The return of Marxism
Posted on Thursday 28 December, 2006
Filed Under Theory
The spectre is still haunting Europe, it seems. Marxism’s back, particularly in France, writes John Thornhill in today’s Financial Times. And he’s not exactly delighted about it, either:
‘One would have thought that several decades of experimentation with communism would have convinced most observers that it was a murderous and economically sub-optimal creed. Even its most fervent supporters could scarcely contest the view that it has spectacularly failed to live up to its creators’ utopian expectations.
That’s his cue to quote the famous claim – based on the 800-page 1997 French work The Black Book of Communism – that Marxism is responsible for 100m deaths in the twentieth century.
What Thornhill doesn’t mention is that this suspiciously exact death toll is both contestable and widely contested. Clearly the nice round figure has been constructed by a group of rightists as an ideological weapon against the left.
Apply the same methodology to, say, the British empire, fascism or the capitalist system as a whole, and the tally would probably prove greater in all cases.
But ‘your side killed more than our side’ is not the way the contemporary serious Marxist left should tackle this vital issue. There is little point in trading comparative death tolls. There is no doubt that Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and others were responsible for tens of millions of murders. Let us simply say so.
The point is, these people do not constitute ‘our side’. The genuine left always led the way in criticising what we knew were exploitative class societies, even during historical conjunctures when it suited various ruling classes to support and even arm these regimes.
Let’s take just one example. Don’t forget that Pol Pot was only able to devastate Cambodia because he had the backing of the US imperialism. Washington is an accessory to his crimes.
We have to make it clear that we reject Stalinism – as well as the mistaken anti-democratic position of Lenin and Trotsky – not just in our theoretical literature, but in our political praxis. Hammer and sickle symbolism, and the use of such terms as ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ to describe our concept of expanded democracy are both disastrous political PR.
Thornhill’s article goes on to accept that most contemporary Marxists have made such a differentiation, and even points out that it is wrong to blame Marx for Stalin.
’Yet, it seems, the edges of Karl Marx’s lips are beginning to twitch again in Europe as fresh attempts are made to reanimate his ideas …
‘The latest surge of globalisation, which is in so many ways reminiscent of the era in which Marx lived, has undoubtedly led to renewed interest in his critique of capitalism. Globalisation may be lifting millions of people out of absolute poverty, but it has also led to startling divergences in relative wealth.
‘How can it be, as a United Nations report recently estimated, that the richest 2 per cent of the world’s adult population own more than 50 per cent of global assets while the poorest 50 per cent own only 1 per cent? How can one understand capital without Das Kapital?
Thornhill is specifically concerned with France, where soi-disant Marxist candidates secured 17% of the vote in the first round of the 2002 presidential elections.
He then selects a number of random quotes from French politicians of left, right and centre, in an effort to illustrate the supposedly pervasive hold of Marxist ideas in that country.
This doesn’t particularly convince me. If Ségolène Royal talks about the need to “frighten the capitalists”, that doesn’t mean she is not essentially a Blairite. If Nicolas Sarkozy condemns about “rogue bosses”, he is simply following a long-established right-populist tradition in French politics.
All in all, not a particularly heavyweight article. But an interesting pointer to the possibilities of renewing Marxism in the twenty-first century, nonetheless.
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25 Responses to “The return of Marxism”
“Don’t forget that Pol Pot was only able to devastate Cambodia because he had the backing of the US imperialism. Washington is an accessory to his crimes.”
Surely not. The US backed Lon Nol until the KR overthrew him. They backed the Khmers Rouges after the Vietnamese overthrew Pol Pot against the regime Hanoi installed in Pnom Penh.
But Dave surely the political tendency you once supported did consider Stalin and the other murderous tyrants you list to be on ‘our side’? Why else did it and you ‘defend’ the ‘workers’ states’ which so oppressed the working people that they remain repulsed by what passes for Marxism?
Don’t come over all innocent, Mike. It doesn’t suit you. You damn well know how the arguments went.
We defended ‘planned property relations’ without extending ‘political support’ to ‘the bureaucracy’.
As if you could do one without the other. But that’s where a mistaken analytical framework gets you.
Well, yes and no. Trotsky in his last years was perfectly explicit that the Soviet Union had become an appalling tyranny, and that the only thing that made it different in practice from the fascist states was the specific programme for the revolution required there: defend socialised property, overthrow the ruling bureaucracy by any means necessary.
That’s of course why he also urged that a new International be built, not on a narrow sectarian platform, but on the broadest base of communist opposition possible.
All subsequent Trots studiously ignored the second point, but paid lip service to the first. When push came to shove in 1989, however, most of them turned out to be “lesser evilists” after all. I suspect the extent to which this became clear shocked Dave as much as it did me – the number of us who genuinely cared about a workers’ revolution in the “workers’ states” was a tiny minority in a tiny minority. Sobering, it was.
Chris – where on Earth did Trotsky ever argue such a thing. I have just leafed through my volumes of the collected works for the last three years of his life, and cannot see a single article where he ever argued what you attribute to him.
And one can only laugh out loud at: “he also urged that a new International be built, not on a narrow sectarian platform, but on the broadest base of communist opposition possible”
That didn’t work out to well, did it?
If you think Trotsky was a fluffy democratic alternative to Stalin, you should read “terrorism and Communism”. I have no doubt that a country run by Trots would be equally repressive as the USSR – after all just look at the Trot groups themselves.
I wouldn’t read too much into this Dave. It seems a major Marx article is a quarterly fixture in The Economist and FT these days.
That’s not to mean creative theoretical work in Marxism isn’t being done, but for the most part it’s taking place outside the revolutionary left.
I wouldn’t read too much into this Dave. It seems a major Marx article is a quarterly fixture in The Economist and FT these days.
That’s not to mean creative theoretical work in Marxism isn’t being done, but for the most part it’s taking place outside the revolutionary left.
The root of the problem for Trotskyists when it comes to the Soviet Union is that Trotsky was assassinated just as the question of the nature of the Soviet Union was opening up as a big issue among his followers – and no one can know where he would have ended up had he not been murdered.
There’s not much that points to him being about to abandon a defencist “degenerate workers’ state” line before his death: he intervened relentlessly against James Burnham and Max Shachtman in 1939-40 when they declared against James P Cannon and the majority in the US Socialist Workers Party that the SU was “bureaucratic collectivist”; and he was always hostile to those who thought the SU “state capitalist” (in his time a tiny group of Bordhigists, council communists, anarchists and unorthodox social democrats). But we just don’t know what the Old Man would have said or done had he lived longer.
What we do know is that rather too many currents in Trotskyism postwar were degenerate workers’ statists who came rushing to the defence of totalitarian Stalinism and third-world nationalism just a bit too easily. Whatever the nuances and the exceptions, the tradition is badly tainted.
Yes paul, but I would argue that the distinctive features of Trotskyism are not any particular analysis of the soviet union, but rather the theories of the permanent revolution and the united front.
It was after all over the question of the united front that Trotsky’s international followers broke from the Comintern, while almost all of Trotsky’s followers within the USSR – eg Christian Rakovsky or Evgeny Preobrazhinsky, had already switched to supporting Stalin after he adopted the left opposition’s economic policy.
Both the theories of permanent revolution and the united front are conceptually elegant, but they are only hypotheses, and events no where in the world have ever supported them. (we only know what actually did happen, we cannot know what could have happened). This is by inspection the obviuos truth with the united front, and closer examination of the russian revolution shows it follows lenin’s and not trotsky’s analysis.
So the whole split in the movement orchestrated by trotsky was misjudged, as was the a perpetuation of Russian models of organisation, and faith in a revolution in the Russian way, long after these ideas were abandoned by the offical communist movement.
The correctness of the united front is regarded as an unquestionable truth by nearly all the british left 0 but if Trostsky was wrong on this – as I argue he was – then the whole history of the far left must be seen radically differently.
As dave points out, it is impossible to defend planned property relations without also making some defence of the bureaucracy. But the conclusion I draw is different from his – that socialists have to explain that the totalitarian features of the bureaucracy were historically contingent, that while we do not defend the totalitarian rule, these were societies tranistional between capitalism and socialism, and the political forms that took were partly the result of historical circumstances, and only partly conscious decisions within the bureacracy – which was also distorted by the cold war, and the armraments competitions (that much Cliff got right).
BTW – have I been incredible slow omn the uptake here, and is neprimerimye Mike Pearn??
“he also urged that a new International be built, not on a narrow sectarian platform, but on the broadest base of communist opposition possible”
I’m sorry but this is just not true. Trotsky was for ideological purity in the International and groups like the POUM and the ILP were rejected when they applied for membership on the basis that they would not agree to every dot and comma of his dogma.
Trotsky missed out on a fantastic opportuinity to help build an anti-Stalinist (or non-Stalinist if you prefer) left because of his very insistance on a “narrow sectarian platform” dictated by the great leader ie him.
I don’t know which party line your coming out with here chris y but I suspect it owes far more to twisting theory to the practical turns of today than historical accuracy.
(but I do agree with the united front)
Sorry if I jump ship here. The whole idea of the permamanent revolution is balls: what Marxists should have been urging on “backward countries” (and should still urge) is capitalist development, rule of law and bourgeois democracy. Forcing socialism has always been utterly self-defeating from 1917 on. Long live the Menshevik peasants’ and workers’ democratic republic of Georgia! Long live the renegades Karl Kautstky, Bill Warren and Meghnad Desai!
As for the united front, against whom? Fascism, for sure, but if capitalism has still got some way to go as a “progressive force” in large parts of the world… The main problem with Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg et al was that they thought capitalism was in terminal crisis and had lost all its dynamism and capacity for modernisation. It should have become clear in the 30 golden years of developed world capitalist boom after 1945 that this perspective was daft; it should be even clearer now. Which does not mean that capitalism is a good thing – it’s a curate’s egg – but let’s get real.
Dave wrote: “We defended ‘planned property relations’ without extending ‘political support’ to ‘the bureaucracy’.
As if you could do one without the other. But that’s where a mistaken analytical framework gets you.”
Yes Dave the analytical framework, Trotskys, was wrong and inadequate. In short Trotsky conflated legal or formal property relations with the relations of production. Or if you like he conflated state property with socialized property.
What your neologism of ‘planned property relations’ means i plain don’t know. A conflation of a planned economy and statified property perhaps? No matter.
Pauil Anderson wrote “There’s not much that points to him being about to abandon a defencist “degenerate workers’ state” line before his death: he intervened relentlessly against James Burnham and Max Shachtman in 1939-40 when they declared against James P Cannon and the majority in the US Socialist Workers Party that the SU was “bureaucratic collectivist”; and he was always hostile to those who thought the SU “state capitalist” (in his time a tiny group of Bordhigists, council communists, anarchists and unorthodox social democrats). But we just don’t know what the Old Man would have said or done had he lived longer.”
Not quite true. Although i do agree that there is NO evidence that Trotsky was looking to abandon his mistaken view of the Russian state as a ‘degenerate workers’ state’.
However Shachtman only declared for the bureaucratic collectivist position after the split. it was not central to the debate within the SWP contrary to myth. The main question in the debate being the regime question on which Trotsky showed some real signs of sympathising with the Minority. He was also clear that he opposed a split on the basis of differing analyses of Russia.
The question of his view of state capitalism is however more interesting. you see at the time of his death he was, contrary to his comments in The Revolution Betrayed, writing copiously on the subject. But in relation to Mexico not Russia. Nonetheless this does mean that he was clear about the possibility of a state capitalist society and did not reject it in toto as is often alleged by various ‘orthodox trots’. That Natalya Trotsky did later adopt a state capitlaist position is to my mind telling as to her revolutionary will.
Btw Rakovsky did not capitulate at the same time as Preobrazhensy and the rest but held out until 1936. the last of the mohicans as it were. his the Professional Dangers of Power is well worth reading as to the dynamics of a degenerating workers state.
Paul, that is possibly the most convincing argument for reformism I’ve ever read. Still not convinced though.
Maybe if someone could persuade me I could take a short cut on the political journey from revolutionary to reformist that so many social democrats have taken…
Permanent Revolution theory is a load of nonsense but I think it a considerable leap of faith from this conclusion to advocating capitalist development for the third world. Perhaps capitalism could be used to further development but I doubt very much it will be. Here in Britain we are far removed from the reality of capitalist development for the third world but over there capitalism literally means enslavement for millions. Large corporations want profits from these nations, a cheap, disposable workforce, not development.
I’ve spent enough time doing work for development charities to realise the role of capitalism is not a benevolent one in the third world. It’s one of the reasons I moved from social democracy to revolutionary socialism. From rapidly increasing the price of water in Tanzania to poisoning the deltas in Nigeria capitalism is not good news for the poorest people of this world.
What Marxists should be urging is development for the third world but we need to recognise that this development does not have to come through an economic system that enslaves, exploits and murders. It breeds resentment and hatred of the West, feelings that are ultimately poison to the struggle for socialism.
“We have to make it clear that we reject Stalinism – as well as the mistaken anti-democratic position of Lenin and Trotsky – not just in our theoretical literature, but in our political praxis. Hammer and sickle symbolism, and the use of such terms as ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ to describe our concept of expanded democracy are both disastrous political PR.”
When has fighting for communism been about PR. PR is about surface, dressing things up, feeling like a cuddly bunny. ‘Theoretical literature’ is about exploding this process. Cutting up the surface. Delving deeper. Knowing more. Osler treats working class people as children. Presumably, we should hide our hammer and sickles and our terminology as working class people are incapable of grasping an argument that explains why something has been obscured and distorted and why it’s worth reclaiming. Too difficult. Keep it simple for the proles. SWP-speak in other words.
Reminds me of Dave’s old buddy in the Socialist Hypocrisy Group. Nick Long. Told us that road humps in Lewisham were the way forward. Hide everything else. Pretend to be Greens.
Osler: old Trot on the fucking run. Just look at him go…
Mike is totally wrong in criticising the Fourth International tradition from which Dave and myself come from for not coming to terms with stalinism. On Socialist Democracy published in the 1970s makes an implicit critique of Trotsky’s stand on the deformed workers’ states, and degenerate workers’ states and calls for socialist pluralism.
The most rotten tradition from (long back) Trotskist origins in the UK still (barely) alive is the SWP. Whose lengtly babblings about where the Soviet Union and the 3rd International started to do wrong include such drivel as Ian Birchall defending the national bolshevik line in Germany and hovering for ever at what point exactly the workers’ state became state capitalist.
I have little time for Trotsky’s stand in the 1920s – and Terrorism and Communism (New Park Edition) is on my bookshelf – next to Issac Deutscher’s book on Stalin.
The Marxist tradtion I think we should be based on is the so-called 2 and a half International which never, for one moment, was compromised by Stalinism.
As for the Livre Noir du Communisme _ perhaps Dave could do some googling on this because Le Monde Diplomatique published a lenegthy reply to this when it came out.
Andrew the Fourth International collapsed politically in the 1940′s when it rejected the conception integral to Marxism that the social revolution cannot be other than the self emancipation of the proletariat and backed the counter revolutionary Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and most notably Yugoslavia. That it later adopted the rather anodyne document you mention in your post is of no importance whatsoever in comparison with its backing of Stalinism against the workers when it really mattered.
Coatsey – are you refering to the critique by a leading USec intellectual – Gilbert Achar, IIRC? That’s just the piece I was thinking off.
Tell me more about your slogan of resurrecting International 2.5, as it would no doubt be known today.
Mike – yes, the FI made many mistakes thanks to its wrong analtyical framework. But to its credit, its mainstream did not cross class lines in East Germany 1953, Hungary 1956 or Poland 1981.
The FT and other papers often come up with articles about how Marx might have been wrong about that socialism lark, but ooh, didn’t he predict globalisation well! The point, for the Left, is not to get Economist readers reading Marx, it’s to resurrect socialism , Marxist or not, as a credible alternative. At the moment we’re as far from that as at any point in the last 200 years.
And the AWL, SWP, Labour Left et al have no idea how to achieve that goal.
“Hammer and sickle symbolism, and the use of such terms as ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ to describe our concept of expanded democracy are both disastrous political PR.” – Dave
Indeed. I reckon anarchists and ultra-leftists both outdo Trotskyists when it comes to presenting socialism in a way that sounds relevant in the modern world. Of course, like you guys they make virtually no impact.
Dave, no I was thinking of the declaration of the USFI: On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Socialist Democracy (published in Inprecor around 1977). I’ve got a copy somewhere in the vast Coates Archives.
Coatesy
“Don’t forget that Pol Pot was only able to devastate Cambodia because he had the backing of the US imperialism. Washington is an accessory to his crimes.”
More importantly, don’t forget that US imperialism devastated Cambodia after the CIA-backed coup in 1970. The KR came to power in a country whose productive base had been largely destroyed by a vicious bombing campaign. Cambodia’s tragedy started in 1970, not 1975.
Mike, when you write:
“it rejected the conception integral to Marxism that the social revolution cannot be other than the self emancipation of the proletariat”
You are exemplifying the methodological error of most “Marxists” – mistaking a hypothesis with an established fact.
What is integral to marxism is the understanding that human society changes through interaction between the economic base, and the social infrastructure – human history is the product of class struggle.
The concept that a classless society can be acheived by the self-activity of the working class is only a hypothesis by Marx, even if one to which he was deeply committed. For many socialists it is an article of faith, but it is not indispensible to a historical materialist concept of history.
Perhaps, the acheivement of socialist society will come from below, and perhaps this will be very democractic. But based upon the evidence of the last 150 years, why should we consider this to be self evidently true? Perhaps the idea is as utopian now as Gerard Winstanley’s common treasury was in the 17th century?
Perhaps a non-capitalist non-market economy can be ushered in from above instead? Perhaps such a society may regulate a planned economy to avoid the instability and waste of capitalism, and may achieve social equality, or at least the elimination of poverty. This outcome would be just as consistent with historical materialism as “socialism from below”.
Given that the formal democracy of bourgeois societies is simply a fig leaf masking the real differences in political power that is liked to wealth, then perhaps a socialist society may even offer less opportunities for individualist chattering by the political classes.
BTW – I am a little mystified by jim jay’s defence of the POUM, and then saying he supports the main plank of Trotsky’s opposition to the POUM, the united front.
Reasons to be cheerful
The Financial Times recently hailed the return of Marxism. Sadly, I suspect that Britain’s only serious paper was having a bit of a laugh. You would have to go back beyond the birth of the First International 140 years ago…