Cardiff Socialist Forum meeting report
CS member Carey Davies reports
Cardiff Radical Socialist Forum met last week to discuss the ‘credit crunch’, the economic crisis and the tasks of the left amidst the coming instability. Eleven people showed up, CPGB/Communist Student members and sympathisers being the biggest single group, along with three Permanent Revolution members and two international students.
Permanent Revolution’s Keith Harvey offered his group’s take on the causes and severity of the crisis. The last two decades have seen a massive expansion of capital following the entry of the collapsed Soviet Union states into the circuit of world capitalism and the embrace of capitalism by China and the other Stalinist countries of Asia. This expansion sustained the speculation of the 1990s, culminating in a crisis produced by over-speculation, but the surplus capital produced in China has a shock-absorbing effect because Western economies can tap into it, meaning its impact on the ‘real economy’ in those countries is reduced.
Not entirely reduced, however; Comrade Harvey accepted that the coming period will see a rise in unemployment, decreasing wages, repossessions and increasing instability. But you do wonder if PR’s interpretation is coloured by their factional history; the notion that we’re in a ‘pre-revolutionary period’ was one of the points of contention in their struggle with what is now Workers’ Power, and while this was unquestionably a ridiculous idea, PR now seem prone to bending the stick too far the other way in the form of a certain myopia about the problems capitalism is having. After all, their prognosis is sunnier than some bourgeois commentators, and it wasn’t too long ago that the likes of Bill Jeffries were proclaiming there would be ‘no impact on the real economy’, an interpretation since revised in light of compelling evidence to the contrary.
The discussion which followed was a reasonably enlightening exploration of the causes and future course of the crisis, as well as the tasks it presents the left. Everyone agreed that the crisis has made it easier advocates of a planned economy to win arguments, but CPGB and Communist Student members repeatedly stressed the importance of the subjective dimension; how can the left stand any chance of meeting the crisis effectively when it is hopelessly divided, pursuing doomed halfway-house strategies and lacking a common programme?
The responses of Permanent Revolution members were perhaps predictable. It seems the prospect of the crisis has galvanised their enthusiasm for ‘intervening in mass struggles’ at the expense of self-examination. Towards the end of the meeting Keith Harvey spoke of the need to ‘prove our worth’ to the working class before we could start thinking about party or programme; unity can come later, once the working class has been impressed by the hard work of the sects. But how can a bunch of tiny, divided groups hope to ‘prove itself’? The need for serious critical self-reflection is greater than ever, but PR seems to think, like the rest of the left, that the solution is more myopic sect work in response to the crisis.
CPGB and Communist Students members are happy to continue to help build the forum, which represents a good opportunity for the left in Cardiff to discuss and debate in what has so far been a comradely and positive manner, as well as unite in action around principled campaigns. But we think it is important to have a serious focus on questions of party, programme and left unity. This is not incompatible with the more ‘outward-looking’ work of the Forum. For example, PR’s Jon Blake has agreed to a discussion on Trotsky’s Transitional Programme, which promises to give rise to some interesting and hopefully constructive debate.
I agree that PR comrades tend to “bend the stick” away from crises and catastrophes when analyzing the current state of global capitalism. But I think this is not just a result of their factional history: not only Workers Power, but virtually the entire British radical left peddles some form of the analysis that has been in a phase of stagnation since the late 70s. The SWP/IST, SP/CWI, IMT, WP, etc. all agree on this, implying 1) the boom of the last decade was entirely based on speculation and debt and, more absurdly, 2) that the integration of the Eastern Block and China into the global market brought no major growth to the capitalist system. In this context I think PR comrades’ emphasis on capitalism’s massive growth in the late 90s and early 00s is entirely understandable. But of course the theory of “long waves” which they employ includes the idea that such a period of growth will end sometime, and clearly the upward wave we’ve been accustomed to is coming to a close.
Actually I don’t agree that we bend the stick away from denying crises. I’d be interested if you could point me to where I said the financial crisis would have “no impact on the real economy.” For example in this article written in March I say;
“In other words the world economy today is not what it was at the turn of the millennium and this is the only reason that the financial crisis has not resulted in a major US recession until now. Whether it does in the next months will fundamentally depend on the strength of these factors and the final depth of the US financial crisis.”
http://www.permanentrevolution.net/entry/1956
Given that estimates suggest the cost of that financial crisis will reach $2.8 trillion then in accordance with this article, its reasonable to believe it will have a serious effect!!!
In a recent article on the October crash I wrote;
“Deepening crisis in the world economy
The scale of this financial crisis comes against the background of a deepening crisis in the world economy. The US economy has sharply this quarter, with unemployment rising and consumption projected to fall for the first time since 1992. Whether or not there is a fall in US GDP will once again depend on the impact of the balance of payments on the numbers, with imports falling very fast and exports growing but less so. But notwithstanding this, the US domestic economy is in recession.”
Yet according to Mike McNair this meant I was “brushing off” the problems faced by the capitalists. You kinda wonder what you’re supposed to do, faced with this frankly wilful misinterpretation of our position.
To repeat – as I wrote in an article in the Weekly Worker in March – the US is in recession.
That means its in a crisis and a deep one.
I’m a little baffled by this article. Meetings of CRSF have from the outset discussed matters of party and programme: the very first looked at the question of the party and the failures of the ‘halfway houses’ Carey refers to. The second looked at the theory of the workers united front and what was wrong with left campaigns such as UAF. Thereafter we’ve looked at questions such as immigration controls, Iran and a socialist response to the credit crunch.
I think Carey is creating a false dichotomy between action and theory. No-one in PR takes the ‘no need to talk, it’s time for action’ line which the SWP use to disguise their opportunism. However, the process of left regroupment will never take place in isolation from active struggle. At present increasing numbers of workers in South Wales are coming into crisis, and it is the duty of revolutionary socialists to intervene in this, with calls (eg) for the nationalisation under workers control of failing companies. The forum, as I see it, is where we should discuss what these calls should be (i.e. an action programme) then unite to fight for them. In this way theory can be tested in practice and activists from different groups or none can forge the kind of bonds which discussion alone will never provide. The creation of a new revolutionary party, likewise, will come from a combination of discussion, debate and action, and in the process will draw in much wider forces than presently exist on the left.
All supporters of the forum are welcome to present their vision of how it should work and/or concrete proposals of what it should be doing, and we have a <a href=”http;//radicalsocialist.org” website which everyone can use for this purpose or for the purpose of expressing their own or their group’s opinions. Please use it and help build the revolutionary socialist voice that South Wales so badly needs.