necessary that the revolution will be made by, and the revolutionary movement will include, workers with religious beliefs.
Third, Marxists reject the idea that any particular religion is inherently more reactionary, (or more progressive) than others. Clearly, at present, this applies principally to Islam, but in other circumstances it could be Hinduism, Confucianism etc. Our attitude to political movements with a religious coloration or religious leaders, such as the (Catholic) Hugo Chavez, or ( Buddhist) Tibetan nationalism or Falun Gong in China or Islamic resistance in Iraq and Palestine, is based not on the movement’s religious beliefs but on the material social forces it represents and the justice of its political cause.
John Molyneux
4 Feb 2007
KOREA COLUMN 18
<b></b>The Theory of Permanent Revolution<b></b>
So far this column has focused on explaining the basic ideas of Marxism as developed by its founders, Marx and Engels. But Marxism is a living, growing theory which has to be kept up in response to changes in capitalism and developments in the class struggle, so now I want to have a look at some of the most important contributions made to Marxism after Marx, beginning with Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution.
The theory of permanent revolution was without doubt one the most original and significant additions to Marxism, with the most far reaching implications, made in the whole of the twentieth century. Unfortunately the first obstacle to understanding it is its name. Naturally, when people first hear the term ‘permanent revolution’ they assume it must signify the idea of revolution going on for ever, without end, which might sound exciting to some people who don’t know what revolutions really involve, but would actually be both impossible and contrary to Marxism, which has the ultimate aim of abolishing violence and conflict in human affairs. In reality ‘permanent’ revolution, like other terms in the history of Marxism such as Bolshevism and Menshevism, is just a nickname that happened to stick, and even the nickname can’t be understood until the basic ideas of the theory have been explained and put in their historical context.
That context was- in the first place- Tsarist Russia at the turn of the century. This was then the most economically, socially and politically backward society in Europe. The vast majority of the population were peasants living and working in conditions at the level of Western Europe in the 17th century. Serfdom had been abolished only in !861, more than 400 years after its disappearance in Britain, and the aristocratic landowners remained the country’s ruling class. Modern industry, with its associated classes of bourgeois and proletarians, was starting to develop in the towns, especially St. Petersburg and Moscow, but agriculture remained predominant. There was no democracy or freedom of speech. Political power was concentrated in the hands of the Tsar or Emperor whose rule was absolute. In other words the situation in Russia was comparable to that in France before the French Revolution of 1789.
The problem facing the young Marxist movement in Russia was what they should do in such circumstances. On one thing they all agreed – that Russia was heading for a revolution that would overthrow the Tsarist autocracy and that they should help bring this about. Where there were differences was on the precise nature and dynamics of this coming revolution, and hence on the strategic role of Marxists within it. These differences came to a head as a result of the 1905 Revolution and three definite positions emerged.
The first, that of Plekhanov and the Mensheviks, was that the Russian Revolution would be a bourgeois revolution led by the bourgeoisie, resulting in a capitalist democracy in which the bourgeoisie was the ruling class . The job of Marxists was to support this process while defending the interests of the working class within it. The struggle for socialism would come later.
The second, taken by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, accepted that the fundamental character of the revolution would be bourgeois – its outcome would be capitalist democracy not socialism – but argued that the Russian bourgeoisie was too conservative and timid to lead its own revolution. The working class , in alliance with the peasantry, would have to lead the democratic revolution.
The third, developed by Leon Trotsky, became known as Permanent Revolution. It agreed with Lenin that the working class, not the bourgeoisie, would lead the revolution but argued that in the process the working class would be obliged to take power and begin the transition to socialism. In other words the Russian Revolution would not stop at its bourgeois democratic stage but would grow over into a socialist revolution.(The name came from the use of the slogan ‘ permanent revolution’ in an 1850 article by Marx which put a similar position for Germany).
To the important objection that Russia’s peasant majority and economic underdevelopment made it too backward to sustain socialist relations of production, Trotsky replied that this was true if Russia was considered in isolation, but that the Russian Revolution should be seen as the first step in an international revolution and that internationally the conditions for socialism were in place.
The actual Russian Revolution of 1917 vindicated Trotsky’s perspective. The Revolution began with the February uprising which overthrew the Tsar and was the spontaneous action of the workers themselves. The Menshevik insistence on the bourgeois character of the revolution turned them, first, into a conservative force trying to hold back the working class, and then into outright counter revolutionaries opposed to the October Revolution. The intermediate position of the Bolsheviks was overtaken by events, especially the emergence of Soviets (workers’ councils) as embryos of workers’ power, and Lenin, returning to Russia from exile, rapidly won the Bolshevik Party to a perspective of workers’ revolution based on the call for ‘All Power to the Soviets’, i.e. effectively adopted Trotsky’s position. Trotsky, in turn, joined the Bolsheviks and together they led the working class seizure of power in October.
The theory of permanent revolution was also confirmed, negatively, by the fact that although the Russian Revolution did inspire a wave of revolution internationally, the defeat of the international revolution made it impossible to construct socialism in Russia and led to the Stalinist reaction.
Stalinism denounced permanent revolution as Trotskyist heresy and reverted to the Menshevik stages theory of alliance with the bourgeoisie, first in relation to the Chinese Revolution in the twenties, and then for all countries where there was a struggle for democracy or national independence. Trotsky responded by generalizing the theory of permanent revolution from just Russia to the world as a whole.
This was of immense significance for Marxism. Marx’s identification of the working class as the agent of socialism (the core proposition of Marxism) had led many would-be Marxists to see the socialist revolution as relevant only to those industrialized countries where the working class was a majority, essentially Europe and North America. By arguing that, even where it was a minority, the working class could and should take power, in alliance with the peasantry and as a first step in an international process, Trotsky made the programme of socialist revolution genuinely global.
Even today, when feudalism is dead and the bourgeoisie rules virtually everywhere, the perspective of permanent revolution remains relevant and vital wherever there is a struggle for basic democracy or national liberation. In such situations there is always pressure on Marxists ( from liberals, reformists, nationalists, Stalinists, etc.) to set aside socialism, and even the basic demands of the working class, in the name of ‘unity’ in the immediate struggle.
The theory of permanent revolution shows how Marxists and the workers’ movement, by taking the lead in the fight for democratic and national demands, can both strengthen those immediate struggles and make them component parts of the struggle for workers power and international socialism.
John Molyneux
28 Feb 2007
KOREA COLUMN 19
The theory of the Revolutionary Party
The most important of the many contributions to Marxist theory after Marx is, in my opinion, the theory of the revolutionary party developed by Lenin. What makes this theory so important is, first, that history has shown that without such a party the socialist revolution cannot be victorious and, second, that this theory affects and transforms every aspect of socialist activity in the here and now.
Before setting out the positive features of the Leninist theory of the party, it is perhaps necessary to say what the theory is not. It is not simply the idea that to struggle effectively the working class needs to be organized into a political party. This was well understood by Marx and by most Marxists and socialists long before Lenin and has continued to be an article of faith of most reformists and non – Leninist socialists subsequent to Lenin.
Nor is it some special organizational formula, such as ‘democratic centralism’. The principle that a socialist party should be internally democratic in discussing and forming policy but united in action in implementing that policy was indeed adopted by the Bolshevik Party and other Leninist organizations but it was not invented by Lenin, not a fixed organizational structure or regime, and certainly not the key distinguishing or defining characteristic of the Leninist party.
What was distinctively Leninist was a new conception of the relationship between the party and the class. This conception was not arrived at by Lenin in a single moment of theoretical inspiration, nor is it systematically set out in any single Lenin text. Rather it was developed in practice, by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, before it was expounded theoretically. With hindsight we can say that this conception rested on the combination of two key principles:
1. The independent organization of a party consisting wholly of revolutionary
socialists
2. The establishment and maintenance of the closest possible links between the independent revolutionary and the mass of the working class.
Prior to Karl Marx there existed two models of socialist activity. The first, drawn from the French Revolution and based on the Jacobins, was of a secret club or conspiracy which would seize power in a coup d’etat on behalf of the masses. The second, as with the ‘Utopian Socialists’, was of passive propaganda which would preach the virtues of socialism to the general public and, especially, to the ruling class. Marx transcended both these models with the understanding that the emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class itself, and the idea of a workers’ party combining active engagement in workers’ day to day struggles with socialist political propaganda.
Following Marx the predominant form of socialist organization was the large national workers party, including in its ranks all or most of the strands of socialism in a given country. A typical example was the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) which had an openly reformist right wing led by Eduard Bernstein, a revolutionary left led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, and a majority ‘centre’ led by Bebel and Kautsky, which talked revolution while practicing reformism. Similar parties, with similar trends existed in most European countries before the First World War, and together they made up the Second, or Socialist International.
What Leninism brought to this was the idea that the revolutionary left should separate from the reformist right and the vacillating center, and organize independently. What was really at stake here was the role of the reformist leaders. Marx and Engels and the young Luxemburg and young Trotsky were all revolutionaries, not reformists, but they tended to assume that once revolution broke out the reformist and centrist leaders would either be swept along with the movement or swept aside by it.
KOREA COLUMN 20
Capitalism and Imperialism
As Marx explained in The Communist Manifesto, capitalism is a system which is subject to constant change and development. ‘The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society… Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions… distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all others.’
In the run up to the First World War, i.e. twenty five to thirty years after Marx’s death, it became clear to most of the leading Marxist theorists that capitalism had entered a new stage of development, distinct and different in various ways from the capitalism analysed by Marx in Capital. Since one of the most obvious characteristics of the period was the struggle between the so-called ‘Great Powers’ (Britain, France, Germany, Russia etc.) to take over and colonise virtually the whole world, the term ‘imperialism’ was widely adopted as the name for this new phase of capitalism. Analysis of imperialism became an important task for Marxism, and that task became even more pressing when rivalry between the imperialist powers erupted into the mass slaughter of world war – the most destructive conflict in human history up to that point.
Many leading Marxists of the time – Hilferding, Kautsky, Luxemburg, Trotsky, Bukharin, and Lenin – applied themselves to this project. Hilferding’s Finance Capital (1910), Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital (1915), and Bukharin’s Imperialism and World Economy(1916), were particularly important contributions to an ongoing debate, but what was to prove by far the most influential analysis was provided by Lenin in his brochure Imperialism – the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). Lenin’s work had significant limitations. By his own account it was only a ‘popular outline’ of the subject and, because it was designed to get past the Tsarist censorship, it dealt only with the economic features of imperialism and refrained from drawing political conclusions. Nevertheless it provided an extraordinarily clear and concise summary of imperialism’s essential characteristics and structure and of the theoretical underpinning of Lenin’s political opposition to the war and to imperialism, which became known by other means.
For Lenin ‘ Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general’ but it was also distinguished by five main features:
1. The replacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly and the domination of economic life by giant monopolies, cartels, trusts etc.
2. The merger of bank capital and industrial capital to produce ‘finance capital’ and the emergence of a financial oligarchy
3. A shift from the export of goods (typical of the previous phase of capitalism) to the export of capital, particularly to economically backward countries where profits are high, due to a scarcity of capital, and cheap labour, land and raw materials
4. The formation of international capitalist monopolies, which operate across the globe and divide the world among themselves.
5. Alongside this economic division, the complete territorial division of the world among the Great Powers, so that further expansion, further acquisition of colonies, was possible only through the forcible repartitioning of the world.
Clearly Lenin’s analysis both offered a Marxist explanation of the First World War, and supported his revolutionary opposition to it. Since war was the necessary consequence of imperialism and imperialism was capitalism in its latest stage, any ‘peace’ on a capitalist basis would only be a ‘truce’ before the next war. Real peace could be won only by the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.
Throughout this analysis Lenin was keen to stress his differences with Kautsky, widely regarded as the world’s foremost authority on Marxism, but whom Lenin viewed as a traitor since his failure to oppose the War in August 1914. Kautsky argued that imperialism was not a ‘stage’ of capitalism as such, or even an economic necessity for capitalism as a whole, but merely a ‘policy’ adopted under the influence of particular pro-imperialist capitalists. He also suggested that it was possible, even likely, that capitalism would soon enter a new ‘ultra-imperialist’ phase in which competition and conflict between rival monopolies and states would give way to agreement and peaceful co-operation. Lenin insisted that such views were both theoretically false, completely separating the politics of imperialism from its economics, and politically disastrous, blunting the struggle against war, imperialism and capitalism and leading directly to opportunism, reformism and class collaboration by sowing illusions in the possibility of a peaceful non- imperialist capitalism, freed of its contradictions.
Lenin’s economic analysis of imperialism must also be seen in the context of his political position on the right of oppressed nations to self-determination. He had first developed this position in relation to the many oppressed nationalities within the Tsarist Empire – Latvians, Georgians, Ukrainians etc. Lenin insisted that revolutionaries in the oppressor country, i.e. Russia, had an absolute duty to defend the right of oppressed nations to secede if they chose to do so, and that this was the only basis on which the international unity of the working class could be achieved. Lenin extended this position to apply to colonial countries in general, arguing that imperialism would inevitably generate anti- imperialist struggles from Ireland to China, and that these would play a vital role in weakening the imperialist powers and assisting their overthrow by the working class. It was therefore necessary to establish an international alliance between the working class and the oppressed nations and people’s of the world against imperialism (without, of course, abandoning independent revolutionary socialist organisation).
The ninety one years since the publication of Lenin’s Imperialism have obviously witnessed enormous further changes in world capitalism, economically and politically – the depression of the thirties, the rise (and then fall) of fascism and Stalinism, the Second World War, the Cold war, the permanent arms economy and the post war boom, the retreat from colonialism, the return of crises in the seventies, globalisation and others too numerous to mention here. At times elements in Lenin’s analysis, e.g. the export of capital to underdeveloped countries, have become less relevant, and elements emphasised by other Marxists, such as the drawing together of the state and capital pointed to by Bukharin, have become more relevant. Nevertheless it is astonishing how well the core of Lenin’s analysis has stood the test of time and how much of it still applies to the world today.
We still live in a world dominated by giant capitalist corporations (far larger, of course, than in Lenin’s day) and imperialist states. Despite the illusions, peddled by the system’s ideologists, in a peaceful ‘new world order’ or a conflict free ‘end of history’ following the fall of the Soviet Union, or in the abolition of poverty and war by capitalist globalisation, imperialism remains warlike and anti-imperialist revolt grows. Despite the existence, in the shape of the US, of a single imperialist superpower, that power is already obliged to strategise against potential future threats such as China, or a resurgent Russia, and has already over reached itself in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, of course, from our side, uncompromising opposition to imperialism and imperialist war remains absolutely central to socialist politics.
John Molyneux
13 April 2007
KOREA COLUMN 21
Marxism and the Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution had more influence on the development of Marxism after Marx than any other event. First it confirmed the argument put in Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution (discussed in column 18 of this series) that the working class could still take power even where it was, as yet, a minority and society had not yet passed through the stage of capitalist democracy. Secondly it demonstrated the crucial role of a centralised revolutionary party in transforming a revolutionary situation into a revolutionary victory (dealt with in column 19). Thirdly, it showed in practice the form of political organisation through which the working class could actually run society – and this will be the focus of this column.
The first historical example of workers’ power, the Paris Commune of 1871, had proved to Marx that the working class would not be able to take over the existing capitalist state machine and use it to construct socialism. Rather it would be necessary to destroy the existing state and create a new workers’ state. The Commune had also established certain key principles on which such a state should operate, e.g. the recallability of elected representatives and their payment at workers’ wages.
These points were recognised and noted by Marx in his great study, The Civil War in France, but in the years following his death, the years of the Second International, they tended to be lost sight of, or to be positively suppressed. This was particularly the case regarding the need to smash the state, which was passed over and avoided as international social democracy became more and more committed to a strategy of parliamentary reform in the run up to the First World War.
KOREA COLUMN 22
Russia: What Went Wrong?
The Russian Revolution of 1917 was the world’s first successful socialist revolution. It proved that the working class was capable taking power even when it was a still a minority in society. It also showed the world the form of political organisation, the workers’ council or soviet, through which the working class could actually run society.
But if we look at Russia twenty years later, in 1937, we see a society which, with the exception of being dominated by state rather than private property, is completely at odds both with the conception of socialism held by Marx and with the aims of the 1917 Revolution.
It is a society ruled by an absolute dictator, Stalin, with the aid of a vast apparatus of secret police. It is a society in which freedom, debate, and democracy are non- existent and where the slightest dissent is punishable by imprisonment or death. The working class live in grim poverty forced to work long hours for low wages, without even real trades unions to defend them. Many of the peasants have recently endured famine and starvation. Inequality, having been massively reduced by the Revolution, is now increasing rapidly as the new rulers, managers, bureaucrats etc. enrich themselves and the preaching of equality is an offence against the state.
So what went wrong? Obviously a great deal hangs on the answer to this question, not least the possibility of making a convincing case for socialist revolution now, in the twenty first century. Before setting out our own views on this issue let us begin by considering some of the other answers that have been put forward.
There are two major groups who, basically, deny that anything went wrong - the western ruling classes (and their ideologists) and the Stalinists themselves. The western bourgeois view is that since working people are inherently incapable of running society, all talk of workers’ power, freedom and equality is a pipedream, and dictatorship and tyranny is either the conscious aim, or at least the inevitable outcome, of any attempt to create a socialist society. The Stalinist view is (or mainly was) that the Soviet Union in the thirties was a true embodiment of socialism and of the ideas of Marx and Lenin and that all talk of tyranny and a police state is bourgeois propaganda.
The bourgeois view is based on a) prejudice against the working class, and b) ignorance of socialist and Marxist ideas. I shall not answer it further here, as every word of this series of columns, from first to last, is an answer. The Stalinist view is based on either ignorance or denial of the facts. It has been refuted by a mountain of evidence and eyewitness testimony, including from genuine revolutionaries (see for example the memoirs of Victor Serge) and, above all, by history. If Russia, or the other so-called socialist countries of Eastern Europe, had really been the promised land for working people, it is inconceivable that these regimes could have been overthrown as they were in 1989-91, without the working class lifting a finger in their defence.
From those who recognise that a problem exists the main focus has been on the character and ideology of Russia’s political leaders – Stalin, Lenin and the Bolshevik Party. In 1956, Khrushchev, in his ‘Secret Speech’ to the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, denounced the crimes of the Stalin era. He blamed the ‘cult of personality’ that developed around Stalin and the latter’s sadistic character. Both the cult and the sadism were facts but the weakness of this as an explanation is obvious: why was the cult developed and why did the Communist Party install and sustain a sadistic monster as its leader?
The main explanation favoured by western academics has stressed the role of Leninism and Bolshevism. It was, the argument goes, the totalitarian character of Lenin as an individual and of Leninism as an ideology, both embodied in the totalitarian Bolshevik Party, that led, more or less inevitably, to the excesses of Stalinism. This view has to ignore or discount important historical facts such as the extremely democratic character of the Bolshevik Party, before, during and immediately after the Revolution, and Stalin’s need, in order to establish his regime, to physically eliminate virtually the entire Bolshevik old guard. *
However, all these explanations suffer from a deeper flaw. They are all versions of what might be called the bourgeois ‘great man’ theory of history, which sees the course of history as shaped, first and foremost, by the ideas and deeds of the tiny minority at the top (usually kings, generals etc. but in this case Marxist theorists and activists). In reality history is shaped primarily by the struggle between classes, which in turn is conditioned by the development of the forces and relations of production, and this historical materialist approach should be applied to the fate of the Russian Revolution just as much as to the rest of world history.
The real question, therefore, is how did the working class who took power in October 1917 then come to lose it again? Once this is established as the core question the main answers are not hard to find.
First the backwardness of Russian economic development, compared to Europe and North America, and consequently the relatively small size of its urban proletariat. This was not in itself decisive (or October 1917 would have been impossible) but it weakened the position of the working class from the start.
Second the utter devastation of the Russian economy in the Civil War of 1918-21 which followed the Revolution and which was imposed on Russia by Western imperialist intervention. The scale of this devastation is hard to grasp: large scale industrial production fell to 21% of its 1913 level, factories closed, transport ceased to function, epidemics of cholera and TB raged and there was widespread famine. Above all this destroyed the economic foundations of the working class. Added to this was the slaughter of a large proportion of the most advanced workers in the Civil War. By 1921 the class, which took power in 1917, had virtually ceased to exist and was no longer able to assert its collective will over society. In the absence of the working class another social force had to take control. Normally it would have been the aristocracy or bourgeoisie, but they had been expropriated and driven out, consequently it was the bureaucracy, of the state and the party which came to the fore, more and more freeing itself from popular control.
Finally, the isolation of Russian Revolution, its failure to spread internationally. This was a very close run thing, especially in Germany, but the effect was to deprive the Revolution of the aid needed to restore the economy and renew and refresh the working class, and to put Russia under immense economic and military pressure from western capitalism.
It was the interaction of these real material factors, not human nature or the alleged defects of Marxist or Leninist ideology, that sealed the fate of the Russian Revolution and produced the phenomenon of Stalinism. The precise nature of that phenomenon will be discussed in the next in this series.
* The claimed ‘textual basis’ of this argument in Lenin’s What is To Be Done? has recently been meticulously refuted by the US scholar Lars T. Lih in his book Lenin Rediscovered – sadly it is very large and very expensive.
John Molyneux
11 May 2007
KOREA COLUMN 23
The Nature of Stalinism
Stalinism is an appropriate name for the political regime operating in the Soviet Union in the nineteen thirties and forties because a) Joseph Stalin was its absolute ruler in those years, and b) the name rightly differentiates this regime from socialism or communism in general, and from the Leninist period of Soviet power that preceded it. However, the term does not tell us anything about the economic, social or class character of the society over which Stalin and Stalinism presided.
What was the economic dynamic of Stalinist Russia – was it fundamentally the same or different from that of western capitalism? Was it fundamentally a class divided society or a classless society, or was it a transitional society on the way to becoming classless? If there were classes in Russia, what classes were they and which was the ruling class? These questions which were all bound up with one another and in reality all boiled down to one – the class nature of Soviet Union – were the subject of intense debate among socialists and Marxists for more than sixty years.
The issue was hugely significant not only in Russia itself and in other similar ‘communist’ countries, but everywhere in the world because the Soviet Union claimed, and to a considerable extent exercised, leadership of the whole international communist movement. The issue remains important today, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and of East European communism, partly because some Stalinist and semi-Stalinist regimes survive – most notably North Korea – partly for historical reasons, and partly because, theoretically, it goes to the heart of what we mean by capitalism and socialism.
In the course of the debate four main positions emerged:1) that the Soviet Union was socialist; 2) that it was a degenerated workers’ state; 3) that it was neither capitalist nor socialist but bureaucratic collectivist; 4) that it was state capitalist.
The first position was by far the most common – it was shared by mainstream ‘communists’, many social democrats, and by the right, and therefore became the ‘common sense’ view - but it was also the most damaging. On the left it often involved the denial of well established historical fact, but at bottom it rested on the idea that the essence of socialism is simply state ownership of property, not working class self emancipation or workers’ power. The right agreed with this because they regarded workers’ power as impossible anyway and knew that identifying Stalinism with socialism discredited socialism in the eyes of the masses.
The degenerated workers’ state position was associated with Trotsky and Trotskyism. It argued that the Stalinist bureaucracy had betrayed the aims of the Russian Revolution and was a counter revolutionary force hostile to the development of socialism in the Soviet Union and to workers’ revolution internationally. It called for a political revolution to overthrow Stalinism. However, it also insisted that, by virtue of its nationalised property relations, the Soviet economy remained post capitalist and this made Russia a workers’ state which was more progressive than world capitalism and had to be defended by socialists. The strength of Trotsky’s position was that it combined revolutionary socialist opposition to both Stalinism and western capitalism. Its weakness was that it opened the door to separating socialism from the self emancipation of the working class.
The bureaucratic collectivist position was first developed within the Trotskyist movement (particularly by the American, Max Schachtman) in opposition to the workers’ state view, but has subsequently been adopted by various academics. It rejects the idea that state ownership equals socialism or a workers’ state, but accepts the idea that state ownership means the abolition of capitalism. It maintains that Russia represented a new form of class society, with a new ruling class. Unfortunately the advocates of this theory have not been able to identify clearly the economic dynamic of this new mode of production or its position in historical development. This has produced confusion as to whether ‘bureaucratic collectivist’ societies were more or less progressive than capitalism and has led many its supporters to move to the right, including support for US imperialism, on the grounds that Stalinism was worse than capitalism.
The designation of Stalinist Russia as state capitalist seems to have been there from the beginning among some Trotskyists and other oppositionists, but the most coherent theory of state capitalism was developed in the late 1940s by Tony Cliff, founder of the International Socialist Tendency. Cliff’s point of departure was that if Stalinism had brought socialism or workers’ states to Eastern Europe (and North Korea) – by means of the Red Army and without workers’ revolutions – then Marx’s fundamental ideas on the revolutionary role of the working class would have to be abandoned. Faced with the choice between the state property criterion and the self emancipation of the working class, between socialism from above and socialism from below, Cliff opted decisively for the latter.
This led him to look beyond property relations as such to the actual relations of production underlying forms of property. Where state property was concerned Cliff argued that it had existed in many different societies and that the real question for Marxists was which class owned or controlled the state. He then showed, through detailed analysis, that the real relations of production in the Soviet economy, were capitalist relations: the control of the means of production by a small minority, with the large majority forced to live by the sale of their labour power and be exploited in the process.
Cliff also showed that once Stalinist Russia was seen in the context of the world economy rather than in isolation the idea that it was basically a planned economy was false. When the Stalinist bureaucracy opted for ‘socialism in one country’ it committed itself, in fact, to competition with western capitalism on capitalism’s terms, i.e. the accumulation of capital, and thus to the ruthless subordination of living labour (the workers) to dead labour (capital) – precisely the fundamental characteristic of capitalism as analysed by Marx in the Communist Manifesto and Capital.
The theory of state capitalism was not only the theory that accorded best with the Marxism of Marx, but it was also the position that best stood the test of time and events. The fall of communism in 1989-91 proved that far from constituting a superior, more progressive mode of production the so-called socialist countries had lost their economic competition with the west. It showed that the working class not only did not control these states, but also felt no allegiance to them. Finally the way the old Stalinist bureaucrats simply ‘moved sideways’ from state to private ownership, without, in most cases, losing power proved there was no fundamental, i.e. class, difference between the two systems.
The theory of state capitalism is thus a hugely important development of Marxism, essential for understanding the world in the 20th and 21st centuries and for continuing the struggle to change it.
John Molyneux
25 May 2007
KOREA COLUMN 24
The International Communist Movement: Part 1
The last two of these columns have dealt with Stalinism in the Soviet Union. This one deals with the history and fate of the international communist movement.
Internationalism has always been a fundamental principle of Marxism and genuine socialism, and Marxists have always sought to organise their forces internationally. Faced with the betrayal of internationalism by the majority of the parties of the Socialist or Second International in 1914, when they supported their own ruling classes in the First World War, Lenin speedily grasped the need for a new (third) international. However, circumstances – primarily the combination of the War and lack of forces – prevented the realisation of this project until fifteen months after the Russian Revolution.
In March 1919 the First Congress of the (Third) Communist International was convened in Moscow in conditions of civil war in Russia and a rising tide of revolution sweeping Europe. Its aim was to create more than just a federation of national parties. The Comintern, as it became known, was to be a single international revolutionary organisation – the Russian Bolshevik Party on a world scale – capable of leading the international proletariat to victory worldwide.
At the time of its First Congress the Comintern was still relatively weak. Apart from the Russian Communist Party the bulk of the foreign Communist Parties participating were from Eastern Europe – the Hungarian, Polish, Latvian, Estonian CPs and so on. From Western Europe and elsewhere came mainly the representatives of small groups or trends, not yet fully formed parties and in many cases not yet fully formed Communists. But by the Second Congress in July 1920 not only had the number of parties represented increased dramatically, so had the size of their support in the working class, especially in Germany.
By now the Communist International had emerged as the highest point yet reached in the history of the organisation of the international working class and the most powerful threat to the rule of the bourgeoisie that has existed up to and including the present day. For the first and only time in history, three things seemed to coincide: a deep and general crisis of the world system, a massive upsurge in militancy and consciousness in the working class internationally, and the existence of strong interlinked revolutionary organisations in a number of countries. Tragically the Comintern did not succeed in its aim and the opportunity was missed.
Why was this? Essentially it was due to a failure of revolutionary leadership. The two crucial defeats were in Italy and Germany and in both cases the passivity of the workers leaders was the decisive.factor. In 1919-20 Italy experienced its biennio rossi, its ‘two red years’, in which there were mass strikes and large scale factory occupations, especially in Turin and Milan. But the leadership of the main working class party, the Italian Socialist Party, which had flirted with the Comintern, sat on its hands and did nothing. The result was not only the missing of a revolutionary opportunity but a terrible reactionary backlash. The two red years were followed by two black years, which culminated in the conquest of power by Mussolini’s fascists.
In terms of building a real revolutionary party it could be said that Italian Marxists were strategically late and tactically premature. On the one hand the revolutionary left remained for too long attached to the wavering and reformist leadership of the Socialist Party. On the other the actual break to form a Communist Party, when it came in 1921, was rushed through in such a way as to minimise the forces won from reformism.
In Germany the process was more drawn out but no less catastrophic in the end. The German Revolution began in October 1918 with a mutiny of sailors in Kiel which spread like wildfire through the German armed forces. Within weeks the Kaiser abdicated and power was assumed by the leaders of German Social Democracy. In January 1919 the revolutionary Spartacus League (shortly to become the German Communist Party) attempted to transform this democratic revolution into a workers’ revolution through an uprising in Berlin. The rising was premature and was put down by an alliance of the Social Democratic Government and right wing militia, called the Freikorps. Its leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxumberg, - Luxemberg was Germany’s foremost Marxist and revolutionary at this time – were murdered.
The so-called Weimar Republic with its Social Democratic government continued but so did the revolutionary crisis. In March 1920 came the Kapp Putsch, a rightwing military attempt to crush the republic, but it was defeated by a nationwide general strike. Then in 1921 the Communist Party, which had grown massively, launched another revolutionary offensive called the March Action. Again it was premature, and again it was defeated.
Still the chronic instability of German society persisted and it all came to a head once again in the summer and autumn of 1923.when Germany was gripped by extreme hyperinflation. In January 1923 1 US $ = 18,000 marks, in June 1$ = 100,000 marks, in December 1$ = 4000 billion marks! With workers carrying their wages in wheelbarrows, support for the Communist Party mushroomed. But having twice acted prematurely the German Communist leaders, acting on advice from Moscow, now did nothing - the moment was lost and German capitalism restabilised itself, at least for five years.
The consequences of this can hardly be overstated. If the German Revolution had succeeded the likelihood is that capitalism would quickly have fallen in all the countries between Russia and Germany, and the possibility is that this would have created such revolutionary momentum that we would be living in a socialist world today. As it was the German defeat brought the post war revolutionary crisis to an end and ensured the isolation of the Russian Revolution, thus massively reinforcing the tendencies to bureaucratic degeneration and Stalinism that were already beginning to manifest themselves.
Behind the failures in Italy and Germany and elsewhere in Europe (e.g. Hungary and Bulgaria) lay the fact that in the short period of time available, less than four years, it proved impossible to transfer to the fledgling European CPs the experience and lessons of revolutionary strategy and tactics acquired by Lenin and the Bolsheviks over decades. Unfortunately the years that followed showed that it was much easier to transfer to the international movement the methods and policies of Stalinism. The consequences of this for the Comintern and for the international working class will be discussed in part 2 of this article.
John Molyneux
8 June 2007
KOREA COLUMN 25
The International Communist Movement Part 2
As said in the last column the early years of the Communist International (1919-23) marked the highest point reached in the history of working class political organisation.
But the defeat of the European Revolution, and the isolation and consequent degeneration in Stalinism of the Russian Revolution was to have a devastating affect on the fundamental role and policies of the Comintern .
The key development was the adoption by Stalin and the Russian leadership of the policy of ‘Socialism in one Country’. Lenin, Trotsky and the entire Bolshevik leadership, like Marx and Engels before them, regarded socialist revolution as an inherently international process and saw the Russian Revolution as the first step in an international revolution without which it could neither build socialism nor survive. In 1924, Stalin, in the wake of the failure of the German Revolution, abandoned this internationalist tradition and opted for the view that it would be possible to complete the building of socialism in Russia alone, provided only that military overthrow by Western Capitalism could be avoided.
This had a profound impact on the policies of the Comintern and its member parties. Initially, the first task of these parties had been to pursue the revolution in their own country, thus simultaneously serving the interests of their own working class and of the Russian Revolution. Now the main task became to prevent a military attack on the USSR and this in turn meant the Communist Parties making alliances with various nationalist and reformist forces who, while totally untrustworthy from the point of view of workers’ revolution, could at least be induced to oppose war on Russia.
The first fruits of this shift to the right were seen in the British General Strike of 1926. In
1925 the Russian Trade Unions, on orders from Stalin, had formed an alliance with ‘left’ British trade union leaders, in what was called the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee, to oppose British intervention in the Soviet Union and this alliance started to have a big effect on the whole attitude of the British CP to the reformist union leaders, silencing criticism of them and reducing the ability of Communist trade unionists to act independently. At just this time the British working class and its trade unions, led by the miners, moved into a massive confrontation with the government and the ruling class, which culminated in the all out General Strike of May 1926.
After only nine days, however, this General Strike was called off and abjectly betrayed by the same left union leaders with who the CP had been in alliance. Moreover, the British CP had been prevented by the Comintern brokered alliance from warning the working class of the unreliability of these leaders or preparing its militants to act independently in the event of a sell-out. Thus the British working class suffered a defeat that set it back for a generation and the Comintern was complicit in it.
A fundamentally similar but even worse catastrophe followed in China in 1927. In the years 1925-7 the Chinese working class, especially in Shanghai and Canton, rose in a huge wave of revolt against the imperialist and feudal warlord hold on China and young Chinese Communist Party grew massively. But the line of Stalin’s Comintern was that the CP should not only ally with, but also subordinate itself to, the bourgeois nationalist Kuomintang led by Chiang Kai-shek, because Chiang was seen as a potential defender of the Soviet Union. In 1927, however, Chiang turned on his communist allies and literally put them to the sword. It was a disaster that led directly to Mao’s turn to the countryside and the peasantry and from which Chinese working class socialism has still not really recovered.
In the process of pursuing these disastrous policies other changes were occurring in the nature of the Comintern. To justify the tactics in China, Stalin reverted to the old Menshevik and social democratic line that the colonial countries were not ready for socialism and that in such circumstances Marxists had to support the ‘progressive’ national bourgeoisies. At the same time all opposition and democratic debate was eliminated from the international communist parties whose leaderships became ever more compliant servants of Moscow.
When, in 1928-29, Stalin embarked on forced industrialisation and collectivisation of agriculture – a state capitalist course which crushed the Russian workers and peasants - he needed to cover his tracks with left sounding phrases and slogans. Transferred to the international sphere, as they automatically were, these pseudo left slogans produced a sectarian policy of denouncing the Social Democratic Parties as ‘social fascists’ and rejecting any alliances, even with other working class parties and even against Nazism.
This phoney leftism had even more terrible consequences than the previous rightist strategy in that, by dividing and confusing the German working class in the crucial years of 1929-33, it greatly assisted the rise to power of Hitler. [ I shall deal more fully with the question of fascism in the next column].
Faced with the direct military threat posed by Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Comintern did a further about turn. From opposing even a workers’ united front it moved to establishing alliances with ‘democratic’ bourgeoisies in what became known as the Popular Front. Put to the test in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) this meant Communists repressing the spontaneously developing Spanish Revolution in the name of unity with sections of the Spanish bourgeoisie against Franco. In practice this not only stopped the revolution but also demobilised the Spanish working class and so aided Franco’s victory.
Meanwhile another force was at work in international communism. If socialism in one country was possible for Russia it was possible for lots of other ‘single’ countries. On this basis the idea of separate national roads to socialism gradually took hold in the various CPs. For a long time this remained subordinate to loyalty to Russia, but as the power of Moscow waned in the fifties and sixties so the nationalist reformist tendencies in the Stalinist parties came to the fore until they became more or less indistinguishable from Social Democracy.
The overall historical effect of Stalinism on the struggle for international socialism, therefore, was a) to preside over a series of catastrophic defeats which ensured the survival of capitalism and the victory of fascism, and b) to transform a movement for world proletarian revolution into a movement for international counter revolution and bourgeois reformism. Thankfully, today, the ability of Stalinism to block workers’ struggle and obstruct genuine socialism is enormously reduced.
John Molyneux
22 June 2007
KOREA COLUMN 26
<b></b>What is fascism?<b></b>
The worst defeat suffered by the working class in the 20th century – the coming to power of Hitler and the Nazis – led directly to the worst catastrophe for humanity in the century, the Second World War, and the worst single crime against humanity, the Holocaust. This nexus of events, therefore, poses a number of questions of the highest political importance: what was the cause of the Nazi phenomenon? What was the nature of the Nazi movement? What enabled it to take power? Could it have been stopped? Could it happen again? Above all, what lessons can we learn from the past to help ensure that it doesn’t happen again?
Obviously it is not possible to deal properly with all these issues in a single column, but what I will try to do is to set out the main lines of the Marxist analysis of Nazism, which can then serve as a basis for fuller answers to the above questions. This analysis was developed principally by Leon Trotsky in 1929-33, i.e. the years of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany and it is best understood in relation, and contrast, to the bourgeois and the orthodox communist, i.e. Stalinist, interpretations of Nazism.
The bourgeois view of Nazism, embodied in thousands of press articles, books, films, TV programmes etc., oscillates between seeing it as an outgrowth of the German national character (its supposed authoritarianism, militarism, cruelty etc.) and as the product of the evil genius of one man, Hitler, who allegedly hypnotised an entire nation with his demonic oratory. These two interpretations, which formally contradict one another, are complementary in that they avoid any connection with social forces or economics, and especially any connection with capitalism.
However, two simple and obvious facts expose the falsity of the bourgeois view in both its versions. The first is that German Nazism was part of an international fascist movement that did not begin or end in Germany, but which existed with varying degrees of strength in almost every country, including supposedly ‘moderate’ Britain, and which first came to power with Mussolini in Italy. The second is that Hitler and his Nazi Party only became a serious political force in Germany in the wake of the international economic crisis that began with the Wall St. Crash in October 1929. Prior to this Hitler’s supposed oratorical powers had little appeal to the German people.
For Trotsky, and for all Marxists, fascism as a whole was a product of, and response to, the international crisis of capitalism that gripped the system following the First World War. It was an attempt to resolve that crisis in the interests of capital by dispensing with parliamentary democracy, establishing a reactionary dictatorship, and crushing the working class.
To this general analysis Trotsky made a crucial addition. He saw that fascism was not just a policy or political trend promoted by the capitalist class as such, or even by a section or wing of big business. Rather fascism began as a real mass movement based in the lower middle class or petty bourgeoisie. This class suffered acutely and in a particular way in the economic crisis: on the one hand crushed from above by the banks and giant monopolies, on the other pressured from below by the trade unions and organised working class. Driven to despair by the economic crisis and feeling ground between the great millstones of the two major classes the petty bourgeoisie ‘went berserk’, and became fertile ground for fascist demagogy.
It is this class basis, which provides the key to the understanding of fascist and Nazi ideology, including its anti-Semitic component. In one direction, ‘anti- capitalist’ rhetoric, but directed against international and finance capital rather than capitalism as such. In the other direction, and much more serious, bitter anti- communism , anti-socialism and anti - trade unionism. Then, uniting both elements, at least in the fascist imagination, anti-Semitism – the Jews as the sinister conspiracy behind both finance capital and communism (after all were not Rothschild and Marx both Jews?).Finally, standing above the classes, the mythical exaltation of the state, the nation, the leader and the race.
The petty bourgeois basis of fascism also shapes its development as a movement. No matter how many supporters it attracts fascism cannot take power by itself, because the lower middle class cannot overthrow the capitalist class proper. Instead it has to be ‘lifted’ into power by big business, as happened in Germany in the autumn of !932. But the ruling class will only take the risk of partially relinquishing control of their state to dangerous outsiders under extreme pressure and it has to be convinced a) that the severity of the crisis is such that it can no longer continue to rule in the old way, and b) that the gamble of unleashing the fascists on the organisations of the working class will succeed. Equally the fascists have to have proved themselves worthy of ruling class backing, by demonstrating in practice their ability to take on the workers’ organisations on the streets.
If the petty bourgeois base of fascism makes it dependant on big business, it nevertheless enables it to offer the ruling class something beyond what is offered by ‘ordinary’ police or military dictatorship. This is a mass cadre at grass roots level which can smash workers’ organisations in the workplaces, on the estates, in the streets, far more thoroughly and effectively than just external operations by the police or army.
This analysis, developed in detail by Trotsky in his brilliant writings on The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, not only captured the essence of fascism but also showed how it could be fought. First, because fascism was such a mortal threat to all workers’ organisations, it was necessary to establish maximum working class unity against fascism by means of the workers’ United Front. (It was precisely this unity that Stalinism sabotaged in 1929-33 with its ultra-left notion that social democrats were social fascists). Second, the petty bourgeoisie could be won over to the side of the working class or at least neutralised, provided the socialist left could convincingly present itself as able to resolve the chronic crisis of the system. In the end this meant proving in practice its ability to overthrow capitalism. ( Again it was just this that was prevented by the later Stalinist policy of alliance with the ‘progressive bourgeoisie’ in the Popular Front.)
The contemporary relevance of these lessons should be clear. The crisis of the system, though less acute than in the 1930s, is still with us and, therefore, so is the threat of fascism, regardless of national character or individual leaders. If the threat is not yet immediate, all the more reason it should be nipped in the bud by strong united working class action. However to eliminate the fascist threat for good, to make the slogan ‘Never Again’ a permanent reality, it is necessary to destroy its breeding ground, the xcapitalist system
John Molyneux
4 July 2007
KOREA COLUMN 27
<b></b>Capitalism Today<b></b>
Capitalism first began to emerge, within feudalism, in Europe and elsewhere, as long ago as the fourteenth century. Through a long series of struggles, revolutions and wars capitalism established itself as the dominant mode of production in Europe by the beginning of the 19th century. It was at this point that Karl Marx became the first person to produce a comprehensive analysis of capitalism’s structure and laws of development. It is useful to compare capitalism today with capitalism in Marx’s time to see what has changed and what remains the same.
The most immediately obvious change is in capitalism’s scale of operation. In the 1840s, when Marx began his analysis, capitalism may have been dominant in Europe but in its developed industrial form it was still more or less confined to a small corner of the north-west – Britain, The Netherlands, Belgium, parts of France and Germany. Today it is truly global.
Capitalism, by means of trade and, indeed, its armed forces, long ago ‘reached’ and affected virtually everywhere but now there is probably no country on the planet where the majority of goods are not produced on a capitalist basis. In 1848 Britain, the so-called ‘workshop of the world’, was by a long way the leading economic power, with France its nearest rival. By the end of the 19th century Germany had displaced France and the USA was advancing swiftly. By the end of the First World War the United States had clearly overtaken not only Britain but all of Europe. By the end of the Second World War US dominance was even more entrenched, with the state capitalist USSR its only serious challenger.
Today the USA remains economically, and, of course, militarily, dominant but, despite its victory in the cold war, its economic lead over the rest of the world is much diminished. In the fifties and sixties ‘economic miracles’ in Germany and Japan put America under pressure and now there is the emerging challenge from China, with India also making huge progress. In addition there are numerous significant and independent centres of capital accumulation, such as South Korea and Brazil, dotted round the world. Capitalism has thus ‘filled up’ the world more completely and is more poly-centred than ever before.
Along with this geographical spread has gone a huge increase in the size and range of capitalism’s major corporations – the Exxon Mobiles and Wal-Marts, the Toyotas and Samsungs – in other words in the concentration of capital, and in the intensity of global economic integration. It is not simply that the international transportation and sale of raw materials and manufactured goods has grown immensely but that the actual manufacture of individual commodities has become an international process.
The growth of the system has been anything but smooth, passing through severe international crises such as the Great Depression of the thirties and the international recessions of the seventies and eighties, and numerous national or regional upsets, nevertheless overall it has been massive.
The economic role of the state has also generally increased substantially, but again the process has been extremely uneven. Since the onset of neo-liberalism in the seventies and the ‘collapse of communism’ in 1989-91 the role of the state has clearly declined compared to the days of Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt and Keynes, but not nearly as much as neo-liberal ideologues expected or wanted.
Another major change has been the rise in the average standard of living of the masses, first in the advanced industrial countries of the so-called West, and second in a significant number of newly industrialising countries. Cross-cultural statistics on living standards are tricky and unreliable, but figures on life expectancy give the broad picture. In 1850 in the US life expectancy for the average white male was 38 years, and for white women, 40 years. By 2001 that had risen to 75 years for men and 80 years for women. In countries such as Canada, Sweden, France and Australia it is similar but even higher, while in Mexico, Brazil, Poland and even China it is now over 70.
Viewed superficially and one-sidedly these changes could be seen as a success story for capitalism. However, what has remained unchanged is even more basic than what has changed. First, the fundamental social relations of production are the same. The main forces of production are still owned and controlled by tiny minorities who produce in competition with one another, on the basis of the exploitation of those who live by the sale of their labour power The immediate producers remain alienated from their labour and the products of their labour – they produce a world not under their or, ultimately, anyone’s control. Society is divided into antagonistic classes – bourgeoisie and proletariat – whose interests are diametrically opposed. Second, the fundamental dynamic of the system also remains unchanged; it is the same in China today as it was in Britain in the Industrial Revolution, namely the drive to accumulate capital i.e. to pursue profit before human need.
Precisely because of this underlying continuity all the changes in capitalism described above have their dark or negative side.
The rise in living standards, though real, has been massively uneven – using again the measure of life expectancy we find, for example, Angola on 37, Mozambique on 40 and South Africa on 42.5 – and accompanied by rising inequality, both within nations and between them. In the US in 1980 the pay of company Chief Executives was 42 times that of a production worker; by 2000 it was 525 times greater! In 1998 the United Nations Development Program reported that the world's 225 richest people now have a combined wealth of $1 trillion which is equal to the combined annual income of the world's 2.5 billion poorest people and the wealth of the three richest individuals now exceeds the total GDP of the 48 poorest countries.
The economic growth experienced by capitalism has been paralleled by a growth in its destructive tendencies. In terms of wars and mass slaughter the 20th century was, by a huge distance, the most costly in history and today the capacity to eliminate human life is greater than ever. The emergence of the US as sole super power (and the potential threat to its position from China) has made it more not less inclined to use and threaten military force. To this must be added the devastating threat capitalism poses to the environment, and thus the future of humanity, through climate change.
But by far the most important consequence of the apparent international ‘triumph’ of capitalism has been, precisely as Marx foresaw, the production, in greater numbers with greater geographical spread.(from South Korea to South America), concentrated in ever growing giant cities (from Kolkata to Cairo), of its own gravedigger – the international working class.
John Molyneux
July 23 2007
KOREA COLUMN 28
<b>Socialism <b></b></b>and the Trade Unions<b></b>
The role of trade unions in the struggle for socialism and the related matter of the role of socialists in the trade unions, have always been questions of enormous strategic and tactical importance and, moreover, ones on which a Marxist approach differs sharply from that of reformists, anarchists, syndicalists and other radical tendencies.
History shows that in almost every country trade unions are the most elementary, most widespread and broadest form of organisation adopted by the working class. Their basic function is to defend and improve the jobs, pay and conditions of working people by enabling them to act in unison against their employers.
Whether union leaders and members are aware of this or not, trade unionism’s point of departure is the class struggle: the fact that there is a permanent and fundamental conflict of interest between workers who live by the sale of their labour power and bosses (capitalists) who strive to maximise profits by increasing the exploitation of their workers.
As such Marxists give strong and active support to trade union organisation and the trade union struggle (where it is waged, as it generally is, in the interests of workers – very occasionally trade unions wage reactionary, e.g. racist or sexist, campaigns). The basic principles of trade unionism - unity is strength, an injury to one is an injury to all and so on – are principles shared by socialists and Marxists, though obviously Marxist principles go beyond trade union principles.
This enthusiastic support for trade unionism already distinguishes Marxism from various other tendencies. There have been some socialist sects (for example some of the 19th century utopian socialists) who dismissed trade unionism as unable to achieve any improvements for working people, on the grounds that any increase in wages would be met by an equal increase in prices. Marx refuted this argument in detail in his pamphlet Wages, Prices and Profit and history has clearly vindicated him, so I will not repeat the argument here.
Some would-be revolutionaries or radicals have rejected the trade union struggle on the grounds that it was merely self-interested or that by its very success in improving workers’ conditions it corrupted them and reconciled them to capitalism. For Marxists, however, the interests of the working class (taken as a whole) are the interests of humanity and they should be pursued more vigorously not less, and the revolution is not an abstract goal for which the workers should sacrifice themselves, but necessary precisely because capitalism cannot meet the needs of workers or mankind.
Of course, the dominant approach to trade unionism is that of the reformists who acknowledge a positive role for unions but within quite narrow limits. For reformists trade unions defend the sectional economic interests of workers but should leave the wider political struggle to a political party operating through parliament. Also the workers’ economic interests are seen as legitimate, but subordinate to a wider national interest which transcends class. For Marxists, by contrast, the working class struggle is always both economic and political and the centre of gravity of the political struggle is not parliament but the workplace. Moreover the notion of a common national interest is myth behind which hides the interest of the capitalist class.
Marxism, therefore, argues that socialists should work consistently within trade unions both raising the level of their economic militancy and encouraging them to take up political questions. At the same time Marxists recognise that trade unions, despite their essential role in the struggle for socialism, do have certain limitations which mean they are not the only form of organisation needed by the working class.
First, trade unions basic activity is to negotiate the terms of sale of workers’ labour power within capitalism, whereas the aim of socialism is to abolish that sale altogether. This means that trade unions by themselves are not well suited to organising the actual overthrow of capitalism. For that task workers’ councils, which represent workers not as sellers of labour power but as producers and potential rulers of society, are also needed.
Second, to negotiate effectively with the bosses, unions have to strive as far as possible to include in their ranks every worker in the relevant industry, trade and workplace, regardless of that worker’s level of political consciousness or militancy. [To every rule there is an exception, and the exception here is workers who are organised fascists, who should be driven out of the unions]. This necessary inclusiveness means that although the unions have certain educative and ideological functions they are not well suited to leading the ideological struggle for socialist consciousness within the working class or to providing political leadership for the class at times of intense conflict. For these tasks a revolutionary party, bringing together the most conscious and committed elements in the working class, across all industrial or occupational boundaries, is what is required.
The Marxist understanding of trade unions has one further crucial and distinctive feature – the analysis of the trade union bureaucracy. Much bitter experience in many different countries has shown that trade union leaders display a tendency to betray not just the socialist revolution but even the most basic economic struggles of their own members. Nor is it only the top leaders who are prone to this but also full time trade union officials in general. The tendency is far too persistent to be a matter of personal failings.
Rather it is that trade union officials come to form a definite social layer, with interests distinct from those of rank and file trade unionists, who specialise in mediating between the working class and the employers. Most union officials enjoy higher wages and better working conditions than their members, and even if they negotiate a bad deal in which jobs are lost or hours increased, they do not lose their jobs or have to work longer. It is not, in most cases, that they are total traitors or servants of the bosses, for they still need to retain the loyalty of their members (with no members they have no salary and are no u8se to the bosses either) but they continually vacillate, now showing resistance and talking left, now backing down and undermining workers’ struggles
Socialist strategy in the unions has to take this well-established tendency into account. Socialist militants have to learn how to work with union leaders and officials when they move in the right direction and how to combat them when they vacillate or sell out. This involves not only supporting the trade union struggle and working in the unions as a whole, but also building within the unions networks of rank and file activists, able to put pressure on the leaders and act independently of them when necessary.
John Molyneux
6 August 2007
KOREA COLUMN 29
<b>What about human nature?</b>
In my experience the two most common objections to Marxism are 1) that it fails to take account of human nature, 2) that it reduces everything to economics.
Actually the two objections contradict each other – the ‘human nature’ argument suggests that socialism won’t work because people are basically greedy and self interested; the overestimating the economic factor argument claims that Marxism fails to take enough account of the role of ideas and ideals in history. The contradiction is not usually noticed because the two arguments are deployed in different spheres. The first is mostly encountered in the sphere of everyday political debate and discussion. The second is most common at the level of theoretical critique in the academic world. For this reason I shall devote a separate column to each.
We should begin by recognising the plausibility of the human nature argument. It is plausible partly because it has such a long pedigree. It embodies an idea that has been central to bourgeois ideology for centuries and to ruling class ideology for millennia. The Christian religion, for example, taught that people were all born ‘wicked’ and this justified both the power of the church to bring them salvation in the afterlife and the power of the state to keep them in order in this life. It is also plausible because it seems to fit with historical experience, with the simple fact that all past attempts to achieve a society of freedom and equality have failed. Finally it is plausible because it seems to explain a lot of our personal experience – all those occasions when we have been treated badly by workmates or let down by friends or people around us just seem to be apathetic.
All this plausibility, however, does not make the argument sound and it is precisely in the last area, the area of our personal experience, that we find the most obvious evidence of its falsity. Yes, it is true that everyday life presents plenty of examples of selfishness, callousness, lack of sympathy and so on, but it is also the case that it offers many examples of the opposite, of kindness, self sacrifice and solidarity – of people who help strangers in difficulties, who risk their lives to save those in danger, who devote their lives to what they see as good causes. IF it really were human nature to be selfish, if we were actually programmed to be that way, such altruistic behaviour would either be non-existent or at best extremely rare, but it is not. What experience actually shows is that human nature permits both selfish and unselfish behaviour, both apathy and commitment,
cowardice and bravery and that which predominates depends on both circumstances and conditioning.
Here we have to remember that the human behaviour we experience is behaviour under capitalism and that capitalism massively conditions people towards selfishness. Of course the system preaches morality and altruism to children but look at how schools are actually organised: the children required to compete to come top of the class (or be punished for not trying), to pass exams, to gain entry to ‘good’ schools and top universities, to get the best jobs, and with any deviation from this self interested agenda subject to severe condemnation.
Nor is it just a question of early socialisation and childhood conditioning. As adults the system virtually forces selfishness on people if they are to survive or be treated with any social respect. Capitalists obviously have to be greedy, in the sense of pursuing maximum profits, unless they are prepared to renounce being capitalists. The managers who work for them have to adhere to the profit/ greed agenda or be sacked. Only the workers are pushed towards, and have an interest in, solidarity (which is what makes workers the socialist class) and such solidarity is not only seriously stigmatised (‘militants’, ‘troublemakers’ etc) but also frequently illegal. The wonder, under capitalism, is not how little but how much self-sacrifice and social responsibility we encounter.
Much the same applies, in a different way, to broader social and historical experience. If we explain the failures of the French, Russian, Chinese and other revolutions – the return of tyranny in Napoleonic or Stalinist form – by human nature, either the greed or ambition of bad leaders or the apathy and inertia of the masses, how do we explain the revolutions in the first place? Of course, in a sense, everything that has happened in human history must be compatible with human nature or it wouldn’t have happened, but in explaining everything in this way we explain nothing.
This raises the question, very seldom asked by most of those who invoke the human nature argument, of just what is meant by ‘human nature’ or what it consists of. I shall take it that by ‘human nature’ is meant a combination of the characteristics which all, or almost all, humans have in common and the characteristics which distinguish humans as a species from other species.
A complete list of such universal characteristics (especially in the biological sense) is obviously immensely long but those that are relevant to the issue of socialism are fairly few and pretty simple. Above all they consist of a number of basic needs which all humans share and which have to be met for humans to survive: the need for air, water, food, clothing, shelter, for social interaction with other humans, for sex. Equally the key distinguishing characteristics of humans relate to the means by which these needs are met, namely collective social labour, followed by language and expanded social consciousness.
Do any of these common or distinguishing characteristics that make up human nature constitute an obstacle to an equal society or to socialism? Both history (real history not bourgeois myth) and reason give a resounding no to this question. History, because for hundreds of thousands of years prior to the development of agriculture, i.e. the vast bulk of human existence, when ‘human nature’ was being forged and consolidated, people lived as hunters and gatherers in deeply egalitarian communities, with no division into rich and poor or leaders and led and with distribution of goods based on the principle of sharing.
Reason, because a glance at the state of the world today shows that capitalism, despite an abundance of resources, is extremely poor at meeting these basic human needs for most of humanity at the best of times and its worst (through war, climate change etc) threatens
even the limited provision that exists. Socialism, by contrast, would make its whole point of departure and raison d’etre the planning of production to meet the basic physical and social needs of human nature
Far from human nature being incompatible with socialism, socialism is just what human nature needs.
John Molyneux
27 August 2007
KOREA COLUMN 30
<b>Is Marxism Economic Determin</b>ist ?
The criticism of Marxism that it 'puts too much emphasis on the economic factor' or 'falsely reduces everything to economics' is the main theoretical objection to Marxism in academic circles. The reason it is so popular with professional sociologists, historians, political philosophers and the like is because it fits so neatly the needs of their social situation. Academics are people who earn their living, or like to believe they earn their living, on the basis of their ideas. Instinctively they are repelled by a theory which seems to downplay the role of ideas in history, and therefore to downplay the role of people like themselves. The professional ideologist is naturally drawn to theories which suggest that in the end it is the power of ideas that is decisive in shaping the world.
Within this there is a narrower career interest in theories that are 'sophisticated' and 'complex', and in questions 'in need of more research and development' - so many research grants and publication opportunities - and a strong bias against definite answers of any kind. 'Communism', the young Marx wrote,' is the riddle of history solved, and knows itself to be so', but such a claim would appall the typical academic who would much prefer the riddle to remain unsolved.
But if this explains the popularity of the objection we still have to assess its truth and on this I would start by saying that all talk of the primacy of ‘economics’ in Marxism or of Marxism reducing everything to ‘economics’ is inaccurate and, at best, ‘loose’. Marx’s theory of history, as The German Ideology makes clear, does not begin with ‘economics’ or with ‘economic motives’, but with human needs – both biologically determined and historically developed – and with the organization of production to meet those needs. Nor does Marx claim that the organization of production determines everything in history, merely that it constitutes a foundation or base on which everything else in history rests.
Moreover this fundamental Marxist proposition must be true, for the simple reason that any individual who is unable meet their needs for food, drink, shelter etc will die, and that any society unable to organize social production to meet those needs, at least to some degree, for most of its members, will cease to exist. To depart from this premise is, as Marx put it, ‘possible only in imagination’. Ruling classes and their ideologists can avoid it because the material work to meet their material needs is always done by others, and because those others (slaves, peasants, workers) are socially subordinate to them, and can be ignored or dismissed.
But isn’t this a round about way of saying everything reduces to economics? No. The human needs we are talking about range from the very basic and absolute need for air, to the only slightly less pressing needs for drink, food, clothing, and shelter, to the need for social interaction (care, language, socialization etc) for babies to grow up human, the needs for love and sex (both a necessity for the survival of the species and a felt need by individuals) and ‘spiritual’ needs for art, music etc. Which of these needs can be called ‘economic’? In a sense none of them – is the need for air an ‘economic’ need? At the same time without economics i.e. the social organization of production, none of these needs, except air, and even that may become problematic, can be met on a consistent basis. For example, without material production there can be no art, which requires such things as walls, paper, canvas, pencils, paint or whatever and above all people with the time and energy to be artists.
What then is the relationship between this economic base of organized production and what Marx calls the ‘superstructure’ of politics, law, philosophy, religion, art etc.? Clearly, as we have seen, economics is a necessary condition for the rest, but does it determine them in some mechanical or absolute sense? Not according to Marx who mainly speaks of shaping or conditioning rather than strict determination. The conditioning of the superstructure by the base is best understood, in my opinion, in terms of a combination of constraints and impulses.
First, the economic level of society constrains or set limits to what is possible at the ideological or superstructural level. For example, modern art and modern culture generally, is obviously impossible on a feudal or medieval economic base. Equally it was not possible to achieve modern political democracy- parliamentary government, universal suffrage etc. - without the development of capitalism with its cities and its working class.
Second, developments in the economic base create powerful impulses for change. For example the early development of the bourgeoisie within feudalism gave an impulse to the rise of a new form of Christianity – Protestantism- which would challenge the alliance of Catholicism and the feudal aristocracy. Similarly the later development of industrial capitalism into monopoly capitalism created a very powerful impulse towards imperialism, the division of the whole world between the ‘great’ powers, and that in turn generated a huge pressure towards war.
Thus neither the Reformation nor the First World War were accidents of history or mainly caused by ideology; on the contrary they had profound ‘economic’ causes or, more accurately, causes located in the development of the forces and relations of production. At the same time it was by no means economically determined that Martin Luther would nail his 95 Theses to door of the church in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517, or that world war would break out in August 1914 following an assassination in Sarajevo.
Let us apply this historical method to a contemporary problem: the likelihood of a US attack on Iran. On the hand there is a very strong economic impulse to attack Iran. To defend its global economic empire the US needs to assert its military dominance, especially over the crucial regions of the Middle East and Central Asia. The disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq create an incentive to try to recoup the situation with another throw of the dice in Iran, before Iran gets a nuclear weapon. But there are also certain basic constraints ( what the US can afford)and a number of complicating factors such as the real possibility of military defeat in Iran, the danger of provoking huge turmoil in the region with disastrous consequences, the probability of massive opposition domestically and internationally. In such a situation an attack on Iran is fundamentally economically caused and motivated, not ideological or religious, but it is also not absolutely economically determined. It hangs in the balance and may depend on factors such as the judgment and character of US political and military leaders, and the strength of resistance in the Middle East, the US and elsewhere.
John Molyneux
14 September 2007
KOREA COLUMN 31
Marxism and Climate Change
Climate change is real and it is a serious threat. More or less all rational people, including even the US government who are at the very edge of that category, now know this to be the case. If climate change is not tackled immediately global temperatures will, before very long, rise to the point where millions die through the failure of their food supplies, floods, storms and other catastrophes and many millions more are displaced. If it is allowed to run unchecked even beyond that point incalculable horrors could be inflicted on both the human race and innumerable other species.
Faced with such clear and present danger the most widespread response, both in the media and amongst environmental campaigners is to say that this issue is so big, so urgent, that it stands above politics or ideology. Since, in the long run, climate change threatens all humanity, all humanity should unite to prevent it. Conservatives, liberals. anarchists, Marxists, especially Marxists, should submerge their differences and put to one side their doctrinal squabbles, special interests and philosophical goals and concentrate on the business at hand – saving the planet. This all sounds like common sense. In fact it is completely false.
To see why this is so just think what would be done about climate change if we really did live in a half way rational world, or if even a significant portion of the key players i.e. the politically and economically powerful, really did sink their differences, put aside their special interests and tackle the problem.
First, all the major governments – the US, Russian, Chinese, British, Japanese, German, French etc - would immediately initiate a massive shift from carbon emitting sources of power such as oil and coal to non - carbon emitting sources such as wind, wave and solar power. Second, they would complement this with government led programmes to insulate all buildings effectively so as to reduce drastically the amount of power used to heat them. Then there would be strict regulations introduced to prevent offices and other public buildings wasting power by being lit up at night. Finally there would be huge public investment in environmentally friendly forms of public transport, crucially buses, coaches and trains, so as to greatly reduce dependence on carbon emitting cars,lorries and planes and once the efficient and comprehensive public transport was in place this could be backed up, if need be, by legal limitations on, for example, cars in city centres or on long distance runs between cities.
One could think of many other measures that could and should be taken but the important point is that all these developments would be government led and legally enforced. There would also be education and propaganda directed at the public but this would be to win support for government action, not instead of it. There is nothing unusual about this. It is what governments and ruling classes ALWAYS do whenever they are serious about tackling an issue or meeting a threat. Thus it is inconceivable that ANY government would say that the way to deal with bank robberies and burglaries is to appeal to people’s consciences and to rely on the interventions of publicspirited citizens. Inconceivable that George Bush would say that the combating terrorism should be left to market forces or that the way to invade Iraq was to encourage as many Americans as possible to make their way to Baghdad under their own steam. Indeed it is precisely to secure centralised and effective action that ruling classes everywhere have created state machines to do their bidding.
Yet when we turn away from this utopian fantasy of rational action in a rational world to what is actually happening, we find that almost NONE of the things that most obviously need doing are being done and that just the leave it all up to the individual approach, which would be dismissed out of hand on other issues, is the one being adopted.
The reason for this abject failure is clear: the priorities and logic of capitalism. The principal holders of economic power in the world capitalist system are the giant corporations. According to the Fortune 500 list the world’s ten largest companies are as follows: 1.Wal-Mart, 2. Exxon Mobile,3. Royal Dutch Shell, 4.BP, 5. General Motors,6. Toyota, 7.Chevron, 8.DaimlerChrysler, 9.ConocoPhillips, 10.Total. It should be immediately obvious that of these ten, nine have an absolute vested interest in the oil/car economy.
The other main centres of power in capitalism are the state machines of the major nations but these are tied directly and indirectly by a thousand strings to these same corporations. Moreover they are locked into competition with each other on behalf of their respective national capitalisms. Thus not only do these state apparatuses not want to make the changes necessary to halt climate change they feel they cannot afford to lest their rivals steal a march on them by opting out of the process of change. To put it very concretely the US ruling class says to itself we can’t really cut our carbon emissions (which would hit profits and damage our economy) for fear the Chinese don’t follow suit and thereby gain a competitive advantage.Likewise the Chinese ruling class will not want to cut back in case the Americans use the opportunity to race ahead.
So compelling is the logic of capitalist competition that both corporations and governments are willing to put at risk the whole future of humanity and the planet rather than lose their position in the world market.
And this is why it would be folly for socialists to drop their distinctive politics or put to one side their distinctive Marxist ideology in the cause of stopping climate change. The reality is that only the Marxist analysis of capitalism reveals the true cause of climate change and, even more importantly, identifies the vested interests standing in the way of preventing it reaching catastrophic proportions. And only socialist politics linked to the mass movement of the working class can mobilise the social and political power able to overcome the resistance of those vested interests and force through the changes necessary to save humanity from disaster.
John Molyneux
15 October 2007
KOREA COLUMN 32
The Politics of Migration
The issue of migrant labour and/or refugees is at, or near, the top of the political agenda in many countries round the world today.
There are two main reasons for this. First, the combination of globalisation and war over the last decade or so has generated flows of migration greater, possibly, than at any previous point in human history – in excess, possibly, even of the huge displacement of people caused by the Second World War. Second, the ruling classes in most of the affected countries put it there.
Despite the fact that these ruling classes are directly or indirectly responsible for the bulk of this movement of people (either by driving people out of one part of the world through poverty, unemployment or war, or attracting them to another part to meet labour shortages) they try to ensure that the prevailing attitude to the phenomenon of migration and to the migrants themselves, is one of hostility.
Obviously the details vary from time to time and country to country, but the general thrust of the ruling class argument, presented through the statements of politicians and complemented through innumerable press and media stories, remains essentially the same everywhere. It is that migrants are to be seen primarily as constituting a ‘problem’ for the ‘host’ country into which they come.
For a start there are always too many of ‘them’; ‘they’ are always arriving or about to arrive in vast numbers, like an invading army, into a country which is always already bursting at the seams. Then ‘they’ are pretty much always taking ‘our’ jobs, causing unemployment among ‘native’ workers, and at the same time jumping the queue to get houses and flats thus creating a housing shortage for deserving citizens. Their presence will also be putting all sorts of pressure on public services. Their children will be causing problems in schools because they don’t yet speak the local language or because they speak too many languages. Form time to time they will get sick and this will cause problems in the hospitals as they take up needed beds and use up scarce resources. They are also quite likely to be bringing and spreading foreign diseases. Remarkably these migrants and refugees also often seem to have tendency to crime – stealing, drugs, prostitution, knives etc – and other forms of bad behaviour but despite this the authorities still seem bent on giving them preferential treatment over local people.
But, even if they are not guilty of all this bad behaviour, ‘they’ are still a ‘problem’ because of their different and ‘alien’ culture – language (which makes them hard to understand) clothes, food (which makes them smell funny), religion (which makes their morals doubtful) and so on. It being well known that people of different cultures have difficulty mixing or living together.
Every socialist has to be able to refute these arguments and expose them for the reactionary rubbish they are. She or he needs at their finger tips concrete facts and statistics to dispose of the mass of exaggerations, myths and downright lies that invariably surround this subject and clearly such concrete facts will differ from country to country and case to case. However there are also certain basic theoretical points which underpin the whole debate.
The first is simply that a rise in population is not a bad thing. All over the world the system tries to convince us that the existence of people is a problem, and of more people a calamity. Obviously this is the perfect alibi for governments and ruling classes everywhere – if there is unemployment, homelessness, poverty etc it is because there are too many people – but it is complete nonsense, an absolute inversion of the truth. If an increase in population really caused unemployment or homelessness then unemployment and homelessness would have been rising relentlessly since the year dot. In reality there is not some fixed number of jobs or houses, and every increase in population means an increase in the workers able to make these things.
On the contrary a rise in population is, fundamentally, a result of an increase in the standard of living. The world’s population is not rising because people are having more children but because more children are surviving and living longer, which in turn is caused by caused by improved diet, health care and living standards. Equally an expanding capitalist economy generates a demand for more labour, which can be met either by natural increase in population or immigration. By the same token the real cause of rising unemployment is economic contraction or crisis.
KOREA COLUMN 33
<b></b>What is Real Democracy?<b></b>
‘Democracy’ is about the most abused word in the political dictionary. Almost every reactionary politician you can think of - Bush, Cheney, Blair, Thatcher, Berlusconi – swears by it. Blatantly undemocratic regimes call themselves democracies: the ruling party of the Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak, is called the National Democratic Party; the Stalinist one-party states of Eastern Europe called themselves People’s Democracies..
At the same time, however, democracy is invoked by people who cannot be dismissed as crooks and opportunists. Nelson Mandela proclaimed his willingness die for democracy at his trial before being jailed for twenty seven years. Similarly when Martin Luther King campaigned through the streets and jails of the Deep South until his life was actually taken, it was, for the democratic right to vote. Karl Marx was also a committed democrat.
Even more importantly, millions of ordinary people, over the centuries, have fought and died for democracy. The tradition stretches from the Levellers in the English Civil War, through the Chartists, the Suffragettes, the resistance fighters in the Second World War, the South Korean workers in the 1990s to the Burmese monks and the Pakistani lawyers of today.
Yet it is also true that millions of people who live under what is generally thought to be
democracy, in the USA or Britain for example, are disillusioned with it. Swap the word ‘politics’ for ‘democracy’ and they will rush to express their lack of interest or their contempt and their conviction that it doesn’t matter who gets in, ‘they’ are all the same.
To understand this it is necessary to view ‘democracy’ historically: it was not an abstract concept that fell from the sky or one day popped into the mind of some philosopher, but t was a political ideal and system that developed in specific circumstances The word ‘democracy’ itself, meaning ‘people’s rule’, originated in Ancient Greece but modern democracy comes from the struggle against feudalism in Europe.
Before the emergence of capitalism, between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, the prevailing order in Europe was the feudal system. This rested on a division in society between lords or aristocrats (large hereditary landowners) and peasants. These societies, which ranged from tiny principalities to huge empires, were ruled by a variety of princes, monarchs, and emperors, who each represented the dominant family in that territory and who frequently claimed that they ruled by divine right. At this time there was no democracy of any kind, and the mass of ordinary people had no political rights at all. Similar undemocratic systems existed in most of the rest of the world e.g. China and India.
Gradually, however, a new class of people began to develop within the feudal order. These were mainly artisans in the towns who became merchants, and small manufacturers – often they were called ‘burghers’ (townsmen), hence the later term ‘bourgeoisie, used by Marx.
.
Under feudalism the bourgeoisie were treated as second class citizens and denied political power by the aristocracy, even though many of them became rich and cultured. Increasingly the bourgeoisie came to resent the arbitrary power of the aristocracy and its monarchs, which they saw as holding back both their own advancement and society as a whole
Eventually the bourgeoisie was able to cast aside the aristocracy and assume its rightful place at the head of society. This involved a series of revolutions and wars such as the English Revolution of 1642, the American War of Independence and the French Revolution of 1789, as well as lesser battles.
But merchants and manufacturers cannot fight wars and revolutions by themselves. To win power they had to mobilise ‘the people’, the lower orders of urban poor of and peasants. In other cases the lower orders mobilized themselves and the bourgeoisie had to manoeuvre to place itself at their head. To do this they needed a political philosophy that offered something to the masses.
Out of these struggles was born the ideology and rhetoric of modern democracy – of the rule of law, of equal rights, of freedom of speech, of representative and accountable government based on election not inheritance.
At first, however, it was an extremely restricted democracy. The bourgeoisie did not think that people of no property should have the vote in case they used the vote to abolish property. Accountable government, yes, but accountable to them not to the working masses. All men are born equal, yes, but this doesn’t include black slaves, ‘natives’, women or, probably, factory workers.
But once the genie of democracy was out of the bottle it was not so easy to control. As the working classes grew in strength, so they seized on the idea of democracy and made it their own. The world’s first mass workers’ organisation, the Chartists, centred on the question of ‘one man, one vote’.
Then towards the end of the nineteenth century, the British bourgeoisie made a remarkable discovery – that it was possible for them to grant workers the vote without the workers voting to get rid of the bourgeoisie. Indeed it was even possible to persuade some workers to vote for their capitalist bosses. From this point onwards every political reactionary and shyster began proclaiming themselves true believers in democracy (while discretely crossing their fingers behind their backs in the knowledge that ‘sometimes’ democracy has to be dispensed with).
What conclusions should we draw from this? That the whole idea of democracy was or is a mistake? That democracy is irrelevant to real needs of working people? This would be a disastrous mistake. The problem with the democracy that exists in Europe, the US and many other countries today, is not that it’s wrong in itself or even doesn’t matter. It is that it is far, far too limited.
The democracy we have been talking about is political democracy. What is needed is political democracy plus economic and social democracy.
The capitalist class can live with political democracy because the decisive levers of power lie not in parliaments or governments, but, first, in the boardrooms of industry, business and the banks and second, in the permanent institutions of the state, above all the armed forces. The former it owns directly, the latter is bound to it by a thousand economic, social and ideological ties and by these means it can turn parliament into a talking shop and bend governments to its will, as we have seen with reformist governments round the world.
This is why Marxists call this form of democracy, bourgeois democracy: democracy that is based on the rule of the bourgeoisie. To move beyond bourgeois democracy to workers’ democracy, to democracy that means real power for the mass of people, it is necessary to extend it from the political sphere to the sphere of production and then other areas of social life. It means democracy in every factory, call centre,school, university, and hospital. It means democracy in the armed forces, the courts and the civil service.
But none of that can be achieved without overturning capitalist property and the capitalist state, without, in other words, a revolution which creates a new form of state that will enable the working class to run society. Thanks to the experience of the Russian Revolution of 1917, backed by other revolutions such as Hungary 1956 and Iran in 1979 we know that the core institution of such a state is the soviet or workers’ council based on the election of recallable delegates from workplace meetings.
However recognising the extremely restricted character of bourgeois democracy and understanding how this alienates millions of working people, does not mean it is not worth defending or fighting for
On the contrary even a freedom of the press that allows The Sun(PLEASE GIVE KOREAN EXAMPLE) to dominate the market also allows socialist papers to be published. Even a parliament reduced to a talking shop is a platform from which socialist ideas can be propagated. Even an elected New Labour government is preferable to no elected government at all. Even the rule of law which defends the property of the rich, offers some protection against the extremes of repression.
But it does mean that the working class should take the lead in the struggle for democratic demands and not be satisfied with just political i.e. bourgeois, democracy . Instead it should transform the ‘democratic’ struggle into a social revolution which alone will make genuine democracy a reality..
John Molyneux
9 Dec 2007
KOREA COLUMN 34
<b></b>Marxism and Art<b></b>
What Marxism has to say about art (by which I mean all the creative arts i.e. music, literature, painting, sculpture, photography, film, drama, dance and so on) is limited but important.
It is limited in that Marxism does not offer, and should not try to offer, any prescriptions or instructions as to how artists should make their art. There is no ‘Marxist’ way to write poetry, or paint, or play the trumpet or compose symphonies, any more than there is a Marxist method of mechanical engineering, playing chess or doing the high jump. (Marx himself wrote some poetry when he was young, but it wasn’t very good and he soon gave it up). Marxism does not require that artists tackle certain themes e.g. class, war or revolution, rather than others such as sex, dreams or religion, or even that art be overtly political or committed.
Nor does Marxism provide a set of ready made political or ideological criteria for the evaluation of art. Mao Ze Dong was a poet as well as leader of the Chinese Revolution , but his merits as a poet are not determined by his merits or lack of them as a revolutionary or ruler of China. A Marxist who argues that T.S. Eliot was a bad poet because he was a reactionary (he was very reactionary) or that Diego Rivera was a greater painter than Picasso because he was more left wing, is not being a Marxist in his or her approach to art. Marx (and Engels) preferred the reactionary pro-aristocratic novelist, Balzac, to the progressive Zola, because he thought Balzac was a better writer who provided a fuller and more insightful picture of French society. The standpoint of Marxism, as Trotsky insisted in his debates over literature and art with the Stalinists, requires that art be judged as art.
What Marxism does do, however, is provide: a) a unique appreciation and understanding of the overall importance of art in individual and collective human development; b) the best analytical method for grasping the course of art and cultural history as a whole; c) an extremely useful standpoint for the analysis of the meaning and significance of individual works of art.
None of the great Marxists ever suggested that either individual works of art or art in general played a key role in determining the outbreak or outcome of revolutions. Nonetheless, they all took a serious interest in art and clearly felt informed and sustained by it. In this respect art seems to operate in a manner closer to medicine or nutritious food than to political action. Also the fact that art has existed in every known society in the history of the world reinforces the case for its social necessity. Marxism enables us to understand this.
For Marxism, creative labour is the essence of becoming and being human. Human beings are animals who have made themselves into more than animals through labour, ‘by producing their means of subsistence’ as The German Ideology puts it (see also Engels, The Role of Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man). Through labour humans shape their environment, their history and themselves.
However, in class divided society, and especially in capitalist society, most people most of the time are deprived of the possibility of creative labour. Their labour is alienated: they do not control it , and are forced to perform it not for themselves but at the behest of others and it becomes something that damages and distorts their lives. Art is the name we give to one of the few forms of creative labour, i.e. labour controlled by the producer (revolutionary practice is another) that is possible in class society. This makes genuine truthful communication of ideas and emotions possible in art in a way that is not possible in completely mercenary entertainment, journalism and advertising. And this is why art is important to us as human beings and Marxists even when that art is ideologically conservative and even though the art world and the cultural industries are dominated by the ruling class.
Indeed it is a central proposition of Marxist art history that the class which controls the major means of material production will also fundamentally dominate artistic production. For Marxism approaches art history on the basis of historical materialism which sees art, along with religion, philosophy, politics and law, as part of the superstructure of society which rests on, and is conditioned by, the economic base constituted by the forces and relations of production.
Of course the relations between economic development, class and art are not to be understood mechanically – they are complex and highly mediated – but denying or disregarding them as in the numerous bourgeois schools of formalist art and literary criticism makes it impossible to grasp the overall movement of cultural history or major developments within it.
For example, why was the art of the European Middle Ages so (relatively) static, formalised and unchanging ? Because it reflected the (relatively) slow development of the forces of production under feudalism and their accompaniment by a rigid social hierarchy resting on frozen relations of production. What generated the spectacular artistic and cultural upsurge of the Renaissance that began in Florence at the end of the thirteenth century (with Dante and Giotto), culminated in Italy with Leonardo, Michelangelo and Titian and then spread north through Germany, the Netherlands and England, encompassing such giant figures as Durer, Breughal, Rembrandt and Shakespeare? The historical materialist will answer that it was a reflection of the rise, at first within the fetters of feudalism and then breaking through in its own right, of the dynamic but contradictory system of capitalism and of the class associated with it, namely the bourgeoisie.
How do we explain why the stately procession of artistic phases ( Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classical, Romantic) measured in centuries and half centuries, suddenly gave way to the frenzy of modernism in which art movements ( impressionism, expressionism, fauvism cubism , futurism, suprematism, dadaism etc) came and went almost in the blink of an eye, except as a response to the ‘constant revolutionising of production’ and ‘uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions’ imposed by modern capitalism.
Can the succession of blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, hip hop etc, and therefore the whole course of modern popular music from Elvis Presley to Amy Winehouse be understood apart from the freedom struggle of BlackAmerica?
Even where individual works and individual artists are concerned Marxism offers unique insights. In his great book Ways of Seeing John Berger used the Marxist critique of capitalist social relations to produce superb accounts of Holbein’s The Ambassadors and Dutch still-life paintings. Neither Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times nor Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot can be understood without a grasp of Marx’s theory of alienation. In Seoul eighteen months ago I saw the Korean artist, Nam June Paik’s great pagoda of TV monitors The More the Better. It cried out for analysis using the concepts of Trotsky’s theory of combined and uneven development.
No amount of Marxism can substitute for specific knowledge of, and sensitivity to, the art concerned. But art is part of society and evolves in constant interaction with society. The richest, most profound and most scientific analysis of society, which is Marxism, cannot fail to enrich our understanding of art.
John Molyneux
January 15, 2008
<div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-54384606377164879802021-11-09T13:36:00.000+00:002021-11-09T13:36:15.504+00:00Reply to Tony McKenna on artReply to Tony McKenna
John Molyneux
Tony Mckenna’s critique of my views on art https://www.counterfire.org/articles/opinion/22668-who-sleeps-in-the-unmade-bed-a-response-to-john-molyneux-on-the-nature-of-conceptual-art struck me as decidedly strange.
First, the title, ‘Who sleeps in the unmade bed?’ is strange. It is strange because we all know the answer: Tracey Emin sleeps in the unmade bed – the piece is called ‘My Bed’. Many others of us also sleep in unmade beds, which is why Emin’s depiction of her own experience related to the experience of a lot of people, especially women who had been subject to ‘slut shaming’ on this account. That is the point of the work. McKenna ignores such matters. He seems to believe that sleeping in the unmade bed are the forces of ‘finance capital’. It is also slightly odd, given I have written on numerous artists over the years (Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Rubens, Picasso, Pollock, Bacon etc), that his first port of call is Emin. But maybe that was to be expected.
Second: as I assume McKenna is aware, I recently published a book, The Dialectics of Art, which deals at some length with these matters. Strangely, McKenna does not even mention this but instead focuses on a single article, ‘The Legitimacy of Modern Art’, which I wrote 23 years ago. In fact it was one of the first pieces I ever wrote on art and had a specific purpose – namely to counter the view then widely touted in journalism and widely held on the left that virtually ALL modern art was ‘illegitimate’ or reprehensible. The reason I did not include the article in The Dialectics of Art was that I thought that particular battle had been largely won, rendering the article somewhat redundant.
Third: McKenna presents me as a champion of ‘conceptual art’. This is both strange and not true. I defended conceptual art against the idea that it was all ‘rubbish’ or ‘not art’ but that was all. As with any art category – impressionism, surrealism, abstract art, abstract expressionism etc – the category of conceptual art contains some good work but also an awful lot of poor work which I wouldn’t champion at all.
Fourth: it is strange given McKenna’s focus on conceptual art, that he never troubles to say what he means by this. Perhaps he thinks it is so generally agreed that no explanation or definition is needed. Instead he simply mentions in passing five examples: Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917) , Carl Andre’s Equivalent VIII ( 1966) which he just refers to as Bricks, Tracey Emin’s My Bed(1998), Damien Hirst’s ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’ (1991) which he refers as a shark pickled in formaldehyde and Hirst’s For the Love of God (2007) which he calls the skull studded with diamonds. Now Duchamp was a Dadaist who is often cited as a forerunner of conceptual art and Andre was a Minimalist (who I suspect would have rejected the conceptual art label), while the notion of a conceptual art movement arises in the late sixties and is particularly associated with Joseph Kossuth. Never mind these details you may say, we know roughly what he means, except that if conceptual art originates in 1917 or in the sixties it cannot be an expression or reflection of ‘the terminal crisis of late capitalism’ McKenna also writes as if conceptual art and the Young British Artists(YBAs) were more or less the same thing. Not so. The YBAs was certainly a label used in the media but it was never a coherent movement with a shared style or aesthetic philosophy (like cubism or surrealism). Some YBAs could, on a broad definition of the term, be considered conceptual artists but others (e.g Marcus Harvey, Gary Hume, Jenny Saville, Rachel Whiteread, Chris Ofili) were definitely not. Moreover, Emin produced some works that were arguably conceptual art (Everyone I ever Slept With, 1963-95 and My Bed) but an awful lot more, such as her numerous ink drawings , her appliquéd blankets, her bronze sculptures and her videos, which were not.
Fifth: it is very strange that what McKenna believes is ‘the source of Molyneux’s theoretical confusion’ is a view that I do not hold at all and indeed specifically reject. This is the proposition that art is defined as art by being accepted and displayed in art institutions such as museums and galleries. This is what is known as ‘the institutional theory of art’ and is associated with Arthur C. Danto who developed it in response to Andy Warhol’s Brillo Pad works. I reject it because it is clearly circular. Just as the view that art is what artists do or what they say it is, the idea that art is what art galleries and museums display as art, begs the question as to what makes a person an artist or an institution an art gallery. The quotation from my article which McKenna deploys to bolster his assertions is as follows, ‘paint or other marks on a flat surface … only become [my emphasis T.M] art in certain social relations’. It is incomplete and seriously misused. I was not arguing about conceptual art only becoming art in the gallery, I was distinguishing between forms of writing and mark making that are not art (e,g. office memos or road signs) and those that are and the social relations I was referring to are not being placed in a gallery but the different social relations of the labour that produced them, namely alienated versus unalienated labour. The strange – perhaps disgraceful – thing is that the misrepresentation would have been clear if McKenna had included the very next two sentences in my article which read, ‘The question “What is art?” then becomes what is the social character of the labour that produces what we call art? The answer to this question is that ‘art’ is the product of non-alienated labour’. So slipshod is McKenna here that he even misattributes the quotation from Marx that ‘A negro is a negro. He only becomes a slave in certain relations’, saying it is from Capital , when in fact it is from Wage Labour and Capital.
Also it is factually not the case that either Emin’s My Bed or her other work or Hirst’s shark and skull pieces or his other works only became art in the gallery. They were already works of art in the studio when they were made. McKenna makes the rather silly mistake (common among tabloid journalists at the time) of imagining that My Bed was Emin’s actual bed that she was sleeping in until the moment she ‘stepped out of it’ and transferred it to Tate Britain. No Tony, it was a construction, a made work just as much as Van Gogh’s painting of his bed in Bedroom in Arles, 1889.
Sixth: speaking of Van Gogh it is very strange how McKenna, as a would-be Marxist, writes about him. In Starry Night, he tells us, ‘the Dutch master poured not only colours and shapes onto the canvass but also his very being’ and it ‘embodies the human essence of the artist Van Gogh’. Was this the same essence , one might ask, that Van Gogh poured into the very different The Potato Eaters or Sunflowers or his portrait of Postman Joseph Roulin. And does this apply only to Van Gogh or did Raphael, Velazquez, Canaletto, Constable, Manet etc. pour their respective essences into their work? And if indeed Van Gogh did this why should not the same be said of Emin and My Bed – it was certainly a very personal work?
Seventh: there is the strange mess that McKenna gets into with the theory of value. For some reason he identifies Van Gogh with use value and conceptual art with exchange value. This makes no sense. Right at the start of Capital Marx makes a distinction between use value and exchange value– properties possessed by all commodities (if a commodity did not have use value it would not sell). Marx states:
A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference [My emphasis – JM]...The utility of a thing makes it a use value
All art works which are sold as commodities, which is the bulk of Western art since the days of Rembrandt and Hals, have use value in this sense even if it is only the desire of a millionaire to appear cultured. There is no difference between conceptual art and pre- or non-conceptual art in this regard.
As for McKenna’s notion that industrial capitalism was associated with use value whereas financial capitalism is about exchange value and that ‘one of the fundamental features of the 2007-08 economic crisis, for example, was the predominance of exchange over use’, I don’t think I will even try to unravel the multiple confusions involved as I should already apologise to the reader for the length of this piece. Unfortunately trying to set the record straight always takes more time than confusing it and in truth pretty much the whole of McKenna’s article is a stream of strange confusions.
The only exception is the not strange but rather drearily familiar belief that a Marxist approach to art is about trying to establish mechanical and direct links between art and economic developments as in the idea that Hirst’s sale of his exhibition at auction reflects or corresponds to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers a few days later or that Emin’s unmade bed reflects or signifies the disarray of financial capitalism.
<div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-21795820123316192722021-02-11T15:39:00.001+00:002021-02-11T15:39:36.709+00:00What is Ecosocialism?<b>What is Ecosocialism?
By John Molyneux and Jess Spear
</b>
Table of Contents
Introduction
What do we mean by ecosocialism?
Climate change, covid and capitalism
Economic crisis and capitalism
Ecosocialism is intersectional
The general nature and dynamic of capitalism
Socialist solutions
Our vision of socialism
<b>Introduction</b>
The purpose of this pamphlet is to set out the concept and key ideas of ecosocialism, especially for those unfamiliar or new to this body of thinking. We particularly want to reach out to those who are appalled to witness our global society’s headlong career towards climate catastrophe and mass extinction and who may be puzzled by its palpable unwillingness to apply the brakes to this disastrous descent and to those who recognise the absolute necessity of a just transition in the struggle for non-fossil fuel dependent world. We maintain that averting catastrophe and achieving a more equal society involve first and foremost a challenge to capitalism.
The pamphlet is co-authored by Jess Spear and John Molyneux, who are respectively editors of the magazines, Rupture and the Irish Marxist Review. Rupture is an ecosocialist quarterly published by RISE (Revolutionary, Internationalist, Socialist, Environmentalist) and the Irish Marxist Review is a theoretical journal associated with the Socialist Workers Network which works within People Before Profit. This pamphlet represents a collaborative effort by the two journals. Both authors, both publications and both organisations are convinced advocates of the need for ecosocialist system change.
Jess Spear and John Molyneux
October 2021.
Jess Spear is a climate scientist and paleo- oceanographer and author of, amongst other things, ‘The Oceans: Past, Present and Future’ http://www.globalecosocialistnetwork.net/2020/05/25/the-oceanspast-present-and-future/ and ‘Poking the Angry Beast: Remember the Younger Dryas’ https://www.letusrise.ie/rupture-articles/remember-the-younger-dryas
John Molyneux is a long standing socialist writer and author of ‘Profit versus the Environment’ (People Before Profit 2017), ‘Apocalypse Now! Climate Change, Capitalism and Revolution’, http://www.irishmarxistreview.net/index.php/imr/article/view/341/331 and ‘Is there time for system change?’ http://www.globalecosocialistnetwork.net/2020/08/21/is-there-time-for-system-change/
Both Jess and John work together in the Global Ecosocialist Network (www.Globalecosocialistnetwork.net)
<b>What do we mean by ecosocialism? </b>
We think ecosocialism is an idea whose time has come.
What has brought this about is quite simply the current condition of the world we live in. We are living in a world characterised by three massive global crises: the Covid pandemic; the economic crisis; the climate crisis. These are far from being the only issues. On the contrary it would be easy to fill many pages just listing vitally important issues - global inequality, imperialism and war, racism misogyny and gender oppression are the most glaring - but the three mentioned are interlocked and threaten the future of humanity. Ecosocialism represents a coherent but also an open response to all these connected crises.
Ecosocialism is based on three key principles: 1)that the crises and the main issues are all the product not of human nature, of the human race as a whole, or of individual ignorance and bad attitudes, but of the economic and social system of capitalism which completely dominates the world; 2) that the issue of climate change and the broader environmental crisis cannot be solved in isolation from the issues of class exploitation and oppression, and colonial, racial and gender oppression. Stopping climate change demands a just transition and a just transition requires a fight for equality and social justice across the board; 3) that the solutions to these crises are interconnected and socialist – they involve moving towards a society based on based on public ownership and democratic planning i.e. production for human need not profit and for ecological sustainability and this will require mass mobilization.
Ecosocialism also involves a view of socialism that is fundamentally different from the anti-democratic police states of official Communism. Let’s look at these points in turn.
<b>Climate Change, covid and capitalism </b>
On the surface and in the view of the mainstream media, the climate crisis and the Covid -19 crisis are unconnected. For ecosocialists, however, they are both symptoms of a profound dislocation in our society’s relationship with nature.
In 1844 Karl Marx argued that capitalism alienated us from ourselves, our fellow human beings and from nature. This was because capitalism was based on alienated labour (labour sold as a commodity) and social labour was both what made us distinctive as humans and was the foundation of our relationship with nature. This created a world in which we are dominated by the products of our own labour and produce in a way that takes no account of damage to the environment. [This argument will be explained and further elaborated in the fourth section of this pamphletarticle.]
Later Marx’s studies of capitalist agriculture and soil erosion led him to argue that for many thousands of years human beings, like all living creatures, had lived and developed through a metabolic interaction with nature. We “human beings live from nature, nature is our body, we must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if we are not to die. To say that our physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for we are a part of nature.”
How we go about living - how our society organises the production of all that we need and want - governs the process by which we “mediate, regulate and control the metabolism between [ourselves] and nature.” This exchange with nature was broadly sustainable until the rise of industrial capitalism which necessitated enclosing the commons, forcing people off the land and into big factories, and giving way to intensive farming practices that quickly stripped the soil of nutrients. Capitalist production, wrote Marx, developed through robbing the two fundamental sources of wealth; the worker and the soil. The land was transformed from a source of food, clothing, and shelter, to a commodity itself and a source of raw materials to produce other commodities. Alongside that came was imperialist expansion and the brutal destruction of indigenous peoples and their society-nature metabolisms. This continues today in the Amazon rainforest, in Africa, in Australia, everywhere there are minerals to mine or forests to clear that are occupied by people who have yet to be convinced of the superiority of capitalist production.
From its beginning capitalism had therefore created a profound distortion in this metabolic interaction, a ‘rift’ between humanity and our environment; and, the accumulation of destruction over time has led us to where we are now - climate change, species extinction, and ultimately civilisation at in peril. In more recent times ecosocialist writers and thinkers such as John Bellamy Foster, Naomi Klein, Ian Angus, Michael Lowy, Sabrina Fernandes, Andreas Malm, Mike Davis and many others have built on these insights and developed them into what has become widely known as ‘metabolic rift’ theory.
Historical research by Andreas Malm showed how in the industrial revolution in Britain, capitalism became dependent on coal-fuelled steam power – not for reasons of technological necessity, there were alternatives such as water power available even then – but for reasons of profitability and in particular, a direct response to militant class struggle. In the course of the 19th and 20th centuries this dependency on fossil fuels, now including oil and gas, developed into a global addiction which continues to this day.
Fossil fuels became the power source of factories and transport systems from Detroit to Guangdong, from Seoul to Sao Paulo; the driver of the world’s biggest armies, fleets and air forces; the motive of innumerable destructive wars; the source of the greatest personal fortunes from the Rockefellers and the Mellons to the Saudi Royal Family; and the foundation of many of the world’s biggest corporations – Standard Oil, ExxonMobile, Shell, BP, SaudiAramco, General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen, China Sinopec etc.
Such was the addiction that even when the scientific evidence for the greenhouse effect and its catastrophic consequences became unequivocal ,unequivocal, capitalism could not stop. Their first instinct was ignore and deny; then when that was no longer possible it switched to delay, confuse and greenwash. Even now after the 12 year warning from the 2018 IPCC Report they can’t stop mining coal, drilling for oil and gas, destroying the rainforest and laying new pipelines whether it is in Tar Sands or the Amazon, Australia or off the coasts of Ireland.
If climate change is the result of profit driven addiction to fossil fuels, Covid is the result of profit driven expansion of giant farms, huge agribusiness, hideously cruel farming methods and ruthless encroachment into the wild. Radical epidemiologists and ecosocialist scientists such as Rob Wallace (author of Big Farms, Make Big Flu) and Mike Davis(author of The Monster at our Door :The Global Threat of Avian Flu) have shown that increased capitalist penetration into the wild increases the likelihood of zoonotic transmission (the leap of deadly viruses from animals to humans) and that mass industrialised farming and globalised food distribution further facilitate their spread. Covid 19 is, therefore, not the first immensely dangerous virus –SARS, Avian Flu, Ebola etc – and will not be the last.
Capitalism has not only caused these catastrophes but is also a huge obstacle to dealing with them. This is true in a multitude of ways but let’s just take two simple examples. 1) The whole world is waiting, hoping for a vaccine but there are 99 different agencies competing – not cooperating, competing - in the search for the vaccine, each hoping to corner the market. 2) From both a health point of view and a climate change point of view less flying is a necessity but from a capitalist standpoint less flying is ‘damaging to the economy’ i.e. to the profits that make a capitalist economy tick. So what is the outcome? The public health advice is not to take foreign holidays; Ryanair fills the airwaves with adverts for special offers; the government issues statements full of mixed messages.
But these are just instances of a tension that runs across the board between the needs of people and of the planet, the needs of life, and the priorities of capitalism.
<b>
Economic crisis and capitalism </b>
The Covid pandemic has triggered an immense global economic crisis, probably the worst recession since the 1930s. During the lockdowns, output in most economies will be found to have fallen by a quarter according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with the effects felt in sectors amounting to a third of GDP in the major economies. For each month of containment, there is an estimated loss of 2 percentage points in annual GDP growth. International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief, Kristalina Georgieva, projects that “over 170 countries will experience negative per capita income growth this year”. Investment bank JPMorgan’s economists predict that the pandemic will cost the world at least $5.5 trillion in lost output over the next two years, greater than the annual output of Japan. And that would be lost forever. That is almost 8 percent of GDP through to the end of next year. The cost to developed economies alone will be greater than that lost in the recessions of 2008-9 and 1974-5 combined. In Ireland the Department of Finance predicts for 2020 a decline in private investment of 37.3%, in personal consumption of 14.2%, in employment of 9.3% and in GDP of 10.5%.
And we know from long historical experience that in recessions, while the super rich are protected or even prosper, it is the working classes, the poor and the oppressed who are expected to pay the price. It is they who suffer the mass unemployment that becomes endemic in any recession and who are on the receiving end of the cuts in benefits and services inflicted as ‘ “we” all have to tighten our belts’.
In Ireland the wage share of workers fell from 53% of GDP in 2008 to 40% in 2016 and overall wage costs fell by 8% while profits increased by 8.25%. As a consequence the proportion of people suffering deprivation rose from 22% to 30% and those in consistent poverty rose from 6% to 9%.
Several points should be made about this. The first is that the ‘trigger’ of a major historical development is not the same as its underlying cause. The First World War was triggered by the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, but its real cause was the rivalry between major imperial powers that had built up over decades. In the case of this global recession this was triggered by Covid but it was a crash waiting to happen that had been widely expected and predicted by many economists for some time.
The second is that capitalism as an economic system has a built in tendency to periodic economic crises. It lives through alternating cycles of booms and slumps: witness the great depression of the 1930s, the boom of the fifties and sixties, the recessions of 1974-76 and 1980-82, the boom of the mid eighties (not experienced in Ireland), the recession of 1991-93, the boom of the nineties and early noughties, the dot com bubble bursting in 2000-2001, and the great recession of 2008-9, followed by a slow ‘recovery’. In times of boom the capitalists rush to invest in a mad scramble for profits (e.g. in property development during the Celtic Tiger) but they overextend themselves, the market becomes saturated and profits fall. Then investors panic and boom turns to slump.
The third is that from an ecological point of view such a system is a complete disaster. In the boom phase capitalists fall over themselves to invest in new projects regardless of their environmental impact. In the slump there is a panic and no money to devote to environmental concerns; the priority is to get back to economic growth. (This was the excuse given by the Green Party for the abandonment of its own environmental programme during its coalition with Fianna Fail in 2007-11 – ‘we had to save the economy’). On a global scale an economic system which continues to oscillate between frenzied booms and catastrophic collapses is socially and ecologically unsustainable.
That is why we stand for an ecosocialist alternative in which production is based not on profitability but on the needs of humanity, the first of which is a planet fit for human habitation.
<b>Ecosocialism is intersectional</b>
Ecosocialism has compelling reasons for being emphatically intersectional. The system change required on a global scale to address the climate crisis and the wider environmental crisis means that we are committed to building a united mass movement for change on a national and international scale. The ecological crisis cannot be solved by piecemeal reforms on this issue or that issue, in this country or that country. But long experience has shown that such unity is only possible on the basis of fighting all the different forms of oppression we suffer and which subjugate us to the environmentally destructive rule of capitalism.
It’s not just a matter of morality and abstract principle, namely that racism, sexism etc are wrong in themselves (though they certainly are) but rather that you can't fight capitalism and climate disaster without fighting racism and sexism and every other kind of oppression. Oppression is functional to capitalism. It intersects with exploitation systemically to support the continuing rule of capitalism and the perpetuation of the class system and all the environmental destruction that comes with it. For example, women's oppression provides a new generation of labour power in large part through free domestic labour and helps ideologically justify low pay for care work in general. This saves capitalists a load of money. So does racial discrimination in pay and working conditions.
As socialist and trade union organiser Jim Larkin said over 100 years ago, “an injury to one is an injury to all.” It's not just a question of working class unity, ; racism, sexism, and LGBTQ+ oppression means you have less possibility for huge parts of the working class to struggle if they have more insecure work, no free time due to caring responsibilities, and are generally downtrodden through being discriminated against.
All of this applies with particular force to the movement against climate change. We know for certain that while climate change ultimately threatens us all, its immediate victims will be disproportionately the poor and the peoples of the Global South, that is those who have done, and do, least to generate it. This is firstly because the areas projected to get extremely hot for most of the year are concentrated in the Global South and in less developed countries; and secondly, because these countries are less developed, and therefore have fewer social supports and infrastructure to mitigate the harm, their ability to withstand hotter temperatures, dramatic shifts in weather patterns, and deadly extreme weather events is much weaker than the wealthier countries in the Global North. In short, more people in the Global South and in developing countries will suffer and die if we don’t act quickly and take the steps necessary to assist their transition. There can be no effective solution to climate change that does not address the question of a just transition for the Global South.
Of one thing we can be certain: climate change will mean, indeed already means, a huge increase in the number of climate refugees, of people displaced by virtue of their homelands becoming uninhabitable. How our societies respond to these refugees will be a crucial issue in determining whether climate change becomes a point of departure for the construction of a decent world or for a descent into barbarity.
At the same time the immense inequality between the capitalist North and the Global South cannot be understood without considering the history of slavery, colonialism, empire and racism. Historically speaking racism developed as an ideological justification for slavery and colonial conquest. The normalisation of racism continues to enable the super-exploitation of black and brown workers who generally receive lower wages and suffer worse working conditions, while also being more likely to be expropriated by landlords charging extortionate rents for substandard accommodation and banks charging them higher interest rates. Additionally, capitalists use immigration as a way of increasing the labour supply at lower wages and then work to blame that desired effect on the workers themselves in order to sow division and resentment among the working class.
The effects of climate change are also deeply gendered. Large amounts of research have shown that the impact of so-called ‘natural’ disasters is substantially greater on women. Thus:
Natural disasters lower the life expectancy of women more than that of men. In other words, natural disasters (and their subsequent impact) on average kill more women than men or kill women at an earlier age than men. Since female life expectancy is generally higher than that of males, for most countries natural disasters narrow the gender gap in life expectancy. Second, the stronger the disaster (as approximated by the number of people killed relative to population size), the stronger this effect on the gender gap in life expectancy. That is, major calamities lead to more severe impacts on female life expectancy (relative to that of males) than do smaller disasters... Taken together our results show that it is the socially constructed gender-specific vulnerability of females built into everyday socioeconomic patterns that lead to the relatively higher female disaster mortality rates compared to men.
Following the catastrophic Asian Tsunami in 2004, estimates made based on the sex of survivors (for instance, by Oxfam International) suggest that around three times as many women as men perished. This is a pattern of inequality that is bound to be repeated in the numerous disasters that will accompany climate change. As we’ve already indicated above, the impacts of these disasters will be far more severe in the Global South than it will be in the relatively affluent North and constitutes yet another reason why ecosocialism, and indeed the whole climate movement, must be intersectional in its approach.
Ecosocialism is an ideological position rather than an organisation, so it is not easy to provide evidence of institutional practice as opposed to aspiration. However the Global Ecosocialist Network (www.globalecosocialistnetwork.net) to which both RISE and People Before Profit members are affiliated can serve as an example. Its founding principles state simply ‘We need a global mobilisation of people power. Such mobilisation requires a commitment to just transition... The united mobilisation we need also requires opposition to all racist, sexist, national, homophobic and transphobic oppression’.
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The general nature and dynamic of capitalism </b>
Capitalism is all about profit. But what is profit? Where does it come from? And what is it about capitalism that leads to environmental destruction?
These are some of the questions Karl Marx answered in his book, Capital. In particular, Marx was interested to understand what lies behind the production of commodities, that is all the goods and services bought and sold in society (from cars and computers to houses and holidays, toasters, tops, and toys). He wanted to understand how commodity production was organised, and what was behind the relations that it depends on - in particular worker/boss and buyer/seller. What conditions does it depend on?
The first condition on which capitalism depends is private property rights. Land (including all that’s underneath it), factories, shops, machinery, technology (ie., all the means of production) are privately owned. Private property rights seem like a no-brainer. Of course you should own your own home, it provides security and peace of mind. But what if you own millions of acres of land? What about privately owning all the machines and all the tools necessary to produce food, shelter, and safe clean drinking water? Private property rights mean the vast majority of people don’t have free access to procure life’s necessities.
The second condition necessary for capitalism is capital, or rather wealth to invest in production, to purchase land, buildings, machinery, and to hire workers. How did the early capitalists come to be so wealthy in the first place? Marx wrote about “primitive accumulation”, the prehistory of capitalism which includes colonisation, outright theft of land, enslaving indigenous peoples and Africans and all the atrocities that went with it. As Marx remarked, “capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.”
Once the capitalists had the wealth and the right to seize and hoard for themselves all the tools needed to live, they then needed the labour required to put the tools in motion, to create commodities to exchange on the market. The theft of communal land and enclosure of small farms created the working class, a class in society who had to rent their bodies to the new businesses forming in order to buy life’s necessities. This was never done freely, it was forced on people, and from the beginning some workers “regarded [factories] as a kind of prison, the interior sound and sights of the machinery at work being in some degree a terror to them.”
In reality, the working class does all of the work to produce all the stuff we buy, all the food and drink we consume, and all the housing and transport we need. But we don’t control the production process, the capitalist does and it is their “right” to control what happens in that process and their interest they are looking after. In fact, the capitalist is only in business for profit, they only “invest” their wealth to create more wealth, to accumulate more capital.
If capitalism depends on workers to produce goods and services, who produces the workers and how does this fit into capitalist production? All the cooking, cleaning, shopping for food and other necessities, having and raising children, and taking care of eldery family members is essential to maintaining the health of workers and producing a new generation fit for work. This ‘care work’ largely done in the home, usually by women, provides a massive subsidy to capitalist production. Indeed, a 2020 report by Oxfam estimated unpaid care work by women globally amounted to nearly $11 trillion a year.
Exploitation is also at the heart of capitalism. There is no such thing as paying a fair wage for a fair day’s work or a kinder, softer, more cuddly capitalism. Under capitalism, the worker cannot be paid for all of the value they produce or else there would be no profit for the capitalist. Take a bartender for example, working a 4 hour shift. On a busy night they might sell €2-3,000 worth of alcohol and food sales, for which they are paid perhaps a measly €60. Without the bartender, the pub couldn’t sell anything and wouldn’t make any money. This is where profit comes from, the value created by the worker above the worker’s wages or ‘surplus-value.’ So, not only do we create everything, build, transport, and stock everything, we don’t actually receive “full” compensation. The owner skims the top for themself.
And the striving to accumulate is not just about personal greed. It is about competition between rival companies and rival states. The capitalist’s interest is to minimise costs of production, whether that be workers wages, the materials used in production, or the environment in which production happens. If they don’t compete successfully, if they don’t cut corners, pay the minimum in wages possible, and externalise as much pollution as possible they are forced out of business and taken over, or in the case of states, dominated and reduced to vassal states. This competition is deadly for tackling climate change and saving the environment. Whether it is Exxon Mobile in competition with BP and Shell or the US in competition with China each capitalist unit is terrified to make the necessary changes for fear they will lose out to their rivals.
As if general exploitation wasn’t enough, capitalism depends on and reproduces the conditions for alienation, which is another way of describing the estrangement and feeling of isolation of workers from nature, each other, and our labour. Private property rights, underpinning capitalist production, means that nature confronts workers no longer as a source of sustenance, of inspiration and wonder. Marx understood and stated (in 1844 – 176 years ago!) that this led also to an alienation from nature, ‘our inorganic bodies’. In its increasingly commodified form (privately owned and controlled), nature is transformed into a material force used against us, determining agricultural practices which then governs the food we eat.
Our alienation from each other is, again, both a precondition and a consequence of capitalist relations. The workers, forced off the land, were then in competition with each other for jobs, for housing, and then for education, for healthcare, for car park spaces, for road space, and on and on. The coercion that compels us to work depends on and reinforces division, worker pitted against worker.
Your alienation from your labour stems from the fact that you are producing for someone else, under their direction and plan (more or less). The product you help create you have no control over, no say in where it goes, what’s done with it, who gets access to it. In that way your creative capacities are distorted, abused, and moulded for a purpose that not only do you not control, but actually controls you. The work to be completed when you enter the office, factory, or shop stands over you. The technology and machinery assisting production, while mechanically assisting your labour, also further controls how you do your work and with what rhythm and at what pace you work. The worker is therefore confronted in the workplace by alien forces that compel them to labour in certain ways. Marx concludes,
“The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home...Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague.”
In short, capitalism has been built through the exploitation, oppression, and squandering of untold numbers of human lives. It required the wholesale destruction of ecosystems on land and water, and pollution at a scale that is difficult to grasp. To keep it going requires daily coercion, violence, degradation, and alienation of workers and the ongoing annihilation of nature. While we struggle to lessen the harm we experience under this system, including the harm done to our environment both near and far, we must not ignore the simple fact that its brutality cannot be reformed away. The logic of capital accumulation, competition, expansion, and “production for production’s sake is leading us to environmental catastrophe.
<b>Socialist solutions</b>
Meeting the challenge of global climate change and the biodiversity emergency means cooperation and planning at an unprecedented scale, on a local, national, and international level. This goes completely against the capitalist system, where cutthroat competition and quarterly profits drive decision making. As long as capitalists are in the driver's seat, business-as-usual will reign. Indeed even after the Paris Climate Accord was agreed in 2015, 33 banks invested nearly $2 trillion in fossil fuels, including $600 billion earmarked for expanding fossil fuel use! Here in Ireland where animal based agriculture is our top carbon emitting sector, the national dairy herd increased by 400,000 cows.
To assemble our forces into movements powerful enough to win, we have to start by rejecting the rules and logic of capitalism, and the ideas littering the pages of mainstream media on how markets can solve climate change. We have to firmly reject eco-austerity. Why should Ryanair get bailed out and fossil fuel corporations continue getting massive subsidies every year, but all of us have to pay yet another tax, yet another fee just to live? We must clearly stand against carbon taxes for workers. It is the big polluters who must pay.
At the same time, climate action has to be more than “saving the environment” and ensuring a safe future. It also has to ensure we’re building a different society that delivers a better life.
Activists in America and across the world are rallying behind the demand for a ‘Green New Deal’ that targets both climate and social crises, aiming to reduce emissions as well as addressing the legacy of colonialism, slavery, and genocide against indigenous peoples. A short animated video released in 2019, entitled ‘A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ showcases how Green New Deal policies could work to undo the harm to people and nature and help build a sustainable future. This is a massively positive step forward for the environmental movement, which for too long has focused on individual actions and lifestyle choices. We would take it a step further.
We need a Green New Deal that rejects the rules of capitalism and puts working people and the oppressed firmly in control over decision making. In short, we need a socialist Green New Deal. That means taking on the big corporations, big businesses, and big farms, challenging their right to decide our lives and our futures. Left to their own devices, we know where they would take us and we are already feeling the consequences.
Bringing these industries into public ownership to be run by workers, farmers, and the communities they serve means we will control the land, machinery, technology and crucially the wealth produced. This gives us the resources we need to rapidly transition while ensuring a better life for all. It also means we don’t have to pray and hope the market delivers what we need and want, we can democratically plan the transition together. With democratic control in the hands of working people and all those oppressed by capitalism we can ensure people's lives and our environment are at the heart of action.
But we don’t have to wait until we’re powerful enough to wrest complete control from the capitalists. We can start with taxing their profits and using that money to implement rapid reductions in emissions. Oxfam reports that an additional tax of 0.5% on the richest 1% would produce enough money to create 117 million jobs. This is crucial because we don’t have much time and wealthier countries, like Ireland, must get to net-zero emissions faster than underdeveloped countries. 2050 is too late. We must aim for 2030.
But we should be clear that the capitalists and their political parties will not give up their power (nor agree even a minor increase in taxes on the rich) without a fight. A socialist Green New Deal must be combined with building our power in our communities and most importantly within our workplaces. That starts by recognising the potential power workers have. The water charges movement, Repeal, and Marriage Equality mass movements underscore a basic fact - when the masses of workers demand change together in their thousands, we can force the government to do what it doesn’t want to. Yet, we have more power than just taking to the streets on a Saturday afternoon. Since we do all the work, without our labour the profits stop flowing, the system shuts down. Going on strike in our workplaces is our most potent weapon against them. We will need to learn to use this weapon more effectively, linking up with socialist trade unionists, organising more workers into trade unions, and taking the militant action necessary to force change now.
Secondly, we rally our forces and build support for climate action by demanding what we need right here, right now, . We need policies that target the inequalities baked into capitalism while also reducing emissions. For example, we can campaign for free, green, and frequent public transport, making transport accessible to all, incentivising the transition from single car use, saving lives, ending the traffic gridlock, and reducing emissions. Instead of concrete and roads, we could have green spaces everywhere, with towns and cities organised for walking and cycling, not cars. Our bin services, recycling, and composting should be brought back into public ownership and community control, but with workers helping plan out how to reduce waste and move towards a more circular economy.
We can start to combat the loss in biodiversity alongside reducing agricultural emissions by transitioning to regenerative farming practices and afforestation with native trees. We should pay small farmers to transition from beef and dairy, and ensure they are part of developing a plan to make it happen democratically. Alongside changes in farming and land use, we could launch education campaigns around how to garden and interact with nature in ways that benefit insects, amphibians, and small mammals.
Beyond changing what work we do, a better life should be about less work overall. A 4-day or 30 hour work week would free up time for family and friends, community and political engagement, and for more art. With universal access to quality public healthcare, education, childcare, community kitchens and laundromats, we could relieve the double burden on families and women in particular, freeing up even more time for leisure and creative pursuits.
Some industries - notably fossil fuels - must be ended, while others are massively expanded, in building renewable energy infrastructure, retrofitting houses and buildings, and importantly in care industries such as nursing, teaching, elderly care and childcare. Democratically elected committees could be set up in every town, workplace, and farm to discuss what is needed to transition and how to ensure it’s just, leaving no person and no community behind.
At the end of ‘A Message from the Future’ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes appeals to the audience, “the first big step was closing our eyes and imagining it. We can be whatever we have the courage to see.” Capitalism relies on and sows division, strife, deprivation, and more, holding us back from seeing what could be and what workers globally have the power to achieve together. If we have the courage to not only imagine a better future, but also to fight for it today, to organise and stand together where we can now, we have a chance to make our world anew, preventing climate catastrophe and preparing the way for a green socialist future.
<b>Our Vision of Ecosocialism</b>
Ecosocialists reject completely the model of ‘socialism’ that existed in Communist or Stalinist Russia, Eastern Europe and its offshoots in China, North Korea etc. Not only were these societies undemocratic police states with no regard for human rights, which failed miserably in terms of women’s rights, LGBTQ rights and racial equality, but they were also ecologically disastrous. Just like western capitalism they pursued fossil-fuel based industrial growth regardless of its impact on the environment. The terrible Chernobyl nuclear accident , the slow death of the Aral Sea, described by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as ‘clearly one of the worst environmental disasters in the world’, and the appalling levels of air pollution in Chinese cities, are just very visible tips of the environmentally toxic legacy of Stalinist relentless industrial growth.
In contrast Ecosocialism stands for a society that combines collective ownership and democracy, equality and freedom because only through such a combination can we overcome the metabolic rift with nature created by capitalism and establish a society that is environmentally sustainable.
Public ownership and democracy are often presented as antitheses which have to be traded off against each other. For ecosocialists they are a necessary condition of each other. Without public ownership of the main industries, banks and financial operations there can be no real democracy because whatever parliament says or does real economic power remains in private hands. Without real democracy public ownership will lead only to dictatorship by unaccountable state officials and that democracy cannot apply only to parliament and local councils but must also operate in workplaces. Factories, data centres, banks, transport system, hospitals, universities, schools – all these institutions should run under the democratic control of the people who work in them. The same will apply to local communities. Only in this way , through grassroots democratic control will it be possible to make ecological awareness a part of every aspect of daily work and life.
Similarly equality and freedom are mutually necessary. Without equality freedom is a myth. The rich and poor have equal rights to sleep in doorways and wait on trolleys. Without equality, that is with the division of society into rich and poor, the disadvantaged have no means of exercising their nominal freedoms in practice. Without free debate and discussion (we are not talking about the right to hate speech and discrimination here) some people will always be more equal than others.
It is not merely that these principles are morally right but that they have become ecologically essential. Take the question of economic growth. It is now certain that the escalating crisis of climate change and wider environmental crisis of the anthropocene requires the abandonment of relentless economic growth; it is very likely that it requires de-growth. But whereas mainstream (ie capitalist) economics operates with an undifferentiated purely quantitative concept of growth or de-growth in terms of GDP, ecosocialism argues that it is necessary to distinguish between forms of production and consumption that are beneficial to the majority of people and conducive to a sustainable relation with nature (for example the production of wind turbines and public transport infrastructure and the retrofitting of homes) and forms that are environmentally damaging or benefit only the super rich (for example armaments production, supercharged sports cars, luxury hotels and tourist resorts). The former need to be expanded and the latter ‘de-grown’ i.e. discontinued entirely. This distinction is particularly necessary when it comes to consumption. Claims that human consumption must be reduced should not be made in a blanket way when ‘under-consumption’ in the most basic sense of malnutrition and severe poverty, is the situation of a huge proportion of the world’s population including many in the Global North while obscene levels of over consumption are practiced by the tiny minority at the top. Also while ecosocialism might mean less consumption of MacDonald’s burgers, private yachts, and ever more complex smart phones, it would mean a better life for the vast majority in terms of housing for all, a decent health service, improved education, shorter hours and longer life expectancy.
But these changes cannot be achieved or managed in a non-calamitous way without public ownership and real democratic planning. To take an obvious example: we cannot possibly restrict climate change without drastically reducing the use of private cars. If this is done under private ownership without a planned economy it will throw hundreds of thousands of workers onto the dole – not only car workers but steel workers, engineering workers, electronics workers, sales workers, mechanics and countless others who are dependent on the motor industry. The same will apply to the oil industry.
Another key feature of ecosocialism is its internationalism. One aspect of this, widely accepted in the contemporary climate movement, is the commitment to international climate justice. Five hundred years ago the world constituted a more or less level playing field with no large gap between the economic development or living standards of Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Five hundred years of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism have produced a grossly unequal world in which the human price for greenhouse gas emissions will be borne first and foremost by those regions and countries least responsible for them. There is no way that this gross injustice can be remedied except on an ecosocialist basis; it cannot be done within the framework of private ownership and the capitalist market.
But ecosocialist internationalism goes beyond that, beyond attempting to level up between the global south and the global north. It actually envisages transitioning to an international society.
There has been a long standing debate in the socialist movement about the possibility of creating a socialist society in one country. Marx and Engels in the mid-nineteenth century argued that it would not be possible but most reformist Labour Party or Social Democratic socialists tended to believe it would be possible to achieve a socialist Britain or a socialist France, Germany or Ireland within the framework of the existing national state and adopted that as their goal. This was also one the main disputes between Stalinism and Trotskyism in the 1920s and after with Trotsky taking the internationalist line. But today’s global environmental crisis has added a totally new dimension to this debate.
We could be as equal, as carbon neutral and as environmentally conscious as can be imagined in Ireland or even in China but if business as usual continues in the US, Russia, India, Western Europe and the rest, global warming will continue for all of us and all out fates will be sealed. The same applies to the plastification, acidification and other pollution of the oceans, to the destruction of the rainforests, to the loss of biodiversity and virtually every other ecological problem.
Capitalism is by its nature nationalistic and organised into competing nation states in a way that continually frustrates even a coordinated international response to the Covid emergency. There is no way it can achieve the international solidarity required to meet the environmental crisis.
An ecosocialist internationalist perspective is also essential for dealing with what is already and will be in the future, a major consequence of climate change, namely a huge increase in climate refugees. At the moment the category of climate refugee is not even legally recognized but the fact is that as temperatures rise ever greater swathes of the planet will become unlivable and people will have no choice but to migrate.
Essentially there will be two possible responses to this situation: first, the all too familiar nationalist, racist, even fascist response which says build walls, fences, concentration camps and let them drown or starve because we have to ‘look after our own first’. Second, an internationalist and humanitarian response which says ‘refugees are welcome here’. Achieving the second response as opposed to the barbarity of the first will require an ecosocialist transformation of society which simultaneously addresses the inevitable issues of unemployment, homelessness and inequality. The answer to Irish/French/German jobs/homes for Irish/French/German people must be jobs/homes for all and only socialist planning can offer that.
In short nothing less than international ecosocialism will meet the challenge of our times. This doesn’t mean that we should expect the whole world to go ecosocialist at once. That is very unlikely to occur but it does mean that if a bridgehead for ecosocialism were to be established in one country , whether it was Ireland or Brazil or wherever, it would be necessary to spread it to other countries as quickly as possible. And recent history, with for example the rapid international spread of Greta Thunberg’s calls for climate strikes and of the Black Lives Matter movement, shows that in today’s globalised world this would be an achievable goal.
What distinguishes the approach and vision of ecosocialism from what might be considered the more ‘mainstream’ and dominant strands of the environmental and climate change movement – the likes of Friends of the Earth, War on Want and the Green Party - is that while the latter believe that catastrophic climate change and a sustainable future can be realised by bringing about a collective ‘change of heart’ within the existing economic system and state framework ecosocialists believe that what is needed is a fundamentally different society based on a sustainable relation to nature and production for human need not profit.
<div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-78431600052907660662021-02-03T17:27:00.005+00:002021-02-03T17:27:37.817+00:00 'The Dialectics of Art' -In Response to Ian Birchall
<i>RS 21 published a review of my book, The Dialectics of Art, by Ian Birchall, https://www.rs21.org.uk/2021/01/18/cultural-marxism-a-review-of-the-dialectics-of-art/ Here is my response ( which rs21 declined to publish – a legacy of their split with the SWP in 2013).
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I would like to start by thanking Ian Birchall for his very fair, indeed generous, review of my book on art . I was particularly pleased that he appreciated the various studies of particular artists and their work which form the central section of the book but which are often neglected in favour of focusing on the more controversial theoretical arguments in the first two chapters. And it is nice that he thinks ‘The strength of John’s work is precisely that he brings to it ideas and experiences from outside the world of art’, though I do lack the expertise of the specialist scholar.
However I would also like to respond to Ian’s disagreements, especially with a view to clarifying, for the purpose of further discussion, what exactly I am arguing.
On the thorny issue of ‘what is art?’ Ian says he is ‘very dubious as to how important the question is’. But in addition to the problem of people rejecting Pollock, Hirst and so on as ‘not art’ there is also a significant historical issue involved. The concept of art as a distinct area of creative human activity has not always existed. It arose first in the Renaissance and was consolidated in the 18th century. Why? My argument is that ‘art’ in this sense developed in parallel with but also in tension with the spread of wage labour and capitalism. As human labour, the means by which the human race created itself, became more and more alienated and commodified, so art emerged as a distinct and separate sphere in which the producer/artist controlled the process of production even if they had to sell their products. This point, which I support with a good deal of argument and quotations from Marx and Morris etc, seems to have been missed by Ian. It also has substantial political implications.
Also there is a misunderstanding I’d like to clear up. Ian writes, after giving some examples, that ‘resistance to alienation exists everywhere – there is nothing unique about art.’ This is true but actually it is an important part of my argument and in the book I give a number of examples of unalienated (producer controlled) labour. Art, I say, is only one form of this and that is why I propose a second element in my definition of art, namely that it involves a striving to unite form and content. Again Ian seems not to have taken this into account.
On the question of making comparative aesthetic judgments I am aware that this is a contentious and sensitive issue – people often feel they are being told what they should and shouldn’t like. Nevertheless as I argue in the book I think that, at a social level, judgment, if not ranking in some strict order of merit, is inescapable. I also think most individuals make such judgments even if not in systematic or thought out way. Indeed it seems to me that Ian makes such judgments in passing, without noticing it, even in this review. Thus he writes ‘There are poems, paintings, songs etc., which may vary in quality [my emphasis – JM]’. Exactly. Also, ‘We can all learn greatly from the work of art critics who point to the strengths – and the weaknesses – of a work’. Well if I point out that work A has many strengths and only a few weaknesses but work B has grievous weaknesses but few strengths, I am actually making a comparative judgment. Indeed in one sentence on Rubens and Hockney - ‘The Rubens merely reproduces – with great skill – a scene that can be observed in ‘real life’, whereas Hockney offers an inventive and imaginative use of colour’ makes three evaluative aesthetic judgments, none of which I happen to agree with, as a basis for a comparative assessment.
It also seems to me an inescapable fact that in virtually all spheres of human endeavour people differ in their levels of achievement . This is true of mathematics, science (not everyone is Newton or Einstein , running, chess, mountain climbing (some people can scale Everest, Ian and I couldn’t manage Ben Nevis), singing (we don’t all have voices to match Paul Robeson, Aretha Franklyn and Maria Callas) and revolutionary politics – I assume Ian and I agree that Lenin was a greater revolutionary Marxist than Zinoviev and that Tony Cliff (‘the most remarkable person I ever met’ – Ian Birchall) stood somewhat above some of his erstwhile comrades. So why would it not also apply to art? Indeed it is manifestly the case that Michelangelo was an above average carver of stone and that Titian was more skilled in the handling of paint than Jack Vettriano. Of course making judgments between Michelangelo and Verrocchio, Rembrandt and Hals, or Picasso and Dali is more nuanced than this but that is why I discuss, extensively, the criteria on which such judgments have been made in the past and what Marxism might add to these. Overall it seems to me if we can’t distinguish art from non-art and we can’t make judgments of quality, which are inherently comparative, we are in a very weak position to make an critical analysis of it at all.
But there is one last point on which I want to insist most strongly. Ian writes:
“I once read a novel by a French Stalinist in which the author gives a brief vision of a communist future. At a railway depot, when the working day ends, all the workers are loaded into coaches and taken to the opera. No alternative for those who might have preferred New Orleans Jazz or death metal. Everyone will appreciate the same universally recognised ‘great art’. I don’t think John quite believes this, but some of his arguments point dangerously in that direction.”
The last sentence here is seriously misleading and unwarranted. As Ian should know, I have always stood completely against any idea of state (or party) imposition in the sphere of art and I repeat this in the book, frequently citing approvingly Trotsky defence of artistic freedom against Stalinist dictation and conformity. As far as I’m concerned Ian should be able to listen to The Monkees and gaze at David Hockney to his heart’s content, before or after the revolution.
<div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-71879344374360149322020-09-03T12:01:00.004+00:002020-09-03T12:01:51.629+00:00Is there time for System Change?<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Is there time for
system change? <o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">This first appeared on the Global Ecosocialist Network website http://www.globalecosocialistnetwork.net/2020/08/21/is-there-time-for-system-change/</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Time is always an important factor in politics and history
but never has it mattered as much as on the issue of climate change. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The IPCC Report’s warning in October 2018 that the world has
twelve years to avoid climate disaster was undoubtedly a major factor in
galvanising a global wave of climate change activism, especially in the form of
Greta Thunberg and mass school strikes and the Extinction Rebellion movement.
At the same it is clear that this warning could be, and was, ‘heard’ or
interpreted in different ways by different people. In this article I want
consider some of those interpretations and their implications, particularly in
relation to the question of whether there is time to bring about system change
or whether, because time is so short, it is necessary to focus on and settle
for changes that can be implemented within the framework of capitalism. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Before coming to that, however, I want to suggest that many
an opportunist politician will have heard the twelve year warning quite
differently from Greta and her followers. To them twelve years would be a very
long time indeed: three US Presidential terms, two full length parliamentary
terms in Britain and many other countries; in other words more than enough time
to fulfil your ambitions, secure your place in the history books or, at least,
secure your pension and several directorships, before anything serious would
have to be done at all. The only practical implication of the twelve year
warning would be the need to set up various commissions, draw up some action
plans, attend a few conferences and generally engage in a certain amount of
greenwashing. Should you be the CEO of a major oil, gas or car company exactly
the same would apply. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At the opposite end of the spectrum there were large numbers
of people, especially young people, who ‘heard’ the warning as meaning that
there was, literally, only twelve years to prevent global extinction.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">These are not equivalent misreadings : the first is utterly
cynical and immensely damaging to humans and nature alike; the second is naive
but well intentioned. But they <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">are both</b>
misreadings of what the report said and of what climate change is. Climate
change is not an event that may or may not happen in 2030 and which might be averted
by emergency action at the last minute, but a process which is already
underway. Every week, month or year of delay in reducing carbon emissions
exacerbates the problem and makes it harder to tackle. By the same token, there
is no absolute deadline after which it will be too late to do anything and we
might as well give up the ghost. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The focus of the IPCC Report was not on ‘extinction’ but
mainly on what would be required to hold global warming to 1.5C above
pre-industrial levels and what would be the likely effects of allowing it to
reach 2C. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What it actually stated in its
Summary for Policy Makers was:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b><span style="color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">A1. Human activities are estimated to have caused
approximately 1.0°C of global warming</span></b><b><span style="background: white; color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> above
pre-industrial levels, with a <i>likely</i> range of 0.8°C to 1.2°C.
Global warming is <i>likely</i> to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052
if it continues to increase at the current rate. (<i>high confidence</i>)
(Figure SPM.1) {1.2}<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/">https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #252f52; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And it added, fairly obviously you might think,
that: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="background: white; color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;">B.5.
Climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water supply,
human security, and economic growth are projected to increase with global
warming of 1.5°C and increase further with 2°C. (Figure SPM.2) {3.4, 3.5, 5.2,
Box 3.2, Box 3.3, Box 3.5, Box 3.6, Cross-Chapter Box 6 in Chapter 3,
Cross-Chapter Box 9 in Chapter 4, Cross-Chapter Box 12 in Chapter 5, 5.2}<o:p></o:p></span></strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/">https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I don’t quote these passages because I regard the IPCC
Report as a sacred text or by any means the last word on these matters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the contrary it seems to me clear that the
Report was conservative in its predictions – not surprising since its method required
consensus among thousands of scientists – and in reality global warming and,
crucially, its effects are proceeding at a faster rate than the IPCC expected. [See
John Molyneux, ‘How fast is the climate changing?’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Climate & Capitalism</i>, 2 August, 2019.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="https://climateandcapitalism.com/2019/08/02/how-fast-is-the-climate-changing/">https://climateandcapitalism.com/2019/08/02/how-fast-is-the-climate-changing/</a>]
My purpose is rather to show that according to the IPCC and to any serious
understanding of climate change what we are facing is not a cliff edge over
which we all fall in 2030, or any other exactly predictable date, but a rapidly
intensifying process with increasingly catastrophic effects. Within that
process there will most likely be tipping points at which the pace of change
accelerates very rapidly and certain shifts become irreversible, but no one
knows exactly when they will be and even then we will still be talking about a
process not an immediate total extinction. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A correct, scientifically based, understanding of this
process is vital. As activists it is probably not helpful to be engaged in some
kind of countdown – we now have only ten years, nine years, eight years...left
to save the planet - as if there were a fixed time line. Nor do we want to be
called out for crying wolf when the world fails to end. It is also important as
a foundation for addressing the question of whether there is time for system
change.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The argument that there is insufficient time for ‘system
change’, by which I mean the overthrow of capitalism, has been around a long
time in the environmental movement, since well before the 12 year warning. I
remember it being put forcefully (and angrily) against a rather hapless
Trotskyist in Campaign to Stop Climate Change when I was first involved with it
in the early noughties. ‘There is no time to wait for your revolution’, he was
told. Now, of course, this ‘no-time’ argument can be used as a cover by people
who are actually pro-capitalist but it can also be put in good faith by people
who would welcome the replacement of capitalism if they thought it a practical
possibility. As evidence of this I cite Alan Thornett who is a lifelong
socialist. In his book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Facing the
Apocalypse: Arguments for Ecosocialism,</i> Alan writes:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">The standard solution advanced by
most on the radical left...is the revolutionary overthrow of global capitalism
– by implication within the next twelve years because that is how long we have
to do it...</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">Such an approach is maximalist,
leftist and useless. We can all, as socialists, vote to abolish capitalism with
both hands, and this is indeed our long-term objective. But as an answer to
global warming within the next 12 years it makes no sense. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">It amounts to a ‘credibility
gap’: while catastrophic climate change is indeed just around the corner, the
same can hardly be said with any credibility of global socialist revolution -
unless I have been missing something. It may not be impossible but it is far
too remote a prospect to provide an answer to global warming and climate
change...</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">Put bluntly, if the overturn of
global capitalism in the 12 remaining years is the only solution to global warming
and climate change, then there is no solution to global warming and climate
change. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Alan Thornett, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Facing the Apocalypse: Arguments for
Ecosocialism</i>, Resistance Books 2019 p.95.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Alan, here, has expressed very clearly the argument I want
to contest. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The first thing to be said is that for serious socialists
and Marxists (beginning with Marx, Engels and Rosa Luxemburg) the struggle for
revolution is not counterposed to the struggle for reforms on any issue. Rather
revolution is something that grows out of the struggle for concrete demands .
So just as Marxists combine the belief that the only solution to exploitation
is the abolition of the wages system with support for the trade union struggle
for wage increases and better work conditions, so they can fight for immediate
demands such as free public transport, leaving fossil fuels in the ground and massive
investment in renewable energies at the same time as advocating ecosocialist
revolution. In this way the possibility of an ecologically sustainable
capitalism is put to a practical test. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But this necessary reply does not exhaust the issue. If
revolution is seen as too remote and unlikely a development to be advanced as a
solution then climate activists should focus virtually all their energies
simply on winning reforms rather than on arguing and organising for revolution.
Moreover , the focus would be overwhelmingly on reforms on only this question.
What would be the point, except abstract morality, of focusing on issues such
as workers rights at work, anti-racism, women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ
rights etc, when the survival of humanity was at stake in the next few years?
If, however, the estimate is that capitalism will prove un- or insufficiently
reformable in this regard, then it is necessary to combine ecosocialist
campaigning with revolutionary activism, propaganda and organisation on a broader
front, recognising that revolution will require the mass mobilization of
working people on numerous issues and their unification in the face of numerous
strategies of divide-and –rule. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Consequently three real questions arise: 1) How likely is
that climate change can be halted or contained by reforms on the basis of
capitalism? 2) How ‘remote’ is the possibility of socialist revolution? 3) Are
there alternatives to this binary choice?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On the first question I and other ecosocialists <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(notably John Bellamy Foster, Ian Angus,
Michael Lowy, Martin Empson, Amy Leather etc) have argued repeatedly and at
length that the possibility of dealing with climate change on a capitalist
basis is remote in the extreme, whether in twelve years, twenty years or forty
years. I will not rehearse all the arguments here but simply say that
capitalism is a system, inherently and inexorably driven by competitive capital
accumulation into a collision course with nature and the fossil fuel industries
– oil, gas and coal – play such a central role in that capital accumulation
that there is no realistic prospect of capitalism being able to end its
dependence on them.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On the second question I would admit that if the future ,
say the next twelve years, resembles the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>immediate past, say the last fifty years, the possibility of
international<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>socialist revolution does
indeed appear very remote. But the very fact of climate change guarantees that
the next decade is NOT going to resemble the past. On the contrary precisely
the conditions brought about by global warming – increasingly unbearable heat,
droughts, fires, storms, floods etc – will transform the level of awareness
among the mass of people of the need to end capitalism and the possibility of
revolution. The fact that the worsening climate crisis will be accompanied by a
wider environmental crisis(in a multitude of forms), deepening and recurring
economic crisis (as is evident right now)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>and increased international geo-political and military tension (for
example with China and Russia) will compound this.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Here the fact established at the beginning of this article that
the ‘twelve years’ is<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>not and cannot be
an exact or final deadline is very important. If, as I think is overwhelmingly
likely, capitalism is unable to hold warming to 1.5C this will not mean, as
Thornett suggests, that the game is up and the struggle is over, but that all
the conditions and disasters outlined above will intensify and in the process
increase the likelihood of mass revolt and revolution.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Many people find it possible to imagine a revolution in one
country but find the idea of international or global revolution implausible. If
by international revolution is meant a simultaneous worldwide coordinated
rebellion this indeed extremely unlikely but this was never the scenario
envisaged by advocates of international revolution. Rather it is that beginning
in one country – Brazil or Egypt, Ireland or Italy – revolution could and would
spread to other countries in a long but continuous series of struggles. This is
a prospect that is actually reinforced by the experience of recent waves of
struggle. First, there was the Arab Spring in 2011 which witnesses a chain
reaction of uprisings from Tunisia to Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Syria before
also inspiring lesser but still significant revolts with the Indignados in
Spain and Occupy in the US. Then there was the wave of mass rebellions across
the globe in 2019 – the French Yellow vests, Sudan, Haiti, Hong Kong, Algeria,
Puerto Rico, Chile, Ecuador, Iraq, Lebanon etc [See John Molyneux, ‘A New Wave
of Global Revolt?’ <a href="http://www.rebelnews.ie/2019/11/06/a-new-mass-wave-of-global-revolt/">http://www.rebelnews.ie/2019/11/06/a-new-mass-wave-of-global-revolt/</a>.
Plus there was the global spread of School Student strikes and, this year, even
in the midst of Covid, of Black Lives Matter. What this makes clear is that in
today’s globalised world revolts can spread internationally with amazing reach
and rapidity. The international impact of a socialist revolution in any one
country would be immense. This will be all the greater if there is a strong
anti-climate change, ecological, element in the revolution – as there will be –
because whatever the debates about socialism in one country in the past, it
will be abundantly clear that no revolution in South Africa or France,
Indonesia or Chile will be able to tackle climate change while the US, China,
Russia and India carry on with business as usual. Climate change is an
international issue like no other in history.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In relation to the question of other alternatives to either
making capitalism sustainable or its revolutionary overthrow there are two that
suggest themselves: there is the perspective/strategy of transforming
capitalism into socialism by means of winning a parliamentary election – what
might be called the Corbyn strategy; there is the ‘alternative’ of
fascist/authoritarian barbarism. The first, unfortunately, is illusory; the
second, even more unfortunately, is all too real.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What I have called the Corbyn strategy (as its most recent
iteration) is in fact very old, going back at least to Kautsky and the German
Social Democratic Party before the First World War, and it has been subject to
numerous practical tests with disastrous consequences whether in Germany
itself, in Italy during the Red Years, in Chile in 1970-73, or with Syriza in
Greece or indeed with Corbyn (except that he failed to achieve the necessary
general election victory). Superficially this strategy seems enormously more
practical and plausible than revolution but in reality it is<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>fundamentally flawed .The existing capitalist
ruling class<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>will not, either in any one
country or internationally, vacate the stage i.e. surrender its power, on
account of a socialist election victory. On the contrary it will deploy all its
economic power (through investment strikes, flight of capital, runs on the
currency etc), its social and ideological hegemony especially through the media
and, crucially, its control of the State to bring the would-be socialist
government to heel or if necessary to destroy it. Such sabotage could be
resisted and overcome only by the revolutionary mobilization of the working
class. That is why this option, for all its progressive intentions, is an
illusion; it will either become the revolution it was designed to render
unnecessary or it will vanish into thin air. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When it comes to the fascist/authoritarian option, we know
from bitter experience, the experience of Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal,
Chile and elsewhere,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that this is a real
possibility, in many respects the opposite side of the coin of the failure of
the reformist option. And as we look around the world today at capitalist
system trapped in a multi- dimensional crisis we can see growing political
polarisation and the forces of the far right mustering in many different
countries. It is a grim fact that three major countries (the US, Brazil and
India) are under far right if not fully fascist control and that significant
numbers of others are ruled by highly authoritarian regimes. As the climate
crisis grows, and with it the number of climate refugees, the
authoritarian/fascist option will look increasingly attractive to panicking
ruling classes and to some of their middle class supporters. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the long run fascism will not stop global
warming but that failure may be on the far side of an ocean of barbarism. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To return to the question of is there time for system
change: no one can predict the future with any precision but by far the most
likely scenario is that the accelerating climate <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and environmental crisis will intensify class
struggle and political polarisation across the board. This process will mount
as the world heads towards the 1.5C threshold and continue after it is crossed.
The movement will have to deal not only with how we avert or stop climate
change but also with how we deal with its devastating effects: with barbarity
or solidarity? Capitalism, in all its forms, will increasingly turn to
barbarity, only system change i.e. the replacement of capitalism with socialism
will permit a response based on working class and human solidarity.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #313131; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">On 24
July, Matt McGrath, BBC Environment correspondent, put up the alarmingly headed
post; ‘</span><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48964736"><span style="color: #fd03ad; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Climate
change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months’</span></a><span style="color: #313131; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">. It
states:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><strong><span style="color: #888888; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Do you
remember the good old days when we had “12 years to save the planet? </span></strong><i><span style="color: #888888; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Now it
seems, there’s a growing consensus that the next 18 months will be critical in
dealing with the global heating crisis, among other environmental challenges.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><i><span style="color: #888888; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><i><span style="color: #888888; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Last
year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that to
keep the rise in </span></i><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45678338"><b><span style="color: #fd03ad; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">global
temperatures below 1.5C this century</span></b></a><i><span style="color: #888888; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">, emissions of carbon
dioxide would have to be cut by 45% by 2030. But today, observers recognise
that the decisive, political steps to enable the cuts in carbon to take place
will have to happen before the end of next year.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="background: white; color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="background: white; color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #252f52; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="background: white; color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;">A.1.2.</span></strong><span style="background: white; color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> Warming greater than the global annual
average is being experienced in many land regions and seasons, including two to
three times higher in the Arctic. Warming is generally higher over land than
over the ocean. (<em><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif";">high
confidence</span></em>) {1.2.1, 1.2.2, Figure 1.1, Figure 1.3, 3.3.1, 3.3.2}</span><b><span style="color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="background: white; color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;">B.1.2.</span></strong><span style="background: white; color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> Temperature extremes on land are
projected to warm more than GMST (<em><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif";">high
confidence</span></em>): extreme hot days in mid-latitudes warm by up to about
3°C at global warming of 1.5°C and about 4°C at 2°C, and extreme cold nights in
high latitudes warm by up to about 4.5°C at 1.5°C and about 6°C at 2°C (<em><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif";">high confidence</span></em>). The
number of hot days is projected to increase in most land regions, with highest
increases in the tropics (<em><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif";">high
confidence</span></em>). {3.3.1, 3.3.2, Cross-Chapter Box 8 in Chapter 3}<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="background: white; color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;">B.1.3.</span></strong><span style="background: white; color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> Risks from droughts and precipitation
deficits are projected to be higher at 2°C compared to 1.5°C of global warming
in some regions (<em><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif";">medium
confidence</span></em>). Risks from heavy precipitation events are projected to
be higher at 2°C compared to 1.5°C of global warming in several northern
hemisphere high-latitude and/or high-elevation regions, eastern Asia and eastern
North America (<em><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif";">medium
confidence</span></em>). Heavy precipitation associated with tropical cyclones
is projected to be higher at 2°C compared to 1.5°C global warming (<em><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif";">medium confidence</span></em>).
There is generally <em><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif";">low
confidence</span></em> in projected changes in heavy precipitation at 2°C
compared to 1.5°C in other regions. Heavy precipitation when aggregated at
global scale is projected to be higher at 2°C than at 1.5°C of global warming (<em><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif";">medium confidence</span></em>). As
a consequence of heavy precipitation, the fraction of the global land area
affected by flood hazards is projected to be larger at 2°C compared to 1.5°C of
global warming (<em><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif";">medium
confidence</span></em>). {3.3.1, 3.3.3, 3.3.4, 3.3.5, 3.3.6}<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/">https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="background: white; color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;">B.5. Climate-related
risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security, and
economic growth are projected to increase with global warming of 1.5°C and
increase further with 2°C. (Figure SPM.2) {3.4, 3.5, 5.2, Box 3.2, Box 3.3, Box
3.5, Box 3.6, Cross-Chapter Box 6 in Chapter 3, Cross-Chapter Box 9 in Chapter
4, Cross-Chapter Box 12 in Chapter 5, 5.2}<o:p></o:p></span></strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="background: white; color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;">C.2.
Pathways limiting global warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot would
require rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and
infrastructure (including transport and buildings), and industrial systems (</span></strong><em><b><span style="background: white; color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;">high confidence</span></b></em><strong><span style="background: white; color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;">). These systems transitions are unprecedented
in terms of scale, but not necessarily in terms of speed, and imply deep
emissions reductions in all sectors, a wide portfolio of mitigation options and
a significant upscaling of investments in those options (</span></strong><em><b><span style="background: white; color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;">medium confidence</span></b></em><strong><span style="background: white; color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;">). {2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5}<o:p></o:p></span></strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-outline-level: 1;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">What Does '12 Years to Act on Climate Change' (Now 11 Years) Really
Mean?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 12.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-outline-level: 4; vertical-align: middle;"><span style="color: #4a4a4a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; text-transform: uppercase;">BY BOB BERWYN, INSIDECLIMATE NEWS<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: #7d7d7d; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; text-transform: uppercase;">AUG 27, 2019<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="background: white; color: #252f52; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></strong></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: 18.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Mid-century is actually the more significant target date in the
report, but acting now is crucial to being able to meet that goal, said Duke
University climate researcher Drew Shindell, a lead author on the mitigation
chapter of the IPCC report.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: 18.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">"We need to get the world on a path to net zero CO2 emissions
by mid-century," Shindell said. "That's a huge transformation, so
that if we don't make a good start on it during the 2020s, we won't be able to
get there at a reasonable cost."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27082019/12-years-climate-change-explained-ipcc-science-solutions">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27082019/12-years-climate-change-explained-ipcc-science-solutions</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-85684961249226113442020-09-03T11:57:00.000+00:002020-09-03T11:57:06.903+00:00The Coalition Trap <div class="header-standard header-classic single-header" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #313131; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; outline: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: center;"><h1 class="post-title single-post-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Poppins, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">The Coalition Trap</h1><div class="post-box-meta-single" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; margin: 6px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span class="author-post" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #888888; margin: 6px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">written by <a class="author-url" href="http://www.rebelnews.ie/author/john-molyneux/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #313131; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; text-transform: capitalize; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s;">John Molyneux</a></span></span> <span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #888888; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">June 27, 2020</span></div><div class="post-box-meta-single" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; margin: 6px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #888888; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><br /></span></div></div><div class="header-standard header-classic single-header" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #313131; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 26px; outline: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: center;"><div class="post-box-meta-single" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; margin: 6px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #888888; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">This first appeared on the REBEL website http://www.rebelnews.ie/2020/06/27/the-coalition-trap-2/</span></div></div><div class="post-entry blockquote-style-1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #313131; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 33px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><div class="inner-post-entry" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Poppins, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">John Molyneux dismantles the idea that the Green Party in government with the right can bring any real change for the working class in Ireland.</h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">One of the many reasons for reading Marx is that he shows, especially in his great work </span><i style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Capital,</i><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"> that the reason why capitalism operates it does, prioritising profit over people, is not because the wrong people are in charge but because of the inner logic of the system. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">That logic is driven by competitive capital accumulation. Every capitalist unit, every business, bank and corporation from the global giants like ExxonMobil, Wal-Mart, BP, Toyota and Apple to the your local shops and small employers, is competing with others in its sector to maximise its profits, so as to invest further, capture more of the local, national or global market, and make even more profit, and so on in an endless cycle. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">This competitive struggle is relentless and ultimately all consuming. Any business that does not take part will be driven out of business. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Governments and state apparatuses of nation states are not outside of or above this process but part of it and subordinate to it. They can influence and modify the course of the competitive struggle a little bit here and a little bit there, slightly to the left on this issue and slightly to the right on that issue but they cannot alter its overall trajectory or turn it into one that serves the interests of working class people . </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">‘Serious’ politicians, ‘senior hurlers’ as they like to call themselves in Ireland, or ‘the grownups in the room ‘ as Christine Lagarde of the IMF put it, understand this and accept it. They know their job is not to resist or challenge the system but to serve it, perhaps making it work as well it can, perhaps lining their own pockets on the way or most likely doing both. This is why the current coalition is such a trap for any party that aspires or claims to be ‘left wing’ or bring about real change. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">‘Come into my parlour!’ said the spider to the fly. ‘Then you’ll have real power, real influence, instead of just staying out in the cold, sitting on the sidelines’. In reality any left party that falls for this is immediately caught in a dense spider’s web of constraints that massively restricts their freedom of action. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">First they will have ministerial seats at the cabinet table – that’s what joining a government means. These ministers will be in a minority, of course, compared to the ‘real’ grownups, but they will be bound by collective cabinet responsibility. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Below the cabinet ministers, there will be elected representatives given Junior Ministerial posts which also locks them into the government consensus. Moreover, these ministers and junior ministers will gain very considerable material, status and career vested interests in ensuring the continuance of the government and of their own positions within it. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Ministers will be subject to massive pressure (and obstruction) from Senior Civil Servants and the bureaucracies that they head. The civil servants will also consider themselves ‘grownups in the room’ and regard any idea of radical change, especially anti-capitalist change, as completely ‘impractical’ and out of the question. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">The pressure exerted by the dominant right wing members of the government and the civil servants will unquestionably be complemented by, and often coordinated with, pressure from highly paid lobbyists from industry. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Most important of all will be the objective constraints imposed by the major capitalist corporations and institutions: the banks, the multinationals, the stock and currency markets, the European Central Bank, the IMF etc. Any sign of serious deviation from serving their interests, which is precisely what a left wing party should be doing, would be met with falls on the stock market, threats to the currency, disinvestment, capital flight and the kind of economic terrorism that was visited on the Syriza government when they tried to defy austerity. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">And the media would be on hand to blame the resulting economic chaos on those in the government who dared to challenge the status quo – its left component. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">If, as is the case in the present state of the world, the left party joined the government coalition in a time of economic crisis and recession, pressures to make working class people pay for the crisis would intensify immeasurably. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">In such a situation, ‘left’ party leaders would be transmitting to their base, and thence to the wider working class, all the well worn excuses and familiar arguments against mobilisation or resistance. ‘Don’t be impatient’, they would say, ‘we’ve only had 6 months, a year, two years…’ or however long it might be. ‘These are exceptional circumstances’ they would plead. We have to put the national interest first.’ ‘Yes we know it’s painful, but we have had to make hard decisions … in the national interest!’ It is possible to write these speeches in advance. We’ve seen it all before.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Thus the overall effect of going into coalition with the right will be not to advance the cause of the left but to create a new obstacle in the way of change and, if the members and voters of the left party concerned are serious in their expectations or their principles, to massively damage the left party itself. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Even if the Programme for Government weren’t such a slap in the face to those who overwhelmingly voted for change, those in power economically would do everything possible to smash attempts to deliver on radical promises.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">But what is the alternative? The alternative is just to sit on your hands and do nothing, all the establishment commentators will say as one. But this is predicated on the idea that all real change ever comes about through parliamentary legislation and being in government.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">This is completely untrue. It is untrue historically – think of the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Irish Revolution and so on – and it is untrue in terms of more recent history, globally and in Ireland. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Consider for a moment the struggle against racism. In the United States, the decisive moments have been the Civil Rights movement of the fifties and early sixties; the Black Revolt of the late sixties (Black Power, the Black Panthers, the Watts and Detroit uprisings etc); and the current Black Lives Matter movement. None of these took place inside government or legislatures. All were primarily mass movements on the streets. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Nor is this just a matter of the US – the other great anti-racist struggle of modern times, the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, was also waged not in parliament [Blacks were not allowed in the South African parliament] but in the streets, the townships, the mines and the countryside. Its principal leader spent almost the entirety of the struggle in jail. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Then there is the anti-colonial struggle. All the great victories against colonialism and empire – India, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Algeria, Kenya, etc. – were won through extra-parliamentary struggle. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">When it comes to climate change, very little of substance has yet been won but it has been mobilisation on the streets – by the school strikers and Extinction Rebellion – that has been key even to put the issue on the agenda. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">In Ireland the massive water charges movement and the Repeal movement prove the same point. And for trade unionists in all countries, industrial action, the strike, not parliamentary manoeuvres, has always been the key to defending and advancing their rights.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.8; margin: 0px 0px 17px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">In short, an abundance of historical experience in Ireland, with both the Labour Party and the Greens, and in numerous other countries, shows that for a left party to go into coalition with the parties of the right, of the ruling class, is a recipe for disaster both for themselves and for those they claim to represent.</span></p><div class="penci-single-link-pages" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; width: 779.984px;"></div></div></div><div class="tags-share-box center-box" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(222, 222, 222); border-left-color: rgb(222, 222, 222); border-right-color: rgb(222, 222, 222); border-top: 1px solid rgb(222, 222, 222); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #313131; display: table; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px; position: relative; text-align: center; width: 779px;"><span class="single-comment-o" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #888888; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><span class="fa fa-comment-o" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; font-family: FontAwesome; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;"></span></span></div><p> </p><div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-30586237596345595382020-09-03T11:52:00.001+00:002020-09-03T11:52:07.804+00:00Climate Change and the Overpopulation Argumeny<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Climate Change and the Overpopulation
Argument<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">John Molyneux<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>This article first appeared in Irish Marxist Review 26</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The idea that the world is, or will shortly become, ‘overpopulated’
has been around long time. It can be traced back to Thomas Malthus and his 1798
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Essay on the Principle of Population</i>.
Its most famous modern articulation was in Paul Ehrlich’s best selling book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Population Bomb</i> in 1968 and it has
always been a component of the ideology of a wing (largely the more conservative
wing) of the environmental movement as exemplified by James Lovelock, the
founder of Gaia theory, Jonathan Porritt, erstwhile Director of Friends of the
Earth (UK) and personal advisor to Prince Charles, and by some of the British
Green Party.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Pioneer ecosocialist, Joel Kovel, has described how, driving round California
in 2000 in his campaign for the Green Party Presidential nomination, he was
left with a bitter taste in his mouth by the undercurrent of racism in the
party maskedby concern about ‘population’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn2" name="_ednref2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the 1960s the claim was mainly that overpopulation was
the cause of world poverty but as time passed the popularity of this argument
faded; recently, however, the overpopulation argument is making something of a
comeback in relation to climate change as evidenced, for example, by the
increasing activity and presence of the ‘charity’ Population Matters. Moreover,
some people on the left seem to have to have bought into the idea, for example
the long standing Marxist and ecosocialist, Alan Thornett who, in his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Facing the Apocalypse: Arguments for
Ecosocialism</i> insists that the left should see ‘the rising human population
as a problem to be addressed’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn3" name="_ednref3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In this article I propose to reject all of this and argue
against the whole idea that overpopulation or population growth should be seen
either as a driver of climate change or as some kind of general ‘problem’.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Climate Change and
Population Growth. <o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When it comes to attempts to present overpopulation as a
cause or exacerbator of climate change there are a number of straightforward and
politically convincing arguments that socialists should understand and advance.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">First,we know very precisely what are the causes of climate
change: the projection into the atmosphere of greenhouse gasses- primarily CO2
and methane – as a result of the burning of fossil fuels (oil, coal, and
natural gas) and the release of methane (from cattle and the melting
permafrost). This is not done by ‘humanity as a whole’ and is not caused by the
size of the world’s population. It is the responsibility of a relatively small
minority of humans engaged in very specific activities. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There are many ways that this fact can be expressed. There
is the fact that the carbon foot print <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>per capita (measured in metric tons per year)
varies enormously from country to country : in Afghanistan in 2018 it was 0.3;
Albania 1.6; Brazil 2.4; Ethiopia 0.2, Australia 16.8; China 8.0; US 16.1;
India 1.9; Ireland 7.7;Germany 9.1.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn4" name="_ednref4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>Here
it is interesting to note that Canada, Australia, Iceland and Greenland are
among the least densely populated countries on earth (4,3,3 and 0.1 people per
sq.km respectively) yet all have very high per capita carbon foot prints (16.9,
16.8, 12.1, 9.4 respectively) compared to a global average of about 5.0. Among
the countries with the highest per capita carbon footprints are Bahrain (21.8),
Kuwait (23.9), Saudi Arabia (18.6), UAR (22.4) and Qatar (38.2). Again, this
has nothing to do with population size or density: Kuwait has 200.2 per sq.km;
UAR 99 per sq.km and Saudi Arabia only 15 per sq.km. There are no prizes for
guessing what it has to do with.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As it happens Ireland is also a good example here. Ireland,
at 7.1, is above the global average in terms of its per capita carbon footprint
and as Leo Varadkar has <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">conceded
‘<span style="background: white; color: #111111;">Obviously, climate emissions and
greenhouse gas is an area where we’re laggard and falling way behind’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn5" name="_ednref5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Yet Ireland has a relatively low population density and, crucially, a smaller
population than it had before the Famine of 1845-9, when its carbon footprint
was more or less zero.</span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In short,the variation and level of carbon emissions has
nothing to do with size of population and everything to do with the level and
specific character of a country’s and, by extension, the world’s economic and
social activities. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is also clear from
the nature of these variations that carbon footprints will be grossly unequal
within countries as well. It is not Brazil’s favellas or Amazonian Indians that
are producing its 2.4 figure, still less is it Australia’s indigenous
Aborigines who are responsible for its very high 16.8. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Then there is the well known claim that 70% of greenhouse
gasses emitted since 1988 have been produced by just 100 multinational
corporations. There is the even more graphic assertion that it is possible to
name the top 100 people killing the planet (the CEOs of the 100 corporations).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 2.5pt; mso-outline-level: 1;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Names
and Locations of the Top 100 People Killing the Planet<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 8.0pt;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">“The earth
is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and
addresses.” – Utah Phillips<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 4.0pt;"><a href="https://www.filmsforaction.org/author/jordan-engel/"><span style="color: #0073fa; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Jordan Engel</span></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> / </span><a href="https://decolonialatlas.wordpress.com/2019/04/27/names-and-locations-of-the-top-100-people-killing-the-planet"><span style="color: #0073fa; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">decolonialatlas.wordpress.com</span></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">/</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> Jun 13, 2019<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/names-and-locations-of-the-top-100-people-killing-the-planet/?fbclid=IwAR1evttSOiB6l-Mv12e8fvuAoXB-4qIVyPW3_-YqQlzczol_sLGrVFzXyT8#.XgoIKfSUoKU.facebook">https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/names-and-locations-of-the-top-100-people-killing-the-planet/?fbclid=IwAR1evttSOiB6l-Mv12e8fvuAoXB-4qIVyPW3_-YqQlzczol_sLGrVFzXyT8#.XgoIKfSUoKU.facebook</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Whether or not these claims are exactly accurate can
probably not be verified but they represent a much more accurate picture of greenhouse
gas emissions than suggesting that they are produced by the world’s population
as a whole.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Let me put it this way: should there occur through some
dreadful tragedy a repetition of the terrible famines of the late nineteenth century
or some recurrence of the Black Death, which wiped out 200 million Chinese
peasants, 200 million of India’s poor and 150 million rural sub-Saharan
Africans, while ExxonMobile, BP, Shell, Toyota, Nissan, Volkswagen, General
Motors, the US military and suchlike continue their activities unaffected
(which they would do) the reduction of the world’s population by 550 million
would have close to zero effect on the level of global emissions or the pace of
climate change. To repeat population growth is simply not the cause of climate
change.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">From this follows that raising the issue of population is
music to the ears of every rotten government, every cynical and opportunist
politician, every oil industry spin doctor and PR merchant. It simply lets all
the real culprits off the hook and directs all our concern, anger, and
campaigning energy in precisely the wrong direction.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Insofar as capitalist governments and their media purport to
address the climate emergency at all it is everywhere in terms of us ‘all being
in this together’; we must all learn to ‘change our behaviour’, probably with
the aid of carbon taxes on ordinary people. In Ireland this is exactly how the
right wing Fine Gael government posed the question and exactly how RTE, in its
week of broadcasts devoted to climate change, presented the issue. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any focus on population size is guaranteed to
let these people and their equivalents, in every other country, off the hook,
just as it would if we were to make any concession to the idea that the reason
for the housing and homelessness crisis was due to the rising population and
there being too many people. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 18.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This last
example points directly to the third major reason for not accepting the idea of
overpopulation as a cause of climate change: not only is it untrue but it feeds
directly into racism. Without doubt many, perhaps most, of the proponents of
population control would indignantly protest their innocence of this charge and
even their avowed anti-racism and in many cases their protestations would be
entirely genuine. For example, I do not doubt that David Attenborough, a lead
patron of Population Matters, is not subjectively racist, while Alan Thornett
is a long standing committed anti-racist. But it is not just a matter of
subjective intentions; there is also the objective logic of ideas, not in a
vacuum but in a concrete historical context. If it is argued that climate
change is, even partially, caused by there being ‘too many people’ then this
raises the question of which kind of people are there too many of and the
answer is not going to be white Europeans and Americans. This is particularly
likely to be the case when a very tempting excuse for Western politicians who
want to avoid emergency climate action or tackling the fossil fuel industry is
to say the real problem is China and India. And if more people are a problem in
general then it is hardly a giant leap to suggest that therefore immigration
must be restricted or reversed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 18.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Thusthere
has always been a racist tinge to advocacy of population control and to certain
kinds of environmentalism. In the opening scene of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Population Bomb</i>, Paul Ehrlich describes a taxi ride in Delhi in
1966 through ‘a crowded slum area’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 18.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">“The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing,
people sleeping. People visiting, arguing, and screaming. People thrust their
hands through the taxi window, begging. People defecating and urinating. People
clinging to buses. People herding animals. People, people, people, people<a name="_GoBack"></a>. . . <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[S]ince that
night, I’ve known the feel of overpopulation.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn6" name="_ednref6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">As has been pointed out, Delhi in 1966 had a population of 2.8 million.
In contrast the population of Paris at that time stood at 8 million, but no one
cited Paris as an example of overcrowding or overpopulation. Rather it was seen
as the epitome of elegance. Paul Ehrlich is a current patron of Population
Matters. Another current patron of Population Matters is James Lovelock,
producer of the somewhat mystical ‘gaia’ theory of mother earth. Lovelock argues
that the maximum ‘sustainable’ population on earth is 1billion; so which 6 billion
are going to go and how are they going to be got rid of? Again it is a fair bet
it is not white British Lovelock wants to cull. In addition there are a
multitude of small population control organisations with manifestly racist
attitudes and policies – groups like</span><b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Californians for Population Stabilization</span></b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> (CAPS)
founded in 1986 which works to "preserve California's future through the
stabilization of our state's </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_population" title="Human population"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">human population</span></a><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">". <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">My
favourite – and they would be funny if they weren’t so nasty – is </span><b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Sustainable Population Australia</span></b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> (<b>SPA</b>) (formerly
Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population). This is an Australian
pressure group<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>founded in </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra" title="Canberra"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Canberra</span></a><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> in 1988, that seeks to establish an </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity" title="Carrying capacity"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">ecologically sustainable</span></a><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> human population. SPA
claims that it is an "ecological group dedicated to preserving species'
habitats globally and in Australia from the degradation caused by human
population growth", and that it "works on many fronts to encourage
informed public debate about how Australia and the world can achieve an
ecologically sustainable population".<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn7" name="_ednref7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn7;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">SPA argues
that </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth" title="Population growth"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">population growth</span></a><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> exacerbates Australia's
water shortage and adds to </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions" title="Greenhouse gas emissions"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">greenhouse
gas emissions</span></a><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">.SPA also
seeks to highlight what it claims are the negative economic effects of
population growth, such as increased housing costs, lower wages and living
standards, and opposes the current historically <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">high level of </b></span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Australia" title="Immigration to Australia"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">immigration to Australia</span></b></a><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">.[My emphasis].<sup><o:p></o:p></sup></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Australia is
the sixth largest country in the world in areaand has a population of only 24.6
million. At 3.1 per sq.km. it ranks 226<sup>th</sup> in a list of countries by
population density (with only places like Iceland, the Western Sahara and
Greenland below it. This gives you a clue that the size of the population is
not really what Sustainable Population Australia are worried about!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Fear of
encouraging or being tainted by racism is probably the main reason why many
environmental (and other)campaigners refuse to take up the population issue
saying things like ‘I don’t want to go there’, or ‘I don’t see population in
itself as the main problem’ and in a sense that is quite reasonable and right
but the issue goes broader and deeper than this and I want to argue that, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">even if there was no question of racism
involved</b>,and even if we are talking about other issues than climate change,the
notion that overpopulation exists or that population growth <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is a bad thing would be profoundly mistaken.
It is mistaken not in the way scientists and social scientists may over or
underestimate the role of a particular factor in a situation. It is mistaken in
the way those who believed (prior to Copernicus) that the sun revolved round
the earth were mistaken i.e.the truth was not just different from what they
believed but, appearances to the contrary, the complete opposite. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Impervious to evidence<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">One of the
clearest signs of the weakness of the overpopulation argument is the way in
which its advocates remain impervious to evidence which manifestly refutes their
claims. The opening lines of Paul Ehrlich’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Population Bomb</i> (1968) read as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">“The battle
to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people
will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this
late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">What
actually happened? In 1968 the world death rate stood at 13.4 per 1000 of
population. By 1980 it had fallen to 10.3 per 1000 and by 2018 it was down to
7.6.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn8" name="_ednref8" style="mso-endnote-id: edn8;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Ehrlich also
claimed in 1969 that<span style="color: #2d2d2d;">“Most of the people who are going
to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been
born,”and in 1970 “Sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come ... And by
‘the end’ I mean an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support
humanity.” <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn9" name="_ednref9" style="mso-endnote-id: edn9;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: #2d2d2d; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> And in 1970 he predicted
that ‘in ten years all important life in the sea will be extinct’ and in 1971
that ‘by the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of
islands inhabited by some hungry people...I would take even money that England
will not exist in the year 2000’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn10" name="_ednref10" style="mso-endnote-id: edn10;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: #2d2d2d; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">On the first </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day" title="Earth Day"><span style="background: white; color: #0b0080; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Earth Day</span></a><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> in
1970, he warned that "[i]n ten years all important animal life in the sea
will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of
the stench of dead fish." In a 1971 speech, he predicted that:
"By the year 2000 the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom" title="United Kingdom"><span style="background: white; color: #0b0080; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">United Kingdom</span></a><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> will
be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million
hungry people." "If I were a gambler," Professor Ehrlich
concluded before boarding an airplane, " I would take even money
that </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England" title="England"><span style="background: white; color: #0b0080; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">England</span></a><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> will
not exist in the year 2000." ... Ehrlich wrote in <i>The
Population Bomb</i> that, "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred
million more people by 1980."<sup><o:p></o:p></sup></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">When none of
this occurred, he refused to accept there was anything wrong with his approach
or method. He just said ‘When you predict the future, you get things wrong. How
wrong is another question... If you look closely at England, what can I tell
you? They’re having all kinds of problems, just like everybody else’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn11" name="_ednref11" style="mso-endnote-id: edn11;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I have
focused on Paul Ehrlich here as the most famous name associated with the
overpopulation argument, but the truth is that virtually all the predictions of
all the population doomsters from Malthus onwards have been falsified by
history. Of course, there are always ‘problems’ and disasters that can be
pointed to: for example, the dreadful famine in Ethiopia in 1983-5 which
claimed 1.2 million lives. For the lazy minded this could be ascribed to
‘overpopulation’ but the argument is nonsense. Ethiopia had a long history of
famines when its population was much lower, it had a catastrophically
incompetent government and there was more than enough food available to feed
the starving Ethiopians if it could have been distributed to them. Moreover
Ethiopia in 1983 had a population of 37 million (half that of Britain in a
country four times the size) and a Gross National Income per capita of $210 per
annum. By 2018 its population had nearly trebled to 105 million. Has it got
poorer? No, its GNI per capita now stands at $790 per annum- still very low but
more than three times higher than in 1983. What is more with the rise in world
population in the last 100 years the overall trend has been for the deaths from
famine to decline.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_1"
o:spid="_x0000_i1025" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="Death toll from famines.jpg"
style='width:450.75pt;height:342pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\oem\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image003.jpg"
o:title="Death toll from famines"/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img alt="Death toll from famines.jpg" border="0" height="456" src="file:///C:/Users/oem/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image004.jpg" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_1" width="601" /><!--[endif]--></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><b><span style="background: #333333; color: white; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 6.5pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(5w
Infographics; Sources: World Peace Foundation, Tufts; Food and Agriculture
Organization, U.N.) <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn12" name="_ednref12" style="mso-endnote-id: edn12;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #333333; color: white; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 6.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[12]</span></b></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Vague alarmism<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Faced with
the dramatic refutation by history of these specific predictions the tendency
of population control advocates and those who are ‘concerned’ about population
growth has become to engage in what I would call vague alarmism. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">A typical
example of this is the world population meters that can be seen at the top of many
population websites which purport to show the disturbing growth in population
second by second. Now obviously if the world population is rising, as it is,
and we are talking about the whole world it will inevitably be rising every
second. This doesn’t mean there is a problem but, of course, it vaguely
suggests there is. The same technique can be used by showing the number of
births every second with the implication we should be worried about this.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn13" name="_ednref13" style="mso-endnote-id: edn13;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Note here the difference between attitudes to births in the abstract and the
concrete. Concretely when someone has a baby the normal human reaction is to
congratulate them and greet the birth of a new human life as to be welcomed.
But in the abstract we are supposed to regard it as a misfortune. Or is it
perhaps that white European babies are welcome, but babies of colour or babies
of the Global South are not (as happened with the racist reaction online to the
news that the first Irish baby of 2020 was black)? In any event this method of
presenting worldwide or national statistics by the second or the minute to make
them look alarming can be used for any and every purpose, e.g. the number of
abortions per minute; the number of muggings, crimes, road accidents etc.
Unless put in context and set against a real benchmark such statistics may be
emotive but have no real value.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">At the head
of the Population Matters website we find the statement:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">It took humanity 200,000 years to reach one billion and
only 200 years to reach seven billion. We are still adding an extra
80 million each year and are headed towards 10 billion by mid-century. <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn14" name="_ednref14" style="mso-endnote-id: edn14;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">But if the
population is rising by 80 million a year that means that the rate of
population growth is actually slowing. If that were not the case the annual
increment would increase. And why should 80 million a year or 10 billion by mid-century
be a particular problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Population
Matters and other ‘populationists’ assume it will be but offer no convincing
reason. They just assume, or intend, that the figures will alarm people. Alan
Thornett writes, ‘The human population of the planet is growing by over 70
million a year – almost the population of Germany. It has done so for the last
50 years and shows little sign of slowing down’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn15" name="_ednref15" style="mso-endnote-id: edn15;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>Thornett
repeats the mistake. In 1973 the world population was approximately 3.9
billion. Today it is 7.7 billion. 70 million is a much smaller proportion of
7.7 billion than of 3.9 billion and the world population growth rate in 1970
was 2.1% per annum and now it is 1.2%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In other words, the rate of growth is slowing and IF the present trend
continues the population will level out by the end of the century and even
decline thereafter. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This whole
discourse is predicated on a fear of large numbers of human beings which has
many sources in our culture, not least the elite’s fear of ‘the masses’ or
‘mob’ and the perennial excuse that ‘rising/ageing population’ and ‘too many
people/an influx of immigrants’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>provides
for governments for crises in housing, health and education. If the same
conscious or unconscious attitude applied to birds it would be possible, as
Alfred Hitchcock probably realised, to scare people silly with the statistic
that there are 200-400 billion birds in the world ie. between ten and twenty
times the number of humans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Two terms
that pepper the writings of populationists are ‘unsustainabilty’ and
‘carrying-power’. We are repeatedly told in their literature that current
levels of population growth are ‘unsustainable’ as if this was obvious or
proven. In fact it is neither. The concepts of sustainability and
unsustainability are familiar in the general ecological discourse but let us
ask what they mean in the context of population. If we say that China’s rates
of economic growth are unsustainable this means either that in the not too
distant future, they will fall to a lower rate or that there will be a
recession and they will go into reverse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If that is what the term means in relation to population growth, then
what is really being said is that the rate of population growth will not
continue ie. it will self-correct.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
would, of course, be reassuring rather than alarming but this never seems to
occur to overpopulationists, much as it never seemed to occur to Malthus or
Ehrlich that if population growth would increase poverty and starvation the
increased poverty and starvation would reduce the population.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The notion
that the earth, or even parts of it, has a fixed ‘carrying capacity’ is similar
to ‘unsustainabilty’ but even less substantial and convincing. The carrying
capacity of a bus has real meaning but what does the carrying capacity of the
earth mean? The population of Hong Kong was 7,450 in 1841. In 1851 it was
32,983. Looking at Hong Kong in those days it would no doubt have seemed
‘obvious’ that this small island could not possibly ‘sustain’ or ‘carry’ a
population of 7.4 millionas it does today.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn16" name="_ednref16" style="mso-endnote-id: edn16;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Clearly they would all starve or eat each other long before such an unthinkable
figure was reached!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Sometimes
the overpopulation argument is put in terms of the earth has certain ‘natural
limits’. Are you saying, the population controllers ask, that the earth can
sustain unlimited population growth, that it can support an ‘infinite’ number
of people? But this is an absurd way to pose the question. ‘Unlimited growth’
and an ‘infinite number’ is so vague and potentially enormous that it would
apply to absolutely anything or everything. Can the world carry an ‘infinite’
number of peanuts? Clearly not. Similarly, you could raise the alarm about the
impossibility of coping with an indefinite or unlimited number of bees or
trees. But this would similarly obscure the fact that right now, and for the
foreseeable future, we need more bees and trees.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The only
real meaning that all this alarmism has and can have is that population growth
is driving climate change and other forms of ecological damage such as ocean
acidification,plastification and destruction of the rain forest. But as we
began by showing, this is not true of climate change and the same arguments
apply to the other forms of ecological destruction. The Great Barrier Reef is
being killed off but by Australian mining and farming methods (along with
climate change) not by Australia’s ‘vast’ population.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The terrible felling of the Amazon rain
forest is not being done to provide space for Brazil’s population, which is
neither dense (at 25 per sq.km) nor growing very fast (at 0.72% per annum<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn17" name="_ednref17" style="mso-endnote-id: edn17;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>)
but to serve the profits of beef and logging corporations. The vast quantities
of single-use plastic that are choking the oceans are produced by a tiny
percentage of the world’s population and, even more importantly, the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">decisions</b> to produce and use that
plastic are taken by literally handfuls of people.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">A misanthropic argument<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">There has
always been a fundamental contradiction in the populationists’ arguments. They
are alarmed at the size and growth of world population. But world population is
NOT growing because people are having more babies, they are not. In 1950 the
global birth rate stood at 36.937 per thousand; by 2000 it was 22.29 per
thousand and today it is 17.464 (and predicted to fall to 14.634 by 2050.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn18" name="_ednref18" style="mso-endnote-id: edn18;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
It is growing because the death rate is falling (infant mortality is falling
and life expectancy is rising). In 1950 the global death rate was 20.15 per
thousand, in 2000 it was 8.647 per thousand and today it is 7.612.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn19" name="_ednref19" style="mso-endnote-id: edn19;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
In 1950 global average life expectancy was 47.0; in 2000 it was 67.1 and today
it is 73.2<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn20" name="_ednref20" style="mso-endnote-id: edn20;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[20]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>.
Of course, as we know, there is increased alienation, exploitation and
inequality, all brought to us by global capitalism, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in itself</i> this rise in the population is caused by an improvement
in people’s living conditions, especially their nutrition and health care. In
itself it is a gain for humanity not a cause for alarm or fear.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">It is true
that climate change and related environmental catastrophes have the potential
to wipe out these gains, but this will not be because the population is too
large but because capitalism, with its production based on competitive
accumulation, was unable to break its addiction to fossil fuels. To blame the
number of people for this and not governments and the system is not only to let
the guilty off the hook but also to malign the innocent. In 1865 Marx called
Malthus’ theory of population, according to which population inevitably grew
much faster than food production, a ‘libel on the human race’ <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn21" name="_ednref21" style="mso-endnote-id: edn21;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[21]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
and the same is true of contemporary would-be population controllers. There is
a deep-seated misanthropy involved here.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Unfortunately,
we are not just dealing with a bad explanation or a reactionary theory but with
an idea which can have, and has had, very reactionary consequences in the real
world. Liberal and leftist populationists try to avoid this by denying they are
for forcible or racist population control and stressing instead population
limitation by means of ‘female empowerment’ i.e. contraception and abortion
rights. Both Population Matters and Alan Thornett do this with Thornett calling
population an ‘eco-feminist issue’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn22" name="_ednref22" style="mso-endnote-id: edn22;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[22]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>But
obviously the left have fought for these rights for decades, ever since the
Bolshevik Revolution and before, without ever endorsing the call for population
control and in the real world the people who will take up and implement this
policy will not be liberals and leftists but governments who want to cut child
benefit<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn23" name="_ednref23" style="mso-endnote-id: edn23;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[23]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
and authoritarian regimes like China with its horrific one-child policy<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_edn24" name="_ednref24" style="mso-endnote-id: edn24;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[24]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and India’s highly repressive forced
sterilisation programme under Sanjay Gandhi in the 70s. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The
underlying problem in the whole populationist ideology is that it its advocates
see the mass of the world’s people, including the international working class,
simply as passive consumers and not as active producers, still less as people
who can take collective control of society. This why they fail to understand
that it was and will be perfectly possible to greatly increase food production
and that the real problem is to ensure its equitable distribution. And why they
fail to see that it is possible for those teeming masses in Delhi and Mumbai,
in Jakarta and Cairo to smash the system that is driving us all towards
catastrophe and create a new economic and social system in which the metabolic
rift with nature is healed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And why they
fail to see that from that point of view the more of such masses, increasingly
proletarianised and urbanised as they are, the better.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 18.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 18.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a name="Vote_down"></a><a href="https://disqus.com/embed/comments/?base=default&f=smithsonianmagazine&t_i=article-book-incited-worldwide-fear-overpopulation&t_u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.smithsonianmag.com%2Finnovation%2Fbook-incited-worldwide-fear-overpopulation-180967499%2F&t_d=The%20Book%20That%20Incited%20a%20Worldwide%20Fear%20of%20Overpopulation&t_t=The%20Book%20That%20Incited%20a%20Worldwide%20Fear%20of%20Overpopulation&s_o=default" title=""><span style="mso-bookmark: Vote_down;"><span style="color: #656c7a; font-family: "inherit","serif"; font-size: 6.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> </span></span><span style="mso-bookmark: Vote_down;"></span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: Vote_down;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;"><!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>See<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/pp.html">https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/pp.html</a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref2" name="_edn2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See Joel Kovel, Foreward to Ian Angus and Simon Butler, Too Many People,
Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2009, pp.xiii-xvii.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn3" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref3" name="_edn3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Alan Thornett, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Facing the Apocalypse:
Arguments for Ecosocialism</i>, Resistance Books, London 2019, p.152<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn4" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref4" name="_edn4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
These and subsequent statistics on per capita carbon foot print are from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn5" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref5" name="_edn5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><a href="https://www.independent.ie/breaking-news/irish-news/ireland-falling-way-behind-on-climate-change-action-admits-taoiseach-37668523.html">https://www.independent.ie/breaking-news/irish-news/ireland-falling-way-behind-on-climate-change-action-admits-taoiseach-37668523.html</a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn6" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref6" name="_edn6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>Cited
in Charles C.Mann ‘The book that incited a world fear of overpopulation’.
Smithsonian Magazine, January 2018.<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/book-incited-worldwide-fear-overpopulation-180967499/">https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/book-incited-worldwide-fear-overpopulation-180967499/</a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn7" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref7" name="_edn7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn7;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Population_Australia"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Population_Australia</span></a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn8" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref8" name="_edn8" style="mso-endnote-id: edn8;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><a href="https://knoema.com/atlas/World/Death-rate"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">https://knoema.com/atlas/World/Death-rate</span></a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn9" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref9" name="_edn9" style="mso-endnote-id: edn9;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>Cited
in Mann, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as above</i>.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn10" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref10" name="_edn10" style="mso-endnote-id: edn10;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>Cited
in Mann, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as above</i>.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn11" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref11" name="_edn11" style="mso-endnote-id: edn11;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>Cited
in Mann, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as above</i>.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn12" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref12" name="_edn12" style="mso-endnote-id: edn12;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>From
Charles C. Mann, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as above</i>.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn13" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref13" name="_edn13" style="mso-endnote-id: edn13;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">See for example: </span><a href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/</span></a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn14" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref14" name="_edn14" style="mso-endnote-id: edn14;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><a href="https://populationmatters.org/the-issue">https://populationmatters.org/the-issue</a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn15" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref15" name="_edn15" style="mso-endnote-id: edn15;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Alan Thornett, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as above</i>, p.130.
SadlyThornett’s reference to this being ‘almost the size of Germany’ is a
terrible argument.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Racist
anti-immigration campaigners often try to scare people by saying the level of
immigration is equal to ‘a new town the size of Birmingham’. Now I know full
well that Thornett is not a racist and has no racist intention here but this
shows the kind of bad argument his position on population leads him into.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn16" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref16" name="_edn16" style="mso-endnote-id: edn16;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Hong_Kong">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Hong_Kong</a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn17" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref17" name="_edn17" style="mso-endnote-id: edn17;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
This compares to population growth rates of 2.9% p.a. in 1960 and 1.95% in
1990. Moreover Brazil ‘s population is 87.6% urban and concentrated
overwhelmingly in the coastal cities such as Rio and Sau Paulo. (All statistics
from <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/brazil-population/">https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/brazil-population/</a>)<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn18" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref18" name="_edn18" style="mso-endnote-id: edn18;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><a href="http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=world+population&d=PopDiv&f=variableID%3A53%3BcrID%3A900">http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=world+population&d=PopDiv&f=variableID%3A53%3BcrID%3A900</a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn19" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref19" name="_edn19" style="mso-endnote-id: edn19;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><a href="https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/death-rate">https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/death-rate</a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn20" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref20" name="_edn20" style="mso-endnote-id: edn20;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[20]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">As above</i>.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn21" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref21" name="_edn21" style="mso-endnote-id: edn21;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[21]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Karl Marx, Letter to J.B Schweizer, 24 January, 1865. <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/letters/65_01_24.htm">https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/letters/65_01_24.htm</a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn22" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref22" name="_edn22" style="mso-endnote-id: edn22;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[22]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Alan Thornett, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as above</i>, Ch.14. <o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn23" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref23" name="_edn23" style="mso-endnote-id: edn23;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[23]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
On a personal note I well remember debating with Jonathan Porritt, then of the
Green Party, at London Marxism in the early 90s and I particularly recall reading
out from Porritt’s book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Coming of the
Greens</i> a passage in which he called for removing child benefit after the
second child. I’m sure this policy went down well with Prince Charles whom
Porritt served as an adviser and who has, of course, lived on benefit all his
life.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn24" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2026%20OVERPOPULATION%20PROOFED.docx#_ednref24" name="_edn24" style="mso-endnote-id: edn24;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[24]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Introduced in 1979 and modified in
the mid-1980sto allow rural parents a second child if the first was a daughter
(no women’s empowerment there!) and,incidentally,supported by our friend
Jonathan Porritt who said,<span style="background: white; color: #121212;"> "Had
there been no 'one child family' policy in China there would now have been 400
million additional Chinese citizens," </span></span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/dec/03/carbon-offset-projects-climate-change">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/dec/03/carbon-offset-projects-climate-change</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-84994618291112434262020-09-03T11:48:00.005+00:002020-09-03T11:48:45.577+00:00Climate Change and Rebellion: an Interview with John Molyneux<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.65pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-outline-level: 1; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: white; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt; padding: 0cm;">Climate Change
and Rebellion: an interview with John Molyneux</span><span style="color: white; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: middle;"><a href="http://roape.net/"><b><span style="color: white; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Home</span></b></a><span style="color: white; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> > </span><a href="http://roape.net/category/blog/"><b><span style="color: white; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Blog</span></b></a><span style="color: #dadada; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> </span><span style="color: white; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> > </span><span style="color: #cdcdcd; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Climate Change and Rebellion: an
interview with John Molyneux</span><span style="color: #dadada; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-line-height-alt: 16.6pt; mso-outline-level: 2; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Climate Change and Rebellion: an
interview with John Molyneux<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #898989; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Posted at 11:58h</span><span style="color: #898989; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> in </span><a href="http://roape.net/category/blog/"><b><span style="color: #898989; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Blog</span></b></a><span style="color: #898989; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">, </span><a href="http://roape.net/category/featured/"><b><span style="color: #898989; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Featured</span></b></a><span style="color: #898989; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">, </span><a href="http://roape.net/category/interviews/"><b><span style="color: #898989; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Interviews</span></b></a><span style="color: #898989; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> </span><span style="color: #898989; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">by </span><a href="http://roape.net/author/roape1974/"><b><span style="color: #898989; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">roape1974</span></b></a><span style="color: #898989; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In an interview with the socialist
writer and activist, John Molyneux, ROAPE’s Leo Zeilig asks him about climate
change, capitalism and socialist transformation. In an important initiative
John has recently founded the </span></b><a href="http://www.globalecosocialistnetwork.net/"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Global Ecosocialist
Network</span></b></a><b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> (GEN) which brings together
activists and researchers from across the Global North and South. The network
hopes to amplify the socialist voice in the struggle against environmental
crisis. Africa, he argues, is crucial to the fight against climate change.</span></b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Can you tell readers of roape.net
about yourself? Your background, activism and politics.</span></b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I was born in Britain in 1948 and became a socialist activist and
Marxist in 1968 through the struggle against the Vietnam War, the student
revolt and May ’68 in Paris. I joined the International Socialists in June of
that year. I have remained active ever since. From the mid- seventies onwards I
began writing in the field of Marxist theory, publishing </span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/molyneux/1978/party/"><b><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Marxism and the Party</span></i></b></a><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> (1978) and </span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/molyneux/1983/07/tradition.htm"><b><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">What is the Real Marxist Tradition?</span></i></b></a><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> (1983) and
other books, pamphlets and articles. Since the late nineties I also started
writing about art and have a book on </span><a href="https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1477-the-dialectics-of-art"><b><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The Dialectics of Art</span></i></b></a><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> coming out later this year.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">From 1975 to 2010 I was a teacher at various levels in the city of
Portsmouth – secondary school, further education and then in the School
of Art at Portsmouth University. In 2010 I retired and moved to Dublin where I
have continued to be an activist with </span><a href="https://www.pbp.ie/"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">People Before Profit</span></b></a><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> and a writer, publishing books
on Anarchism, the media, Marxist philosophy and Lenin for Today. I have also
served as the founder and editor of the </span><a href="http://www.irishmarxistreview.net/index.php/imr/index"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Irish Marxist Review</span></b></a><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Can you speak a little about your
involvement in the climate change movement? As a long-standing socialist and
activist, when did you first become seriously aware of climate change – what
was it that impacted on you explicitly?</span></b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I don’t think there was any single moment. I think probably it was the
socialist writer, </span><a href="https://bookmarksbookshop.co.uk/view/2993/Stop+Global+Warming+Change+the+World"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Jonathan Neale</span></b></a><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">, who first fully explained the issue to me
somewhere around the turn of the century. Jonathan served for a period as
Secretary of the </span><a href="https://www.campaigncc.org/"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Campaign to Stop Climate Change</span></b></a><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> and I was involved in that
campaign in a limited way. But I didn’t find that they were very receptive to
my revolutionary socialist ideas.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 16.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 15.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">However, from quite
early on I was convinced that climate change was going to be an existential
crisis for humanity because I was convinced that capitalism was not going to
stop it. There were, of course, debates about this question. Many people
thought there HAD to be a capitalist solution or at least a solution within
capitalism because they thought overthrowing capitalism was out of the
question. Others, including Marxists, engaged in hypothetical debates as to
whether capitalism might, in theory, be able to deal with the issue.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 16.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 15.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">My view was that
regardless of what might theoretically be possible the actually existing
capitalism we were dealing with was not going to stop climate change or even
seriously try to stop it until it was too late. This was because capitalism is
driven by profit and competitive accumulation at every level and because it is
far too heavily invested in fossil fuels to simply switch to renewables. To
those who say we can’t wait for your socialism, we need change NOW, my reply is
I will fight alongside you for change, but I don’t believe we can wait for
capitalism to go green, it’s simply not going to happen. I hope I’m wrong but
so far, I’ve been right.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I always understood how disastrous climate change was going to be but at
first I thought of it as something fairly far in the future – by the end of the
century etc – and probably outside my life time. But it has become clearer and
clearer that even the IPCCs (the </span><a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</span></b></a><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">) predictions are
too conservative and that the beginnings of climate catastrophe are with us
already.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Recently, specifically last year –
with the extraordinary global protests of school students and many others – the
climate emergency has broken onto the world stage, leaving us all forever
changed. Can you discuss how you interpreted this movement and its
significance, and any weaknesses you see?</span></b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The school strikes for climate were unequivocally magnificent and hats
off to Greta Thunberg and everyone else involved. It was wonderful to see young
people stepping forward and on such a global scale. The civil disobedience
organised by </span><a href="https://rebellion.earth/"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Extinction Rebellion</span></b></a><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">, especially in the first London
Rebellion Week, was also a fantastic step forward. Every socialist should
enthusiastically back them and constructively engage with them. I haven’t
much time for leftists who dismiss radicalising young people because of their
lack of ‘the correct programme’ or base in ‘the organised working class’.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 16.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 15.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">But of course,
these movements, like every emergent mass movement, have weaknesses. In
particular it is a weakness that they tend to think of themselves as ‘beyond’
or ‘above’ politics and therefore often discourage political debate. In my
opinion every aspect of climate change and the environmental crisis is
intensely political and some political forces (largely those on the serious or
‘hard’ left) are friends of the planet and the climate movement and others (the
right and far right) are its enemies. Without fetishizing the figure of 3.5%
[XR thinks that mobilising 3.5% of the population is necessary to secure
‘system change’] I think XR’s aim to mobilize those sort of mass numbers is
excellent but I’m not sure that all their methods of organising are conducive
to achieving this.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">You have just initiated the </span></b><a href="http://www.globalecosocialistnetwork.net/"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Global Ecosocialist
Network</span></b></a><b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> (GEN) bringing together
activists and researchers from across the Global North and South. Can you
explain what you hope to achieve?</span></b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 16.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 15.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The developing
climate emergency has generated much increased public awareness of climate
change and the environment generally and a new wave of activism which many
socialists are part of and engaging positively with. However, the current
environmental discourse – internationally – both in terms of the media and most
of the public is dominated by what could be called ‘green liberalism’. A more
radical version of green liberalism is also prevalent among activists along
with a vague ‘deep green’ consciousness. This goes together with an
understanding of system change as essentially a change in collective mind set
which lends itself to illusions in the possibility of converting corporations
and mainstream politicians and the State.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 16.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 15.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">At the moment the
socialist voice in the movement is very limited, certainly not dominant. But
the socialist voice is essential because capitalism is not going resolve either
the climate change issue or the wider environmental crisis. Socialist
transformation of society is objectively necessary. Moreover a socialist
approach is crucial to winning over and mobilizing the mass of working class
people. Unfortunately, in this extremely urgent situation much of the international
revolutionary left is very weak.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 16.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 15.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Our network is an
attempt in a small way to improve this situation, to amplify the socialist
voice and reach out to new forces. Its initial aim is to bring ecosocialists
together to facilitate the exchange and propagation of socialist
environmentalist ideas along with reports on the development of the crisis and
resistance from around the world. Later it may be able to hold conferences and
issue calls for action.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Marx’s ‘ecological writings’ have
been fairly recently written about by writers like John Bellamy Foster, and
others. Can you explain why a structural challenge to capitalism is essential,
and how Marxism can help in this challenge?</span></b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">First, I think we should acknowledge the enormously important
intellectual work done by </span><a href="https://johnbellamyfoster.org/"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">John Bellamy Foster</span></b></a><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> and his collaborators such as
Paul Burkett and Ian Angus. There was a widespread interpretation, including
among Marxists, of Marx as ‘productionist’ and a ‘super industrialiser’ and therefore
anti-environmentalist. They demolished this myth. Speaking personally I owe a
considerable debt to John Bellamy Foster for his book </span><a href="https://monthlyreview.org/product/marxs_ecology/?v=79cba1185463"><b><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Marx’s Ecology</span></i></b></a><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">. When I read it after more than 30
years as a Marxist it substantially transformed and deepened my understanding
of Marxism. The concept of the ‘metabolic rift’ is hugely important. I’m very
proud that he is a sponsor of GEN. Ian Angus’s </span><a href="https://monthlyreview.org/product/facing_the_anthropocene/?v=79cba1185463"><b><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Facing the Anthropocene</span></i></b></a><i><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> </span></i><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">– he’s another
sponsor – is also brilliant.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 16.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 15.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I have already
explained above the essential reason why we need a structural challenge to
capitalism but this applies at every level. Production for profit is inherently
destructive of nature whether we are talking about the dumping of toxic waste
round the corner from where I live, to the plastic choking the oceans, to the
deadly pollution of the air – all the way to the overarching challenge of
climate change.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 16.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 15.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">What is more
capitalism will ensure that the response to climate disasters which it is
generating will be callous, cruel, class based and racist. This has been
demonstrated time and again from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans to Hurricane
Maria in Puerto Rico to the fires in Australia. We need to challenge capitalist
priorities, structures and the system as a whole, not only to stop
environmental degradation and catastrophic climate change but also to deal with
its effects.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">ROAPE, a radical review and website
on political economy, focuses on Africa. Unfortunately, we have not covered the
climate emergency in enough detail recently. The mobilisations last year were
weak across the continent, as inspiring as they were. What role does Africa
have to play in the struggle against climate change and how do you see the
Global Ecosocialist Network helping?</span></b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 16.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 15.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Africa is
absolutely crucial to the struggle against climate change. In terms of
immediate effects Africa will almost certainly be the worst hit part of the
world. The drought in Southern and Eastern Africa is already truly deadly and
the extent of poverty in Africa will magnify the consequences of every climate
disaster and extreme weather event. That this comes on top of the fact that
Africa, as a whole, has the lowest per capita carbon footprint of any continent
makes Africa the litmus test of any verbal commitment to climate justice.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 16.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 15.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Moreover the racist
hierarchy of death in the world will ensure that hundreds or thousands of lives
lost in central or eastern Africa will be less reported and count for less in
terms of Western consciousness than five or ten lives lost in California or
Australia.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 16.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 15.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Mass mobilizations
in Africa linked to demands for climate justice would be the best possible
antidote to this state of affairs.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 16.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 15.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">It is therefore a
key task of the Global Ecosocialist Network to do what it can to rectify the
disgraceful neglect of the situation in Africa and to stimulate radical
resistance in the African continent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">We are very pleased that Africa is well represented among our initial
sponsors and we have already published an excellent article on the </span><a href="http://www.globalecosocialistnetwork.net/2020/01/28/catastrophe-is-upon-us-the-grim-view-from-southern-africa/"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">terrible situation in Southern and Eastern Africa by Rehad Desai</span></b></a><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">, the South African
radical film maker, who is also a member of the Network’s Interim Steering
Committee.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">What are the immediate tasks for the
network, and how do we expand it?</span></b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 16.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 15.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The most immediate
task is to expand the readership of the website and the membership of the
Network both through individuals joining and organisations affiliating. For
this we need our existing members and supporters to actively promote GEN and
recruit to it. Here it is important to stress that joining GEN is ‘commitment
light’: it does not entail any major obligations in terms of activity, nor does
it impinge on any individual’s or organisation’s existing political practice.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">If in the next period we can gain enough members and resources – we have
no external funding whatsoever – we can move to the next stage of convening
some kind of international meeting or conference. Hopefully this would enable
us to put the Network on a sounder democratic footing than it has at present –
obviously doing this on a global basis presents certain problems e.g.
anywhere such a meeting is convened, be it Rio or Paris, Cape Town, Lagos,
Mumbai or Sydney, will be much harder for some comrades to reach than others.
Possibly down the line we can develop multiple regional foci or centres. The
holding of the </span><a href="https://sdg.iisd.org/events/2020-un-climate-change-conference-unfccc-cop-26/"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Cop 26 Conference in Glasgow in November</span></b></a><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> may also
serve as a focus for us.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 16.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 15.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Meanwhile any
support ROAPE can give us in terms of written input to the website, publicity,
individual membership and organisational affiliation will be most welcome.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">John Molyneux is a socialist, writer
and activist and editor of Irish Marxist Review. John is also a founder of
the </span></b><a href="http://www.globalecosocialistnetwork.net/2019/12/22/steering-committee/"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Global Ecosocialist Network</span></b></a><b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">.</span></b><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p> </p><div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-67854698317195898282020-09-03T11:44:00.003+00:002020-09-03T11:44:37.210+00:00The Return of Stalinism<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><a name="_GoBack"></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
Return of Stalinism?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">John Molyneux<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i>This first appeared in Irish Marxist Review 24.</i></span></p>
<p class="fst" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-left: 40.0pt;"><span style="color: black;">Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts
and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as
tragedy, the second time as farce...<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-left: 40.0pt;"><span style="color: black;">The
tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the
living. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-left: 40.0pt;"><span style="color: black;">Karl
Marx, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: black;">When the Berlin Wall
came down in 1989 with the fall of the ‘Communist’ regimes in Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union collapsed soon after in 1991,Stalinism, together with
socialism in general, was widely pronounced dead. The death of Stalinism was
proclaimed not only by the right but by many on the left who hoped that its
demise would clear the way for a genuine socialism from below. And, in fact,
much of this was true. In particular, the once mighty international communist
movement, which brought us truly mass communist parties in places such as Italy,
France, Greece and South Africa and was globally hegemonic on the left, has
shrivelled to a fraction of its former glory. Nevertheless, it is now clear
that Stalinism, however diminished, survived this catastrophe both at the level
of state power in certain places (e.g. China, partly, North Korea, Vietnam and
Cuba) and in the consciousness and organisations of sections of the
international left (the KKE in Greece, the French CP, the South African CP, the
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Morning Star</i> in Britain and so on).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: black;">Moreover – and this is
the occasion of this article – there are signs of a certain revival of various
forms of Stalinism among a layer of young people on the left, including in
Ireland. In light of this, it seems worthwhile to revisit the question of
Stalinism: to examine the nature of the beast and assess the role it has played
internationally and in Ireland.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: black;">To assess Stalinism as
a historical phenomenon, we first need to recognise that it has various
manifestations and that, while these are all related to one another, they are
by no means all ‘the same’. I would distinguish the following main categories:
1) Stalinism in Russia under Stalin, known as ‘high Stalinism’;2) Comintern Stalinism;
3)Stalinism after Stalin in Russia and Eastern Europe; 4) Stalinism in the Third
World (China, Cuba etc.). I will look at them in turn and then say something
about the specific role of Stalinism in Ireland. Because this necessitates
covering a vast amount of history on an international scale, it will not be
possible in one article to offer detailed substantiation for all the points
made, but I will endeavour to supply references to such substantiation in the
notes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 12.0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">High Stalinism<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p style="line-height: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: black;">Joseph Stalin was
appointed General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party on 3 April 1922. At
this stage, this was an administrative position and not at all equivalent to
party leader, as it later became. Lenin was already seriously ill at this time,
and in</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"> May1922, he suffered
his first stroke, temporarily losing his ability to speak and being paralysed
on his right side. With Lenin politically offside, leadership within the
Communist Party, and therefore the state, passed to the ‘triumvirate’ of
Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin. This alliance was formed, explicitly, to
marginalise and combat Trotsky.Within it, Zinoviev and Kamenev (both long-standing
associates of Lenin) were generally seen as the senior partners.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 12.0pt;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">During
this period, Lenin, as he started to recover, became increasingly concerned
about and hostileto Stalin. He worried about Stalin’s bureaucratic methods, his
increasing power and his Great Russian bullying tendencies in his handling of
the national question in Georgia. In January 1923, the ill Lenin dictated a
note urging comrades to seek the removal of Stalin from his post as General
Secretary, but a further stroke rendered him unable to pursue this and, after a
long illness, he died in January 1924.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 12.0pt;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">In
the period 1923–24, Stalin operated in coalition with Zinoviev and Kamenev
while steadily building up his control over the rising bureaucracy. In late
1924, he moved against Zinoviev and Kamenev while also promulgating his key
doctrine of ‘socialism in one country’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn2" name="_ednref2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
(Prior to this, Bolshevik doctrine had been that, ultimately, the Russian
Revolution could not survive and socialism could not be built without spreading
the revolution internationally.) Zinoviev and Kamenev joined forces with
Trotsky to oppose Stalin, but in 1927, Stalin, backed by Bukharin, was
completely victorious, getting his opponents removed from the Central Committee
and deporting Trotsky to the remote Alma Ata on the Chinese border.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 12.0pt;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">In
1928–29, Stalin launched policies of forced industrialisation (the Five Year
Plan), and forced collectivisation of agriculture. At the same time, he turned
against and removed his ally, Bukharin, who favoured slower, more
peasant-friendly economic growth. From this point on, Stalin was the effective
personal dictator in Russia. He continued to rule, without serious internal
challenge, until his death in 1953. This period included the transformation of
Russia into a major industrial nation (the second largest economy in the world),
the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War (at the cost of 20–25
million Russian lives) and Russia’s emergence as a world superpower with
nuclear weapons and the onset of the Cold War. It also included the
establishment by the early 1930sof a totalitarian police state in which no
opposition of any kind was tolerated, not even the most limited literary,
poetic or philosophical criticism. It was possible to be persecuted for having
the ‘wrong’, i.e. disapproved of, theory of genetics or writing the wrong kind
of symphony or to end up in a camp in Siberia for lateness to work.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 12.0pt;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">This
regime lasted until Stalin’s death and beyond, but within this, there was a
period of intense, almost manic repression between 1934 and 1938. It began with
the assignation of the prominent Stalin supporter Sergei Kirov in December
1934, which served as the excuse for a huge crackdown. In the Great Purges that
followed, millions of workers and peasants were sent to the Gulag (network of
prison camps) in Siberia and hundreds of thousands were shot – many of them
Communist Party members and officials. The terror culminated in the Moscow
Trials of 1936–38, massive show trials in which many leading Old Bolsheviks
(veterans of the Revolution) were put on trial for treason. These included
Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rykov, Pyatakov and Radek, most of whomwere
summarily executed. Three features of this period were particularly
nightmarish: a) You didn’t have to be an actual opponent of the regime to be
persecuted – it was enough to fall foul of your boss or a minor local official
to find yourself accused, and accusation was tantamount to conviction; b)
people were regularly accused not only of crimes they did not commit but of
crimes they couldn’t have committed (thus, leading communists who had played
major roles in the Russian Revolution were accused of having been fascist
agents all along and having plotted to murder Lenin, all at the behest of Leon
Trotsky; c) many of the leading old revolutionaries, such as Zinoviev and
Kamenev, were induced by threats, torture or other pressures to confess to
these outlandish crimes.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn3" name="_ednref3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[iii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>Another
feature of the period was the development of an extreme cult of personality
around Stalin (a feature subsequently replicated by other Stalinist leaders
such as Mao, Kim Il Sung, Nicolae Ceausescu and Enver Hoxha) in which not only
was the length and breadth of Russia covered in his portraits and statues, but
he was regularly hailed in the press in the most obsequious terms as the ‘all
knowing’ father of his people, the sun around which the stars revolve and such
like.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 12.0pt;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The greatest figure of our time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-left: 40.0pt;"><span style="color: black;">Thanks
to Stalin and to the Communist Party which he heads, as its outstanding guide,
the world of socialism is invincible.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-left: 40.0pt;"><span style="color: black;">Thanks
to Stalin, and to the genius which he inherited and developed further from
Marx, Engels and Lenin, the working class and oppressed peoples of all lands
have a mighty example and ally in their struggle against capitalist
exploitation, oppression and war.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn4" name="_ednref4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[iv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-left: 40.0pt;"><span style="background: white; color: black;">The genius and will of Stalin, the architect of the rising
world of free humanity, lives on for ever.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: 42.55pt;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The great theoretician
of communism ...an unsurpassed master of Marxiandialectics.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn5" name="_ednref5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[v]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 12.0pt;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">But
although these are all facts about Stalin and his rule, a Marxist analysis must
go beyond this narrative to examine the deeper social and class forces
involved. Stalinism represented not a continuation of the Russian Revolution of
1917 but its counter-revolutionary negation, and it was part of the counter-revolutionary
wave that swept Europe after the initial post World War 1 international
revolutionary upsurge. This wave brought Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany,
O’Higgins in Ireland, Pilsudki in Poland, Horthy in Hungary, Chiang Kai-Shek in
Chinaand Stalin in Russia. However, Stalin did not create the counter-revolution
in Russia, any more than Lenin created the revolution; rather, he was its
expression, the political leader of the rising bureaucratic class that
displaced and replaced the working class at the helm of the Russian state. The
combination of two major developments produced this process: the social
disintegration of the Russian working class and pressure from international
capitalism.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn6" name="_ednref6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[vi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="mso-line-height-alt: 9.6pt;"><span style="color: black;">The Russian
working class, which had reached the highest level of consciousness and
revolutionary struggle yet seen anywhere in the world in 1917, had virtually
ceased to exist by 1921. In the course of the Civil War, the vast majority of
the most militant and politically conscious workers had either been killed in
battle or raised to the position of state officials. Under the combined impact
of the Civil War, the Revolution itself and the World War that preceded it, the
Russian economy had collapsed utterly. Gross industrial production fell to 31%
of its 1913 level, large-scale industrial production to 21% andsteel production
to 4.7%.</span>The<span style="color: black;"> transport system was in ruins.Epidemics
and famine raged. The total of industrial workers fell from about three million
in 1917 to one and a quarter million in 1921, and those that remained were
politically exhausted. As Lenin put it in 1921:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="quoteb" style="margin-left: 47.5pt; mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">[The] industrial proletariat ... in our country, owing to
the war and to the desperate poverty and ruin has become declassed, i.e.
dislodged from its class groove and has ceased to exist as a proletariat.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn7" name="_ednref7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn7;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[vii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="fst" style="mso-line-height-alt: 9.6pt;"><span style="color: black;">The
Bolshevik party found itself suspended in a vacuum. To administer the country,
it had to take over and use a vast army of Tsarist officials, and, against all
its intentions, it itself became bureaucratised. Bureaucracy is essentially a
hierarchy of officials not subject to popular control from below. In Russia,
the social force that Marxists (above all, Lenin) counted on to prevent the
development of bureaucracy, an active revolutionary working class, had been cut
from under the feet of the party. In this situation, it was impossible to
implement the Marxist programme in pure form. For a period, it was possible to
mount a holding operation, relying on the hardened socialist commitment of the
Bolshevik old guard, to cling to the basic revolutionary aspirations while
making the necessary practical compromises (for example, the New Economic
Policy or NEP) and waiting for help from the international revolution. This, in
essence, was the course taken by Lenin. But failing the international
revolution (and it did fail), a stark choice had eventually to be made:either
remain loyal to the theory and goal of international proletarian revolution,
with the possibility of losing state power in Russia, or cling to power and
abandon the theory and goal. The situation was extremely complex – and the
participants did not see it in these clear terms – but, essentially, Trotskyism
was the product of the first choice and Stalinism of the second.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="fst" style="mso-line-height-alt: 9.6pt;"><span style="color: black;">The
second main objective factor in the rise of Stalinism was the isolation of the
Russian Revolution and the consequent immense pressure of international
capitalism on the Soviet regime. The imperialists obviously wanted to see the
restoration of capitalism in Russia and were prepared to exert political,
economic and, ultimately, military leverage to bring that about. Given that the
capitalist world was enormously stronger than the Soviet Union in all these
respects, how could this pressure be resisted? The Bolshevik answer to his
question – and it remained Trotsky’s answer – was by spreading the revolution.
But Stalin’s adoption of ‘socialism in one country’, which was not just his own
innovation but expressed the mood and interests of the bureaucracy he
represented, turned its back on that solution. The only alternative was to
compete economically and militarily with the West. In a country as poor and
underdeveloped as Russia in the 1920s, that meant industrialisation and the
accumulation of capital as rapidly as possiblebased on the exploitation of the
labour of the working class and the peasantry, i.e. competition with the West
on capitalist terms. Stalin’s ‘strength’, if that is what you can call it, was
that he understood this and pursued it ruthlessly:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="quoteb" style="margin-left: 47.5pt; mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">No comrades ... the pace must not be slackened! On the
contrary, we must quicken it as much as is within our powers and possibilities.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="margin-left: 47.5pt; mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">To slacken the pace would mean to lag behind; and those who
lag behind are beaten. We do not want to be beaten. No, we don’t want to. The
history of old ... Russia ... she was ceaselessly beaten for her backwardness
... For military backwardness, for cultural backwardness, for political
backwardness, for industrial backwardness, for agricultural backwardness ...<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="margin-left: 47.5pt; mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced
countries. We must make good this lag in ten years. Either we do it or they
crush us.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn8" name="_ednref8" style="mso-endnote-id: edn8;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[viii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">This
was the meaning of the intense industrialisation of the Five Year Plan and the
forced collectivisation of agriculture. The process transformed the bureaucracy
into a ruling capitalist class and Russia into a bureaucratic state capitalist
society.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn9" name="_ednref9" style="mso-endnote-id: edn9;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[ix]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Its immediate
consequences were a huge increase in industrial production, a dramatic fall in
the living standards of the working class and extreme famine in the
countryside. It was this extreme contradiction between the crushing of the
working class and peasantry and the ‘Marxist/Communist’ rhetoric of the regime that
generated the extreme repression against anyone who just might object or point
to the realities, especially if, like the Old Bolsheviks, they had a living
connection to 1917.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">If
Stalinist Russia was this monstrous, how is it possible for some ‘socialists’
and ‘communists’ today to defend it? I will deal here with four main arguments
put forward by apologists for Stalinism.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">First,
that the case against Stalinist Russia put here is just a recycling of Western
capitalist propaganda. It is commonly assumed and claimed that socialist
critics of Russia get their information from the capitalist media and from
right-wing pro-capitalist academics. This is quite false. For a start, there
are a number of eye-witness accounts of repression in Russia by long-standing
revolutionaries, such as Victor Serge and Ante Ciliga. Then there is the fact that
the key critiques of Stalinist Russia such as Trotsky’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Revolution Betrayed</i>, Roy Medvedev’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Let History Judge</i> and Tony Cliff’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">State Capitalism in Russia</i>are based on extensive use of Russian
sources. Besides this, many of the most damning facts, such as the appalling
Moscow Trials, were not secret but were trumpeted around the world. If
‘Marxists’ are prepared to believe that the majority of the Bolshevik Central
Committee who led the October Revolution were really fascist agents, as was
claimed in the show trials, then there is little hope for them. In any case,
the Soviet state later conceded that these were frame-ups and rehabilitated
many of the victims.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn10" name="_ednref10" style="mso-endnote-id: edn10;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[x]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">A
second line of defence concedes that there were ‘problems’ in the Stalin era
(and after)– ‘mistakes’ were made, even ‘crimes’ were committed – but maintains
that the basic social structure, especially the economy, remained basically
sound and socialist. This argument is more complex because it comes in many
forms, ranging from the official Soviet explanation after 1956 that ‘the
problem’ was that Stalin allowed or encouraged a ‘cult of personality’ to
develop around him as an individual, all the way through escalating degrees of
criticism to the so-called ‘orthodox’ Trotskyist view that the Stalinist
bureaucracy was out and out counter-revolutionary and that the Russian
Revolution had seriously degenerated but that it remained a workers’ state
because of the state ownership of all the major means of production.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn11" name="_ednref11" style="mso-endnote-id: edn11;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> At the most apologetic,
pro-Soviet end of this spectrum, this view is simply incompatible with the now
well known facts: with the total absence of any real democracy in the one-party
police state and with the vast scale and long duration of the repression, which
cannot be attributed to one or a few individuals but required a huge layer to
administer it and which, in its essentials, endured after Stalin’s death until
the time of Gorbachev; and with the large-scale and extravagant privileges of
the ruling bureaucracy.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn12" name="_ednref12" style="mso-endnote-id: edn12;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Even its most radical
anti-Stalinist form, that espoused by Trotsky himself,<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn13" name="_ednref13" style="mso-endnote-id: edn13;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xiii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> this attempt to
separate the realm of politics and the state from the realm of the economy and
treat them as opposed to one another, runs into deep contradictions. In a
society where the state owns the bulk of the means of production and plans the
economy, the class that controls the state and the planning clearly controls
the economy. And it was a matter of demonstrable fact that the working class
controlled neither the state, nor the planning process, nor the workplaces. Far
from there being workers’ control, workers did not even have the limited
protection of independent trade unions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">In
the end, the argument that Stalinist Russia was either socialist or a workers’
state, even a flawed or degenerated one, boiled down to the negative claim that
it could not be capitalist because it was dominated by state ownership. But
history provides a multitude of examples of state capitalism, i.e. of state-owned
enterprises and industries being clearly capitalist, ranging from the tobacco
industry under Napoleon<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn14" name="_ednref14" style="mso-endnote-id: edn14;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xiv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> to the Pentagon and the
US military and much of the Chinese economy today. Even when the state ownership
of industry is close to total, this doesn’t stop that industry being run on a
capitalist basis, for the accumulation of capital at the expense of the working
class, in competition with the forces of world capitalism, as happened in the
USSR.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">The
third main argument in favour of supporting Stalinist Russia is that it
defeated Hitler and the Nazis. Clearly, this has a certain emotive appeal, but
we should note that a) the same argument can be, and is, used to justify
Churchill and the British Tory Party, and b) from the Roman army’s defeat of
Spartakus to the Battle of Waterloo or the killing fields of the Somme or the
US at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there is no basis for the idea that victory in
war makes a regime or state in any way progressive. Moreover, there is the
inconvenient fact that, but for the disastrous role of Stalinism in Germany in
the early 1930s, it is likely that Hitler would have been stopped from coming
to power at all. (I will amplify this point in the next section.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">Stalinism and the Communist International<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">The
Communist International or Comintern was founded in March 1919. By the time of
its Second Congress, it had the support of mass working class parties in a
number of countries and 67 affiliates globally. The Comintern was conceived of,
by its founders, as a single world party of socialist revolution. Its task was
to coordinate and carry through in each individual country the proletarian
revolution begun in Russia in October 1917. The Comintern in its early years
constituted the highest point ever achieved, before or since, by working class
socialist organisation.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn15" name="_ednref15" style="mso-endnote-id: edn15;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">But
in winning the struggle for power inside the Russian Communist Party in the
1920s, the Stalinist bureaucracy also took control of the Comintern. They were
able to do this by exploiting the prestige of the Russian Revolution and
because the national leaderships of the other parties lacked confidence in
themselves as a result of their almost universal experience of defeat. This
rapidly had a devastating impact on the practice of the Communist parties
globally. In line with Stalin’s new doctrine of ‘socialism in one country’, the
CPs came to be treated by the Comintern leadership not as agents of
workingclass revolution but as instruments of Soviet foreign policy. In particular,
they were steered towards cultivating various reformist and bourgeois forces
who, it was hoped, could be relied upon to hinder and oppose Western
intervention in Russia.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">This
resulted in two major defeats for the international working class in Britain
and China, respectively. In Britain, the Soviet trade unions (on orders from
the Party, of course) formed an alliance with the leaders of the British TUC.
This was known as the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee, and it operated in
the run up to the British General Strike of 1926. As a result, the British
Communist Party and its trade union militants were instructed to moderate
(effectively cease) their criticism of the trade union leaders, and this had a
disastrous effect when the TUC General Council called off the General Strike
just as it was gaining strength. The Communist Party and the workers it
influenced were taken by surprise and totally disoriented.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn16" name="_ednref16" style="mso-endnote-id: edn16;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xvi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> In China, the disaster
was much worse. There, the young but large Communist Party was told to form an
alliance with the bourgeois nationalist Kuomintang (KMT), in which they
completely subordinated themselves to the KMT. This was because Stalin hoped
the KMT, led by Chiang Kai-shek, would prove a useful international ally. But
when the workers of China rose up en masse in 1925–27, Chiang Kai-shek waited
for the opportunity to strike and then put the unprepared and unresisting
Chinese Communists to the sword (‘literally’ as they say) in the Shanghai
Massacre in April 1927.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn17" name="_ednref17" style="mso-endnote-id: edn17;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xvii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">Even
more catastrophic were the consequences of Stalinist policies in Germany during
the rise of the Nazis. From 1924–28, the Comintern moved rightwards to
opportunist alliances, but in 1928/29 it lurched dramatically ‘leftwards’ to an
extreme and disastrous ultra-leftism. This turn, known as ‘the Third Period’ or
‘Third Period Stalinism’, was imposed by Moscow in tandem with Stalin’s
introduction of the Five Year Plan and forced collectivisation of agriculture.
Stalin needed exaggerated left-wing rhetoric to cover his establishment of
state capitalism and his personal dictatorship in Russia, and the German and
international working class were made to pay the price. After the Wall St Crash
of 1929 plunged the world and especially Germany into deep crisis, Hitler and
his Nazi Party started to grow massively. In 1928, the Nazis polled 800,000
votes. In 1930, it shot up to 6,400,000. The thoroughly Stalinist German
Communist Party (KPD) refused to recognise the danger. Instead, they claimed
this huge advance constituted the ‘beginning of the end’ for ‘Mr.Hitler’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn18" name="_ednref18" style="mso-endnote-id: edn18;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xviii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> and that they, the
KPD, were the real victors in the election, despite getting only 4,600,000
votes. They also comforted themselves with the disastrous illusion that, if the
fascists came to power, they would soon shoot their bolt and that ‘after
Hitler’ would come their turn.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">Moreover,
the Stalinists accompanied this vain bragging with an ultra-sectarian refusal
to form a united front with the Social Democrats against the Nazis on the
grounds that the Social Democrats had become ‘social fascists’ and that
national fascism and social democracy were not opposites but ‘twins’. This
appalling ultra-leftism assisted the Nazis in two ways. On the one hand, it
lulled rank-and-file Communists into a false sense of security. If the social
democrats and the fascists were twins, then there was no need to be
particularly alarmed at the prospect of a Nazi government. On the other hand,
it rendered impossible any united resistance to the fascists on the ground. The
consequence was that, when the German bourgeoisie lifted Hitler into power in
January 1933, the German working class – on paper the strongest, best organised
working class in Europe –surrendered without a fight, and the first act of the
Nazi government was to smash to smithereens all the organisations of the German
working class, Communist and social democratic alike, before going on to plunge
the world into war and carry out the Holocaust.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn19" name="_ednref19" style="mso-endnote-id: edn19;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xix]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">Once
Hitler was in power, it seems gradually to have dawned on Stalin that the Nazi
regime, with its ambitions for lebensraum (living space) in the East,
constituted a serious military threat to the Soviet state. This realisation brought
about a 180 degree turn in Comintern policy from ultra-left opposition to any
united front to the indiscriminate unity of the Popular Front. The strategy of
the Popular Front, pioneered in France in 1934, was adopted at the 7<sup>th</sup>
Congress of the Comintern in 1935.It involved the attempt to construct grand
alliances in every country, not just between working class organisations and
the left but also with so-called ‘democratic’ bourgeois parties, such as the
Radical Party in France or progressive Tories in Britain, while behind the
scenes Stalin manoeuvred for an alliance at state level with Britain and
France.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">As
a strategy, Popular Frontism faced its decisive tests in France and Spain and
was a miserable failure in both cases. In France, it met with the initial
success of electing a People’s Front government under Leon Blumin 1936, but
when this unleashed a massive general strike and wave of factory occupations
which threatened to challenge capitalism, the Blum government, crucially aided
by the French CP who had militants in the factories, sold out and settled the
strike. From that point on, the Blum government lost any radical impulse. It
broke up in 1938, and this prepared the way for the ignominious collapse in the
face of the Nazi armies in 1940.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn20" name="_ednref20" style="mso-endnote-id: edn20;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xx]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">In
Spain, a Popular Front government was elected in February 1936 but was met by an
armed fascist rebellion led by General Francisco Franco. This led to three
years of bitter Civil War in which the fascists, backed by Hitler and Mussolini
(while Britain and France stayed neutral), were eventually victorious and more
than 200,000 anti-fascists were slaughtered. Franco’s initial coup was met by a
mass revolutionary response from the working class, especially in Barcelona,
but this uprising was restrained and then repressed by the Popular Front,
including the Spanish CP, in the name of ‘unity’ against Franco. ‘First win the
war, then worry about the revolution’ was the line, but, without revolutionary
action from below, the working class was demobilised and demoralised, and thewar
could not be, and was not, won on a purely military basis.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn21" name="_ednref21" style="mso-endnote-id: edn21;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">This
showed the fundamental flaw in the Popular Front strategy and how it differed
from the united front. The purpose of the united front was to maximise the
fighting strength of the working class, i.e. to increase the size and militancy
of demonstrations, mass strikes and workers’ occupations. The effect – and the
precondition – of the Popular Front with its ‘unity’ with the bourgeoisie and
its parties was to hold back and limit the workingclass struggle. Nor could it
be otherwise because the British and French capitalists would not dream of
entering an alliance on any other terms. Millions of rank-and-file Communist
workers were deluded on this score; Stalin was not. When he couldn’t get a
military alliance with British and French imperialism,Stalin opted for a
non-aggression deal with Hitler (the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1938–June 1941),
and when that broke down with Hitler’s invasion of Russia in 1941 and he got
his alliance with Britain (and the US), Stalin unceremoniously wound up the
Comintern in 1943 as a ‘gesture of good will’ to the allies. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">Thus,
the balance sheet of the influence of Stalinism on the Communist International
and the international workingclass struggle from the British General Strike to
the Second World War was unrelentingly negative and greatly assisted the
advance of the fascism it later claimed credit for defeating.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">Stalinism after Stalin<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">At
the end of the Second World War, Stalinism extended its grip across Eastern
Europe. Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Roumania, Bulgaria,
Yugoslavia and Albania all ‘went Communist’, i.e. established regimes that
economically and politically were modelled on the Soviet Union with state
ownership of the major means of production, a ruling bureaucratic class and a
single-party dictatorship. In every case except Yugoslavia and Albania, where
Communist-led partisans took power, these regimes were the result of the
westward sweep of the Red Army on its way to Berlin and not of independent
people’s movements from below.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn22" name="_ednref22" style="mso-endnote-id: edn22;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> And this division of
Europe was broadly agreed between the Great Powers (US, Britain and Russia) at
the Yalta Conference in 1945,<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn23" name="_ednref23" style="mso-endnote-id: edn23;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxiii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> though that did not
prevent the Cold War breaking out within a few years.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">The
death of Stalin in 1953 was followed by a power struggle within the leadership
of the Soviet Communist Party, which was eventually won by Nikita Khrushchev, a
long-standing Stalinist apparatchik. Khrushchev promptly shocked the world and
the international Communist movement by embarking on a limited process of
liberalisation and convening the 20<sup>th</sup> Congress of the CPSU at which,
in a Secret Speech, he acknowledged and denounced some of the crimes of Stalin.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn24" name="_ednref24" style="mso-endnote-id: edn24;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxiv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> However, this
liberalisation was only a power move by Khrushchev to win support against his
opponents, and its very narrow limits were rapidly made clear. The moment
dissidents began to question the ongoing party dictatorship and police state,
they were faced with severe repression.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">This
took its most extreme form in Hungary. In October 1956, a mass student protest
in Budapest against Stalinist control turned rapidly into a nationwide workers’
revolution which threw up numerous workers’ councils and brought the collapse
of the Stalinist Government. But on 4 November, the Russian army mounted a full-scale
invasion of Hungary with 30,000 troops and over 1,000 tanks. The Hungarian
revolutionaries resisted, but after six days of street fighting,</span>they <span style="color: black;">were crushed, suffering more than 7,500 casualties.
Unsurprisingly, the Stalinists in Russia, Hungary and internationally denounced
the Hungarian workers as fascist counter-revolutionaries.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn25" name="_ednref25" style="mso-endnote-id: edn25;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>Apart from being
factually false, this accusation plunged Stalinist apologists into serious
contradictions. How was it to be explained that after 10years of ‘glorious’
socialism, fascism suddenly gained mass support in Hungary? Nor was this
contradiction restricted to Hungary –the entire period of Stalinist rule and
Russian domination in Eastern Europe was punctuated by popular revolts: Berlin
workers in 1953, Polish intellectuals and workers in 1956 and then again on a
mass scale with Solidarnosc in 1980, Czechoslovakia and the Prague Spring in
1968, Yugoslavia in 1987 and so on untilthe fall of the Berlin Wall, the Rumanian
Revolution and the collapse of the whole system in 1989–91.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn26" name="_ednref26" style="mso-endnote-id: edn26;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxvi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>Either Eastern European
workers had an in-built aversion to socialism and a congenital affection for
fascism (in which case, how did Eastern Europe go ‘socialist’ in the first
place?) or the ‘socialism’ that was imposed on them must have left a great deal
to be desired.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">From
1956 onwards, these contradictions began to affect the consciousness of
European Communists. At the time of Hungary, the Western party leaderships,
though shaken by Khrushchev’s revelations, remained loyal to Moscow, but there
were considerable rank-and-file splits, especially in Britain, which saw over a
quarter of the members leave and the emergence of the anti-Stalinist New Left around
E.P.Thompson.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn27" name="_ednref27" style="mso-endnote-id: edn27;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxvii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
By the time it came to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, many Western
CPs, including the British, actually opposed the invasion and, for the first
time, defied the Moscow line.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">This
led to the gradual development of what became known as Eurocommunism.Eurocommunism
was spearheaded by the Italian Communist Party, then the largest CP in Europe,
in the 1970s. It involved a combination of increasing distance from Moscow,
including critiques of high Stalinism that could sound superficially
Trotskyist, with an evolution rightwards in domestic policies towards social
democratic centrism.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn28" name="_ednref28" style="mso-endnote-id: edn28;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxviii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> This culminated in
Italy in the mid-1970sin the ‘historic compromise’, whereby the CP made an
alliance with the Christian Democrats. It also brought with it a shift away
from grassroots industrial organisation in the direction of ‘cultural politics’
allegedly inspired by Gramsci.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn29" name="_ednref29" style="mso-endnote-id: edn29;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxix]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">However,
social democratic reformism <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">with</i> a
‘communist’ tinge proved no more successful than social democratic reformism <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">without</i> a ‘communist’ tinge. In Italy,
the once mighty CP went into gradual but chronic decline, and Eurocommunism
proved a failure everywhere it was put to the test, culminating in the utter
debacle and surrender by Eurocommunism’s descendants in Syriza. Moreover, the
ongoing underlying dependence of the Eurocommunist CPs on Russia (both ideologically
and, in many cases, materially) was demonstrated by the fact that, when the
Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989–91, so did the Western CPs
in many cases.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn30" name="_ednref30" style="mso-endnote-id: edn30;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxx]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">Stalinism in the Global South<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">If
Stalinism in Europe has been a story of disaster and failure, in the Global
South – what used to be called the Third World or ‘the developing countries’–
it can at least lay claim to a number of historic victories. There has also
been no shortage of catastrophes where Stalinist policy has contributed
directly to terrible defeat (for example, Indonesia in 1965, where half a
million people were massacred, the Pinochet coup in Chile in 1973 and numerous
calamities in the Middle East). But against this can be set such major
successes as the Chinese Revolution in 1949, the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the
Vietnamese Revolution and the defeat of the US in 1976 and the overthrow of
Apartheid in South Africa in the early 1990s, and the reflected prestige
accruing from these victories has played a role in both the survival of
Stalinism after 1991 and in its recent limited revival in the West.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">What
accounts for this relative difference is that the Western CPs, for all their
allegiance to the bureaucracy in Moscow, retained a social base in their
respective working class movements and were, therefore, a) blocked from taking
power by the bourgeoisie and b) unable to make a breakthrough while the working
class remained subordinate. In the South, however, Stalinism was able to attach
itself to anti-imperialist bourgeois nationalism and, in some cases, become a
social force that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i> able to come to
power.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">This
assimilation of communism to bourgeois nationalism began as far back as the
Comintern’s policy of subordination to the Kuomintang in the Chinese Revolution
of 1925–27, referred to above. It was further accentuated by the Popular
Frontism of the mid-1930s and by the more or less formal adoption by Third-World
Stalinist parties everywhere of the originally Menshevik ‘stages theory’ of
revolution. In pre-revolutionary Russia, the Mensheviks argued that Russia was
heading for a bourgeois democratic revolution which would therefore have to be led
by the bourgeoisie. The struggle for socialism would only begin after the
bourgeois revolution had consolidated itself and capitalism had become more
fully developed. In the meantime, the working class and its party should accept
a subordinate role (so as not to frighten off the Bourgeois democrats).In
opposition to this, Lenin and the Bolsheviks argued that the bourgeois
democratic revolution would not be led by the bourgeoisie themselves, who were
terrified of revolution, but would have to be led by the working class.
Trotsky, in his theory of permanent revolution, agreed that the democratic
revolution would be led by the working class but also believed that, under
workingclass leadership, the revolution would grow over into a socialist
revolution.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn31" name="_ednref31" style="mso-endnote-id: edn31;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxxi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Stalinism reverted to the Menshevik two-stage theory of revolution, which also
dove-tailed with the use of the Comintern parties as pressure groups in the
interests of Soviet foreign policy. In the absence of a ‘revolutionary’
bourgeoisie in Russia, the Mensheviks more and more tried to assume that role
themselves. The same thing tended to happen with the Stalinist Parties in the
so-called Third World.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">The
classic cases were China and Cuba. After the terrible defeat of 1927 and
several subsequent crushed uprisings, Mao Zedong and the remnants of Chinese
Communism fled to the countryside, to Jiangxi and Hunan, where they commenced a
long guerrilla struggle, which included the epic Long March of the Red Army
through the immense Chinese interior. This culminated, after a period of
renewed limited alliance with the Kuomintang against Japanese invasion, in the
victory of Mao and the Red Army in the Chinese Revolution of 1949. In social
terms, the Red Army was based on the Chinese peasantry, but it was led and
controlled by the déclassé and displaced urban intellectuals of the [Stalinist]
Chinese Communist Party. The role of the Chinese working class in this struggle
was close to zero and certainly not in any way dominant. When the Red Army
marched in victory into Beijing in 1949, the working class remained passive,
and power was taken not by the Chinese peasantry (whose social position, as
Marx and Lenin had argued long previously, precluded them emancipating
themselves or running cities) but by the militarised CP intellectuals. What
they established was not workers’ power or socialism but a Chinese nationalist
state capitalism, disguised under extravagant ‘Marxist’ rhetoric.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn32" name="_ednref32" style="mso-endnote-id: edn32;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxxii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">The
Cuban Revolution of 1959 was also the result of a rural guerrilla war but, in
this case, led not by Communists or the Communist Party but by anti-imperialist
revolutionaries and intellectuals such as Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Camilo
Cienfuegos. As in China, such a revolution could not, by its nature, establish
either workers’ power or peasant power. However, Castro’s guerrilla army lacked
an administrative cadre with which to govern Havana and Cuba. For this, he
turned to the old Stalinist Cuban Communist Party and, in the process,
proclaimed his conversion from nationalist humanism to Marxist-Leninism and
declared (after the event) that Cuba had experienced a socialist revolution. At
the same time, Cuba joined the Soviet bloc and placed itself under Russian
protection. Again, the result was not socialism but state capitalism.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn33" name="_ednref33" style="mso-endnote-id: edn33;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxxiii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">A
third key example is South Africa. Here, as elsewhere, the Stalinist CP adopted
the stages theory of a struggle against apartheid first and a struggle for
socialism later.In accordance with this, the CP made an alliance with black
middle-class nationalist forces in the African National Congress. Within this alliance,
they accepted an influential but ultimately subordinate role (to Oliver Tambo,
Nelson Mandela and so on) and argued against excessive workingclass militancy
or socialist demands. The result was that, when the Apartheid regime finally
capitulated in the early 1990s, South African capitalism survived largely
unscathed. A black bourgeoisie, epitomised by current president Cyril
Ramaphosa, emerged, including many leading Communists;corporate white economic
power and white landownership continued, as did township poverty, and South
Africa remained one of the most unequal countries in the world.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn34" name="_ednref34" style="mso-endnote-id: edn34;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxxiv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">Thus,
in all these cases, as in others such as India, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Ghana,
Mozambique and Tanzania, a real victory was won – national independence – but
it was bourgeois national independence, not socialism. In fundamental class
terms, it was similar, for all the differences in scale, culture and rhetoric,
to what occurred in Ireland with the limited success of the War of Independence
and the defeat of the Irish Revolution.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">Finally,
we should note that while Stalinism in the West has benefitted from its
association with the likes of Castro, Guevara and Ho Chi Minh, it has also
tended to extend its more or less uncritical support for the enemies of US
imperialism to figures such as Assad and Gadaffi, who are plainly oppressors of
their own people, even when the masses in these countries rise up against them.
Stalinist support for Assad, whose suppression of the Syrian Revolution has
involved the slaughter of close to half a million Syrians, is an extreme
example of this. It is worth saying that this approach has a certain ‘radical’
appeal in that it seems to defy American power and the bourgeois media, but in
global terms, it is profoundly counter-revolutionary and denies not only
revolutionary agency but even basic democratic rights to large swathes of the
world’s population.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">Stalinism in Ireland</span></b><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">Because
of the post-Civil War counter-revolution – ‘the carnival of reaction’ following
partition – and the continuing influence of the republican tradition,<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn35" name="_ednref35" style="mso-endnote-id: edn35;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxxv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> the influence of
Stalinism in Ireland has been very weak. Consequently, Irish Stalinism cannot
be held responsible for catastrophes on the scale of the defeat of the British
General Strike and the failure to stop Hitler. Nevertheless, its role has been
damaging.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">The
key to this has been Irish Stalinism’s acceptance and promulgation of the
stagestheory of revolution. As we have seen, this doctrine – Menshevik in
origin – was adopted by the Stalinised Comintern in relation to China in 1925–27
and then generalised to the rest of the developing world. In Ireland, it meant
arguing that Ireland had first to complete its struggle for national political
and economic independence, which would be waged in alliance with the
‘progressive national bourgeoisie’, before beginning the struggle for a
workers’ republic. This was counterposed to Connolly’s denunciation in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Labour in Irish History </i>of the repeated
treachery of the ‘national’ bourgeoisie and his advocacy of the working class
as the only ‘incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn36" name="_ednref36" style="mso-endnote-id: edn36;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxxvi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">One
important turning point where this had an effect was in the Republican Congress
in 1934. This very promising development emerged as a breakaway to the left of
the IRA as a result of the failure of the Army Council to permit agitation
against the Blueshirts and also conducted impressive work against sectarianism
in Belfast. In April 1934, they produced a manifesto which stated ‘We believe a
Republic of a united Ireland will never be achieved except through a struggle
which uproots capitalism on its way’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn37" name="_ednref37" style="mso-endnote-id: edn37;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxxvii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> But, in fact, many in
the Republican Congress leadership, including its main mover, PeadarO’Donnell, were
opposed to raising the demand for a Workers’ Republic, as proposed by Connolly’s
children, Roddy Connolly and Nora Connolly O’Brien. At a Congress in September
1934, the O’Donnell position, which advocated ‘the Republic’ but not ‘the
Workers’ Republic’, was narrowly passed by 99 votes to 84, crucially with the
support of the Irish Communist Party. <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn38" name="_ednref38" style="mso-endnote-id: edn38;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxxviii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> As a result, a
serious opportunity to found a revolutionary party with a base in the working
class was missed for a whole generation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">Its
adoption of the stages theory meant that the Irish Communist Party played a
conservative role on the Irish left for decades to come. Milotte comments that ‘The
assertion that national independence should be fought for prior to, and not in
unison with, the struggle for socialism ultimately led the Irish communist
movement back to supporting Fianna Fáil, and even to declaring that only Fianna
Fáil could unite Ireland and free it from Britain’s grasp’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn39" name="_ednref39" style="mso-endnote-id: edn39;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xxxix]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">Another
channel by which the Stalinist stages theory permeated the Irish left was C.
Desmond Greaves’ influential biography of James Connolly. Greaves was a former
member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Connolly Association.In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Life and Times of James Connolly</i>(1961),<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn40" name="_ednref40" style="mso-endnote-id: edn40;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xl]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>which was widely regarded
as authoritative, he maintained that the ‘mature’ Connolly had come round to
accepting a two-stages view of the Irish Revolution and that this was what led
him to join with Pearse and the nationalists in the 1916 Rising.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn41" name="_ednref41" style="mso-endnote-id: edn41;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xli]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Greaves, in turn, along
with Roy Johnston, was influential in winning the IRA/Sinn Féin over to a
Stalinist version of Marxism in the 1960s, and this in turn fed into the
disaster of the Workers’ Party.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">After
the split between the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA in December 1969,
Official Sinn Féin evolved into Sinn Féin–the Workers’ Party in 1977 and then the
Workers’ Party in 1982. The Workers’ Party, which was thoroughly Stalinist in
its ideology, sought and received a certain amount of support from the Soviet
Union and, notoriously, North Korea. However, it also succeeded in building a
considerable base in the working class, and, in 1989, it won seven seats in Dáil
Eireann with 5% of the vote. However, this remarkable success (by the standard
of Irish history) was immediately undermined by the organisation’s Stalinism. Its
commitment to the stages theory led the Workers’ Party to the view that it
should advocate the industrialisation of Ireland to complete the first stage of
the Irish Revolution, i.e.it should support <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">capitalist
</i>industrialisation. Consequently, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989–91
and the majority of the Workers’ Party TDs became convinced the ‘Communist
project’ had failed, they moved to the right, not the left. In 1992, they split
to form Democratic Left and from there moved on to join the Labour Party.
Inside Labour, they used their considerable organisational skills to capture
the leadership of the party. The upshot was that when the Labour Party formed a
coalition government with Fine Gael in 2011 and proceeded to dramatically
betray its working class voters in a way that has still not been forgiven, it
did so largely under the leadership of former Stalinists in the shape of Eamon
Gilmore, Pat Rabbitte and Rory ‘Ho Chi’ Quinn.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn42" name="_ednref42" style="mso-endnote-id: edn42;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xlii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> One thing these Labour
traitors retained from their Stalinist past was their pathological hatred of
‘the Trots’.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">Conclusion<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">Given
this sorry history, internationally and in Ireland, how is it possible that there
could be any sort of revival of Stalinism?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Quote1" style="mso-line-height-alt: 8.8pt;"><span style="color: black;">First,
there is the fact that most of this history is now quite old and either memory
of it has faded or it is simply not known, which of course is the reason for
this article. There is also the widespread notion that ‘my enemy’s enemy must
be my friend’,as in ‘our ruling class reactionaries denounce Colonel Gadaffi as
a dictator/murderer/mad dog or whatever and we know our rulers are liars so
maybe Gadaffi is not too bad or even a progressive friend of the Libyan people’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_edn43" name="_ednref43" style="mso-endnote-id: edn43;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[xliii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> The folly of this way
of thinking is most evident in the case of Hitler, but there are numerous other
examples: Pol Pot, Mussolini, Idi Amin, Norieda and so on. In the Falklands/Malvinas
War, Thatcher denounced the Argentinian junta – they deserved to be denounced.
What makes the Stalinist dictatorships and the various incarnations of
Stalinism internationally appear different is that, superficially, they employ
Marxist language. This makes it possible for them to sound very radical – for
example, ‘communist’ sounds more radical, more ‘in your face’ than socialist –
but the reality is that Stalinist and Stalinist-influenced parties have almost
always played a very conservative role in struggles everywhere.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">It would, therefore, be a serious
mistake for a new generation radicalising in the face of the decay of
capitalism to turn in the direction of Stalinism in any of its forms.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;"><!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> For a full account of this
episode, including Lenin’s last letters, see Moshe Levin<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, Lenin’s Last Struggle</i>, Ann Arbor, 2005.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref2" name="_edn2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> For Trotsky’s critique of
‘socialism in one country’, see Leon Trotsky, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Third International After Lenin</i>, New York, 1970, especially
pp.3–76.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn3" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref3" name="_edn3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[iii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> For a detailed historical
account of the Stalin era and the purges by a Russian socialist, see Roy
Medvedev, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Let History Judge</i>, New York,
1971. For an eye witness account by a Yugoslav communist, see Ante Ciliga, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Russian Enigma</i>, London, 1979.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn4" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref4" name="_edn4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[iv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">https://www.marxists.org/subject/stalinism/1939/12/stalin-bday.htm</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn5" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref5" name="_edn5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[v]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Dmitry Manuilsky, ‘<span style="color: #330000; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">The
Great Theoretician of Communism’, The Communist International, No 1, January
1940,</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">https://www.marxists.org/archive/manuilsky/1940/01/x01.htm</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn6" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref6" name="_edn6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[vi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> See John Molyneux, ‘Does
Leninism lead to Stalinsm?’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Irish Marxist
Review 16</i>, </span><span style="mso-field-code: HYPERLINK;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">http://www.irishmarxistreview.net/index.php/imr/article/view/233/224.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn7" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref7" name="_edn7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn7;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[vii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="background: ivory; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Lenin, <strong><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected Works</i></strong>, Moscow, 1962,
vol. 33, p.65.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn8" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref8" name="_edn8" style="mso-endnote-id: edn8;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[viii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> Stalin, Speech to business
executives, 1931, cited in Mike Haynes, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Russia:
Class and Power,1917-2000,</i> London, p.81.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn9" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref9" name="_edn9" style="mso-endnote-id: edn9;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[ix]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> The fullest statement of the
state capitalist analysis of Stalinist Russia is Tony Cliff<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, State Capitalism in Russia</i>, London,1974.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn10" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref10" name="_edn10" style="mso-endnote-id: edn10;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[x]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> Except Trotsky, of course. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn11" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref11" name="_edn11" style="mso-endnote-id: edn11;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> This was summed up in the
formula that Russia was a ‘degenerated workers’ state’. This was the position
of Ernest Mandel and the Fourth International (USFI), of James P Cannon and the
US SWP, of Peter Taaffe and the Committee for a Workers International (parent
body of the SP in Ireland) and many other Trotskyist groups. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn12" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref12" name="_edn12" style="mso-endnote-id: edn12;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> See the description of the
lifestyle of the Soviet Politburo in Mike Haynes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">op.cit</i>, p.160.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn13" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref13" name="_edn13" style="mso-endnote-id: edn13;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xiii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> See Leon Trotsky, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Revolution Betrayed</i>, London.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn14" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref14" name="_edn14" style="mso-endnote-id: edn14;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xiv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The example comes from Engels in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anti-Duhring</i>. ‘Certainly if the taking
over of the tobacco industry is socialistic then Napoleon and Metternich must
be numbered among the founders of socialism’. Marx, Engels, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Selected Works</i>, Vol.2.,Moscow, 1962,
p.148.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn15" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref15" name="_edn15" style="mso-endnote-id: edn15;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> For an overview of the history
of the Comintern as a whole, see Duncan Hallas, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Comintern</i>, London, 1985and also Fernando Claudin, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">From Comintern to Cominform</i>, London,
1975.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn16" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref16" name="_edn16" style="mso-endnote-id: edn16;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xvi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> See Tony Cliff and Donny
Gluckstein, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Marxism and Trade Union
Struggle: The General Strike of 1926</i>, London, 1986.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn17" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref17" name="_edn17" style="mso-endnote-id: edn17;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xvii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> See Harold R. Isaacs, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution</i>,
Chicago, 2010 and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leon Trotsky on China</i>,
New York, 1976.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn18" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref18" name="_edn18" style="mso-endnote-id: edn18;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xviii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> Die Rohte Fahne, September 1930,
cited in Tony Cliff, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Trotsky</i>, Vol. 4,
London, 1993, p.112.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn19" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref19" name="_edn19" style="mso-endnote-id: edn19;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xix]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> See Leon Trotsky, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fascism, Stalinism and the United Front</i>,
London, 1989 and Donny Gluckstein, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Nazis, Capitalism and the German Working Class</i>, London, 1999.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn20" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref20" name="_edn20" style="mso-endnote-id: edn20;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xx]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> See Tony Cliff, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Trotsky,</i> Vol.4, London, 1993, Ch.9 and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leon Trotsky on France</i>, New York, 1979.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn21" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref21" name="_edn21" style="mso-endnote-id: edn21;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">See Andy Durgan,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Spanish Civil War</i>, Palgrave, 2007
and Felix Morrow, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Revolution and
Counter-Revolution in Spain</i>, New York, 1974.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn22" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref22" name="_edn22" style="mso-endnote-id: edn22;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> For an overall account of this
process, see Chris Harman, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Class
Struggles in Eastern Europe:1945-83</i>, London, 1988.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn23" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref23" name="_edn23" style="mso-endnote-id: edn23;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxiii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> For Churchill’s account of his
deal with Stalin, see Winston Churchill, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Second World War,</i> Vol. VI, London, 1954, p.198. See also the discussion of
this in Gabriel Kolko, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Politics of
War</i>, London, 1969.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn24" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref24" name="_edn24" style="mso-endnote-id: edn24;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxiv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> For the text of Khrushchev’s,
speech see https://www.marxists.org/archive/khrushchev/1956/02/24.htm<span class="MsoHyperlink">.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn25" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref25" name="_edn25" style="mso-endnote-id: edn25;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> See Peter Fryer
Hungarian Tragedy, London, 1956, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">https://www.marxists.org/archive/fryer/1956/dec/index.htm</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">. Fryer was the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Daily Worker</i> (paper of the CPGB)
correspondent in Budapest in 1956. What he saw led him to break with Stalinism.
Chris Harman, as above pp.117–186, also provides an excellent account.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn26" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref26" name="_edn26" style="mso-endnote-id: edn26;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxvi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> For an overall account of these
revolts, see Chris Harman, as above. For Poland, see Colin Barker, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Festival of the Oppressed: Solidarity,
Reform and Revolution in Poland 1980-81</i>, London, 1986.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn27" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref27" name="_edn27" style="mso-endnote-id: edn27;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxvii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> See John
Saville, ‘<span style="color: #330000;">Edward Thompson,the Communist Party and
1956’,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Socialist Register</i>, 1994,<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">https://www.marxists.org/archive/saville/1994/xx/epthompson.htm</span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn28" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref28" name="_edn28" style="mso-endnote-id: edn28;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxviii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> See Ernest Mandel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">From Stalinism to Eurocommunism</i>, London,
1978.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn29" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref29" name="_edn29" style="mso-endnote-id: edn29;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxix]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> For a critique of this misuse of
Gramsci, see Chris Harman, Gramsci versus Eurocommunism, parts 1&2,
International Socialism, old series 98 and 99,https://www.marxists.org/archive/harman/1977/05/gramsci1.html<span class="MsoHyperlink">.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn30" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref30" name="_edn30" style="mso-endnote-id: edn30;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxx]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> See Alex Callinicos, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Revenge of History: Marxism and the
Eastern European Revolutions</i>, Pennsylvania, 1991.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn31" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref31" name="_edn31" style="mso-endnote-id: edn31;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxxi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> For the debate among Russian Marxists
and Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution see John Molyneux, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leon Trotsky’s Theory of Revolution</i>,
Brighton, 1981, Ch.1.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn32" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref32" name="_edn32" style="mso-endnote-id: edn32;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxxii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> For Marxist analyses of the
Chinese Revolution of 1949 and the Maoist regime, see Tony Cliff, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Deflected Permanent Revolution,</i> London,
1986, https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1963/xx/permrev.htm and
Nigel Harris, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Mandate of Heaven: Marx
and Mao in Modern China</i>, London, 1978.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn33" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref33" name="_edn33" style="mso-endnote-id: edn33;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxxiii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> See Tony Cliff, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Deflected Permanent Revolution</i>, as
above, and Mike Gonzalez, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Che Guevara and
the Cuban Revolution,</i> London, 2004.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn34" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref34" name="_edn34" style="mso-endnote-id: edn34;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxxiv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">See Mary Smith, ‘The Marikana
Massacre and Lessons for the Left’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Irish
Marxist Review</i> 5, http://www.irishmarxistreview.net/index.php/imr/article/view/56/58.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn35" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref35" name="_edn35" style="mso-endnote-id: edn35;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxxv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> For an analysis of the Irish
counter-revolution, see Kieran Allen, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">1916:Ireland’s
Revolutionary Tradition</i>, London, 2016, especially Ch.4.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn36" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref36" name="_edn36" style="mso-endnote-id: edn36;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxxvi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> James Connolly<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, Labour in Irish History</i>, London, 1987,
p.24.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn37" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref37" name="_edn37" style="mso-endnote-id: edn37;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxxvii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> Cited in Mike Milotte, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Communism in Modern Ireland</i>, Dublin,
1985, p.150.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn38" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref38" name="_edn38" style="mso-endnote-id: edn38;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxxviii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">For an account of this episode,
see Milotte, as above, pp.150–157.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn39" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref39" name="_edn39" style="mso-endnote-id: edn39;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xxxix]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Ibid</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">. p.157.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn40" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref40" name="_edn40" style="mso-endnote-id: edn40;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xl]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> C. Desmond Greaves, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Life and Times of James Connolly,</i>
London, 1976.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn41" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref41" name="_edn41" style="mso-endnote-id: edn41;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xli]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> See Kieran Allen’s critique of
Greaves in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Politics of James
Connolly,</i> London, 1990, pp.xii–xvi.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn42" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref42" name="_edn42" style="mso-endnote-id: edn42;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xlii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> For a detailed history of the
Workers’ Party, see Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers
Party,</i> Dublin, 2009.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn43" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2024%20The%20Return%20of%20Stalinism%20AOD%20final-1PRROFED.docx#_ednref43" name="_edn43" style="mso-endnote-id: edn43;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[xliii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> Unfortunately, Gadaffi <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i> a dictator and a murderer. Just to
avoid any (wilful?) misunderstanding, this does not mean NATO or Western
intervention in Libya was in any way justified – merely that we should not sing
Gadaffi’s praises or defend him against his own people.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-986293629987796352020-02-20T14:05:00.001+00:002020-02-20T14:05:51.030+00:00The Failure of the Far Right in Ireland<br />
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">John Molyneux<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This article first appeared on Rebel News </span></b><a href="http://www.rebelnews.ie/2020/02/13/the-failure-of-the-far-right/">http://www.rebelnews.ie/2020/02/13/the-failure-of-the-far-right/</a></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">‘The rise of
the far right’ has been an all too familiar headline over the last few years in
places ranging from Brazil to India, Italy to Spain. Over the last year or so
there have been grounds for concern that something similar might be about to
happen in Ireland: the arson attack the Direct Provision Centre in Roosky, the
Peter<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Casey <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>phenomenon in the Presidential Election, a
substantial fascist march in Belfast, the agitation in Oughterard, the racist
dog whistles of Noel Grealish<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and Verona
Murphy, the ranting of Gemma O’Doherty and so on. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Fortunately,
one of the most notable features of the recent historic General Election has
been the utter failure of the Far Right to gain any serious traction. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The facts
are stark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fascist National Party –
they really are fascists – led by Justin Barrett (formerly of Youth Defence)
polled 0.2% overall and only 4,773 votes across the country. Their best result
was in Longford-West Meath where they got 1.75%. The Irish Freedom Party, led
by the aptly named Hermann Kelly, and by Ben Gilroy, formerly of Direct
Democracy and the Irish Yellow Vests, did better: they got 0.3% of the vote
nationwide. Their best result was 2%<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in
Cork North West<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- a highly conservative
area and one of the very few seats untouched by the Sinn Fein surge; their
worst was a total of 119 in Dun Laoghaire.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unsurprisingly , the notorious Gemma O’Doherty
, standing as an independent in Dublin Fingal, was among the more successful
far right candidates but stlll polled<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>only 1.97% (1252 first preferences ). Presumably she chose Dublin Fingal
because of the migrant population in Balbriggan. John Waters in Dun Laoghaire
got only 1.5% <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It was
particularly satisfying to see the pathetic performance of Peter Casey . With
money no object, Casey who had polled over 20% in the Presidential election on
the basis of anti-Traveller racism, arrogantly stood in two constituencies –
his home base of Donegal and Dublin West (again chosen for its migrant
population). The result – only 1,143 first preferences in Donegal and a
miserable 495 in Dublin West. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Equally
striking is the fact that in Sligo-Leitrim , Sinn Fein’s Martin Kenny, whose
car was burnt out after he welcomed asylum seekers in Roosky, easily topped the
poll with 15,035 first preferences, while the National Party candidate got only
451 and Renua, who have also been dabbling in racist rhetoric recently, managed
the truly dismal 75. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The only
significant exception to this pattern of failure was the election of Noel
Grealish in Dublin West with 13.3% of first preferences and of Verona Murphy in
Wexford, with 7.8 % (5,825) first preferences, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>on the 11<sup>th</sup> count. Here it should
be noted that both Grealish and Murphy had established substantial bases on a
non-racist basis before making their racist comments. In other words, unlike
Casey or O’Doherty, racism was not their main or only selling point.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Another significant indicator of
the far right’s marginalisaion was the RTE/The Irish Times Exit Poll asking
voters what issue was most important in their decision how to vote. Immigration
was at the bottom of the list with only 1%. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This
catalogue of failure raises the question of why. Why has Ireland proved so
different from so many other countries in this respect? I believe we can
identify three main causes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The first is
rooted in Ireland’s history. Irish nationalism arose and developed in opposition
to the British Empire and British colonialism. It was a nationalism of the
oppressed not the oppressor. This gave it a fundamentally different political
character and trajectory to that of British, German, French or American
nationalism. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The latter, linked
inextricably to imperialism, was predominantly reactionary and racist and, when
pushed further, led and leads in the direction of fascism. The Union Jack was
the flag not only of Britain but of the Tory Party and the BNP. There has
always been a cross over between the right of the Tory Party and British
fascism, just as there have always been links between Loyalists and Nazis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In contrast
Irish nationalism was always associated with the progressive side of history.
This can be traced back to the United Irishmen and the links with the French
Revolution. The very label ‘Republicanism’ is an expression of this and as the
struggle for Irish freedom radicalised so the direction of travel was
predominantly to the left, to Larkin and Connolly, to the Limerick soviet and
the Irish Revolution. Along with this came an identification with anti-racism.
This goes back to Daniel O’Connell welcoming to Ireland the US anti-slavery
campaigner Frederick Douglas and to Roger Casement condemning the Belgian
atrocities in the Congo. You can hear it in the lyrics of ‘Come Out ye Black ‘n
Tans’:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;">Come tell us how you slew
them poor Arabs two by two</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
<span style="background: white;">Like the Zulus they had spears and bows and
arrows</span><br />
<span style="background: white;">How you bravely<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>faced one with your 16-pounder gun</span><br />
<span style="background: white;">And you frightened them natives to their marrow<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;">It was there in the Civil
Rights struggle in the late 60s inspired by the Civil Rights struggle in the US
and could be seen in the murals of West Belfast and the links with the
anti-apartheid struggle. It is a major factor in the strength of support for
Palestine evident in Ireland.</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This does
not mean there has been no tradition of racism in Ireland. There has long been
deep rooted anti-Traveller racism, there has been the racism of the Blueshirts
and there has been quite widespread ‘popular’ racism of the ‘we should look
after our own’ variety. But this historical difference has deprived Irish
racism and fascism of the ready organising base – especially in the petty
bourgeoisie - provided by French nationalism for the Front National or by
American nationalism for Trump and the alt-right. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Second,
there is the fact that at the time of the Crash and after, when the stable
Fianna Fail/ Fine Gael duopoly first began to crack, it was the left and
particularly the far left, PBP/AAA etc. along with Right 2 Water, that were
able best to articulate and focus working class anger against austerity and
actually to organise and lead resistance in communities through the fight
against cuts, the household charges and the water charges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This leading role of the left and the fact
that this left was generally strongly anti-racist was very important in
blocking the road to racist ideas and organisation which <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">were present</i></b>, for
example, in the water charges movement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Third, there is the record of the Irish left and Irish
anti-racists actually combating and confronting the racists and fascists
whenever they have tried to rally, march or harass mosques. This goes back at
least to the mobilisation against fascist holocaust denier, David Irving, when
he was invited to Trinity in 1989 and again in 2002 and was seen at its best
1-2000 anti-racists, with the aid of Bohs fans, trounced Pegida Ireland ‘s
attempt to march down O’Connell St in February 2016. The same was true in
Belfast in June 2018. By confronting them and, crucially, repeatedly out
numbering them , anti-racists and the left have humiliated and demoralized the
far right and, so far, prevented them gaining the initial foothold on to which
to build and launch themselves as a credible alternative.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However, each of these explanations<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>comes with a warning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, the historical legacy remains
important but Ireland is no longer an oppressed colony. Fortunately ireland has
not acquired colonies or empire of its own but our ruling class and political
establishment identifies strongly with US imperialism (witness the ongoing use
of Shannon by the US military) and with the rising imperialism of the EU as
seen in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Fortress Europe’ and the
death<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>toll of refugees in the
Mediterranean<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(which Fine Gael MEPs voted
to continue). This creates a certain material basis for identification with
notions of white supremacy and hostility to immigrants. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Second, the ability of the left to lead the articulation of
working class anger cannot be taken for granted or regarded as secure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we have said there was a submerged racist
current in the watercharges movement around the Says No phenomenon and the
so-called Freemen and we have seen the potential for racism to gain popular
traction in developments such as the mobilization against the Direct Provision
centre at Oughterard. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Third, the tactic of confronting the far right on the
streets<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is necessary<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but has its limits. It must be used
judiciously not obsessively and carries the risk of turning into an endless
pursuit of tiny irrelevant bunches of fascists by small anti-fascist hit squads
at the expense of building a serious left challenge to the system which breeds
racism.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In short the overwhelming defeat inflicted on the far right
at the recent election is excellent. But there is no room at all for
complacency and anti-racist campaigning must continue combined with building
the left alternative.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-28625854209455497642019-11-17T13:58:00.002+00:002019-11-17T14:09:42.167+00:00Why we need a socialist solution to climate change<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Why we need a socialist solution to
climate change<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">John Molyneux<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A lot has been written, including by myself, on why
capitalism, by its very nature, cannot tackle or stop climate change. The
purpose of this article is not to repeat those arguments but to make the
positive case for socialism as necessary to deal with this existential crisis
for humanity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By socialism I mean simply the combination of two things:
public ownership and democratic control of production and society. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By public ownership I mean not the elimination of personal
private property or the nationalisation of every small business and corner shop
but of the main banks, corporations, industries, services and utilities. For
example public ownership of bus and transport networks, of the health service,
of one main state bank and one main state insurance company, of social housing,
of waste management, of water, electricity, gas, wind and solar power
production, of Larry Goodman’s ABF Food Group, of Denis O’Brien’s Communicorp <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and so on. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By democratic control I mean that each major workplace –
each hospital, factory, train station, school, university, construction company
etc. – should be run by the elected and recallable representatives of its
workforce, within the context of a democratic plan for the economy and society
as a whole. That would need to be proposed by government based on and
accountable to democratically elected popular assemblies. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Without large scale public ownership, capitalism and the
laws of the capitalist market will continue to dominate and this will have
disastrous consequences for the environment as it has done already. Without
democratic control you have not socialism but state capitalism<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/REBEL%20Why%20we%20need%20a%20socialist%20solution%20to%20climate%20change%20(Autosaved).docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
with a new ruling class of state bureaucrats which, as has been seen in
Stalinist Russia and in China, also has terrible ecological consequences
because it subordinates the needs of the people and nature to accumulation for
accumulation’s sake in competition with other states. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Only through socialism will it be possible to generate both
the political will at the top and the genuine popular support and collaboration
to achieve the immense coordinated transformation of the national and international
economy necessary in the current emergency. Only public ownership and
democratic planning can coordinate the establishment and expansion of free
public transport, the urgent transition to renewal energy, the mass
retrofitting of homes and a vast programme of aforestation and rewilding. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Most of the climate and environmental movement support the idea
of a just transition but only socialism with its commitment to ending class
privilege and inequality can actually deliver this. In any society where there are
billionaires alongside homeless people, and immense divisions between rich
countries and poor countries as a result of imperialism and globalised
capitalism all attempts at transition to ending carbon emissions , even where
they are made, will inevitably be structured and blighted by this inequality.
The rich will look to protect themselves and their life styles in gated
communities in the uplands while trying to shift the burden of paying for the
transition onto ordinary people.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Take the example of transport. If, as is absolutely
essential, we get people out of the private car and onto free public transport,
what will be the consequences of this? Under capitalism it will mean the
bosses<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of the giant auto companies
(Volkswagen, Toyota, General Motors etc) will see which way the wind is
blowing,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>loot their own companies and
put the proceeds in their Swiss bank accounts , while throwing their hundreds
of thousands of workers on the scrap heap.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Under socialism the auto industry CEOs and big shareholders could be
relieved of their ill-gotten gains while the rundown of the industry is managed
in a way that retrains and re-employs the workers in socially useful work eg
building wind turbines or buses. The same applies to flying. If air travel were
to be reduced, as it must be to save the planet<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/REBEL%20Why%20we%20need%20a%20socialist%20solution%20to%20climate%20change%20(Autosaved).docx#_edn2" name="_ednref2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>,
under capitalism this would most likely be done by a price mechanism so that
executives would continue to jet round the world to their conferences while
ordinary people had to give up their holidays to Spain and the Greek Islands .
That in turn would mean redundancy for airline workers and crisis in the
Spanish and Greek tourist industry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Again only socialist planning could solve this. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And it would be the same for the utterly deadly coal
industry. When Margaret Thatcher destroyed the British coal industry in 1984-5 she
did it for entirely capitalist ‘economic’ reasons<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- there wasn’t an ounce of environmentalism
in it – but the effect on mining communities and villages was devastating; many
have still not recovered. Avoiding such communal destruction on a vastly
greater requires socialist planning. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Climate justice on a global scale is totally unthinkable
without socialism. Five hundred years ago the different continents and regions
of the world were roughly at the same level of economic development; for
example China was every bit as economically advanced as Europe and India was
seen as a rich country. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Centuries of
capitalism, slavery and imperialism, with the latter growing out of the former,
created an immensely uneven world; industrial production, wealth and power
became concentrated in the so-called advanced ‘West’ – essentially Europe and
North America – with poverty, starvation and lack of industrial development
concentrated in Asia, Africa and Latin America, now usually called the Global
South. This pattern has changed somewhat in recent decades with massive
capitalist development in China and other parts of South and East Asia but it
is still a massive reality across much of the world. Historically and still
today the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America have contributed least to
climate change but will be hugely disproportionately affected by it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example a 1.5-2 C global temperature
increase will be a death sentence for much of Africa because it will destroy
their agriculture; melting Himalayan glaciers and rising sea levels will
utterly devastate the deeply impoverished Bangladesh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This cannot be challenged or dealt with
without socialist redistribution of wealth and socialist planning internationally.
Only socialist internationalism based on the common interests of the world’s
working people could achieve such international cooperation; any capitalist
option, no matter how ‘green’ its intentions, would degenerate into national
and international rivalries which would destroy any coherent international
planning</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then there is the question of overall economic growth. There
is a growing view in the environmental movement that the idea of continuous
economic growth is completely unsustainable. Greta Thunberg, in her speech to
the UN, spoke of ‘fairy tales of eternal economic growth’. But under capitalism
stagnation or, even more so, de-growth is an immediate crisis, a recession when
it is short and a ‘great depression’ when it is extended, spelling mass
unemployment, poverty and austerity<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(with
the risk of fascism thrown in). This is because capitalism has a drive to
growth built into its very fabric.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Achieving a non-growth economy (measured in terms of GDP) or, should it
prove essential, a de-growth in certain areas would also only be possible on
the basis of socialist planning combined with the popular consent that would
come from mass involvement in the democratic planning process.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then there is the fact that the proliferation of extreme
weather events associated with climate change has already begun, as is evident
from the numerous disasters currently observable round the world. This is
clearly going to intensify in the years ahead. Even in the event of a Damascene
conversion by the world’s rulers – of which there is no sign – it is unavoidable,
due to the climate change already built into the system, that we will see a
dramatic escalation of ‘natural’ catastrophes – storms, floods, droughts, fires
etc – over the next 5-10 years. But we know from abundant experience that the
way capitalism responds to such events <span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">is
through a combination of crocodile tears (for a very short while), followed by
callous indifference and abandonment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">This pattern has
repeated itself through the Bush Administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina
in New Orleans in 2005, to Superstorm Sandy in 2012 under Obama and Hurricane
Maria in Puerto Rica in 2017. In all of these cases all sorts of pledges of aid
and reconstruction were made in the immediate aftermath of disaster only for
them to disappear into thin air when it came to delivery. Years later people
who lost their homes and everything in them were still unable to return.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The case of Hurricane Maria was particularly
atrocious. Initially the death toll was officially claimed to be 64. A year
later it was admitted to be 2,975</span><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/REBEL%20Why%20we%20need%20a%20socialist%20solution%20to%20climate%20change%20(Autosaved).docx#_edn3" name="_ednref3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[iii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> and many critics argue that it was really
much higher.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bitterness at the appalling
response to the Hurricane, by both the Trump administration and the local
governor, was a significant factor in the great revolt of the Puerto Rican people
earlier this year. On a lesser scale similar scenarios were played out over the
Grenfell Fire and in relation to flood victims in Ireland. Moreover, class and
racial privileges will continue to operate even within the extreme weather
events as happened with Katrina in New Orleans and the more frequent and
extensive these are the more this will be the case. The rich and white will be
saved, while the poor and black will be sacrificed and demonised as ‘dangerous
looters’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">When we grasp the
fact that escalating climate change will make events like the California fires,
Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas and flooding in Bangladesh a regular and
ongoing occurrence – regardless of what is done to stop it now – it is clear
that a socialist response at governmental and societal level is necessary to
cope with them and minimise the death toll and human suffering. In other words
we will need huge state intervention resting on popular participation and
solidarity to rescue the victim, feed the hungry and house the homeless.
Speaking of housing the homeless it is worth noting that rich societies such as
the US, Britain and Ireland, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">operating on
a capitalist basis</i>, cannot even do this in normal times: what will they be
like in time of catastrophe?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Moreover, rising
temperatures and extreme weather will inevitably increase the flow of refugees,
probably massively so because swathes of the planet will cease to be habitable,
and in the next decade, not the end of the century. How will the better placed
countries respond? On the basis of a capitalist economy, an economy based on
the profit motive, it hard to see how there will be any even moderately humane
response.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again only a socialist economy
and society, which harnesses the collective labour and talents of all and
understands that with every new person comes a new and equal contributor to
society regardless of nationality, colour or ethnicity, will respond with
dignity and humanity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Finally, some
imagine that there might be a third alternative, neither capitalism nor
socialism, but a return to some kind of pre-capitalist society based on small
scale ecologically sound self-sufficient villages or communes. Whatever one
thinks of the moral value of such communities as experiments or pre-figurations
of life in an imagined future, the fact is such a lifestyle is simply not an
option for the vast majority of ordinary people in our society and will not and
cannot gain any large scale popular take up any more than did the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">phalansteres</i> of the early nineteenth
century (communes inspired by French utopian socialist, Charles Fourier) or the
hippy communes of the sixties. And when we think of a world of seven billion
people<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in a state of crisis the idea
that such a ‘third’ or ‘deep green’ alternative would be viable for the
majority is completely untenable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are we
saying the 100 million people in Guangdong (the hyper industrialised and
urbanised region of South China) or the 24 million people of Shanghai should go
back to rural communes? This is literally not possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only a solution in which the 100 million of
Guandong or the 20 million of Mumbai or the eight million of Paris or the one
and half million of Dublin (together with all the millions in smaller towns and
in the countryside) take <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">collective </i>ownership
and control of the immense productive resources generated by workers’ labour
under capitalism and move forward to a society based on production for human
need offers a real way forward for humanity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Unfortunately there
is a possible ‘third alternative’ to both socialism and capitalist business –as
–usual in a society in extreme crisis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That alternative is fascism or some other form of ultra- right
authoritarian dictatorship. This would not abolish either class inequality or
capitalism but it might partially bring private capital under state control and
it would certainly abolish democracy, even in its current very limited
parliamentary form. And in conditions of acute climate crisis it would mean, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and would be premised on</i>, racist
barbarity that globally would exceed that of the holocaust and the Second World
War. This has not happened yet but we see a whiff of it with Trump, Bolsonaro
and Salvini. Parliamentary democracy and the limited democratic rights gained
by working people should, of course, be defended against this fascist threat
but in the immense crisis we are entering capitalist business-as-usual will
become less and less a viable option . A socialist solution is an historic
necessity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/REBEL%20Why%20we%20need%20a%20socialist%20solution%20to%20climate%20change%20(Autosaved).docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[i]</span></b></span><!--[endif]--></span></b></span></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>As James Connolly put it back in 1899,
‘<span style="background: ivory; color: black;">Socialism properly implies above
all things the co-operative control by the workers of the machinery of production;
without this co-operative control the public ownership by the State is not
Socialism – it is only State capitalism.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>James Connolly, ‘State Monopoly versus Socialism’, </span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1901/evangel/stmonsoc.htm">https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1901/evangel/stmonsoc.htm</a></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/REBEL%20Why%20we%20need%20a%20socialist%20solution%20to%20climate%20change%20(Autosaved).docx#_ednref2" name="_edn2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
There are currently no signs of this happening – witness the expansion of
Heathrow Airport and the fact that on the day of Global Climate Strike Leo
Varadkar was opening a new runway at Knock.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn3" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/REBEL%20Why%20we%20need%20a%20socialist%20solution%20to%20climate%20change%20(Autosaved).docx#_ednref3" name="_edn3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[iii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span style="background: #eaf3ff; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 9.5pt;">Baldwin, Sarah Lynch; Begnaud, David. </span><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hurricane-maria-death-toll-puerto-rico-2975-killed-by-storm-study-finds/"><span style="color: #663366; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 9.5pt;">"Hurricane
Maria caused an estimated 2,975 deaths in Puerto Rico, new study finds"</span></a><span style="background: #eaf3ff; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 9.5pt;">. CBS News<span class="reference-accessdate">.
Retrieved </span><span class="nowrap">August 28,</span><span class="reference-accessdate"> 2018</span>.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-54060224911196325872019-11-17T13:53:00.000+00:002019-11-17T13:53:01.299+00:00Apocalypse Now! Climate change, capitalism and revolution.<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Apocalypse Now! Climate change,
capitalism and revolution<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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John Molyneux</div>
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<i>First published in Irish Marxist Review 25, November 2019.</i></div>
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In the year since the publication in October 2018 of the IPCC
[Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] Report warning that the world has 12
years in which to limit global warming to a 1.5C increase, the impending
apocalypse of catastrophic climate breakdown has moved dramatically from future
tense to present tense. </div>
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It is difficult to find the words adequately to express
either the scale of the crisis that is upon us or its urgency. This is because
we are entering a situation for which there is no historical precedent or
analogy. It is not <u>like </u>the Black Death, or similar to the First or the
Second World Wars. Nor is it the same as a nuclear holocaust. And it hasn’t
happened yet so none of us know concretely what it will be like or exactly how
it is going to unfold. Nor will the climate crisis be a single event or even a
series of events with some kind of time limit. Rather it will be a multitude of
interacting events and processes which may extend indefinitely over decades or
even centuries.</div>
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But what we do know is that both the rapidly accumulating scientific
evidence and the evidence of events round the world show that climate change is
developing and climate catastrophe is hurtling towards us at an even faster
rate than the IPCC report predicted. <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
We know that July 2019 was the hottest month the world has experienced since
records began. <span style="color: #262626; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The
European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Programme, which analyzes
temperature data from around the planet, said that July, which was the hottest
month since temperature records began, was around 0.56 °C warmer than the
global average temperature between 1981-2010. That's slightly hotter than July
2016, when the world was in the throes of one of the strongest El Nino
events on record. <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
We know that Canada and the far north are warming at twice or more the rate of
more southerly latitudes. This is producing a much faster melting of the ice
caps, glaciers and permafrost (</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">soil, rock or sediment that is frozen for more
than two consecutive years)</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> </span><span style="color: #262626; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">than was expected. Thus</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 82.6pt; margin-top: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #404040; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; padding: 0cm;">Greenland's massive ice sheet may have melted by a record amount
this year, scientists have warned. </span></strong><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">During this year
alone, it lost enough ice to raise the average global sea level by more than a
millimetre. Researchers say they're "astounded" by the acceleration
in melting and fear for the future of cities on coasts around the world. One
glacier in southern Greenland has thinned by as much as 100 metres since I last
filmed on it back in 2004</span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #121212; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/arctic"><span style="color: #ab0613; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Arctic</span></a><span style="color: #121212; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted,
an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis
is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #121212; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">A team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks said
they were astounded by how quickly a succession of unusually hot summers had
destabilised the upper layers of giant subterranean ice blocks that had been
frozen solid for millennia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #121212; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">“What we saw was amazing,” Vladimir Romanovsky, a
professor of geophysics at the university, told Reuters. “It’s an indication
that the climate is now warmer than at any time in the last 5,000 or more
years.“ <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #121212; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #121212; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And
the consequence of this is not just on polar bears and rising sea levels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has an immediate effect in terms of
intensifying the greenhouse effect. White ice reflects heat from the sun back
into space. Dark ocean and land absorbs and retains it so the shrinking of the
ice caps further amplifies global warming . The melting of the permafrost releases
into the atmosphere immense quantities of methane and methane (also produced by
ruminating cattle) is a far more deadly greenhouse gas than CO2. Over a 20 year
period it traps 84 times more heat than CO2 and global concentrations have
already risen from 722 ppb (parts per billion) to 1866 ppb, the highest ratio
in 800,000 years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #121212; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Then there have
been the succession of extreme weather events over the past 12 months.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> These include the huge fires in California; 50C
temperatures in much of Australia, the catastrophic cyclones (Idai and Kenneth)
in Madagascar, Malawi and Tanzania (which claimed over 1000 lives): major fires
in Portugal and Northern Greece, fires across Alaska and Siberia, drought in
Southern India with Chennai (Madras), a city of 7 million people, running out
of water; flooding in Nepal (90 dead and 1 million displaced)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and Mumbai, Bihar, and Assam ; flooding in Japan;
a heat wave across Northern China; fires across Sweden; exceptionally high
temperatures in July in Europe such as 38C in the UK, 41.8C in Belgium, 40.7C
in the Netherlands (the first time ever over 40C in that country) and 42.6C in
Paris. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And now, as I write, the burning
of the Amazon (along with fires in the world’s other great forest carbon sinks
in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Congo) and the utter destruction of the
Bahamas by Hurricane Dorian. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">What is more there was also the
extraordinary cold spell in America in January/February of this year in which
semi-arctic conditions swept down into the heart of the USA in what was a
‘polar vortex’ with temperatures as low as – 30 C. </span>[The polar vortex is
linked to climate change because rising temperatures in the Arctic affect the
jet stream in the upper atmosphere driving cold winds south and drawing warm
wind northward]</div>
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What makes these events so important is not just the
dreadful immediate suffering they produce but the fact that it is in the form
of extreme weather (rather than rising sea levels) that climate change is going
have its main impact in the next five to ten to fifteen years, so they are very
much the shape of things to come – this year, next year and the year after, not
in 2050 or ‘by the end of the century’ as is so often said in the official
discourse. Taken in the round this combination of scientific predictions and
actual experience is alarming in the extreme and a number of very serious
climate scientists are beginning to articulate this. <span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">James Anderson, a Harvard University professor of
atmospheric chemistry best known for </span><a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jpca.5b11957?journalCode=jpcafh" target="_blank"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">establishing</span></a><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> that chlorofluorocarbons were
damaging the Ozone Layer states has stated that: ‘The chance that there will be
any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero,’ and
argued that recovery from this will require ‘a World War Two<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>type transformation of industry’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>within ‘five years’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">When
considering the prospects we face, socialists also have to take into account
not only the direct natural consequences of the heatwaves, droughts, fires,
storms and floods that are on their way but also their likely social and
political consequences. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, it is
absolutely unavoidable that those who will suffer most, by a long way, from all
these climate disasters will be the poor and deprived: above all the poor of
the global south where temperatures are already high, housing is ramshackle,
health and emergency services weakest and welfare provision nonexistent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To experience drought or flooding in India or
Bangladesh, where people are already dying on the streets in ‘normal’ times, is
quite different from experiencing it in modern Europe. But the same will also
apply, if not to the same extent, to the poor and the working people of even
the most advanced capitalist countries. All the soaring inequalities that characterise
our neoliberal capitalist society will inevitably be reflected in circumstances
of climate breakdown, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Second, we know
from abundant experience in the past that the way our rulers respond to
so-called ‘natural disasters’ is through a combination of crocodile tears (for
a very short while), callous indifference and repression. This pattern has
repeated itself through the Bush Administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina
in New Orleans in 2005, to Superstorm Sandy in 2012 under Obama and Hurricane Maria
in Puerto Rica in 2017. In all of these cases all sorts of pledges of aid and
reconstruction were made in the immediate aftermath of disaster only for them
to slip away into abandonment when it came to delivery. Years later people who
lost their homes and everything in them were still unable to return.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The case of Hurricane Maria was particularly atrocious.
Initially the death toll was officially claimed to be 64. A year later it was
admitted to be 2,975</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> and many critics argue that it was really
much higher.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bitterness at the appalling
response to the Hurricane, by both the Trump administration and the local
governor, was a significant factor in the great revolt of the Puerto Rican
people earlier this year. On a lesser scale similar scenarios were played out
over the Grenfell Fire and in relation to flood victims in Ireland. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Third, there is
the dreadful fact that accelerating climate change is destroying food
production and increasing desertification in the hotter regions of the earth
and is going to render increasing areas of the planet virtually uninhabitable.
If global warming<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>exceeds 2C or heads
towards 3C, for which it is on course at present, this will apply to southwest
North America, North Africa, large parts of southern Africa and Australia while
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>major expansions of semiarid
regions will occur over the north side of the Mediterranean, southern Africa,
and North and South America. <span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Climate
model simulations also suggest that, alongside droughts, rainfall, when it does
occur, will be more intense for almost the entire world (we are already seeing
this in places) and this will increase soil erosion.</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> The effect of all this, as night follows
day, will be a huge increase in the numbers of climate refugees.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Climate refugees already exist, of course,
but the fact that this is not an ‘officially’ recognised category and that an
exact definition is difficult to arrive at<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
means that estimates of numbers vary greatly and are to some extent arbitrary. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus Climate Migration website tells us ‘</span><span style="background: white; color: #3a3a3a; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">For example we know that last year 24 million people were
displayed by weather related disasters like floods and hurricanes’</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="background: white; color: #3a3a3a; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> while Migration Data Portal says, ‘</span><span style="background: #FBFBFA; color: #4a4a4a; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">In 2018,
17.2 million people in 144 countries and territories were newly
displaced in the context of disasters within their own country’</span><span style="background: white; color: #3a3a3a; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">,’ and that ‘In </span><span style="background: #FBFBFA; color: #4a4a4a; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2018, displacement has been caused primarily
by extreme weather events, especially storms (9.3 million) and cyclones,
hurricanes and typhoons (7.9 million). Particularly devastating were the
southwest monsoons in India and Typhoon Mangkhut in China and the Philippines ‘<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: #FBFBFA; color: #4a4a4a; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Accurate predictions as to future numbers of climate refugees are therefore
inherently impossible but it is clearly going to run at least into the hundreds
of millions. And what we do know is how existing capitalist governments, rulers
and politicians have responded to this situation. We know that one wing of the
political spectrum ( Trump, Orban, Salvini, Bolsonaro etc) have responded by
saying simply ‘let them drown in the Mediterranean or die in the deserts’ and
by trying to legally enforce such racist inhumanity by criminalising aid to
refugees and simultaneously using the crisis ideologically to grow and sustain
far right political movements. We know that the so-called ‘centre’ and ‘mainstream’
of the spectrum (Macron, Obama, May, Varadkar etc)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and even many on the left, while using a less
incendiary language, nonetheless<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in
practice appease and capitulate to the far right in such a way as to strengthen
the latter. In other words we know that as general climate crisis escalates so
too will the danger of a fascist and barbarian ‘solution’ to it.</span><span style="background: white; color: #3a3a3a; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #3a3a3a; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">In concluding this section I will
simply say that while all predictions about the speed of the process of climate
breakdown<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and consequent deadlines,
whether they are the IPCC’s 2030 or James Anderson’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>five years, can only be best guesses It is an
unavoidable fact that this catastrophe is hurtling towards us. It is also
unavoidable fact that neither the current global system, nor any significant
component of it (for example any major government)<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: #3a3a3a; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
has shown any sign of taking the action necessary to avert the
catastrophe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite all the scientific
reports, all the evidence of actual disasters, and all the green talk, global
greenhouse emissions – and in the end that is the statistic that counts – are
still rising. In 2018 they reached an all-time record high of 37.1 billion
tonnes with China’s up by 4.7%, the US by 2.5% and India by 6.3% <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: #3a3a3a; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>.
In 2019, the UK Met Office predicts, there will be a further rise by 2.75 parts
per million (ppm), among the highest annual rises in the 62 years since good
records began.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: #3a3a3a; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Asleep or awake our rulers are walking us into the furnace.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #3a3a3a; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Climate Change and Capitalism<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #3a3a3a; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">In this article I will take for granted
that ‘we’ – concerned citizens, activists, trade unionists, workers,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>young people<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>and old, school students and college students – all of us together,
should do everything we can to raise awareness about climate change and to
build a movement against it. We should have supported the 20 September school
strike, and will support future strikes; we will back Extinction Rebellion Week
and every other similar resistance round the world. We will also back every
piece of progressive legislation – like bans on fracking, declarations of
climate emergencies or Brid Smith’s Climate Emergency Measures Bill (which
sought to compel the Irish Government to cease grant licenses for further
fossil-fuel exploration and extraction)<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: #3a3a3a; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> .
We will fight for everything that gains us time, moves us in the right
direction and pushes back the impending disaster or even sets an example to the
rest of the world as to what has to be done. The only exception to this is
those measures such as carbon taxes which violate the principal of just
transition and, by penalising working class people, threaten to alienate them
from the mass popular movement we need. We should campaign for free and
expanded public transport; for retrofitting of homes; for huge aforestation
programmes; for the redirection of agriculture away from cattle and beef
production and for massive public investment in renewable energy (wind, solar
and tidal power). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #3a3a3a; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Having said all that, however, I also
want to argue that in order to combat climate change, to prevent it becoming
catastrophic and to deal with the effects of it that are already built into the
system and will inevitably intensify in the coming years, it is essential for
the anti-climate change movement to become anti-capitalist and indeed to end
capitalism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">Capitalism drives and is
linked to climate change at every level. There is an important <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>historical argument that our economic
dependence on fossil fuels came about not due the availability of natural
resources nor for technological reasons but because it suited the needs of
capitalism. Andreas Malm in his important study <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fossil Capital: the Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming</i><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>has</span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">shown that during the
Industrial Revolution steam power based on coal was adopted in preference to
water power because it facilitated capitalist exploitation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is also the powerful argument, both
scientific and political, that the origins of a new geological age, the
Anthropocene characterised by a total environmental crisis including climate
change, corresponds to the immense global capitalist boom after the Second
World War.</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hence the ‘hockey stick’ shaped graphs for so
many natural and social phenomena ranging from C02 in the atmosphere to ocean
acidification, urban population and international tourism.</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">However,
the angle from which I want to approach this issue is the simple question: why
have our rulers, the world’s governments and politicians left it so long to
even begin seriously addressing the issue of climate change when it would have
been so much easier to tackle it earlier? Here there are a number of parallels.
What would happen to a doctor whose patient was diagnosed with cancer and who knowingly
ignored the diagnosis, fobbing the patient off with paracetomol, until they
were almost at death’s door? They would certainly be struck off and probably
subject to criminal prosecution. Or what about a shipping company that had an
ocean liner which they knew was not seaworthy and most likely would not make
the Atlantic crossing for which it was scheduled, but nonetheless gambled on
sending it out at the cost of a two thousand lives? That company would be
guilty at the least of corporate manslaughter. These examples can be repeated
for cars, planes, bridges and so on. Yet the fact is that what our rulers have
done regarding climate change has been worse than any of these in terms of its
consequences for humanity and animal species. They have, already, guaranteed
the death of millions of people and the extinction of thousands of species.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Let’s
be clear about how long they have known about the problem. The possibility of
the greenhouse effect was first understood in 1896, by the Swedish scientist,
Svante Arhenhuis, but it was not considred practically significant. The fact
that some global warming was actually occurring was first measured in the 1930s
but it was assumed to be on too minute a scale to worry about. This started to
change in the 1950s with the work of Guy Stewart Callender and in the 1960s
David Keeling demonstrated that human-generated greenhouse emissions were large
enough to cause global warming. </span><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn18;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> By the late 1970s there was
already a degree of scientific consensus on this. The simple fact that the UN
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 by the
World Meteorological Organisation and the UN Environment Programme and issud
its first report in 1990 testifies to the fact that every serious government
and political leader has known about the problem for thirty years. In 1992 the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) , at the Rio Earth Summit,
committed states to reduce gas emissions ‘based on the then scientific
consensus’. In 1993 scientists received evidence from Greenland ice cores and
by the end of the 1990s they knew they were looking not just at gradual warming
but the real possibility of rapid and catastrophic warming should certain
thresholds or tipping points be crossed. </span><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn19" name="_ftnref19" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn19;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> In other words, our so-called
‘world leaders’ and governments, almost without exception, have been knowingly
gambling with the lives of hundreds of millions of people for decades. Their
deep guilt is undeniable but the question is ‘why?’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">One
answer might be that these politicians simply don’t give a damn – they care only
about themselves, their careers and the pockets they can line. But even this
were true it woouldn’t explain why politicians and governmentswould not
consider it in their own interest, politically as well as for their children,
to do something serious about climate change in the same way that the British
ruling class decided it was in their interest to abolish the slave trade in
1833 or the US government decided it had to abolish slavery in order to win the
Civil War or, a century later, to pass civil rights legislation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">An
answer to that might be that there have been no votes in tackling climate
change because ‘people’ didn’t care about it. But people didn’t care because
they didn’t understand it. This, of course, can be laid at the door of the
media. The responsibility of the media is clear. For decades they colluded with
corporate funded climate denial to treat climate change as just ‘a theory’ and
invariable to ‘balance’ scientific testimony with climate scepticism. If they
no longer do that [in Ireland and the UK, as opposed to the US and elsewhere]
they still don’t treat climate change as a real ‘crisis’ like Brexit or an
economic crash but relegate it to the inside pages and they still refuse to
link ever increasing extreme weather events to climate change. However, the
media is not a stand alone independent force in this: a) the media is largely
owned and controlled by people, like Rupert Murdock and Denis O’Brien, who are
an integral part of the ruling elites; b) the media, especially the news media,
takes its cue to a huge extent from governments and leading politicians. All it
would have required to get the media to change their agenda would have been a
few concerted statements and appeals from ‘world leaders’. So we are back to
our question as to why those leaders have refused to do this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The
compelling answer is the tackling climate change consistently clashed with the
interests and priorities of capitalism, the imperative of profit. At every
stage, and still today, our leaders have found that even when they ‘sincerely’
wanted to do what was necessary to avert climate breakdown this conflicted with
the immediate needs of ‘the economy’ ie. capitalism and they invariably chose
the latter over the former. This applied whether it was Enda Kenny, George
Bush, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama (never mind Trump) Tony Blair or David
Cameron, Sarkosy , Macron, Putin or Xi Jinping. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Understanding
this involves understanding not so much how climate change works as how
capitalism works. </span><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn20" name="_ftnref20" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn20;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[20]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> For capitalist businesses the
profit imperative is not just a need for a reasonable ‘return’ (as they often
claim) but a drive to maximise profit . Nor is it just a matter of personal
greed, an insatiable desire for more luxury cars, yachts or private jets. It is
an objective pressure deriving from the very nature of the capitalist system –
not just the ideology of neo-liberalism – which dominates every enterprise and
unit within it. This is because capitalism is based on competition in the
market, ultimately the world market, and the measure of success in that
competition is the amount of profit realised. This operates at every level from
the local corner shop to the giant multinational corporation. To put it
concretely SPAR is competing with Centra, Volkswagen is competing with Toyota
and General Motors, and ExxonMobile is competing with BP and Shell, and if they
do not keep up in he race, the race for profit, they will go out of business
and get taken over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Crucially – for
responding to climate change – this operates not at the level of states but also
internationally between capitalist states, between the USA and China</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn21" name="_ftnref21" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn21;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[21]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> and Russia and the EU and
India and so on in an endless struggle of all against all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">At a
national level this relentless competition is partially mitigated by the
existence of the state (not just parliament but the civil service, judiciary,
police, armed forces etc) . One of the functions of the capitalist state, along
with repression, is to provide services and infrastructure (schools, hospitals,
roads, transport etc) required by the capitalist economy as a whole, which it
may not be in the interests of private businesses to maintain. But no such
authority exists at the international level. </span><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn22" name="_ftnref22" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn22;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[22]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> Internationally each
capitalist state acts on behalf of its own capitalist class in the global
competition. Thus not only each business but also each state is under an iron
compulsion to grow its economy at a rate that matches its rivals.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The
final piece in this capitalist jigsaw is the central role played by fossil-fuel
and fossil fuel related corporations in the global capitalist economy. The
likes of Shell, BP, ExxonMobile, Texaco, Toyota, Volkswagen and General Motors
are among the very biggest in the world and they all exercise a huge influence
on government. It should be remembered that US Vice President Dick Cheney, the
brains behind George W Bush, was an executive of the oil company, Halliburton
and that Trump’s first Secretary of State was Rex Tillerson, former CEO of
ExxonMobile. But it should also be understood that the objective weight of
these companies in the world economy gives them immense political leverage even
without such direct personal influence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">As a
result of these combined pressures the prioritisation of profit over the
environment and over human life becomes second nature to both business
executives and mainstream politicians and state officials. US Secretary of
State, Mike Pompeo, is pleased the Arctic is melting. In May this year, with $
signs flashing in his eyes, he stated:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #262626;">The Arctic is at the forefront of opportunity and
abundance. It houses 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil, 30 percent of
its undiscovered gas, an abundance of uranium, rare earth minerals, gold,
diamonds, and millions of square miles of untapped resources, fisheries galore.<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/06/world/one-million-species-threatened-extinction-humans-scn-intl/index.html"><span style="color: #262626;"><o:p></o:p></span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #262626;">Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways
and new opportunities for trade. This could potentially slash the time it takes
to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days. Arctic sea lanes
could become the 21st century Suez and Panama Canals.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn23" name="_ftnref23" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn23;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[23]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE;">
<span style="color: #262626;">The
point about this is not how outrageous but how normal this is. ‘They’ might not
all say it so openly but it is how the large majority of them think. It
requires immense popular mobilisation, on a much greater scale, than anything
yet achived by Extinction Rebellion or Fridays 4 Future or anybody else to
force them to even contemplate any other way of operating and when that does
happen their ‘change of heart’ is only temporary, to get the threat of the
popular movement to go away, before returning to profit driven
business-as-usual. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE;">
<span style="color: #262626;">This
is why capitalism and capitalist politicians have done next to nothing to stop
climate change: this is why they have been prepared to sacrifice hundreds of
millions of lives and millions of species and gamble with the future of the
planet. That is what they have done for decades and, in many cases, for
centuries and what they are still doing now and will continue to do in the
future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this doesn’t just mean not
doing enough; it means actively intervening to prevent serious action being
taking as Leo Varadkar and Fine Gael did in Ireland by using behind the scenes
parliamentary manoeuvres tp block Brid Smith’s Climate Emergency Measures Bill,
and as Obama did at the Copenhagen Earth Summit in 2009 and Trump has done by
pulling the US out of the 2015 Paris Accords.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Trump’s statement on this summed it all up in a single sentence, ‘ the
Paris Accord will undermine our economy’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE;">
<span style="color: #262626;">This
explanation of what has already happened in the immediate past provides us with
the best guide as to what will happen in the immediate future. Even if by some
extraordinary and most unlikely miracle substantial sections of the global
business and political elite were to have a collective Damascene conversion to
environmentalism, there would be no way, by their methods, they could turn
around the immense oil tanker of the global economy in the very short time we
have to avert disaster. This is why we need ‘System change not climate change’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #262626;">The Meaning of System Change<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE;">
<span style="color: #262626;">The
slogan ‘System change not climate change’ is popular in the movement and that
is a very good thing, but itis clear that it means different things to
different people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE;">
<span style="color: #262626;">For
some, and I would cite Irish Green Party leader Eamonn Ryan as an example here,
bringing about system change is largely about changing the collective ‘mind
set’ and developing a new ‘narrative’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn24" name="_ftnref24" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn24;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[24]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> According to this view,
and I think that in a rather vague way this is quite widely shared in ‘green’
and environmentalist circles, capitalism is first and foremost a set of
attitude and beliefs – attitudes and beliefs which can be altered by education
and persuasion , even if that persuasion involves a significant amount of
peaceful protest. What is involved is the ‘people’ should be induced to move
away from their acquisitiveness and obsession with consumption. Similarly
society should be persuaded to abandon its addiction to economic growth and its
use of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as a key measure of national success.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE;">
<span style="color: #262626;">This
approach, well intentioned as it may be, gets the relationship between mind
sets and social reality upside down. CEOs and business managers are not
obsessed with profit maximisation because profit maximisation because the idea
arbitrarily dropped into their heads from the sky but because it is a daily
necessity imposed on the by capitalist social relations. Capitalist politicians
are not focused on economic growth because they were taught it at university
but because without growth capitalism goes into a downward spiral , a
‘recession’, and nation states that fail to grow decline and are eventually
conquered or taken over. The ‘mind set’ of capitalist economics which prevails
from the Harvard Business School to the Economics Department at Trinity, from
the Federal Reserve Bank in Washington to the ESRI, is not just a mistake; it
represents a set of real material interests, the interests of the capitalist
class. System change, therefore, requires not just changing attitudes but
changing the material social relations which underlie them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE;">
<span style="color: #262626;">Another
widespread view is that system change means a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>mix of government initiatives<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>from above and life style changes in society so that gradually a
sustainable eco-friendly form of capitalism will be arrived at.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This idea should, of course, be tested in
practice, in particular by demanding the necessary initiatives from governments
e,g. keeping fossil fuels in the ground It is right always to test the limits
of the system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it is very doubtful
that this gradualist approach can work at all and it certainly isn’t going to
work quickly enough to meet the challenge we face. Moreover, it leaves the basic<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>economic dynamic of the system <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>– competitive production for profit – in place
and tht dynamic is inherently anti-ecological: it creates as Karl Marx, John
Bellamy Foster and others have argued, a ‘metabolic rift’ between society and
nature so that even if some time-gaining reforms are achieved (which is helpful
but not guaranteed) all the fundamental problems will reassert themselves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE;">
<span style="color: #262626;">Real
system change means transforming the basic way in which production is organised
in our society. It means public ownership, not of every corner shop and small
business, but of the main industries, services, banks and financial
institutions and their operation according to democratic social planning. The
democratic planning is not an afterthought or optional extra – without it
public ownership gives you, as in Stalinist Russia, only state capitalism. <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn25" name="_ftnref25" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn25;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[25]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Only this breaks the
competitive ‘accumulation for accumulation’s sake ‘ logic of capitalism and
makes possible large scale production to meet human needs which include a
sustainable relationship with nature. The word for this is socialism. Without
socialism the march to ecocide and barbarism will continue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #262626;">Revolution<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE;">
<span style="color: #262626;">But
how is socialism to be achieved? Unfortunately socialism cannot be achieved by
the normal methods of parliamentary democracy. I say unfortunately because it
would be much simpler if it could; indeed we would probably have many examples
of socialism already since there have been many instances of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the election of governments with socialist intentions.
The problem is that parliament is essentially a talking shop, a facade for a
fundamentally undemocratic system. The real centres of power in any capitalist
society, whether it is the US, China or Ireland, lie outside parliament in the
board rooms of the banks and major industries and in the armed forces, the
upper ranks of the civil service and the judiciary and in the recesses of the
deep state, none of which are in any way democratic. Whenever socialist or even
seriously reformist governments come to power these institutions mobilize their
power to frustrate, block and eventually remove the government<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn26" name="_ftnref26" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn26;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[26]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>. They would do the same
with any seriously ecological government. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only way in which such a government could
successfully be defended would be by mass mobilization from below, which went
beyond the limits of normal parliamentary democracy to defeat the bosses and
the state; in other words by revolutionary means.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE;">
<span style="color: #262626;">The
only way, in general, that real system change, real change to an
environmentally sustainable society, can be achieved is by mass revolution. That
means a combination of mass street demonstrations, mass strikes and widespread
workplace occupations which breaks the power of the existing state and
establishes a new form of democracy based on people’s assemblies. <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftn27" name="_ftnref27" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn27;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[27]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE;">
<span style="color: #262626;">There
is an obvious argument against this perspective: it runs ‘There is no sign of
your mass socialist revolution happening and we have no time; we need a
solution to climate change NOW!’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
argument was put to me when I first started to get involved on the climate
issue about 18 years ago. It was a powerful argument then and remains a
powerful argument today (only 18 years later and capitalism iis no nearer
solving the problem).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would reply with
two points. First revolution is not, and should never be, counterposed to the
immediate changes that are needed now: keep it in the ground, free public
transport etc. I repeat we must fight for every immediate step forward we can
get.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Second, it is true that there is
not an immediate prospect of national, let alone international socialist
revolution, but the very fact of extreme climate crisis will generate the
conditions that will make revolution possible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE;">
<span style="color: #262626;">First,
the proliferation of extreme weather events around the world, together with
accumulating scientific evidence, will make the need for system change clear to
increasing numbers of people globally. Second, the actual experience of those
weather events will push people more and more in the direction of people power,
collectivist responses to them<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in order
to deal with them and prevent ordinary people being abandoned while the rich
head for their gated communities in the hills.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Third,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the imminent prospect of
climate catastrophe will increasingly provide a straightforward answer to what
has long been a major objection to socialism and revolution: look how it ended
in Russia! The truth is Marxists could produce endless explanations about what
went wrong and how Stalinism<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>was a
result of material conditions not socialism as such but most people who never
read Trotsky or Tony Cliff or any of that were still turned against socialism
by what happened in Russia (and China, and Eastern Europe and so on). The point
about extreme change is that it is likely to override all that with the
proposition that at least socialism would better than extinction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Third, the very global nature of the climate
crisis will make the global spread of revolution, if a national breakthrough is
achieved, more likely and more obviously necessary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lastly, and this too will become more and
more obvious as the climate crisis deepens, the alternative to socialist
revolution<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>will be fascist barbarism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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https://theconversation.com/climate-strikes-greta-thunberg-calls-for-system-change-not-climate-change-heres-what-that-could-look-like-112891?fbclid=IwAR0gKBwVotRv_C1l16kCOl7H<span style="color: #121212; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
This is to be expected because the IPCC report derived its authority from the
fact that it represented the consensus of many thousands of scientists
worldwide and that built a certain conservatism into its conclusions.</div>
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<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
<span style="color: #262626; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">El
Niño events are characterized by warming of the ocean waters in the Pacific
Ocean and have a pronounced warming effect on the Earth's average temperature.
Though there was a weak El Niño in place during the first part of 2019, it is
transitioning to a more neutral phase, making the extreme July temperatures
even more alarming.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See David Shulman, BBC Science editor, ‘Climate change: Greenland’s ice faces
melting death sentence’ . <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49483580">https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49483580</a></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/18/arctic-permafrost-canada-science-climate-crisis">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/18/arctic-permafrost-canada-science-climate-crisis</a></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2018/01/15/carbon-pollution-has-shoved-the-climate-backward-at-least-12-million-years-harvard-scientist-says/?fbclid=IwAR2TgKwARWsHgs6hc4">https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2018/01/15/carbon-pollution-has-shoved-the-climate-backward-at-least-12-million-years-harvard-scientist-says/?fbclid=IwAR2TgKwARWsHgs6hc4</a></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span style="background: #EAF3FF; color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.5pt;">Baldwin, Sarah Lynch; Begnaud, David. </span><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hurricane-maria-death-toll-puerto-rico-2975-killed-by-storm-study-finds/"><span style="color: #663366; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.5pt;">"Hurricane
Maria caused an estimated 2,975 deaths in Puerto Rico, new study finds"</span></a><span style="background: #EAF3FF; color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.5pt;">. CBS News<span class="reference-accessdate">.
Retrieved </span><span class="nowrap">August 28,</span><span class="reference-accessdate"> 2018</span>.</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></b></div>
</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-desertification-and-the-role-of-climate-change#targetText=Both%20natural%20variability%20in%20climate,become%20more%20prone%20to%20e">https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-desertification-and-the-role-of-climate-change#targetText=Both%20natural%20variability%20in%20climate,become%20more%20prone%20to%20e</a></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Is
someone in Africa whose livelihood as a farmer is gradually destroyed by
climate change and decides to try to reach Europe to obtain a better life a
climate refugee or an ‘economic migrant’? Is someone who flees a local war that
broke out as a result of tensions over water shortages a climate or a war
refugee or both?</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <a href="http://climatemigration.org.uk/climate-refugee-statistics/">http://climatemigration.org.uk/climate-refugee-statistics/</a></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <a href="https://migrationdataportal.org/themes/environmental_migration#recent-trends">https://migrationdataportal.org/themes/environmental_migration#recent-trends</a></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
For a critique of the Irish Government’s Climate Action Plan see Eddie Conlon
etc</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn12" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<h1 style="background: white; margin-top: 0cm;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #365f91; font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-themecolor: accent1; mso-themeshade: 191;">[12]</span></b></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Damian Carrington</span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘</span><span style="color: #121212; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 115%;">Brutal news': global carbon emissions jump to all-time high in 2018’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Guardian</i>, 5 December 2018.<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See Damian Carrington, ‘Worrying rise in global CO2 forecast for 2019’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Guardian</i>, 25 January 2019.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
This excellent Bill was actually passed by the the Dail (the Irish Parliament)
but prevented from becoming law by back room manouvering by the Fine Gael
Government.</div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Andreas Malm, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fossil Capital: the Rise of
Steam Power and the Origins of Global Warming</i>,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Verso, London 2016.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn16" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See Ian Angus, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Facing the Anthropocene,</i>
Monthly Review Press, New York, 2016.</div>
</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref17" name="_ftn17" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See above pp.44-45.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref18" name="_ftn18" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn18;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See Rudy M Baum, ‘Future Calculations: the First Climate Change Believer’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Distillations 2</i>, 2016, p.38-39 .</div>
</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref19" name="_ftn19" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn19;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See Jonathan Neale,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Stop Global Warming-
Change the World</i>, London 2008, pp17-18.</div>
</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref20" name="_ftn20" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn20;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[20]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Many environmental activists have an excellent understanding of the former but
a poor understanding of the latter. For some socialists – hopefully declining
in number – it is the other way round.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref21" name="_ftn21" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn21;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[21]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See Peadar O’Grady on </div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref22" name="_ftn22" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn22;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[22]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
The idea that the United Nations is such an overarching international authority
is a persistent liberal illusion. </div>
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<div id="ftn23" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref23" name="_ftn23" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn23;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[23]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/06/politics/pompeo-sea-ice-arctic-council/index.html">https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/06/politics/pompeo-sea-ice-arctic-council/index.html</a></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn24" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref24" name="_ftn24" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn24;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[24]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> I
cite Eamonn Ryan here on the basis of having heard him speaking to this effect
and using these expressions at several meetings. He clearly doesn’t meanwhat I
would argue for because he is willing, keen even, to go into coalition with
Fine Gael or Fianna Fail i.e. run capitalism.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn25" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref25" name="_ftn25" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn25;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[25]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> As
James Connolly put it ‘<span style="background: ivory; color: black;">Socialism
properly implies above all things the co-operative control by the workers of
the machinery of production; without this co-operative control the public
ownership by the State is not Socialism – it is only State capitalism.’ James
Connolly, ‘The New Evangel – state monopoly versus socialism’ in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Workers Republic</i>, 1901 . </span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1901/evangel/stmonsoc.htm">https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1901/evangel/stmonsoc.htm</a>.
Many other Marxists such as Engels, CLR James and Tony Cliff have argued the
same point.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn26" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref26" name="_ftn26" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn26;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[26]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
For a more thorough account of this experience see John Molyneux,
‘Understanding Left Reformism’<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, Irish
Marxist Review 6,</i> (2013). <a href="http://www.irishmarxistreview.net/"><span style="background: white;">http://<i>www.irishmarxistreview</i>.<i>net</i></span></a><i><span style="background: white; color: #333333;">.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn27" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2025%20Apocalypse%20Now%20(Autosaved)%20(Autosaved).docx#_ftnref27" name="_ftn27" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn27;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[27]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
There is a vast literature on the nature, history and dynamics of revolution in
the Marxist tradition eg Karl Marx, The Civil War in France (on the Paris
Commune), V.I.Lenin, The State and Revolution, and L.Trotsky, The History of
the Russian Revolution. On more recent revolutionary attempts Colin Barker ed
Revolutionary Rehearsals, London 1987 is very useful. The democratic popular
assemblies referred to here are, in the Marxist tradition, usually referred to
as ‘soviets’ (or workers’ councils) after their role in the Russian Revolutions
of 1905 and 1917.</div>
</div>
</div>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-18083294461636572152019-11-17T13:03:00.002+00:002019-11-17T13:03:32.563+00:00Reflections on the Global Revolt<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Reflections
on the global revolt<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">John
Molyneux<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i>First published on the socialist website REBEL at www.rebelnews.ie</i></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">In the
last few weeks it has become clear that there is wave of popular revolt around
the world. The extent of this has only just become evident but when we look
back it is clear that the origins of this wave reach back to the end of 2018
and early 2019.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Chronology of the revolts:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Date revolt began<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">France:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yellow Vests<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>October/November 2018<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Sudanese
Revolution<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>19 December<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2018<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Haiti<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>7 February 2018<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Algeria:
Revolution of Smiles<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>16 February 2019<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Hong
Kong<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>March 2019 went mass 9 June<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Iraq:
Tishreen Revolution<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1
October 1019<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Puerto
Rico: Telegramgate<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>8 July 2019<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Ecuador<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>3
October 2019<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Catalonia<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>14 October 2019<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Chile<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>14
October 2019<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Lebanon<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>17-18 October 2019<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">In
addition there are places where there have been significant protests that might
or might not develop further e.g. Uruguay, Peru and Costs Rica, plus of course
there has been the global climate change protests by school students and
Extinction Rebellion. It is a tide comparable, in the last half century,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>only to that of 1968 and that of 2011 when
the Arab Spring spilled over into the Spanish Indignados and the US Occupy
movement.This article is not, and could not be a full account or comprehensive
analysis of these revolts. Rather it presents a number of provisional
observations of characteristics and patterns and a few conclusions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Issues<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">This
explosion of rebellion round the world is not really a wave in the sense that
the Arab Spring of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2011 was a wave i.e.
a sequence of linked revolts, one following the other and each inspiring the
next. Rather each rebellion seems to have had its own specific national
trigger. In Hong Kong is was the Extradition Law, in Puerto Rico it was the
leaking of the Governor’s tapes, in Catalonia it was the vicious sentences
imposed on independentist leaders and in Lebanon it was a tax on What’s App.
But if we exclude Hong Kong and Catalonia where the issues are essentially
democracy and self –determination, the common thread linking all the revolts
from the Yellow Vests to Iraq and Chile has been an uprising against poverty,
inequality, rising living costs and corruption. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">This
should serve as a reminder of something socialists can easily forget when
society seems calm and ‘the level of struggle is low’: namely that across the
world there exists, underneath the surface stability, a seething mass of pain
and anger which finds little expression in the ordinary business of politics as
usual. Most of the time this pain and anger is dealt with by people as
individuals alone or in their families and the pressure of the day to day
struggle to cope is one the main factors, perhaps the main factor, that
inhibits them from being politically active. But then sometimes a particular
outrage or attack can touch a collective nerve in the working class and spark a
volcanic collective response which suddenly opens up completely new horizons.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Consider
Chile. I have just heard a You Tube video in which my old Chilean comrade,
Mario Nain, speaks of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chile as being
almost in a state of insurrection. Yet this is how Chile is described in its
current Wikipedia entry. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The modern </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_state" title="Sovereign state"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">sovereign state</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> of Chile
is among South America's most economically and socially stable and prosperous
nations, with a </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-income_economy" title="High-income economy"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">high-income economy</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> and high </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_standards" title="Living standards"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">living standards</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">. It
leads </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_America" title="Latin America"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Latin American</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> nations in rankings of </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_development_(humanity)" title="Human development (humanity)"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">human development</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_(companies)" title="Competition (companies)"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">competitiveness</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_per_capita" title="Income per capita"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">income per
capita</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization" title="Globalization"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">globalization</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index" title="Global Peace Index"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">state of peace</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_freedom" title="Economic freedom"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">economic freedom</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">, and </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_corruption" title="Political corruption"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">low perception of corruption</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> (</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Bertolt
Brecht, in his great poem, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">To Posterity</i>,
speaks of ‘<span style="color: #333333;"> despairing w</span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">hen there was only injustice and no resistance</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is occurring at present is proof that
the decaying system of global capitalism is pregnant with potential revolution.
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The
mass character of the revolts<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">What is most
immediately striking about the current wave is not only its geographical spread
but its extraordinary mass character within each country. The sheer numbers are
truly amazing. Some historical benchmarks: the biggest street demonstration in
Russia in 1917 was probably the June Days when about 400,000 marched. The great
united demonstrations which blocked the path to power of French fascism in 1934
involved 1 million nationwide and maybe 5-600,000 in Paris. Martin Luther
King’s historic March on Washington where he gave his ‘I have a dream’ speech,
was 250-300,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In May ’68 the largest
single mobilization was about 1 million in Paris.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The biggest demonstration in British history
was the 2 million against the Iraq War in 2003.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Yet between 1 and 2 million turned out in Honk Kong on the 16 June; that
is out of a total population of 7 million. In Lebanon on 20 October an
estimated 1 million took to the streets out of a national population of only 6
million. Chile (population 18 million) similarly had something like a million
people on the streets of Santiago last weekend. Wikipedia offers a list of the
USA’s biggest demonstrations historically. According to this list the fourth
largest ever <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">– for the whole United
States</i> – was the 1.1 million on 22 July of this year in San Juan, Puerto
Rico, which completely shut down the entire 11 lane Expreso las Americas.
Puerto Rico has a total population of 3.1million (!) and it being an island
there wasn’t much scope for bussing people in. Of course size in itself is not
the same as revolutionary significance - the June Days demonstration in
Petrograd was full armed soldiers, sailors and workers – nevertheless these
immense numbers are very significant and require some explanation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Obviously
some people will put it down to social media, just as they called the Egyptian
Revolution the ‘twitter’ revolution,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>and I’m sure social media plays its part in that it offers an
alternative way of getting out news and opinions to the channels provided by
the MSM or by traditional leftist means such as leaflets. But I don’t believe
it is even half the story. In Egypt in 2011 the regime shut down the internet
without in any way being able to halt the revolution and in 2013 the existence
of social media did not prevent the triumph of the counter revolution. The vast
size of these mobilizations is reflective of much deeper trends. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The
first of these is the huge growth of the world working class. In 1993 the
figure for waged or salaried employees was 985 million out of a world
population of approximately <span style="background: white; color: #353432;">5.526
billion or about 18%. By 2013 the number of waged/salaried employees had grown
to </span>1.575 billion out of a total of <span style="background: white; color: #353432;">7.086 billion or just over 22%. And significantly this figure
constituted just over 50% of the world’s total labour force of about three
billion. Of course not all these waged employees were workers (a minority would
be managers) but most of them were and this meant that for the first time in
history Marx’s proletariat really did constitute something like a majority of
society globally.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="background: white; color: #353432;">Even more important than the
absolute figures is the trend. In the twenty years from 1993 to 2013 the number
of waged/salaried </span>grew by 589,814,000 (a staggering 60% of the 1993
figure). An average of 29 million people joined the waged labour force each
year. Moreover the growth of waged labour was concentrated in the developing
countries.<span style="font-size: 7.0pt;"> </span>In the developed
countries, the salaried/waged employee figure rose slowly from 345 million
(1993) to 410 million (2013). In non-developed countries the growth was
explosive, from 640 million (1993) to 1,165 million (2013). The non-developed
world waged labour force is bigger than the global waged labour force twenty
years ago.<span style="font-size: 7.0pt;"> </span>An estimated
445 million waged or salaried employees were in <st1:place w:st="on">East Asia</st1:place>
in 2013 i.e. more than in the whole of the developed countries! The current
revolts are precisely in places that have experienced this process of proletarianisation.
Inevitably superficial commentators will not see these revolts as working class
because, by and large, the people on the street are not miners, dockers, car
workers and so on. But they are, overwhelmingly wage workers – what else could
they be? -<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and they are what the
contemporary working class looks like.<br />
Closely linked to proletarianisation and to the size of mass demonstrations
is urbanisation. The World Bank’s list of countries by degree of urbanisation
shows over 30 countries that are more than 80% urban including Argentina (92%),
Brazil(85%), Chile (89%), Lebanon (88%) Saudi Arabia (83%), UK (82%), US (81%)
and Uruguay (95%). As with the spread of wage labour it is in the developing
countries that the process of urbanisation is most rapid and many that were
predominantly rural until very recently are now substantially urban e.g.
Algeria (70%), Bolivia (68%), Mongolia (71%), Peru (78%) and Turkey (73%). The
World Atlas lists 69 cities with a population over 5 million and 26 over 10
million. <br />
This combination of urbanisation and proletarianisation has also produced a
change of political strategy and tactics. In 1968 a strong pull was exercised,
especially in the developing countries, by the strategy of rural guerrilla
warfare, usually under the label of Maoism (in Asia) and Guevarism (in Latin
America). Even in the advanced industrialised countries there was a strong
temptation to ‘pick up the gun’ in one form or another (the Black Panthers, the
Red Brigades, the IRA etc). And where that was rejected in favour of an
orientation on the industrial working class, this meant a focus on the manual
worker trade unions and a model of revolution proceeding largely from big
economic strikes to bigger economic strikes to street demonstrations to
occupations to a general strike to an uprising. In the current rebellions the
spontaneous strategy of choice has been the monster demonstration – mass
mobilizations of people power on the streets. Mass strikes have been, are and
will be, extremely important in these revolutions, for example there have been
general strikes in Lebanon and Chile, but the line of travel has largely been <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">from</b> mass political demonstrations <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">to</b> political strikes, not from economic
strikes to a political movement.<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Youth<o:p></o:p></b><br />
In virtually all these rebellions young people have been the drivers, as
with the climate movement; this is most obvious in Chile where the whole movement
was begun by school students and students resisting fare increases and in Hong
Kong with the sustained running battles with the police and in the Lebanon. In
one sense this is entirely to be expected as young people always come to the
fore in revolutions, but in what is happening at the moment I think there is a
specific generational factor involved. Three of the largest and deepest revolts
have been in countries<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- Chile , Lebanon
and Iraq – with absolutely traumatic pasts. In the case of Chile it was ruled,
for seventeen years from 1973 to 1990, by one of the most brutal dictatorships
in modern times- that of General Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet came to a US-
backed military coup which destroyed the radical Popular Unity Government of Salvador
Allende and which was renowned for its use of death squads and extreme torture.
Lebanon’s trauma was almost exactly contemporaneous with that of Chile; it
consisted of a multi- sided Civil War which claimed about 120.000 lives and
drove a million Lebanese into exile. In the course of this conflict Beirut
became an international by word for destruction and chaos. The War left Lebanon
deeply divided on sectarian lines – Maronite Christians v Sunni Muslims v Shia
Muslims v Druze Christians – which had originally been fostered by French
colonial rule and after the 1990 ceasefire<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>its political system (as in Ireland) was given a sectarian
structure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the most magnificent
features of the current revolution is that it has mobilized people from all of
the communities and overcome sectarian divisions. Of course this can be
explained as an effect of collective struggle but the immediate emergence of an
anti-sectarian movement was almost certainly through the development of a new
young generation who had moved beyond the old sectarianism. Again there may be
a parallel with Ireland. In the case of Iraq the trauma was the US invasion of
2003 which devastated the country and also plunged it into long running and
bitter sectarian conflict as the US played off Shia against Sunni in a way that
included producing ISIS. It was normal during much of the post war period for
the mosques to receive 100 bodies per day. That Shia and Sunni have joined
together in the current revolt is magnificent and again tribute in part to a
new generation.<br />
It is also striking, however, that those countries which took the lead in
the Arab Spring in 2011 and suffered worst in the repression and
counterrevolutions that followed – Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria (Tunisia is a
partial exception) – have not been the forefront of the present wave in
contrast to Sudan, Algeria and Iraq which were relatively silent in 2011.Such
are the dialectics of history; those that were last shall later be first.<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ecuador<o:p></o:p></b><br />
I have not so far discussed Ecuador partly because I don’t have figures for
the size of the demonstrations. Nevertheless the scale and intensity of the
revolt against the government’s package of cuts and austerity measures,
including cuts to fuel subsidies, was astonishing. This can be judged from some
simple facts: a)from the outset the protests blocked all major roads and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>bridges into the capital, Quito;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>b) four days after the start of the uprising
the armed forces were deployed to force the release of 50 servicemen captured
and detained by protesting indigenous groups (!); c)<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 7.0pt;"> </span>On 8 October, the Ecuadorean President, Lenin
Moreno, relocated his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_Ecuador" title="Government of Ecuador">government</a> from Quito to the coastal
city of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guayaquil" title="Guayaquil">Guayaquil</a> after
anti-government protesters had overrun Quito, including the Presidential <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carondelet_Palace" title="Carondelet Palace">Carondelet
Palace</a>.<br />
Also of importance in Ecuador was the fact that immediately after the cuts were
announced a quadruple alliance was formed between the main workers’ union, the
Frente Unitario de los Trabadores, the Confederation of Indigenous
Nationalities of Ecuador , the Federation of University Students of Ecuador and
the Popular Front (led by the Communist Party of Ecuador). Not only are the
Indigenous groups (roughly 6% of the population) included but they, the victims
of centuries of extreme oppression and marginalisation, appear to have been the
most advanced component of the movement. Moreover, it is a striking difference
from some of the other protests that such a leading role is played by a
pre-existing left party. In any event this alliance brought the Government to
its knees in a fortnight. <br />
<br />
<br />
Repression<br />
These marvellous mass revolts have shown themselves well able to withstand
serious levels of repression. The Yellow Vests took a sustained battering from
the brutal French cops and continued undaunted. The Hong Kong rebels have stood
up to both assault by criminal thugs and ongoing police violence. On 11 October
the Hong Kong authorities announced they had arrested 2379 protestors including
750 under the age of 18. In the Sudanese Revolution,which lasted seven months,
approximately 260 protestors were killed, including over 100 in the 3 June
massacre by the Janjaweed which also involved the rape of 70 women. Yet after
the 3 June the movement came back in strength to achieve at least a partial
victory. In Lebanon the Red Cross has reported having to treat 402 people with
injuries from tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon. In Chile about 20
people have been killed and many others injured by ‘balines’ (lead balls),
alongside over 3000 arrests and the cops have been randomly and brutally
beating people on the streets, yet the uprising has continued and grown. Even
more savage has been the level of violence in Iraq where as many as 200 have
been killed, but without breaking the revolution. <br />
In terms of the responses of the different regimes, the behaviour of
President Moreno of Ecuador is fairly typical. When the protests against his
cuts began he announced (5 October ) he ‘would not negotiate with criminals’.
After six days of escalating revolt he said ‘the country needs to recover its
calm. Let’s sit down and talk’. And on 13 October the government entered into a
televised (!) negotiation with the Indigenous Confederation and agreed to
rescind its cuts. Similarly the Chilean President, Sebastian Pinera declared a state
of emergency on 18 October and proclaimed he was ‘at war’ with the enemy within.
Three days later he was restructuring his cabinet and announcing limited
reforms and on by the evening of the 25 October, after the million strong march
in Santiago , he tweeted ‘ <span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt;">The
massive, joyful and peaceful march today, where Chileans ask for a more just
and supportive Chile, opens great paths for the future and hope. We have all
heard the message’.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt;">But there are two dangers that
need to be signalled here. The first is that politicians who declare war one
day and sue for peace the next will shift back onto a war footing the moment it
suits them i.e. when they feel they have the advantage. On no account should
they be trusted. The second is that young demonstrators and revolutionaries who
have marched through tear gas, water cannon and bullets to what they see as
victory are apt to believe they are invincible and that they can conquer all
through courage, daring and will power. Such a mood was prevalent among Egyptian
revolutionaries after they deposed Mubarak. Unfortunately revolutions are not
as simple as that, and the consciousness of even revolutionary masses remains
contradictory; they can be deceived, disoriented and even demoralised in such a
way that the counter revolution can strike back. When it does, 200 massacred,
3000 arrested in no way marks the limits of the savagery that can be unleashed
and tragically revolutions can be drowned in blood as happened in Chile in
September 1973, the Paris Commune in 1871 or Egypt in 2013. What this raises is
the question<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of political strategy and
leadership and it is to that I now turn.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt;">Politics<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt;">In Sudan and Ecuador the
movements had organised political leadership from the start, with the national
Communist Parties playing a significant, if not dominant, role. But this is not
typical. More common, from the Yellow Vests to Hong Kong, Lebanon, Chile and
Iraq is an absence of any clear political leadership and expression of the
movement . Catalonia is somewhere in between, with established bourgeois
nationalist<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and radical parties, but no
clear political leadership.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt;">This political vacuum is a
serious problem not because people need to be taught how to rebel or to manage
the tactics of struggle in the streets but because it makes it very difficult
for the revolution to articulate clear political aims or a definite plan for a
better society. Obviously people want an end to poverty, austerity,
corruption<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and neo-liberalism , a
reduction of inequality and so on . But what exactly is required to achieve
these aims? Is it enough just to put in power people of integrity and honesty?
If what is required is system change, as the climate movement proclaims , what
exactly does that mean and who is going to deliver it? What is going to be done
about the existing state, including the hidden deep state? In the absence of
serious answers to these questions, and they are unavoidably political answers,
it is very hard for any movement, any ‘revolution’ to move beyond very limited
reforms – the removal of a hated dictator, the reversal of particular attacks. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt;">What all this points to is the
fact that socialists, in the present global situation, have an obligation to
search for ways to put real socialist transformation back on the global agenda.
<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt;">Finally, a note on climate
change. I mentioned at the start of this article that alongside these revolts
we have seen a rising movement over climate change. It is however noticeable
that climate change, though produced huge mobilizations in some places –
500,000 in Montreal, 170.000 in New Zealand – has not figured in the much
bigger and more working class movements we have been discussing. This is
clearly because, for all its ultimate importance and all its ability to
motivate a very considerable layer of new activists and rebels, it remains for
most working class people still something of an abstract question compared to
the price of fuel and the cost of living.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And by and large it is concrete questions that move the largest masses
into struggle. In 1914-18 it was not the threat or even the declaration but the
actual experience of the War that drove the masses to rebellion. The point
about climate change, however, is that it is only a matter of time – and not a
long time at that – before it moves from the realm of the abstract to the very
concrete indeed. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt;">When that happens all the latent
strength of the international working class and the immense potential for
revolt that we are currently witnessing on display across the world will stand
us in immensely good stead. But it will also mean the political questions posed
at the end here will acquire redoubled force.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt;">John Molyneux adds: <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt;">Since writing this article (on
02.11.19) I have discovered from Simon Assaf in Lebanon that I was mistaken to
say that climate change ‘has not figured in the much bigger and more working
class movements we have been discussing.’. According to Simon the extreme high
temperatures and consequent fires in Iraq and Lebanon WERE a significant factor
in fuelling popular anger and driving the revolts. I am pleased to stand
corrected on this point.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-2187199001142420442019-03-18T21:30:00.000+00:002019-03-18T21:30:07.068+00:00The Future of Marxism<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: ivory; color: black; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
Future of Marxism<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: ivory; color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">John
Molyneux<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: ivory; color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i>First published in Irish Marxist Review 23. February 2019.</i></span></b></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Marxism remains the
philosophy of our time. We cannot go beyond it because we have not gone beyond
the circumstances that engendered it.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Jean-Paul Sartre, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Critique of Dialectical Reason</i>.</div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: ivory; color: black;">Marx laid the cornerstones of the science
which socialists must advance in all directions, if they do not want to lag
behind events.</span><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: ivory; color: black;"><br /></span></i></div>
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Lenin, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Our Programme</i>,
1899</div>
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All my political life academics, politicians, pundits,
including various leftists and radicals, have been announcing the end or death
of Marxism or proclaiming the need to ‘go beyond’ it. They variously claimed
that capitalism had solved its fundamental contradictions, that class was
disappearing, that the proletariat was disappearing (André Gorz), that the
collapse of Stalinism meant the end of socialism, that capitalism was
spontaneously morphing into something else (post-capitalism?), that all ‘grand
narratives’ of history should be abandoned (Lyotard and post-modernism), that
history had come to an end (Fukuyama) and so on ad infinitum. I reject all this
and agree with the statement by Sartre at the head of this article. </div>
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As long as there are class divisions and exploitation, alienation,
oppression and crises, and these are increasing not diminishing, there will be
resistance and those resisting will turn and return to Marxism to guide their
struggles. This is because Marxism has no serious rival as a coherent critique
of the system, as a strategy to defeat it and as a vision of a free egalitarian
future. Therefore, I am certain that Marxism will have a future. </div>
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However, I also adhere to the statement from Lenin. Marx
laid the foundations, but Marxism must be kept up and developed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, Marxists after Marx have done this
and there is a great legacy to build on – the work of Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin,
Luxemburg, Bukharin, Trotsky, Connolly, Lukács, Gramsci, Cliff, Harman and
numerous less known figures<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>-
but capitalism never stops changing:</div>
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The bourgeoisie cannot exist
without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby
the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></div>
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So new challenges are continually thrown up. But before I go
on to discuss some of these, I should first specify what I mean by the Marxism
that has to be ‘advanced in all directions’. For me the core of Marxism is ‘the
self emancipation of the working class’. Marxism is the theory of the working
class struggle not just in the sense that it designates the working class as
the agent of socialist change but in the sense that it is the theoretical
expression of that struggle.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Theories that move away from that – for example most of the Frankfurt School –
may be influenced by Marxism but they are not, in my opinion, fully Marxist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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So what are the key theoretical issues that Marxists need to
address now and in the immediate future? I am going to look at three: a) the
changed and changing nature of the proletariat; b) the working class and
identity politics – the struggle against oppression; c) the challenge of climate
change and the anthropocene. Before embarking directly on the discussion some caveats
are necessary. None of us knows or can know what problems and challenges will
be thrown up in the future.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>I<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a> have therefore restricted myself to questions which are
incipiently already posed in and by the present but on which more work needs
doing. My list is not in any way intended to be exhaustive or limiting, merely
to raise issues where I have something definite to say, without having any sort
of definitive answers: that’s the point - these are raised as intellectual
challenges requiring further work by, I hope, many hands.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Changing
Proletariat<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Given the characterisation of Marxism outlined above – as
the theory of working class self- emancipation – the question of the nature of
the proletariat today is obviously of enormous importance especially as it has
changed so dramatically in recent decades.</div>
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In a footnote to the first page of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Communist Manifesto</i> Engels defined the proletariat as, ‘the
class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own,
are reduced to selling their labour-power in order to live’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This definition always required a degree of qualification
and amplification, for example to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">exclude</i>
those who appear to live by the sale of their labour-power, but are in reality
hired managers, paid above the value of their own labour, in order to control
the labour of others, and to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">include</i>family
members who depend on the income of a wage worker and the unemployed who form
part of the reserve army of labour. But with these modifications I believe that
Engels’ definition still stands today, provided we understand it as located
within the Marxist theory of exploitation and class struggle. It is the fact of
exploitation (the extraction of surplus value) that generates the antagonism
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and which forms workers into a
distinct class. </div>
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Moreover, this points to two very important facts. The first
is that the working class which, when Marx wrote the Manifesto in 1848 existed
only in North Western Europe (and a little in America) and numbered about 20
million, now numbers approximately 1.5 billion and exists in large masses on
every continent and in almost every country in the world. The second is that
even in the old ‘advanced’ industrialised countries like Britain, France or the
US, the working class still constitutes the substantial majority of the
workforce and of the overall population. However, the issue I want to raise
here and which I believe needs investigation by Marxists is not the numerical
size of the proletariat but its character and structure as a militant fighting
force and potential revolutionary subject. The distinction is important. In
Victorian England the largest category of employed workers was domestic
servants but when it came to struggle, for example the General Strike of 1842,
it was miners, weavers, spinners, pottery workers, mill workers and factory
workers who led the way; in 1888-89 it was the Match Girls, dockers and gas
workers.</div>
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In the years 1917- 21, the largest, most revolutionary wave
of proletarian struggle in history, it was metal workers who, from Petrograd to
Berlin, Turin to Sheffield, were ‘the vanguard’, along with miners, dockers and
railway workers. In 1979 Tony Cliff, when assessing the balance of class forces
in Britain, noted that:</div>
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<span style="background: white; color: black;">[S}hipyards, mining, docks and motor vehicle manufacturing,
employing some 4 percent of the labour force in Britain, were the industries
most prone, by far, to strikes. In 1965 these industries were responsible for
53 percent of all strike days in the country. The specific weight of these
industries in the general workers’ front is much greater even than the figures
show, because of the high level of concentration of workers’ power in them.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span></div>
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Cliff then went on to argue that the decline in strikes and
levels of workers’ organisation in these industries in the second half of the
1970s showed that the British working class movement had entered a serious down
turn in struggle. This was roundly rejected by many on the left at the time but
subsequent events proved him right. So in these terms – and internationally,not
just in Britain – where are we today?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One thing is beyond doubt: shipyard workers, miners, dockers and car
workers are no longer the most advanced section of the working class in Britain
for the simple reason that they barely exist. </div>
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Let’s look which sections of workers have been in the
forefront of the struggle over the last few years. Here in Ireland, beginning
with the LUAS workers (tram drivers) in 2016 we have seen disputes involving
Dublin Bus and Bus Eireann workers, teachers, Dunnes Stores workers, Irish Life
workers, Lloyds Pharmacy workers, Ryanair pilots, archaeologists (!)<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>,
film workers and Google workers – a far cry from the traditional industrial
proletariat. Probably the biggest victories were won by the LUAS drivers and
the Ryanair pilots. At the same time it has to be said that the largest working
class mobilisation by far in recent years and the most significant victory
(because it defeated the state) was the Water Charges movement which was
community not workplace based and driven.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the USA the largest and most militant strikes this year
were the massive rolling strikes by teachers. Other strikes catching the eye
were McDonald’s workers against sexual harassment and prison strikes against
unpaid labour. In India in 2016 an estimated 160 to 180 million public sector
workers went on a 24 hour general strike against privatisation and government
economic policies. It was hailed as the largest strike in history. In Britain
this year the most dynamic strike with the biggest pickets and most militant
rank and file involvement was by UCU, the lecturers’ union. In 2016-17 one of
the key strikes was by junior doctors.The other day I saw a facebookpost froma
comrade in New Zealand which read ‘Teachers on strike. Ambulance drivers on
strike. Bus drivers on strike. Midwives on strike.The working class of Aotearoa
is rising’.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Spain on International Women’s Day approximately 5
million held a strike against gender inequality and sex discrimination. Again,
all this is a long way from what the industrial struggle looked like in 1889,
1913, 1919 or 1972.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Obviously it can be objected that the evidence I have put
forward here is simply impressionistic. This is true but it is also my point.
We need a Marxist analysis of who the modern proletariat is, where they are
located, and which are its key sections from the point of view of potential
power and militancy. Moreover that analysis needs to be both global and
national. We need the international overview but the nationally specific
element is also essential. Socialists still largely have to operate on a
national terrain and the fact that miners have ceased to be a significant
factor in the class struggle in Britain or Ireland does not make this true of
South Africa or China. As Tony Cliff used to say, ‘You can’t find your way
round the London Underground with a map of the Paris Metro’. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cliff’s metaphor applies even more theoretically and
temporarily than it does geographically. There has long been a theoretical
debate within Marxism as to whether white collar workers are proletarians or
petty bourgeois/middle class. That needs to be resolved. In practice almost all
socialists and conscious trade unionists will stand in solidarity with
lecturers and junior doctors but the notion that such people are middle class
persists and is damaging to the unity of the working class and to an
understanding of its potential power. Even among those who accept ‘in theory’
the working class character of a teacher or lecturer the out of date cultural
stereotype often survives and with it the conception that their role in the
struggle is secondary. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are three further points that I think will need to be
considered and examined in depth in the necessary ‘reconnaissance’ and
‘mapping’ of the territory of the contemporary working class. The first is the
class’s newly developed global character. Socialists have invoked the
international working class ever since the Communist Manifesto but the shift in
this regard over the last few decades is qualitative. </div>
<div style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #353432; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">In the twenty years from 1993 to 2013 the
number of waged/salaried </span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">grew
by 589,814,000 (a staggering 60% of the 1993 figure). An average of 29 million
people joined the waged labour force each year. Moreover the growth of waged
labour was concentrated in the developing countries. In the developed
countries, the salaried/waged employee figure rose slowly from 345 million
(1993) to 410 million (2013). In non-developed countries the growth was
explosive, from 640 million (1993) to 1,165 million (2013). The non-developed
world waged labour force is bigger than the global waged labour force twenty
years ago.An estimated 445 million waged or salaried employees were in East
Asia in 2013 i.e. more than in the whole of the developed countries!</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The largest working class in the
world is, of course, the Chinese; it is followed by the Indian, the American
(USA), the Indonesian and the Brazilian. Today even countries as impoverished
as Pakistan and Bangladesh have a larger waged labour force than Britain or
France. On the 8-9 January of this year somewhere between 150 and 200 million
workers went on strike in India in what was claimed to be the largest strike in
history.The idea that a worldview centred on the urban working class is somehow
Eurocentric is completely out of date. The growing internationalisation of the
working class applies not only across nation states but within them. Kim Moody
in his book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On New Terrain</i>, which is
a partial fulfilment in relation to the US of the programme I am proposing,
points to the ‘growing diversity’ of the American working class. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Blacks,
Asians, Latinos composed over a third of the US population in 2010, compared to
20 per cent in 1980...These racial and ethnic groups now make up a large and
growing proportion of working class occupations. Blacks,Latinos and Asians,
including immigrants, composed about 15-16 percent of the workers in
production, transportation, and material moving as well as service occupations
in 1981 and now make up close to 40 percent of each of these broad occupational
groups. Furthermore, these groups are spread throughout these occupational
categories to a much larger degree than in the past.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This growing diversity applies,
to a greater or lesser extent, to the composition of the working class of
numerous countries today – even Taiwan now has 700,000 migrant workers – and in
each case the details of this and its implications need to be analysed. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Alongside this diversity there is
the growing feminisation of the workforce. Women now make up 40 percent of the
employed workforce worldwide. In many countries – and not always the countries people
might expect – the percentage is much higher. Some examples:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>%
women<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>% women<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Angola<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>50.1<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nepal<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>51.8<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Armenia<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>46.1<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Portugal<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>48.8<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Australia<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>46.2<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Russia<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>48.6<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Azerbaijan<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>48.8<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Sweden<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>47.7<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Belarus<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>49.7<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Togo<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>49.2<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Benin<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>49.2<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Vietnam<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>48.1<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[All figures from the World Bank Data website </span><a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.TOTL.F"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.TOTL.F</span></a><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> ]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">These figures are easy to obtain
and to list but what really counts is to integrate them into an analysis of the
class struggle in both its economic and ideological/political dimensions. The
figure for Ireland stands at 44.9% - not spectacular by international standards
but marking a sharp increase from 34.4% in 1990; a fact which has almost
certainly had a huge ideological impact, as manifested in the big victory in
the Abortion referendum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In China, with
the world’s most important working class, the female percentage has actually
fallen slightly from 45.2% in 1990 to 43.7%. But we know that the ‘immigration’
of tens of millions of young women from the countryside was a crucial element
in China’s extraordinary economic transformation<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>,
so what is happening here and how does it impact on the struggle of the Chinese
working class?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>India, with the second
largest working class, is a major exception: women making up only 24.5% of the
workforce. Again, why and what effect does this have on the contours of the
struggle? Another very interesting fact contained in the figures for the US
presented by Moody is that the category of ‘proletarianising’ lower
professionals is 80% female<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">All this constitutes a call for a
great deal of work by present and future Marxists. But one thing is clear:the
old image of ‘the proletarian’ as a white, male, industrial worker, so deeply
lodged in our collective consciousness, must be buried.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Working Class, Oppression and Identity Politics <o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></b>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I believe much work needs to be
done on the question of the relationship between the working class and what is often
called ‘identity politics’.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Since Lenin wrote ‘What is to be
Done?’ revolutionaries have known that they should be ‘tribunes of the people’
fighting all cases of oppression.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Moreover, they have to work to train the working class in this spirit <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">for the sake of the working class’s own
political consciousness</i>. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Working
class consciousness cannot be genuinely political consciousness unless the
workers are trained to respond to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i>
cases, without exception, of tyranny,oppression, violence and abuse, and no
matter <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what class</i> is affected.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This principle remains completely
valid today but, I would suggest, there has also been shift in how it needs to
be applied as a result of the changed nature of the working class discussed
above. This, too, will need to be investigated. To illustrate the nature of the
shift I’m talking about let me give the example of the great British Miners’
Strike of 1984-5. The example is important because it has been recounted
endlessly at socialist meetings and in socialist literature as a kind of model
of how workers learn in struggle to oppose oppression.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">At the beginning of the strike the
National Union of Miners’ journal used to contain a pin up and young miners on
their demonstrations used to shout to the young women watching ‘Get your tits
out for the lads!’ but by the end the strike the pin ups had gone, and the
sexist chants were dropped. The change came through the combination of the
magnificent role of miners’ wives and girlfriends in supporting the strike and
the miners interaction with wider socialist and feminist circles who were in
solidarity and who argued with them about their attitudes to women. Similar
processes occurred in relation to racism and black people and to homophobia and
gays. I personally remember hearing a miner on a picket line explaining how,
until the strike, he cared nothing for blacks but then, as the miners
themselves experienced police brutality, he came to understand and identify
with black people and their struggle.Again I know from personal experience that
the interaction with socialist activists was part of this transformation. The
well known film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pride</i> is a brilliant
representation of how the same process worked in relation to homophobia with a
contingent of miners leading the Lesbian and Gay Pride march in 1985 and the
Labour Party conference committing itself to support LGBT rights on a motion
from the NUM.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">All this is excellent of course
but notice something: in this account the central protagonists in this epic
class battle were white male industrial workers. The oppressed groups – the
women, blacks and lesbians and gays – were, in a sense, external to the
struggle. This was less true of the women than of the others, but nevertheless
broadly the case. The solidarity given by and to the three oppressed groups was
immensely important, as Lenin stressed, for the development of their political
consciousness but it was not so important, and certainly not decisive, for the
outcome of the strike. In the 1972 miners’ strike it was solidarity from
engineering workers (at Saltley Gates) that was decisive. In 1984-5 the key
question was solidarity or lack of it from steel workers and the decisive
moment was probably the Battle of Orgreave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Again if we return to Tony Cliff’s four key industries – shipyards,
miners, docks and car workers – they were all predominantly white male workers.
That is not how the struggle looks today. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Today, because of the changes
noted in section one, many, probably most, of the important economic strikes
involve workforces that are significantly or even majority female. Teachers’
strikes,health workers’ strikes, cleaners’ strikes, retail workers’ strikes are
all examples. Moreover, in most western countries and especially in Britain and
the US these strikes are likely to be massively multicultural. The major
transformation in public attitudes to homosexuality and (albeit to a lesser
extent) to gender fluidity internationally mean that any substantial strike
will include significant numbers of openly LGBTQ people, including on pickets,
strike committees etc.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">It follows, therefore, that the
struggle against sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia is not only crucial
for the wider political consciousness of the working class but also for its
basic unity in the economic struggle, even within most workplaces and
industries. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">How this relates to community and
street based struggles which show signs of increasing in importance – the
anti-poll tax and anti-water charges movements, and now the French gilets
jaunes are examples truly mass community movements, as were the Egyptian
Revolution (in its initial phase) and the Syrian Revolution, the Indignados and
the Occupy movements – is complex and needs studying. In general communities
are even more gender balanced i.e. majority female, than workplaces; note the
prominent role of working class women in the water charges movement in Ireland
and in the gilets jaunes. On the other hand many communities will tend to be
more ethnically/racially segregated than workplaces which makes it at least
possible for such movements to have a racist dimension or infection in a way
that is less likely in a mass workplace strike. Again there needs to be a
specific mapping of the territory: Hackney is not Rochdale is not Plymouth; New
York is not Dallas and Paris and Sau Paulo are something else again. What is
important is the Marxists in every country should be asking these questions and
charting how these profound social changes are shaping the class struggle and
the struggle against oppression.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Another feature of the recent
period, with the potential to increase in the future, is the emergence of ‘non-traditional’
strikes called in a ‘non-traditional’ way. Thus there was the Day Without
Immigrants in the US on 16 February 2017, against Trump’s racism and his racist
wall, which closed restaurants across the country.Then there was the Polish Women’s
Strike in October 2016 which defeated government plans to further restrict
Polish abortion rights. Ewa Majewska offered the following account in ‘When
Polish Women Revolted’ in Jacobin.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #191919; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">It was Gocha Adamczyk, a member of the left-wing </span><a href="http://partiarazem.pl/"><span style="background: white; color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Razem Party</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">,<span style="color: #191919;"> who, through a simple </span></span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1659773451018196/"><span style="background: white; color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Facebook event</span></a><span style="background: white; color: #191919; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">,
called for Polish women to protest against the proposed abortion bill in
September 2016. She invited women to post their pictures wearing black and
adding the hashtag #BlackProtest. The call for Polish women to “strike”
against the proposed abortion bill was announced by Krystyna Janda, the famous
actress known from Andrzej Wajda’s film <em><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Man of
Steel.</span></em> These simple yet powerful ideas inspired more than
150,000 Polish women — and more abroad — to join the online protest, wearing
black to symbolically mourn their reproductive rights. Demonstrations had
already begun earlier that year, in April, when the first version of the bill
appeared. But it was after the bill was introduced to Parliament in summer
2016, with the #BlackProtest online and the </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/10/03/polish-women-go-on-nationwide-strike-against-proposed-abortion-ban/"><span style="background: white; color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Women’s Strike on October 3</span></a><span style="background: white; color: #191919; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> on
the streets, that they reached worldwide prominence and the peak of their
strength. All of this culminated in the International Women’s Strike on March
8, 2017.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: #191919; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">In Argentina on October 19, 2016 the <i>Ni
unamenos (Not one woman less) </i>collective organized a women’s </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_strike" title="Mass strike"><span style="background: white; color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">mass
strike</span></a><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">, in response to the murder of
16-year-old Lucía Pérez, who was raped and </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impalement" title="Impalement"><span style="background: white; color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">impaled</span></a><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> in Mar del Plata. It consisted of a
one-hour pause from work and study early in the afternoon, with protesters
dressed in </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mourning" title="Mourning"><span style="background: white; color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">mourning</span></a><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> for what was known as <i>Miércoles
negro</i> ("Black Wednesday").</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni_una_menos#cite_note-huff-19"></a><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> These protests became region-wide and
gave the movement a greater international momentum, with street demonstrations
also taking place in </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Chile, Peru, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivia" title="Bolivia"><span style="background: white; color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Bolivia</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguay" title="Paraguay"><span style="background: white; color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Paraguay</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">, Uruguay, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Salvador" title="El Salvador"><span style="background: white; color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">El
Salvador</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala" title="Guatemala"><span style="background: white; color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Guatemala</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">, Mexico and </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain" title="Spain"><span style="background: white; color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Spain</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">.</span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">In the run
up to International Women’s Day in 2017, inspired by Poland, a group of
activists in Ireland called for a Strike 4 Repeal, demanding a referendum. The
initial reaction of some on the left was conservative and sceptical – this is
not how you call REAL strikes, without going through the unions etc. – but
through social media the idea gained momentum and, while it’s not possible to
know how many people actually went on strike on the day, it is fact that several
thousands of, mainly young, women and men converged on O’Connell Bridge and
occupied it for several hours in a vibrant and exciting action.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Then on 8 March 2018 came Spain’s
feminist mass strike. Beatriz Garcia, Marisa Prez and Nuria Alabao report: <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; color: #2c2c2f; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Since
2016, international women’s day has become the rallying point for a new
feminist activism in many countries. Poland, Turkey, Italy and large parts of
Latin America have seen demonstrations of tens of thousands on March 8th,
raising new and old slogans against sexist violence, for reproductive rights
and equal pay. But Spain stood out on 8 March 2018, both for the scale of the
mobilization—an estimated 5 million—and for its militancy: not just a
demonstration but a nationwide women’s strike, <i>unahuelgafeminista</i>,
a stoppage of waged work, care and shopping. In Madrid, the action began at
midnight on March 7th with a traditional <i>cacerolazo</i>, the sound of hundreds
of banging pots and pans ringing out from the central square, Puerta del Sol.
Women teachers, hospital workers, students, housewives and journalists joined
the strike <i>en masse</i>. The evening of March 8th saw a million-strong
demonstration, six kilometres long, transforming the city centre into a vast
fiesta with music and carnival puppets. In Barcelona organizers counted 600,000
parading through the streets to the feminist rally in Plaça de Catalunya. In
Bilbao, a crowd of 40,000 packed the Plaza del SagradoCorazón and sang along
with the women’s group onstage in a feminized version of the old militant
song, <i>A la huelga! </i>Many spoke of a <i>15<span class="smallcaps"><span style="text-transform: uppercase;">M</span></span> feminista</i>—a
turnout comparable to the Indignados’ occupation of the squares from 15 May
2011 in its scale, autonomy and social diversity. Yet plenty of those
celebrating this year’s International Women’s Day were too young to remember
2011<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="mso-comment-date: 20190114T1338; mso-comment-reference: WC_1;">.</a><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15;" title=""><span style="mso-comment-continuation: 1;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: #2c2c2f; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><!--[if !supportAnnotations]--><a class="msocomanchor" href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_msocom_1" id="_anchor_1" language="JavaScript" name="_msoanchor_1">[WC1]</a><!--[endif]--><span style="mso-special-character: comment;"> </span></span></span><span style="background: white; color: #2c2c2f; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; color: #2c2c2f; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The
connection between these forms of struggle which, given their success, look
likely to continue and increase, and the changing nature of the working class
is evident. Another effect of these changes is that, while what is often called
‘identity politics’ is rising, it is by no means necessarily counterposed to
class politics, and separatism, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in the
sense in which it was prevalent in the late sixties and seventies, is hardly in
evidence. Separatism was partly a response to the unreconstructed sexism
prevalent on much of the left, especially the US left, in the sixties and the
left has improved since those days, but there is also a connection to the
changes I’ve been talking about. I think the decline of separatism is a
reflection of the fact that the struggle against oppression is now
predominantly internal to the working class. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; color: #2c2c2f; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Separatism
was always primarily a middle class perspective, a means of carving out a
social/political perspective within capitalism (even if that might be a nation
state as in some varieties of black nationalism and early Zionism) rather than
challenging capitalism as such, or simply a vehicle for career advancement,
especially in the media and in academia. Separatism is manifestly inappropriate
to a situation where there is a collective struggle against a common enemy,
i.e. a real battle to be won. This is not just about workplace economic
struggles; it applied strongly in the campaign to win the Repeal referendum
where any notion that men should be excluded from the campaign (from voting,
canvassing, marching?) would immediately have been seen, by virtually everyone
involved, as shooting ourselves in the foot.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; color: #2c2c2f; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This
doesn’t mean difficulties with identity politics have gone away. It can be, and
is, used in a self-serving, divisive and sectarian way.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: #2c2c2f; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Nevertheless many of the concerns of identity politics in the context of the
struggle against oppression are legitimate, e.g. gender and ethnic balance in
meeting panels and speakers at rallies, provided they are applied sensibly. Moreover,
the general use in the movement of ‘new’ terms such as ‘privilege’ and
‘intersectionality’ is largely positive. For Marxists the key question here is
not unpacking the flaws in the, usually academic, theory ‘behind’ or associated
with the term, but looking at what it actually means to the people who use it. So
with ‘privilege’ the main point is not the deficiencies of the theory in </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_McIntosh" title="Peggy McIntosh"><span style="background: white; color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Peggy
McIntosh</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">'s </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_McIntosh#Invisible_knapsack" title="Peggy McIntosh"><i><span style="background: white; color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack</span></i></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">, but simply that when people refer to white or male
privilege they are citing a manifest fact – that there are advantages in many
situations in being white or male or both, and that often the recipients of
these advantages are not fully aware of them<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>. Similarly with
‘intersectionality’, regardless of the merits or otherwise<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 7.0pt;"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberl%C3%A9_Williams_Crenshaw" title="Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw"><span style="background: white; color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">,<span style="color: #222222;">what counts most is that
generally it is used to argue for solidarity between the oppressed and against
economistic sectionalism and separatism – things Marxists are entirely in
favour of. At the same time we need to be aware that critiques of identity
politics can easily be used to bolster or lead to reactionary conclusions. <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn18;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">To conclude this
section, all the tendencies discussed here – the changing nature of the working
class and the consequent shift in the character of the struggle against
oppression - are likely to continue and develop further. There is the danger
that Marxism is not yet up to speed in charting these developments and
responding to them. This danger is compounded if Marxists, out of concern to
defend the fundamentals of their tradition, react in a conservative way to the
challenges presented by a changing world. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But provided this reaction is avoided Marxism
is very well placed to rise to the challenge precisely because Marxism is able to
grasp the links between divers social, economic and political phenomena in a
way unmatched by any academic discipline or alternative theoretical
perspective. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Facing up to Climate
Change<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The third major issue Marxism will have to respond to in the
immediate future is obviously climate change<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">. </b>Given that when its foundations were laid down catastrophic
climate change was not even dreamt of, Marxism has proved remarkably effective
in dealing with this new challenge. If pride of place goes to John Bellamy
Foster for his pathbreaking<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Marx’s Ecology</i>, which demonstrated a
deep concern with the environment at the heart of historical materialism, and
forhis theory, based on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Capital</i>, of a
‘metabolic rift’ between capitalism and nature, numerous other Marxists have
contributed to forging a Marxist and socialist response to this existential
crisis for humanity and for the world’s species.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thanks to the work of Foster, Paul Burkett, Andreas Malm,
Ian Angus, Jonathan Neale, Kohei Saito, Martin Empson and others, it has been
clearly established: a) that the driver of climate change and the wider
ecological crisis is capitalism not human nature or even ‘industrial society’
as such; b) that humanity already possesses the knowledge and technology to
halt climate change (through a massive shift to renewable energy, public
transport, sustainable building, and non-beef agriculture, combined with large
re-forestation);c) that the inability to tackle climate change derives not from
this or that superficial character of the system or even some ingrained
ideological mindset (a ‘belief in growth’ or ‘an addiction to
consumption’)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but from capitalism’s
fundamental dynamic: its in-built drive to accumulate capital and to expand in
its relentless struggle for profit. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Moreover, this analysis has provided a strong basis for
propaganda and agitation and it will continue to do so. It points to a
necessary critique of the idea that climate chaos can be stopped by reforming
individual behaviour or by altering patterns of consumption.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is particularly important in relation to
the reactionary and potentially disastrous attempt by governments and ruling
elites to load the burden of combating climate change on ordinary people while
protecting the giant corporations, states and their military machines, as we
have seen with Macron’s fuel taxes (and the mass revolt against them) and with
the proposal for a carbon tax in Ireland. It suggests strongly that what we
need internationally are mass movements from below for ‘system change not
climate change’ and that combating climate change needs to become an integral
component, like anti-racism and anti-imperialism, of the international
socialist and working class movement.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All this stands and will continue to stand. We carry on the
fight on all fronts for the fundamental changes required to stop the headlong
rush towards catastrophe. However, the extreme urgency of the situation raises
another difficult question. The recent IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change) Report has said the world has 12 years to bring about fundamental and
unprecedented change or face disaster. The question Marxists have to face is:
what if capitalism does not change course either at all or in time and the
world heads in to the territory of 2 or 3 per cent Celsius warming?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is, I have to say, every reason to believe that this
will be the case. The governments of the world have known the basic facts of
climate change for over 30 years – at least since the IPCC was established in
1988 and issued its first Report in 1990 – and they have done nothing serious
about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And despite all the scientific
warnings and all the fine words of David Attenborough and all the ‘earth
summits’ they still not doing anything serious, by which I mean they are still
not taking action on the scale necessary to deal with the problem. Neither
Kyoto nor Copenhagen nor Paris, regardless of their failures, even attempted,
even aspired to, the action required by the crisis we are facing. </div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 13.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: -61.7pt; margin-top: 0cm;">
The main strategy of the corporations and governments has
been to talk the talk but not walk the walk. It has been to engage in massive
‘green washing’ while continuing business as usual. The case of Volkswagen
epitomises this approach. <span style="color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-themecolor: text1;">In 2013 Volkswagen proclaimed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: -61.7pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-themecolor: text1;">“Resource conservation and
sustainability in the production sector are pivotal for achieving our Group
goals for 2018. We are aiming not only to adopt eco-friendly practices but also
to strike a balance between the three main factors: economy, ecology and
society.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn19" name="_ftnref19" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn19;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-themecolor: text1;">[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -61.7pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">In September 2015 it was revealed that
Volkswagen had been intentionally and systematically cheating environmental
tests on carbon dioxide emissions of millions of its cars (about 11 million in
all). The cars were fitted with a special device that lowered emissions when
the cars were being tested but allowed the level of emissions to rise
dramatically in ordinary driving.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -61.7pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In so far as a section of the world’s rulers
has an alternative strategy it is that of Trump and Bolsonaro - engage in the
most absurd climate change denial (‘its a Chinese hoax’, or ‘it’s a Marxist
plot’) which really signifies a determination not to give a damn and to tough
it out, in the belief that they and their class will be protected from the
worst of the catastrophe. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The result of all this is that concentrations of key gases
in the atmosphere that are driving up global temperatures reached a new high in
2017.In their <a href="https://library.wmo.int/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=20697"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">annual greenhouse
gas bulletin</span></a>, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says there
is no sign of reversal in this rising trend.Carbon dioxide levels reached 405
parts per million (ppm) in 2017, a level not seen in 3-5 million years. And
this is the decisive statistic. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are
cumulative – once there they stay there. It doesn’t matter if the rate of
greenhouse emissions in the EU are slowing or somewhere else has cut their
commitment to fossil fuels; the world has one atmosphere and if the
concentration of greenhouse gases in that atmosphere is rising then the course
to disaster has not changed. The Titanic is still headed for the iceberg.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We can say ‘we need a revolution’ and indeed we do say so
and we should say so. But what if, despite our best efforts, the international
revolution doesn’t arrive in the next 12 years? We are then into the territory
of catastrophic climate change. The meaning of this needs to be clarified. It
does not mean the world will end in 12 years; it doesn’t mean humanity will be
wiped out; it doesn’t mean we will all be up to our knees in water; and it
doesn’t mean – yet – what Marx called ‘the common ruin of the contending
classes’. It means the intensification of extreme weather events on a hitherto
unprecedented scale – more droughts, more fires, more storms, more floods, more
destruction of crops and more refugees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It means therefore the extreme intensification of the class struggle. In
the face of disaster the rich will not unite with the poor, the capitalists
will not unite with the workers – they will save themselves and their own (in
class not national terms) and let the rest of us starve, drown or wander the
streets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there will be, as there
always is, resistance. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is the challenge for Marxism. Marxists are going to
have to think about how we address this new and unprecedented state of the
world. What will we pose as the way forward in a world in the grip of major
climate change?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The question exists at
two levels that are distinct but, of course, interlinked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first is the level of immediate strategy
and tactics, of demands, slogans, mobilisations, in the face of climate change
induced disasters. The second is at the level of charting a way out of or dealing
with a situation in which massive and, perhaps, ongoing climate change is
already an accomplished fact. I mean more here than just calling for
socialism,but attempting to spell out what socialism would mean in those
circumstances.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are not at present
equipped for this and this is a call for individual and collective work.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Obviously I am not able to answer my own questions here but
I do want say a bit more about them. In terms of responding to ‘natural’
disasters I think it is fair to say that generally speaking in the past the
left has often responded at a propaganda level after the event but not
attempted much of an immediate intervention as the disaster was unfolding.
Katrina in New Orleans would be an example of this and the same would seem to
be the case with the recent California fires. But what if the hurricanes and
the wildfires are recurring and ongoing in a short space of time? Then we would
have to respond with both immediate and strategic demands. Thinking about this
will have to be both global and national. We will have to learn from each
other’s experiences internationally while also understanding that although
climate change is by its nature a trans-national phenomenon, the impact of
climate change will vary enormously from one part of the world to another –
from the Sudan to Bangladesh, from the Gulf of Mexico to Australia. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then there is the question of the nature of the economy and
society that might be able to fix, or be compatible with, a hothouse world. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Left Review 111</i> (May-June 2018) Troy
Vettese argues for what is known as ‘the half-earth’ solution. The key problem,
he says, will not be population or economic growth but ‘land scarcity’ and what
he suggests is that humanity will have to confine itself to one half of the
earth’s land surface while the other half is reforested and re-wilded, so that
half the world would absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. It would also
involve compulsory veganism because that and only that would permit the
required reduction in the use of land for arable farming. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now Vettese’s article and proposal is clearly utopian, not
in the sense of being inherently impossible (I do not know if it is
hypothetically possible) but in the sense that it contains no link, and doesn’t
attempt to establish one,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>between where
we are at present and this imagined alternative society. But my point is that
we are going to need, before too long, serious non-utopian Marxist thinking
that addresses the issue of what kind of other world we are advocating.
Moreover, the agitational demands and responses that we make in the face of
mounting disasters will need to point in the direction of such an alternative –
a socialist alternative certainly but a concretely articulated one. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These are massive and daunting issues and at the moment they
not seem the most pressing ones, compared for example with the complexities of
Brexit or the rise of the far right, but it won’t be long before they are very
pressing indeed and if Marxists don’t have answers for them the right and the
fascists most certainly will. That is why I think the Marxist ‘hive mind’,
especially Marxists a lot younger and more able than me, needs to get its
thinking cap on. Needless to say this is in no way counterposed to fighting in
the here and now to do everything we can to prevent humanity coming to this
dreadful pass but a necessary preparation for the probable future.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Conclusion<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If we look at the world today with a theoretical perspective
and theoretical categories inherited from the past and not developed to take
account of new circumstances and new types of struggle, the conclusions we draw
are likely to be highly pessimistic: the level of class struggle is low, the
far right is on the rise, the left is very weak, all we can do is hold on until
things get better. But as Gramsci says, quoting Marx, ‘A resistance too long
prolonged in a besieged camp is demoralising in itself.’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn20" name="_ftnref20" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn20;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[20]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Besides we do not have unlimited or indeed very much time before the stakes in
the struggle rise enormously higher. If, however, we grasp that the
international working class is much stronger than ever before and continually
forging new forms of struggle and we use our Marxism not just to defend old
truths but to face new challenges, above all the challenges of the
anthropocene, then it becomes clear that there are huge opportunities for
resistance and transformation and for breakthroughs by the left both now and in
the period ahead. The future of Marxism is to rise to this task.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
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<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> I
have listed here the main figures in what could be called the classical Marxist
and then the international socialist traditions to which I adhere, but this
doesn’t mean there are not a multitude of others – William Morris, Karl
Kautsky, Rudolf Hilferding, Victor Serge, Walter Benjamin, Clara Zetkin,
Theodor Adorno, Raya Dumayevskaya, CLR James, Ernest Mandel, Franz Fannon , Amilcar
Cabral, Perry Anderson, John Berger, Alex Callinicos, David Harvey, Mike Davis,
Angela Davis etc.etc. - from whom, whatever my disagreements with them and
their disagreements with each other, there is an immense amount to be learnt.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Karl Marx, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Communist Manifesto</i>.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
This is how Marx himself understood his theory. I argue the case for this in
John Molyneux, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What is the Real Marxist
Tradition? </i>Bookmarks 1985.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn4" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>Gramsci
on prediction. ‘In reality one can “scientifically” foresee only the struggle
not the concrete moments of the struggle, which cannot but be the results of
opposing forces in continuous movement’. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the
Prison Notebooks, London 1971, p.438</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn5" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Tony Cliff, ‘The balance of class forces in recent years’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">International Socialism 6</i>, Autumn 1979. https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1979/xx/balance1.htm</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn6" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
The archaeologists’ dispute, which is ongoing as I write, is, significantly,
over exceedingly low pay.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn7" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
John Molyneux, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lenin for Today</i>,
London 2017 p.26</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn8" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Kim Moody,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> New Terrain; How Capital is Reshaping the Battleground of the Class
War</i>, Haymarket, Chicago, 2017. P.35. </div>
</div>
<div id="ftn9" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>See
for example, Leslie T. Chang, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Factory
Girls</i>, New York, 2008.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn10" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See Kim Moody, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as above</i>, p.40.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The exact accuracy of such a statistic is
debateable because the categories are debateable, but the trend is significant
and should be explored further because this is likely to be an important sector
of struggle. </div>
</div>
<div id="ftn11" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
It is true that the same idea is there in Marx – witness his support for
Poland, Ireland and the North in the US Civil War – but he did not give it the
same general ‘programmatic’ expression as did Lenin.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn12" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Lenin<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, What is to be Done?</i> Peking
1975, p.86</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn13" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/03/poland-black-protests-womens-strike-abortion-pis"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/03/poland-black-protests-womens-strike-abortion-pis</span></a><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div>
<div id="ftn14" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">See </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7JYEfXi2RM&t=95s"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7JYEfXi2RM&t=95s</span></a><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">.</span><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn15" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Beatriz Garcia, Marisa Prez and Nuria Alabao, ‘Spain’s
feminist strike’, New Left Review 110, Mar/Apr 2018 p. 35</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn16" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
The same, of course, can be said of ‘workerism’. </div>
</div>
<div id="ftn17" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 3.0pt;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref17" name="_ftn17" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">For those who like quotes from
the classics to back up arguments this is a nice one: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 3.0pt;">
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">"When ten intellectuals, whether in Paris,
Berlin, or New York, who have already been members of various organizations,
address themselves to us with a request to be taken into our midst, I would
offer the following advice: Put them through a series of tests on all the
programmatic questions; wet them in the rain, dry them in the sun, and then
after a new and careful examination accept maybe one or two.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 3.0pt;">
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">T<span class="textexposedshow">he case is radically
altered when ten workers connected with the masses turn to us. The difference
in our attitude to a petty-bourgeois group and to the proletarian group does
not require any explanation. But if a proletarian group functions in an area
where there are workers of different races, and in spite of this remains
composed solely of workers of a privileged nationality, then I am inclined to
view them with suspicion. Are we not dealing perhaps with the labour
aristocracy? Isn't the group infected with slave-holding prejudices, active or
passive?</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">It is an entirely different matter when we are
approached by a group of Negro workers. Here I am prepared to take it for
granted in advance that we shall achieve agreement with them, even if such an
agreement is not actual as yet. Because the Negro workers, by virtue of their
whole position, do not and cannot strive to degrade anybody, oppress anybody,
or deprive anybody of his rights. They do not seek privileges and cannot rise
to the top except on the road of the international revolution”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Leon Trotsky, ‘Closer to the Proletarians of the
Coloured Races’. (1932) </span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/06/black01.htm"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/06/black01.htm</span></a><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref18" name="_ftn18" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn18;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See Gary Young’s interesting article, ‘It comes as no shock that the powerful
hate “identity politics”’ <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/05/no-shock-powerful-hate-identity-politics">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/05/no-shock-powerful-hate-identity-politics</a></div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn19" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref19" name="_ftn19" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn19;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><a href="http://www.volkswagenag.com/content/vwcorp/info_center/en/publications/2014/05/Group_Sustainability_Report_2013.bin.html/binarystorageitem/file/Volkswagen_"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">http://www.volkswagenag.com/content/vwcorp/info_center/en/publications/2014/05/Group_Sustainability_Report_2013.bin.html/binarystorageitem/file/Volkswagen_</span></a><span lang="EN-IE" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn20" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2023%20The%20Future%20Of%20Marxism.wc-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref20" name="_ftn20" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn20;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[20]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Karl Marx, ‘The Eastern Question’, 14 September 1855, cited in Antonio Gramsci,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Selections from the Prison Notebooks</i>,
Lawrence & Wishart, 1971, p.239</div>
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-52304621401561976082018-07-19T12:30:00.001+00:002018-07-19T12:30:33.425+00:00Imperialism, Russia and Syria<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Imperialism, Russia and Syria<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">John Molyneux and Memet Uludag<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">First published in Irish Marxist Review 21.</span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The question of Syria
and attitudes to Western intervention, Russian intervention, the Syrian
Revolution and the Assad regime have generated much heated debate on the left
internationally and in Ireland. We are responding to this debate with articles
by John Molyneux on imperialism and Russia<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>and by Memet Uludag on the Assad regime and their joint article on the
political conclusions that follow from this analysis.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Imperialism and Russia<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Molyneux<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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The Marxist analysis of imperialism was developed in a
mixture of debate and cooperation by a number of great Marxists, principally
Luxemburg, Bukharin and Lenin, just over one hundred years ago. It argued that
the logic of capitalist development had led to a new international imperialist
stage of the system, characterised by giant monopoly corporations operating
globally and, with the aid of their various capitalist states, occupying,
dominating and dividing up virtually the entire world. </div>
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The main imperial powers of the time
were Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, USA and Japan <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with more minor ones such as Belgium and
Austria-Hungary. The Marxist theory of imperialism was concerned not only with
relations between these imperialisms and their colonies, i.e. how Britain
exploited India, South Africa and Ireland, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>how France oppressed Algeria, Morocco and
Martinique or Russia ruled Latvia, Georgia and Uzbekistan and so on, but also
with the rivalries between the major imperial powers and how this led to war.
Understanding the economic roots of the catastrophe of the First World War was
one the key concerns of the whole debate on imperialism and<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> all</b> the Marxists cited above<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>,
whatever their secondary differences, agreed that imperialism, arising from the
fundamental drive of capitalist competitive accumulation, led to war for ‘the
division and redivision of the world’. </div>
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At that time the central inter-
imperialist conflict was between Britain and Germany. Britain as pioneer in
terms of capitalist industrialisation had established by far the largest world
empire ‘on which the sun never set’. Germany, by contrast, was a late
developer, only becoming a unified nation in 1870, and only entering the world
stage at a time when the planet was pretty much already carved up. But in terms
of industrial and financial strength (and therefore military strength) Germany
was overtaking Britain. German imperialism therefore demanded its ‘fair share’
of colonies. British imperialism, unsurprisingly, was resistant to this idea of
sharing out its ‘property’. And it was around this central conflict that
systems of alliances formed – France and Russia and later the US with Britain,
and Austria-Hungary, Italy and the Ottoman Empire with Germany – that fought it
out on Flanders Fields and the Eastern Front.</div>
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One hundred years on it is widely
accepted that the First World War was a humanitarian catastrophe and, in left
wing circles, probably that it was an imperialist catastrophe, but this was far
from being the case at the time and it is worth briefly recalling the various
‘left’ political responses to the war. First we should note that the large
majority of what today would be called ‘the left’ supported the War. By this I
mean they backed ‘their own’ nation, supported their own ruling class, in the
War. This was true of almost all the leaders of the numerous socialist parties
that made up the Second International and of various other syndicalists and
anarchists , including the Russian anarchist, Kropotkin and many Russian SRs (Socialist
Revolutionaries). Many of these leftists advanced ‘left –wing’ arguments for
their position. The German socialists said they were fighting against Tsarist
barbarism, the Russian and British said they were fighting against German
(sometimes Prussian)militarism. Where it was popular, eg. in Ireland, it was
said they were fighting for the rights of small nations such as ‘poor little
Belgium’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Marxists who opposed the
War such as those mentioned above along with the likes of Karl Liebknecht and
Clara Zetkin in Germany, LeonTrotsky, James Connolly,and John<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>MacLean in Scotland, were a tiny minority.
Amongst these revolutionary opponents of the war there were differences of
emphasis but the fiercest in his opposition – and historically the most important
– was Lenin, so it is worth setting out his position in his own words.</div>
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What <span style="background: white; color: black;">is this war being fought for, which is bringing mankind unparalleled,
suffering? The government and the bourgeoisie of each belligerent country are
squandering millions of rubles on hooks and newspapers so as to lay the blame
on the foe, arouse the people’s furious hatred of the enemy, and stop at no lie
so as to depict themselves as the side that has been unjustly attacked and is
now “defending” itself. In reality, this is a war between two groups of
predatory Great Powers, and it is being fought for the partitioning of
colonies, the enslavement of other nations, and advantages and privileges of
the world market. This is a most reactionary war, a war of modern slave-holders
aimed at preserving and consolidating capitalist slavery. Britain and France
are lying when they assert that they are warring for Belgium’s freedom. In
reality, they have long been preparing the war, and are waging it with the
purpose of robbing Germany and stripping her of her colonies; they have signed
a treaty with Italy and Russia on the pillage and carving up of Turkey and
Austria. The tsarist monarchy in Russia is waging a predatory war aimed at
seizing Galicia, taking territory away from Turkey, enslaving Persia, Mongolia,
etc. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Germany is waging war with the
purpose of grabbing British, Belgian, and French <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="v21pp74h:368">
colonies. Whether Germany or Russia wins, or whether there is a “draw”, the war
will bring humanity fresh oppression of hundreds and hundreds of millions of
people in the colonies, in Persia, Turkey and China, a fresh enslavement of
nations, and new chains for the working class of all countries.</a><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">It is hard to
imagine a clearer statement of condemnation. However, to reinforce his
opposition, Lenin, following the German revolutionary, Karl Liebknecht’s
statement that in this war ‘The main enemy is at home!’ argued that the duty of
revolutionary socialists was to support the defeat of their own ruling class,
their own government:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: black;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="color: black;">A
revolutionary class cannot but wish for the defeat of its government in a
reactionary war, cannot fail to see that its military reverses facilitate its
overthrow. Only a bourgeois who believes that a war started by the governments
must necessarily end as a war between governments and wants it to end as such,
can regard as “ridiculous” and “absurd” the idea that the Socialists of <em><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif";">all</span></em> the belligerent
countries should wish for the defeat of <em><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif";">all</span></em> “their”
governments and express this wish. On the contrary, it is precisely a statement
of this kind that would conform to the cherished thoughts of every
class-conscious worker, and would be in line with our activities towards
converting the imperialist war into civil war.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black;">Two points should be made about
this position which are relevant to today. The first is that obviously
‘patriotic’ supporters of the war accused Lenin of being a supporter of Germany
and the Kaiser, and even of being a German secret agent, in the way that
opponents of the War on Iraq were accused of supporting Saddam Hussein. The
second is that treating his ‘own’ i.e. the Russian<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>government as ‘the main enemy’ affected the
balance of Bolshevik agitation but it did not at all, as can be seen from the
extended quotation above, mean that Lenin abstained from attacking Germany. Nor
did he accept the fact that Germany was a lesser imperial power than Britain
or, in terms of enslaved nations, Russia was a justification for supporting
Germany. He was explicit on this point.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">Germany is fighting not for the liberation, but for the
oppression of nations. It is not the business of Socialists to help the younger
and stronger robber (Germany) to rob the older and overgorged robbers.
Socialists must take advantage of the struggle between the robbers <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>to
overthrow them all. To be able to do this, the Socialists must first of all
tell the people the truth, namely, that this war is in a treble sense a war
between slave-owners to fortify slavery.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="v21fl70h:304"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="s6"></a><span style="mso-bookmark: s6;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">Despite the
defeat of Germany in 1918 and the punitive nature of the Treaty of Versailles,
the underlying economic and geo-political realities remained such that the
pattern of alliances in the Second World War was close to a rerun of those in
the First (with the additions<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of Italy
and Japan on the German side). The Second World War, however, brought about a
fundamental restructuring of imperialism. Despite its victory Britain emerged
decisively weakened and destined to rapidly lose much of its empire. Germany
was partitioned and no longer a major power. The USA and the Soviet Union
emerged from the War as the world’s two leading powers and conflict between
them – the Cold War – soon developed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Was the
Soviet Union imperialist?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">From the
standpoint of the Marxist theory of imperialism it was indisputable that from
1945 onwards the United States was the world’s leading imperialist power. This
was clear in terms of both its overwhelming economic dominance and its military
power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1945 US GDP stood at 1.6
trillion dollars<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>compared to the approx
1 trillion of the twelve main Western European countries<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1945 the US share of world manufacturing
production stood at over 50 % and in 1956 it accounted for 42 out the top fifty
corporations in the world.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
‘America’s military might was as great as its economic power. In<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1949 ... US forces were stationed in 56
countries and had the use of 400 bases world-wide’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>.
Its military budgets far exceeded those of all other countries; it stood at the
head of what was by far the world’s biggest military alliance, NATO, and above
all it had nuclear weapons which it rapidly developed on an almost unimaginable
scale – sufficient to destroy the entire population of the globe. This
accumulation of imperial power enabled it to intervene, covertly or overtly, on
a regular basis to shape events in its interests from Latin America to the
Middle East to the Korean Peninsula.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Moreover, it is fair to say that, at least by the sixties, an
understanding of the role of US imperialism was widespread on the international
left. <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
But what of the US’s only serious international rival, namely the USSR or
Soviet Union? Was this a rival imperialist power or something entirely
different?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">As far as the
large majority of the global left were concerned, with the exception of the
pro-US social democrats, it was axiomatic throughout the second half of the
twentieth century that the Soviet Union was not, and could not be, imperialist.
This was because they associated imperialism with capitalism and believed that
the Soviet Union was, in some sense or other, a socialist society and therefore
essentially anti-imperialist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Soviet
Union itself put a good deal of effort into cultivating this image. It
presented itself always as the advocate of ‘Peace’ and instructed its
supporters globally (members and fellow travellers of the numerous Communist
Parties) to participate in the various peace and disarmament movements of the
time, such as CND and could also cite its material aid to various anti-US
national liberation movements eg. in Vietnam. Even<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trotskyists who rejected the official Soviet
propaganda and refused to regard it as socialist nevertheless tended to accept
that the Soviet Union was a (degenerated) workers’ state, because of the state
ownership of the means of production<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and therefore could not be imperialist. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">But if we set
aside the question of these labels and look not at what the Soviet state said
about itself but instead at what it actually did, it becomes abundantly clear
that its behaviour was highly imperialist. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">As the Second
World War was drawing to a close Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met a Yalta in
October 1944 to discuss the post-war settlement. There they decided to divide
up Europe between them with the East being under Soviet control and the West
going to the US and Britain, completely over the heads of all the peoples
concerned. <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> It was
a classic imperialist carve-up directly reminiscent of what was done in the
Middle East with the Balfour Declaration and the Sykes-Picot Treaty and what
was done at the Treaty of Versailles. In so far as what actually happened differed
from the agreements reached in advance this was due to the disposition of
Russian and Allied forces on the ground at the end of the war.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">The Soviet Union
then used the combination of the Red Army and the respective Eastern European
Communist Parties to, a) insist that the whole of Eastern Europe from Poland to
Bulgaria came into its sphere of influence and under its control; b) adopted
the Soviet economic and political model and c) used that control and that model
to subordinate the economies of the Eastern bloc to the needs of the Russian
economy. This was done by means of extreme war reparations, mixed companies and
unequal trade. Chris Harman describes this process in detail in his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Class Struggles in Eastern Europe 1945-83</i><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
and on the final element comments: ‘The method of exploitation was quite
simple: Eastern European goods were bought at below world market prices, at
times even below cost price, while Russian goods were sold in Eastern Europe at
above world prices’ <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">This economic
exploitation and subordination was widely understood and resented by ‘ordinary’
people across the Eastern bloc and is one the main reasons, along with the police
state methods of the regimes, why Eastern Europe is characterised by a
succession of ‘anti-Soviet’ rebellions throughout the post-war period. The
first of these rebellions was in Yugoslavia in 1948. It was led by Marshall
Tito and the Yugoslav Communist Party and centred precisely on the Yugoslav’s
unwillingness to be economically subservient to Stalin and the Soviet Union.
The next was in the workers uprising in East Berlin in 1953, followed by
revolts in Poland and Hungary in 1956. The Hungarian revolt turned into a full
scale revolution. Then came the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the
Solidarnosc uprising in Poland in September 1980.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Soviet response to all these revolts was
invariably repressive and imperialist: on two occasions – Hungary ‘56 and
Czechoslovakia ’68 they mounted full scale military invasions. The cycle of
revolt and repression ended only when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the
Communist regimes collapsed right across Eastern Europe and in Russia itself in
the years 1989-91.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">Soviet
imperialism, however, was by no means confined to Eastern Europe. It operated also
within the boundaries of the USSR and in Asia. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">The old Tsarist
empire was infamous as ‘the prison house of the peopl</span><span style="background: white; color: red;">e’s’</span><span style="background: white; color: black;"> and was regularly denounced as such by Lenin and the
Bolsheviks. Their position was to defend unequivocally the right to
self-determination, including the right to secede, of all the various and
numerous oppressed<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>nationalities of the
Russian empire – of Latvians, Estonians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Uzbeks, Kazaks
and so on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Under the Stalin regime all
the old oppression of these nations was restored. Although granted formal
‘autonomy’, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>all their economic,
political and cultural life was strictly controlled from Moscow through
European Russian party secretaries and there was a general process of cultural
Russification. In extreme cases whole supposedly autonomous National Republics
were dissolved and entire national populations were deported: this was the fate
of the Volga German Republic in 1941, the Kalmuk SSR in in 1943, the
Checheno-Ingush SSR and the Crimean Tartars in1946. Communists leaders from these
oppressed nations were also systematically persecuted. Tony Cliff writes:
‘Altogether in the big purge of 1937-8 the whole or majority of thirty national
governments were liquidated. The main accusation against them was their desire
for secession from the USSR.’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
And the outcome of this imperialist oppression was that the moment the
centralised Communist regime fell apart almost all these nationalities decided
to secede in much the same way as the moment the British empire was weakened,
the British colonies in India and Africa all established their independence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">Just as the US
and the Soviet Union partitioned Germany at the end of the War so they
partitioned Korea. The country was split<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>into a Soviet puppet regime in the North and a US puppet regime in the
South, a division from which the Korean people are still suffering. Then in
1950 North Korean forces, prompted and backed by the Soviet Union, invaded the
South. What followed was a three year proxy war between the great powers (also
with the involvement of China) which utterly devastated Korea and claimed
something like 3 million (overwhelmingly Korean) lives without achieving any
significant outcome. It was classic imperialist butchery in which ordinary
people were sacrificed on an industrial scale by both sides.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">The Chinese
Revolution of 1949 when Mao’s Red Army captured Beijing was hailed as the
greatest victory for ’communism’ since 1917, but within seven years the Soviet
and Maoist Regimes were at each other’s throats in a split which divided the international
Communist movement , came close to war and affected geo-politics for
decades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ostensibly the split was about
doctrine with the Maoists condemning<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>‘Soviet revisionism’ and preaching a more ‘revolutionary’
anti-imperialist line but China’s deeds and actual development give the lie to
this ‘ideological’ i.e. idealist explanation. In reality the basis of the split
was that the Soviet Union was attempting, as it did elsewhere, to impose its
will and its economic priorities on China but Mao, the Chinese nationalist was
having none of it. In other words the root of the problem was Russian
Imperialism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">Yet another
example was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 which led to ten years
of war costing over 2 million lives and creating 5 million refugees at the end
of which Russia was forced to admit defeat and withdraw.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">Nor did Russian
imperialism come to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. If, as was
often argued by right wing anti-communists, Soviet imperialism was driven by
ideology, by a political aspiration to force communism on the whole world, then
these imperialist wars should have ceased after 1991. If on the other hand
Soviet expansionism was, like western imperialism, fundamentally driven by
competitive capital accumulation, then one would expect it to continue despite
the abandonment of ‘Marxist’ or ‘Communist’ language and symbolism, and despite
the shift sideways from bureaucratic state capitalism to a mixed semi-state capitalism</span><span style="background: white; color: red;">. </span><span style="background: white; color: black;">Continue it did. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">First under
Yeltsin and then under Putin Russia waged two brutal wars in 1994-96 and
1999-2000 in and against Chechenya. Amnesty International reported, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘There were frequent reports that Russian
forces indiscriminately bombed and shelled civilian areas. Chechen civilians,
including medical personnel, continued to be the target of military attacks by
Russian forces. Hundreds of Chechen civilians and prisoners of war were extra
judicially executed’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">The Chechen
capital, Grozny, was flattened and occupied but guerrilla resistance continued
in the mountains for another nine years. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">In August 2008 in
a short and totally unequal war, Russia invaded Georgia in a dispute about the
region of South Ossetia. In 2014 they intervened in the conflict in the Ukraine
to annexe the Crimean Peninsula.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">Reviewing this
brief survey of Russian imperialism since 1945 it could be objected that is
one-sided in that in each instance I have failed to consider the possible
justification for Russia’s actions as in the invasion of Hungary in 1956 was
necessary to prevent ‘fascist counter revolution’ or the invasion of
Czechoslovakia was necessary to prevent it being taken over by the West and the
invasion of Afghanistan was necessary to prevent it being taken over by
Islamist jihadis and so on. Any power always has its justifications; in the
modern world where ‘public opinion’ (i.e. the consciousness of the working
class) has to be considered even by dictators, no government ever simply says
we are imperialist predators. To have considered each of these justifications
in turn would have extended this article far beyond the space available, but it
is worth noting the pattern. In each case the ‘excuse’ put forward is the need
to combat a demonised enemy: fascists, western imperialists, jihadis, Islamic
terrorists etc. The problem is that, with the substitution of evil communists
for western imperialists this turns out to be more or less the same list of enemies
used by the US and the UK to justify their numerous imperialist interventions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">Two final points
should be made about this. The first is that whether Cuba, Vietnam or Nicaragua
‘went communist’ or not was a matter for the Cuban, Vietnamese and Nicaraguan
people alone: the US had no right to any say in the matter. Similarly if
Hungary<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
or Czechoslovakia or Poland wished to cease being ‘communist’ or Afghanistan
wanted to be Islamic or Chechenya wanted to be both Islamist and independent
that was for them to decide not Russia. The second is that no serious person
will believe that in 1914 Britain, who held in subjection India, Ireland and
half of Africa, went to war for the sake of ‘poor little Belgium’ or that the
US fought for three years in Korea out of concern for the rights of the Korean
people. By the same token are we really being asked to believe that the Russian
state which had deported the Chechens and the Crimean Tartars wholesale in the
thirties and forties was motivated by international solidarity, rather than,
for example, its desire to protect oil supply lines or to have a foothold on
the Black Sea, when it came to 1999 or 2014?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black;">No, the pattern
of imperialist behaviour is long standing and consistent and therefore when it
comes to assessing Russia’s current interventions in the war in Syria there is
absolutely no reason to imagine that it is motivated by anything other than
imperialist calculation and self interest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Assad’s Syria<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Memet Uludag<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
On March 15 2018 the war in Syria
entered its eighth year without a solution. The ongoing situation in Syria has
caused deep divisions in public opinion, as well as divisions within the
international left. Today, as the social and economic reasons of the 2011
uprising are fading away from most analyses and debates, it is still very
important to understand the conditions within which the revolt began. To
understand the triggers of the revolution and its popular demands we also need
to understand the nature of the Assad regime, among others things. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In this article, I would like to
briefly look at the recent history of Syria and try to explain the nature of
the Assad regime in terms of its social and economic policies. The
revolutionary uprising has long been crushed by domestic and foreign
counter-revolutionary forces. There are multiple reasons for the emergence of
these forces and the defeat of the revolution. I am not going to deal with
these as part of this article.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Various sources estimate the death
toll in Syria to be between 350,000 and 500,000.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> There
are more than 11 million Syrian refugees of which 6 million internally and 5
million externally displaced. More than 13 million people in Syria are in
continuous need of humanitarian assistance.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_edn2" name="_ednref2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> These
figures alone make us think why the Syrians, who paid such a heavy price in the
end, had risen up against the Assad regime.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Once a protestor, now a refugee<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
At one of the public meetings in
Dublin, organised by United Against Racism, a Syrian refugee speaker had said,
“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We went out onto the streets to protest.
We wanted change. People wanted change for a long time. It was men, women, and
families on the streets. In the beginning it was peaceful. But very soon we
were attacked by the regime forces. We hadn’t expected such a harsh response.
We ended up hiding from these attacks</i>. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">People
were arrested, shot and killed</i>.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In 2016-17, there were mass
protests in Ireland. What had began as a mobilisation against the introduction
of water charges had soon turned into protests against the government and its
policies. People wanted change. People wanted the government to go. <span style="color: red;">Nobody would ever expect to see the armed state forces on the
streets</span>, shooting and killing people. The initial heavy handed police
response in local areas eventually disappeared. It wasn’t because the Irish
Government didn’t want to stop the protests, or send out more police but
because Ireland was not Syria, it was not ruled by a regime like that in Syria.
<span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Arab Spring<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In 2011 uprisings began in
various Arab countries that became known as the ‘Arab Spring’. Protests had
toppled the dictatorial presidents of Tunisia<span style="color: red;">'s</span>
and Egypt. This gave hope to Syrian people who wanted change. The revolts in
Tunisia had begun with Mohamed Bouazizi (29 March 1984–4 January 2011), a
Tunisian street vendor setting himself on fire against <s>the</s> police
brutality. The catalyst in Syria was the arrest and torture of a group of young
boys in Daara for writing a graffiti that read “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It's your turn, Doctor Bashar al-Assad</i>". Hundreds of
protesters took to the streets in outrage at the boys' arrests. The protestors
were gunned down in horrific scenes that would be relayed around the world and
spark an uprising involving hundreds of thousands of people across Syria. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Torture as the Norm<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
As widely documented, the Syrian
security forces are so well-known for their torture methods that the US, under
George W. Bush, called upon them to help interrogate suspected al Qaeda members.
The faith of the Daraa boys was indeed not going to be any different than those
arrested and sent to Syria by the American government.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
A detailed interview in 2017 with
survivors of rape and torture in Assad’s prisons exposed the gruesome nature of
the state security forces.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_edn3" name="_ednref3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[iii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_edn4" name="_ednref4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[iv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_edn5" name="_ednref5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[v]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Following the 2008/9 global
financial crash, as with the international Occupy Movement, the uprisings of
Arab Spring were an inspiration for the global anti-capitalist and
anti-imperialist struggle. These revolts had emerged in countries that were
under long standing powerful dictatorial regimes. Syria under the rule of Assad
was no exception.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Bashar al-Assad came to power in
2000, following the death of his father Hafez al-Assad, who was the President
of Syria from 1971 to 2000. Bashar is also the commander-in-chief of the Syrian
Armed Forces and the Regional Secretary of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party's in
Syria.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">A short political history of Syria<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Syrian history, beginning with
the independence from France in 1946 has been one of multiple military coups, social
turmoil with different class interests emerging, power struggles between
nationalists, communists and others that represented these interests, and
ultimately the establishment of strong Ba’ath Party rule.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The period between 1946 and 1958
saw a number of economic and social reforms including reforms in labour laws
and establishment of trade union membership and strike rights. But none of
these were to be permanent gains under various ruling powers that followed. The
revolt in 2011 was not the first uprising by Syrians. In 1951, following an
uprising the year before the first congress of peasants was held in Aleppo.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_edn6" name="_ednref6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[vi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Peasants mobilised to bring about changes in their living conditions.
Pressurised by the landlords to stop the land redistribution, the government
eventually suppressed the peasant mobilisation. As a response to growing social
unease, in 1958 a section of the army officers forced Syria into a union with
Egypt, forming the United Arab Republic (UAR). Unopposed by the Communists, UAR
was supported by the Ba’ath Party. This period, lasting until 1961, started a
process of industrialisation, social welfare reforms, land distribution and
nationalising of major industries. During the same period, independent workers’
and peasants’ organisations were increasingly targeted by the regime and
strikes were banned. The unity between Egypt and Syria fell apart when the
Syrians objected to their second class status within the union. This was
followed by a military coup by the Ba’athists in 1963. The new regime continued
on with the industrialisation and nationalisation process with the state and
bureaucracy increasingly taking control of industries and the wider economy. In
an article published in International Socialism, Issue 135, Jonathan Maunder
argues that, "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Syria’s entry into the
UAR and the 1963 coup can be seen as examples of what Tony Cliff called
deflected permanent revolution, a deviation from the process of permanent
revolution as outlined by the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky”.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_edn7" name="_ednref7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn7;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[vii]</span></b></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
</i>Maunder, correctly concludes that, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the
results of this deflected permanent revolution were forms of state capitalism,
not socialism</i>”. Tony Cliff in his 1967 pamphlet “The struggle in the Middle
East”<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_edn8" name="_ednref8" style="mso-endnote-id: edn8;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[viii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
wrote, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In Syria the Ba’ath regime has
been more radical than Nasser’s regime in the field of land reform. But neither
Nasser nor the Ba’ath can ever become revolutionary, or grow beyond their
middle-class social basis. Their social base is the army officers, civil servants
and teachers, sons of merchants and prosperous artisans, better-off peasants
and small-scale landowners.</i>” <span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Small in size
and relatively unorganised the Syrian working class did not manage to establish
itself as </span><span style="background: white; color: red; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">a</span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> leading force in society. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Bashar al-Assad’s father Hafez
al-Assad came to power in 1971, after an intra-party coup in 1970 that removed
Salah Jadid, a Ba’athist army officer. He ruled the country until his death in
2000. Under his rule and the ‘Collective Movement’ the regime wanted to sustain
the nationalist-socialist line of the state and the Ba'ath party. This created
not a true socialist nation but a Syria that was highly centralised, with the
military and elite bureaucrats playing a key role at all levels, including the
economy. Hafez al-Assad strengthened his power using deeply sectarian methods
of creating an elite state bureaucracy and an army composed of high-ranking
officers from <span style="color: red;">the</span> minority Muslim Alawi sect.
Till <span style="color: red;">the</span> 1980’s Syria saw strong growth in <span style="color: red;">the</span> economy with evermore increased numbers of workers
and dropping relative poverty. At the beginning <span style="color: red;">of the</span>
1980’s the economic growth declined sharply. Having enjoyed a decade of growth
and total control (and suppression) of any opposition, the regime started
attacking the gains of the previous period. Wages were cut; subsidies on basic
goods were removed. In <span style="color: red;">the</span> early 1990’s
unemployment rose sharply to 16%<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_edn9" name="_ednref9" style="mso-endnote-id: edn9;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[ix]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> and
according to some figures more than 70% of the population were living below <span style="color: red;">the</span> relative poverty line. In early 90’s the regime
started a process of opening up the country to private business which marked
the beginning of ‘market economy’. What was a form of state capitalism under
the rule of an elite military-bureaucrat class had begun to turn towards
capitalism.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Between 1980 and 2000, the regime
of Hafez al-Assad committed numerous massacres against civilians and organised
opposition forces. In 1982, following attacks in <span style="color: red;">the</span>
previous two years, the regime had murdered more than 20,000 civilians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1980 saw the massacre of inmates in Tadmur
Prison, which Amnesty International described as “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a source of despair, torture and degrading treatment</i>”<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_edn10" name="_ednref10" style="mso-endnote-id: edn10;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[x]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">From Father Assad to Son Assad - The Nature of the Assad Regime<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Bashar al-Assad inherited his
father’s power in 2000 and continued to open up the country to capitalist
economy by advancing a neoliberal model while maintaining his harsh dictatorial
rule. During the previous decades the economy was falsely <span style="color: red;">described as</span> ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">socialist’</i>
when really it was a state capitalist dictatorship.He replaced this with a
so-called ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">social market economy</i>’
while in fact everything had begun to be market driven and hardly anything
about it was social. Bashar al-Assad had begun to put the might of his power to
the use of private capital and started creating an environment of crony
capitalism by handing over state industries and assets to his family members,
close allies and <s>to</s> powerful elites within the regime. Even Chatham
House, a ‘prestigious’ pro-capitalist research and policy institute says, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The uprising against the Assad regime was
sparked by the security services’ brutal response to a demonstration of dissent
by schoolchildren in Deraa. However, economic grievances were an important
element fuelling the disaffection, both in Deraa – where the appropriation of
land for Makhlouf’s duty-free enterprise had been a contentious issue – and
elsewhere in Syria</i>”<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_edn11" name="_ednref11" style="mso-endnote-id: edn11;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[xi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Since the 2011 uprising in Syria,
especially and most importantly within the international left and the global
anti-war movement there have been deep divisions on the nature of the Assad
regime. Some sections of the left and others have described his regime as,
‘anti-imperialist’ or ‘progressive’ or ‘pro-Palestinian’ or ‘pro-secularism’
etc. and dismissed the popular uprising against all ‘good things’ as a plot.
The escalating war in the country, the emergence of counter-revolutionary
Islamist forces and the intervention by global imperialists, especially the US,
have given further excuse to Assad defenders to reject the social-political
conditions which gave rise to the revolt in Syria. Furthermore, ‘defending the
Assad regime’ has been put forward as an anti-imperialist duty for the left.
According to Assad defenders, the only imperialist force in Syria is the US led
bloc and all other forces, including the civilian protestors and
counter-revolutionary forces alike are part of an imperialist attempt to topple
the <span style="color: red;">regime. Thus</span>, they conclude<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that the Russian and Iranian intervention in
the war is a ‘legitimate’ and justified intervention in order to defend a
‘legitimate’ government. <span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In his article, titled “The
Syrian Cause and Anti-Imperialism”<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_edn12" name="_ednref12" style="mso-endnote-id: edn12;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[xii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> the
Syrian revolutionary Yassin Al-Haj Saleh refers to a conversation: “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I was in Istanbul for about ten days when I
met a Turkish communist who explained to me that what was going on in Syria was
nothing but an imperialist conspiracy against a progressive, anti-imperialist
regime</i>”. He then argues why we need to understand the political and social
dimensions of the Syrian struggle and the nature of the Assad regime, to make <span style="color: red;">sense</span> of it all.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Secularism<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The so called ‘secularism’ of
Assad is in fact all about a deep ethnic and religious sectarian divide in the
country. As Saleh explains, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the Regime’s
so-called secularism is almost completely an ideological façade that covers its
essential sectarianism. Divide and rule is not only a colonial method, it has
become the regime’s method for over two generations. By the way, the regime
never used the word secularism in its discourse in the past. Bashar or Buthaina
Shaban only used this word in interviews with western journalists. Like the War
on Terror, this is only another cheap commodity to sell to Western powers and
even those on the left looking for ways to avoid recognizing the fascist
character of the Assad regime. Inside Syria, the regime rules through a process
of sectarianization to entice Syrians to fear and mistrust each other based on
their sect. The regime attempts to present itself as the only force capable of
keeping these divisions, which it in fact foments, in check. This is a
deliberate policy. Sectarianism is not a primordial characteristic of Syria, or
any other nation for that matter. It was foisted upon the country in order to
divide the population and maintain the regime</i>.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_edn13" name="_ednref13" style="mso-endnote-id: edn13;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[xiii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Furthermore, the secularism in Syria
is another form of class oppression where the regime using its military might
dismissed any opposition by the poorer sections of the society as a
backward-religious-terrorist attempt. Assad and his family have been portrayed
as western style secularists while his Grand Mufti of Damascus has been
blessing the killing of civilians in his prisons. Secularism is in fact nothing
but protecting the class interests of the ‘westernised’ lifestyles of the upper
classes and the elites within the inner circles of the regime.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Anti-Imperialism of Assad<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
There are two major global
imperialist forces in Syria: The US and Russia. The US maintains it anti-Assad
position while Russia, with <s>the</s> support from Iran is doing its best to
keep the regime in power and secure its global interests. The intervention by
the US does not make the Assad regime anti-imperialist. In fact, given the
nature of the Russian state and its self-serving actions in Syria, the Assad
regime is in alliance with an imperialist power, it’s just not the US in this
case.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Historically, the regime has <span style="color: red;">presented</span> itself as an enemy of Israel, a supporter of
Palestinians and Hamas, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. In fact, its history is full
of contradictions and political manoeuvres that at all times served the interests
of the regime and the ruling class in Syria. It used the Palestinian struggle
against Israel as a bargaining chip and to create a position of strength in the
region. The Palestinian issue also gave Syria a bargaining chip against the US.
The Palestinian refugees in Syria have always been under suspicion and
surveillance <span style="color: red;">by </span>the regime.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Hafez al-Assad supported the
first US-led war in Iraq in 1991<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">.<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Saleh describes Assad regimes
‘anti-imperialism’ as “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the regime always
played a double game. Inside the country, the regime blackmailed Syrians,
claiming that we were all under threat from outsiders, the old colonial powers,
Western imperialism, and the Israeli occupation. It nurtured a besieged castle
mentality and paranoia in the population. This was always useful to incriminate
dissidents as foreign agents and impose political and ideological uniformity on
Syrians. At the same time the regime blackmailed the Western powers with its
assertion that it was a bulwark against fundamentalism and terrorism in Syria
and the region. It was always prepared to slander its own population in
presence of western diplomats, journalists, and scholars. The Assadists knew
well that this discourse was marketable to imperialist powers that were engaged
in their so-called War on Terror; this same discourse had justified the murder
of tens of thousands killed in the early 1980s and now hundreds of thousands in
their ongoing counterrevolution. Beneath all this rhetoric, the Assad dynasty’s
main aim is to stay in power forever and accumulate millions and billions of
dollars that comes with ruling the country</i>.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_edn14" name="_ednref14" style="mso-endnote-id: edn14;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[xiv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The Syrian regime is neither
socialist, nor progressive. It has turned from a form of bureaucratic and
military controlled state-capitalism into a neoliberal state. The state is not
secular where religion and state are fully divorced but one that uses religion,
among others to create sectarian divisions. These divisions have historically
helped <span style="color: red;">strengthen</span> the ruling class in Syria. The
Assad regimes have had many U-turns and political manoeuvres to protect the
interests of the Syrian ruling class and to position themselves accordingly.
The regime is not a democracy but an authoritarian dictatorship. It has been
successfully using ‘anti-imperialism’ to suppress all forms of opposition in
the county. While it pretended to protect minorities, such a Christian groups;
it has always been oppressive to other ethnic groups such as the Kurds. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
When one looks at the
presidential election results of the <span style="color: red;">past</span> 45
years one has to wonder: How can any regime achieve such ‘great’ results? </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span lang="EN-IE">2014 Bashar al-Assad 88.7%, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span lang="EN-IE">2007 Bashar al-Assad 99.82%, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span lang="EN-IE">2000 Bashar al-Assad 99.7%, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span lang="EN-IE">1999 Hafez al-Assad 100%, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span lang="EN-IE">1991 Hafez al-Assad 99.99%</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span lang="EN-IE">1985 Hafez al-Assad 100%, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span lang="EN-IE">1978 Hafez al-Assad 99.9%, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span lang="EN-IE">1971 Hafez al-Assad 99.2%</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
There is only one answer to that:
by constant oppression using a brutal state apparatus with total lack of
freedom.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The Syrian people rose up for
change. They <span style="color: red;">ended up</span> becoming refugees and
their revolution was defeated for now. But that doesn’t change the facts about
the regime and the reasons why people went out to protest in 2011.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
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<!--[endif]-->
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
The ‘Marxist’ exception to this was Karl Kautsky, the so-called Pope of Marxism
and the ideological leader of the Second International who believed that imperialism,
or ‘ultra-imperialism’ could be conducive to peace in a similar way to some
advocates of globalisation argued it would make for a peaceful world. Lenin
furiously rejected Kautsky’s suggestion. See the discussion of this issue in
John Molyneux, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lenin for Today</i>,
London 2017, pp 71-74. </div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Lenin,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Appeal on the War</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> ‘(1915). </span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/aug/x04.htm"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%;">https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/aug/x04.htm</span></a><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 39.5pt; text-align: justify;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> Lenin, Socialism
and War, </span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/s+w/ch01.htm"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/s+w/ch01.htm</span></a><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn4" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn5" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Lenin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Socialism and War<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/s+w/ch01.htm"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%;">https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/s+w/ch01.htm</span></a></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn6" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
These are in 1990 International Geary- Khamis dollars, a standard measure which
facilitates historical and international comparisons taken from Angus Maddison,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The World Economy: Historical Statistics</i>,
OECD 2003, p.85 and 51.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn7" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See John Rees, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Imperialism and
Resistance,</i> London 2006, p.43.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn8" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
As above, p.42.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn9" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
In saying this it should not be forgotten that a very large part of
international social democracy (from Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin in the
1945 British Labour Government to Harold Wilson and Tony Blair along with the
German Social Democrats, the leadership of the Irish Labour Party etc.)
actually supported US imperialism throughout the post-war period, from Korea to
Vietnam to Iraq.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn10" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
The authors of this article do not accept that the Soviet Union was either
socialist or a workers state, degenerated or otherwise. Following Tony Cliff, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">State Capitalism in Russia</i>, we regard it
as bureaucratic state capitalist. </div>
</div>
<div id="ftn11" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See the vivid description of this actually happening in Gabriel Kolko, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Politics of War</i>, New York 1970,
pp114-5.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn12" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See Chris Harman<span style="background: white; color: black;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Class Struggles in Eastern Europe 1945-83</i>,
London, 1988 pp41-49.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn13" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
As above p.45.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn14" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Tony Cliff, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Russia –A Marxist Analysis</i>,
London 1955. p.190</div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
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</div>
<div id="ftn15" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 6.5pt;"> </span><a href="http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2001.nsf/webeurcountries/RUSSIAN+Federation?OpenDocument"><span style="background: white; color: #663366; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 6.5pt;">Russian Federation 2001 Report</span></a><span class="reference-text"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 6.5pt;"> </span></span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnesty_International"><span style="background: white; color: #0b0080; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 6.5pt;">Amnesty International</span></a><span class="reference-text"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 6.5pt;"> </span></span><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20071114184928/http:/web.amnesty.org/web/ar2001.nsf/webeurcountries/RUSSIAN%2BFederation?OpenDocument"><span style="background: white; color: #663366; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 6.5pt;">Archived</span></a><span class="reference-text"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 6.5pt;"> 14 November 2007 .</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn16" style="mso-element: footnote;">
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
The conflict in the Ukraine was very complex and cannot be discussed here but
this is a thorough and impressive analysis, Rob Ferguson, ‘Ukraine:
imperialism, war and the left’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">International
Socialism</i> 144.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://isj.org.uk/ukraine-imperialism-war-and-the-left/">http://isj.org.uk/ukraine-imperialism-war-and-the-left/</a></div>
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<div id="ftn17" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ftnref17" name="_ftn17" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
In making this general argument I specifically do not want to give the
impression that I accept in anyway the lie that the Hungarian Revolution of
1956 with its mass workers’ councils and its heroic working class resistance to
Soviet tanks was a ‘fascist counter-revolution’. See Chris Harman, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Class Struggles in Eastern Europe 1945-83</i>,
as above, especially pp139-143.</div>
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<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
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<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-IE"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">2016, UN envoy estimates
400,000 killed</span></b><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">. The UN special envoy for Syria has estimated that 400,000 people have
been killed throughout the past five years of civil war</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ednref2" name="_edn2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Syria Emergency - UN Refugee Agency</b> </span><span lang="EN-IE"><a href="http://www.unhcr.org/en-ie/syria-emergency.html"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">http://www.unhcr.org/en-ie/syria-emergency.html</span></a></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ednref3" name="_edn3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[iii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Inside Assad's prisons: Horrors facing
female inmates in Syrian jails revealed</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span lang="EN-IE"><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/assad-prisons-women-syria-female-inmate-treatment-conditions-exclusive-life-jails-a7899776.html"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/assad-prisons-women-syria-female-inmate-treatment-conditions-exclusive-life-jails-a7899776.html</span></a></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ednref4" name="_edn4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[iv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Outsourcing Torture</b> </span><span lang="EN-IE"><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/02/14/outsourcing-torture"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/02/14/outsourcing-torture</span></a></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn5" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ednref5" name="_edn5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[v]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Young Men Who Started Syria's
Revolution Speak About Daraa, Where It All Began</b><br />
</span><span lang="EN-IE"><a href="https://news.vice.com/article/the-young-men-who-started-syrias-revolution-speak-about-daraa-where-it-all-began"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">https://news.vice.com/article/the-young-men-who-started-syrias-revolution-speak-about-daraa-where-it-all-began</span></a></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn6" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ednref6" name="_edn6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[vi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt;"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Authoritarianism
in Syria: Institutions and Social Conflict, 1946-1970</b>, </span><span lang="EN-IE" style="background: white; color: #333333; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Steven Heydemann</span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn7" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ednref7" name="_edn7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn7;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[vii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-IE"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The Syrian crucible</span></b><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, International
Socialism, Issue 135, Jonathan Maunder</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn8" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ednref8" name="_edn8" style="mso-endnote-id: edn8;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[viii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-IE"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The struggle in the Middle
East</span></b><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">,
Tony Cliff, </span><span lang="EN-IE"><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1990/10/struggleme.htm"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1990/10/struggleme.htm</span></a></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn9" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ednref9" name="_edn9" style="mso-endnote-id: edn9;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[ix]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-IE"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">International Labour
Organization</span></b><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, ILOSTAT database. Data retrieved in November 2017</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn10" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ednref10" name="_edn10" style="mso-endnote-id: edn10;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[x]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-IE"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Syria: Torture, despair and
dehumanisation in Tadmur Military Prison</span></b><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">. Amnesty International 18
September 2001</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn11" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ednref11" name="_edn11" style="mso-endnote-id: edn11;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[xi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-IE"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Syria’s Economy Picking up
the Pieces</span></b><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, Research Paper, David Butter, Middle East and North Africa Programme
| June 2015</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn12" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ednref12" name="_edn12" style="mso-endnote-id: edn12;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[xii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-IE"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The Syrian Cause and
Anti-Imperialism</span></b><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, Yassin Al-Haj Saleh, </span><span lang="EN-IE"><a href="http://www.yassinhs.com/2017/05/05/the-syrian-cause-and-anti-imperialism/"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">http://www.yassinhs.com/2017/05/05/the-syrian-cause-and-anti-imperialism/</span></a></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn13" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ednref13" name="_edn13" style="mso-endnote-id: edn13;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[xiii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-IE"> </span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Revolution, counterrevolution, and imperialism in Syria, Interview with
Yassin al-Haj Saleh, International Socialist Review</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn14" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%20Imperialism,%20Russia,%20Syria%20EDITED.doc#_ednref14" name="_edn14" style="mso-endnote-id: edn14;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[xiv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-IE"> </span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Ibid<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Syria: the debate on
the left<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">John Molyneux and Memet Uludag<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Debate on the left about Syria,
in Ireland and internationally, has centred on whether or not it is possible to
combine opposition to all US and Western intervention in Syria with opposition
to Russian intervention and to the Assad regime’s war on his own people.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
On one hand there <span style="color: red;">are</span> some supporters of the Syrian people and even of
the Syrian revolution who are so bitter against the Assad regime and its
Russian backers and so desperate at the ongoing plight of the Syrian people
that they end up calling for some kind of Western intervention. Sometimes this
takes the form of outright calls for bombing but often it consists of vaguer
calls for ‘the international community’ to ‘do something’, or to implement
sanctions or to ‘establish a no-fly zone’. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We understand that these calls
are often well intentioned, motivated by a desire to alleviate the suffering of
the Syrian people, but we disagree completely with this approach. We believe it
loses sight of the fact that US imperialism, as argued above, is the main
imperial force in the world and encourages the illusion that it undertakes
‘humanitarian’ interventions when it doesn’t. If the US intervenes in Syria it
will not be to help the Syrian people but to advance its own imperial interests
and it won’t make the situation better, it will make it even worse and could
easily escalate into wider Middle Eastern War. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The concept of ‘the international
community’ is also an illusion. It suggests that the various imperialist and
capitalist powers whose domestic role is to administer and maintain the
exploitation of their respective working classes somehow, when they get
together, become benevolent humanitarians acting in the best interests of
oppressed peoples. They do not. The ‘international community’ is a euphemism
that all too often actually means US imperialism and its many allies.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The imposition of a ‘no-fly zone’
sounds like a ‘peaceful’ solution but is not thought through. A no-fly zone is
meaningless unless it is enforced and it could only be enforced by the US
military or its allies. It would simply serve as a stepping stone to war and
invasion. Sanctions, in this case, would legitimise the idea of US and the
Western powers as the world’s police and hit the ordinary people of Syria.
There is a fundamental difference between imperialist imposed sanctions on
Syria and BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) on Zionist Israel which is a
popular movement from below in solidarity with, and called for by, the
Palestinian people.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Thus we should oppose all Western
intervention in Syria, other than provision of humanitarian aid which should be
massively expanded. If our governments and rulers really care about the Syrian
people there is something very simple they can do: welcome the refugees!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
But if opposition to Western
intervention is our first priority this should be accompanied by opposition to
Russian intervention, to the appalling Assad regime and to the interventions by
other regional powers – Iran, Turkey, Israel etc. The tyrannical Assad regime,
as described above, deserves only to be overthrown but this is a task for the
Syrian people themselves.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
There are some, particularly from
a Stalinist background or influenced by the same, who argue that any criticism
of Russia or Assad ‘objectively’ supports either US imperialism or ISIS and
other reactionary jihadist forces. We reject this for the following reasons:</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">a)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->It is perfectly possible to criticise Russia and
its imperialism without supporting the US. Socialists have been doing this for
many decades and it has not prevented us from opposing and mobilising massively
against the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Afghan War, the Iraq War and the bombing
of Syria. Russia is not as big a power as the US but it is no less imperialist,
as its record shows.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">b)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->It is perfectly possible to condemn Assad’s war
on his own people without supporting any foreign intervention. Not to do so is
to defend the indefensible. It is a matter of indisputable fact that by far the
biggest killer of Syrian civilians has been the Assad regime.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">c)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The idea
that opposing Assad means supporting ISIS and other counter-revolutionary
jihadists denies to the Syrian people the possibility of progressive and
revolutionary action and consciousness. Indeed it says to them you have no
right to rebel against the tyrannical regime by whom you are oppressed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Intentionally or not it is a concession to
Islamophobia. It was clear that attitudes of this sort influenced some leftist
responses to the whole phenomenon of the Arab Spring, with the half stated
belief that a genuine popular democratic revolution could not be produced by
Arabs/Muslims; it had to be orchestrated behind the scenes by either the
Americans or the Islamists or both.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">d)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->We stand in solidarity with the Syrian people
and with the Syrian Revolution of 2011 and with the Arab Spring as a whole. We
believe that, sooner or later, the peoples of the Middle East will rise again. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-61791471812220197412018-07-19T12:27:00.001+00:002018-07-19T12:27:09.195+00:001968: Revolutionary Year<br />
<div class="Body">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">1968:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Revolutionary year<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">John Molyneux</span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">First published in Irish Marxist Review 21. </span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">As Marx says at the beginning of <i>The
Communist Manifesto</i> the class struggle which runs through history is ‘an
uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight’. It does not move in a gradually
rising steady line upwards. Rather it rumbles on at a subterranean level,
taking hesitant steps into the light followed by retreats back underground and
then renewed surges. Sometimes it oscillates sharply up and down, and sometimes
it explodes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is always a battle: they
attack us and we resist; we resist and they counter attack. The war is always
waged on many fronts – economic, political, ideological and military - and over
many different issues, small and great.</span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The tempo
of the struggle is always different in different countries and in different
parts of the one country. At any particular moment one country or one town can
seem to be THE revolutionary country or THE revolutionary city: France and
Paris in 1848 and 1871; Russia and Petrograd in 1917; Turin in 1919, Spain and
Barcelona in 1936; Portugal in 1974, Egypt and Cairo in 2011. But the
underlying rhythm of the struggle is international. Looking back on history we
can see: the (bourgeois) revolutionary wave in the last quarter of the 18<sup>th</sup>
century which stretches from the American and French Revolutions to the Haitian
slave revolt, and 1798 and the United Irishmen; the wave of revolutions, part
bourgeois, part proletarian, that strikes Europe in 1848<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with centres in Paris, Berlin and Vienna but
also the Chartists in Britain and the Young Irelanders in Ireland; there was
the wave of industrial struggle before the First World War that included the
IWW in the US, the rise of syndicalism in France, the ‘Great Unrest’ in Britain
and the Lockout in Dublin, followed by the anti-war revolutionary wave running
from the Easter Rising of 1916 through the Russian Revolution, the Hungarian
Revolution, the German Revolution of 1919, the Italian Red Years, the Irish
Revolution to the ebb tide setting in with the defeat of the German Revolution
in 1923. More recently we saw the surge of 2011 encompassing the Tunisian
Revolution, the Egyptian Revolution and the other risings of the Arab Spring,
the Indignados in Spain and the Occupy movement in the US and elsewhere.</span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">1968 was such a moment. In country after
country, from Vietnam to Mexico, from Chicago to Derry volcanoes of resistance
erupted on what were largely an unsuspecting media and public. But despite
their volcanic character it is clear, looking back, that the eruptions of 1968
did not come out of the blue. They marked the coming together of various mass
movements that had been developing over the previous decade: the Black movement
and the anti- racist movement,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the
anti-Vietnam war movement, the international student movement, the youth
counter-culture, the beginnings of a new women’s movement, the emergent new
left and underneath it all a rumbling but rising workers’ movement in the
factories and workplaces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These
movements, in turn, had deep roots in the molecular social changes gathering
pace since the Second World War. </span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<b><span lang="EN-US">The Roots of ’68</span></b></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">The decade of the 1950s, and to lesser extent
the early sixties, was a political desert for the left. Not, of course, in what
was then called the Third World where there was the Chinese Revolution of 1949,
the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and numerous other developing national liberation
struggles, but certainly in North America and Western Europe, capitalism’s
heartlands. Especially in the US, where the McCarthyite witch-hunts had routed
most of the Left, but also in most of Europe there was a stifling conservative
consensus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>America saw eight years of
relatively untroubled rule for the blandly conservative ‘</span><span lang="NL" style="mso-ansi-language: NL;">Ike</span><span lang="EN-US">’ (President
Eisenhower). In Britain Churchill gave way to Eden and Eden to MacMillan who
confidently informed the British people that they had ‘never had it so good’
and secured 13 years of Tory rule. In France General De Gaulle reigned supreme
after extricating the country from the Algerian War and in Germany it was the
Christian Democrat, Konrad Adenauer, who served as chancellor from 1949-63. In
Portugal and Spain the old fascist dictators, Salazar and Franco, lingered on
without major challenge, until 1968 and 1975 respectively.</span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">Underpinning this stability was the Post-War
economic boom, conditioned by the permanent arms economy whereby the major
powers devoted vast quantities of capital to investment in armaments and thus
offset the tendency to over accumulation of capital and the declining rate of
profit. The result was summarised by the Marxist economist Michael Kidron in
his 1970 book <i>Western Capitalism Since the War</i>: </span></div>
<div class="fst" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 40.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">High employment,
fast economic growth and stability are now considered normal in western
capitalism. Half the working population have known nothing else...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 40.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">the system as a
whole has never grown so fast for so long as since the war – twice as fast
between 1950 and 1964 – as between 1913 and 1950, and nearly half as fast again
as during the generation before that. <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[1]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">But this boom, long and powerful as it was, also
contained the seeds of its own destruction. The permanent arms economy rested
overwhelmingly on the massive arms spending undertaken by the US, to a lesser
extent, Britain. This created an international expansion from which other
countries benefitted without themselves having to engage in the armaments
expenditure while the US and British arms spending sustained growth but at a
slower rate. The consequence was that Japan and Germany grew at a much faster
rate than the US or Britain and by the late sixties emerged as major
competitors. This in turn induced the US and Britain to cut their arms budgets
(in relative not absolute terms) thus allowing the falling rate of profit to
resume and economic growth to begin to falter in the second half of the sixties
to be followed by a full blown international recession in 1973.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[2]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">The long boom also generated a number of
gradually accumulating social contradictions. It created, in the first place a
serious labour shortage in the capitalist heartlands. This led to: a) a shift
in population from the countryside to the towns; b) large scale immigration
from colonies and former colonies; c) the entrance of large numbers of women,
especially married women, into the workforce d) the increasing empowerment at
workplace level of rank-and-file trade unionism (due to bosses’ need for their
labour); e) an expanded demand for a more educated workforce which in turn
involved a big expansion of higher education, i.e. more students. All of these
developments interacted with each other and created the conditions for a
radical explosion. </span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">Thus in many countries: Greece, Italy, Spain,
Portugal, France and, indeed, Ireland the post-war conservative hegemony rested
in large part on social structures rooted in the countryside . The massive
process of urbanisation undermined those structures. In France in 1950 30% of
the population still worked on the land. By 1967 this had fallen to only 16.7%.
In Italy in 1950 the figure was 40%, falling to 25% by 1967 and in Ireland the
proportion fell from 40.1% in 1950 to 30% in 1967. <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[3]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a> Even
in Britain which had been urbanised back in the 19<sup>th</sup> century it was
still the case in the fifties and sixties that the old Tory Party and much of
the ruling class still had a substantial base in the countryside and traded on
the habits of deference engendered by rural life. In the US the most important
feature of the process of urbanisation was the drawing of Southern black
peasants and small farmers into both the Southern and Northern cities, thus
creating a Black working class and small educated middle class, unwilling to
accept the traditional Jim Crow racism and, most importantly, with the ability
to resist it. It was not only the Civil Rights and Black Power movements that
laid the ground for ’68 but also the huge uprisings in Watts in 1965 (34 dead)
and Detroit in 1967 (43 dead). </span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">The entrance of more and more women into the
workforce and the expansion of higher education, including an influx of female
students, created a huge pool of women whose life experience was radically at
odds with the traditional view of women as simply mothers and housewives in the
home, not supposed to have opinions or voices of their own, and certainly not
expected to demand equal pay. How this interacted with the growing power of
workers in the workplace can be seen in the Dagenham women’s equal pay strike
of 1968, which was a crucial landmark in the struggle for Equal Pay in Britain.
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[4]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">The demand for educated labour and the expansion
of higher education had effects on the student body that were qualitative as
well as quantitative. It meant, on the one hand, the appearance for the first
time in universities and colleges of a layer of students from working class
backgrounds. The majority of students continued to be drawn from the middle
classes and above but the working class presence altered the social and
ideological atmosphere in the student body. At the same time students of the
sixties could no longer look forward to an assured position within the
establishment after they graduated. Thus there emerged a generation of students
at least open to questioning the received political wisdom and even, in certain
circumstances, identifying actively with working class struggles. This
generation was very different from the generation of students many of whom had
famously scabbed on the General Strike of 1926.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[5]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">As a result the 1960s saw the birth,
internationally, of a student movement that was well underway before 1968. Some
of its key moments included the publication of the Port Huron Statement of the
SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) in 1962, the birth of the Free Speech
Movement in Berkeley in December 1964, the Free University of Berlin in June
1966 and the London School of Economics sit-in in 1967. White American students
were also interacting with, and being radicalised by, the Black Civil Rights
Movement particularly through going to the South to assist in voter
registration drives. </span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">Other interactions that were important in
preparing the way for 1968 were those between the anti-colonial movements in
Africa (Ghana, Congo,Algeria, South Africa, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe etc), the Black
movement in the US and the relatively new Black (largely West Indian) community
in Britain. These connections exist at many levels. Stokely Carmichael of the
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in the South, Black Power and then
the Black Panthers, cites Algerian revolutionary Franz Fanon as his patron
saint. Malcolm X tours Africa and goes to Mecca and visits Britain, speaking at
the Oxford Union and inspiring a Black nationalist movement in Britain. The
sit-in at the London School of Economics was precipitated by the appointment as
its Director of the racist Sir Walter Adams from Rhodesia. </span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">Most important of all, globally, was the
interaction between the American war in Vietnam and the international anti–war
movement. I will deal with this shortly when I come to discuss the actual
events of 1968.</span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">First, however, it is necessary to say something
about what became known at the time as ‘the counter culture’. The underlying
social changes described above produced a broad radicalisation that was
reflected culturally in a multitude of forms throughout the sixties. There was
the emergence of a series of youth subcultures - beats, flower children,
hippies, etc – most significantly, of course, in the US but each with massive
international resonance and certain local variations (beatniks, mods etc)
producing such phenomena as ‘the summer of love’ in Haight-Ashbury in San
Francisco and widespread experimentation with psychedelic drugs. This was
closely associated with waves of musical innovation from Bob Dylan, the Beatles
and the Rolling Stones to Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, The Doors, Marvin
Gaye, Nina Simone and much else, with the confluence of the youth culture and
the music being most visible in the famous festivals such as Woodstock. </span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">If the music, always the art form closest to the
life of young people, stands out as most memorable and most representative of
the period, it is also the case that no aspect of art and culture remained unaffected.
Whether it was in the poetry of Ginsburg, Ferlinghetti, and Adrian Mitchell;
the novels of Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, James Baldwin, or Alan Sillitoe; the
films of Godard, Truffaut<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and Loach, the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>satire of <i>That Was The Week That Was</i>
and <i>Private Eye,</i> or the comedy of Lenny Bruce or Dick Gregory or the
‘anti-psychiatry’ of R.D. Laing,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the
radicalism of the sixties leaves its mark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Of course this cultural radicalism is not at all the same thing as
revolt on the streets or socialist politicisation, but the counter culture
shapes the atmosphere of the time and forms an important back drop to the
events of 1968 and from time to time there are direct intersections such as at
the International Poetry Festival at the Royal Albert Hall in 1965, presided over
by Allen Ginsberg, when Adrian Mitchell read his dramatic poem ‘Tell me lies
about Vietnam’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[6]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>or the Dialectics of Liberation Conference in
1967 organised by R.D. Laing and David Cooper and addressed by, amongst others,
Stokely Carmichael, Paul Sweezy and Herbert Marcuse. <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[7]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<b><span lang="EN-US">From Saigon to Paris<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">The Vietnamese people had been fighting for
their independence since the mid-1940s, first against the French whom they
defeated at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, then, after a short interval,
against the pro-imperialist South Vietnamese government and their US
backers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1960 President Kennedy sent
3200 US troops to Vietnam and from there on the war escalated rapidly. By 1963,
when Kennedy was assassinated, the number of US troops had risen to 18,000. By
1965 it was 180,000 and by 1967, 500,000. Throughout this time the line from
the US government was, naturally, that America was winning and that, as they
said at the time ‘there was light at the end of the tunnel’. In the mindset of
mainstream America of the time it could hardly be otherwise. How could the
might of the USA not be about to crush a small country full of Communist
peasants? </span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">Then, on 31 January 1968, came the Tet
Offensive. ‘Tet’ is the Vietnamese New Year. In this uprising, led by the National
Liberation Front, fighting reached the heart of Saigon. Jonathan Neale
describes what happened:</span></div>
<div class="Body" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">On Tet they [the NLF]
struck, throwing in everybody they could. The tunnels of Cu Chi were the base
for the assault on Saigon. Fighters flooded into the city. That morning sappers
from the tunnels assaulted the American Embassy in the heart of Saigon and held
part of it for hours. The world saw the television pictures<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[8]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a>.</span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">In military terms the Tet Offensive failed. They
did not capture Saigon and the NLF guerrillas were forced to retreat suffering
heavy casualties but in political terms its effect was immense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Images flashed round America and the world
that were undeniable and ‘unspinnable’. Far from being on the verge of victory
the US forces were in fact under siege in the enclave of Saigon. The
government’s lies were exposed for all to see. </span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">Because of the growing draft and lengthening
casualty list, combined with the radicalising Black Revolt, the War was already
massively unpopular in the US. 300,000 had marched against the War in New York
in April 1967. Now this opposition intensified and spread internationally.
Opposition to the Vietnam War became the great unifying factor of the global
youth and student revolt and runs like a red thread through all the events of
1968.</span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">In Britain, for example, it produced the famous
Grosvenor Square demonstration of the 17 March. Post war Britain had seen some
large trade union and CND demonstrations but this was different. Called by the
far left Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, under the militant slogan of ‘Victory to
the NLF!’, the march of tens of thousands of, mostly, students and young people
charged down Charing X Road, spontaneously taking the whole breadth of the
street and, when it faced a line of police blocking its path to Grosvenor
Square and the US Embassy, unceremoniously swept the cordon aside and
triumphantly occupied the Square. Fearing that the crowd might want to storm
the Embassy, the police counter-attacked on horseback and in force. The result
was a pitched battle the like of which London had not seen for decades. But
this was just one example. Similar processes and similar confrontations were
developing in Germany, with Rudi Dutschke and the SDS, in Japan with the
Zengakuron student movement, in Italy, in France and elsewhere. </span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">Back in America the combination of the War, the
student revolt and the radicalisation of the Black movement was throwing the
whole of society and its political system into crisis. On 12 March the anti-War
Senator Eugene McCarthy, the Bernie Sanders of the day, very nearly defeated
the sitting President, Lyndon Johnson, in the New Hampshire Primary- an unheard
of occurrence - and in Wisconsin he won by 57 – 38%. On 31<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>March, a deeply troubled<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Johnson announced he would not be seeking
re-election. Then on 4 April Martin Luther King was assassinated – an event
that was followed by largely Black riots across many of America’s cities. King
himself was part of the shift to the left occurring in the US. In 1967 he had
come out against the Vietnam War and at the time of his death he was leading a
campaign against poverty and supporting a sanitation workers strike. But his
assassination also signified to many that to achieve real change, to win Black
liberation, it would be necessary to go beyond the great Civil Rights leader’s
politics of non-violence and passive resistance to a more revolutionary
position. For many, the politics of Martin Luther King were giving way to the
politics of the Black Panthers.</span></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">Meanwhile in France the student revolt was
growing rapidly and, along with issues about male/female access to dormitories
and overcrowding in lecture halls, the Vietnam War was central to this. We see
here the interplay of immediate local, you could call them ‘bread and butter’
issues with big global questions that was, and often still is, characteristic
of the student movement. Writing at the time Tony Cliff and Ian Birchall
describe what happened:</span></div>
<div class="fst" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 40.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">On 20 November
1967 Nanterre witnessed the largest student strike in France to date. Ten thousand
students took part. On 13 December university students all over France held a
one-day strike and six secondary schools joined in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 40.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 12.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">On 21 February
1968 a mass demonstration of university and secondary school students took
place in Paris. One of its acts was to rename the Latin Quarter “The Heroic
Vietnam Quarter”. On 22 March a mass demonstration took place in Nanterre
protesting against the arrest of a number of militants in the previous
demonstration. On this occasion the March 22 movement was formed. The students
occupied the university.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 40.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 12.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">On 29 March the
students of Nanterre decided to hold a day of political discussion at the
university. The rector closed the university for two days, during which
large-scale clashes took place between members of March 22 movement and the
fascists of the Occident group.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 40.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 12.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">May 2 and 3 were
to be days of demonstration against imperialism. On 2 May the rector again
closed the university. Disciplinary procedures were initiated against Daniel
Cohn-Bendit and six other members of the March 22 movement. On 3 May a meeting
of 500 students took place in the Sorbonne. Several revolutionary organisations
participated: JCR, FER, the March 22 movement and others. The rector of the
University, Roche, called the police in at 4 p.m. The Sorbonne was invaded by
the police and all the students arrested. Immediately after, spontaneous
demonstrations began in the Latin Quarter and they fought the police until 11
p.m. <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[9]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 12.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">This was the start of what has gone down in history as ‘May ’68’ or
‘the May events’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 12.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">The May Events<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Following the
mass arrests on 3 May there were further student demonstrations on 6, 7 and 8
May of increasing size, with ‘Liberez nos comrades!’ as a key slogan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The demo on 7 May began in the Latin Quarter
and then set off on a spontaneous ‘long march’ across Paris gaining support as
it went and ending in the evening with 50,000 on the Champs-Elysées.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then on Friday, 10 May came the fateful
‘Night of the Barricades’. More than 50,000 students, school students and young
workers, gathered at Place Denfert-Rochereau, south of the Latin Quarter, and
headed for the Boulevard Saint-Michel where they were met with a huge force of
CRS riot police. The Battle of the Barricades which ensued saw street fighting
not experienced in a western European city since the end of the Second World
War. It raged from 2am in the middle of the night to 7am in the morning. The
CRS acted with their customary brutality, using water cannons, CS gas and baton
charges, beating people at will, and the demonstrators resisted by tearing up
and hurling cobblestones from the streets and building over sixty barricades.
What was particularly significant was that, witnessing the behaviour of the
cops, the local residents started to actively sympathise with the revolt, handing
out food and drink, throwing water on the pavements to neutralize the gas and
taking the injured into their homes. This was an important sign of what was to
come.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">The next day
representatives of UNEF (National Union of Students), the CGT (the main trade
union confederation controlled by the French Communist Party) and the CFDT (the
next biggest union) called a general strike for Monday 13 May in protest at the
police brutality. On that day 10 million workers came out on strike – the whole
country was shut down – and a million workers and students marched through
Paris. The main slogan was ‘Adieu de Gaulle!’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But it was what happened next that was really historic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">The union
leaders, who had not initially been sympathetic to the students but had been pushed
into action by grassroots pressure over the police brutality, assumed that
after the one-day strike the workers would return to work and it would be back
to business as usual. There would have been, as so often before and since, a
token protest – very fine in itself but no real threat to the system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the event many workers did not go back to
work and sections of them, beginning with the Sud Aviation factory in Nantes on
14 May, declared an unlimited strike and started to occupy their workplaces –
like the students had occupied the Sorbonne. Once this process started it
spread like wildfire. Again Cliff and Birchall describe the sequence of events:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 40.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 12.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Next day, 15 May,
Renault-Cléon was occupied.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 40.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 12.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">On 16 May the
strike and occupation movement spread to all Renault factories. At Billancourt
the strikers declared their demands: for a minimum of 1,000 francs a month,
immediate return without loss of pay to 40 hours a week, retirement at 60, full
pay for the days of the strike, trade union freedom in the factory. These
demands were taken up by all the large enterprises in the country.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 40.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 12.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">In the footsteps
of Renault all the engineering factories, the car and aeroplane plants, went on
strike and were occupied by the workers. On 19 May the trams stopped along with
mail and telegraph services. The subway and bus services in Paris followed
suit. The strike hit the mines, shipping, Air France, etc, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 40.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 12.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">On 20 May the
strike became general. Some 9 million workers were now on strike. People who
had never struck before were involved – Folies Bergères dancers, soccer
players, journalists, saleswomen, technicians. Red flags fluttered from all
places of work. Not a tricoleur was to be seen.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[10]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 12.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">It was this that changed everything and made 1968 historic, that
transformed dramatic and heroic street theatre into a real challenge to the
system. The revolutionary carnival atmosphere in the Latin Quarter continued –
the Odéon, the National Theatre, was handed over to the students by its
Director, the legendary Jean Louis Barrault, and turned into a permanent 24/7
debating chamber, and the students at the Ecole Des Beaux Arts (School of Fine
Art) made it into a factory for the production of those still iconic silk
screen posters which flooded the streets of Paris. But it was the mass action
by the working class, in the workplaces where profits are made and real power
lies, that constituted a potential revolutionary challenge to capitalism in a
way that was simply not possible for students however ‘revolutionary’ their
ideas and aspirations might be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">This fact is lost
in many of the somewhat romantic and nostalgic accounts of May ’68, which focus
on the imaginative slogans of the students and the alleged role of the
avant-garde Situationist International but it was widely understood at the time<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[11]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a> as can be seen in many of
the posters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype
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<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">But, of course,
concentrating mainly on the students and ignoring or down playing the role of
the workers comes naturally to various academics and journalists and makes it
possible to view the whole struggle as a glorious ‘utopian’ illusion. The
revolutionary potential of the situation was also denied, from a different
angle, by the trade union leaders and the leadership of the French Communist
Party (PCF) who insisted that the workers only wanted economic concessions not
workers’ power or social revolution. Georges Seguy, Secretary General of the
CGT wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">No, the 10
million workers on strike did not demand power for the working class but better
conditions of life and work, and the overwhelming majority expressed their
attachment to democracy in their opposition to personal rule.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[12]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Certainly it is
true that May ’68 in France was not yet a fully formed revolutionary situation
comparable to September-October 1917 in Russia or October 1923 in Germany in
which a majority of the working class were ready to support insurrection but
that is not the argument. The argument is that the general strike could have
developed in that direction but that the trade union and Communist leaders,
like the above mentioned Georges Seguy, did their very best to ensure that the
movement didn’t go beyond limited economic demands and that the general strike
was brought to an end, as rapidly as possible, on that basis. The reason this
was effective is that the PCF was then the dominant party in the French working
class and ran the main union, the CGT, whereas the revolutionary left groups
were tiny and only had a base among students. Again, the PCF, which from the
start had been hostile to the student revolutionaries, used its stewards to physically
prevent the students and the ‘ultra lefts’ from reaching and influencing the
workers.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[13]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a> In addition the PCF argued
to call off the strike in favour of defeating De Gaulle and the right in the
coming general election set (by De Gaulle)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>for 23 June. In the event, with the movement demobilised and
demoralised, the Gaullists won the election easily and the PCF actually lost
votes. The leaders then claimed that the election result proved there was no
revolutionary possibility and blamed the left. <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[14]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a>.
L’Humanité, the PCF newspaper, wrote that, ‘Each barricade, each car set on
fire, swung hundreds of thousands of votes to the gaullists’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[15]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">In reality what
the May Events showed was that contrary to the almost unanimous opinion of
sociologists, journalistsand many leftists, the working class in an advanced
European capitalist society retained a capacity for revolutionary action. What
it also showed was the need for consciously revolutionary organisation and
leadership not external to but within the working class if that capacity was to
be developed and realised rather than squandered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">The defeat in
France, and it was a heavy defeat, had serious consequences for the French left
in the years ahead. Revolutionary groups were banned and many demoralised
intellectuals moved to the right, spawning the phenomenon of Post-Modernism
with its scepticism towards all ‘grand narratives’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[16]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a>
However, internationally the May Events continued to have an inspirational
effect and 1968 carried on being a year of radical upheaval. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">From Prague to Mexico – via Derry</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">In 1968 so much
was happening in so many different places that recording all the important
developments, or weaving them into a coherent narrative, in one article is
impossible. Thus unmentioned so far is the fact that Black Panther, Bobby
Seale, was arrested in February, that student rebellion forced the closure of
Rome University in March and that German SDS leader Rudi Dutschke was shot and
nearly killed in April, that there was a three month long occupation of Tokyo
University, and that in Britain there was student unrest at the Universities of
Essex, Hull, Bradford, Leeds and Guildford and Hornsey Art Schools. On 5 June
Robert Kennedy, who had come out against the Vietnam War and was waging a
campaign for Presidency based on radical rhetoric, was assassinated in
California.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In July the trial came to a
head of Dr Benjamin Spock and four others for advocating resistance to the
Vietnam War Draft and Dr Spock was sentenced to two years in prison for
‘treason’. When you remember that Spock was the author <i>The Common Sense Book
of Baby and Child Care</i>, which had sold 50 million copies and served as a
guide to a whole generation of American parents and turned its author into a
‘national treasure,’ you get some idea of the impact this trial had in the US.
All of these events contributed to the mounting atmosphere of apocalyptic
crisis. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">The next major
event of world importance came on 20 August with the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia. It is not possible here to go into the complex history that led
to up to this<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[17]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a> except to say that although
the dynamics in the Eastern bloc were different it was not totally disconnected
from the crisis and wind of change in the West. In January 1968 Alexander
Dubcek was elected Ist Secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party,
replacing the diehard Stalinist Antonin Novotny who had ruled the country since
1953 and inaugurating the process of liberalisation known as ‘the Prague
Spring’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn18;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[18]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a>. Leonid Brezhnev and the
Soviet state were having none of it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On
the night of the 20-21 August their tanks rolled into Prague. The invasion of
Czechoslovakia, though it restored Stalinist control in the short term, was
nevertheless a major landmark in the slow dissolution of the Soviet empire that
proceeded from Berlin in 1953, through Hungary 1956, the Solidarnosc rising in
Poland 1980-81 to the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of
Soviet Communism in 1991. But it was also very significant within the specific
politics of 1968. It divided the international Communist movement in such a way
that supporters of the invasion and hard line Stalinists are still known on the
left as ‘Tankies’ and it reinforced the anti-Stalinist inclinations of the
young generation of ‘68ers. Let me put this in personal terms: for me and many
like me it was very important that in 1968 we protested at both the US embassy
and the Russian embassy, against Vietnam War and against the crushing of the
Prague Spring,<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn19" name="_ftnref19" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn19;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[19]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a> just as in 1956 it was
important for the birth of the New Left that they protested both Suez and
Hungary. It meant we had anti-Stalinism in our political DNA and put flesh on
the bones of the slogan, ‘Neither Washington nor Moscow, but International
Socialism!’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">No sooner had
Russian tanks ensconced themselves in the streets of Prague than attention
swung back to America with the Chicago Democratic Party Convention. Following
LBJ’s decision not to seek re-election the US Democratic Party had to select a
new presidential candidate. With Bobby Kennedy dead, the Democratic Party
bosses (as in 2017 with Sanders and Clinton) set about ensuring the victory of
a ‘safe’ pro-war candidate, Hubert Humphrey. Meanwhile the forces of the
anti-war movement and the left mobilised to protest on 28 August. About 10,000
demonstrators gathered and the response of the Chicago authorities headed by
Mayor Richard Daley (the epitome of an old time machine politician) was to
unleash a police riot that mercilessly beat the protestors of the streets – in
full view of the world’s media. Eight leaders of the protest, including Black
Panther Bobby Seale and peace activist David Dellinger<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>were arrested and charged with conspiracy.
The spectacular show trials of the Chicago Eight, then Seven, rumbled on
throughout the year with scenes of Bobby Seale being bound and gagged in the
dock for answering back against Judge Hoffman.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">On 7 September
there was a protest that might seem insignificant compared with many of the
events we have been discussing but in fact was a very significant harbinger of
things to come: a women’s liberation protest at the Miss America Beauty Contest
at Atlantic City. The new women’s movement only fully took off in the early
seventies but its roots definitely lay in the struggles of the sixties. A
particular catalyst in America was the serious and often overt sexism that was
common within the Black, student and anti-war movements of the time. Women
activists who had made the journey to the South to fight for Civil Rights or
campaigned against the War started to ask ‘What about our liberation?’ and this
in turn resonated much more widely. It was similar with the birth of the Gay
movement in the Stonewall Riots of June 28, 1969. The fact that what was born
was called ‘the women’s liberation movement’ and the Gay Liberation Front is an
echo of the National Liberation Front in Vietnam and testifies to the seminal
role of the War in radical consciousness. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Then in October
came a sequence of events that both illustrate the profoundly international
character of the struggle in 1968 and have resonated down the years. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">The 1968 Olympics
were scheduled for Mexico City. The highly repressive Mexican Government had
spared no expense in what was a very impoverished country. On 2 October about
10,000 students and school students gathered in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas
in the Tlatelco district of Mexico City. Among their slogans was the cry, ‘No
to the Olympics, We want Revolution!’. The regime, unprepared to permit any
interference in their costly spectacle, unleashed the security police and army,
complete with snipers. More than 1300 people were arrested that day and an
unspecified number – some estimates are as high as 3-400, were killed. Three
days later, on the other side of the world, on 5 October, a crowd assembled in
Derry to demand their Civil Rights. The Civil Rights movement, directly
inspired by the Civil Rights struggle in the Deep South, and the Derry Housing
Action Committee were making such extreme demands as ‘One Man, One Vote!’ –
against the systematic gerrymandering that produced a permanent Unionist
dominated City Council in a majority Nationalist town – and ‘No discrimination
in Housing!’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- in a state where such
discrimination was endemic. At the Rally, which was banned by the Northern
Ireland authorities,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eamonn McCann rose
to address the crowd when, he recalls, a youngster called Mickey Devine shouted
out ‘McCann! What about the Mexican students?’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn20" name="_ftnref20" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn20;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[20]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a> a
cry which inspired Eamonn’s call for defiance. The deeply sectarian Royal
Ulster Constabulary proceeded to batter the demonstration off the streets with
blatant brutality with the result that 5 October has gone down in history as
marking the beginning of ‘The o which rocked Northern Ireland for the next
thirty years. But just one week later we are back in Mexico where the
government’s hope for a trouble free Olympics was shattered for all time by the
dramatic gesture of two Black American athletes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">When Tommie Smith
and John Carlos, respectively Gold and Bronze medallists, in the 200m Sprint
mounted the victory podium they raised their black gloved fists in a Black
Power salute. This extraordinary gesture of defiance sped instantly round the
whole world. Unparalleled in sporting history except for Muhammed Ali’s
conversion to the Nation of Islam and refusal of the draft to Vietnam, this action
seemed to sum up in one single image the whole sprit of 1968. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Those who reject
the central revolutionary message of 1968 will depict, and dismiss, it as
primarily a student affair. They should be reminded that politically speaking
1968 began with peasant fighters in Vietnam and ended in Derry and Mexico City,
with its highest point being a general strike of ten million workers. Moreover,
although 1968 came to a chronological end the struggles launched in that year
did not cease and in many cases reached their highest levels in the years that
followed: for example the Italian workers struggles in the ‘hot autumn’ of
1969, the struggle in Chile in 1972, the industrial struggle in Britain in 1972
and early 1974, the Portuguese Revolution in 1974.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only in the mid-to-late seventies was the
system able to restore its stability largely through a series of deals with
social democracy and trade union leaders<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn21" name="_ftnref21" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn21;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[21]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Lessons and Conclusions<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">When Marxists
draw ‘the lessons’ of historical events they have a very convenient habit of
confirming said Marxist’s current political perspective. I guess this is no
exception but I will say in my defence that these are lessons and conclusions
which, personally speaking, I drew at the time – in the immediate aftermath of
the the May Events.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Essentially there
were three:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Revolution is
possible<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">The agent of
revolution will be the working class<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">For revolutionary
victory there needs to be built a revolutionary organisation based in the
working class. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">To these we can
add a number of others: the role of anti-imperialist struggle in provoking
rebellion within the imperialist powers themselves; the particular role of
students as a catalyst of change and fertilizer of the revolutionary movement;
the central role of fighting racism and other struggles of the oppressed in any
revolutionary crisis. But all these ‘lessons’ only matter if in some sense the
events of 1968 can be repeated. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Now, obviously,
if we are speaking of mechanical or exact repetition this is clearly not
possible. But will we see new revolutionary years, years in which revolts and
struggles inspire and inform each other, leaping national and indeed
continental boundaries? I am convinced we will. I have argued the case for this
at length elsewhere<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftn22" name="_ftnref22" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn22;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[22]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a> and will simply say here the
underlying crisis of the system both economically and environmentally is now
much more severe than in 1968 and the international working class is now much
larger and potentially stronger. Of course sceptics will produce no end of
reasons as to why the working class will not, will never, revolt but they did
exactly that before 1968. They were wrong then, they will be wrong again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="Body">
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<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
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<!--[endif]-->
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 40.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[1]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US">
See<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/kidron/works/1970/westcap/intro.htm"><span class="Hyperlink0"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">https://www.marxists.org/archive/kidron/works/1970/westcap/intro.htm</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[2]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"> This is a highly condensed summary of the analysis most fully
presented in Chris Harman<i>, Explaining the Crisis</i>, London 1987.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[3]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"> Figures from Chris Harman, <i>The Fire Last Time:1968 and After</i>,
London 1988, pp17-18. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn4" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[4]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"> We have seen a recent reprise of these processes in Ireland and the
consequent spectacular victory in the Repeal referendum. See Marnie Holborow,
‘Fighting the sexist system’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Irish
Marxist Review 20.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn5" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[5]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"> The changed social position of students was very well analyzed at
the time in </span><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #333333;">Chris
Harman, Richard Kuper, Dave Clark, Andrew Sayers and Martin Shaw, </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #333333;">Education, Capitalism and the Student Revolt</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #333333;">, London 1968. Extracts from
this pamphlet are published in International Socialism 158, Spring 2018.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn6" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[6]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmMCObgu_jc"><span class="Link">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmMCObgu_jc</span></a></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn7" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[7]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"> See R.D. Laing and David Cooper ed.,<i>The Dialectics of Liberation</i>,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>London 1967.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn8" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[8]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"> Jonathan Neale, <i>The American War: Vietnam 1960-1975</i>, London,
Chicago and Sydney, 2001, p.93.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn9" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[9]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"> Tony
Cliff and Ian Birchall, <i>France: the struggle goes on</i>, London 1968, p.7.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn10" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[10]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"> As
above p.19</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn11" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[11]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US">
Including by the then 19 year old author of this article. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn12" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[12]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US">
Georges Seguy, cited in Cliff and Birchall, <i>as above</i>, p.57.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn13" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[13]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"> The
PCF had a highly disciplined cadre and they literally formed cordons on the
mass demonstrations to prevent the students merging with the workers, and when
several thousand students marched to the occupied Renault-Billancourt factory
they found the gates locked against them.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn14" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[14]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"> It
should be noted that this mode of argument- set out to demobilise the workers
and then blame defeat on the demobilised workers and the ‘ultra-left’ is in no
way specific to the Stalinist – reformist French Communist Party but is
deployed by union officials and reformists everywhere. In recent years Irish
workers have often heard it from the leadership of SIPTU.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn15" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[15]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US">
Cited in Cliff and Birchall, <i>as above</i>, p.67.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn16" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[16]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #222222;">"Simplifying to the extreme, I
define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives", Jean Francois
Lyotard, </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #222222;">The
Post Modern Condition</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #222222;">, Minnesota, 1984. </span><span lang="EN-US">Especially, of
course, the ‘grand narratives’ of socialism and Marxism.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn17" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref17" name="_ftn17" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[17]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"> For
an excellent account see Chris Harman, <i>Class Struggles in Eastern Europe
1945-83</i>, London 1988. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn18" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref18" name="_ftn18" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn18;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[18]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"> It
would be a mistake to see Dubcek as either the main driver of this process or
its ‘hero’. There was a serious economic crisis that impelled sections of the
ruling class to move towards reform and Dubcek, previously a run of the mill
bureaucrat was merely the figurehead, moreover as the movement for change
gathered steam he did his best, in classic reformist fashion, to restrain it.
See Chris Harman,<i> as above</i>, pp.187-244.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn19" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref19" name="_ftn19" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn19;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[19]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"> Of
course for us the protests against the Vietnam War were larger and more
important – after all as Karl Liebknecht said ‘The main enemy is at home!’. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn20" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref20" name="_ftn20" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn20;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[20]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"> See
Eamonn McCann’s verbal account of this episode <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1pPCP2nako"><span class="Link">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1pPCP2nako</span></a>.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn21" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref21" name="_ftn21" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn21;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[21]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"> For
a superb account and analysis not only of 1968 itself but of the social changes
leading up to it and the struggles that followed see Chris Harman, <i>The Fire
Last Time:1968 and After</i>, London 1988. This book, by far the best on the
year and the period has recently been republished by Bookmarks in London.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn22" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/IMR%2021%201968-1%20PROOFED.docx#_ftnref22" name="_ftn22" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn22;" title=""><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="border: none; color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[22]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></span></sup></a><span lang="EN-US"> See
John Molyneux,<i> Lenin for Today</i>, London 2017, especially The Introduction
and Chapters 1, 3 and 7.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-71309497179090084992018-07-19T12:23:00.001+00:002018-07-19T12:23:17.927+00:00My Journey Through 1968 . First posted on Rebel -the New Socialist Websight rebelnews.ie<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Remembering 1968<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
John Molyneux</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘It was the best of times! It was the worst of times!’ </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No! Actually it was the best of times – closer to Wordsworth
(‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, And to be young was very heaven’) than
to Dickens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least that is how 1968
was for me and how it has remained for fifty years. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
Every so often there is a year
which casts a spell on a generation. Afterwards simply to mention it brings
innumerable images to the minds of many people who lived through it. 1968 was
such a year. There are millions of people throughout the world who still feel
their lives were changed decisively by what happened in those 12 months.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So begins Chris Harman’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Fire Last Time:1968 and After</i>, the best book ever written on that
extraordinary year, and every word of it applies to me. Since a narrative
account of ‘my ‘68’ would far exceed the requested length for this article I’m
structuring it around some of the ‘innumerable images’ that mention of this
extraordinary year brings to my mind.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first is of the Bowery, the skid row of downtown Manhattan.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype
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</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img alt="1968 Bowery 3.jpg" height="208" src="file:///C:/Users/oem/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.jpg" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_0" width="243" /><!--[endif]--></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Bowery in 1967</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I found myself on the Bowery at Christmas 1967. I was a
student visiting New York on a three week trip and on my first night I was
robbed in my hotel room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This forced me
to make my way down through Manhattan to the Bowery in search of accommodation
in a $1 dollar a night flop house. As a new student I had just met people with
socialist and Marxist ideas for the first time, and the extreme inequality I
saw in New York as I walked past the corporate wealth of the sky scrapers and
Madison Avenue to the utter degradation of the down-and – outs on the Bowery
both shocked me and resonated with the ideas I had recently encountered. I also
grasped, half intuitively, that these two poles were two sides of the same
capitalist coin – of the same alienation as I would later learn from Marx.
Capitalism I decided was simply unacceptable; I would become a socialist.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Returning to my University in Southampton I got involved in
left politics in the Uni and in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, which leads to
my second image: the mounted police charging against Vietnam protestors in
Grosvenor Square. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
id="Picture_x0020_1" o:spid="_x0000_i1031" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="The World in 1968 (4).jpg"
style='width:257.25pt;height:169.5pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\oem\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image002.jpg"
o:title="The World in 1968 (4)"/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img alt="The World in 1968 (4).jpg" height="226" src="file:///C:/Users/oem/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image003.jpg" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_1" width="343" /><!--[endif]--></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Grosvenor Square, 17 March 1968.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A group of about ten of us from Southampton Uni travelled to
London for the demo in a minibus. We arrived at Travalgar Square to find it absolutely
filled with Vietnamese flags – a truly beautiful sight, aesthetically as well as
politically. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After speeches the march of
many tens of thousands headed down Charing Cross Rd and Oxford St towards the
US Embassy in Grosvenor Square in Mayfair. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We were met in South Audley St. with a line of cops blocking
the entrance to the Square, but ten or twenty thousand<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>people all pushing is quite a weight and the
police cordon soon <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>broke.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We swept triumphantly into the Square in
front of the embassy. Fearful that the embassy would be stormed, and such was
certainly the mood of the crowd, the police counter attacked on horseback. This
was my first major protest and the first time I’d seen anything like this. It
was very scary, especially seeing a demonstrator who had been kicked in the
head, but I was in awe of the protestors who stood their ground and fought
back. Of course the media reported the whole thing as an example of outrageous
violence by extremists – never mind the violence of My Lai, napalm and the rest
in Vietnam.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This was a time when something world shaking seemed to
happen every few days – on 4 April Martin Luther King was assassinated and
there were across the US – but my next image comes from Paris and is a
barricade made of cobblestones. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
id="Picture_x0020_2" o:spid="_x0000_i1030" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="barricade-paris-1968.jpg"
style='width:276.75pt;height:186pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\oem\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image004.jpg"
o:title="barricade-paris-1968"/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img alt="barricade-paris-1968.jpg" height="248" src="file:///C:/Users/oem/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image005.jpg" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_2" width="369" /><!--[endif]--></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In early May we started to get reports of students clashing
with the police in the Latin Quarter, the student area, of Paris. The protests
began over issues such as overcrowding, mutual access to male and female
dormitories and, of course, Vietnam. The French riot police, the CRS, were
known for their brutality and the fighting was fierce. On 10 May it culminated
in ‘the Night of the Barricades’ when local people came to the aid of the
students. This was followed on 13 May by a general strike of 10 million workers
in solidarity with the students. I decided to take myself to Paris. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I got there, around 17 May, I found a society at a
standstill, paralysed by the power of the working class. I made my way to the
occupied Sorbonne. There was no actual street fighting going on but the debris
of the struggle was everywhere, in particular piles of these huge cobblestones
that had been dug up to build barricades and to hurl at the cops. You could
also see the walking wounded on the streets with their heads bandaged by the
improvised infirmary in a wing of the Sorbonne. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I stayed overnight on the floor of an occupied room with
about 20 others. Asking round the room I was surprised to discover that none of
the others were actually Sorbonne students but mostly young workers who had
been inspired to join the struggle. What they mostly talked about was how their
consciousness had been dramatically changed over the previous few weeks from
passive acceptance of the system to outright rebellion.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The next day I made my way, not far, to the Odeon, France’s
National Theatre, which had been handed over to the students by its famous
director, Jean Louis Barrault, and turned into a <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>permanent<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>round the clock debating chamber</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_i1029" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="1968 theatreodeon_small.gif"
style='width:137.25pt;height:183pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\oem\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image006.gif"
o:title="1968 theatreodeon_small"/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img alt="1968 theatreodeon_small.gif" height="244" src="file:///C:/Users/oem/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image007.jpg" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_3" width="183" /><!--[endif]--></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The occupied Odeon.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ten Days that Shook
the World</i> John Reed describes the atmosphere in 1917: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then the Talk, beside which Carlyle’s “flood of
French speech” was a mere trickle. Lectures, debates, speeches–in theatres,
circuses, school-houses, clubs, Soviet meeting-rooms, Union headquarters,
barracks–. Meetings in the trenches at the Front, in village squares,
factories–. What a marvellous sight to see Putilovsky Zavod (the Putilov
factory) pour out its forty thousand to listen to Social Democrats, Socialist
Revolutionaries, Anarchists, anybody, whatever they had to say, as long as they
would talk! For months in Petrograd, and all over Russia, every street-corner
was a public tribune. In railway trains, street-cars, always the spurting up of
impromptu debate, everywhere…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Odeon was a glimpse, on a much smaller scale of course, of the
same explosion of discussion. From there I found my way to the École des Beaux
Arts which had been transformed into a poster factory churning out the now
iconic silk screen posters of the revolt which were then plastered across Paris
. Of these many famous images I have chosen one that points to what really Made
May ’68 so important – the workers’ great strike and factory occupations. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_5"
o:spid="_x0000_i1028" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="Beauty-Is-in-the-Street-007.jpg"
style='width:300pt;height:180pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\oem\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image008.jpg"
o:title="Beauty-Is-in-the-Street-007"/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img alt="Beauty-Is-in-the-Street-007.jpg" height="240" src="file:///C:/Users/oem/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image009.jpg" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_5" width="400" /><!--[endif]--></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It was
this power that made May ’68 not just amazing and inspiring street theatre but
a real challenge to the system, a real potential revolution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">By the
time I returned to Southampton I was convinced of three things: 1) revolution
was possible;2) the agent of revolution was the working class; 3) it was
necessary to build a revolutionary organisation in the working class to
challenge the leadership of reformist trade union officials and the old
Communist Parties, whom I saw opposing and selling out the May struggle by
working to end the strike as soon as possible. Sometime in June Tony Cliff
visited Southampton to talk to a group of about four or five students, and
argue more or less exactly this. I joined the International Socialists. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So many
other things happened that year but for reasons of space I will mention just
three. On August 20, by which time I was back home in London, Soviet tanks
rolled into Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_6"
o:spid="_x0000_i1027" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="1968 soviet-invasion-czechoslovakia-1968-002.jpg"
style='width:292.5pt;height:192.75pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\oem\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image010.jpg"
o:title="1968 soviet-invasion-czechoslovakia-1968-002"/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img alt="1968 soviet-invasion-czechoslovakia-1968-002.jpg" height="257" src="file:///C:/Users/oem/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image011.jpg" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_6" width="390" /><!--[endif]--></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">From
the beginning of the year the Communist reformer, Alexander Dubcek, had been
announcing his intention to liberalise and bring in ‘socialism with a human
face’. Brezhnev and the Soviet Union were having none of it. The International
Socialists and others immediately organised a mass protest at the Russian
Embassy. This was important because it gave concrete expression to the IS
slogan, ‘Neither Washington nor Moscow’ and for me and others it meant that
anti-Stalinism was in our DNA. The invasion split the international Communist
movement and to this day Stalinists are known as ‘Tankies’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Also in
the summer of 1968 I attended a national organising meeting of the Vietnam
Solidarity Campaign in Leeds to plan for a major demo in London in October. The
meeting began in Leeds University but after a red scare we were kicked out and
ended up, by various means, up on the nearby Yorkshire Moors. As far as I know
there is no photo of this but in my mind’s eye I can see the likes of Chris
Harman, Robin Blackburn and Tariq Ali sitting round a hollow in the hills to
debate the route of the march until a bunch of farmers arrived with dogs and
clubs to turf us off their land.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
mention this because it was an example<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>of the kind of mad cap spontaneous ‘happening’ that characterised much
of the organising in that year. But the day also had its serious side. The IS
people argued that the Vietnam demo should go to the East End and the Bank of
England to link the struggle against the war to the workers’ struggle against capitalism.
They didn’t win that debate<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- the demo
went to Hyde Park – but my impression is they won many of the best of the ’68
generation to the perspective of going to the working class and the factories,
just in time for the big industrial battles of 1969-74. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
last but one image I’m citing does not, unlike the others, relate to an event I
took part in. Nevertheless it is absolutely and symbolic of the period. This is
the image of Tommy Smith and John Carlos giving their Black Power salute on 12
October on the victory podium at the Mexico Olympics. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_7"
o:spid="_x0000_i1026" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="1968 Black power salute.jpg"
style='width:153.75pt;height:184.5pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\oem\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image012.jpg"
o:title="1968 Black power salute"/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img alt="1968 Black power salute.jpg" height="246" src="file:///C:/Users/oem/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image012.jpg" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_7" width="205" /><!--[endif]--></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This
magnificent gesture of defiance is iconic in itself but also underlines the
immense importance of the Black American struggle throughout 1968 and in the
whole historical period. The civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Malcolm
X and Muhammed Ali, Black power and the revolutionary Black Panthers
transformed ‘the ideological panorama of the age’, to quote Gramsci. It was, of
course, the Civil Rights Movement in the US that inspired the Civil Rights
struggle in Northern Ireland which led to the famous demonstration in
Derry<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>on 5 October. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
issue of racism was never far away in 1968. I already mentioned the
assassination of Martin Luther King but there were also Enoch Powell’s viciously
racist ‘rivers of blood’ speeches in February and April which made race and
immigration into central issues in British politics. In May ’68 attempts were
made to demonise the student leader, Danny Cohn-Bendit , as ‘a German Jew’ and
‘foreign scum’ prompting the mass response ‘We are all German Jews’ and ‘We are
all foreign scum’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Finally
I remember this poster from May.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_8"
o:spid="_x0000_i1025" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="9780234772874-us.jpg" style='width:241.5pt;
height:354pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\oem\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image013.jpg"
o:title="9780234772874-us"/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img alt="9780234772874-us.jpg" height="472" src="file:///C:/Users/oem/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image014.jpg" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_8" width="322" /><!--[endif]--></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The beginning of a long struggle. It certainly was for me
and for many of my generation. And many of us who came into the revolutionary
movement in that year have shown a good deal of staying power. Having seen
1968, I can never say, ‘It can’t happen’ and the important thing, of course, is
to use the history of ‘68 to inspire and inform a new generation of
revolutionaries today. The struggle goes on and now, if humanity is to have a
future, the revolution is more necessary than ever before.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-43179889567365242202018-01-07T01:07:00.000+00:002018-01-07T01:07:13.626+00:00Lenin:The State - and Revolution Today<br />
This is Chapter Three of my book <b>Lenin For Today.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">Chapter 3: The State - and Revolution Today <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 1.3pt; tab-stops: 414.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<i>The
State and Revolution</i> is the most famous
and important of all Lenin’s many works. Its importance to Lenin can be judged
by when it was written – in August and September of 1917, while he was in
hiding, at the time of the Kornilov Coup, and on the eve of the insurrection: a
time when it can be imagined he had rather a lot to do and a lot on his mind<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.
It is also clear from what he said about it himself in a note to his close
associate Kamenev at a moment when he had good cause to fear for his life in
July 1917:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 1.3pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify;">
Comrade<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Kamenev<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 1.3pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<em>Entre</em><span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span><em>nous</em>: if they do me
in, I ask you to publish my notebook: “Marxism on the State ” (it got left
behind in <st1:place w:st="on">Stockholm</st1:place>).<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>It’s bound in a blue cover. It
contains a collection of all the quotations from Marx and Engels, likewise from
Kautsky against Pannekoek. There are a number of remarks and notes, and
formulations. I think it could be published after a week’s work. I believe it
to be important, because not only Plekhanov but also Kautsky have bungled
things. The condition: all this is absolutely<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>entre
nous</em>!<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 1.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<em><span style="font-style: normal;">The objective
historical importance of </span>The State and
Revolution</em><em><span style="font-style: normal;"> is also clear. It was the theoretical foundation
of the central slogan of the Revolution, ‘All power to the Soviets’, and thus
of the Revolution itself. And here it must be remembered that the idea of
soviet power was not only the central aspiration of the Russian working class
in 1917 but also the key element in its appeal to the international working
class. From <st1:state w:st="on">Berlin</st1:state> and <st1:city w:st="on">Turin</st1:city>
to Limerick, workers who aimed to follow in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Russia</st1:country-region></st1:place>’s footsteps formed or tried
to form ‘Soviets’ i.e. workers’ councils. <o:p></o:p></span></em></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 1.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<em>The State and Revolution</em><em><span style="font-style: normal;"> drew the
sharpest and clearest theoretical dividing line between reformist and
revolutionary socialism, and between the Marxism of the Second and of the Third
International, between Social Democracy and Communism. That split had already
occurred over the question of the First World War, of course, but it was </span>The State and Revolution</em><em><span style="font-style: normal;"> that
completed the break and, as it were, hammered it home, especially for the
period when the war was over and revolution was on the agenda across <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>. Was the goal of the working class movement to win
a parliamentary majority for a socialist party so that it could take control of
the state and thus transform society in a socialist direction, as the German
Social Democratic Party, the British Labour Party and the parties of the Second
International argued? Or was it, as the parties of the Third or Communist
International maintained, to prepare and organise for a working class uprising
which would destroy the existing state apparatus, including its parliament, and
replace it with a ‘soviet’ state, a state based on workers’ councils?</span></em><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><em><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span>The State
and Revolution</em><em><span style="font-style: normal;"> was the fundamental text of this historic fork in
the road. And it continued to be regarded as an authoritative, almost sacred
text of the international Communist movement long after that movement had
abandoned its central positions in practice.</span></em><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><em><span style="font-style: normal;"> Some idea of the work’s ongoing prestige can
be gleaned from the fact that such leading political theorists of the time as
Lucio Colletti and Ralph Miliband both devoted substantial and largely
approving essays to it in the early seventies.</span></em><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></em></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 1.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<em><span style="font-style: normal;">However it is
not </span>The State and Revolution’s</em><em><span style="font-style: normal;"> historic
significance that is my main interest here. Rather my concern is with its
contemporary relevance. Are its main theses (still) valid and can and should
they be regarded as a guide to action now and in the immediate future? In order
to answer this question it is first necessary to set out a summary of Lenin’s
argument.<o:p></o:p></span></em></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 1.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<em><span style="font-style: normal;">He begins with
the assertion that t</span></em>he state is not an eternal institution but the
product of the division of society into<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> classes</span><span style="color: #333333;">. He quotes from Engels’ <i>The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State:<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 1.3pt; margin-top: 5.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">[The state] is a product
of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this
society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it
has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But
in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic
interests, might not consume themselves ans society in fruitless struggle, it
became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society … and alienating itself more and
more from it …the state <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 1.3pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">This,
says Lenin, ‘expresses with perfect clarity the basic idea of Marxism with
regard to the historical role and meaning of the state’ which he stresses is
that the state is ‘a product and a manifestation of the<i> irreconcilability</i> of class antagonisms’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Lenin then contrasts this with ‘bourgeois and particularly petty bourgeois
ideologists’ who have “corrected” Marx
‘to make it appear that the state is an organ for the reconciliation of
classes’ whereas ,‘According to Marx, the state is an organ of class <i>rule</i>, an organ for the <i>oppression</i> of one class by another’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
He elaborates on this point, again referencing Engels, by stressing that the
essence of the state consists of ‘special bodies of armed men having prisons
etc at their command’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 1.3pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">From
this Lenin draws the obvious conclusion that the modern state is a capitalist
state, serving the interests of the capitalist class. This conclusion had, of
course, already been drawn repeatedly by Marx and Engels including in<i> The Communist Manifesto.</i> ‘</span><span style="background: white;">The executive of the modern state is but a
committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.’ But Lenin
drives it home. He stresses that Marx’s dictum applies even to the most
democratic republic with full universal suffrage. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 45.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>[T]he omnipotence of “wealth” is more certain in a
democratic republic... A democratic republic is the best possible political
shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of
this very best shell …it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no
change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic
can shake it.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
Universal suffrage is also, says Lenin, an instrument of
bourgeois rule, ‘a means to decide once very few years which member of the
ruling class is to repress and crush the people’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
in contrast to ‘<span style="background: white;">the false notion that universal
suffrage “in the present-day state" is really capable of revealing the
will of the majority of the working people and of securing its realization.’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
And he emphatically concludes that, ‘Bourgeois states are most varied in form,
but their essence is the same: all these states, whatever their form, in the
final analysis are inevitably <i>the
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie</i>.[Emphasis in original]’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">So far Lenin has been summarising, albeit
in markedly more vehement language, the ‘orthodox’ Marxist position on the
state. By orthodox I mean not just the actual views of Marx and Engels but what
was considered orthodox by the leading parties and leading Marxists of the
Second International, that is by German Social Democracy, Karl Kautsky, George
Plekhanov and the like. (‘It is not denied [by the Kautskyites-JM] that the
state is an organ of class rule or that class antagonisms are irreconcilable’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>).
But at this point Lenin makes a decisive move beyond ‘the orthodoxy’, that is
the orthodoxy of the Second International. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">He bases himself on Marx and Engels’
observation in their 1872 Preface to <i>The
Communist Manifesto</i> that ‘One thing especially was proved by the Commune,
viz. that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state
machinery and wield it for its own purposes”’. <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
He then notes that this comment has generally (by the Marxists of the Second
International) been interpreted to mean that Marx is emphasising ‘the idea of
slow development’ but <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">As a matter of fact <i>the
exact opposite is the case</i>. Marx’s idea is that the working class must <i>break up</i>, smash the ‘ready-made state
machinery’ and not confine itself to laying hold of it.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">Lenin backs up his interpretation with
quotations from the <i>18<sup>th</sup>
Brumaire of Louis Napoleon </i>and Marx’s 1871 ‘Letter to Kugelman’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">It is this idea – the impossibility of
‘taking over’ the existing state machinery by the working class and the absolute
necessity of destroying it – which is the central, the key, idea in <i>The State and Revolution</i> and its
decisive innovation. True, this idea is already present in Marx and Engels, as
Lenin insists and demonstrates, but it is in a sentence here and a sentence
there. It is Lenin who ‘discovers’ this point which had hitherto been lost or
ignored, grasps its significance and gives it such emphasis as to make it
unavoidable and unignorable. The phrases, ‘the destruction of the apparatus of
state power’, ‘abolishing the bourgeois state’, ‘destroying the state machine’,
‘smashing the state’ are repeated again and again and driven home with a force
that is both characteristic of Lenin’s writing and almost unique to it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">The significance of this point is that it
contradicts the entire previously dominant strategy of the international
socialist movement. That strategy, exemplified in the practice of the SPD but
also pursued, albeit with national variations, by all the major socialist
parties of Europe, was to win governmental power through the accumulation of
votes and then use that governmental power to take control of the existing
state apparatus (a process often described as ‘the conquest of state power’)
which in turn was to be used to transform society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">The question of ‘smashing the state’ is
obviously linked to the question of violent revolution, which Lenin also
advocates – it is hard to see how the state machine can be ‘smashed’ without
any physical and extra-legal confrontation, especially as ‘special bodies of
armed men’ constitute the essence of the state – but is nevertheless not
identical to it and, in fact, more important. On the one hand, as October 1917
showed, it may be possible to destroy the existing state apparatus (by winning
over the rank-and-file of the armed forces etc) with relatively little
violence. On the other hand it is possible to have a violent revolution, an
armed struggle, which preserves and ‘takes over’ the existing state apparatus
(albeit the outcome of this operation will be some form of capitalism – perhaps
state capitalism – not workers’ power or socialism).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">Taking over the state machine, either by
parliamentary or military means, is a strategy in which leaders at the top,
whether they are MPs or guerrilla leaders (Alexis Tsipras or Fidel Castro) play
the active and predominant part while the mass of the working class are reduced
to a supporting role. In contrast ‘smashing the state’ puts a premium on
initiative and mass action from below. It is necessary, through force of
numbers, to drive the police off the streets and seize police stations; to go
to the barracks and win over the soldiers, to form local committees which
control areas, to commandeer buses and trains and such like. All of this
requires a risen working class acting in its workplaces and neighbourhoods.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">This becomes particularly clear when we
examine the next question addressed by Lenin which follows directly from
dismantling the capitalist state: namely, ‘What is to Replace the Smashed State
Machine?’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">As Lenin points out Marx had already given
a ‘general’ answer to this question in <i>The
Communist Manifesto,</i> namely, ‘the proletariat organised as the ruling
class… winning the battle of democracy’. But because Marx ‘did not indulge in
utopias’ a concrete answer as to ‘the specific forms this organisation would
assume’ had to wait for ‘the<i> experience</i>
of the mass movement’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.
This was provided by the Paris Commune.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">Using Marx’s analysis of the Commune in <i>The Civil War in France</i>, Lenin
identifies a number of key features of the new state that will supplant the old
capitalist state. They are: ‘suppression of the standing army, and its
replacement by the armed people…The police…turned into the responsible and at
all times revocable instrument of the Commune’; <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn19" name="_ftnref19" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
the Commune to be formed of ‘municipal councillors, chosen by universal
suffrage in the various wards of Paris, responsible and revocable at any time’:
the same recallability to apply to ‘the officials of all other branches of the
administration’; ‘the privileges and representation allowances of the high
dignitaries of state’ to be abolished and ‘From the Commune downwards, public
service to be done at workmen’s wages’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn20" name="_ftnref20" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[20]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">Commenting on these measures, Lenin
writes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">The Commune, therefore, appears to have replaced the smashed
state machine “only” by fuller democracy: abolition of the standing army; all
officials to be elected and subject to recall. But as a matter of fact this
“only” signifies a gigantic replacement of certain institutions by other
institutions of a fundamentally different type. This is exactly a case of
"quantity being transformed into quality": democracy, introduced as
fully and consistently as is at all conceivable, is transformed from bourgeois
into proletarian democracy; from the state (= a special force for the
suppression of a particular class) into something which is no longer the state
proper.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn21" name="_ftnref21" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[21]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">Against anarchism, Lenin insists that a
state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, is still necessary ‘to suppress the
bourgeoisie and crush their resistance’ and argues that one of the reasons for
the Commune’s defeat ‘was that it did not do this with sufficient
determination’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn22" name="_ftnref22" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[22]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
But because this new State represents the interests of the majority against the
minority (of exploiters) and because it will increasingly involve that majority
in its day-to-day work it will already be <i>starting</i>
to wither away. Lenin strongly emphasises the anti-bureaucratic character of
the new state. He accepts that: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">Abolishing the bureaucracy at once, everywhere and
completely, is out of the question. It is a utopia. But [he maintains] to smash
the old bureaucratic machine at once and to begin immediately to construct a
new one that will make possible the gradual abolition of all bureaucracy--this
is not a utopia, it is the experience of the Commune, the direct and immediate
task of the revolutionary proletariat.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn23" name="_ftnref23" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[23]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">It is this semi-state which, Lenin says
(again following Marx and Engels), will wither away completely with the
achievement of ‘complete communism’ by which he means a society without class
divisions or class struggle and based on the principle (taken from Marx’s <i>Critique of the Gotha Programme</i>) of
‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 60.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt;">
We set ourselves the
ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i.e., all organized and systematic
violence, all use of violence against people in general. We do not expect the
advent of a system of society in which the principle of subordination of the
minority to the majority will not be observed. In striving for socialism,
however, we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, therefore,
that the need for violence against people in general, for the <i>subordination</i> of one man to another, and
of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since
people will <i>become accustomed</i> to
observing the elementary conditions of social life <i>without violence</i> and <i>without
subordinat</i><i><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">io</span>n</i>.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn24" name="_ftnref24" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[24]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 1.3pt;">
This
is far from being all that is contained in this remarkable book* but it is, I
hope, a fair summary of its central argument, an argument which is, at least in
its own terms, rigorously consistent. There is, however, an important omission
in <i>The State and Revolution</i> and it is
one that Lenin himself draws attention to, viz. the experience of the Russian
Revolution itself. The reason for this omission is that Lenin was planning a
chapter on it but was unable to write it because he was ‘“interrupted” by a
political crisis – the eve of the October Revolution of 1917’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn25" name="_ftnref25" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[25]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.
As a consequence there are only a couple of passing references to what would
probably have been central to that chapter – the role of the Soviets or
Workers’ Councils. Actually the passing remarks themselves point to that
centrality. Thus:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 1.3pt; margin-top: 5.0pt;">
<span style="background: white;">the
bourgeois ideologists …substitute arguing and talk about the distant future for
the vital and burning question of present-day politics, namely, the
expropriation of the capitalists, the conversion of all citizens into workers
and other employees of one huge “syndicate”--the whole state--and the complete
subordination of the entire work of this syndicate to a genuinely democratic
state, <i>the state of the Soviets of
Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.</i> [emphasis in original]<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn26" name="_ftnref26" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[26]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 1.3pt;">
<span style="background: white;">And<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 1.3pt; margin-top: 5.0pt;">
<span style="background: white;">…the
entire class-conscious proletariat will be with us in the fight—not to “shift
the balance of forces", but to overthrow the bourgeoisie, to destroy
bourgeois parliamentarism, for a democratic republic after the type of the
Commune, or a <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">republic</st1:placetype>
of <st1:placename w:st="on">Soviets</st1:placename></st1:place> of Workers’
and Soldiers’ Deputies, for the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn27" name="_ftnref27" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[27]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 1.3pt;">
<span style="background: white;">Moreover, as we have seen, the question of Soviet power lay
at the heart of all Lenin’s theory and practice in 1917. It is therefore useful
to note how certain features of the Russian Soviets added significantly to and
developed beyond the experience provided by the Commune and reasonable to
consider these features as an aspect of Lenin’s theory of the state. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">First, we should note that whereas the
Commune was established only after the insurrection and the assumption of power
by the working class (at least in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Paris</st1:city></st1:place>),
the Soviets, both in 1905 and 1917, made their appearance before the conquest
of power (though after the uprising that overthrew the Tsar). The Soviets
emerged not in the first instance as a new state but as an expression of, and
means of coordinating, the revolutionary struggle, which was also the <i>embryo</i> of a new state. This created a
period of dual power in which the undermining and ‘smashing’ of the bourgeois
state was greatly facilitated by the possibility of winning the workers,
soldiers and sailors over to accepting the authority of the Soviets as ‘their’
government. It also created the possibility of first popularising the idea of
Soviet power internationally and then agitating for and actually establishing
soviets or similar organisations in revolutionary and pre-revolutionary
situations in other countries <i>prior</i>
to the insurrection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">Second, whereas the Commune was based on
elections in municipal wards, that is on geographical constituencies, the
Soviets were based on the election of delegates from workplaces and soldiers’
and sailors’ units. This difference reflected economic development. In <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Paris</st1:city></st1:place> in 1871 industrial
production was generally small scale and the working class was predominantly
located in small workshops. In Petrograd and <st1:city w:st="on">Moscow</st1:city>,
despite the overall backwardness of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Russia</st1:country-region></st1:place>, there were numerous
factories some of which, like the Putilov works, were among the largest in the
world. It also reflected the huge role in the revolution played by the soldiers
and sailors of the vast conscript army, itself the product of the industrial
scale mobilisation for total war.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">But this shift from areas to workplaces
and barracks as the main unit of representation constituted a major advance in
working class democracy. It meant that the election of a deputy could be the
outcome of a collective discussion and debate rather than of individualised,
atomised, voting*. It also made exercising the right of recall enormously
easier and more effective. Because in a ‘parliamentary’ constituency the
electors are not a collective and do not assemble or meet on a regular basis it
is very difficult to recall a representative but with workplace elections the
electors are a collective and can recall their delegate by simply holding a
workplace meeting. This is not just a question of dealing with deputies who
‘sell out’; it also makes it possible for the Soviet to reflect shifts in the
views of the workers. This is very important in the midst of a revolution when,
precisely because the masses are involved in daily struggle, the consciousness
of the working class is changing very rapidly. And clearly workplace based
election reinforces the class character of the democracy, of the new state.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">Lenin, in his 1918 polemic with Kautsky,
put it this way:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and
exploited people themselves, which<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>helps</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>them to organise and administer their
own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the working
and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being
best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others
to elect and exercise control over those elected. The Soviet form of
organisation automatically helps to unite all the working and exploited people
around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus—the
bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social
connections, etc. (these real privileges are the more varied the more highly
bourgeois democracy is developed)—all this disappears under the Soviet form of
organisation.... Indirect elections to non-local Soviets make it easier to hold
congresses of Soviets, they make the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>entire</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>apparatus less costly, more flexible,
more accessible to the workers and peasants at a time when life is seething and
it is necessary to be able very quickly to recall one’s local deputy or to
delegate him to a general congress of Soviets.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn28" name="_ftnref28" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[28]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">And even when in 1920 he is arguing in
favour of participating in bourgeois parliaments Lenin still insists:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">…only workers’ Soviets, not parliament, can be the instrument
enabling the proletariat to achieve its aims; those who have failed to
understand this are, of course, out-and-out reactionaries, even if they are
most highly educated people, most experienced politicians, most sincere
socialists, most erudite Marxists, and most honest citizens and fathers of
families.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn29" name="_ftnref29" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[29]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;">So, with
this addition, we can turn to our central question: is the argument of <i>The State and Revolution</i> valid today?
Can it and should it serve as a guide to action for 21<sup>st</sup> century
workers and socialists?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><b><span style="background: white;">Arguments against Lenin’s theory<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;">The
question of the state, its nature, role and legitimacy, has been at the centre
of political philosophy and political theory from at least Hobbes’ <i>Leviathan</i> in the 17<sup>th</sup> century,
if not Plato’s <i>Republic</i>, and has
continued to be so up to the present including in major recent academic
debates. A comprehensive survey of this debate is obviously beyond what is
possible in this work. Instead I’m going to focus on six positions, each of
which constitutes an explicit or implicit critique of, and alternative to, the
Leninist theory of the state and each of which has a certain resonance and
currency in society today and in contemporary movements for social change. The
positions are: 1) that universal suffrage gives democracy;2) the pluralist
theory of power; 3) Foucault’s theory of power; 4) the autonomist/ anarchist
critique; 5) the ‘Gramscian’ critique; 6) Poulantzas’ critique. I will then consider the positive relevance
of Lenin’s view in relation to recent and future struggles.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><b><span style="background: white;">Universal suffrage<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;">By far the
most important argument against the Leninist (and Marxist) theory of the state
is that the existence of universal suffrage (along with parliamentary
government and ‘free and fair’ elections) is democracy and ensures that the
state apparatus – police, armed forces, judiciary, civil servants etc – is
politically neutral and serves the people. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;">This is
not an academic theory – it is seldom put in theoretical form and very hard to
defend as such or support with empirical evidence – but it is something much
more powerful than that. It is the absolutely dominant position supported by
the entire European and North American political establishment and most of the
global establishment as well, and accepted as more or less self evidently true
by almost all the media, along with most of the education system or systems.
Crucially, and this is very important for the maintenance of consensus in this
matter, it is also accepted by the majority of the main ‘opposition’ parties
and movements. To be specific it is accepted by most of the social democratic
parties and trade unions – at least their leaderships. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;">As a
result this view becomes the taken-for-granted assumption, the ‘common sense’,
on which almost all political discourse is based and within which it is framed.
More than that it takes on, and is actively given, a normative character. To
dissent from it is not merely to hold a different or even a mistaken view, it
is to be an opponent of democracy as such and anti-patriotic, disreputable to
say the least and quite possibly ‘evil’. One consequence of this is that many
political figures on the left who personally and privately do not believe in
the class neutrality of the state and its institutions, nevertheless feel
obliged – for fear of the scandal or loss of public sympathy – to speak
publicly as if they do. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;">To see
how this works, imagine if in the British House of Commons a leading left-wing
politician, probably a member of the Labour Party, maybe even its leader, were
respond to comments from the Tory front bench about sending ‘our boys’ to the
Middle East to serve their country, by saying, ‘I do not accept that the armed
forces are “our boys” or serve the
British people; they are an instrument of the British capitalist class being
deployed abroad in the interests of imperialism and at home to hold down the
working class’. The response would, of course, be ferocious and the ferocity
would not at all be confined to the Tories but would be expressed with equal
rage by numerous Labour MPs and by virtually the entire mass media. It would be
the same if analogous comments were made about the police (say after a riot or
confrontation with a demonstration or a police killing) or about judges if they
ruled against workers in an industrial dispute. And I give a British example
but it would be the same in all countries.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;">However,
the fact that a theory or view is widely imposed and widely accepted* obviously
does not make it valid and in this case the claim that universal suffrage and
parliamentary government delivers real democracy, i.e. governments or states
that represent the interests or wishes of the majority, will not withstand
critical examination.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;">In the
first place, no election taking place in a capitalist society is fought on a
level playing field. By their very nature political parties that represent the
interests of the rich and the corporations, together with the upper middle
classes, have enormously more money and resources at their disposal than do
parties which rely mainly on the support of
the working class and the poor. This makes<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;">* I do
not want to exaggerate the extent to which this view is actually accepted at
the base of society. In fact it is clear that large numbers of working class people
reject the ‘official’ view of the political structure and believe that ‘<i>they </i>(the politicians and ‘high-ups’)
are all the same’ and ‘all in it for
themselves’ and see the police as their enemy etc. Then there is another layer
of people who half believe these things and half accept the official narrative.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;">a big
difference in election campaigns. An election campaign involves the production
and organisation on a large scale of leaflets, posters, billboard adverts,
newspaper and TV advertising, public meetings across the country etc. – all of
which costs money. It is true that a workers’ party, a party of ‘the people’,
will have more volunteers, more ‘foot-soldiers,’ than a party of the rich but
apart from rare and very exceptional circumstances the resources of the
bourgeois parties will far outweigh those of the workers’ parties or the left.
And the more important and the larger the scale of the election the more this
disparity between the resources of the corporations and the ‘ordinary’ people
makes itself felt: the American Presidential election being an extreme case, in
that it is close to impossible to mount a credible national campaign without
major corporate sponsorship. The only significant counterweight to this huge
imbalance is the funding of many Labour and social democratic parties by the
trade unions but obviously this is not, and cannot be enough to achieve
parity.*<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;">*
Moreover this funding comes with a price. In practice the political use of
trade union money and resources, which far exceed that of any other tendency in
the working class movement, is heavily influenced by the trade union
bureaucracies and is deployed, by and large, to prevent social democratic
parties moving too far to the left.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;">Also
elections take place in the context of and under the influence of a mass media
that is heavily biased against the left and socialism. This is inevitably the
case because a) most of the media is owned and controlled by big business and
run as a business; b) even when the media is state owned, as in the BBC, it is
still controlled from above by people committed to the status quo; c) the media
operates on the basis of concepts of ‘objectivity’ which take capitalist social
relations for granted and regard ‘the middle ground’ as somewhere between George
Bush and Hilary Clinton or David Cameron and Tony Blair, and ‘news values’
which systematically combine the political agenda of the government/state with
celebrity culture ‘infotainment’.</span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn30" name="_ftnref30" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; color: black;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[30]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;">
Moreover this media bias is only one (important) aspect of wider capitalist
hegemony which operates both globally and in every nation state, through a
multitude of institutions including the education system and most of the
various churches. In 1845, in <i>The German
Ideology,</i> Marx and Engels wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling
ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the
same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of
material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the
means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of
those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn31" name="_ftnref31" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[31]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space">Greece</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;">Having
won a general election and having formed a government such a would-be
anti-capitalist party finds itself in the position of being in office but not
in power.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">First and foremost such a government is
not in control of the national economy. The bulk of industrial and financial
capital which between them dominate the economic life of the country will be,
insofar as it is, or is perceived to be, an anti-capitalist government, in the
hands people hostile to it. Secondly it is not at all, not even nominally, in
control of the global economy on which it is likely to be heavily dependent and
with which it is likely to be deeply enmeshed. This will almost certainly
include a considerable number of multinational corporations with substantial
investment in the country and in many cases will involve all sorts of specific
ties, obligations, debts etc to institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank,
or the European Central Bank. Our would-be anti-capitalist government would
also face the hostility of numerous, and very powerful, foreign governments who
would be working in concert with the aforementioned corporations, banks, and
international institutions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">Between them these forces have the ability
to make life extremely difficult for any government that wishes to act against
their interests. They can, for example, go on investment strike or simply lower
their level of investment; they can close down operations and relocate to
countries they feel are more ‘business friendly’. Both of these course of
action can be presented as simple ‘business’ decisions rather political
interventions but both can have the effect of seriously damaging the economy
and increasing the level of unemployment. They can also provoke a run on the
banks or speculation against the national currency. Moreover, they can do these
things secure in the knowledge that the bulk of the media will blame the left
government for the economic hardship which ensues.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">So what resources will our elected radical
government have at its disposal to deal with this very hostile environment? It
will, of course, have ‘moral’ and legal authority. Where ‘the public’ or
‘ordinary people’ are concerned that moral authority may be, probably will be,
very high but it is not the opposition of ordinary people that we are talking
about; the problem is opposition and, indeed, sabotage by bankers and
corporations and it seems highly unlikely that the government’s democratic or
moral authority will cut any ice whatsoever with such people. In 2015 the Greek
Syriza government, generally perceived as radical and left wing at the time,
received a dramatic democratic endorsement from the Greek people with a 60%
‘OXI’ (NO) vote in the referendum on the Troika’s austerity memorandum. Did
Mario Draghi and the European Central Bank bat an eyelid? Of course not. They
simply piled on the pressure – pressure which, sadly, swiftly broke Syriza’s
resistance. No senior banker or corporate CEO worth his or her immense salary
would do otherwise. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">So what of the government’s legal
authority? Constitutionally such a
government would have the power, provided it commanded a majority in
parliament, to pass laws that would be legally binding on companies and
financial institutions operating on its territory. But how would it be able to
administer and enforce such laws? Insofar as it operated as a ‘normal’ i.e.
constitutional government it would run the country and enforce the laws passed
by parliament by means of the existing state apparatuses. It would use the
existing government departments, with their established teams of civil
servants, and it would, if necessary, deploy the existing courts, police and –
as a last resort – the military to secure compliance. In theory these
apparatuses would be constitutionally obliged to follow the orders of the
democratically elected government, but would they do so in practice?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">To answer this question we shall consider
three things: a) the nature and composition of the state apparatuses; b) the
nature of the challenge being posed by the government; c) the historical
experience of the state’s relationship to left governments.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">The first thing to note is that state
apparatuses, with very few exceptions, are hierarchical organisations. The
democratic elective principle applies, as a rule, only to parliaments (and
local councils). The armed forces, police, judiciary, prisons, civil service
etc. are based on appointment, discipline and subordination. Unless there is
mutiny in the ranks their behaviour is determined by those who run them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 28.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;">The next thing to note is that those who
head these institutions are highly paid. They are not highly paid compared to
CEOs in the private sector, still less compared to major capitalists but they
are paid far, far, above the average wage. In the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">United States</st1:country-region></st1:place> an army general earns
about $180,000 a year plus considerable perks; a police chief in a major city
earns over $190,000 and Federal judges
$220 - 250,000. In <st1:country-region w:st="on">Britain</st1:country-region>
a Brigadier earns over £100.000 and
General Sir Peter Hall, Head of the Army, receives £180,000 plus a flat in <st1:place w:st="on">Central London</st1:place>. General Sir David Richards, Chief of
Defence Staff, gets £256,000 a year with an apartment in <st1:placename w:st="on">Kensington</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">Palace</st1:placetype>
(a royal palace and official residence of the Duke and Duchess of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Cambridge</st1:city></st1:place>). Police chiefs in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Britain</st1:country-region></st1:place> range from over £280,000
for the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to about £170,000 for an average Chief
Constable. British judges average
between £200,000 and £250,000 a year. In 2010 The Guardian reported that Prime
Minister David Cameron had published data about the salaries of top civil
servants:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">The data lists the names of some 170 senior civil
servants who earn over £150,000, more than the prime minister. Top of the list
is John Fingleton, the chief executive of the Office of Fair Trading, who earns
up to £279,999 a year. Other high earners include David Nicholson, the chief
executive of the NHS, who earns between £255,000 and £259,999 and Joe Harley,
IT director general and chief information officer for the Department for Work
and Pensions. The Ministry of Defence has the largest number of high earners,
with no less than 28 of its civil servants making the list, along with 21 from
the Cabinet Office.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn32" name="_ftnref32" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[32]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">These
facts are hardly surprising. Rather it would be astonishing if they were
otherwise in any stratified society.
Nevertheless they are worth reflecting on because they have important
political implications. It is one of the most basic facts of political life,
observable in voting behaviour across the world that high earners tend to be
‘right wing’ or ‘conservative’ in their views. Moreover, these state officials
are overwhelmingly drawn from very privileged backgrounds. This is true internationally but the British
case is particularly illustrative because of the role of private i.e. fee
paying education. As Owen Jones has noted:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">Only 7% in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Britain</st1:country-region></st1:place> are privately educated, and
yet this section of society makes up 71% of senior judges, 62% of the senior
armed forces and 55% of permanent secretaries. It is quite something when the
"cabinet of millionaires" is one of the less unrepresentative pillars
of power, with 36% hailing from private schools. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/28/british-society-elitism-privileged-owen-jones">http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/28/british-society-elitism-privileged-owen-jones</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">Obviously
the incomes, the background, the education will all shape the outlook and
behaviour of those who run the apparatuses of the state. But there is more
involved than these standard ‘sociological’ influences. The state machine of
every capitalist society consists of a set of institutions that has been shaped
historically over a lengthy period of time (in the case of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Britain</st1:country-region></st1:place> more than four hundred
years) to serve the interests of that capitalist society and its dominant
class. In the course of that history it has developed a tradition, an ideology
and an ethos which fits this purpose; which, for example, identifies being
‘politically neutral’ with being ‘above politics’ [ like the monarchy] and with
the need to defend ‘the country’ regardless of, and, if necessary, against the
‘irresponsible’ and ‘here to day, gone tomorrow’ politicians. And given the
already noted hierarchical character of these institutions it would be more or
less impossible for anyone who did not share this ideology and ethos, who was
not ‘responsible’ and ‘reliable’, to be appointed to senior positions. In other words everything we know about the
nature of senior figures in the state suggests that they certainly could not be
relied on simply to do the bidding of a left or radical government or to defend
that government if it found itself in conflict with major national and
international capitalist interests.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">This
is where we have to consider the nature and degree of challenge represented by
our putative elected ‘left’ government. Obviously this can challenge can exist
at many points on a spectrum but broadly I would suggest there are four
possible ‘scenarios’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">First,
the government offers only a very mild challenge to the system and the ruling
class. It makes clear that it has no intention of trying to ‘overthrow’ or
‘fundamentally transform’ capitalism and that it completely accepts the
established structures and rules of the existing state. All it aspires to is to
run capitalism in a way that somewhat more humane and more favourable to the
lower orders. Second, the government does not attempt to end capitalism, even
gradually, but is nonetheless committed to a policy or set of policies which
the capitalist class considers seriously against its interests (e.g. outright
opposition to austerity, or large scale disarmament and opposition to NATO
membership). Third, behind or under the auspices of the government a mass
movement is developing which the capitalist class fears and which it believes
is in the process of getting out of control, i.e. moving in a revolutionary direction.
Fourth, the elected left government really does want to bring about an end to
capitalism and a transition to socialism and sets about introducing anti-
capitalist measures.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">In
terms of historical experience the first scenario – very little real challenge
– is, by far, predominant. This is the norm for the large majority of social
democratic and labour governments in Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy,
Greece, Scandinavia and elsewhere (which
is precisely why they are now frequently thought of as ‘mainstream’ rather than
‘left’ and certainly not ‘radical left’). In these cases the government may
come under pressure from the state apparatuses, sometimes very strong pressure,
behind the scenes. But this pressure is often acceded to and publicly the
appearance of business as usual i.e. of the state as the politically neutral
servant of the government is maintained. At the opposite end of the spectrum,
the scenario of a determined challenge to the very existence of capitalism by
an elected left government is not just rare but as far as I can see
historically non- existent. I am speaking here of deeds not words, of course,
but there is simply no example of a radical left government embarking on a
serious legislative assault on the foundations of capitalism. How the state would respond to such a
development must therefore remain a matter of speculation rather than hard fact
but we can get a pretty good idea from how it has responded to the second and
third scenarios of which we do have historical examples.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">One
such example is the Curragh Mutiny in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Ireland</st1:country-region></st1:place> in 1914. Strictly speaking
this occurred before the introduction of full universal suffrage (in 1918 and
1928) and was directed at a Liberal, not a Left, government. Nevertheless it is
a revealing episode. The Liberal Government, led by Prime Minister Herbert
Asquith, was in favour of granting Ireland Home Rule. The Ulster Unionists were
vehemently opposed and created the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) to
resist. With Home Rule due to become law
in 1914 the British Cabinet discussed military action against the Ulster
Volunteers. Faced with this prospect the officers of the British Army stationed
at the Curragh, after consultation with senior officers in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city></st1:place>, rebelled. Technically, they avoided
the offence of mutiny by collectively resigning their commissions. Within three
days the government capitulated and accepted there could be no action against
the Volunteers. In the event Home Rule was shelved because of the outbreak of
the First World War but the Curragh incident had a lasting effect on British
policy and paved the way for the partition of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Ireland</st1:country-region></st1:place> in 1921. It was a graphic
illustration of the willingness of a key component of the state machine to act
against the declared will of a ‘democratically’ elected parliament and
government. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">Two
even more telling examples are provided by <st1:country-region w:st="on">Spain</st1:country-region>
in 1936 and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Chile</st1:country-region></st1:place>
in 1973. <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">The Spanish Popular Front government
took office on 16 February 1936, as a result of its general election victory. The Popular Front comprised two liberal
(bourgeois) Republican parties, the Spanish Socialist Party (a far left Social
Democratic party), the Spanish Communist Party, a section of the
anarcho-syndicalist CNT and the formerly Trotskyist and avowedly revolutionary
Marxist, POUM. In itself this government had no plans to challenge or abolish
capitalism in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Spain</st1:country-region></st1:place>
but it came to power on the basis of six years of intense class struggle which
included the overthrow of the Spanish monarchy in 1931 and the uprising of the
Asturian miners in 1934. To the Spanish ruling class this was unacceptable and
it reacted in July 1936 by backing a Fascist coup led by four generals
including General Francisco Franco. The coup was mounted from within the
Spanish state apparatus using the army. It succeeded in about half of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Spain</st1:country-region>, while in the other half it was resisted
by mass workers action from below with the workers effectively taking power in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Barcelona</st1:city></st1:place> and elsewhere.
The country was thus split in two and the Spanish Civil War began. After three
years of intense and bitter fighting the Fascist forces, armed and assisted by
Hitler and Mussolini, were triumphant. After their victory they exacted a
terrible revenge slaughtering up to 200,000 of their Loyalist opponents.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<st1:place w:st="on">Chile</st1:place><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"> in 1970 saw the election of a Popular Unity
government led by Salvador Allende. </span>Popular Unity resembled the Spanish
Popular Front of the thirties in that its core consisted of an alliance between
the Communist Party and the Socialist Party (Allende was from the SP) with liberal
Radicals. In office, Allende and Popular Unity pursued policies of limited
nationalization, social reform and Keynesian economic expansion. They did not,
however, challenge the Chilean state apparatus or military, hoping instead to
win their support or at least to neutralize them. For a year or so the
government’s economic strategy seemed to be working – the economy grew and
working class living standards were raised – but, in 1972, Chile went into
economic crisis and experienced raging inflation.<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 15.6pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">The Chilean working class responded to this with mass
resistance in the form of major strikes and demonstrations and the organization
of <i>cordones</i> (industrial coordinating
networks) which were embryonic workers’ councils, combined with demands that
the pace of change should be speeded up. At the same time, the right increased
their mobilization against the movement and the government and began
preparations for a coup. Allende temporized. 1973 saw two unsuccessful coup attempts
but Allende still did not break with the military, or arm the workers. On 11
September the infamous General Pinochet, whom Allende had made
Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army on 23 August, staged a successful coup (with
the backing of the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>) which
claimed the lives of Allende himself and 30,000 Chileans, establishing a brutal
military dictatorship that ruled <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Chile</st1:country-region></st1:place> for seventeen years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 15.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 15.6pt;">
From the point
of view of this discussion what is significant is that in both these cases the
coups were led and executed by the military, i.e. from within the existing
state apparatus that showed itself quite willing to overrule the results of
universal suffrage when it deemed this necessary ‘in the interests of the
nation’.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 15.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 15.6pt;">
In view of this
history, the recent threat of mutiny against a Jeremy Corbyn led Labour
Government by an anonymous serving general is a serious warning. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 15.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 15.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #281e1e;">A senior serving general has reportedly
warned that a Jeremy Corbyn government could face "a mutiny" from the
Army if it tried to downgrade them. The unnamed general said members of the
armed forces would begin directly and publicly challenging the labour leader if
he tried to scrap Trident, pull out of Nato or announce “any plans to
emasculate and shrink the size of the armed forces.”… “The Army just wouldn’t
stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise
the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means
possible, fair or foul to prevent that. You can’t put a maverick in charge of a
country’s security. There would be mass resignations at all levels and you
would face the very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a
mutiny.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn33" name="_ftnref33" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #281e1e; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[33]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 15.6pt; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 15.6pt;">
<span style="color: #281e1e;">We are told that this ‘anonymous’ general had served in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Northern Ireland</st1:country-region></st1:place>
(obviously the press, who were used to give wide publicity to this ‘leak’, knew
his identity) and the prediction of ‘mass resignations…which would effectively
be a mutiny’ directly evokes the tactic used in the Curragh a century ago.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 15.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 15.6pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">For all these reasons – the influence of money and
resources on the electoral process, the ideological hegemony of the
bourgeoisie, the hierarchical, privileged and conservative character of the state apparatuses, and the
clear historical experience – we can see that Lenin’s (already quoted)
description of the idea, </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">‘that
universal suffrage “in the present-day state" is really capable of
revealing the will of the majority of the working people and of securing its
realization’ as a ‘false notion’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn34" name="_ftnref34" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[34]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>still
holds true today.</span><span style="color: #333333;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">What
is also clear is that the advent of universal suffrage has not changed or
prevented the systematic use of the state machine – especially the police,
courts, special agencies and, sometimes, the army – to harass and repress the
working class and other oppressed
people. This is very much the daily experience of working people from the <st1:city w:st="on">Paris</st1:city> banlieues to the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region></st1:place> ghettos or the estates of
Clondalkin and Balleyfermot* and of strikers, demonstrators and protestors in
every country. And even when it is not in anyway theorized or politically
articulated this experience produces a quite different attitude to the police
(especially) and other state representatives in working class communities where
they tend to be instinctively distrusted or even hated, as compared to the
attitude in middle class communities and above where they are more often seen
as protectors and allies. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">*
Clondalkin and Balleyfermot are working class communities in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Dublin</st1:city></st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">Moreover,
this everyday antagonism also regularly escalates, primarily at the behest of
the ruling class, into atrocities, outrages, killing and even massacres.
Historically speaking the examples of this are far too numerous to list;
nevertheless here are a few examples that spring immediately to mind and all of
which occurred in ‘democracies’ with universal suffrage: the slaughter of the
Asturian miners in 1934 (5000 killed); the behaviour of the CRS towards French
students in May 1968; the Chicago police riot in 1968; Bloody Sunday in Derry
in 1972; the role of the British police in the Miners Strike of 1984-85; the
behaviour of the Italian police in Genoa in 2001; the Marikana miners massacre
in South Africa in 2012; the killing on a daily basis of unarmed Black people
by US police in contemporary America.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">The
last two examples are particularly telling because they follow on the heels of
‘democratic’ and anti-racist victories – the defeat of Apartheid in South
Africa and the election of Barack Obama as the first Black US President - which,
if democracy lived up to its name and the forces of the state were really
subordinate to the electoral process, would have made such events unthinkable. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">In
sum, the class nature of the state in capitalist society is not changed in any <b>fundamental </b>way by the advent of
universal suffrage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<b><span style="color: #333333;">The Foucault critique<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">If
the argument about universal suffrage is the dominant argument against the
Leninist view of the state in mainstream political discourse a different
argument has been particularly influential in the academic world in recent
decades and has also found a resonance in various forms of left practice: This
is the theory of and approach to power derived from the work of Michel
Foucault. It could also be called the
Foucault- Nietzsche- anarchist critique because it has its philosophical roots
in Nietzsche and because in terms of its influence on political practice it has
often been associated with anarchist or autonomist currents. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">It
is, for a number of reasons, not easy to deal with this critique within the
framework of this study. Foucault never presented his position ‘systematically’
and certainly not in any set piece critique of Lenin. Rather it emerges as an
inference from a number of his historical studies of the clinic, the prison
etc., with the anti-Leninist conclusions being drawn mainly by other hands. As
for its Nietzschean roots, they are largely implicit rather than explicit and
since they constitute a profound challenge not just to the Leninist theory of
the state but to Marxism and even socialism as a whole, they call for a much
more wide ranging debate than is possible here.* Finally, when it comes to
anarchist/autonomist practice (or grassroots reformist practice) it is obvious
that Foucault is only one influence among many, ranging from Bakunin and
Kropotkin to John Holloway and Hardt and Negri). Nevertheless the argument is
important and needs to be addressed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #333333;">Foucault differs
sharply from Nietzsche in terms of his political sympathies which were radical
and on the side of the oppressed rather than aristocratic and elitist.
Nevertheless there is a real link in terms of Nietzsche’s theory of ‘the will
to power’ which provides a foundation for Foucault’s insistence on the primacy
and ubiquity of power struggles and their independence from economics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-left: 18.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">For Nietzsche the will to power was the driving force of
all human behaviour and history, if not of the universe. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">My idea is that every specific body strives to become
master over all space and to extend its force (its will to power) and to thrust
back all that resists its extension. wBut it continually encounters similar
efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by comig to an arrangement
(“union”) with those of them that are sufficiently related to it; thus they
then conspire together for power. And the process goes on …[Nietzsche, <i>The Will to Power</i> s. 636]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">[Anything which] is a living and not a dying body … will
have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize,
become predominant – not from any morality or immorality but because it is <i>living</i> and because life simply is will
to power. [Nitetzsche, <i>Beyond Good and
Evil</i>, s.259]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">Three
short observations on this perspective: a) as it stands in Nietzsche it is
simply an assertion, unsupported and untested by any evidence; b) if it is true
it rules out possibility of human, or proletarian, liberation, offering the
prospect only of an endless series of struggles in which oppressor and
oppressed from time to time switch places; c) within the theory there is no
reason to side with the oppressed, indeed it would seem more logical to side
with the oppressor as Nietzsche generally did.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333;">The
essence of the Foucault based critique is that, contrary to Lenin [Lenin as he
is often, but wrongly, understood – JM], power is not concentrated in the state
or state machine but is everywhere in society; in the school, the office, the
prison, the hospital etc. Power is not a ‘thing’ which can be seized or
smashed; it is a social relation embodied
in ‘dividing practices… examples are </span> the mad and the sane, the sick and the
healthy, the criminals and the "good boys.’ What is needed, therefore, is:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 18.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 12.0pt;">
a new economy of power relations, a way which
is more empirical, more directly related to our present situation, and which
implies more relations between theory and practice. It consists of taking the
forms of resistance against different forms of power as a starting point. To
use another metaphor, it consists of using this resistance as a chemical
catalyst so as to bring to light power relations, locate their position, and
find out their point of application and the methods used. Rather than analyzing
power from the point of view of its internal rationality, it consists of
analyzing power relations through the antagonism of strategies. For example, to
find out what our society means by sanity, perhaps we should investigate what
is happening in the field of insanity.<span style="font-size: 13pt;"> </span>And what we mean by legality in
the field of illegality. And, in order to understand what power relations are
about, perhaps we should investigate the forms of resistance and attempts made
to dissociate these relations. As a starting point, let us take a series of
oppositions which have developed over the last few years: opposition to the
power of men over women, of parents over children, of psychiatry over the
mentally ill, of medicine over the population, of administration over the ways
people live.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 18.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt;">
This
theoretical approach, this methodology, implies, despite Foucault’s refusal of
the role of ‘leader’ or ‘strategist’, a definite practical strategy, ‘Every
power relationship implies, at least<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>in
potentia</em>, a strategy of struggle.’<span style="font-size: 13pt;"> </span>And the strategy is precisely to
focus on<span style="font-size: 13pt;"> the ‘series of </span>oppositions’ listed above, more or less as ends in
themselves. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
The aim of these struggles is the power
effects as such. For example, the medical profession is not criticized
primarily because it is a profit-making concern but because it exercises an
uncontrolled power over people's bodies, their health, and their life and death…<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
To sum up, the main objective of
these struggles is to attack not so much "such or such" an
institution of power, or group, or elite, or class but rather a technique, a
form of power<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Out of these various struggles it is hoped that the <i>episteme </i>(dominant system of
‘power-knowledge’) of the age will be fundamentally transformed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In responding to Foucault it should be stated clearly that
his historical studies yield numerous insights of value to socialists and
revolutionaries (for example on the question of mental illness). What I want to
contest is not the value of his researches but the counterposition of his
analysis of power to that Marx and Lenin and the idea that the strategy
deriving from this constitutes a viable alternative to the Leninist strategy of
smashing the capitalist state.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first thing to say is that the Foucault based critique
seems to rest on a misreading or misunderstanding of Marx and Lenin on the
state. Neither Marx nor Lenin viewed the state or the state machine as a
‘thing’ or ‘instrument’, like a gun or a motor car, as opposed to a relation
between people. The fact that Lenin
stresses the impossibility of ‘taking over the state’ and the need to smash it
shows this because ‘things’ or instruments like guns and motor cars clearly can
and will be taken over by the working class and wielded for their own purposes.
The Leninist strategy for smashing the state also shows it because it is a
strategy of dismantling the core of the state apparatus, its ‘armed bodies of
men’, by creating a class split in the army, turning the rank-and – file
against the offices and winning them over to the revolution. Moreover, the aim
is to replace the capitalist state apparatus with a new state apparatus
characterised by radically different power relations between people –
democratic election, recallability, workers’ pay etc.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Secondly neither Lenin nor Marx thought that state power
was the only or even main form of power in society. On the contrary the essence
of their theory was that state power, for all its relative autonomy, was
ultimately an expression of class power the basis which lay in control of the
means and process of production. Consequently the observation that there are
power relations in, for example, every workplace (and hospitals, clinics,
schools, offices and prisons are all workplaces) is hardly news to Lenin or any
serious Marxist. The real difference between Foucault and Lenin/Marx here is
that Foucault sees, for example, the power of medical consultants not just as
relatively autonomous but as completely separate from the capitalist economy
and the capitalist state*.And on this Foucault is surely wrong: that is there
is a clear and demonstrable connection (both in terms of personnel and
function) between the power position and behaviour of, to name but a few, hospital directors and
consultants, prison governors, head teachers, office managers and university
principals, and the class power and requirements of the bourgeoisie.<o:p></o:p></div>
<ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal">See the statement
above,’ …the medical profession is not criticized primarily because it is
a profit-making concern but because it exercises an uncontrolled power
over people's bodies, their health, and their life and death.’<o:p></o:p></li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 1.3pt; tab-stops: 414.0pt; text-align: justify;">
Moreover, recognition of the existence of
power in a multitude of locations and institutions does not make all these
centres of power equal in degree or importance. Clearly the power of a school
teacher over her pupils or a doctor in relation to her patients is real but it
is in no way comparable to the power of the state machine, especially – and
this is the key strategic point – when it comes to dealing with a mass working
class movement. It was not a cabal of doctors and psychiatrists who crushed the
Paris Commune, handed power to Hitler, broke the <st1:country-region w:st="on">Asturias</st1:country-region>
miners’ strike and defeated the Spanish Revolution, overthrew Allende’s Popular
Unity Government, shot down unarmed protestors in Derry and broke the million
strong movement in <st1:place w:st="on">Tiananmen Square</st1:place>. It was,
respectively, the French, German, Spanish, Chilean, British and Chinese state
forces. The reason for Lenin’s intense focus on the state in <i>The State and Revolution</i> was because
after three years of world war and in the midst of a revolution the question of
the state had become the main question of the day as he, himself, spelt out in
the Preface to that work. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 60.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 12.0pt;">
The question of the state is now acquiring particular
importance both in theory and in practical politics...The world proletarian revolution
is clearly maturing. The question of its relation to the state is acquiring
practical importance.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 60.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 12.0pt;">
And again<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 60.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 12.0pt;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;"> </span></span><span style="background: white;">The question of the relation of the
socialist proletarian revolution to the state, therefore, is acquiring not only
practical political importance, but also the significance of a most urgent
problem of the day, the problem of explaining to the masses what they will have
to do before long to free themselves from capitalist tyranny.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn35" name="_ftnref35" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[35]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In terms of its practical and strategic implications Foucault’s
theory of power points towards and seems to fit with both identity- based
politics (feminist, LGBT, black, disability etc) and local community campaigns.
In such contexts it can supply these campaigns with a wider ’revolutionary’ or
‘anarchist’ gloss while at the same time dovetailing with a kind of
do-it-yourself reformism. Where it fits much less well is with national trade
union struggles, national and international anti-war movements, the global
question of climate change, and above all any kind of mass revolutionary
situation in all of which the issue of
government/state power is unavoidably central. In practice, therefore, the role
of a Foucault –influenced strategy is most likely to be be that of adjunct or
subordinate element within an overarching reformism.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Anarchist and
Autonomist Critiques<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ever since Bakunin clashed with Marx in the First
International in the mid -19<sup>th</sup> century anarchists and critiqued
Marxists as authoritarian and ‘statist’ and there is no Marxist to whom these
objections have been so vigorously made as Lenin. The essence of the anarchist
position has been and remains opposition to all forms of government and state
on principle. As Bakunin put it:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Pa10" style="margin-bottom: 2.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 2.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">With the cry of peace for the workers, liberty for all the
oppressed and death to rulers, exploiters and guardians of all kinds, we seek
to destroy all states and all churches along with all their institutions and
laws, religious, political, juridical, financial, police, university, economic
and social, so that the millions of deceived, enslaved, tormented and exploited
human beings, liberated from all their directors and benefactors, official and
officious, collective and individual may breathe at last with complete freedom<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn36" name="_ftnref36" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[36]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
(M Bakunin, <i>The Programme of the InternationalBrotherhood</i>,1869,
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1869/program.htm).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And “We do not accept, even for
the purposes of a revolutionary transition, national conventions, constituent
assemblies, provisional governments, or so-called revolutionary dictatorships.”
Thus anarchists vehemently rejected Lenin’s insistence on the need for a new
workers’ state, the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, to replace the
capitalist state. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are philosophical
affinities between the classical anarchist identification of power as such as
the root of all evil and the Nietzsche/Foucault view referred to above with the
difference that anarchists place a minus sign where Nietzsche places a plus.
But where Lenin’s theory of the state and questions of revolutionary strategy
are concerned the central issue is this: is it possible for the working class
and revolutionaries, not in relation to the classless society of the future,
but in the midst of and immediate aftermath of revolution to renounce all use
of state power or would this be a recipe for defeat?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The fundamental problem with the
anarchist position is that the class struggle, which has formed the material
basis for the existence of states for at least 5000 years, does not cease in
the face of a successful workers’ uprising in in one city or one country. On
the contrary, as the history of all revolutions shows, it continues with great
intensity as the international capitalist class attempts to roll back and
undermine the revolution. How can these attempts be resisted and the
construction of a socialist economy be embarked upon without the aid of a state
apparatus i.e. special bodies of armed men and women [militia/ red
guards/prisons/ courts of justice etc] and without state ownership and
administration of key industries and services [transport, health, education,
welfare etc]?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are numerous anarchist
critiques of Leninist and Bolshevik authoritarianism but very few anarchist
attempts to answer these basic and simple questions. One example is by
Alexander Berkman, who was in <st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place>
between 1919-21, in his primer <i>What is
Communist Anarchism?</i> which concludes with a chapter on ‘Defense of the
Revolution’. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Berkman argues that the
revolution must be defended ‘by armed force… if necessary’ but: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
…the
social revolution must be Anarchistic in method as in aim. Revolutionary
defense must be in consonance with this spirit. Self-defense excludes all acts
of coercion, of persecution or revenge. It is concerned only with repelling
attack and depriving the enemy of the opportunity to invade you.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How would foreign invasion be
resisted?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
By the
strength of the revolution. In what does that strength consist? First and
foremost in the support of the people, in the devotion of the industrial and
agricultural masses… Let them believe in the revolution and they will defend it
to the death…<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
The
armed workers and peasants are the only effective defense of the revolution… By
means of their unions and syndicates they must always be on guard against
counter-revolutionary attack. The worker in factory and mill, in mine and
field, is the soldier of the revolution. He is at his bench or plough or on the
battlefield according to need.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn37" name="_ftnref37" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Sabon; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[37]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Berkman repeats this idea again
and again. ‘Understand well that the only really effective defense of the revolution
lies in the attitude of the people … the strength of the revolution is organic
not mechanistic…Let the people feel that it is indeed their own cause which is
at stake and the last man of them will fight like a lion in its behalf’. These
noble sentiments are, of course, at some level true but as an argument <b>against</b> the need for a workers’ state
they are seriously unconvincing. The first paragraph quoted contains a
distinction between self-defense and ‘coercion’ which is unsustainable in a
revolution or civil war. Any revolution, if it is to be successful, must engage
in a degree of coercion both in the act of insurrection itself and in the
transition period that follows it. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In general Berkman’s argument
resembles that of naïve and idealistic would be revolutionaries who say. ‘If
everyone in the country went on strike the government would be forced to give
in, so its obvious we call a general strike tomorrow’. Of course if every
worker is a ‘soldier of the revolution …at his bench or plough or on the battlefield
according to need’ then there would indeed be no problem. Unfortunately the
experience of every struggle, every strike and every revolution is that the
consciousness and commitment of the working class and, more broadly, of ‘the
people’ develops unevenly. If no workers ever scabbed on strikes there would be
no need for picket lines. If no workers ever served in the police or army or
fought for the counter revolution there would be no need for barricades or
workers’ militia and if all the revolutionary workers simply arrived ‘on the
battlefield according to need’ without a party or state to organise this then
revolution would be a very easy and simple matter.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Berkman shows some awareness of
the problem when he writes, ‘The military defense of the revolution may demand
a supreme command, coordination of activities, discipline and obedience of
orders’. But he doesn’t think this through or realise that this precisely
implies the need for a state apparatus; rather he falls back, again, on vague
formulae about these [the supreme command, obedience to orders,etc] proceeding
‘from the devotion of the workers and peasants’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn38" name="_ftnref38" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Sabon; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[38]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
An interesting parallel with
Alexander Berkman is provided by the Organisational Platform of the Libertarian
Communists, the founding document of so-called Platform Anarchism written by
Nestor Makhno and others, on the basis of the actual experience of the Russian
Revolution. The social revolution, they say:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Pa15" style="margin-left: 11.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span>which threatens the privileges and the very existence of the
non-working classes of society, will inevitably provoke a desperate resistance
on behalf of these classes, which will take the form of a fierce civil war… <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">As in all wars, the
civil war cannot be waged by the labourers with success unless they apply the
two fundamental principles of all military action: unity in the plan of
operations and unity of common command...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 11.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
Thus, in view of the necessities
imposed by military strategy and also the strategy of the counter-revolution
the armed forces of the revolution should inevitably be based on a <i>general
revolutionary army with a common command and plan of operations </i>[my
emphasis].<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn39" name="_ftnref39" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[39]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here, too, on the basis of the Russian experience, ie the experience of a real revolution, anarchists
have conceded the essence of the Marxist argument for a workers’ state. They
deny this saying they reject ‘the principle of authority … and the state’ but
their denial is in vain. Like it or not, a revolutionary workers’ army “with a
common command” implies a state, just as it implies a certain amount of “authority”.
No amount of word play will get round this.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Pa15" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">If post-revolution civil war poses this question most sharply it
is nevertheless the case that the same arguments apply to post-revolution
running of the economy. Certainly if the whole ‘community’ or ‘all the people’
or even all of the workers and lower middle classes of the nation (or the
world) were completely united and equal in their consciousness and devotion to
the libertarian socialist/ anarchist cause there would be no call for a state.
Indeed full communism could be established immediately. But in reality this is
not going to be the case and operating even something as basic as the railways
will require that, as well as being run under workers’ control, it is ‘owned’
by a national authority – the workers’ state The only alternative would be that
each enterprise (each railway station or section of track?) would be owned by
its workforce, but this would invite disunity and competition between
enterprises and clearly be a recipe for disaster.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another variant of the anarchist critique – one associated
with autonomist currents, such as that around Toni Negri – was presented by
John Holloway in his 2002 book <i>Change the
World Without Taking</i> <i>Power</i>.
Basing himself in part on the experience of the Zapatistas in Mexico and partly
on tendencies in the post-Seattle anti-capitalist movement, Holloway argued
that focusing on the state has been the fundamental weakness of the socialist
movement, reformist and revolutionary alike who ‘despite all their differences,
both aim at the winning of state power’. The whole idea of capturing state
power was wrong because state apparatuses are integrally tied to authoritarian
capitalist social relations and so ‘capturing’ them would result in replicating
the oppression the movement was trying to overcome. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="background: white;">The orthodox Marxist tradition, most clearly the Leninist</span> <span style="background: white;">tradition, conceives of
revolution instrumentally, as a means to an end. The problem with this approach
is that it</span> <span style="background: white;">subordinates the infinite
richness of struggle, which is important precisely because it is a struggle for
infinite</span> <span style="background: white;">richness, to the single aim of
taking power. In doing so, it inevitably reproduces power-over (the
subordination of</span> <span style="background: white;">the struggles to the
Struggle) and ensures continuity rather than the rupture that is sought.
Instrumentalism means</span> <span style="background: white;">engaging with
capital on capital’s own terms, accepting that our own world can come into
being only after the</span> <span style="background: white;">revolution. But
capital’s terms are not simply a given, they are an active process of
separating. It is absurd, for</span> <span style="background: white;">example, to
think that the struggle against the separating of doing can lie through the
state, since the very</span> <span style="background: white;">existence of the
state as a form of social relations is an active separating of doing. To
struggle through the state is</span> <span style="background: white;">to become involved
in the active process of defeating yourself.</span> <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn40" name="_ftnref40" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[40]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Instead of focussing on the state Holloway proposes
developing non-capitalist social relations in the here and now in ‘autonomous’
spaces, such as the Zapatista liberated zone in Chiapas in southern Mexico. The
Occupy movement, as it developed in the <st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place> and elsewhere in 2011, came long
after Holloway’s book but there are obvious parallels in terms of the strategy
pursued – the establishment, albeit in city centre squares as opposed to the
remote jungle, of autonomous spaces.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a theoretical critique of Leninism Holloway’s work
suffers from a major defect in that in assimilating Leninism to Social
Democracy and reformism on the basis that they all aim at capturing the state
he fails to even register the crucial distinction, absolutely central, as we
have seen, to <i>The State and Revolution</i>,
that the capitalist state is not to be taken over or ‘captured’ but smashed.
Consequently Holloway’s argument that Lenin and Leninists do not recognise how
embedded the state is in capitalist social relations misses its mark.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Occupying spaces, whether in <st1:place w:st="on">Chiapas</st1:place> or <st1:address w:st="on"><st1:street w:st="on">Tahrir Square</st1:street>, <st1:city w:st="on">Puerto</st1:city> <st1:state w:st="on">Del</st1:state></st1:address> Sol or Wall St, can play an important
role in the revolutionary struggle but posing it as an <b>alternative</b> to the struggle for state power (i.e. the struggle to
smash the capitalist state and establish a workers’ state) is a false strategy.
These occupations are or can be hugely inspirational but what they do not do is
establish any sort of control over society’s main productive forces or
accumulations of wealth and thus, in themselves, they are not able to transform
economic and social relations of production. Moreover, even if such a strategy
aims at avoiding confronting or trying to defeat the state this does not mean
that the state will ignore or tolerate the ‘occupiers’. Of course, it may do so
for a while, especially if it judges it best to allow the movement to run out
of steam. But, sooner or later, if it is not ‘smashed’, the state will use its
bodies of armed men to reclaim the ‘autonomous spaces’, as it did with the
Occupy movement and with <st1:street w:st="on">Tahrir
Square</st1:street>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Gramsci versus Lenin?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Incarcerated by Mussolini, the great Italian Marxist,
Antonio Gramsci, embarked on an analysis of the causes of the defeat, in the
period 1919-22, of the Italian Revolution and of the revolution in Europe,
compared to its success in <st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place>.
Gramsci had played an important role in this revolution as acknowledged
intellectual leader of the workers of <st1:place w:st="on">Turin</st1:place>
and of the workers’ councils movement and he emerged in 1921 as a founder of
the Italian Communist Party (PCI). His reflections were many sided. They
included a philosophical critique of the
passive fatalistic and economic determinist Marxism of the Second International
and of the Italian Socialist Party in particular (which, he believed
underpinned its disastrous failure to act at decisive moments in the struggle)
and of what he saw as the mechanical materialism of Bukharin’s book on
historical materialism, along with a rejection of the rigid ultra-leftism of
the early PCI leader, Amadeo Bordiga, who saw little difference between fascism
and bourgeois democracy, and numerous observations and insights into the
dynamics of Italian history. He also made the following observation about the
difference between the social structure of <st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place> and of the West.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
In <st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place> the State everything, civil
society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West, there was a proper relation
between State and civil society, and when the State trembled a sturdy structure
of civil society was at once revealed. The State was only an outer ditch,
behind which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn41" name="_ftnref41" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[41]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This difference necessitated, Gramsci argued, a strategic
shift from emphasis on what he called ‘the war of manoeuvre’ to emphasis on
‘the war of position’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn42" name="_ftnref42" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[42]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
This was a military analogy referring to the change in the First World War from
armies moving across country to engage in set piece battles to long drawn out
trench warfare. What exactly this meant in terms of political strategy what
never systematically explained by Gramsci and remains highly debateable, but
scattered comments suggest: a) that it implied a rejection of the idea that
(after 1921) an immediate insurrectionary offensive or conquest of power was on
the cards<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn43" name="_ftnref43" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[43]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>; b)
that the balance of party work between propaganda and agitation needed to alter
in the direction of propaganda so as to create a substantial layer of organic
worker intellectuals<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn44" name="_ftnref44" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[44]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>;
c) that to ‘become the leading and ruling class’ the proletariat must create ‘a
system of class alliances which enables it mobilise the majority of the working
population against capitalism and the bourgeois state’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn45" name="_ftnref45" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[45]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>;
d) that it implied a long drawn out war of attrition or ‘reciprocal siege’
demanding ‘immense sacrifices’ and therefore requiring an ‘unprecedented
concentration of hegemony’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn46" name="_ftnref46" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[46]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
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The concept of hegemony, cited here, is by no means
exclusive or original to Gramsci<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn47" name="_ftnref47" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[47]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>,
but it is, of course, particularly associated with him. It’s precise meaning or
interpretation is part of the debate we are about to embark on but for the
moment let’s say simply that it means leadership or dominance and especially
ideological or moral leadership – in relation to class struggle the ability of
a ruling class (or a revolutionary would-be ruling class) to win widespread
acceptance of its rule/leadership as legitimate or inevitable.</div>
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What makes it necessary to consider these Gramscian themes
here is that over the last forty or fifty years they have been repeatedly made
the point of departure for an analysis
of the state and a political strategy that has been explicitly anti- Leninist
in that it has rejected any notion of insurrection or (violent) revolution, any
goal of ‘smashing the state’, in favour of a perspective which puts far more
emphasis on the role of ideological hegemony than it does on force in securing
capitalist rule, and replaces the notion of any decisive confrontation with the
state with a strategy of gradual transformation of the state and society by
means of a ‘long march through the institutions’ of civil society.</div>
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The two main arenas within which this allegedly Gramscian
perspective, which I shall call Gramscism, was developed were the left of
academia, where Gramsci was immensely popular not to say ‘hegemonic’, and, in
terms of practical politics, the European Communist Parties or Eurocommunism as
it came to be known. In <st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place>
an important role was played by the CPGB’s theoretical journal <i>Marxism Today</i> whose most important
intellectual figures were Eric Hobsbawm and Stuart Hall<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn48" name="_ftnref48" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[48]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
and on the continent by the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the Spanish
Communist Party under the leadership of Enrico Berlinguer and Santiago Carillo<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn49" name="_ftnref49" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[49]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>,
respectively. In all these cases Gramscian terminology was adopted within a
political framework and perspective which was already, and had been for many
years, explicitly reformist, in the sense of being committed to a peaceful
parliamentary road to socialism. Moreover, it was generally employed to
legitimate, even within that reformist framework, a significant shift towards
the political centre, including the PCI’s ‘historic compromise’ with Christian
Democracy and <i>Marxism Today’s</i>
advocacy of ‘New Times’ and a deal between the Labour Party and the Social
Democrats. </div>
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An idea of the distance travelled from classical Leninism in
the name of Gramsci is indicated in this claim by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal
Mouffe</div>
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From the Leninist concept of
class alliances to the Gramscian concept of ‘intellectual and moral’
leadership, there is an increasing extension of hegemonic tasks, to the extent
that for Gramsci social agents are not classes but ‘collective wills’… There
is, then, an internal movement of Marxist thought from extreme essentialist
forms— those of Plekhanov, for example—to Gramsci’s conception of social
practices as hegemonic and articulatory, which virtually places us in the field, explored in contemporary thought, of
‘language games’ and the ‘logic of the signifier’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn50" name="_ftnref50" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[50]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
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Historically and theoretically this whole attempt to enlist
Gramsci’s undoubted insights for anti-Leninist and reformist purposes has been
subject to severe and, indeed compelling, criticism by amongst others Chris
Harman, Ernest Mandel and Peter Thomas<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn51" name="_ftnref51" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[51]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.
What follows is a brief summary of the case against Gramscism.</div>
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Gramscism rests, first and foremost, on a radical distortion
and misuse of the historical Gramsci. Gramsci was a thorough going
revolutionary who split from the Italian Socialist Party to found the PCI in
1921 on an explicitly Leninist basis. In the Lyons Theses of 1926, Gramsci’s
last major work before his imprisonment, he unequivocally reaffirmed his
Leninism, writing:</div>
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The transformation of the communist parties …into Bolshevik
parties can be considered the fundamental task of the Communist International.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn52" name="_ftnref52" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[52]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
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There is no possibility of a revolution in <st1:place w:st="on">Italy</st1:place> which is not a socialist
revolution .. the only class which can accomplish a real, deep social
transformation is the working class.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn53" name="_ftnref53" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[53]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
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Its [the PCI’s] fundamental task… to place before the
proletariat and its allies the problem of insurrection against the bourgeois
state and of the struggle for proletarian dictatorship…<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn54" name="_ftnref54" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[54]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
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The Communist Party links every immediate demand to a
revolutionary objective; makes use of every partial struggle to teach the
masses the need for general action and for insurrection…<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn55" name="_ftnref55" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[55]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
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The whole Gramscist appropriation of Gramsci is therefore predicated on the notion that he
abandoned this revolutionary and insurrectionist perspective while in prison.
No biographical evidence has ever been presented to prove or even seriously
support such a notion. Rather Gramscism has rested on exploiting the ambiguous
and, often opaque, formulations to be found in the <i>Prison Notebooks</i>, disregarding the known fact that Gramsci adopted
this ‘Aesopian’ language in order to deceive the prison authorities. But even
here what Gramsci actually writes contradicts the reformist interpretation put
on it. </div>
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Gramsci writes of the war of manoeuvre and the war of
position but they are both forms of [class] <b>war</b>. He writes that, ‘the supremacy of a social group manifests
itself in two ways, as “domination” and as “intellectual and moral
leadership”.’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn56" name="_ftnref56" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[56]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> In the
analysis of the ‘relation of forces’ in a particular conjuncture he identifies
three ‘moments or levels’: </div>
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1. A relation of forces which is closely
linked to the structure independent of human will… the level of development of
the material forces of production [which] provides a basis for the emergence of
the various social classes…2…the relation of political forces; in other words…
the degree of homogeneity, self-awareness and organisation attained by the
various social classes. ..3…the relation of military forces which from time to
time is directly decisive.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn57" name="_ftnref57" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[57]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
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And he says ‘Historical development continually oscillates
between the first and the third moment, with the mediation of the second’ <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn58" name="_ftnref58" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[58]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
He calls for a ‘dual perspective’ involving ‘force and consent, authority and
hegemony, violence and civilisation’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn59" name="_ftnref59" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[59]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
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In the face of this repeated emphasis on the <b>combination</b>, i.e. dialectical
interaction, of force and consent, domination and moral leadership, economic
structure, politics and military force, the Gramscists have one-sidedly abstracted and emphasised
‘hegemony’ or ideological leadership in such a way as to minimise or disappear
altogether the role of both economic struggle (strikes etc.) and revolutionary
insurrection to smash the state and thus counterpose Gramsci to Lenin.</div>
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Equally erroneous has been their tendency to treat
pre-Gramscian Marxism – the Marxism of Marx and Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg and
Trotsky - as if it was generally
characterised by crude mechanical economism and emphasis on physical force with
little or no awareness of the role of ideology; as if, in other words <i>The German Ideology, The Eighteenth Brumaire
</i>and Engels late letters on historical materialism had not been written and
as if Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky had not read them and not written their own
non- economistic texts such as <i>What is to
be Done</i>? and <i>The History of the
Russian Revolution</i>, ** [NOTE : Unfortunately this developed as an academic
orthodoxy via lecturers who taught and students who received Marxism via
Althusser and Gramsci (and commentaries on same); particularly in the 80s it
was common to meet both students and lecturers who had read Althusser and
(some) Gramsci but not read the Marxist classics.] and as if the concept of
hegemony had not been in common usage in the Bolshevik Party. By contrast
Gramsci himself more than once referred to Lenin as the originator and
developer of the concept of hegemony.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn60" name="_ftnref60" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[60]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
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Instead of Gramsci’s insights and observations on the
question of hegemony constituting an alternative to, or critique, of Lenin’s
theory of the state and revolution, as the proponents of Gramscism have
suggested, it is clear that Gramsci himself saw them as a supplement or
addition to Leninism – a development of Leninism on the basis of Leninism
itself. This is evidenced not only by Gramsci’s invariably favourable
references to Lenin as the ‘last great theoretician’ and so on but also quite
explicitly in the statement ‘the greatest modern theoretician of the philosophy
of praxis…constructed the doctrine of hegemony as a complement to the theory of
the State-as-force.’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn61" name="_ftnref61" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[61]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
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But leaving aside these textual and historical debates about
Gramsci’s relation to Lenin what is abundantly clear is that the contemporary
capitalist class, maintains its rule/dominance/hegemony by a complex
combination of ideological consent and physical force both of which rest upon
and also reinforce its economic power. Take for example two basic ideas which
are essential to bourgeois hegemony, respect for (capitalist) property and
respect for the (capitalist) law. Both these ideas are systematically
promulgated by the education system, the media, the church and many other
institutions and, in normal times, are widely accepted by most – though not all
– working class people. But they are both continuously backed up by force; by
the police, courts, prisons etc. How long would respect for property and the
law survive if this were not so, if it were possible to defy the law with
impunity? Conversely it is also evident that capitalist rule which rested on
pure force alone with no ideological consent would be incredibly vulnerable.</div>
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In reality the balance between force and consent is
continually shifting. Most of the time, and especially in periods of relative
social peace, the element of consent is to the fore with force remaining in the
background. But this does not mean that force has lost its importance because
as consent starts to breakdown the use of force can increase and then
predominate. </div>
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Consequently a strategy, such as that proposed by the
Gramscists, which focuses entirely on the struggle for ideological hegemony and
ignores the question of force, of the need to smash the capitalist state, is in
reality a reversion to pre-Leninist reformism and deeply irresponsible. It is
akin to marching one’s army into battle with no plan of action for should the
enemy actually open fire. </div>
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A further question which has to be considered in relation to
Gramsci’s ideas is the extent to which it is possible to be build socialist
counter hegemony within and under capitalism, i.e. before the conquest of
political power. I will return to this important strategic question in Chapter
4/5/6/??</div>
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<b>Carrillo, Poulantzas
and Eurocommunism<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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The last alternative to Lenin’s theory of the state that I
shall address is that of the Spanish Communist Party leader Santiago
Carrillo and the Greek- French theorist, Nicos Poulantzas who between them most
clearly developed the Eurocommunist position on the state. What makes them
particularly relevant today is their influence on Syriza in <st1:place w:st="on">Greece</st1:place>. </div>
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Whereas the ‘Gramscist’ project involved a serious
misrepresentation of Gramsci, Carrillo, in his landmark 1977 work <i>Eurocommunism and the State</i>, made no
secret of his departure ‘from some of
Lenin’s theses’ which ‘are out of date’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn62" name="_ftnref62" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[62]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.
At the start of the book Carrillo speaks of ‘the revolutionary movement’ and
‘the revolutionary process’ and insists that ‘the State apparatus as a whole
continues to be the instrument of the ruling class… This is a Marxist truth’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn63" name="_ftnref63" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[63]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.
But as the book develops he progressively strips away and discards all the
revolutionary conclusions that Lenin (and Marx) drew from this ‘truth’. </div>
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Carrillo takes as his point of departure Louis Althusser’s
famous essay on ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn64" name="_ftnref64" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[64]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
(along with the kind of interpretation of Gramsci already discussed) and argues
that:</div>
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<i>The strategy of revolutions of today, in the developed capitalist
countries, must be oriented to turning these ideological apparatuses round, to
transform them and utilise them- if not wholly then partly – against the State
power of monopoly capitalism.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn65" name="_ftnref65" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[65]</span></b></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> </i>(Italics
in original)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He then insists that ‘modern experience has shown that this
is possible’ and discusses in turn each of Althusser’s ideological state
apparatuses (the church, the education system, the family, the law, politics,
the media) claiming that in each there are observable signs of change and
division (this was in 1976) which make their progressive transformation
possible. As evidence he sights the emergence of modernising and radical forces
within the Catholic Church, the fact that ‘ Today the universities and
educational centres… frequently become centres of opposition to capitalist
society’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn66" name="_ftnref66" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[66]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>, the
crisis and transformation of the traditional family and so on.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These accounts are followed by the claim, directly citing
Althusser, that:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
So far as we know, no class can
maintain state power in a lasting form without exercising at the same time its
hegemony over and within the State ideological apparatuses.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn67" name="_ftnref67" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[67]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Consequently, he maintains, this ‘capture’ of the
ideological state apparatuses will open the way to winning over the coercive
apparatuses of the state and he holds out a vision of a modernised democratic army acting as ‘an intellectual
educator of men skilled in protecting out territory from outside attack’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn68" name="_ftnref68" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[68]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
rather than as an instrument of class rule. This does away with the need for
insurrection and ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ (workers’ power and a
workers’ state) in favour of a ‘democratic’ i.e. parliamentary, and gradual
road to socialism.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nicos Poulantzas’ <i>State,
Power, Socialism</i> was published in 1978, a year after Carrillo’s work. It
begins with a critique of the proposition that Carrillo had called ‘a Marxist
truth’ namely that the state is an ‘instrument of the ruling class’. Poulantzas
states that, ‘There is certainly no general theory of the state to be found in
the Marxist classics’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn69" name="_ftnref69" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[69]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
and rejects the ‘purely instrumental conception of the State’ which he also
calls ‘the traditional mechanistic-economist conception’<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn70" name="_ftnref70" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[70]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> which he describes as ‘bequeathed by Stalinist
dogmatism’. <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn71" name="_ftnref71" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[71]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>Rather
than seeing the state as an ‘instrument’ he defines it as ‘the<i> specific material condensation</i> of a
relation of class forces among classes and class fractions’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn72" name="_ftnref72" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[72]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However this formulation, which at first appears more
‘sophisticated’ and ‘advanced’ than that of Carrillo (or Lenin), is deployed by
Poulantzas to arrive at very much the same conclusions as Carrillo. The conception of the state as a condensation
of class forces develops into the proposition that ‘<i>The establishment of the State’s policy must be seen a the result of
class contradictions inscribed in the very structure of the State,</i>’ and the
notion of ‘<i>contradictory relations
enmeshed within the State’</i>,<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn73" name="_ftnref73" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[73]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
so that the state must also be grasped as ‘a strategic field and process of
intersecting power networks’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn74" name="_ftnref74" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[74]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
This, in turn, leads to the notion that ‘the struggle of the dominated classes’
is present ‘within the State’ and that ‘popular struggles traverse the State
from top to bottom’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn75" name="_ftnref75" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[75]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a result, Poulantzas argues, the possibility exists that
on the basis of a shift in the balance of class forces and major popular
struggles it will be possible to ‘transform’ the state rather than smashing it.
He writes of ‘a long stage during which the masses will act to conquer and
transform the state apparatuses’ <a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn76" name="_ftnref76" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[76]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
and that;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
For state power to be taken, a
mass struggle must have unfolded in such a way as to modify the relationship of
forces within the state apparatuses, themselves the strategic site of political
struggle.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn77" name="_ftnref77" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[77]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Moreover, this strategy is directly counter posed to the
Leninist strategy of dual power leading to the replacement of the old state
machine by soviet power. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
For a dual power-type of strategy, however,
the decisive shift in the relationship of forces takes place not within the
State but between State and the masses outside. In the democratic road to
socialism, the long process of taking power essentially consists in the
spreading, development, reinforcement, coordination and direction of those
diffuse centres of resistance which the masses always possess within the state
networks, in such a way that they become the real centres of power on the
strategic terrain of the State<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn78" name="_ftnref78" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[78]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In response to these Eurocommunist perspectives the first thing to note is that
nothing remotely approaching Carrillo’s projected left hegemonic transformation
of <u>any </u>of the ‘ideological state apparatuses’ has occurred in the forty
years since they were advanced. Moreover, this cannot be attributed simply to
unfavourable developments in the course
of the struggle and the balance of political forces, for nothing approaching
the establishment of left hegemony has
EVER occurred in these apparatuses under capitalism. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The unfortunate fact is that while such institutions as the
education system or the mass media are subject to influence from below by
popular struggles and are, indeed, quite
adept and partially reflecting and absorbing such incursions there are, in all
capitalist countries, powerful structural factors which prevent their radical
transformation or take over. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yes, certain radical teachers and professors will make
progress and become influential and it may even be the case that certain
faculties or university departments a whole may go ‘Marxist’ or left-wing or
whatever, especially in times of mass struggle and revolt, such as the late
sixties, but the commanding heights of
the education system both at school and university level and in the
administrative bureaucracy of the state will remain firmly out of reach. Yes,
the bourgeois press will allow individual radical journalists a certain voice,
the likes of John Pilger, Paul Foot and Eamonn McCann, and from time radical
film makers like Ken Loach or Michael Moore or, in times past, Jean Luc Godard
and Roberto Rossellini, or lefty comedians like Bill Hicks and Mark Steel will
be permitted a niche presence but the media as a whole – the multinational
corporations that dominate the world news and entertainment market<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn79" name="_ftnref79" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[79]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
and the state broadcasting companies dominant in individual countries –cannot
possibly be captured or transformed by the left while capital and the
capitalist state remain in place.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn80" name="_ftnref80" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[80]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If this is true of the ideological apparatuses, it is even
more clearly true of the coercive state apparatuses and it is precisely these
that have to be transformed if the Carrillo/Poulantzas strategy for transition
to socialism is to be realised. Here it is only necessary to move from
Poulantzas’ highly ‘sophisticated’ theoretical abstractions to examining just a
few actually existing coercive state institutions to see that this is a
fantasy. Is it going to be possible, gradually or otherwise, to establish left
hegemony in the CRS (the French riot police), the racist and murderous US
Police departments or the Golden Dawn voting Greek Police or the London Met?
How? And what about the secret forces of the deep state – MI5 and MI6 or the
French General Directorates for External and Internal Security or the FBI and
the CIA? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And then there is the question of the most important of all
the institutions of the state, the army or perhaps we should say the armed
forces as a whole, which is repository of decisive physical force in society. It is certainly true that the armed forces are
not immune to popular pressure and that mass popular struggles will, as
Poulantzas argues, have their effects, ‘within’ them. Indeed the fact that, in
contrast to the secret services and even more than the police, the armed forces
are ‘mass’ organisations whose rank-and-file are drawn overwhelmingly from the
working class, makes them the most susceptible of all state institutions to
such ‘contamination’. But, precisely for this reason, the armed forces are
anything but democratic; on contrary they are founded and constructed entirely
on the principle of authority, discipline and following orders, orders issued
by a high command which, as we have already shown, is completely tied to the
ruling class and completely unsusceptible to left influence. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Consequently, in so far as the rank-and-file of the armed
forces do start to be affected by popular struggles and to adopt radical ideas,
they immediately face the problem, if they want to act on those ideas, of the
orders they are receiving from their officers.
To defy those orders is to engage in mutiny, a crime which has always
been and remains, subject to severe punishment and which, by its nature,
threatens to ‘break up’ or smash the state in true Leninist style. Short of
this revolutionary action from below the
generals, admirals and airforce commanders will retain the ability to use the
military to suppress popular dissent and to obstruct radical change.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Clearly the only way in which it might be possible even to
attempt to transform the character of such institutions would be through the
election of a ‘left government’ which would then pursue a policy appointing its
supporters to the head of such institutions. In other words the Eurocommunist
strategy, for all its Marxist language, resolves itself in practice into a
revived version of the old parliamentary road to socialism pursued, with no
success, by the left wing of social democracy. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the most serious weaknesses in the schema of both
Carrillo and Poulantzas is that not only do they underestimate these structural
limitations to the transformability of the state apparatuses, they also more or
less ignore the fact that their avowed enemy, the existing ruling class, will actively
resist. Faced with a genuinely left government whose aim, as Carrillo and
Poulantzas insist, is not to administer capitalism á la mainstream social
democracy but to gradually transform it into socialism, there is zero chance
that the ruling class will passively await its demise. On the contrary they
will use all the many means at their disposal to prevent such an out come and
that will include forcing on the left government and the popular movement
precisely the decisive physical confrontation the Eurocommunist strategy is
designed to avoid. Given the imminent prospect of losing everything it has held
dear for centuries, everything it believes in and identifies with the very
basis of civilisation, why would the ruling class permit this to happen without
provoking a real show down?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally, it is a feature of both Carrillo’s and Poulantzas’
criticism of Leninism (and Marx) that they essentially accept and endorse the
democratic claims and credentials of the Western parliamentary system. Carrillo
is explicit:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
As regards the political system
established in <st1:place w:st="on">Western Europe</st1:place>, based on
representative political institutions – parliament, political and philosophical
pluralism, the theory of the separation of powers, decentralization, human
rights etc.- that system is in essentials valid and it will be still more
effective with a socialist, and not a capitalist, economic foundation.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn81" name="_ftnref81" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[81]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is a position which I have to say is to the right of
views that can be heard on any street corner or in any pub in the working class
districts of Dublin since the crash of 2008, the bank bailout and the Troika-
led imposition of austerity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Poulantzas is less effusive and refers frequently (though
vaguely) to the need for ‘a sweeping transformation of the state apparatus’ but
he, like Carrillo, speaks of his strategy as ‘the democratic road to socialism’
and writes: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
What is involved, through all the
various transformations, is a real permanence and continuity of the
institutions of representative democracy – not as unfortunate relics of the
past to be tolerated as long as necessary, but as an essential condition of
democratic socialism.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn82" name="_ftnref82" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[82]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Moreover, he argues that Lenin’s insistence on the
replacement of bourgeois parliamentarism by the ‘direct democracy’ of the
soviets was what prepared the ground for Stalinism. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
Was it not this very line
(sweeping substitution of rank-and-file democracy for representative democracy)
which principally accounted for what happened in Lenin’s lifetime in the Soviet
Union, and which gave rise to the centralising and statist Lenin whose
posterity is well enough known.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn83" name="_ftnref83" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[83]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In this way the positions of both Carrillo and Poulantzas
are less advanced than and to the right of the instinctive revolt not only of
the Irish working class in recent years but also of the Spanish masses in the
Indignados movement of 2011 with its slogans of ‘They don’t represent us!’ and
‘Real democracy now!’ and of the general spirit of the American and
international Occupy movement.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>The Struggle Today
and Tomorrow<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So far<b> </b>I<b> </b>have argued that the core propositions
of Lenin’s <i>The State and Revolution</i>
withstand all the many and varied critiques to which they have been subject.
But any text written a hundred years ago is subject to the seemingly common
sense objection that, ‘Surely it must be out of date now’. Actually ideas don’t
work like that. Pythagoras formulated his theorem more than 2500 years ago; it
still happens to be valid. Copernicus published his theory that the earth
circles the sun, rather than the reverse, in 1543. We can fairly safely assume
that when the five hundredth anniversary of this comes round it will still be
the case. But of course the opposite is not true either, namely that all ideas that
were once considered the case remain so. Copernicus also believed that the Sun
was the centre of the universe; this was an advance on thinking the earth was
the centre but we now know it not to be so. In other words these questions have
to be judged on their merits and, as Marx pointed out in the Second Thesis on
Feuerbach<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn84" name="_ftnref84" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[84]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>, the
ultimate test is human practice. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For this reason I want to conclude this chapter by examining
the relevance of the Leninist theory of the state to some major contemporary
struggles. I shall begin with the largest and most powerful revolutionary
struggle of the 21<sup>st</sup> century so far – the Egyptian Revolution of
2011.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Egyptian Revolution began, on the 25 January, with a
more or less spontaneous uprising. Of course the event had been called by
various left and democratic organisations but they thought they were calling a
protest demonstration not an uprising. The starting point of the uprising was
expressed in its main slogans ‘Down! Down! Hosni Mubarak’ and ‘The people want
to bring down the regime!’. But bringing down Mubarak and his regime involved
confronting the Egyptian state or more precisely – and as we shall see the
distinction is important – one section or one arm of the state: the police.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mubarak’s police were already widely hated by the population
because of their daily interactions with the public, their systematic bullying,
brutality and worse i.e. torture. When they attempted to drive the mass
demonstration of 25 January off the streets the people fought back and their
ranks were swelled by hundreds of thousands more who poured out of the working
class districts to join the revolt. Within days, 28 January was decisive, the
police were defeated: it was they not the demonstrators who were driven off the
streets, and this occurred not only in <st1:city w:st="on">Cairo</st1:city> but
across <st1:country-region w:st="on">Egypt</st1:country-region>, especially in
the key cities of <st1:city w:st="on">Suez</st1:city> and <st1:place w:st="on">Alexandria</st1:place>. In the famous <st1:place w:st="on">Battle</st1:place> of the Camel on 2 February ‘the
people’ also defeated the regime’s attempt to mobilize against them a
counter-revolutionary army of thugs and criminal elements (baltagiya). The mass
occupation of <st1:street w:st="on">Tahrir Square</st1:street>
was maintained. Then, as Mubarak clung to power, the Revolution on the streets
started to spread to the workplaces in a mass strike wave. This decided matters
and Mubarak resigned on 11 February.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Power now passed into the hands of the military in the form
of SCAF, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Significantly the army had
not been deployed against the people in the eighteen days in which the
Revolution was at its height. This enabled the propaganda claim that ‘The army
and the people are one hand’ to have a certain popular resonance and this was
compounded by the fact that ever since the days of Nasser in the fifties and
sixties the notion of the Egyptian army as a progressive force had considerable
currency with sections of the Egyptian left – with Nasserites of course but
also with various left nationalists, Stalinists and Communists. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The assumption of power by SCAF by no means halted the
development of the Egyptian Revolution and mass demonstrations continued,
including with confrontations with the military police, but illusions in the
neutrality and ‘patriotism’ of the army, i.e. the core of the state, clearly
slowed its momentum.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When the Presidential elections were held in May/June 2012,
Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood very narrowly led in the 1<sup>st</sup>
round with 25% versus 24% for Ahmed Shafiq who was clearly the candidate of the
military and of counter-revolution, with the Nasserist leader, Hamdeen Sabahi,
who was supported by much of the left, in third place with 21%. In the 2<sup>nd</sup> round Morsi defeated by
Shafiq by 51.7% to 48.3%. In other words
more than a year into the revolution the candidate of the army could still
command a mass vote.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This became even more important a year later. The Morsi
government was a disaster for both the Egyptian people and for the Muslim
Brotherhood itself. It did its very best to block any continuation of the
Revolution, to demobilise protests on the streets and to collaborate with the
military but it satisfied nobody as the society spiralled into crisis. A huge
popular revolt against the government swelled up spearheaded by a group called
Tamarod (Rebellion). Tamarod presented itself as a progressive pro- revolution
grassroots organisation, but it subsequently emerged that they always had links
with the military.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On 30 June 2013 monster anti-Muslim Brotherhood Government
demonstrations took to the streets in <st1:city w:st="on">Cairo</st1:city> and
across <st1:place w:st="on">Egypt</st1:place>.
Maybe as many as 14 million mobilised and the next day a million people
occupied <st1:street w:st="on">Tahrir Square</st1:street>.
Two days later the military, led by General Al-Sisi, moved to arrest Morsi and other leaders and
to depose the government. This was met with acclaim by many on the streets. The
Brotherhood responded by insisting on the legitimacy of Morsi and his government
and establishing two permanent protest sit-ins. On the 14 August after six
weeks of ongoing protest the Al-Sisi
regime crushed these sit-ins by military force with revolutionary
military coup was now firmly established and sealed in blood. It remains in
power today.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There has been widespread debate in <st1:place w:st="on">Egypt</st1:place> and internationally about
these events with debate focusing on what should have been, and should be, the
attitude of the left to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian Revolutionary
Socialists, for example, have been subject to much criticism for a) voting for
Morsi against Shafiq in the second round in 2012 and b) for defending the
Brotherhood against the repression they have been suffering since the coup.
This debate has mainly been about the nature of Islamism and of the Muslim
Brotherhood in particular but the point I want to make here is that it should
also have been about the nature of the state. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In reality hostility to the Muslim Brotherhood, which was
coloured by a good deal of Islamophobia, allowed many on the left to gloss over
and turn a blind eye to the class nature and deeply reactionary character of
the Egyptian state apparatus. In these circumstances a wider grasp of the Leninist theory of the state,
which was held by the Revolutionary Socialists but by almost no other tendency
on the Egyptian left, would have been of immense practical use. It would have
made it much more possible to turn the anti-Morsi mobilisation in a progressive
and revolutionary direction and much more difficult for Al-Sisi to hegemonise
that mobilisation. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The same issue resurfaced in relation to the attempted
military coup in <st1:place w:st="on">Turkey</st1:place>
on 15 July 2016. Obviously history did not repeat itself in that the Turkish
masses, overwhelmingly the Turkish working class, took to the streets to
confront the tanks and prevent the coup. However, as in <st1:place w:st="on">Egypt</st1:place>, it was clear that a
substantial section of what is called ‘the nationalist left’ were either
entirely passive in their response to the coup or partially sympathetic to it
on the grounds that the military might be a lesser evil than the ‘fascist’
Islamist Government of Erdogan and the AKP.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That the notion of the capitalist state and its military as
in someway progressive or the ally of the working class has purchase on the
left has a number of roots (it has always been central to Social Democracy and
Labourism) but in many parts of the world, including Turkey and Egypt, it is
due above all to the abandonment of Leninism, first in practice and then in
words, by the official international Communist movement.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In <st1:country-region w:st="on">Greece</st1:country-region>,
which has been the other decisive arena of struggle in the last few years, the
question of the state has again been of great importance. The election of the
Syriza government in January 2015 raised and focussed the hopes of the left
across Europe but, as the first electoral victory of a party with a
Eurocommunist pedigree, it also promised to put to the test the Poulantzian
strategy of ‘transforming’ the capitalist state.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn85" name="_ftnref85" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[85]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
It seemed likely to be a severe test because of the notoriously reactionary and
semi-fascist character of the Greek state apparatus that had ruled Greece as a
military dictatorship in 1967 – 74 and whose police force were rumoured to vote
50% for the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn86" name="_ftnref86" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[86]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
In the event the test did not materialize for the simple reason that Syriza
made no attempt to transform the Greek state (or to undermine or seriously
modify Greek capitalism); instead, from the outset its leader Alexis Tsipras
sought to placate and reassure the state apparatus, and the Greek ruling class
as a whole, by appointing three ‘safe’ right wingers – Nikos Kotzias, Panos
Kammenos, and Yiannis Panousis – to the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Defence and
Citizan Protection (the police) respectively.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn87" name="_ftnref87" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[87]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The most surprising, shocking even, of the appointments was
that of Panos Kammenos, leader of the right wing and racist ANEL party. The
claim was that this was necessary to establish a coalition with ANEL which in
turn was essential to enable Syriza to form a government, it being two seats
short of an overall majority. In reality this was neither a constitutional nor
a political necessity – Syriza would have been in a very strong position to
rule as a minority government, challenging the other parties to bring them down
and precipitate an election (which Syriza would almost certainly have won). The
assessment of the Financial Times is much more accurate: ‘Syriza’s partnership
with Mr Kammenos and his nationalist party is considered vital to maintaining
the loyalty of the armed forces to a government led by former Communists’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn88" name="_ftnref88" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[88]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But if an all out confrontation between the Greek deep state
and the Syriza government did not materialize because of Syriza’s instant appeasement
of the priorities of that state and its early abandonment of any kind of
serious anti-capitalist strategy, such a confrontation nevertheless did take
place with the supra- national ‘institutions’ of the European Union and
international capitalism, the so-called ‘Troika’ of the European Central Bank,
the EU Commission and the IMF.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
Syriza came to power on the
basis of its Thessaloniki Programme which pledged to end austerity by
renegotiating the terms of Greece’s crippling international debt and
implementing a ‘<span style="color: #111111;">National Reconstruction Plan’ to
confront Greece’s immediate ‘humanitarian crisis’ and ‘reverse the social and
economic disintegration, to reconstruct the economy and exit from the crisis’.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn89" name="_ftnref89" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[89]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #111111;">We demand immediate parliamentary elections and a strong
negotiation mandate with the goal to:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 7.5pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #111111; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #111111;">Write-off the
greater part of public debt’s nominal value so that it becomes sustainable in
the context of European Debt Conference.<strong> </strong> It happened for <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Germany</st1:place></st1:country-region> in 1953. It can also happen
for the South of Europe and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Greece</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 7.5pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #111111; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #111111;">Include a ‘growth
clause’ in the repayment of the remaining part so that it is growth-financed
and not budget-financed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 7.5pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #111111; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #111111;">Include a
significant grace period (moratorium) in debt servicing to save funds for
growth.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn90" name="_ftnref90" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[90]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #111111;">At
the same time the Syriza committed itself to remaining within the EU and the
Eurozone. These radical anti-austerity aims were to be realized through
negotiations with their ‘European partners’. Alexis Tsipras, Yannis Varufakis
and other Syriza ministers consistently referred to the EU and its leaders as
their ‘partners’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #111111;">It
is a feature of the political culture of the European left (outside of its
‘Leninist/Trotskyist’ components) that it frequently combines hostility to its
own national establishment and their political representatives – the
likes of Merkel, Cameron, Blair, Sarkosy, Rajoy, Samaras etc. - and the police
chiefs and generals of its own state, with a rose –tinted view of the representatives
of those same establishments and states when they gather together
internationally. As a result there is a widespread notion that the European
Union and the United Nations are in some way progressive institutions embodying
‘left values’ such as international cooperation and internationalism. In what
can broadly be called the peace movement it is common to find resolute
opponents of almost all war, such as the late Tony Benn, who are equally
resolute proponents of the UN. Moreover, this attitude seems to persist despite
an abundance of evidence and experience to show that in all important matters
the UN is nothing but an instrument of, and cover for, the interests of the
major (imperialist) powers. As Perry Anderson has written:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #111111;">The UN is a political entity without any
independent will. If we set aside its specialized agencies, most of which
perform useful practical services of one sort or another, the core of the
institution–that is, the General Assembly and Security Council–is a
legitimating, not a policy-making, apparatus. Decisions reached by the
organization are in essence embellishments of the relationships of power
operative at any given time.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn91" name="_ftnref91" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #111111; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[91]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #111111;">Thus one often hears that Tony Blair’s offence in 2003 was to
embark on the invasion of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>
without a second resolution from the UN as if sanctification by the UN would
have made that invasion legitimate. At bottom this is the transfer of the
reformist perspective on the existing state as an instrument to be harnessed
for the transformation of society into the international arena. Obviously there
are no quotations from Lenin about the EU or the UN but we do know that he and
the Communist International in his day regularly referred to the <st1:place w:st="on">League of Nations</st1:place> as a ‘thieves kitchen’ and ‘league of
imperialist bandits’. Bukharin and Preobrazhensky in their <i>ABC of Communism</i>, which was a kind of Leninist revolutionary
textbook wrote: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #111111;">It is pure fable to say that the <st1:place w:st="on">League
of Nations</st1:place> has been founded to promote the cause of peace. In
actual fact it has a twofold aim: the ruthless exploitation of the proletariat
throughout the world, of all colonies and of the colonial slaves; and the
crushing of the incipient world revolution.<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn92" name="_ftnref92" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #111111; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[92]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #111111;">When Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis came to negotiate
face to face with German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schauble and the Troika
Eurocrats he found their behaviour much more closely resembled that of
imperialist bandits than that of partners. In an interview with the New
Statesman, Varoufakis recorded how he was confronted with:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222;">The complete lack of any democratic
scruples, on behalf of the supposed defenders of <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>’s
democracy…To have very powerful figures look at you in the eye and say “You’re
right in what you’re saying, but we’re going to crunch you anyway.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222;">[T]here was point blank refusal to
engage in economic arguments. Point blank. … You put forward an argument that
you’ve really worked on – to make sure it’s logically coherent – and you’re
just faced with blank stares. It is as if you haven’t spoken. What you say is
independent of what they say. You might as well have sung the Swedish national
anthem – you’d have got the same reply<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn93" name="_ftnref93" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">[93]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.<span class="apple-converted-space"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222;">The
reason the Eurocrats were not interested in Varoufakis’ economic arguments was
simple: the ‘negotiation’ was not about the best economic policy for Greece and
they were not ‘partners’ of the Greek people; they were representatives of
European capital and they had decided in advance that Syriza had to be forced
to submit, publicly and humiliatingly, to draconian austerity in order to deter
radical experiments or debt defiance anywhere else. And of course we know that
despite the backing of a massive OXI (No!) vote by the Greek people a few days
earlier Syriza government on July 8 2015 did just – publicly submitted.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222;">In
short the whole episode was an object lesson in the simple truth that these
institutions of the ruling class – the European Commission, the ECB, the IMF
etc – cannot be ‘taken over’ or ‘harnessed’ or used to implement
anti-capitalist policies or even policies that seriously conflict with the
interests of the capitalist class. And had Syriza chosen the road of defiance
and confrontation there can be little doubt that the Greek state machine would
have operated as an ally of the EU institutions against the Syriza government
and against the working people of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Greece</st1:place></st1:country-region>. In those circumstances
merely to end austerity, never mind achieve the transition to socialism, would
have needed the revolutionary mobilization of the Greek working class to defeat
and dismantle the authoritarian and reactionary Greek state apparatus.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222;">Finally
there is the struggle unfolding as this book is being written around Jeremy
Corbyn’s leadership of the British Labour Party. When Corbyn was first elected
leader in September 2015 David Cameron responded immediately saying, ‘The
Labour Party is now a threat to national security’. This was a double-edged
barb. On the one hand it challenged Corbyn to state, and prove,his loyalty to
the British state and its main institutions (armed forces, police, security
services, monarchy etc) and was accompanied by concerted media attacks him over
symbolic issues like singing the national anthem and kissing the Queen’s hand
clearly designed to cast doubt on this loyalty. On the other hand it was a
message to the British state and its military and security services to say that
with Corbyn it was no longer business as usual. Within days an ‘unnamed’ senior
serving general had issued a warning in <i>The
Sunday Times </i>of a possible ‘mutiny’ against a Corbyn government<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 21.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #281e1e;"> The Army just
wouldn’t stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to
jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever
means possible, fair or foul to prevent that. You can’t put a maverick in
charge of a country’s security.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 21.0pt; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #281e1e;">“There
would be mass resignations at all levels and you would face the very real
prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftn94" name="_ftnref94" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #281e1e; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[94]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 21.0pt; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #281e1e;">Since this
episode the lead role in the assault on Corbyn has passed to the Labour Party
Blairites and the majority of MPs in the Parliamentary Labour Party who have
done their best to force him to resign and to oust him by means of a leadership
challenge by Owen Smith. This has spectacularly failed with Corbyn being
reelected on 24 September 2016 with a resounding 65%. Doubtless Corbyn’s right wing Labour opponents
– the Hilary Benns, Angela Eagles, Alasdair Campbells and so on – who are far
more loyal to the British state and ruling class than they are to the Labour
Party, will do all in their power to ensure that objection that Corbyn is
unelectable becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But should a Corbyn led Labour
Party, despite their best efforts and despite the media, nevertheless follow in
the footsteps of Syriza and be elected the question of the British State
apparatus would become centre stage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 21.0pt; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #281e1e;">It seems
abundantly clear that far from collaborating or acquiescing in Corbyn’s efforts
at social transformation that state apparatus, together with the power of
British and international capital (and the EU and the US government etc. etc.)
will move to block, frustrate and undermine him at every turn, even to the
point, if necessary, of unseating by force.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 21.0pt; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #281e1e;">What these
examples all demonstrate is that the analysis outlined a century ago in <i>The State and Revolution</i> that the existing state is an organ of class
rule by the capitalist class and that it cannot be ‘taken over’ by the working
class but must be smashed and replaced by a new state based on workers’
councils, retains all its relevance today. Indeed the more the level of
struggle rises and intensifies the more important and central this analysis
becomes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 21.0pt; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;">The Assault on Corbyn 18
september 2015<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 4.5pt;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;">The assault on Jeremy Corbyn by
the establishment and their media is clearly a coordinated attempt to destroy
him. It is to be hoped that people will see through it and it will backfire.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 4.5pt;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;">Many of the attacks will be
gutter journalism at its worst and many will be easy for the left to rebut with
sarcasm and humour on social media. But the ruling class are not fools; they
have long experience and a killer instinct in these matters. We on the left
need to understand what they are doing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 4.5pt;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;">The issues of will Corbyn
sing the national anthem or wear a red poppy or kiss the Queen’s hand may seem
trivial but they chime with Cameron’s tweet that Labour’s new leader is a
‘threat to national security’. What the ruling class are saying to Corbyn is
‘Are you loyal to the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">British</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">State</st1:placetype></st1:place>?’ And they are daring
him to say he is not and demanding that he prove he is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 4.5pt;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;">But if he IS loyal to British
state lots of things go along with this. Not just the monarchy and innumerable
ceremonies ( which are not there just for decoration but as important symbols
of loyalty and subordination) but also ‘support for our boys’ in war, ‘defence
of the realm’ via the armed forces – including MI5, MI6 etc, support for ‘our’
police and ‘our’ justice system, backing ‘British’ business and so on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 4.5pt;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;">A number of things make this
difficult for Corbyn. First, the issue will not go away. Even if the current
feeding frenzy fades, it will always be there in the background to resurface in
new tabloid headlines in the future. Second, he will be surrounded by
Ministers, MPs, trade union leaders and ‘advisers’ telling him he HAS to go
along with this stuff to be ‘electable’ and they are likely to back their
advice with threats of resignation etc., because many of them really are loyal
to the British state – a lot more loyal to it than they are to Corbyn or the
Labour Party come to that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 4.5pt;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;">Then there is the deeper
problem that this is probably an issue which Jeremy Corbyn has not thought through
himself. Certainly this is the case with the Labour Left historically and with
left reformists generally (and internationally). Their whole project, their
whole strategy, is based on the idea of USING the existing state to transform
society. It is on this basis that they achieve their popularity, saying to
working people ‘Support us and we will form a government that will run the
country more in your interests’. They don’t say to working class people you
should rise up, overthrow the existing state and create your own state. They
say vote for us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 4.5pt;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;">History shows that this is a
question on which the Labour Party has repeatedly fallen down, ranging from
support for the First World War, to the Attlee government’s manufacture of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Britain</st1:country-region> first nuclear bombs and backing for the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> side in the
Cold War. Michael Foot (a lifelong member of CND) was repeatedly crucified on this
issue – and I don’t mean his ‘donkey jacket’ at the Cenotaph, I mean nuclear
weapons. As Labour leader he was never able to give a clear answer to the
question, ‘Will a Labour government get rid of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s nuclear deterrent?’ and
as a consequence was reduced to incoherence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 4.5pt;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;">Of course it is possible that
Corbyn could come out fighting and say I reject any allegiance to the Royal
Family, the Armed Forces and the State as a whole – they are instruments for
holding down and oppressing the working class. But this seems unlikely. And if
he does try to prove his loyalty to the British state he is likely to be
trapped in an endless series of damaging concessions which will gradually
eviscerate a lot of his radicalism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 4.5pt;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;">I know this
is a grim scenario when everyone on our side is rightly delighted with Corbyn’s
stunning victory which has undoubtedly opened up a huge space for political
debate and given an impetus to struggle from below. But the historical
experience on which it is based is also grim. And if Jeremy Corbyn and the
Labour Party prove me wrong it will be wonderful.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 4.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 4.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div>
<!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br clear="all" />
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<!--[endif]-->
<div id="ftn1">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Obviously this was only possible because he had already done the preparatory
work in 1916 and early 1917. See
V.I.Lenin, <i>Marxism on the State</i>,
<st1:place w:st="on">Moscow</st1:place>, 1976.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> CW
Vol.36 p.454 <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jul/07d.htm">https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jul/07d.htm</a></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<div style="line-height: 14.4pt; margin-right: 60.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> ‘<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Under the banner of Workers’ Soviets, under the banner
of revolutionary struggle for power and the dictatorship of the proletariat,
under the banner of the Third International</span> –<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><em><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Workers of the World Unite!’. </span></em><em><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal;">Closing
words of</span></em><em><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></em><em><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal;">Leon
Trotsky,</span></em><em><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> Manifesto
of the First CongressoftheCommunistInternational, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/ffyci-1/ch01.htm"><span style="font-style: normal;">https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/ffyci-1/ch01.htm</span></a></span></em><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> With the
adoption of the Popular Front strategy in 1934 and the parliamentary road to
socialism in western Europe in 1951.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn5">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
L.Colletti, ‘Lenin’s <i>State and Revolution</i>,’
in <i>From Rousseau to Lenin</i>, <st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place> 1972.</div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
R.Miliband, Lenin’s ‘<i>The State and Revolution</i> ‘(1970) in <i>Class Power and State Power</i>, <st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place>
1983.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn6">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
F.Engels, <i>The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the State</i>, cited in Lenin, <i>The State and Revolution</i>, Moscow, 1977, p.10.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn7">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.10.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn8">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.11.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn9">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.13</div>
</div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.17</div>
</div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.46.</div>
</div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.17.</div>
</div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.36.</div>
</div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.12.</div>
</div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.38</div>
</div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.38</div>
</div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref17" name="_ftn17" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.30 and p.38.</div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref18" name="_ftn18" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.41.</div>
</div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref19" name="_ftn19" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.42.</div>
</div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref20" name="_ftn20" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[20]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.42.</div>
</div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref21" name="_ftn21" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[21]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.42-3.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref22" name="_ftn22" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[22]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.43.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn23">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref23" name="_ftn23" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[23]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.48.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn24">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref24" name="_ftn24" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[24]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.79</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn25">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref25" name="_ftn25" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[25]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.114.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn26">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref26" name="_ftn26" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[26]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.93</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn27">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref27" name="_ftn27" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[27]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p. 112</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn28">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref28" name="_ftn28" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[28]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Lenin, <i>The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade
Kautsky</i>, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/democracy.htm">https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/democracy.htm</a></div>
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<div id="ftn29">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref29" name="_ftn29" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[29]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Lenin, <i>Left-Wing Communism – An Infantile Disorder,</i>
<a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch09.htm">https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch09.htm</a></div>
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<div id="ftn30">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref30" name="_ftn30" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[30]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> This
compresses into one paragraph the analysis presented in John Molyneux, <i>Will the Revolution Be Televised? A Marxist
Analysis of the Media</i>, London 2011.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn31">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref31" name="_ftn31" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[31]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn32">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref32" name="_ftn32" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[32]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/may/31/senior-civil-servants-salaries-data">http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/may/31/senior-civil-servants-salaries-data</a></div>
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</div>
<div id="ftn33">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 15.6pt;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref33" name="_ftn33" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[33]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <span style="color: #333333;"><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-army-could-stage-mutiny-under-corbyn-says-senior-serving-general-10509742.html">http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-army-could-stage-mutiny-under-corbyn-says-senior-serving-general-10509742.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div id="ftn34">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref34" name="_ftn34" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[34]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Lenin, <i>The State and Revolution,</i> as above,
p.17.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn35">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref35" name="_ftn35" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[35]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Lenin, <i>The State and Revolution</i>, as above p.7-8</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn36">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref36" name="_ftn36" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[36]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <span style="font-size: 9pt;">M Bakunin, <i>The
Programme of the International Brotherhood</i>, 1869, <a href="http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1869/program.htm">http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1869/program.htm</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div id="ftn37">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref37" name="_ftn37" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[37]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Alexander Berkman, What is Communist Anarchism?
<st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place>,
1972, pp.290-91</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn38">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref38" name="_ftn38" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[38]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.291</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn39">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref39" name="_ftn39" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[39]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <i><span style="font-size: 9.5pt;">Organisational
Platform of the Libertarian Communists </span></i><span style="font-size: 9.5pt;">written in 1926 by Nestor Makhno, Piotr
Arshinov and other Russian anarchists of the <i>Dielo Trouda </i>(Workers’
Cause) (<a href="http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/platform/general.htm">http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/platform/general.htm</a>)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref40" name="_ftn40" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[40]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
J.Holloway, <i>Change the World Without
Taking Power,</i> (2002), <span style="background: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20110701110507/http:/libcom.org/library/chapter-11-revolution">http://web.archive.org/web/20110701110507/http://libcom.org/library/chapter-11-revolution</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref41" name="_ftn41" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[41]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> A.
Gramsci, <i>Selections from the Prison
Notebooks</i>, <st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place>,
1982. p.238.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn42">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref42" name="_ftn42" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[42]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above pp.238-9.</div>
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<div id="ftn43">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref43" name="_ftn43" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[43]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> See
above p. 235</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn44">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref44" name="_ftn44" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[44]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> See
above p.240.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn45">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref45" name="_ftn45" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[45]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
A.Gramsci ,’The Southern Question’ in <i>The
Modern Prince and Other Writings</i>, <st1:place w:st="on">New
york</st1:place> 1972, pp.30-31.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn46">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref46" name="_ftn46" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[46]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> A.
Gramsci, <i>Selections from the Prison
Notebooks</i>, <st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place>,
1982. p.238.</div>
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</div>
<div id="ftn47">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref47" name="_ftn47" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[47]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> The
term was widely used by Lenin and by the Bolsheviks in the context of
struggling for working class hegemony in the democratic revolution and also had
long standing ordinary bourgeois usage as in ‘Napoleon established his
established hegemony over much of <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>’.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn48">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref48" name="_ftn48" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[48]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> See for
example Stuart Hall, ‘Gramsci and Us’, <i>Marxism
Today</i>, June 1987, <a href="http://www.hegemonics.co.uk/docs/Gramsci-and-us.pdf">http://www.hegemonics.co.uk/docs/Gramsci-and-us.pdf</a></div>
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</div>
<div id="ftn49">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref49" name="_ftn49" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[49]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> See <st1:city w:st="on">Santiago</st1:city> Carillo, <i>Eurocommunism
and the State</i>, <st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place>
1977.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn50">
<h4 style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref50" name="_ftn50" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[50]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> Ernesto
Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, ‘Post-Marxism without Apologies’<u>, </u><span style="color: #2c2c2f;"><a href="https://newleftreview.org/I/166"><i><span style="color: #1e5c97;">New Left Review</span></i><span style="color: #1e5c97;"> I/166, November-December 1987</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></h4>
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<div id="ftn51">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref51" name="_ftn51" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[51]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> See
Chris Harman,, ‘Gramsci versus Eurocommunism’, parts 1 and 2, in <i>International Socialism</i> <i>Journal </i>98 (May 1977) and 99 (June
1977)., Ernest Mandel, <i>From Stalinism to Eurocommunism</i>, <st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place> 1978, especially
pp.201-220., Peter Thomas <i>The Gramscian
Moment</i>, Haymarket, 2010.</div>
</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref52" name="_ftn52" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[52]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> A.
Gramsci, <i>Selections from Political
Writings, 1921-26</i>, <st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place>
1978, p.340.</div>
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Gramsci, As above p. 343.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref54" name="_ftn54" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[54]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.357</div>
</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref55" name="_ftn55" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[55]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.369.</div>
</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref56" name="_ftn56" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[56]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
A.Gramsci, <i>Selections from the Prison Notebooks</i>, <st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place>, 1982. p.57..</div>
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above pp.180-83</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref58" name="_ftn58" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[58]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.183</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref59" name="_ftn59" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[59]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, pp.169-70.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref60" name="_ftn60" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[60]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.357</div>
</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref61" name="_ftn61" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[61]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">A. Gramsci, <i>Further
Selections from the Prison Notebooks</i>, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city></st1:place>
1995, p.507. ‘<em><span style="background: white; color: #555555;">The majority of
commentators, anxious to stress the decisive contribution made by Gramsci, or
more subtly, to oppose Gramsci to Lenin, end up by underestimating the place of
hegemony in Lenin’s work and remaining almost completely silent on the Third
International.”</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; color: #555555;"> </span></span><span style="background: white; color: #555555;">(C. Buci-Glucksmann, <i>Gramsci and The State</i>, London 1980 p174)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref62" name="_ftn62" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[62]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> S.Carrillo,
<i>Eurocommunism and the State</i>, <st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place> 1977, p.10.</div>
</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref63" name="_ftn63" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[63]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.12-13.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref64" name="_ftn64" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[64]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm">https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm</a></div>
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S.Carrillo, as above, p22-3.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref66" name="_ftn66" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[66]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.34.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref67" name="_ftn67" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[67]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Althusser quoted by Carrillo, as above, p. 49.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref68" name="_ftn68" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[68]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.68.</div>
</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref69" name="_ftn69" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[69]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Nicos
Poulantzas, <i>State, Power, Socialism</i>,
London 2000, p.20. Poulantzas, Althusser and their like are fond of such
dismissive statements (‘There is no
Marxist theory of … ideology, politics, religion etc., etc, ‘) What it means is less clear. Does it mean
there is no specific book on the subject? Well there is Engels’ <i>Origin of the Family, Private Property and
the State. </i>Or does it mean that
there is no general theory embedded in Marx and Engels’ writings as a whole?
But Lenin’s <i>The State and Revolution</i> would seem to demonstrate precisely that
there is such a theory. Maybe it is just a fancy (pompous?) way of saying he
doesn’t agree with the theory that exists.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref70" name="_ftn70" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[70]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above pp.12 and 15.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref71" name="_ftn71" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[71]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.130.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref72" name="_ftn72" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[72]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.129.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref73" name="_ftn73" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[73]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, pp132-3. Italics in original.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref74" name="_ftn74" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[74]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above, p.136.</div>
</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref75" name="_ftn75" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[75]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.141.</div>
</div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref76" name="_ftn76" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[76]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.254</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn77">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref77" name="_ftn77" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[77]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.258</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn78">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref78" name="_ftn78" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[78]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.258. It is worth noting that here Poulantzas explicitly distances
himself from Gramsci writing , ‘It is not therefore a question of a straight
choice between frontal war of movement and war of position, because,in
Gramsci’s use of the term, the latter always comprises encirclement of a
fortress state’. (p.258).</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn79">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref79" name="_ftn79" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[79]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> The likes
of Murdoch’s News International, Time Warner, Disney and so on. </div>
</div>
<div id="ftn80">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref80" name="_ftn80" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[80]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
See John Molyneux, W<i>ill the Revolution be Televised? </i>London 2011.</div>
</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref81" name="_ftn81" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[81]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Carrillo, as above, p.105.</div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref82" name="_ftn82" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[82]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Poulantzas, as above, p.261.</div>
</div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref83" name="_ftn83" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[83]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above p.252.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn84">
<div class="fst" style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-right: 48.6pt; text-align: justify;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref84" name="_ftn84" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[84]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"> ‘The question whether objective truth can be attributed to
human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man
must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his
thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that
is isolated from practice is a purely<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>scholastic</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>question.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref85" name="_ftn85" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[85]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> This
question was the subject of much debate at the time and it is quite useful to
revisit what was said in those days. The author took part in a debate with
Syriza supporter, Professor Helena
Sheehan, in <st1:place w:st="on">Dublin</st1:place>
on ‘Syriza and Socialist Strategy’ in March 2015. It can be seen here <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6xMwkKF6WA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6xMwkKF6WA</a></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref86" name="_ftn86" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[86]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> For a
good account of the genesis and peculiarities of the Greek state see Kevin
Ovenden, <i>Syriza: Inside the labyrinth</i>, London 2015, Ch.6, Face to face with the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Deep</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">State</st1:placetype></st1:place>.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref87" name="_ftn87" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[87]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> For the political record and character of
these Ministers see Kevin Ovenden, as above, pp. 118-130.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref88" name="_ftn88" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[88]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <i>Financial Times</i>, 5 April, 2015, cited in
Kevin Ovenden, as above, p. 130.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref89" name="_ftn89" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[89]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Syriza:The Thessaloniki Programme, <a href="http://www.syriza.gr/article/SYRIZA---THE-THESSALONIKI-PROGRAMME.html#.V9vRWVUrLIU">http://www.syriza.gr/article/SYRIZA---THE-THESSALONIKI-PROGRAMME.html#.V9vRWVUrLIU</a></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref90" name="_ftn90" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[90]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As
above.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref91" name="_ftn91" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[91]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #111111; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/made-usa/">https://www.thenation.com/article/made-usa/</a></span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref92" name="_ftn92" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[92]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
N.Bukharin and E.Preobrazhensky, <i>The ABC
of Communism</i>, <st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place>
1969, p.180. Trotsky in <i>The Revolution
Betrayed</i> records how the Soviet Union’s attitude to the <st1:place w:st="on">League
of Nations</st1:place> changed under Stalin. See L.Trotsky, <i>The Revolution Betrayed,</i> <st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place>
1967, pp193-204.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref93" name="_ftn93" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[93]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2015/07/yanis-varoufakis-full-transcript-our-battle-save-greece</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/oem/Documents/Old%20Laptop%20Documents/LENIN%20FOR%20TODAY%20%20DRAFT.doc#_ftnref94" name="_ftn94" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[94]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-army-could-stage-mutiny-under-corbyn-says-senior-serving-general-10509742.html">http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-army-could-stage-mutiny-under-corbyn-says-senior-serving-general-10509742.html</a>.
It was also reported that this ‘unnamed’ general had served in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Northern Ireland</st1:country-region>
during ‘the Trouble’ and was disgusted at Corbyn’s refusal to condemn the IRA.
Those who know something of Irish history will recognise in the general’s statement
a threat to repeat the tactic used by the British army in the Curragh Mutiny of
1914 which prepared the way for the partition of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Ireland</st1:country-region>.</div>
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30608474.post-73953497870596466642018-01-07T00:54:00.003+00:002018-01-07T00:54:59.858+00:00The Future Socialist Society- audio This is a recording of me reading my 1987 pamphlet The Future Socialist Society.<br />
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jofZFunDzM<div class="blogger-post-footer">These articles may be freely republished.</div>John Molyneuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01331822630276555082noreply@blogger.com0