Tony Cliff?

[Rooster]

What exactly is wrong with Tony Cliff and why? I see a lot of flak being sent his way on this site but I've never really read anything of his. Well, I've read his stuff on state-capitalism in Russia a long time ago and the impression that I have, because I can't remember exact details, was that some of his conclusions didn't quite add up from the facts presented.

[daft punk]

"For instance, in the anti-poll tax struggle, Tony Cliff, at a meeting in Scotland, infamously suggested that not paying the poll tax was similar to not paying your bus fare! The consequence of this was that the SWP played absolutely no role in the anti-poll tax struggle. They did not have a single member on the All-Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation National Committee. But this did not stop them from claiming later, out of earshot of Militant supporters, both in Britain and internationally, that they were “really leading the campaign”."
http://www.socialistworld.net/pubs/history2/p16.html

[daft punk]

"Trotsky’s series of ‘transitional demands’ were a bridge from the existing level of consciousness of the working class at that stage to the idea of the socialist transformation of society. But the IST, beginning with Tony Cliff, rejected this idea. Cliff made his organisation’s view clear: “The basic assumption behind Trotsky’s transitional demands was that the economic crisis was so deep that the struggle for even the smallest improvement in workers’ conditions would bring conflict with the capitalist system itself. When life disproved the assumption the ground fell from beneath the programme.”20
No programme is put forward irrespective of the concrete historical conditions. Trotsky’s approach was entirely justified in the 1930s. But what Cliff did not understand was the change in the objective situation which flowed from the world upswing of capitalism in the post-1945 period, which did allow serious reforms to be conquered by the working class. Even then, contrary to Cliff’s assertion, the working class did actually implement some of the transitional demands outlined by Trotsky. For instance, for an historical period the Italian workers implemented the idea of a sliding scale of wages, through the scala mobile. The colossal development of the shop stewards’ committees in Britain, in the post WW2 period, and in other countries, was a partial realisation, in a slightly different form, of the demand in Trotsky’s programme for “factory committees”."


http://www.socialistworld.net/pubs/history2/p14.html

[Rooster]

Is there not some issue with his conception of what makes a class?

[daft punk]

Probably all sorts. A biggie was the state capitalism thing. The SWP zigzag quite a bit so it's hard to follow, I dont really pay it too much attention. There is tons about it on the CWI site, they even have a pamphlet on the SWP. The stuff I pasted above is just a couple of random things.
http://www.socialistworld.net/mob/doc/3344

[The Idler]

"even the Introduction to the Pluto Press version of Cliff`s State Capitalism in Russia was honest enough to recognise that "[t]he conclusion that the USSR represents a form of state capitalism was in no way novel. It was a view that had often been advanced before"

Another leader called Tony | The Socialist Party of Great Britain (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2000/no-1149-may-2000/another-leader-called-tony)

[robbo203]

Another leader called Tony | The Socialist Party of Great Britain (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2000/no-1149-may-2000/another-leader-called-tony)


A good article though it has to be said Cliff did produce some interesting and valuable stuff. I remember reading recently a very effective and empirically substantiated demolition job that he did on Lenin's dotty idea of the "labour aristocracy" in the West being "bribed" out of the so called superprofits made from imperialist investment in the Third World

[Q]

What exactly is wrong with Tony Cliff and why? I see a lot of flak being sent his way on this site but I've never really read anything of his. Well, I've read his stuff on state-capitalism in Russia a long time ago and the impression that I have, because I can't remember exact details, was that some of his conclusions didn't quite add up from the facts presented.

There has recently been some debate around Cliff's conception of party and working class organisation. This has been summed up recently here (http://cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004770), where the importance of this debate is explained. The debate, so far, includes:

- Mangling the party of Lenin (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004702) (former American ISO member Pham Binh makes his case).
- The mangling of Tony Cliff (http://links.org.au/node/2726) (Paul D’Amato replies)
- Revolutionary Method in the Study of Lenin (http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?page=article&id_article=24112) (Paul Le Blanc also replies)
- Falling out over a Cliff (http://cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004719) (Lars T Lih gives his own perspective and replies to all three as he has been misquoted and misunderstood when his research was called in for defense of the various positions).

[Dr Doom]

overrated hack. he defended support for the allies in the second world war throughout his life and his ideas especially regarding state capitalism were incredibly unoriginal.

[Rooster]

I remember reading recently a very effective and empirically substantiated demolition job that he did on Lenin's dotty idea of the "labour aristocracy" in the West being "bribed" out of the so called superprofits made from imperialist investment in the Third World

Can you remember what that was?

[Rooster]

overrated hack.

How so?


he defended support for the allies in the second world war throughout his life

Instead he should have been supporting....?


and his ideas especially regarding state capitalism were incredibly unoriginal.

Yeah but are they wrong? If so, in what way?

[Dr Doom]

How so?

its just lame when tony cliff and the SWP try and pass 'his' theory on state capitalism as something groundbreaking and original. when left communists had been saying that shit since 1918.


Instead he should have been supporting....?

um neither side.


Yeah but are they wrong? If so, in what way?

well i do believe the ussr was state capitalist but cliffs writings on the subject are quite weak when compared to others.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

um neither side.



Bollocks. Capitalism might be a fucking nightmare of a system for the working class, but Nazism was killing off entire populations of people. This wasn't a situation like NTC v Qaddafy, where both are as bad as each other. It's a clear case where one was far more dreadful a prospect than the other.

[NoPasaran1936]

Bollocks. Capitalism might be a fucking nightmare of a system for the working class, but Nazism was killing off entire populations of people. This wasn't a situation like NTC v Qaddafy, where both are as bad as each other. It's a clear case where one was far more dreadful a prospect than the other.

Exactly, fascism has to be fought with strength. If that means a unified front with capitalists, so be it. You can atleast argue what causes fascism; capitalism and gain support that way.

I on the otherhand, would defend the allied attack on Nazis.

[Dave B]

Cliff would have realised that soviet Russia was state capitalism from 1918 if he had read Grant's “refutation”.

Against the Theory of State Capitalism Reply to Comrade Cliff, 1949

And then gone on to read the;

Left wing childishness and the petty-bourgeois mentality. Collected Works, Volume 27, page 335


As cited in Grant's own article, Twelve paragraphs in from The Economics of the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism ;


"But what does the word 'transition' mean? Does it mean, as applied to economics, that the present order contains elements, particles, pieces of both capitalism and socialism? Everyone will admit that it does. But not all who admit this take the trouble to consider the precise nature of the elements that constitute the various social-economic forms which exist in Russia at the present time. And this is the crux of the question." (Left wing childishness and the petty-bourgeois mentality. Collected Works, Volume 27, page 335)




http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/grant/works/4/9/reply_to_tony_cliff.html



so then onto the next dot Left wing childishness and the petty-bourgeois mentality. Collected Works, Volume 27,



If the words we have quoted provoke a smile, the following discovery made by the "Left Communists" will provoke nothing short of Homeric laughter. According to them, under the "Bolshevik deviation to the right" the Soviet Republic is threatened with "evolution towards state capitalism". They have really frightened us this time! And with what gusto these "Left Communists" repeat this threatening revelation in their theses and articles. . . .


It has not occurred to them that state capitalism would be a step forward as compared with the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic. If in approximately six months' time state capitalism became established in our..........
page 335



http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/LWC18.html


It is like the game kids play, joining up the dots.

If anyone is struggling with it I can do it again more slowly and walk you through it with a spoon.

[daft punk]

Grant gave the idea of state capitalism to Cliff and then rejected it.

[Dave B]

For the Stalinists.

J. V. Stalin THE FOURTEENTH CONGRESS OF THE C.P.S.U.(B.)
December 18-31, 1925 (“Concerning State Capitalism”)





page 338

See how Lenin formulated our tasks when he gave the grounds for the New Economic Policy. Before me lies the draft of the pamphlet The Tax in Kind, written by Lenin, in which he clearly and distinctly gives the fundamental guiding lines:




http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/FC25.html




And in V. I. Lenin THE TAX IN KIND. Back again to ????????




In order to make this attempt I will take the liberty of quoting a long passage from my pamphlet, The Chief Task of Our Day. "Left-Wing" Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality. It was published by the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies in 1918 and contains, first, a newspaper article, dated March 11, 1918, on the Brest Peace, and, second, my polemic against the then existing group of Left Communists, dated May 5, 1918. The polemic is now superfluous and I omit it, leaving what appertains to the discussion on ,"state capitalism" an the main elements of our present-day economy, which is transitional from capitalism to socialism.

Here is what I wrote at the time:
page 330

THE PRESENT-DAY ECONOMY OF RUSSIA
(EXTRACT FROM THE 1918 PAMPHLET)

State capitalism would be a step forward as compared with the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic. If in approximately six months' time state capitalism became established in our Republic, this would be a great success and a sure guarantee that within a year socialism will have gained a permanently firm hold and will have become invincible in this country.

http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/TXK21.html

[Hit The North]

Anyone serious about understanding Cliff should read his work and not base their opinion on some of the hack opinions in this thread.

I saw Cliff speak many times and he was always an enthusiastic supporter of the international working class and spoke with a depth of knowledge that was impressive. Was he always right? No. Did he have weaknesses? Yes. But he was always a fighter for workers whether they were being bombed by Washington or run over by Soviet tanks and, in my opinion, he was amongst the front rank revolutionaries of his generation.

[Искра]

Bollocks. Capitalism might be a fucking nightmare of a system for the working class, but Nazism was killing off entire populations of people.
Nazism is capitalism. Capitalism is killing of entire populations of people.

[Hit The North]

Nazism is capitalism. Capitalism is killing of entire populations of people.

Yeah, dude, because, like, capitalism's everyday activity entails the extermination of peoples on the basis of their race and the erection of concentration death camps. :rolleyes:

[Dave B]

Aside from having expected the likes of Cliff and Grant to have read Trotsky’s The tasks of Young Communists from 1922.

[Incidentally there was a very brave and probably shortly dead Menshevik at that conference making a nuissance of himself by heckling on about state capitalism which was one reason Trotsky ‘dealt with it’. Forgot his name but I can find it I am sure.]


You would have expected them to have read Trotsky’s seminal anti Stalinist ‘Socialism in One Country' Essay.

Wouldn’t you?

Guess where we are going next?


The Program of the International Revolution or a Program of Socialism in One Country?

5. The Theoretical Tradition of The Party



At the beginning of the same year, i.e., 1918, Lenin, in his article entitled “On Left Wing Childishness and Petty Bourgeois Tendencies,” directed against Bukharin, wrote the following: “ If, let us say, state capitalism could be established in our country within six months, that would be a tremendous achievement and the surest guarantee that within a year socialism will be definitely established and will have become invincible.” [18]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1928/3rd/ti02.htm

[Искра]

Capitalism is actually mode of production... but whatever... it's extermianting people on the basis of their race, nationality, class or political affiliation for serveral centuries.

[Rooster]

its just lame when tony cliff and the SWP try and pass 'his' theory on state capitalism as something groundbreaking and original. when left communists had been saying that shit since 1918.

Isn't this acknowledged in one of the prefaces to the book on the subject?


well i do believe the ussr was state capitalist but cliffs writings on the subject are quite weak when compared to others.

What are those weaknesses? That's what I'm trying to understand. What other writings on the subject would you recommend then?

[Aurora]

Yeah, dude, because, like, capitalism's everyday activity entails the extermination of peoples on the basis of their race and the erection of concentration death camps. :rolleyes:
I'm sure your aware that the British invented the concentration camp and that the Americans rounded up the Japanese and put them in camps, so why should we support these democratic states any more that a fascist one?
WWI had no fascism and it managed to wipe out around 30-35 million people.

It's not the job of socialists to pick a temporarily nicer capitalist state it's our job to push forward working class interests, calling for workers to die for capitalism doesn't do that.

The only qualitative difference between WWI and WWII is that the SU was involved but Cliffites think the SU was capitalist so to be consistent presumably they should take a Zimmerwaldist position, but no, they take the position of Social-Patriotism.

[Dave B]

Also this time from; Alan Woods and Ted Grant


Lenin and Trotsky—what they really stood for- Chapter 7
Lenin's Struggle Against Bureaucracy 1969





In a speech at the Eleventh Party Congress in March, 1922, Lenin pointed out that the class nature of many who worked in the factories at this time was non-proletarian; that many were dodgers from military service, peasants and de-classed elements: ...................... (Works, vol. 33, page 299)

Also from V. I. Lenin ELEVENTH CONGRESS
OF THE R.C.P.(B.) March 27-April 22, 1922



The third, supplementary lesson is on the question of state capitalism. It is a pity Comrade Bukharin is not present at the Congress. I should have liked to argue with him a little, but that had better be postponed to the next Congress. On the question of state capitalism, I think that

page 278

generally our press and our Party make the mistake of dropping into intellectualism, into liberalism; we philosophise about how state capitalism is to be interpreted, and look into old books. But in those old books you will not find what we are discussing; they deal with the state capitalism that exists under capitalism.

Not a single book has been written about state capitalism under communism. It did not occur even to Marx to write a word on thissubject; and he died without leaving a single precise statement or definite instruction on it. That is why we must overcome the difficulty entirely by ourselves. And if we make a general mental survey of our press and see what has been written about state capitalism, as I tried to do when I was preparing this report, we shall be convinced that it is missing the target, that it is looking in an entirely wrong direction.

The state capitalism discussed in all books on economics is that which exists under the capitalist system, where the state brings under its direct control certain capitalist enterprises. But ours is a proletarian state it rests on the proletariat; it gives the proletariat all political privileges; and through the medium of the proletariat it attracts to itself the lower ranks of the peasantry (you remember that we began this work through the Poor Peasants Committees).

That is why very many people are misled by the term state capitalism. To avoid this we must remember the fundamental thing that state capitalism in the form we have here is not dealt with in any theory, or in any books, for the simple reason that all the usual concepts connected with this term are associated with bourgeois rule in capitalist society.

Our society is one which has left the rails of capitalism, but has not yot got on to new rails. The state in this society is not ruled by the bourgeoisie, but by the proletariat. We refuse to understand that when we say "state" we mean ourselves, the proletariat, the vanguard of the working class. State capitalism is capitalism which we shall be able to restrain, and the limits of which we shall be able to fix. This state capitalism is connected with the state, and the state is the workers, the advanced section of the workers, the vanguard. We are the state.


http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/EC22.html

And from Grant and Woods again;



Comrade Johnstone, after a desperate search through Lenin's Selected Works, can find only one quotation which can be even vaguely interpreted as implying the acceptance of the idea of "Socialism in One Country". Alas! the vagueness is dispelled by even a cursory glance at the text of this rough, uncorrected document which the Stalinists attempted, after Lenin's death, to summon to their aid. What Lenin is referring to in this article is not the "building of socialism" within the frontiers of the Tsarist empire, but the social forms which are necessary to carry out the gradual elimination of the elements of "state capitalism" (NEP) and then begin the tasks of socialist construction (electrification, industrialisation, etc). Lenin's careful qualifications, which emphasise the absence of the material basis for socialism, leave no doubt as to his position. Thus, referring to the need for a "cultural revolution" for the overcoming of material backwardness (and therefore of class conflicts in society) Lenin wrote:
"This cultural revolution would now suffice to make our country a completely socialist country; but it presents immense difficulties of a purely cultural (for we are illiterate) and material character (for to be cultured we must achieve a certain development of the material means of production, must have a certain material base)." (On Co-operation, Works, vol. 33, page 475)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1969/lat/7.htm
page 472

V. I. Lenin ON CO-OPERATION






II
Whenever I wrote about the New Economic Policy I always quoted the article on state capitalism[158] which I wrote in 1918. This has more than once aroused doubts in the minds of certain young comrades. But their doubts were mainly on abstract political points.

page 437


NOTES


[158] Lenin refers to his article "'Left-Wing' Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality" (see present edition, Vol. 27, pp. 323-54). [p.472]


http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/OC23.html#en158

Not Rocket Science is it???????????


and then mentioned Ted's main contribution to Marxism, The Marxist Theory of the State, which was a reply to Tony Cliff (http://www.tedgrant.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm)'s flawed theory of state capitalism.



"You know, Ted sometimes said to me that he didn't know why Lenin and Trotsky (http://www.revleft.com/lenin-trotsky-stalinism-johnstone.htm) wrote so many books. Nobody reads them and if they do they don't understand the ideas!"
http://www.marxist.com/revolutionary-ted-grant-memorial-meeting.htm

[Hit The North]

I'm sure your aware that the British invented the concentration camp and that the Americans rounded up the Japanese and put them in camps, so why should we support these democratic states any more that a fascist one?
WWI had no fascism and it managed to wipe out around 30-35 million people.


Yes, comrade, I am aware of these facts. I am an anti-capitalist communist. This doesn't mean that I gloss over differences between normal functioning capitalism and exceptional states like Nazi Germany. Neither does it mean it commits me to support one side over the other in WW2.


It's not the job of socialists to pick a temporarily nicer capitalist state it's our job to push forward working class interests, calling for workers to die for capitalism doesn't do that.Yes, and Cliff, probably more than other leaders of his generation, resolutely refused to favour one capitalist power over another and he did this under the slogan of Neither Washington Nor Moscow but International Socialism.


The only qualitative difference between WWI and WWII is that the SU was involved but Cliffites think the SU was capitalist so to be consistent presumably they should take a Zimmerwaldist position, but no, they take the position of Social-Patriotism.
If they do take these positions (and I don't know if they do) then they take them retrospectively as there were no such thing as "Cliffites" during WW2, as you well know.

Meanwhile, if Cliff held this position it was because at this time he believed that the USSR was some kind of workers state (he wasn't born with the theory of state capitalism!). And like nearly every other revolutionary of his generation, having witnessed the murderous Nazi persecution of communists, socialists, anarchist and trade unionists and their military backing of the crushing of the Spanish Republic, he was under no illusions that the clear and present danger to world civilization was the barbarous Nazi regimes.

This current fashionable left communist notion that there was no qualitative difference between Nazism and bourgeois democracy is just abstract nonsense, empty of empirical detail, but heavy with rhetoric.

But more to the point, what is the implication of Cliff's alleged support for the allies in WW2 for the later theory and practice of the IST? Which other national bourgeois power did they cosy up to in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s and today, in your opinion? Or is your criticism simply that he held a position as a young man that did not accord with his theory as a mature theorist?

[Omsk]

Prole Art Threat, are you supportive of the struggle of the people of the USSR in their war against Nazi Germany?

[Hit The North]

Prole Art Threat, are you supportive of the struggle of the people of the USSR in their war against Nazi Germany?

This is an academic question. But, yes, Germany invaded the USSR, laid waste to its population, and if victorious would have instigated a massive program of ethnic cleansing; so of course I support the self-defence of the Russian people.

[Rooster]

Prole Art Threat, are you supportive of the struggle of the people of the USSR in their war against Nazi Germany?

Can we please not derail the thread with this bullshit? I don't care about personal preferences of users here. I'd rather learn about Tony Cliff.

[A Marxist Historian]

How so?



Instead he should have been supporting....?



Yeah but are they wrong? If so, in what way?

I think this is actually unfair to Cliff (something I don't say that often, he's not one of my favorite folk.)

To the best of my knowledge, Cliff then had and for the rest of his life still had the classic Marxist position that WWII was an imperialist war, just as imperialist for the allies (except for the USSR in the opinion of Cliff actually *during* WWII, though later he changed his mind unfortunately), so you oppose both sides and call for revolutionary defeatism, just like in WWI.

Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo and Nagasaki were not better than the Holocaust, just different imperialist atrocities.

-jh-

[A Marxist Historian]

Isn't this acknowledged in one of the prefaces to the book on the subject?



What are those weaknesses? That's what I'm trying to understand. What other writings on the subject would you recommend then?

Cliff's version of state capitalism, though popular here on Revleft, is I believe one of the feebler ones theoretically. The Bordigist version is better theoretically, but even further detached from reality.

I think the popularity of the Cliff version is because his empirical descriptions of Russia are not as bizarre as those of those Marxists who do a better job of staying consistent with Marxist theory, but therefore look pretty weird to anyone with any knowledge of Soviet reality. That it's poor Marxism is less of a problem, as most contemporary leftists have fairly feeble understanding of Marxism anyway.

The classic demolition of Cliff's Marxist pretensions was written some 40 years ago by a Brit named Ken Tarbuck, definitely worth reading.

http://www.bolshevik.org/history/misc/tarbuck.htm

-M.H.-

[Ostrinski]

Does anyone here have a good word for Tony Cliff or is he just that much of a bastard?

[dodger]

Does anyone here have a good word for Tony Cliff or is he just that much of a bastard?

Put it this way, the man does 1 years paid labour in '36, never been in a union.
He then has the audacity to lecture hector and crow like a cockerel, how workers should proceed. Not only within the shores of Britain, but every soul on the planet. What have Taafe, Grant, Healy Benn got in common with me? Cliff take a hike. Cranky ideas divorced from everyday life are useless, to be ignored.They all should have stayed in the Labour Party. That was their natural home. British general staff 40miles behind the trenches in a French Chateau were more in touch with the troops than those clowns.

[robbo203]

Can you remember what that was?


Yes it was an article written back in the 1950s entitled "Economic roots of reformism" (Socialist Review, Vol.6 No.9, June 1957) in which Cliff maintained that increases in the average standard of living tend to go with a narrowing of wage differentials (though this would not necessarily apply to the relative position of workers as a whole vis-a-vis the capitalists). He went on to present data which clearly showed that the ratio of wages of skilled labour to unskilled labour was markedly lower in an economically advanced country such as Britain than in a relatively backward one like Rumania. Not only that, whereas the former had considerable investments in parts of the world from whence "superprofits" could be drawn, the latter had virtually none and presumbly therefore had no means of "bribing" its own labour aristocracy as Lenin nonsensically claimed.

In short, the position of the well paid worker compared to other workers was significantly better in a poor country like Rumania than it was in "imperialist Britain". This directly contradicts what the labour aristocracy thesis would lead us to expect.

[robbo203]

Can you remember what that was?



Yes, it was an article written back in the 1950s entitled "Economic roots of reformism" (Socialist Review, Vol.6 No.9, June 1957) in which Cliff maintained that increases in the average standard of living tend to go with a narrowing of wage differentials (though this would not necessarily apply to the relative position of workers as a whole vis-a-vis the capitalists). He went on to present data which clearly showed that the ratio of wages of skilled labour to unskilled labour was markedly lower in an economically advanced country such as Britain than in a relatively backward one like Rumania. Not only that, whereas the former had considerable investments in parts of the world from whence "superprofits" could be drawn, the latter had virtually none and presumbly therefore had no means of "bribing" its own labour aristocracy as Lenin nonsensically claimed.

In short, the position of the well paid worker compared to other workers was significantly better in a poor country like Rumania than it was in "imperialist Britain". This directly contradicts what the labour aristocracy thesis would lead us to expect.

[Hit The North]

Cliff's version of state capitalism, though popular here on Revleft, is I believe one of the feebler ones theoretically. The Bordigist version is better theoretically, but even further detached from reality.


Oh dear. How can something be theoretically "better" but more detached from reality? Isn't the sole purpose of a theory to model and explain an aspect of reality?


That it's poor Marxism is less of a problem, as most contemporary leftists have fairly feeble understanding of Marxism anyway.
As you prove in your own case with your weird and unMarxist interpretation of theory. Theory needs to be proved in practice. Any theory that is detached from reality is therefore useless.

[Hit The North]

Put it this way, the man does 1 years paid labour in '36, never been in a union.
He then has the audacity to lecture hector and crow like a cockerel, how workers should proceed. Not only within the shores of Britain, but every soul on the planet. What have Taafe, Grant, Healy Benn got in common with me? Cliff take a hike. Cranky ideas divorced from everyday life are useless, to be ignored.They all should have stayed in the Labour Party. That was their natural home. British general staff 40miles behind the trenches in a French Chateau were more in touch with the troops than those clowns.

Have you got Marx's, Lenin's, Trotsky's and Luxemburg's CVs to hand? Not very impressive in terms of the working class jobs they held down are they? Charlatans! :rolleyes:

And the idea that Cliff's work was divorced from reality and not concerned with the day-to-day class struggle, merely shows that you have not been keeping up with your reading.

[Devrim]

well i do believe the ussr was state capitalist but cliffs writings on the subject are quite weak when compared to others
What are those weaknesses? That's what I'm trying to understand. What other writings on the subject would you recommend then?

There was a long series of articles (http://libcom.org/library/what-was-ussr-aufheben) in the UK magazine Aufheben which addressed this question. The section concerning Cliff is near the end of part one (http://libcom.org/library/what-was-the-ussr-aufheben-1).

It isn't a piece I agree with completely, but it does provide a good introduction to the question.

Devrim

[Devrim]

Does anyone here have a good word for Tony Cliff or is he just that much of a bastard?

He bought me drinks all night the last time I saw him, shame about his politics though.

Devrim

[Devrim]

Yes, and Cliff, probably more than other leaders of his generation, resolutely refused to favour one capitalist power over another and he did this under the slogan of Neither Washington Nor Moscow but International Socialism.

I think that there was a point in the 1950s (i.e. Korea) when this was true, but certainly by the time of the Vietnam war he had dropped the position if not the slogan. In reality the groups influenced by Cliff took a position of 'Either Washington or Moscow', in a whole host of Cold War conflicts ranging from Vietnam to Afghanistan.


But more to the point, what is the implication of Cliff's alleged support for the allies in WW2 for the later theory and practice of the IST? Which other national bourgeois power did they cosy up to in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s and today, in your opinion? Or is your criticism simply that he held a position as a young man that did not accord with his theory as a mature theorist?

I don't think that it was just something that he held as a young man though. I don't think he ever broke from that position, and perhaps nor have you:


This is an academic question. But, yes, Germany invaded the USSR, laid waste to its population, and if victorious would have instigated a massive program of ethnic cleansing; so of course I support the self-defence of the Russian people.

It sounds very like 'defencism' to me, the communist position was turn the imperialist war into a class war.

Devrim

[black magick hustla]

Yeah, dude, because, like, capitalism's everyday activity entails the extermination of peoples on the basis of their race and the erection of concentration death camps. :rolleyes:

capitalism can take many "forms", some of them more erratic/bizarre than the others, the only requirement is the application of the law of value.

[Rooster]

Anyone serious about understanding Cliff should read his work and not base their opinion on some of the hack opinions in this thread.

Any suggestions?


Probably all sorts. A biggie was the state capitalism thing.

But isn't one of the main problems with his state-capitalist theory is his idea of what constituted a capitalist class?

To everyone else, thanks for the suggestions. I'll try to get through some of links supplied at some point.

[Brosip Tito]

Any suggestions?I would suggest:

- Rosa Luxemburg,
- The Nature of Stalinist Russia,
- State Capitalism in Russia,
- Stalinist Russia: A Marxist Analysis (Most of this is comprised of the above two, but is lacking some parts).
- And if you are interested in the Israel-Palestine conflict, he wrote quite a bit on the mid east.

All are here (https://epress.anu.edu.au/archive/cliff/index.htm).

[Hit The North]

I think that there was a point in the 1950s (i.e. Korea) when this was true, but certainly by the time of the Vietnam war he had dropped the position if not the slogan. In reality the groups influenced by Cliff took a position of 'Either Washington or Moscow', in a whole host of Cold War conflicts ranging from Vietnam to Afghanistan.


Easy to say, harder to prove. But you have the opportunity now...


I don't think that it was just something that he held as a young man though. I don't think he ever broke from that position, and perhaps nor have you:


Originally Posted by Prole Art Threat http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2398995#post2398995)
This is an academic question. But, yes, Germany invaded the USSR, laid waste to its population, and if victorious would have instigated a massive program of ethnic cleansing; so of course I support the self-defence of the Russian people.

It sounds very like 'defencism' to me, the communist position was turn the imperialist war into a class war.


You mean the so-called 'left communist' position? The official communist position was defence of the USSR. And for the record are you arguing that the Russian and Ukrainian workers were in any position to turn their guns on the Stalinist bureaucracy when they had a Nazi knife to their throats?

And it may sound like 'defencism', but given the concrete circumstances, defence against Nazi barbarism was the moral imperative.

[Hit The North]

capitalism can take many "forms", some of them more erratic/bizarre than the others, the only requirement is the application of the law of value.

All "forms" being equal, I suppose?

[black magick hustla]

All "forms" being equal, I suppose?

I don't think indians starving to death in similar numbers to jews being killed in concentration camps because they were sustaining the british war effort with their resources cared too much about that type of value judgements.

[Hit The North]

Originally Posted by Brospierre http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2399542#post2399542)
Does anyone here have a good word for Tony Cliff or is he just that much of a bastard?

In the context of his peers, Healey and Grant, Cliff has much to recommend him. He helped to create an independent socialist workers party that, at its peak, was youthful, vibrant and innovative. This in part reflected Cliff's own approach which refused to cling to dogma and orthodoxy and struck out on an original course. In comparison both Grant and Healy remained trapped in out-moded Trotskyist positions. Healy created a sect that nurtured an atmosphere of abuse (often sexual, according to some ex-members) and was bank-rolled by middle eastern and north African dictators; whilst Grant took ten thousand socialists into the wilderness of left reformism with his inflexible attachment to the tactic of entryism.

[Hit The North]

I don't think indians starving to death in similar numbers to jews being killed in concentration camps because they were sustaining the british war effort with their resources cared too much about that type of value judgements.

This is an interesting historical fact: six million Indians starving as a direct result of their resources being channelled into the British war effort. I would very much like to see the documentary evidence for this so I can use it in my propaganda against the British state. Perhaps you will oblige.

But I note you don't answer the question: are all "forms" of capitalism equal in your opinion?

[Grenzer]

You mean the so-called 'left communist' position? The official communist position was defence of the USSR. And for the record are you arguing that the Russian and Ukrainian workers were in any position to turn their guns on the Stalinist bureaucracy when they had a Nazi knife to their throats?

And it may sound like 'defencism', but given the concrete circumstances, defence against Nazi barbarism was the moral imperative.

If by 'official communist' you mean the puppets of Moscow who conflate state ownership with socialism, then you are right.

And moral imperative? This doesn't sound like a very materialist position. I mean I understand where you're coming from entirely, but I think hustla brings up a good point.

[Hit The North]

I This doesn't sound like a very materialist position.

If by "materialist position" you mean one devoid of any notions of human value, then you are right, it isn't. But then I'm not that kind of materialist.

[black magick hustla]

This is an interesting historical fact: six million Indians starving as a direct result of their resources being channelled into the British war effort. I would very much like to see the documentary evidence for this so I can use it in my propaganda against the British state. Perhaps you will oblige.
Google Bengal Famine, I don't have time to do your homework. There is even a New York Times article about it.




But I note you don't answer the question: are all "forms" of capitalism equal in your opinion?

I don't really play those games, so I won't answer your question.

[Devrim]

Easy to say, harder to prove. But you have the opportunity now...

I don't think it needs to be 'proven'. The positions taken by the SWP and its forerunners are well know. They did take sides in the Vietnam war, which in my opinion this was part of a wider inter-imperialist conflict, and if you accept that they took the side of Moscow. The same can be said of many other conflicts since. The question is not to 'prove' whether they did, or not. The facts are clear. What could be contested is the analysis of the nature of these conflicts, but then that is something that can not be 'proven'.


You mean the so-called 'left communist' position? The official communist position was defence of the USSR. And for the record are you arguing that the Russian and Ukrainian workers were in any position to turn their guns on the Stalinist bureaucracy when they had a Nazi knife to their throats?

I am not quite sure why it is 'so-called' left communist: It was a label that Lenin used so it should be good enough for you.

Anyway, what you are saying could be applied equally to the First World War. Should Belgium or Serbian workers have taken class positions when the Germans were attacking them, and had the proverbial 'knife at their throats'?

In 1914 in the outburst of jingoism, it didn't seem like workers in Russia were in a position to turn their guns on their bosses, and yet three years later they did. I don't say that this would have happened in the Second World War, but the fact that the official 'communist' position argued for defencism in the allied countries including opposing strikes by workers in those countries certainly made it less likely.

Devrim

[Devrim]

In the context of his peers, Healey and Grant, Cliff has much to recommend him.

I'd agree, though comparing somebody to Healy isn't actually much of a recommendation.

Devrim

[Q]

There has recently been some debate around Cliff's conception of party and working class organisation. This has been summed up recently here (http://cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004770), where the importance of this debate is explained. The debate, so far, includes:

- Mangling the party of Lenin (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004702) (former American ISO member Pham Binh makes his case).
- The mangling of Tony Cliff (http://links.org.au/node/2726) (Paul D’Amato replies)
- Revolutionary Method in the Study of Lenin (http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?page=article&id_article=24112) (Paul Le Blanc also replies)
- Falling out over a Cliff (http://cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004719) (Lars T Lih gives his own perspective and replies to all three as he has been misquoted and misunderstood when his research was called in for defense of the various positions).
Pham Binh wrote a new reply: Wanting to get Lenin wrong (http://cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004775).

[Sir Comradical]

He refused to defend Korean communists during the Korean war because for him, both sides were imperialist or some shit. Plus all that 'state capitalism' nonsense. A revisionist traitor. Type his name into the ICL search box. They quite rightly drag him through the mud.

http://www.icl-fi.org/

[A Marxist Historian]

Yes it was an article written back in the 1950s entitled "Economic roots of reformism" (Socialist Review, Vol.6 No.9, June 1957) in which Cliff maintained that increases in the average standard of living tend to go with a narrowing of wage differentials (though this would not necessarily apply to the relative position of workers as a whole vis-a-vis the capitalists). He went on to present data which clearly showed that the ratio of wages of skilled labour to unskilled labour was markedly lower in an economically advanced country such as Britain than in a relatively backward one like Rumania. Not only that, whereas the former had considerable investments in parts of the world from whence "superprofits" could be drawn, the latter had virtually none and presumbly therefore had no means of "bribing" its own labour aristocracy as Lenin nonsensically claimed.

In short, the position of the well paid worker compared to other workers was significantly better in a poor country like Rumania than it was in "imperialist Britain". This directly contradicts what the labour aristocracy thesis would lead us to expect.

Mechanical materialism of the worst sort.

In colonial countries, you have combined and uneven development, with modern top of the line capitalist enterprises existing side by side with stuff unchanged from hundreds or even thousands of years ago. So of course, you have much higher wages in the advanced modern sectors. And yes indeed, this means you get a labor aristocracy in colonial countries. This in fact was the basis of Frantz Fanon's rejection of the proletariat as the revolutionary class in Africa, as all too often the tiny trade unions of the very small labor aristocracy of countries like Upper Volta supported colonialism, which had enabled them to escape out of extreme rural poverty.

In an imperialist country, the whole country is on more or less the same level of economic development, so of course the wage differentials are much less.

In general, the average wage levels are much higher in a successful imperialist country such as England in the 19th Century or the USA now, due precisely to the imperial superprofits flowing in to the imperial bourgeoisie, which make it possible for the bourgeoisie to throw scraps to part or all of its proletariat to pacify them, if need be.

That this has a lot to do with the conservatism of the British proletariat in the late 19th Century, and the American in the 20th, is I think self-evident.

And though the monetary differentials are not as huge as in colonial countries between the more aristocratic portion of the proletariat and the lower levels, they are marked, and have a tremendous effect on consciousness. Especially nowadays, when you get a skin color and/or citizenship marker after the American pattern between the top layers of the proletariat and the bottom--an American custom that has spread to England and continental Europe. Hasn't spread that much yet to Japan only because Japan lets in so few immigrants.

As someone who spent over twenty years of his life in a thoroughly labor aristocratic union, I can assure you that my fellow labor aristocrats were intensely conscious of what they were, and definitely looked down on lower levels of the working class. OTOH, their level of union consciousness was very high, and that sometimes (not often enough) overrode that. And the large number of leftists in my union local helped too.

Though some of them were badly infected with labor aristocratic attitudes too...

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Oh dear. How can something be theoretically "better" but more detached from reality? Isn't the sole purpose of a theory to model and explain an aspect of reality?

As you prove in your own case with your weird and unMarxist interpretation of theory. Theory needs to be proved in practice. Any theory that is detached from reality is therefore useless.

"Better" in the sense of less contradictory, abstractly speaking, to the Marxist theoretical premises of the theorist.

I could not agree with you more that any theory, no matter how beautifully self-consistent it may be in the abstract, is useless if it doesn't correspond to reality.

So "bureaucratic collectivism," since it is basically just a variant of the standard bourgeois theory of the USSR, namely "totalitarianism," can have some limited predictive value when examining a society like the USSR, just as do the writings of bourgeois anti-communist scholars in general. "State capitalism," which is totally detached from reality, has none.

If you think I believe either bureaucratic collectivism or state capitalism have any real worth whatsoever, you misunderstood me completely.

-M.H.-

[Q]

There has recently been some debate around Cliff's conception of party and working class organisation. This has been summed up recently here (http://cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004770), where the importance of this debate is explained. The debate, so far, includes:

- Mangling the party of Lenin (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004702) (former American ISO member Pham Binh makes his case).
- The mangling of Tony Cliff (http://links.org.au/node/2726) (Paul D’Amato replies)
- Revolutionary Method in the Study of Lenin (http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?page=article&id_article=24112) (Paul Le Blanc also replies)
- Falling out over a Cliff (http://cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004719) (Lars T Lih gives his own perspective and replies to all three as he has been misquoted and misunderstood when his research was called in for defense of the various positions).
Pham Binh wrote a new reply: Wanting to get Lenin wrong (http://cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004775).
And yet two more replies:
- 1912 and 2012 (http://cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004784) - Paul Le Blanc argues that the Bolsheviks constituted themselves as a separate party at the Prague conference and advocates a 'united front' for today's disunited Marxist left
- Both Pham Binh and Paul Le Blanc are wrong (http://cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004785) - The left has never properly grasped the history and significance of Bolshevism, argues Mike Macnair