Stop the War coalition censorship of critics

Both Hands Off the People Of Iran and Communist Students have had their affiliation revoked by the Stop the War Coalition (STWC) leadership – because of their opposition to both an imperialist attack on Iran and the theocratic regime in Teheran. This policy has been characterized by StWC chair, Andrew Murray, as "entirely hostile to the Coalition". A comment that speaks greatly of the approach currently supported by the Coalition on the issue of Iran.

In the face of criticisms made by both Communist Students and Hands Off the People of Iran the leadership of the coalition has resorted to ham-fisted exclusion. This should be condemned by any principled internationalists - quite regardless of whether they support the campaign aims of either organisation.

The full press-release can be read on the HOPOI site.

I'd ask that you all take a few seconds out of your day to email the STWC leadership to complain about this blatant censoring of critical voices. You may do so here

The History of Capitalism

Both within the later-parts of the first volume of Capital and in other writings such as Grundrisse Karl Marx provides an overview of the origins and development of capitalist economy seemingly at odds with that most commonly ascribed to Marxist political philosophy.

Far from the common sense conception of Marxism expressing the simple reduction of "legal and political" structure of society to the "base" relations of production in a fairly mechanistic and automated fashion, these writings suggest a depth of historical understanding not easily evident by the accusations often leveled at Marx by his detractors.

While I’m not sure that Marx devoted huge tracts of writing on the precise nature of the developmental stages of abstract capitalism, those sections in which Marx does mention these processes are very illuminating. Marx notes in Grundrisse for example the ‘contradictory form’ of bourgeoisie society containing as it does relations “derived from earlier forms … in an entirely stunted form” [1].

Within the chapters ‘The origins of the Capitalist Farmer’ and the ‘Modern Theory of Colonalisation’ Marx appears to provide a proto-psychological basis for the advent of capitalist accumulation, noting that:

The advance of capitalist production develops a working class that by education, tradition and habit looks upon the requirements of that mode of production as self-evident natural laws [2]

Marx talks of slavery as providing the embryonic basis of primitive accumulation before noting the exponential growth in ships employed in this trade, suggesting that (within America) the cotton industry provided the basis for “commercial exploitation”. Fermenting the “eternal natural laws” of capitalist accumulation [2]. The use of this term may well be an ironic dig at those that presume – as many continue to do so – that the laws of capital are unchangingly rigid expressions of eternal economic phenomena, upon which we may perhaps affix phrases such as that of “human nature”. Marx makes short thrift of such ideas by smashing the notion that features characteristic of capitalist economic relations, such as that of money, “wade through all economic relations” [1]. Noting the midwife of force inherent in tumultuous societal change, Capital nears its end with a closing remark on the blood and dirt the history of capital comes “dripping with from head to toe” [3].



[1] http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm
[2] http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm
[3] http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm#n15

Stalinism and the 'Democratic People's Republic of North Korea’

A fascinatingly macabre insight into both the workings of a stanoloid state-machine and what remains of those grouping that unquestioningly follow them has been provided courtesy of a curious grouping calling itself the All Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (ALCPB). The grouping seems to exist without many of the links binding the U.K. Stalinist left to the official communism of the now non-existent Communist Party of Great Britain, suggesting a U.K. membership limited beyond even that of the remnants of the existing Stalinist left.

The AUCPB has posted within their internet group forum an official North Korean press-release titled Spirit of Defending Leader with Very Life Displayed in Flood-hit Areas. The article notes and comments upon the effects of the recent flooding affecting the ‘Democratic Peoples Republic of North Korea’ (DPRNK) by remarking on the lengths workers have supposed to have gone to in order to protect images glorifying the country's leader, President Kim Il Sung. The article comments rather amazingly:

among such people are peasant of the Jongdong Co-op Farm in Phyonggang County Cha Hyang Mi who handed over portraits (of President Kim Il Sung) to rescuers and went to the bottom of the torrent water, peasant of the same farm Pak Jong Ryol who lost his wife and child by landslide but saved the portraits and worker of the Ichon Foodstuff Factory Kang Hyong Gwon who firmly took portraits in his hands in flood though his five-year-old daughter slipped down from his back (2)

(1)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union
(2)http://www.tongilkorea.net/?action=fullnews&id=8276

Lindsey German and the Grand Old Duke of York

A "Student Organising Meeting" was called at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) on Saturday 8 September, with speakers including NUS President Gemma Tumelty, Lindsey German and Tony Benn of the Stop the War Committee (STWC).

Writing in the pages of Socialist Worker, Assed Baig prefaced a report of the meeting by noting, apparently without irony, "things have changed" [1]. Beyond wafer-thin displays of public-unity between Gemma Tumelty and the Stop the War leadership, the meeting reaffirmed the central importance the STWC intends to assign the “Grand old Duke of York” approach to demonstrations in the coming year.

Lindsey German provided a perfunctory speech on the "global" successes of the anti-war movement. Highlighting the "lobby of parliament" on 8 October, she paused only briefly to brush aside suggestions that student activists might question the strategy of a march, distinguishable from the last only by its dwindling number of attendees.

Perhaps fearing that promises of unceasing protest may have sounded more menacing than originally intended, the crowd were treated to a seemingly endless shopping-list of Stop the War achievements, ranging from the premature ejection of Blair from office to the “recent decision to withdraw British troops from Basra to a base outside the city” [1].
That the leadership of the STWC felt compelled to rally the troops to hear about these latest achievements suggests that they at least partially recognise the demoralising effect of asking a fairly small core of activists to repeat unchanging slogans, in lieu of a wider strategy for change.

Ben Lewis of Communist Students commented on the “global” anti-war movement Lindsey German had made not inconsiderable reference to, by highlighting the existence of an anti imperialist anti-war movement in Iran and the ripe opportunity this presents for principled unity among Iranian workers, women and students in opposition to Iran’s Islamic regime, while opposing US imperialism.

This position of solidarity was in turn caricatured by an SWP member from the floor, with the expressed support of the STWC leadership on the platform, as dictating to the Iranian left. Unsurprising though this may be, such an attempt to deflect criticism with convenient hyperbole should be met with the disapproval it deserves.

[1] http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=12990

Gay Rights in Iran & The SWP

The issue of rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans individuals (LGBT) has reached unparalleled prevalence on the far-left within the last 20 years or so, related discussion feature in the Socialist Workers Party’s ‘Marxism’ and the Socialist Party’s ‘Socialism’ events yearly. Accusations of retrospective homophobia levelled at Socialist Party comrades are dismissed as nonsense, or simply attributed to the lingering ideological baggage of previous political leaders. Such as Socialist Appeal’s Ted Grant – a man prone to describing the movement for gay liberation as “petty bourgeois” nonsense [1].

That the language used by sections of the left in reference to these issues has changed is not expressive of a reawakening of the left to the importance of these issues. Far from the championing the rights of oppressed and minorities groups within the last five years there has instead been an abdication of basic solidarity within many of the most oppressed and marginalized within these groupings.

Comments made by Lindsey German of the Respect Party most clearly express the Herculean task sections of the far-left have set themselves in accommodating phantom right-wing reaction of every shade and hue. This is perhaps most famously expressed by the characterization of the rights of gays and women as expendable in an attempt to avoid “shibboleths” at the Marxism 2003 meeting ‘Revolutionaries & the left’ [2].

That Respect has had to begrudgingly accommodate – if just formally – an acknowledgement of the rights of LGBT individuals within the material it publishes says something about the measure of pressure exerted on the leadership in the face of previous omissions and oversights [3].

I cite these examples not for the joy of the inarticulate genuflection within which they are couched but to instead suggest it is expressive of the wider politics of the Socialist Workers Party’s role inside and outside of Respect. Beyond the lip-service occasionally paid to the issue at conference time and in policy documents scant attention is provided by the Socialist Workers Party to the rights of oppressed minorities they begrudgingly champion, as is most clearly the case in Iran.

Reading the pages of the ‘Socialist Worker’ one would not know that there even existed a persecuted LGBT movement in Iran, a belief that would seem to oddly coincide with views attributed to London Central Mosque cleric Sheikh Sharkhawy, that homosexuality simply does not exist in the Islamic Republic of Iran [4].

Until recently the most obvious omission of this fact related to the scant coverage of the hanging of two gay teenagers – an act rightly condemned by gay rights organizations such as Outrage! The threatened deportation from the UK of Iranian lesbian Pegah Emambakhsh to near certain “arrest, imprisonment, torture, lashings and/or possible execution” looks set to continue this tradition of silence on the part of the Socialist Workers Party – members of which can expect very few articles about the persecution of Pegah and others like her [5].

The attacks on gay minorities in this and other instances are attacks on us all and should rightly be met with the vocal and continuous outrage they deserve. The task of principled communists is to call on the unity of LGBT minorities, students and workers to condemn these acts and fight against the capitalist fundamentalists that threaten and divide them, as part of a wider project of principled international solidarity in opposition to imperialist war and regime change from above.


[1] http://www.marxist.com/the-theoretical-origins-of-the-degeneration-of-the-fourth-interview-with-ted-g-3.htm

[2] http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/602/respect%20LGBT.htm

[3] http://www.ukgaynews.org.uk/Archive/2005nov/2202.htm

[4] http://www.ilga.info/Information/Legal_survey/europe/supporting%20files/out_and_muslim_in_the_united_kin.htm

[5] http://www.petertatchell.net/international/savepegah.htm

Marx, Negri & Callinicos

Hardt and Negri's 'Multitude' - a Foucaultian appraisal of the phenomena of globalisation in reference to the emergence of a diverse 'multitude' contains an interesting comment on the nature of Marxist Labour Theory of Value, namely that:

"Marx adopts from the classical philosophers the Maxim that in Capitalist society the source of all value and wealth is labour" [1: pg 144]

Interestingly the point that Marx indeed "adopted" a labour theory of value - namely, rejected the implication that labour itself is the sole source of wealth is hardly touched upon by Negri - who instead choosing to build upon a conflated misconception of Marxist theory to make wider points on the nature of Abstract labour.

The point I raise here is of interest to the debates surrounding the opening line of the 'What We Stand For' column of the Socialist Workers Party's 'Socialist Worker, namely the statement that under capitalism "The Workers create all the wealth" [2].

While we may find it less strange to attribute statements of this kind to a theorist standing in the tradition Negri does - shunning Capital as a flawed work that:

Served to reduce critique to economic theory, to annihilate subjectivity in objectivity, to subject the subversive capacity of the proletariat to the reorganising and repressive intelligence of capitalist power' [3].

It may be considered a rather more curious statement for an avowedly Neo-Marxist organisation to make. Amusingly it is SWP theoretical big-wig Alex Callinicos that takes Negri to task most comprehensively for his contradictory 'reading' of Marx [3]. Callinicos notes that the primacy assumed by labour "as subjectivity, as source, as potential of all wealth" contradicts with Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program' namely the statement that:

Labour is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists) as labour, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labour power

Jack Conrad of the CPGB has correctly analysed the Socialist Worker's 'What We Stand For' column in 'One-dimensional Marxism and proposition one' [2] and drawn wider conclusions about the Economistic divergence from Marxism it - in part - expresses. That Callinicos has made criticisms of this particular 'misreading' of Marx (albeit via the work of Negri) as "symptomatic of a deeper conceptual shift" is telling.


[1] Multitude - Negri / Hardt
[2] http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/605/nature.htm
[3] http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj92/callinicos.htm

Old Marx Vs Yound Marx

First an apology, I have been delayed from contributing to this blog due to a number of largely work-related factors, as Engels poignently remarked at Marx's funeral oration: "man must, before all else, eat, drink, live and clothe himself, and then only can he engage in politics, science, art, religion, etc!" [1]

My first exposure to Marx as a teenager was via the 'Philosophical and Economic manuscripts' - and to some extent - these paved the way for the development of much of my thought on topics surrounding Marx and Marxism and my understanding of it. These are essencially the early writings of Marx (identified by some as spanning the period up until the publication of the German Ideology). The great deal of theory on early and late Marx seems to have grown exponentially with time. It may perhaps be said that this point relates to the relatively more recent publication of a lot of Marx's earlier writings.

Comments that have been made with regards to the early 'humanistic' Marx - attributable here to Easton in his 'Alienation and the Early Marx' - are an important reference point for how we understand the development of Marxist thought. Reading Hayek's "Road to Serfdom" it becomes clearly apparent the entirely unproblematic reading of 'Socialism' or indeed 'Marxism' that have been utilised by opponents (as though such a homogenous entity ever existed).

There are - unsurprisingly - discernable differences within the work of 'early and late' Marx, the suggestion found within the 'Philosophical and Economic Manuscripts' that Man himself becomes a commodity is quite a contrast to a later Marxist conception of man's exploitation on the basis of the nature of his ability to sell his labour a valorisation of capital (i.e the production of surplus value in conflict with the interests of the owners of the means of production). While, in other sections of the Manuscripts Marx describes briefly the "palaces" capitalism produces, alongside the worker's "hovels" - hinting at the later work of Engels's 'Condition of the Working Class in England'. The concepts of alienation, an inherent 'human nature' (or species-being) and the commodification of this human nature are some of the key characteristic features of the work.

The point Easton makes - that we may distinguish two distinct Marxs) relates to an understanding of a later deterministic Marx (as expressed by Capital and Theories of Surplus Labour) betraying the early humanistic Marx. It is noted, for example, that the topic of alienation is not something to which Marx does not returns in detail in later works [2]. While it may be said that we find within works such as 'Theories of Surplus Value' a scope for later deterministicly inevitable relationship to capitalist crisis - with millennial overtones of future joy, serenity, prosperity, and justice - in which development seems intrinstictly caotic and prone to dramatic crisis.

I remember once being asked quite good-naturedly by a fellow student which was the 'right' Marx - the early or the late: I gave a fairly perfunctory reply and then went away and had a good think. While The Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 were I believe published posthumously, it seems clear that we should not view any of the formative writings of the period as 'fixed' in stone, expressing rigidly unchanging thought. At the risk of providing a cop-out, In much the same way that Marx adapted to the changing political situation within which he was writing, and responded to this fact - so should we, illustrating the dialogical and dialectical nature of any application of this thought.


[1]http://www.marxists.org/archive/kun-bela/pamphlets/1932/12.htm
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation