I think my major dislike for Leninists is their arrogance. It seems unfounded, given the actual track record of Leninism (and mainstream Marxism). So when I saw a patronising article on the Greek riots in the Weekly Worker I had to reply pointing this out. I’ve added the letter to the end of this posting, for those interested.
I think my major dislike for Leninists is their arrogance. It seems unfounded, given the actual track record of Leninism (and mainstream Marxism). So when I saw a patronising article on the Greek riots in the Weekly Worker I had to reply pointing this out. I’ve added the letter to the end of this posting, for those interested.
So much for my New Year’s resolution on avoiding pointless debates with clueless Leninists in order to concentrate on more important things — I knew it was a mistake to flick through that paper in Housmans! Talking of which, the politics paper rack there always depresses me — seeing the Leninist ones, with titles like "1917" and such like, makes me wonder what "non-political" (so-to-speak) people think when they see that. It seems stuck in the past, not even 100 years ago but an eternity… Compared to 2009, even 1979 seems like a different world.
I hope anarchist journals are not that bad — although I do like my anarcho-history and dose of "dead anarchists"! Still, I hope Freedom comes across as accessible and not mad (as too many Leninist ones do). We try to make Black Flag relevant, but it is slightly different as it primarily aims for people who are anarchists (or close) rather than newbies to the ideas. So we try and get a balance, with articles of interest to the wider left and ones which anarchists would enjoy. Not sure how successful we are, but that is the aim.
And talking of which, we will be starting work on issue 229 of Black Flag soon so if you are interested in contributing an article or getting involved, we would like to hear from you (although you really need to be a class struggle anarchist, or close, as that is the remit of the journal). I’ll blog on this soon.
I was thinking of blogging about me, Marx and Marxism at some stage. I know that some anarchists dismiss Marx out-of-hand, but I disagree. Yes, his politics were flawed but he was a brilliant writer (at times) and his critique of economics should inform any serious economic analysis or analysis of capitalism (after all, an economist who expounded some of his ideas, in neo-classical jargon, was awarded the (non-)Nobel Prize in economics recently). Of course, his analysis is incomplete and flawed in parts, but it has important insights which we must build on just as Marx built on Smith, Ricardo and Proudhon. Which is why I’m partial to post-Keynesian economics, which tries (at its best) to build upon the best insights of Keynes and Marx in order to develop a realistic analysis of capitalism.
And talking of which, I saw a posting recently when as "Austrian" economist was moaning that the current crisis raised the profile of Minsky (his The Financial Instability Hypothesis) and post-Keynesian economics rather than his pet dogma (for more on Minsky, see this pdf article by Steve Keen). This is unsurprising, as Minsky was trying to understand how finance works in real life rather than, as "Austrians" do, bemoaning how banks lower the rate of interest below its "natural" (equilibrium!) rate. As AFAQ explains, this is at odds with their usual dismissal of equilibrium as not existing in reality as well as being a somewhat meaningless concept in economic analysis (this point was also made, I was happy to discover, by John Edward King in his extremely useful A history of post Keynesian economics since 1936). The problem is, of course, that even if we do assume that interest reflects the "time perference" of individuals (which is doubtful), it is still a source of income for banks and so, as Minsky stresses, they have an interest to expand credit and, unsurprisingly, they do in the face of market forces. So, I’m not surprised that Minsky was turned to, and not the "Austrian" — particularly as their main policy is lecture people not to do it again and, just now, let the current mess collapse…
Good news, for those who like a bit of economics, I rediscovered the location of post-Keynesian Paul Davidson’s wonderful critique of "Austrian" economics: THE ECONOMICS OF IGNORANCE OR IGNORANCE OF ECONOMICS?. An analysis was strident as Sraffa’s review of von Hayek’s in the 1930s, which (along with Kaldor) helped bury "Austrian" economics — not that you would know that from most books by "Austrian" economists, at least the books I’ve seen…
Talking of Keynes, it looks like George Monbiot has discovered Silvio Gesell, who reached some of the same conclusions as Proudhon. I’m sure that Monbiot found him via The General Theory, in chapter 23 where Keynes states that Gesell aimed for "the establishment of an anti-Marxian socialism, a reaction against laissez-faire built on theoretical foundations totally unlike those of Marx . . . I believe that the future will learn more from the spirit of Gesell than from that of Marx" — one for the mutualists in the audience…). I’m not sure that is correct, as any serious socialism need to understand as Marx and Proudhon did that exploitation happened in the workplace and so needs to advocate co-operatives to end it (as Proudhon did, I’m not sure about Gesell).
Monbiot notes that Silvio Gesell "became finance minister in Gustav Landauer’s doomed Bavarian republic" but, of course, fails to mention anarchist ideas, nor the roots of Gesell’s ideas in Proudhon. But then, Monbiot has repeatedly shown that he does not (cannot?) understand anarchism (not least in his book The Age of Consent, which I mean to review someday…) — but he spends some time ripping it off… Perhaps that is why he spends so much time misrepresenting it, so that people will not know where he rips-off his better ideas from?
And on a somewhat unrelated note, this is good: This Week, On America’s Next Top Asshole Wealth creation? Aye, right — not the best time to try that line Mr. capitalist… Which would be a good time to present one of my favourite Marx quotes (from Chapter 24 of Capital Vol. 1):
"An unparalleled example of the ‘discoveries’ of vulgar economics! It replaces an economic category with a sycophantic phrase, and that is all . . . All the conditions necessary for the labour process are now converted into acts of abstinence on the part of the capitalist . . . The capitalist robs himself whenever he ‘lends (!) the instruments of production to the worker’, in other words, whenever he valorises their value as capital by incorporating labour-power into them instead of eating them up, steam-engines, cotton, railways, manure, horses and all; or, as the vulgar economist childishly conceives, instead of dissipating ‘their value’ in luxuries and other articles of consumption. How the capitalist class can perform the latter feat is a secret which vulgar economics has so far obstinately refused to divulge. Enough that the world continues to live solely through the self-chastisement of this modern penitent of Vishnu, the capitalist. Not only accumulation, but the simple ‘conservation of a capital requires a constant effort to resist the temptation of consuming it.’ The simple dictates of humanity therefore plainly enjoin the release of the capitalist from his martyrdom and his temptation, in the same way as the slave-owners of Georgia, U.S.A., have recently been delivered by the abolition of slavery from the painful dilemma over whether they should squander the surplus product extracted by means of the whip from their Negro slaves entirely in champagne, or whether they should reconvert a part of it into more Negroes and more land." [Capital, vol 1., pp. 744-5]
Great stuff! As this wonderful version of Solidarity Forever:
Another great version of a classic socialist song was sung at Obama’s concert by Bruce Springsten (who is a great singer-song writer) and folk-legend Pete Seeger, namely Woody Gruthie’s This Land is Your Land. And it is the full, leftie, version with the verse on private property:
Strangely, in the 2004 election I saw footage of this song being played at a Republican election event! Don’t people listen to the lyrics of songs? I guess not, otherwise the Republicans would not have tried to appropriate Born in the USA back in the 1980s nor would Errol Brown sing at the 1987 Tory election rally! Talking of which, a simple and beautiful song about communism:
And so the era (error) of George Bush (and I’m glad to see the back of him, he was an insult to our intelligence!) is over (the great cartoonist Steve Bell comments on this, although I doubt we will see much change — unless those millions who came to see Obama become president, all those who watched it at home, act for themselves and pressurise him to be as progressive as they hope he will be! Which was the point Naomi Klein made on More 4 News last night, and one I made in my article on Obama after the election. I should also note that Gordon Brown, on the same news programme, proclaimed that the UK and USA had a special relationship and friendship that dated back 200 years — at which point I thought that, presumably, it was just a friendly prank when the British burnt Washington in 1814, as part of the Anglo-American war of 1812 to 1815! I do wish politicans (like people in general) had some grasp of the facts before spouting off… I have no illusions in Obama, he is a centrist politician at the top of a bureaucratic machine under pressure from capital to act in specific ways, but if people act on the hope he seems to have tapped into then interesting things may develop. Let us hope so — and anarchists need to encourage a perspective of "Yes we can, but only if we act and not wait for Obama!.
And before the promised letter to The Weekly Worker (with useful links added), a few links. First, Chomsky on Gaza. Second, on the awkward fact that so-called "libertarians" (of the right, of course!) supported Pinochet: Milton Friedman and the Economics of Empire by Greg Grandin). Third, on the right’s attempt to blame the government for the Bush collapse. The historical revisionism concerning Fannie and Freddie and their role in the financial crisis appears in strange places (like the Metro‘s letters page!) and really needs to be refuted — as AFAQ discusses, crisis comes from many potential sources — including the nature of the market itself. Fourthly, Firing The Boss: An Interview with Chicago Factory Occupation Organizer, which I have blogged on before (shame about a lack of will to turn it into a co-operative!). Fifthly, Terry Jones (yes, that Terry Jones, the expert on medieval history 🙂 ) on the current economic crisis. To quote from it:
"Last year David Letterman, on his TV show, put it to Greenspan that "when we say the economy is booming that’s not necessarily good news for everybody along the way". Greenspan replied: "That’s right! It’s called ‘creative destruction’ and ‘creative destruction’ means that in order to create goods and services and facilities you have to … shut down a lot of facilities and a lot of people lose their jobs and that’s gotta be grim."
Of course, when "creative destruction" happens to rich people then there is something wrong with the markets, so requiring state intervention. As Gore Vidal put it, capitalism is "free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich" (something Chomsky repeatedly echoes: "no ‘irony,’ but the normal workings of ‘passionate love of laissez faire’: for you, market discipline, but not for me, unless the "playing field" happens to be tilted in my favor, typically as a result of large-scale state intervention."). Which is the way capitalism has always worked, and needs to not only to be created in the first place but also to survive and not to destroy society along the way.
until I blog again, be seeing you…
Dear Weekly Worker,
According to Ted North “anarchism” does “not offer a realistic line of advance.” (“A single bullet”, Weekly Worker, no. 752) Instead, “for real progress to be made the workers must establish parties which really represent their historic interest.”
Really? Would that be like the original Marxist party of this kind, the Social Democratic one? Well, perhaps not as these quickly became reformist (as anarchists predicted) and by 1914 their degeneration was such even Lenin could not fail to notice it. Would it be a Bolshevik style party? The one which opposed the soviets in 1905? The one whose Petrograd leaders opposed the demonstrations in February 1917 which lead to the start of the revolution? The one whose bureaucracy Lenin spent most of 1917 fighting, violating his own organisational principles to get it to act? The one which seized power in October 1917 and quickly became (as anarchists predicted) the dictatorship over the proletariat?
So, perhaps, it is not “halfway house projects” which “are doomed to disappoint and fail”? Perhaps it is the whole Marxist notion of political parties? I would suggest that history proves beyond doubt that it is Marxism which leads “eventually [to] defeat,” while ensuring that there are few “futile gestures” along the way – after all, if the working class had listened to Marx there would have been no Paris Commune…
While North attacks the notion of “riot after riot”, he also complains that because “there is no effective left alternative, KKE was able to take a lead in organising . . . demonstrations in order to keep them safe and attempt to bring anti-state sentiments back under control.” So when the KKE opposes riots it is different than when North argues that “riot after riot” does “not offer a realistic line of advance”? Please explain the difference. If the KKE position is in “some senses analogous to the French Communist Party (PCF) in 1968”, is the CPGB’s analogous to that of the Bolsheviks in February 1917?
I should note that few anarchists think that “riot after riot” is enough. The aim is to create popular organisations which can take the struggle onwards. As Kropotkin argued “to make a revolution it is not, however, enough that there should be such risings – more or less successful. It is necessary that after the risings there should be left something new in the institutions, would permit new forms of life to be elaborated and established.” The task of anarchists is to encourage these institutions, the new forms of popular self-organisation (such as federations of community and workplace assemblies) as well as influence the struggle with our ideas. We organise accordingly.
Rest assured, though, “Marxists will struggle alongside anarchists whenever our interests coincide.” Sadly for him, we “have no illusions” where Leninism leads (or our fate under it). Although it is nice to see a Marxist acknowledging that anarchists do not think the state is the main enemy, but that we also “hate capitalism and yearn for human liberation.” So, yes, “we ought to engage them in serious debate” – who knows, the Marxists may learn the lessons of history rather than repeating them?
Iain McKay