Marxism in the Anglosphere
Posted on Sunday 17 June, 2007
Filed Under Theory
One of the books I am reading right now is Meghnad Desai’s ‘Marx’s Revenge: the Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of State Socialism‘. That’s the jacket, pictured left. It’s currently remaindered at the Economist’s Bookshop and presumably elsewhere, and is well worth the price of two pints.
Labour peer Lord Desai is well-known as a Marxian economist, and the material on economics is every bit as good as one would expect from this man’s pen. In particular, the exposition of the transformation problem, the Böhm-Bawerk critique and the Bortkiewicz solution is exemplary.
But decidedly shakey on political sociology and the Marxist theory of the state, two of my little pet academic areas. I may venture a review once I have finished the volume. Incidentally, marxist.com – the website of the Grantites – offers a detailed critique in eight full-length articles here.
Anyway, at one point Desai makes the following aside: ‘Marxism was also weak in its appeal to American and British socialists. There were followers of Marx in these countries, but Marxism was never a philosophy for a political party of any substantial size.’
That’s a straightforward statement of fact, of course. But after reading it, it occured to me that it also applies to all English-speaking countries of which I am aware. There has never been a substantial Marxist current in Canada, Australia or New Zealand, either.
Any opinions as to why this should be? Is there something specific about Anglo-Saxon political culture that makes it impervious to dialectical materialism? I’m genuinely asking. Comments, please.
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22 Responses to “Marxism in the Anglosphere”
Dave, read some Perry Anderson. All English speaking countries outside the metropole were of course colonies and imported some English/British particularism.
Though it is worth noting that it is only 26 years ago that the party polling the most votes in major elections in one English speaking capital city was avowedly Marxist.
That party is now a microsect though some of its members are still active elected politicians on the left.
See if you can guess which party.
Sorry, don’t know why I typed “26″ – it’s actually about 18 – 20 years ago
Oooh, you tease, LoTB. This is not some sly dig at the 1981 London local government Labour left and Ken Livingstone and the Socialist Action clique today, perchance? Otherwise, you got me.
No, no, not an attempt to slag off people inside the UK Labour Party.
OK, I’ll give you another few clues. It was a party that had begun it’s move towards Marxism – and a fairly orthodox “Stalinist” variety at that – in the 1960s through the influence of popular front politics. By the 1970s it was quite explicitly Marxist – ie it wasn’t that a Marxian faction were in control, it is what the party was about.
By the late 1980s, though, both the break up of the Soviet bloc and a fundamental reassessment meant it began to move in a social democratic direction. Eventually it split – the vast majority moved in an openly social democratic direction, but they couldn’t meet the party rules’ stipulation to change the party’s constitution (2/3rds I think) and so the Stalinist rump kept the name.
Have another go, and then I’ll tell – though the above ought to be enough
He is of course giving us a fairly tendentions version of the history of the Workers Party here in Ireland, which was briefly a real player in Southern politics.
The split which killed the WP as a force was a great deal more complex than the above potted version would have you believe. For starters the party was split almost down the middle and arguably the “Stalinist rump” kept more of the activists on the ground – Democratic Left was ahead of its time in some ways, with a group of parliamentarians, a soft electoral base and not much in the way of a membership or an activist layer in between. The single biggest grouping in the split was probably made up of those who dropped out altogether over the next couple of years.
Secondly, although it is clear in retrospect (and was clear at the time to many) that the parliamentary group / New Agenda / Democratic Left were moving towards social democracy, that was not how they presented themselves. In fact at the time of the split they would have claimed that such a description was a Stalinist slander of their firmly held socialist beliefs. The confused nature of the split meant that some of the most left wing members went with the generally right wing split, while some of the least radical members stayed with the Stalinist rump.
Having visited both Australia and New Zealand, I can say that they actually ‘feel’ like young and dynamic countries still. They have much more land than we have in Britain, and everyone is less crowded in. I think you would probably find that the citizens of those countries are actually more satisfied with their life and there are not the large disparities one sees in Britain, or if there is, there is an ideology that hard work will get you up there. Also, they are not very industrialized. New Zealand was actually intended to be the ‘breadbasket’ of the Empire, exporting lamb is still their major industry, and Australia is covered with sheep stations. That is not to say that there is not a history of class struggle in Australia. The famous song, ‘Waltzing Matilda’ is apparently all about a famous shearers strike in the 1910′s.
America is hardly ‘Anglo-Saxon’.
“Is there something specific about Anglo-Saxon political culture that makes it impervious to dialectical materialism? I’m genuinely asking. Comments, please.”
This is quite possibly the most ignorant and philistine question I’ve ever come across on an ostensibly ‘left’ blog ever (granted, I don’t make a habit of reading ‘stalin’s tombola’ but still…).
Dave,
your post has prompted some thoughts over at the Socialism Or Your Money Back blog.
There has been a Marxist-inspired political current in the UK: the Scots’ roots of the ILP. Me dad was ‘baptised’ in a Socialist Sunday School circa 1913. I still have Plebs’ pamphlets explaining Dialectical Materalism from him.
Apart from that the London Working Class left hasd always had a minority Marxist left – since the First International if memory serves me right. Me English part of the family come from radical bookbinders and printers and I can assure you they were influenced by Marxism – though me Grandad’s complete edition of Dickens (which is in the front room of me gaff) probably played a more important role in his life.
Andrew, surely the point is not whether or not there have been Marxist or Marxian (more appropriate for the ILP given it was a coalition of all sorts) parties in Britain but that they have never been leading parties – unlike, say, the SPD or SPOe or PSOE or PCI or whatever.
In that sense Dave is right. There are plenty of Marxists in the Labour Party – from Luke Akehurst left – but the party itself is not a Marxist party and nor has it ever been.
I’d guess the reason is simple, and not to do with “Anglo-Saxon Attitudes”. The British and US and to a large extent white Commonwealth countries were able to make concessions to the working class and offer hopes of a better life through either reform or liberalism. In South Africa the white workers were given privileges that rested on keeping the black workers down.
Ireland has been the exception as a colonial counry and despite the backward infuence of the Church, provided a fertile ground for Connoly and Larkin (OK, I know that both were born in the UK! But neither of them could ever fit in well with our British labour leadership.)
Germany, though an imperialist power, retained backward features and was defeated in the First World War, so that it had revolutionary conditions for a time, in which its Communist Party was born, continuing to grow in the Depression years though not replacing the Social Democrats among those workers with jobs.
And then there’s France, But that’s another tale.
The peculiar history of Engkand and the Ubited Sattes as Protestant countries may have had an influence – we had Cromwell, not Robespierre. And the Nonconformist element in British Labour may be a cliche but is true.
Incidentally, on a couple of occasions Socialists owing adherance in some degree to Marx gained substantial votes in parts of the USA – New York in about 1914, California another time. But these may have related to temporary conditions and immigrant minorities in the NY case.
Mick Brooks of Alan Woods Marxist.com has an eight part series of articles which refutes the anti-marxism perspectives of Desai:
http://www.marxist.com/revenge-desai-part-one010805-5.htm
I recall a book was published entitled Half-Marx which argued that Labour was half-marxist — which is rather like being a little bit pregnant — and naturally the author was a tory type.
Here’s an interesting word to throw into the debate: imperialism. What effect did the existence of the British Empire, and the contentious question of the aristocracy of labour and the indirect benefit gained by the proletariat in oppressor nations from imperialism, have on the ideology of working class militants?
Alan’s comments above say it really. Desai cannot possibly have an honest disagreement – he is part of the enemy camp (as he is anti-marxist).
In the article itself he is described as, in essence being a tool of the class enemy.
I am afraid there are few clearer examples of the violence imminent in the Leninist world view. One is either one of the elect – the true believers in Marxist-Leninist-Woods-Grant thought, or one is a bourgeois or an agent of the bourgeois. It doesn’t take much for that to become a justification for suppression.
Thankfully, the working people of the world have learnt that lesson and there is no working class anywhere in the world who would willingly vote for the Leninists. (Waiting for someone to tell me Chavez is a Leninist now)
The social democrats, on the other hand, can draw their inspiration from Marx – at least from his views on history and sociology – without turning into a latter day inquistion.
It depends what you mean by “of any substantial size”
Mark P is right to say that relative to the size of Ireland the stickies were a major player in relatively recent history.
But in Britain in 1945, the CP had two MPs, 45000 members, a daily paper with a paid circulation of 100000 (restricted due to paper rationing) and an estimated readership of 500000. They also gained 1,219,000 votes at the 1945 Labour Confernce to readmit them compared to only 1,314,000 votes against, and at that time leading members of the LP, like party chair(elected unlike Blears) Harold Laski were self-proclaimed marxists.
I think the issue here is as much the first past the post electoral system as anything else, had we had PR in the 1940s and 1950s the CPGB would have sunk much deeper institiional roots.
Andy, the CP never had a membership of half a million. Where do you get that from?
You are out by an order of magnitude.
Incidentally, the chair of the Labour NEC, which is what Laski was, is still elected in exactly the same way.
LOTB
I say quite clearly that the CP had a membership of 45000 (forty five thousand) it was their paper who had a readership of half a million.
At the time there was paper rationing and all newspapers were passed around several readers, the paid sale was 100000. (incidentally the RCP’s paper Socialist Appeal had a paid sale of 27000, an order of magnitude greater than socialist worker today).
The difference with the time when laski was chair of the party and today is that when Laski was chair of the NEC that was the only chairperson the LP had. The unelected chair is a Blairite invention.
Andy on CPGB membership: err, you do, sorry.
On “chair of the Labour Party”: Laski wasn’t chair of the Labour Party though, he was chair of the NEC.
Of course I wish Blair hadn’t chosen to call this position “Chair” – we’d had a “campaign co-ordinator” in the shadow cabinet for years and nobody objected and this post is more or less the same. He could have used that title and given the toddler left – want it want it, not fair not fair – one less thing to fill their nappies over.
But the whole whinging and whining thing about it is like a marketing exercise by the publishers to show that Drucker’s “Doctrine and Ethos in the Labour Party” is still worth buying.
Has it ever occurred to any of the people who whine about Hazel Blears’s job title as though it was a new Peterloo that, actually, nobody outside the increasingly denuded meetings they go to gives a toss?
LOTB,
the reason for the complaints was because of the precise signal that it sent about Blair and his relationship to the Party’s rulebook/constitution, and because it mirrored Tory practise (especialy being appointed solely by the leader, rather than teh NEC or some other party organ).
LOTB, on the contrary, I know plenty of people turned off joining the Labour Party by the visible lack of democracy. Blears’ position is a high-profile (but not that important) one. The lack of a leadership election is another.
No historian, me, but I always thought that the answer to the question was that left political parties in the UK and its colonies were created by the Trade Union movement, whereas elsewhere (at least in Europe) trade unions were created by philosophical political parties.