John Crump on Marx

[Morpheus]

From Subversion (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/8195/index.html)

A Contribution to the Critique of Marx.
by John Crump

What do we say about Lenin? We see him now as a bourgeois revolutionary who expressed his bourgeois aspirations by using communist terminology. This is not to say that Lenin represented the interests of the existing bourgeoisie in Russia in 1917; nor are we focusing attention on Lenin's own personal bourgeois social background. Although we mean when call Lenin 'a bourgeois revolutionary' is that he and the Bolsheviks were instrumental in building up capitalism in Russia: the capitalist revolution of 1917 (which included the October seizure of power as one of its episodes).

Naturally, Lenin thought himself as a communist, and is no reason to doubt that he was put the sincere when he said so. Yet is easy enough for communists to point out numerous ways in which his practice and the theory from which it was derived fell far short of Communism. His concept the role working class was to play (or, more to point, was not to play) in the revolution and his Jacobin ideas on dictatorship are just two of the more obvious as deficiencies when we measure him against communist standards. As is equally well known much of what he had to say about socialism/Communism also indicates a peculiarly warped concept of the new society. The famous formulation of socialism in The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It, written in September 1917 is that 'socialism is nearly state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people'-and explicit statement that his image of socialism was a fundamentally state-capitalist one. Then there was the phoney distinction made between socialism and Communism in State and Revolution, which served to give the illusion that this arbitrarily labelled socialism was within striking distance the Bolsheviks in 1917, even if Communism was not. Coupled with this went the often expressed assertion that ‘there is... absolutely no contradiction in principle between Soviet (that is, Socialist) democracy and exercise and dictatorial powers by individuals’-unashamed defences of the continuing oppression of the working class.

Of course this is all becoming rather old hat. But it is on this sort of evidence that our rejection of Leninism rests, and it is by applying to Russian reality standards which can be obtained from Marx's works (or simply by thinking about for yourself) that we have been able to show the Russian social system to the capitalist, and the Leninist ideology which masks and justifies it to be an essentially bourgeois body of thought. It is a simple matter to put side-by-side with certain quotations from Lenin's writings and speeches an equal number of totally contradictory ones lifted from Marx and Engel’s texts. For example, as random selection:

'... The working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness' (What Is To Be Done, Lenin)

'... Been emancipation of the workers must be act of the working class himself.' (quoted by Engels in the Preface to the 1890 German edition of the Communist Manifesto)


' If socialism can only be realised when the intellectual development of all people permits it, then we shall not see socialism for at least 500 years...' (Lenin speaking on 21st November 1917 as recorded in Ten Days That Shook The World )

' Marx... entirely trusted to the intellectual development of the working class, which was sure to result from combined action and mutual discussion'(Engels Preface to the 1888 edition of the Communist Manifesto)


'We must raise the question of piece-work and apply it in practice;... we must make wages correspond to the total amount turned out, or to the amount of work done...'(The Immediate Tasks Of The Soviet Government)

' Let us now consider a little more closely the characteristic peculiarities of piece-wages. The quality of labour is here controlled by the work itself, which must be of average perfection in the piece price is to be paid in full. Piece-wages become, from this point of view, the most fruitful source of reductions of wages and capitalist cheating' (Capital, Vol 1, Karl Marx, page 553)

It is the sort of passages which have led us to say of Leninism and Marxism are qualitatively different, that they expressed the interests of totally different revolutionary processes.

All of this appears to be completely cut and dried, yet what has been gradually been occurring to me is that there is a real danger of one-sidedness in the way in which we go about assessing Leninism and Marxism. In other words, we have to be very careful not to contrast Leninism only with what is best in Marxism. We have to be very careful to compare Leninism with the whole of Marxism, and not with some carefully selected and refined Marxism which only represents one side of Marx’s thought and activity. I would of course agree that there is an entire area of Marx’s writings which amounts to an often brilliant and penetrating exposition of communism. If we take the communist doctrine expressed in this section of his writings, and apply it to Lenin’s ideas, true enough we can show (as we did above) the bourgeois revolutionary nature of Leninism. But, on the other hand, what happens, if we take that same communist doctrine and apply it to the rest of Marx’s own writings, and to his overall activity as a revolutionary? How does Marx himself begin to show up? Since I don’t want to mince my words, I’ll say frankly that Marx then starts to look like a bourgeois revolutionary himself. More specifically, he and Engels can then be identified as the theoretical leaders of the bourgeois revolutionary movement (social democracy) which culminated in the German revolution of 1918.

Now to say this is not to retract what I said above - that there is an "entire area of Marx’s writings which amounts to an often brilliant and pen*etrating exposition of communism”. Nor is it to deny that Marx’s contributions to socialist theory in this area of his writings are enormously valuable and that we can still learn a great deal from them even today. What it is to say, though, is that the communist ideology which Marx developed here was a social*ist theory expressing an entirely different (bourgeois) political practice To put it another way, the communist ideology which Marx elaborated here was precisely what he himself meant by the term ‘ideology’ a set of ideas which (even when intrinsically correct) mask rather than reveal the true nature of the problem.

The particular problem which several generations of European radicals were wrestling with throughout the long years of Marx and Engels’ political activity was the problem (or, rather, the series of problems) of bourgeois revolution. This was why there was nothing contradictory in the fact that the movement into which most of them were eventually to become organized (the Second International) should have culminated in a wave of capitalist revolutions which swept across Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the First World War. This bourgeois revolution expressed itself in a variety of guises - demands for German unity, Polish independence, the overthrow of tsarist autocracy in Russia, etc. - and one of the theoretical forms it took was ‘socialism’ or ‘Marxism’ To the extent that this ‘socialist’ doctrine was theoretically correct (i.e. was genuinely socialist) it was little more than a disembodied theory, having no real point of contact with the problems of the day. Ultimately, this was precisely what some of the social democrats came to say about it. On the other hand, to the extent that this doctrine did relate to the problems inherent in bourgeois revolution (the pressing problems of Marx and Engels’ day), it was capitalist. Needless to say, it was just this state-capitalist area of Marxism which was eagerly taken up by social democrats and (later) Bolsheviks alike, while in their hands the communist sector of Marx’s thought was either ignored or else ritualised into harmless scripture.

The communist element within Marxism could not have been anything other than a disembodied theory at the time it was put forward because, in the conditions of the nineteenth century, communist revolution was simply impossible. Just how near or far the communist revolution is from us today is not something which I will go into here, but at least we can say that for Europe and the other advanced, imdustrialised parts of the world the era of bourgeois revolutions is well and truly finished. Even if the, prospects for a communist revolution re*main fairly bleak, at least we now have the opportunity (which Marx and Engels never had) to engage in the work of constructing a theory of communism with minds which are relatively uncluttered with the baggage which belongs to the bourgeois revolution. As we set about constructing this theory of communism, many of the foundation stones from which to build it can be cut from the rich communist vein which runs through Marx's writings. If we want to build soundly, however, we need to be perfectly clear in our minds about those other sections of Marx’s works which are fit only for the state-capitalist slagheap. Above all we need to free ourselves from the sort of mystifying generalisation which declares that “all attempts to deny or ‘transcend’ Marxism lead logically to counter-revolution”. (The quote comes from Revolutionary Perspectives No 1, this magazine was the forerunner of the present day Communist Workers Organisation) The only worthwhile comment is to enquire which particular ‘Marxism’ it is that those who come out with this sort of remark have in mind; the ‘Marxism’ which stood for ‘Abolition of the wages system!’ or the ‘Marxism’ which declared itself for the ‘gallant Turks’? The ‘Marxism’ which maintained that the ‘complete domination of the alienated thing over man is fully manifested in money’, or the ‘Marxism’ which wanted ‘Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly’?

This pamphlet is not intended as a systematic explanation of a new way of looking at Marx. A hefty tome would be required for that. All I want to do in the remaining sections is to put a little flesh on the skeleton of the case which I have argued so far.

It is impossible to unravel contradictions which exist within Marx's theory and practice unless one understands his morbid horror of utopianism. One of Marx's best point was his vision of communist society, and the passion with which he clung to it throughout most of his adult life. In place of a society based on private property, where ‘my work is alienation of my life, because I work in order to live, to furnish myself with the means of living’, Marx's image of a new society where ‘my work would be free expression of my, and therefore a free enjoyment of my life’ has won for his early texts their current popularity. But the achievement of such a society was not (even distantly) on the horizon at the time that Marx was writing such texts. Consummate remaining just as much a utopia when Marx wrote about it as it did in the hands of (say) Owen. No doubt is expecting too much of Marx, but what was required was a cool understanding that the struggles which were in process in his day were not (even remotely) the struggle for the society that he was dreaming of. Even the struggles of the working class of his day, however heroic they might have been, could not be artificially drafted into the service of communism.

Of course, Marx was only made of flesh and blood and the urge to the active was a strong one for him and Engels. But, if they chose to the active, it was their duty as communists to make absolutely at the difference between, on the one hand, the bourgeois-revolutionary and reformist working class activity in which they were engaged (there was no other activity worth talking of for them to engage in), and on the other hand, the communism to which they were committed in their theory. To have failed to make this difference clear would have resulted in socialism being fatally confused with bourgeois revolution and working class reform of capitalism. As everyone knows, this is just what happened. And it happened thanks, at least in part, to Marx and Engels.

I want to try to avoid being misunderstood here. There is a passage in Engels’ Marx and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung where he write: “If we did not desire that, if we did not desire to take up the movement from its already existing, most advanced, actually proletarian side and push it further, then nothing remained for us to do but to preach communism in a little provincial sheet and to found a tiny sect instead of a great party in action. But we had already been spoilt for the role of preachers in the wilderness; we had studied the utopians too well for that. We had not drafted our programme for that.”) It is worth mentioning, just as an aside, that the phrase “take up the movement from its already existing, most advanced, actually proletarian side” is little more than bluster. There was no real proletarian class in Germany at the time Engels was writing about, and “most advanced” is a purely relative expression. One could substitute “hopelessly backward” without doing any great damage to the meaning of this passage. Apart from this aside, how*ever, I am not arguing that Marx and Engels should have “preach(ed) communism in a little provincial al sect and (ought) to (have) found(ed) a tiny sect’”. It is true that, if they had done so, it would at least have been striking a blow (however small and insignificant) for communism rather than against it, since less confusion would have been caused. But doubtless there were good reasons - in the sense of applying the materialist conception of history to the conditions in existence at that time for their encouraging and participating in bourgeois revolutionary movements in 1848 and at later dates too. To put it another way, there were doubtlessly good reasons for their behaving as capitalist revolutionaries even while they remained communists on the theoretical plane. To have consistently applied the materialist conception of history in this cold, unemotional way, however, would have required a super*human degree of mental toughness. Cold and unemotional though Marx and Engels might have been on some occasions, there as a healthy slice of romanticism in their characters too. Since they were men and not angels, there is nothing surprising in the fact that they should have sought some escape from the tension that was set up between their theoretical commitment to communism and their actually engaging in bourgeois revolution. This escape was nothing less than kidding themselves (and most of the rest of the world too) that the bourgeois revolution in which they engaged was itself communist - or that at least it included a (non-existent) communist potential. Whatever the personal relief that this escape from reality gave to Marx and Engels, it did incalculable damage to the development of a correct theory of communism.

Perhaps who has ever read Marx with a critical communist consciousness could deny that the criticism which we have made of him here applies to his early writings. The very idea that “the German proletariat” (what proletariat?) stood in an excellent situation.., for socialism in 1844 is too preposterous to waste any time on. Precisely the same goes for the notion expressed in the Communist Manifesto that the “Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution...and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will, be but the prelude to an im*mediately following proletarian revolution.” Interestingly enough, when Engel’s wrote many years Liter that “Never: has a factual programme justified itself as well as...”the one put forward in the Manifesto, he quoted the section containing the above passage. Wisely, however, he cut his quotation short in mid-paragraph --before it came to the forecast of a proletarian revolution in Germany.

Obviously this sort of romantic nonsense looks ridiculous in retrospect. Yet in itself it was not particularly damaging to communism. If this were all that was wrong with the position which Marx and Engels adopted vis-à-vis the revolution of 1848, it would be quite reasonable to say that they were guilty of nothing more than their enthusiasm for socialism getting the better of them. They imagined socialism to be a great deal nearer than it eventually turned out to be, and hence were mistaken only in terms of the time-scale that was likely to apply to the social changes which they were predicting. Unfortunately, how*ever, there is more to it than this. In the Communist Manifesto and elsewhere we find a mixture of starry-eyed romanticism and hard-headed realism that was to prove fatal.

If Marx had simply projected an image of communist society in the Manifesto and suggested that this would be the more or less rapid outcome of the revolution which he saw coming, this in itself would not have, done too much harm. Marx was not too much of a realist for this however:-. Instead of an out-and-out utopian (but not particularly harmful) projection of socialism, what we get is a semi-realistic recipe for state capitalism which was fraught with danger because its relation (or non-relation) to socialism was lest unclear. Firstly, the proletariat was to take power. In the conditions of the time this was no more realistic than suggesting that the moon would drop out of the sky, but at least as an abstract and - as it were - a historical statement of communist principle, this was correct. Having taken power, though, the proletariat was to exercise its rule within a continuing capitalist society. In other words, the proletariat, as a unified class, was to be the political master of a system which economically continued to exploit it. What can be made of this? As far as Marx’s understanding that in the middle of the nineteenth century an immediate advance to communism was impossible, is concerned, the position he took up was again realistic and correct. But to imagine that within the economic system of capitalism, the proletariat could maintain its undivided unity and hence its political rule, so that a new ruling minority class would not appear, (nor the politically dispossessed bourgeoisie regain control of the state) -was utterly wishful thinking. Lastly, and for the same reason the idea that this (supposedly pro1etarian administered) capitalism could peacefully and gradually transform itself into communism was just as mistaken (and as dangerous).

Anyone who notices a similarity between the programme we have criticised here and the policy which Lenin and the Bolsheviks subjectively thought they, were pursuing from 1917 onwards is, of course perfectly right. True, there were differences between Bolshevik policy and the programme outlined in the Communist Manifesto. For Marx it was the working class as a whole which was the revolutionary actor: for Lenin the party. One can criticise Leninism on these grounds as a throwback to Jacobinism, as Rosa Luxemburg did. But such a criticism is, in the end, more or less peripheral. The whole notion of a proletarian administered form of capitalism, which was common to Marx in the Communist Manifesto and to Lenin in l9l7, was disastrously wrong. Lenin’s concept of the role of the revolutionary vanguard might well be an additional error on top of this, but the communist critique of Leninism does not center on this additional mistake.

Even if some people can accept this criticism of the early Marx up to and including the Communist Manifesto, they will probably tell us that Marx in his maturity is a different kettle of fish. I do not agree with this and I think it is possible to prove it wrong. It is, for example, no defence of the mature Marx to refer to his and Engels’ joint preface to the German edition of the Manifesto of 1872, where it was stated that “no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of section II.” Anyone who reads that preface carefully can see that what Marx and Engels were talking about was a change in the details of the policy they advocated, emphatically not a change in the principle on which that policy rested (“...the general prin*ciples laid down in this Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever.”) Unfortunately I do not have the time or the materials to hand to trace the state-capitalist thread right the way through Marx’s literary output in the years following 1848. However, as an illustration that state-capitalism was still being advocated by Marx in his maturity - and, what is more, was being even more explicitly (and erroneously) identified with socialism than in the Manifesto we can refer to the Critique Of The Gotha Programme of 1875. The Critique is worth taking up because, as with the Communist Manifesto, it also shows the theoretical continuity which exists between Marx and Lenin, as well as the discontinuity which exists between them.

Of course, just as with the Manifesto and Marx’s earlier texts, the Critique of the Gotha Programme contains plenty of good points. ‘Good points’ here means valid statements of communist principle. As before I am not disputing Marx’s commitment to communism as a theory in the Critique, and this commitment to communist theory is just what provides the theoretical discontinuity which exists between Marx and Lenin. One searches in vain in Lenin’s writings for an exposition of socialism which can even begin to be compared to any of the many excellent explanations of socialism which occur within Marx’s works. Lenin never properly grasped what socialism was all about and normally seems to have identified it with ‘proletarian’ (i.e. vanguard party, in his case) administered state-capitalism. Not so Marx. Marx knew exactly what socialism was. But in his concern to convince himself and the world in general that the capitalist revolutionary activity he was engaged in had something to do with socialism, he ended up presenting a proletarian-administered state-capitalist image of socialism alongside the correct image of socialism which is also to be found in his writings. It is this proletarian-administered state-capitalist image of socialism found in Marx as well as Lenin’s texts which provides the theoretical continuity which exists between them, and it was this parallel existence of two distinct images of socialism within Marx’s thought which also gave rise to the formulae of the “first phase of communist society” and the higher phase of communist society” which are found in the Critique Of The Gotha Programme.

Let us analyse these two “phases of communist society”. The so-called “higher phase of communist society” corresponds, in fact, to communism. At first glance, so too does the “first phase of communist society”. The state has dis*appeared, the means of production have been socialised, “producers do not ex*change their products” any longer we are told. Formally, at any rate, the “first phase of communist society” rests on these corner-stones of communism. Marx admits that the “first phase” suffers from “defects”, that it is still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society” but ‘such admissions never shake his conviction that it is still communist. What is important in Marx’s description of the “first phase of communist society”, however, is not so much what he says about it as what is left unsaid. What we have to do is to think out the unspoken implications behind what Marx tells us about his so-called “first phase”.

“...the social working day consists (we are told) of the sum of the individual labour hours; the individual labour time of the individual producer is the part of the social labour day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such and such an amount of labour (after deducting his labour from the common fund), and with this certificate he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as costs the same amount of labour, The same amount of labour which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.” (Critique of the Gotha Programme, Karl Marx)

Formally, the means of production are owned communally. But, as far as the individual is concerned, without working he cannot consume. In order to live he has to supply his labour power in exchange for the certificate which enables him to eat. He is, in other words, nothing but a wage labourer (a certificate labourer if you like) and will probably need quite a bit of convincing that his condition is basically any different to his propertyless status under capitalism.

“Producers do not exchange their products”, Marx tells us, but he admits that “the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities”. Equivalent amounts of labour are still in fact exchanged, only in this case it is certificates which are exchanged with products. True enough, these certificates are not money since they are not intended to circulate -and exchange is supposed to be confined to relationships between the communally owned warehouses (or whatever one calls them) and the individual. Yet, even if we assume this to be so, this would still not prevent Marx’s “first phase of communist society” from being a form of capitalism. The fact is, though, that even these restrictions on the process of exchange could in reality be nothing more than pious hopes. Exchange between individuals would still be bound to occur and, whatever the intention behind the labour certificates, they would be bound to circulate too. The only way to prevent this, or at least to drive it underground, would be to devise some strict form of policing system for suppressing exchange between individuals.

This last point brings us on to the question of the state. Marx’s “first phase of communist society” would inevitably be a society well supplied with social tensions. ‘ As we have seen, certificate labourers (whatever the mythology employed to obscure this state of affairs) would in fact stand before the means of production as a propertyless certificate earners forced to ‘sell’ their labour power. The means of production would therefore confront them as an alien force, from which they were divorced, but to which they had to submit. As far as personal consumption was concerned, this would be as rigidly controlled as it is within existing forms of capitalism. In addition, the only way to restrict exchange between individuals would be to suppress it forcibly. To keep the tensions engendered by such a society under control, some form of policing authority employing force where necessary and defending what were in fact property rights would be required. One might of course suggest that no special armed body of men and women would be needed to do this job - that all would participate in the business of policing themselves. Difficult though it might be to imagine this working in practice, there would be nothing to recommend it even if we grant it as a possibility. It would be no more preferable to have certificate labourers policing themselves than it would to have them policed by a special social group. Indeed, one could say that it would be even less preferable, since the chances of workers (sorry - certificate labourers!) fighting back would be re*duced.

No matter how insistently Marx might have applied the label “first phase of communist society” to this society which he described in the Critique Of The Gotha Programme, as soon as we examine it in any sort of depth we can see that it is a form of capitalism. Marx’s presentation of communism is perfectly correct as long as he deals with it in an abstract, theoretical fashion - or as long as he relegates it to the distant future (the “higher phase of communist society”). But as soon as he tries to relate his presentation of communism to the struggle he was actually engaged in, or to what was materially possible in the latter half of the nineteenth century, he inevitably starts to reduce this ‘communism’ to the level of capitalism.

Within a ‘proletarian’-administered state-capitalist image of socialism of his own, Lenin was the last person likely to notice any inconsistencies in Marx’s description of the “first phase of communist society”. On the contrary, when Lenin wrote his commentary on the Critique Of The Gotha Programme in State And Revolution he did so entirely uncritically. But the remarkable thing about this section of State And Revolution is that, while Lenin accepted the basic incon*sistencies incorporated in Marx’s treatment of the “first phase of communist society”, having once accepted these inconsistencies he consistently thought them through to their conclusion in a way which Marx himself had never done. Lenin thus realised what we ourselves have pointed out above - that the descrip*tion of the “first phase of communist society” given by Marx in the Critique Of The Gotha Programme means inevitably the “strictest control by society and by the state over the measure of labour and the measure of consumption”. Lenin is quite right to point out that, once Marx’s basic inconsistencies that ‘bourgeois rights will continue to exist within communism is accepted, it con*sistently “follows that under communism there remains for a time not only the bourgeois right, but even the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie!”

Naturally, anyone who has a reasonable grounding in Marx's writings can ridicule what Lenin wrote here. It is after all quite possible to sift out any number of bald statements that socialism and the state are incompatible, that there will be no state under socialism, from Marx and Engels’ texts. It is, however, a singularly pointless exercise to do so. Statements that the state is an organ of class society, that there can be no state in the classless society of socialism and so on may abound in Marx and Engels’ works but they belong to those sections of their writings where they were dealing with more or less ab*stract socialist theory. Whenever Marx and Engels got down to suggesting con*crete solutions to the problems of the capitalist revolution they were involved in, it was an entirely different story. Socialist terminology was still em*ployed by them, even on these occasions, but the socialist content of their ideas was then eclipsed by state capitalism in their desire to be ‘realistic’ or ‘scientific’. This is what provides the theoretical continuity between Marx and Lenin. When we compare the Critique of the Gotha Programme with State and Revolution, the most we can accuse Lenin of is having said openly and honestly what Marx himself had merely implied.

By way of summing up, I would like to restate what I have already said, in a slightly different way. The dilemma which Marx found himself in was very much the same as that which still confronts communists today. Marx yearned for communism at a time when only capitalist struggles offered any chances of success in the reasonably near future. Like most present-day communists he was frustrated by inactivity too. The third source of tension was that he wanted to have done with utopianism and to be ‘scientific’. We can thus represent Marx’s dilemma graphically by a diagram which shows Marx occupying the middle ground between “communism”, “activity” and “science” (we could just as well call this last factor “materialism” or “anti-utopianism”).



COMMUNISM

MARX

ACTIVITY SCIENCE/materialism/anti-utopianism


Marx wanted to close the three sides of this triangle but, in the condit*ions of his day, it was impossible do this. Try as one might, only one side of the triangle could be closed. One could try to be an active communist i.e.:

/COMMUNISM
/
ACTIVITY SCIENCE/materialism/anti-utopianism

but this left one open to the charge of being utopian, since one’s actvity’ was like, thrashing about in a vacuum. One could be a scientific communist i.e.:-


COMMUNISM

ACTIVITY SCIENCE/materialism/anti-utopianism

but, since science demanded that one recognise that communism offered no pros*pects of anything but the very longest—term success, one was bound to be accused ed of inactivity, or at least of standing aside from the mass struggles that were in process. Finally, one could be active and “materialist” (or in the sense of engaging in what Engels called “the already existing” movement) i.e.:

COMMUNISM

ACTIVITY-------'SCIENCE’


but - as we have seen - this could only put one's commitment to communism at risk.

The answer to this riddle is of course that -only the working class as a whole, rather than individual revolutionaries can bridge the three sides’ of this triangle. Until workers do close this triangle, all we more or less isolated revolutionaries are stuck with this dilemma. What makes it particularly painful is precisely that there is no solution at the level of the isolated individual revolutionary (or revolutionary group). However distasteful it might be, in the absence of communist consciousness among the mass of the work*ing class, the individual revolutionary has to give up something. The only choice we have is to decide which one of the three factors we have represented in our diagram (“communism”, “activity” or “science “materialism”/”anti-utopianism) we choose to abandon. Without becoming sentimental, this is the tragedy of anyone who desires to be a revolutionary socialist under present conditions - and Marx demonstrates that tragedy particularly well.

John Crump, August 27, 1975



A COMMENT ON JOHN CRUMP’S “A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF MARX”

Joint Social Revolution/Solidarity pamphlet.

JOHN CRUMP states that “for Europe and other truly industrialised parts of the world the era of bourgeois revolutions is well and truly finished”. Indeed I would go further and say that today capitalism is the dominant world system (east and west) and the working class a truly international class. The state capitalist reforms of Marx’s ‘Communist Manifesto’ that provided the link with Lenin’s bolshevist policies are all but complete, with the traditional left arguing over the remaining details. And yet John maintains that socialists today face the same dilemma as they did in Marx’s day, that of choosing between sectarian socialist politics and involvement in bourgeois reform politics. This just doesn’t square.

Socialists pursue their own individual and class interests (in a slightly more conscious manner than most workers). To the extent that socialism was not immediately realizable in Marx’s day, socialists HAD to pursue those interests as best they could within the framework of the emerging capitalist society. This meant helping in the organisation of their fellow workers as an independent class and pursuing reforms aimed at strengthening the class. It inevitably also meant fighting alongside the bourgeois against feudal and aristocratic institutions.

Is the situation the same today? YES, in so far as socialists are still pursuing the same interests. But today the pursuit of those interests leads much more closely to socialism. The old institutions of the working class (social-democratic parties, trade unions and co-operatives) most useful in the struggle for basic reforms, are now integrated into capitalist administration. Workers are obliged to go beyond, and even outside and against these institutions. The basic reforms of the past are now taken for granted, workers aspirations increasingly become more difficult for capitalism to satisfy. In addition the technical capacity of the world and the potential for abundance and elimination of toil become more clearly contrasted to capitalisms restrictions and waste.

There is no automatic link between the every day class struggle, which is marked by numerous periods of reaction, and the socialist objective, but a link can be made with the most advanced elements of struggle, something which Marx despite the advanced level of his theory could not do. Creating this ‘link’ is undoubtedly a problem but we are not forced into making the pessimistic choices offered us by John Crump.

Socialists who are ‘guided’ by some ‘historical mission’ rather than their own individual and class interests in the present situation, have fallen prey to the very mystification they have been aiming to overcome, they have turned socialism into a religion (although they may have exorcised Marx!)

Mike Ballard (Published in Social Revolution No. 6)

[rcpnz]

Crump is a bit of an oddball.

He was in the SPGB and left in 1974 because he faild to turn the SPGb into a reformist party. His critique enclosed, the rpely of Camden Branch can be available from Socialist Studies No.44.:

Introduction
We are reissuing John Crump’s 1973 circular as we said we would in our introduction to the reissue of Movement or Monument? We do this to prepare the way for our own critique, and to situate ourselves within a tendency that has long existed in the Socialist Party. We also think that some of Crump’s criticisms remain valid, although we stress, as we did before, that we do not agree with everything he wrote.

We would also like to stress that we are not engaging in this exercise because we want to “fuck up” the Socialist Party (as one comrade recently put it), nor because we like to engage in intellectual games for the sake of it. It is because we want the Socialist Party to function as a revolutionary organisation. As members of a democratic working class party, we reserve our strongest criticisms for ourselves, because we are serious about the revolutionary project. We are serious about wanting to put an end to what Crump calls the SPGB’s largely uninterrupted history of “missed opportunities”.

And in case anyone thinks that this is purely an academic debate, we are sure no one reading this old circular will fail to draw comparisons between some of Crump’s examples and the period we are NOW living through. So it is with a sense of urgency that we reissue this document, and call on all serious revolutionaries to join with us in the project of drawing out the theoretical roots of our practical failure.
Dave Flynn, Stuart Watkins


What is it that prevents the SPGB functioning as a revolutionary organisation?
John Crump, 1973
Introduction
Very soon I shall be resigning from the SPGB. I should say right at the start that this is a move which is forced on me anyway by the silly rule that lays down that “A member taking up residence abroad shall automatically cease to be a member of the Party” (rule 3). The fact is that if I were not going abroad I would have remained a member in order to support the efforts of those other comrades like myself who are seeking to convert the SPGB into a revolutionary organisation. Since I am forced to leave the Party, however, I have decided to issue a circular explaining my criticisms of the SPGB. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, although rule 3 would give me a good excuse for just drifting out of the Party without any fuss, I believe this would be a politically dishonest thing to do. If I must leave, then I want to explain my disagreements. But there is a second much more important reason than this purely personal consideration. For a considerable period now, a number of revolutionaries within the PSGB have been resisting the sectarian policies of the majority. It is therefore high time that some of their basic criticisms of the SPGB as it functions at present were plainly stated in a single document and if my circular can serve this additional purpose I shall be very pleased.

Now let me make quite clear what I have said here. I – and I alone – am responsible for this circular. It was written solely by me and distributed by me. But no one is pretending either that these are simply the ideas of one isolated and disgruntled member. All of the views expressed in this circular have been developed by means of discussion with other comrades and, whatever the differences which may exist between us in details and points of emphasis, no one should have any doubt that the basic criticism of the SPGB outlined in this statement commands a fair body of support within the Party itself. It is this which gives it whatever significance it has and it is for this reason that I would urge all those comrades who are genuinely interested in seeing the SPGB operate as a revolutionary organisation to think hard about the issues raised here.
Part 1
How the SPGB fails
When one first joins the Party one is unaware of the fact that the long history of the SPGB is very largely an uninterrupted series of missed opportunities. What one is aware of are the considerable achievements of the SPGB and, even as I am about to leave the Party, I am far from denigrating these. The greatest of these achievements is simply that in the long period of the Labour Party and the Communist Party ascendancy it was for all practical purposes the SPGB alone in Britain which maintained an uncompromising socialist position. Even if today there are others who have come to argue that socialism is a wageless, moneyless, stateless society based in the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, this in no way detracts from the tremendous service which the SPGB performed for the working class movement in Britain throughout those bleak years in keeping alive the idea of what socialism is.

Nor is this the only major contribution of the SPGB. The Party has never deviated from the principle that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself. It has consistently denounced leadership and insisted that a socialist society can never be achieved until the majority have clearly understood what socialism is and have taken a conscious decision to establish the new society. The SPGB also pioneered the state capitalist analysis of Russia in the English-speaking world and every member of the Party is rightly proud of the fact that for almost seventy years now the SPGB has unfailingly opposed all of the capitalism’s wars. To repeat, these are considerable achievements – yet any revolutionary can see that by themselves they are nowhere near enough. Much more than this is needed for the SPGB to start operating as a revolutionary organisation and against these achievements we have to set the SPGB’s equally consistent record of constantly failing even to recognise favourable opportunities as they present themselves, let alone to take serious action in them.

Now even among the revolutionaries within the SPGB there might well be less than total unanimity as to just which developments within capitalism over recent years have produced situations which socialists could have turned to their advantage. But any list of those opportunities which have occurred would have to include:
§ the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and its repercussions in Britain when the Communist Party lost half of its total membership and thousands of others first had their illusions about state capitalism shattered.
§ the period from 1958 into the early sixties when CND was at its peak, when tens of thousands marched against nuclear weapons and when “the campaign made a terrific impact on the British political scene” (Socialist Standard, April 1966, p52.)
§ again the period from mid-1966 onwards when the Labour government’s anti-working class actions were becoming increasingly obvious to many workers, when the “Labour governments betrayal of its policies (was causing) increasing disillusionment amongst its supporters” (Socialist Standard, May 1968, p72) and when the SPGB itself was asking “Is Labour Cracking Up?”.

It would be a useful exercise at some time to examine how the SPGB responded (or, rather, failed to respond in any serious way) to each of these events in turn. A common pattern would then be seen to emerge of how in each case the Party acted with unbelievable slowness and lethargy, of how there was next to no serious discussion among the members of what sort of intervention the Party could reasonably hope to mount and how – as a result – there was a total absence of the clear-thinking foresight which socialists should be expected to show at such times. In this section of my circular I shall mainly confine my attention to the period when a Labour government was in power from
mid-1966 onwards but at least I want to explode here the myth which has grown up within the SPGB that its handling of CND was one of its success stories! Just what solid evidence does this fairy tale rest on? On nothing more than the fact that in the 1960s the SPGB managed to gain a few new members by its limited propaganda efforts directed at CND, when any objective appraisal of the Party’s role would have to show that – even if we make due allowances for the SPGB’s admittedly meagre resources – its approach to CND was a case if far too little coming far too late.

This sort of complacent assessment of its own activities which we can see in relation to CND is, in fact, all too typical of the SPGB. I well remember how one comrade, who had been out of the Party for several years, wrote to me in 1971 that on rejoining he had found that “a remarkable new growth” had taken place, “a phase of growth, since it involved development where the Party had never looked like developing, outside London…” At the time I replied as follows:

“I can well imagine that rejoining in 1970, when – as you say – the Party had been going through a phase of growth over the previous four years or so, was an encouraging experience. But, all the same, I am afraid that I cannot draw the same conclusions as you – probably for the very reason that I was active as a member right through that period of growth. When you rejoined you saw the end result of 4-5 years growth, the handfuls of new members we had recruited, but what you didn’t see were the hundreds the Party failed to attract because of the opportunities it missed.
As you probably know, the five years 1966-71 have been ones of growth for nearly all radical groups in Britain (with a few notable exceptions like the CP – but then, it’s hardly a radical organisation, is it?) and it seems to me that the SPGB too could hardly have failed to attract new blood during such a period. Even by making no great effort, we couldn’t fail to have a modest influx of new members. Looked at in the abstract, I suppose all growth appears like a “healthy sign”, but, once it is placed in a context of fairly wide-spread radicalisation, the degree of growth we achieved in the 1966-71 period starts to look more like a miserable failure.”

Reading these lines again two years later, I am more than ever convinced that they are right. The years of the Wilson government presented the SPGB with a real opportunity to advance, as numerous Labour supporters recoiled in dismay and disgust from their party’s policies – and yet it was an opportunity which was almost totally squandered. Let me explain in some detail, then, why I say it was squandered.

When the first Wilson government came to power in October 1964 its supporters had a ready excuse for what they saw as its failure. How could it take on big business, look after the ordinary working men and women or “take steps towards socialism”, they asked, when it had been elected on such a slim majority? Socialists knew that this Labour government, like any other, would “administer British capitalism in the only way open to them – in the interests of the British capitalist class” (Socialist Standard, November 1964, p175) – but it was common knowledge too that, equipped with the alibi of his small majority in the House of Commons and being the shrewd politician he was, Wilson was temporarily in a strong position and that he would soon call another general election where Labour would be likely to be returned with an increased vote. This, of course, was just what did happen in March 1966 and it should have been no surprise to any socialist that in the new situation which emerged, then the radicalisation of a section of Labour supporters occurred as they saw their illusions about Wilson wrecked once his alibi had gone. After all, this train of events bore at least certain similarities to what had happened twenty years earlier at the time of the Attlee government, when all sorts of radical groups in Britain had benefited from the growing disillusionment of many of those who supported Labour and when – as part of this process – the membership of the SPGB climbed to around 1000.

Now surely it is reasonable to expect that a socialist party, faced with this developing situation between October 1964 and March 1966, should have been preparing itself to take maximum advantage of the opportunity which was likely to present when the illusions harboured by Labour’s supporters started to wear thin. The fact is, however, that when disillusionment did start to set in among them in the summer of 1966 (“Many who voted the Labour Government into power in 1964 and with a much increased majority earlier this year are wondering if they did the right thing” Socialist Standard, July 1966, p107) the SPGB was caught totally unprepared. The Party had not even taken what should have been the elementary step of producing an up-to-date pamphlet analysing the Labour Party from a socialist standpoint, so that it was left to inexperienced members like myself (I had joined the SPGB in December 1964) to urge belatedly that we do so. What I could not begin to understand at the time – although it is clear enough today – was how it was possible that the bulk of the membership, composed largely of comrades with many years experience behind them, should have been so completely unaware of what the situation demanded.

When I moved the floor resolution “That this Conference calls on the Executive Committee to urgently look into the question of producing a short, moderately priced pamphlet on the Labour Government” at the Party Conference in April 1966 I made what I fondly imagined were obvious points. The SPGB needed such a pamphlet and, above all, it needed it fast. It needed a pamphlet exposing the capitalist orientation of the Labour government which it could put into the hands of Labour supporters as they started to question Wilson’s policies. Since a purpose-written analysis of the Labour government would take time to publish, and since a pamphlet was needed by the closing stages of 1966 at the very latest, probably the best booklet that could be produced under the circumstances was a collection of some of the articles dealing with the Labour government which had appeared in recent issues of the Socialist Standard.

The resolution was indeed passed by the Conference and went to the Executive Committee and its Pamphlets Sub-Committee – but what happened then? A specially produced pamphlet on Labour Government or Socialism? Was laboriously written and was finally issued… two years later, in February 1968! Surely there was something a trifle pathetic about a publication which in 1968 took 28 out of its total 30 pages “to expose the uselessness of Labour Government” (Labour Government or Socialism? p29) at a time when it had already become painfully obvious to those workers likely to read it just how useless that government was. By then any thoughtful worker could see that the Wilson government was pursuing anti-working class policies and the last thing he needed was for the SPGB to point out to him that his wages had been frozen in the second half of 1967 (Labour Government or Socialism? pp 19-20). If he bothered even to read such a pamphlet his most likely conclusion must have been that the SPGB was simply out of touch.

One important effect of the relatively widespread radicalisation which, as we have already mentioned, accompanied the decline in fortunes of the Wilson government was that many who had previously supported the Labour party became receptive to new ideas. An important tendency developed (especially among young numbers of young workers) to think their ideas about socialism and in order to do this many of them wanted to read the classic works of marxism and leninism, including books which had often been out of print for years. Thus it was no accident that several major works which had been unavailable for decades were suddenly republished in the second half of the 1960s as commercial propositions by book companies with an eye on the market.

It was against this background that in 1968 some of us suggested that the SPGB should take steps to have Julius Martov’s The State and Socialist Revolution republished, on principal grounds that it does a brilliant job on Lenin’s State and Revolution and that the amount of work which this would have entailed for the Party would have been small since an acceptable translation already existed. There is no point now in resurrecting all the arguments and counter-arguments which were make for and against this proposal in the interminable wrangling it gave rise to at to Delegate Meetings and two Annual Conferences. All that I wish to do here is to mention a couple of the more ridiculous arguments which were used by the sectarians within the SPGB in order to defeat this suggestion. By restating them again we can illustrate once more just how out of touch the majority of SPGB members were with the opportunities which existed.

The Executive Committee – via its Pamphlets Sub-Committee – claimed that The State and the Socialist Revolution was “not a work that would attract a wide general sale; it is of most use to a more limited range of reader” (Report of the 46th Meeting of the 65th Executive Committee of the SPGB, 1968) and their spokesman repeated this at the 1969 Delegate Meeting (“it would have a limited appeal – this is what you are asking the Party to take on.) Quite apart from the fact that the dubious comment that it was “not a work that would attract a wide general sale” was meaningless from the SPGB point of view anyway (which pamphlet produced by the SPGB ever has attracted “a wide general sale”?), these remarks showed an amazing degree of unfamiliarity with developments which were taking place in the late 1960s. One just has to run one’s eyes along one’s bookshelves to see the books which companies like Penguin were bringing out at this time (the first ever paperback editions of John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook The World in 1966, or Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution in 1967, of Bukharin and Preobrazhensky’s ABC of Communism in 1969 etc, etc) in order to realise how hollow such conclusions were.

But this was not all. Anyone with even a modicum of sense should have been able to see that, since Martov is relatively well known, a booklet carrying his name was likely to be an infinitely more effective vehicle for socialist ideas that a pamphlet written by an anonymous SPGBer. Who else but a member of the SPGB’s Executive Committee, then, could have declared: “It is not good enough that we should push pamphlets written by other people. ‘Principles and Policy’ [the title of an SPGB pamphlet] is far more important and we should get our priorities right”? (Report of the Proceedings of the 66th SPGB Delegate Meeting, 1969, p12).

In case anyone objects that the real barrier to the SPGB’s taking steps to make Martov’s The State and the Socialist Revolution available was the work it would have required or the expense it would have involved, I want to emphasise here that there is a recognised method which revolutionaries should adopt for meeting such a challenge. The sort of approach which is needed on such occasions is the issuing of a report by those comrades responsible (and ultimately this means the Executive Committee) which clearly states the amount of work and costs which the project under consideration is likely to involve and which gives a realistic estimate of the benefits likely to accrue from seeing it through. The facts can then me laid before the membership in this way and it is then up to them to decide whether or not they have the necessary commitment to tackle this additional task. This was never done at the time when The State and the Socialist Revolution was being discussed – and neither was it done when a resolution was passed at the 1969 Party Conference that “This Conference calls on the Executive Committee to set up a Committee to report to the 1969 Delegate Meeting with details of costs and probable advantage of employing a member full-time at Head Office”.

Again it should have been obvious to anyone who had given any thought at all to the opportunities which existed during this period that the first necessity for the SPGB was an efficient organisation. Efficiency was clearly impossible, however, so long as the Party did not have even a single full-time worker acting as co-ordinator from Head Office. It was with this in mind that some of us moved the above resolution and saw it passed at the 1969 Party Conference – only to find that the SPGB Executive Committee “allowed the matter to lapse” (Report of the Proceedings of the 66th SPGB Delegate Meeting, 1969, p8). It was announced at that Delegate Meeting that the “Executive Committee’s attitude is that because of the Party’s financial difficulties they will not set up a Committee at the moment.” Nor was a committee ever subsequently appointed, a majority of the SPGB membership being prepared to accept this decision of their Executive Committee.

But what was the state of the SPGB’s finances at this time? I am not disputing that in 1969 the Party’s bank account stood at a low figure but what I do want to spotlight is the fact that the membership dues stood then at 1/- per week. In other words, translated into hard cash, the average member of the SPGB’s commitment to the revolution stood at 5p per week. This was what lay behind the shameful argument that a Party of more than 600 members could not support a single full-time worker. By way of comparison (and this was pointed out in a related discussion at the SPGB Conference the same year) at the relevant time groups like IS and the SLL were levying themselves at the rates of 2/6 (12.5p) per week and 10/- (50p) per week respectively – and as a result were far outstripping the SPGB both in organisational efficiency and in their impact on the working class. I said it then and I say it again now that if the majority of the members of the SPGB are not prepared to more than match the dedication shown by these rival organisations they can never hope to turn the sort of opportunity which presented during the period of the second Wilson government to the advantage of the socialist movement. What is more, in the absence of such revolutionary commitment, neither does the SPGB deserve to be taken seriously by the working class.
Part 2
The Theoretical Roots of This Failure
So far this circular has broken very little new ground. Although stated in perhaps more extreme terms that usual, the type of criticism outlined in Part 1 – or at least that part of it which concerns itself with the level of activity achieved by the Party – is quite common even among the sectarians within the SPGB. Where such criticism normally stops, however, is at a point far short of any serious examination of the body of theory from which the SPGB’s practice is derived. This in itself is highly significant, of course, because it shows a widespread reluctance (or inability) among a majority of the members of the SPGB to apply the Marxian method of analysis to the Party itself. How else can one explain this failure to trace back the deficiencies in the SPGB’s practice to deficiencies in its theory?

Many examples of this could be given but here I will mention only one. A statement drawn up by one of the members of the present Executive Committee of the SPGB in May 1968 (Some Reflections on the Present Political Situation and the Condition of the Socialist Party) contained forthright criticism of the Party. It pointed out that “the Socialist Party and its members are living in a political vacuum”, and that there was “no apparent point of contact with life and Politics”, merely “apathy and indifference” and so on. Yet – incredibly – having said all this, it refrained from any analysis of the SPGB’s theory and even when it mentioned the possibility that faulty practice might just conceivably stem from theoretical inadequacy this was clearly for rhetorical purposes only and was instantly dismissed (“all experience shows this is NOT the case”). Since on the contrary – as we have shown in Part 1 – the experience of the SPGB shows nothing of the sort it is now time to consider the theoretical roots of the Party’s failure.

The ‘Marxism’ of the SPGB
“Behind the inflexibility of theoretical formulas with
which your excellent Comrade Kautsky will supply
you until the end of his days, you conceal… your
inability to act.” (Jaures speaking to Bebel at
the Amsterdam Congress of the Iind International,
August 1904)

Even an SPGBer can see that there was something slightly bizarre about a tiny group with little more than a hundred members at its formation in June 1904 assuming the grandiose title of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Part of the explanation for this readiness of the founder members of the SPGB to dub their group ‘The Socialist Party’ lies in the fact that they saw themselves as but one section of an international socialist movement (“Those who really desire ... economic emancipation must enrol in the Army of International Socialism, the British section of which is The Socialist Party of Great Britain.” Socialist Standard, November 1904). But the original membership of the SPGB believed that there was far more than simply the solidarity they expected to forge with “those abroad who occupy our position” (Report of the 3rd Annual Conference of the SPGB, 1907 – see the Socialist Standard, June 1968, p97). Besides this there was ‘history’ too. It was ‘history’ which would force the working class to become revolutionary (one could still hear echoes of this within the SPGB even during recent years – “sooner or later the mass of the population, those who are compelled to work for a living, will be driven by their material interests to set about abolishing the private ownership of the means of production and replacing it by the common ownership of the means of production… And this will be in accordance with the Materialist Conception of History’s own decree” (!) Socialist Comment, 1956, p40) and history too which would make the SPGB ‘The Socialist Party’ in more than name alone.

On this view, history was a mechanical process remorselessly grinding on towards its inevitable destination – socialism. And when I use the term ‘inevitable’, this is no caricature either. For the early members of the SPGB (and even for a few of the current ones: “South West London Branch consider that socialism is inevitable – that is the Party’s case”. Report of the Proceedings of the 65th SPGB Annual Conference 1969, p9) socialism really was preordained. According to their understanding of Marx, “Society … moved … under the pressure of growing economic forces making a change in social forms inevitable” (Socialist Standard, March 1913, pp49-50, my emphasis). This was a doctrine of economic determinism and, even though the founder members of the SPGB might have avoided the crudest of the conclusions which many of the social democrats of the Second International drew from the same brand of ‘marxism’, their own conclusions were only marginally less crude. To give the Party its due, the SPGB never subscribed to the belief which was popular among so many social democrats before the 1st World War that ‘history’ would bring capitalism to the point where it would be forced to collapse, but it did insist that ‘history’ would bring the working class to the point where it would be forced to become socialist. In other words, the SPGB maintained a commitment to the need for consciousness, but only by reducing consciousness to a level where it was conceived as something which emerged more or less mechanically.

There is nothing surprising about this fact that the ‘marxism’ of the early SPGB was basically the ‘marxism’ of the Second International. Indeed it is hard to imagine how it could have been anything else when one remembers that the SPGB originated as a breakaway from the old Social Democratic Federation. If anything ever was ‘inevitable’, it was that the SPGB’s ‘marxism’ was bound to be “the mongrel child of Engels, Kautsky, Hyndman and De Leon” (as one comrade recently put it) and of these four it was Engels and Kautsky who without any doubt were the major influence.

Engels, of course, had been the leading populariser and most authoritative interpreter of Marx’s ideas in the years after Marx’s physical decline and then death – that is during the very period when ‘marxism’ was emerging as a major political and intellectual force in Europe – and it was under his guidance that the ‘marxists’ of Kautsky’s generation grew up. Even a well-informed biographer of Marx and Engels such as David Riazanov never fully grasped the extent of Engels’ influence on these younger men. Writing about Anti-Duhring, he says: “It was epoch-making in the history of Marxism. It was from this book that the younger generation which began its activity during the second half of the seventies learned hat was scientific socialism, what were its philosophic premises, what was its method…. For the dissemination of Marxism as a special method and a special system, no book except Capital itself has done as much as Anti-Duhring. All the young Marxists who entered the public arena in the early eighties – Bernstein, Karl Kautsky … George Plekhavov.. – were brought up on this book” (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, D. Riazanov, 1927, p210.) Yet even this appraisal of Engels’ major work underestimates its real impact. Instead of “no book EXCEPT Capital” Riazanov ought to have written no book INCLUDING Capital”. As Kautsky himself made clear: “…. Judging by the influence that Anti-Duhring had upon me, no other book can have contributed so much to the understanding of Marxism. Marx’s Capital is the more powerful work, certainly. But it was only through Anti-Duhring that we learnt to understand Capital and read it properly” (F. Engels’ Briefwechsel mit K. Kautsky quoted in Engels and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Gareth Stedman Jone. New Left Review 79, p19, my emphasis).

Now what was the essential feature of this interpretation of Marx’s ideas which social democrats like Kautsky obtained from Anti-Duhring and Engels’ other writings and which enabled them to “understand Capital and read it properly”? It was a rendering of Marx where ‘marxism’, instead of being a critical theory serving as a means to revolutionary practice, tended to be narrowed down until it was reduced to a system of schematically applied ‘laws’. It was not that Engels’ took his friend’s ideas and twisted them into a different doctrine altogether, nor even that he superimposed certain notions of his own which were fundamentally at odds with the original and authentic ‘marxism’ of Marx. The answer to the riddle was simply that, as Engels himself often said, “Marx was a genius. We others were at best talented”. The result of Engels being a less gifted thinker than Marx was that, as he applied himself to the job of popularising his dead comrade’s theories, so he was simplifying them and unconsciously debasing them. It would be decidedly unfair to say that Engels in his later writings abandoned his own and Marx’s concept that it was the revolutionary act of the working class which would introduce socialism but what he did do was to emphasise one-sidedly the determinist element in Marx’s thinking. Many examples of this could be given but Engels’ letter to Bloch (21-22 September 1890) will be sufficient to illustrate the point here. Although Engels assures Bloch that “We make our history ourselves”, even if “under very definite assumptions and conditions”, this becomes so heavily qualified (“This (the historical event) may again be viewed as the product of a power which works as a whole unconsciously and without volition. For what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed. Thus history has proceeded hitherto in the manner of a natural process and is essentially subject to the same laws of motion.”) that it is for all practical purposes drained of its revolutionary implications and turned into an abstract formula. What we are left with is a causally determined historical process which calls to mind the Darwinian scheme of evolution.

This, in fact, was just what made ‘marxism’ so acceptable to the followers of Darwin such as Kautsky in Germany (in the appendix on Kautsky to Luise Kautsky’s Letters of Rosa Luxemburg (1925) she mentions how Darwin “exercised a great influence upon him” and that Kautsky was “a disciple of Darwin in his student days in Vienna”) and Hyndman in Britain (“Marx is the Darwin of modern sociology….” Historical basis of socialism in England. H.M. Hyndman, 1883, p435). After Engels’ death in 1895 the prestige which went with editing Marx’s unpublished manuscripts was transferred from Engels to Kautsky and to this was added the aura of orthodoxy as he defended ‘marxism’ from its revisionist critics such as Bernstein. Kautsky’s influence on the SPD and the whole of the Second International was enormous – and he was much admired by the members of the early SPGB too. In fact, his reputation within the SPGB was so high that of the first five pamphlets it produced no fewer than three were translations of Kautsky’s works. Thus we can see that although the SPGB was hostile right from the start to the reformist policies pursued by the social democratic parties, its ‘marxist’ theory had much more in common with that of the Second International than later generations of Party member have ever cared to admit.

Strangely enough in the first few years of the Party’s existence this doctrine of economic determinism which went under the name of ‘marxism’ – and which provided the justification for the quietist policies for which the SPD became notorious – did not prevent the SPGB from maintaining a high level of activity. This appears as less of a paradox than it seems at first if we ask ourselves exactly what the founder members of the SPGB were trying to achieve in the decade before the 1st World War. There is plenty of evidence (even the name chosen for the Party’s journal is significant here) that they saw their role as one of raising aloft the standard of socialism so that the working class would have a focus which it could group itself around as it became socialist. The early members of the SPGB threw themselves into their activity because, as they saw it, there was only a limited amount of time to construct the nucleus of an organisation into which the workers were expected to flock as soon as ‘history’ endowed them with socialist consciousness. There was a great deal of enthusiasm within the SPGB during those first year because ‘history’ really did seem to be moving in their direction. Real wages, which may have risen by as much as 50 per cent between 1880 and 1900, had stagnated ever since 1900 and there was a wave of radicalisation affecting considerable numbers of workers (the emergence of groups such as the SLP in 1903 and the SPGB itself in 1904 being just some of the sign of this). Even the growth of the SPGB, less than spectacular thought it was, seemed to confirm that ‘history’ was steadily doing its work of making the working class socialist because it was after all no mean achievement for the Party to quadruple its membership during its fist ten years.

The 1st World War and the Russian Revolution between them proved to be a traumatic experience for the economic determinists with the SPGB, however. Well over half the membership fell away – presumably disillusioned because ‘history’ seemed to have let them down -- and although the other stuck to their determinist faith, the time scale to which they were operation that to be drastically revised. Socialism receded into the distant future and there was no longer seen to be any need for a high level of activity. The basic work of setting up the organisation skeleton of a socialist party and of establishing a viable journal, which the members had busied themselves with prior to 1914, had already been accomplished and it now became a case of simply maintaining these in existence and waiting.

From this time on the main characteristic of the economic determinists was to be an attitude of exaggerated caution towards taking any initiative and there were very definite reasons why this was so. The familiar claim was still heard that (in the end) ‘history’ would create the conditions which would bring about the development of socialist consciousness among the working class and that when that time came the SPGB would be recognised by the workers as the core around which they could construct a suitable organisation for liberating themselves. But, in addition to this, the assertion was also made that in order that the workers should be able to recognise the SPGB in this way, it had to guard its reputation above all else. A number of valid arguments were then used to back up this line of reasoning – there must be no compromises, principles were more important than a mass membership and so on – but to these was added an entirely spurious one. This was that the SPGB had also to be able to demonstrate that it had never made any mistakes! The more intelligent economic determinists at least qualified this and said no important mistakes but there were plenty of others (and still are among the decreasing number of economic determinists within the Party today) who insisted that the SPGB had never made any mistakes at all! The really crippling effect of this ‘argument’ was that it became yet another excellent reason for abstaining from activity. After all, if you don’t do anything you are unlikely to commit many mistakes. This was why we can say with Jaures that behind the inflexibility of their theoretical formulae the economic determinists concealed their inability to act.

The Utopianism of the SPGB
However sharply the revolutionaries within the SPGB might criticise the economic determinists, the fact is that they stand a great deal closer to them than they do to the utopians who today comprise an increasingly large percentage of the SPGB’s membership. This is not merely because the economic determinists are at least ‘marxists’ of a sort, in the sense that they have been greatly influenced by Marx even though their understanding of his theories remains the inadequate interpretation provided by Engels and Kautsky. It is also due to the fact that, however mechanically they saw it as happening in practice, the economic determinists still realised that socialist consciousness would arise out of the experiences of the working class in its day to day struggles. The utopians, on the other hand, are not ‘marxists’ in any meaningful sense of the word at all. Even though they might still from sheer force of habit decorate their arguments with quotations from Marx’s writings, their basic ideas and methods represent a return to the utopian socialism of the early nineteenth century.

Although the subject matter of the previous section made a semi-historical approach necessary, this circular makes no pretence of being a history of the SPGB. This is why I do not intend to trace here the process by which the economic determinists (who at one time formed the overwhelming bulk of the SPGB’s membership) started to lose control of the Party to the utopians. Suffice it to say that – starting in the 1930s, and at an increasing pace in the 40s and 50s – a new type of member began to join the SPGB. If the economic determinists could be criticised on the grounds that they were more interested in interpreting the world than in changing it, the utopians who now came into the SPB were barely interested in what was happening in the real world at all. For them, capitalism was just “the passing show” (the title of a column which was featured in the Socialist Standard for many years) and if it warranted any comment whatsoever it was simply to show what a stupid and unpleasant social system it was compared with the sane and orderly society of socialism. The actual struggles which workers were engaged in were dismissed out of hand (“these utterly useless activities” says an article in the July 1973 Socialist Standard) because there was not seen to be any connection between these struggles and the attainment of socialist consciousness by the working class. Instead the implicit assumption of the utopians was that socialism was to be established only when a majority of people had been made convinced of its desirability… by the propaganda efforts of the SPGB and its associated parties! In other words, they conceived of the development of socialist consciousness as being essentially a matter of education, of the workers being taught socialist ideas by the Party.

It was natural enough that when this utopian doctrine was stated in a particularly frank and unambiguous style by a member called Turner and his supporters within the SPGB in the early 1950s, it should have provoked a fierce reaction not only from the economic determinists but from other utopians too. The Party’s discussion journal was full of charges of “Revisionism and Renegades in the SPGB” (Forum, February 1954) and so on because in a tradition-bound organisation such as the SPGB any frontal attack not so much on its principles as on the verbal formulae it employs to express those principles was bound to evoke a hostile response. The irony of that particular episode which led to Turner – who had by this time gone over to gradualism – resigning from the SPGB in 1955 was, however, that (as one comrade wrote in a letter to me recently) the utopians “lost the battle but are winning the war” with the economic determinists. A direct frontal attack was never mounted by the utopians again but gradually – by sheer weight of numbers – their approach is becoming the dominant one within the SPGB, although in many cases this partially obscured by the compromises which have been struck with the economic determinists. An obvious example of this sort of compromise is the fact that even today the SPGB maintains a purely verbal commitment to support the trade unions in their efforts to improve workers’ conditions – even though this so-called “support” never takes any concrete form and even though all other types of working class struggle (“protests against the Government’s pricing policy, squatting, and demands for higher pensions, lower rents, higher Social Security payments, etc” as the July 1973 Socialist Standard details them) are rejected as a waste of time. Anyone who has any doubts about the real nature of this supposed “support” for trade unions would do well to remember the remark blurted out by one member of the Executive Committee of the SPGB at the 1972 Delegate Meeting (a remark which, by the way, was not recorded in the official Report of the Proceeding of the 1972 Delegate Meeting): “We don’t support trade unions; we just say they are necessary”!

We can say that the ideas and methods of the utopians within the SPGB represent a return to the pre-marxian socialism of the early nineteenth century for a number of reasons. Firstly because – just like the classical utopian socialists such as Robert Owen, St. Simon and Fourier – their tendency is to present socialism as a universal panacea to which they hope to convert people by sheer force of argument. As one comrade put it in a document published last year (Critical Theory and Revolutionary Practice October 1972, pp2-3): “When you get right down to it they’re trying to convince the workers of the need for Socialism via moral persuasion. ‘Socialism’ (like syrup of figs) is good for you.” Since for them socialist consciousness does not develop out of the struggles in which workers are involved, they have nothing to fall back on except the hope that sooner or later the “unthinking majority” (Report of the Proceedings of the 1972 SPGB Delegate Meeting, p8) will wake up – that the “revolution of the human mind” (Robert Owen) which the classical utopians longer for will take place.

The result of this is that socialism is projected as an ideal (and usually) remote system of society. Only a half-hearted effort is made to connect it with the actual problems which confront the working class and what is more important is that scarcely any attempt at all is made to relate the concept of socialism to the idea circulating among workers which have been thrown up as they grapple with these problems and search for answers to them. No one doubts the good intentions of the utopians when they declare that “Socialists put forward the case for a new world of common ownership and democratic control, trying to get workers to see their problems from this stand point (Socialist Standard, June 1966 p83). Any objective examination of their methods, however, can only reveal their total inability to form bridges between what workers are thinking now and what the utopians hope they start thinking in the future. Even when a virtually tailor-made issue such as “free transport” presents itself the utopians are incapable of recognising the opportunities it offers. For them it is just another aspect of the “the passing show” so that the suggestion that it could be used in order to encourage some workers to think beyond the ideas of abolishing certain prices, which has already aroused their interest, in the direction of a society of completely free access to all products is met with blank incomprehension. (“If we are going to publish anything during the course of an election let it be the terms of our condemnation of the whole system, not of some detail of it” – from the discussion on the proposed pamphlet on free transport in the Report of the Proceedings of the 1972 Delegate Meting, p5).

When the utopians within the SPGB reject many of the efforts of the working class to improve their conditions they are following in the long tradition which extends all the way back to the classical utopian socialists. As Marx pointed out, the Owenites opposed the Chartists and Fourier’s supporters were against the Reformistes because they too could not understand the crucial importance of the workers’ attempts at democratic self-organisation (today this means in a whole range of organisations – tenants’ associations, claimants unions, parent-teacher associations and student unions to name but a few). The SPGB’s Declaration of Principles announces bravely that the emancipation of the working class “must be the work of the working class itself” but the utopians can not begin to see that it is only by engaging in a wide range of day to day struggles that the working class can possibly obtain the confidence in its own ability and the degree of understanding necessary for it to overthrow capitalism. Recognising this, a revolutionary socialist party would be duty bound to intervene in the workers’ struggles by means of sympathetic propaganda material which aimed at speeding the growth of socialist consciousness and the democratic self-activity of the working class. But instead of this the utopians in the SPGB actually call for abstention from these struggles! They are utopians because, as Marx caustically remarked about their nineteenth century predecessors, they “want the workers to leave the old society alone, the better to be able to enter the new society which they have prepared for them with so much foresight” (The Poverty of Philosophy).

The economic determinists have made a fetish out of inaction but not so the utopians. Their calls for a higher level of activity within the Party have often been among the most strident but, leaving aside for the moment the fact that their words have rarely been matched by their deeds, what they fail to realise is that their activity is totally irrelevant to the workers anyway. This is why there can be no solution to the SPGB’s inadequacy as long as they exert such an influence on the Party. The brutal truth is that if their practice does not relate to the workers’ struggles it cannot solve the major problem confronting the working class, which is capitalism. If their activity is irrelevant to the workers, then more activity simply means more irrelevance.

A way forward?

If a way forward exists for the SPGB it lies with the revolutionary minority. In this circular I have identified the three tendencies which are at present uneasily co-existing within the Party. The economic determinists at one time formed the bulk of the membership but are now shrinking into a minority, even though their influence is still considerable. Then there are the utopians, who are well on the way to establishing themselves as the majority and are thus able to compensate for their theoretical poverty by their numbers. Finally there is a minority of revolutionaries.

The revolutionary minority started to crystallise in the late 1960s, a development which was not unconnected with the revival of interest in revolutionary politics which occurred at about this time and which made itself felt in much wider circles than the narrow confines of the SPGB. There are, of course, important differences in both their theory and practice between each of the three tendencies, even between the economic determinists and the utopians, although such differences have tended to be obscured both by the verbal compromises which have been struck between these two currents and by the fact that quite a few of the more eclectic members of the SPGB have a foot in both these camps. But, whatever the differences which exist between the utopians and the economic determinists, they are firmly united by one thing – their sectarianism. Both deserve to be called sectarians since both stand aside from the workers’ struggles, the utopians because they dismiss them as irrelevant, the economic determinists because they are resigned to waiting for ‘history’ to breathe life into the skeleton of their Party. Only the revolutionaries reject this sectarianism and this is why, whatever the distinctions they can draw between the utopians and the economic determinists, they regard themselves as being opposed by a unified sectarian majority.

Whether or not we revolutionaries can eventually convert the SPGB into a revolutionary organisation is naturally open to question and I am just stating a personal opinion when I express my doubts about this. My own view is that the sectarian rot has gone too far for us to be able to do this in any reasonable period of time but I am not opposed to those comrades who are determined to try. As I explained at the beginning of this document, circumstances over which I have no control are forcing me to resign from the Party and what I am doing now it to use the opportunity this offers to issue this statement outlining the basic criticism which the revolutionaries within the SPGB direct at the sectarian majority. Naturally, even after I have ceased to be a member of the Party I shall continue to co-operate with those comrades who will remain in the SPGB to continue the struggle there and I am hopeful that they themselves will go no to form strong links with revolutionary socialists active outside the SPGB. In this way, the revolutionary organisation which we are all working to establish will be built, possibly as a revitalized SPGB but more likely independently of it.

Note on quotations: In this circular I have scrupulously avoided referring by name to any present members of the SPGB. I have, however, frequently quoted from articles which have appeared in the Socialist Standard and elsewhere and from statement made during discussions at SPGB conferences and delegate meetings. Where a member of the SPGB is quoted in connection with the ideas of the economic determinist, utopian or revolutionary tendencies within the Party this should not be taken to imply that I personally regard that member as an economic determinist, a utopian or a revolutionary. This analysis of the SPGB was more interested in identifying the major currents which exists within the SPGB than in personal attacks on individuals. It is also necessary to point out that, given the wide ranging compromises which have been struck between the economic determinists and the utopians, it is often possible to use quotations from one to illustrate the views of the other.

[redstar2000]

Crump is a bit of an oddball.

He was in the SPGB and left in 1974 because he failed to turn the SPGB into a reformist party.

Perhaps I'm not reading "between the lines" with sufficient skill, but I don't see how anything he said in either of those two pieces could be construed as "reformist".

On Crump's overall critique of Marx's ambivalence, I'm reluctantly compelled to agree...at least until I see a really well-reasoned and strongly supported rebuttal.

Perhaps this is because I am also "a bit of an oddball"...that is, one who sees that material conditions are primary and consciousness as a product of those conditions.

I do think that communists have a constructive role to play in present-day resistance to capitalist hegemony...though not, as the Leninists assert, to "lead" it. I think we should encourage and, where possible, participate in any form of resistance that is "outside" the formal bourgeois channels of "dispute resolution"...and that our goal in such activity is both to radicalize the resistance as much as we can and to put forward the idea of communism as our ultimate aim.

I also think, on a less weighty matter, that communists should assess themselves sufficient funds for publishing activities...and then give away our literature to whomever is interested.

It's been my experience that communists trying to be "businessmen" end up being good at neither.

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___________________________

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[rcpnz]

Hi Redstar,

John Crump proposed in 1973 something called 'Where We Stand', proposed as an alternative to the Declaration Of Principles of the SPGB(1904). In it, he stated:
"The task of socialists is to encourage, both by revolutionary propaganda and, where appropriate, active participation, working class struggle, with a view to the emergence of socialist consciousness, the democratic self-organisation of the working class and the militant defence of working class living standards."

By this he meant things like reform struggle etc. Even if he didn't by this, a resolution proposed by him, and proposed at Conference by Manchester Branch said that we should support the struggle of workers to get reforms to their benefit. That is not the position of the SPGB. We hold such things as to be a bourgeois diversion to the workers obtaining socialist consciousness. If we were to support reform struggles, we would have to logically then append to our object a list of minimum demands.

The whole split between the SPGB and the left-wing of capital goes back to the late 19th century, and the early 20th century.

The SPGB wanted to have a party with only Socialism as it's IMMEDIATE AND ULTIMATE objective. It opposed the use of the minimum program as this attracted those opposed to Socialism(Ramsay Macdonald, later to become Labour Prime Minister admitted this in 1896 - except he was supporting the use of the minimum program on the grounds that using only the socialist objective, no-one would come to us, but if we use reforms, workers will listen - this has been NEARLY proven, what it has proven is that it is a lot harder to get workers to think for themselves than it is to manipulate them). It isn't very helpful that we are opposed to the concept of leadership, and to the concept of manipulating our fellow members of the working class to some 'revolutionary situation' which would inevitably lead to the establishment of this 'vanguard' as the new ruling class, as I quote Engels as writing in my signature to this message.

The quote of Ramsay Macdonald was given in a debate between the SPGB(Dr S.Coleman), and the Militant Tendency(?? B.Shepherd)(1982). The former also cites it in his contribution to 'Non Market Socialism In the Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries', which is essentially a book written by 'academic socialists', like Coleman, and Adam Buick, and Rubel also. John Crump I think also wrote a contribution to it. Also, Crump wrote a book with Adam (Buick) on 'State Capitalism: The Wages System Under New Management'. I have asked Adam for them both but he has no copies for some reason.

I hope some of the stuff I have said has clarified matters. I saw your site. Perhaps if you like we could have a discussion on the 'red-green' forum regarding the various positions you take up(I just got invited onto it).

If you want to know more, then just ask, and the SPGB site is very helpful for some things.

[Wenty]

how many people do u think clicked on this link and actually read all the posts?!!

[Morpheus]

rcpnz,

The term reformist is usually applied to someone who either thinks capitalism should not be abolished, but just modified to make it work better, or someone who believes in abolishing capitalism through a series of gradual reforms, rather than revolution. Crump doesn't seem to fit either of these. Fighting for short-term improvements is not automatically reformist if one's ultimate aim is revolution.

Comrade Wenty,

I did.

[rcpnz]

"The term reformist is usually applied to someone who either thinks capitalism should not be abolished, but just modified to make it work better, or someone who believes in abolishing capitalism through a series of gradual reforms, rather than revolution. Crump doesn't seem to fit either of these. Fighting for short-term improvements is not automatically reformist if one's ultimate aim is revolution."

We think that a reformist is someone whom supports reforms.The way we see it, we think that the support of reforms will inevtiably act as a bourgeois diversion to workers obtaining socialism. Reformism is futile, look at all the acts passed by parliament, many by so-called 'socialist' governments, and see that they have acheived nothing fundamental.

I said earlier:
"If we were to support reform struggles, we would have to logically then append to our object a list of minimum demands".

This is the whole reason for the divide between us and the capitalist left(of course there are other reasons also, but this is the fundamental one).

[redstar2000]

We think that a reformist is someone who supports reforms.The way we see it, we think that the support of reforms will inevitably act as a bourgeois diversion to workers obtaining socialism. Reformism is futile...

That's not logical. If reformism is truly "futile", then how could it ever act as a "diversion"?

It seems to me that the "diversionary" aspect of reformism is methodological: it asserts that "playing by the (capitalist) rules" will actually gain something significant for you.

It seems to me that we as communists should not concern ourselves so much with the "content" of "reforms" as with the methods of reformism: bourgeois elections, ritualized "strikes", professional lobbyists, publicity campaigns, etc.

These are all methods of "struggle" that take the initiative out of the hands of ordinary workers and replace that initiative with "trust" (in one form or another) in the "leadership".

It seems to me that the recent wildcat strike at Heathrow illustrates this distinction. The demanded reform was trivial--what counted was that a group of workers took matters into their own hands instead of trusting their "leadership".

At this point in history, most workers "believe" in reforms; they haven't "given up" on capitalism. I think we should be telling them two things:

1. The "reform" that you want isn't really going to help much, if at all.

2. But if you really want it, you're going to have to take it...they aren't going to give it to you just because you ask for it "through channels".

It is in this sense that I think the working class "educates itself"...and I think it is a process we should encourage.

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___________________________

U.S. GET OUT OF IRAQ NOW!
___________________________

"...a disgusting and frightening website"
The RedStar2000 Papers (http://www.sawu.org/redstar2000)
A site about communist ideas

[rcpnz]

"That's not logical. If reformism is truly "futile", then how could it ever act as a "diversion"?"

It acts as a diversion because it tells workers that their social problems can be solved through reform, which argues against the contention that social problems are caused by the social system itself.

Working class consciousness at this point is low. By supporting reforms we would be telling workers that they can acheive something through these reforms. It is a Leninist tactic. It is the equivelant of banging someone's head against a wall in order for them to discover that it isn't nice to have their head banged against the wall!

It, to me, is a form of political deception. I think that communists should tell workers of the futility of reformism, and explain the need for a revolution.