The Anti-Cuts movement, A defence of Communist intervention
Alfred Stevens throws his two pence into the Callinicos / Penny debate.
Parliament Square, December 9th.
Think about the most popular chants that you heard on the student marches over the last year. Which ones rung out the loudest?
If you were walking anywhere near myself on the 10th, 24th and 30th of November or 8th and 9th of December then the one you’ll recall being bellowed the loudest was, “No ifs, No buts, No education cuts.” This was followed by, “Nick Clegg shame on you”, being ‘sung’ at a slightly lower volume and then in at third place on the volume chart came the mildly edgier, “ooooooo, we hate Tories and we hate Lib Dems etc.”
What you might also have noticed is the chants that experienced less popularity. These included the socialist classic, “One solution, revolution” and more recent ones such as, “education for the masses, not just for the ruling classes” and the lack of noise being made in explicit support for free education.
You may be wondering what the point of pointing this out is and questioning whether or not you’ve stumbled across some sad end of year list ranking 2010’s most popular protests anthems. Unfortunately not. The point being, is that during these protests the student led anti-cuts movement has been very vocal in letting it be known what it is against but far quieter when pressed on the question of what it is for.
I raise this issue because deciding collectively what it is fighting for is the biggest challenge the anti-cuts movement faces in the immediate term. Thus far the movement has existed as a motley collection of people and ideas working together in an often anarchic fashion against the cuts. This same motley bunch must now decide what it is offering as the alternative to cuts if it is to progress and it is the duty of Communists to fight tooth and nail for the movement to adopt a socialist alternative.
This is not out of some desire to, ‘own this revolution’, as Laurie Penny recently accused the far-left of trying to do but out of the knowledge that these cuts are inevitable under capitalism. The argument the Coalition government is using that the cuts are necessary is wholly correct when using the logic of profit. To defeat the cuts the movement needs to understand this or else it is either doomed to failure, or at most will achieve a stay of execution for the victims of austerity until the next inevitable crisis of capitalism. To argue other wise is to ignore economic truths.
It is frankly naïve to adopt as the motive for the movement to, ‘battle social oppression and fight the machinations of a dissembling government working to protect profit at the expense of the people.’ It may all sound well and good and righteous but are all capitalist governments not in place and have always been in place for the express purpose of protecting profit and in the process subordinating the needs of the people to that purpose? To change this uncomfortable truth it is not enough to change one capitalist government for another but we must strive to completely change the economic system that dictates the way in which we are governed.
Now I’m not making the case that the movement should factionalise over the issue, I agree the factionalism of the left in the past has been one of its most crippling weaknesses and must be avoided. To win we need unity in action. I also agree that no one group should be trying to take ownership of the movement and I think Laurie Penny implying that socialists operate as an elite cadre distributing edicts to the masses is somewhat insulting. The purpose of socialism is to create the most truly democratic society possible, is it not? This dedication to democracy should translate into the campaigns we become involved and thus every single person involved in the anti-cuts campaign, whatever their politics, should use their voice to make their point of view heard.
The movement needs open and honest debate like a fire needs oxygen. Then in these debates I completely agree with Jo Casserly when she says it is the socialists job to, “be talking about how these cuts are linked to capitalism, the façade that is democracy under capitalism and the need for revolutionary change.” It is our duty to win people’s support for these ideas within the movement, for Laurie Penny to argue that socialists should be doing anything other than this is running counter to the need for the debates to be open and honest.
I also agree with Alex Callinicos and Jo Casserly in their criticisms of Laurie Penny’s conception of the movement as being too indulgent in, “the cult of novelty”. To position the anti-cuts movement as something completely new, as it being the product of twitter is making the same silly statements that Naomi Klein et al were when harping on about the new postmodern techie activists when the anti-globalisation movement shut down the WTO talks in Seattle, 11 years ago.
Our struggle today is unique in the sense that the scale of the cuts are unprecedented, and people are particularly angry about what they see as an illegitimate government’s broken promises but really we are not so far removed from the many, many class struggles that have gone before us. We like the peasants in 1381, like the diggers in 1649, like the chartists in the 19th century and like the miners in 1984-85 represent the players in the next chapter of the historic class struggle of oppressed against oppressor. We take lessons from these struggles and also from thinkers of the past, such as Marx, who have contemplated the same problems of how to emancipate mankind that we face today. We then apply these lessons to the situation today and seek to enlighten as many people as we can to these lessons so the movement can better achieve it’s aims.
This is not out of some desire to hijack the movement but out of the knowledge that if we are not aware of the mistakes we have made in the past then we are doomed to repeat them.
So we must then move forward into next year and into the next phase of the struggle mindful of maintaining the utmost democracy in the anti-cuts movement but also fighting for its avocation of a socialist alternative. We do this not through some coup detat but through the arguing openly for our politics in the debates of the coming months. We need do this not only in the student assemblies and occupations but also, as Laurie and Jo and Alex have all rightly pointed out, in the workplaces, in schools, in the street convincing all people of the working class that the battle against the cuts is the battle against capitalism. This is not some new goal but one that the left has been pursuing for more than a century to limited success and the sooner the anti-cuts movement recognizes that it is what it too should be fighting for then sooner we can all stop looking over our shoulders when discussing politics in case it jeopardizes the ‘broadness’ of the movement.
Once the movement has agreed upon a shared set of coherent aims and goals we can build a much more effective movement that is organized, radical and determined to win.
“Thus far the movement has existed as a motley collection of people and ideas working together in an often anarchic fashion against the cuts. This same motley bunch must now decide what it is offering as the alternative to cuts if it is to progress and it is the duty of Communists to fight tooth and nail for the movement to adopt a socialist alternative.”
Anarchism is a solicialist alternative and the students are learning this, which is great, and you upper-case C Communists are losing ground. As they read more Rudolf Rocker and Emma Goldman, the authoritarian views of Marx and his ilk will fade away into the dustbin of history where they belong.
Donnacha,
Marx was a consistent democrat, which is more than can be said of his anarchist contemporaries like Bakunin.
Yes some students will no doubt be influence by anarchism as the come into politics but many will also be influenced by Marxism.
Whilst I don’t agree with everything they wrote or stood for Rudolf Rocker and Emma Goldman were exceptional writers and militants. What is funny with your assertion is that the works of Marx are flying off the shelves all over the world since the crisis broke out. Marxism is far from in the dustbin.
You do realise that reading Marx does not a Marxist make? I’ve read Proudhon, but I’m not a mutualist. Shit, I recently read Hayek! The fact that Marxist lecturers have Marx texts on university courses all over the world helps a lot.
Marxism as a political system is fundamentally flawed and history has proved that over and over again. Bakunin and Kropotkin got it absolutely right when they said that putting Marxist ideas into practice would ultimately lead to, basically, Stalin.
The last thing the student/anti-cuts movement needs is a bloody Party. We’ve already got some of those and their failure to organise together is what has led to the anarchic explosions on the streets. Right to Work/Coalition of Resistance/whatever the SP are trying to build have been left behind. That hasn’t stopped the people left behind trying to dictate to those ahead of them.
Donnacha,
Thanks for your thoughts. I will leave the ‘Marx-Stalin’ question for now given time. But I was wondering, what are the parties “we’ve already got some of” in today’s conditions? Personally, I see myriad sects, and no parties.
Which, by the way, makes it unsurprising that the left has ‘been left behind’ by the protests thus far – it is not in a fit state to unite itself, let alone anyone else.
Surely the question now though is: what next? What political-organisational forms emerge? What is our alternative and how do we fight for it amongst the mass of the population? For me, this raises the party question.
Was good to meet you at the first kettle demo (I recognise your picture from your blog!)
wcg
Ben
In terms of parties, we have the SWP, Socialist Party (both of them, the old Millies and the original bunch), the SSP in Scotland, etc. Hierarchical, focused on electoral politics, popular front building (normally sectarian) and self-promotion (such as selling their newspapers) – totally useless.
What next? Building a structure on syndicalist grounds – I recommend everyone read Rocker’s writings on anarcho-syndicalism as soon as possible to see how (and look at the early days of the Catalonian revolution). Direct democracy, a federated delegate structure and no damn leaders!
For anyone who hasn’t read Rocker, his major works are available here: http://www.anarchosyndicalism.net/rocker/works.htm
“I think Laurie Penny implying that socialists operate as an elite cadre distributing edicts to the masses is somewhat insulting.” – Insulting it may be, it’s an also an accurate depiction of the way the vast majority of the left operate. You yourselves know this, there’s plenty of articles on your site decrying the activities of other lefties, so why are you suddenly so shocked when someone else starts making the same criticisms?
And saying that this movement is part of an ongoing class struggle is only half the picture, just saying that and not paying any attention to what makes this moment historically unique is every bit as ahistorical as just stressing the newness of the movement. It may not be the only movement of its kind in history, but the fact that the last precedent you can give is the miners’ strike – before most of the current lot of students were born – speaks volumes. If you’re so keen on learning the lessons of history, maybe it’d be a good idea to start by considering why no recent struggle in British history has approached anywhere near the success of this movement – perhaps paying particular attention to the movement against the Iraq war, where there was a socialist intervention so successful it killed the entire movement off.
Donnacha,
Marx is not drawn upon in academic study alone but is used as a guide to understanding the world and a strategy to overcome capitalism. Stalinism is the antithesis of Marxism I would not expect to have to explain this to comrades. If you read the ‘Civil War in France’ and pretty much all of his works you can see the democratic vision Marx held.
Bakunin was an elitist anti-semite who wanted to guide the insurectionary movement through a secret society of revolutionaries. Led by him, of course. Kropotkin has given the movement some truly excellent works but collapsed like social democracy into national chauvinism.
The SWP and the SP are not parties, they are sects who will never lead the working class in any great numbers.
It is exciting that people are on the streets. But what next? Bigger and bigger confrontations whether with students and the police or workers on strike do not make a revolution. This is where syndicalism, and funnily enough where most of the post war Trotskyists, fall down. We need a long term vision and a long term organisation. For us, that is a communist party. An organisation of workers with different tendencies and factions joined together fighting for a Marxist programme and socialist revolution. The syndicalists gave the original CPGB some of the best militants. Tom Mann and JT Murphy were true working class heroes.
Rockers ‘Anarcho-syndicalism: theory and practice’ is definitely worth reading, studying and discussing. As a strategy it is fundamentally flawed. Unions should encompass all workers regardless of whether they are anarchists, communists, Labourites or no politics. Apart from a few historical examples the anarcho-syndicalist unions have just been political organisations within the workers’ movement. These syndicalist inspired unions often degenerate towards social democracy when they take on a mass-character. The Renavados in Spain have demonstrated this exceptionally well with the CGT. We want to build mass industrial unions, truly controlled by the membership that are not dominated by social democracy. At the same time we wish to work within this movement to win workers to action and a socialist programme.
Bakuninist,
We are not shocked at the criticism, we want to frame that criticism properly. We are against the destructive practices of the left sects and want to build a thoroughly democratic and revolutionary movement.
I would question how succesful this movement has been compared to the anti-war movement. In terms of numbers those who are active are a tiny fraction of the entire student body and we have not witnessed the power of the organised working class. Yet.
The socialist intervention did not kill off the movement against the Iraq war. Quite the opposite. It was the lack of political leadership beyond social democracy and pacifism that squandered the political momentum of the movement.
If you’re against the destructive practices of the left sects, then why does that article just say that Laurie Penny’s description of them is “insulting” and uncritically repeat Callinicos’ arguments, rather than admit that Penny made valuable points in her criticism of the way the left operates, and that the undemocratic practices of the kind that Callinicos and his followers have always engaged in are a much greater problem for those of us trying to build a democratic and revolutionary movement?
I think it would be very difficult for this movement to be less successful than the anti-war movement, which managed to take a massive popular feeling and channel it into methods that achieved precisely nothing. It’s true that we haven’t yet seen the power of the organised working class, but then that was entirely absent in 2003 as well. What we have seen is the use of methods and tactics that have the potential to be successful, whereas the anti-war movement was always doomed by its failure to employ direct action and move beyond the bounds of futile liberal protest.
As for the question of what killed off the movement against the Iraq War, you can call it a socialist intervention or you can call it social democracy, but you can’t deny that the Socialist Workers Party (and, to a lesser extent, the Communist Party of Britain) played a major role in killing off any attempt to move beyond the politics of social democracy/liberalism/pacifism. Now, you may say that the SWP and CPB’s presence in that movement didn’t live up to your standards for a “socialist intervention”, but it was certainly an intervention made by an organised group of people who considered themselves to be socialists. Bearing in mind how that one turned out, I hardly think you can blame us for being suspicious this time around.
“Marx is not drawn upon in academic study alone but is used as a guide to understanding the world and a strategy to overcome capitalism.”
Strawman – I was explaining why there are such high sales of Marx’s works. If Rocker’s “Nationalism and Culture” were covered by sociologists in the same way as Hannah Arendt’s “Origins of Totalitarianism” then it wouldn’t be out of print. I don’t doubt that people still look to Marx to understand the world, but I hope they don’t go around waiting for the spontaneous outbreak of revolution from the proletariat when they break out of their false consciousness. I also hope they don’t see the massacre of the natives of the Americas as a necessary part of progress.
“Stalinism is the antithesis of Marxism I would not expect to have to explain this to comrades. ”
Explain, then, how Bakunin predicted the emergence of a Stalin-type figure and how Kropotkin warned Lenin directly of the dangers of, well, Stalinism? Stalinism, or Maoism, is the natural outcome of a political revolution that’s maintains a hierarchy. Marx had some great ideas, but also some very, very dangerous ones.
“Bakunin was an elitist anti-semite who wanted to guide the insurectionary movement through a secret society of revolutionaries. Led by him, of course. ”
Firstly, the personal flaws of Bakunin, Proudhon, even Kropotkin, are well known by anarchists and recognised. That’s why we’re anarchists, not Bakuninists or Kropotkinists. We don’t lionise the theorists (unlike Marxists, Leninists, Maoists, etc.), but take from them what’s useful in building a non-dogmatic, non-personality-based collection of texts.
As for Bakunin being a leader – that didn’t happen in the Jura Federation, did it?
“These syndicalist inspired unions often degenerate towards social democracy when they take on a mass-character. ”
Like most Marxist parties (including that led by Marx himself)? What destroyed most of the syndicalist unions was not a drift towards social democracy, but a drift towards Marxism after the Russian revolution that ultimately led to social democracy. That and massive state oppression in many cases. Spain is, obviously, the main success and it was not a move towards social democracy of the union that destroyed it, but the move of key figures towards involvement in the popular front government and the undermining of the revolution by Stalin’s henchmen.
“We want to build mass industrial unions, truly controlled by the membership that are not dominated by social democracy. ”
That’s called syndicalism and the only way to maintain syndicalism is not to elect institutional leadership. Anarcho-syndicalism is not about buidling a union of anarchists, but about working within unions (or sometimes trying to build new industrial unions) and persuading the workers towards anarchist ideas.
Bakuninist,
Not every article we post has to repeat our criticisms of the left sects. Our site is full of such criticism and discussion on this. Comrade Stevens correctly defended the presence and the idea of communist intervention in these movements, against the wooly liberal nonsense being spouted by Laurie Penny and every Guardianista who considers themselves radical for tweeting about protests. Callinicos, the SWP and the left sects are barriers to a revolutionary and democratic movement, and that is why we have an approach of going through the left at the same time as building independently.
We will see how successful the movement will be. The trade union leadership looks intent on channeling popular discontent into dead end tactics. We did see direction in the anti-war movement. What we did not see is ridiculous set piece battles with the police, where the police are clearly going to win. We want mass direct action not minority actions of radical students and their hangers-on.
The SWP and the CPB did not intervene with socialist politics, strategy or aims. They presented themselves as pacifists, anti-militarists etc to win over liberals and parts of the establishment. Clearly this was wrong and it was not a socialist intervention. I don’t think they can be given that much credit in killing off the movement as it would have dissipated after we failed to stop the war.
Donnacha,
It is a shame Rocker’s work is partially out of print. So are many other works by excellent revolutionaries. Marx did not stake revolution on spontaneous eruptions, you are confusing him some anarchists. Consciousness exists, and every human holds contradictory views and ideas that are against their interests. The task of communists is to clarify the reality of modern capitalism through fighting with the ideas and programme necessary for socialist revolution. Marx did not welcome the wholesale murder of Native Americans. He correctly explained that their mode of production and society would be destroyed by an ascending capitalism. The progressive aspect of capitalism is that is revolutionises production and creates its own grave digger: the working class. Capitalism lays the basis for socialism.
Bakunin did not predict the emergence of Stalin out of Marxism. Bakunin bizarrely flung accusations of Marx being an anti-democrat and wanting to impose a dictatorship. That is because Bakunin failed to grasp what the dictatorship of the proletariat meant and was fighting a losing battle within the international against Marx. This is the same Bakunin who had his supporters join bourgeois juntas in the Spanish Revolution of 1873, where the working class suffered the full weight of reaction. Did Marxism lead to Stalinism? Victor Serge, the best kind of anarchist that ever was – a Bolshevik – once wrote:
“It is often said that ‘the germ of all Stalinism was in Bolshevism at its beginning’. Well, I have no objection. Only, Bolshevism also contained many other germs, a mass of other germs, and those who lived through the enthusiasm of the first years of the first victorious socialist revolution ought not to forget it. To judge the living man by the death germs which the autopsy reveals in the corpse – and which he may have carried in him since his birth – is that very sensible?” – From Lenin to Stalin, 1937.
Being an anti-semite or a national chauvinist are not personal flaws. They are political positions alien to the revolutionary movement. Our comrades do not lionize Marx, Lenin or Trotsky we see Marxism as an evolving body of thought that best explains our world and offers solutions to bring about socialist revolution.
Many Marxist parties did become reformist and backwards. The German SDP is the shining example of what happens when revolution is saved for Sunday meetings yet political action is guided by piecemeal reformism. The SDP also contained a large revolutionary wing that is shown by the revolutionary movement that swept Germany in 1918 and created the USPD, the KPD and the small yet important KAPD. The FAUD was an important organisation as well, but did not achieve the mass character of the Marxist inspired parties. In part you are correct the October Revolution and the Communist International finished off the syndicalist unions. Syndicalists became Communists because the October revolution had shown categorically that political power and organisation matter just as much as war on the economic terrain.
Industrial unions are not the sole aim of some anarcho-syndicalists, we also oppose the bureaucracy within the unions and think it is a joke when socialists or anarchists get elected to high office of a union on a reformist or watered down ticket. We see it with SP and SWP comrades all the time, instead of fighting for socialism the crumble and argue the bureaucracy’s line.
There are several debates within the anarcho-syndicalist movement on what organisational form they wish to fight for. Mass anarcho-syndicalists unions are off the cards now. Minority unionism, working within existing unions or forging a political union of anarchists are all positions held within the anarcho-syndicalist movement. It will be interesting to see where it goes but industrial unionism and working within existing unions does not make anyone an anarcho-syndicalist.
Aye, I understand that not every article you post has to reiterate your criticism of the left sects, but can you not see how, *in an article responding to criticism of the left*, to dismiss said criticism without admitting that it has any basis in reality, while quoting approvingly from a major leader of the largest left sect, might look a little bit odd? And when you counterpose “mass direct action” (which we can all agree is a good thing) against “ridiculous set piece battles where the police are clearly going to win” and “minority actions” – what does that even mean? What do you count, say, the battle of Millbank or the attacks on the treasury or Lewisham Town Hall as? Mass direct action is already taking place, the only question is whether communists will be involved in it as an organic part of the movement, or standing on the sidelines preaching the ‘correct line’. What direct action did you see in the anti-war movement? The only things I can think of were the school student walk-outs (good, but they didn’t spread to other sectors, and I think they’ve already been eclipsed by the walk-outs this time around), and the targeting of RAF bases (which never achieved a truly mass character, in part due to sabotage by the STWC leadership).
The SWP and CPB may have presented the movement with a liberal face, but in order to motivate their activists to carry out the legwork needed to dominate the movement, they had to sell it to their membership with socialist verbiage, very similar to the stuff in this article. And, just like you, they used impeccably democratic and socialist phrases to pit the idea of the “mass movement” against direct action – a dichotomy which has been comprehensively discredited by the recent student movement, which has taken off, not in spite of, but as a result of the “unacceptable violence” that’s been so widely condemned.
And to say that the movement “would have dissipated after we failed to stop the war” is a completely meaningless of putting the cart before the horse that effectively excludes the behaviour of the anti-war movement’s leaders from any scrutiny. The SWP and CPB can’t be blamed for the fact that there wasn’t a mass anarcho-syndicalist union, or even a Communist Party, with millions of members ready to take militant action against the war, but they can be held responsible for the fact that they managed to gain hegemony over a movement which did briefly have millions of supporters and, rather than using that hegemony to push for militant tactics in the hope of creating a political crisis, chose to keep things as broad and liberal as possible in the interests of recruitment.
I think that running through all of this there seems to be a fundamentally flawed view of consciousness on your part. For me, consciousness is something that arises out of material conditions, and, crucially, out of struggle, so to rebuke the protestors for not repeating the right Marxist jargon while ignoring the fact that, unlike any protesters in a long time, they’ve managed to tactically outwit the might of the British state gives a hopelessly one-sided picture of what’s going on. Yes, communists can play a role in helping people draw out the lessons of their experiences, but that’s very different to the picture you seem to have, where we start out with all the answers and then bring them to the poor masses who’ve been stumbling round taking action blindly without any of our precious theory to guide them.
Bakunin,
We are dismissing Laurie Penny’s criticism of the left which is based on a liberal conception of the movement. We have plenty of critical articles against the left groups which you can read on this site. Millbank and other actions have been positive, but let’s not make a strategy out of these type of actions and a fetish of battling the cops. It is a fantasy to think all of the recent protests got the upper-hand against the police. Plenty of the time the police have had the ability and numbers to kettle, make arrests and attack our demonstrations. The demonstration outside parliament is testament to that. If you think getting beaten and kettled around Parliament Square is outwitting the police then what does the police outwitting us look like? We are not rebuking any of the protesters, that would be completely stupid. We are asking a simple question: what next?
We think that the protests have been excellent but we need a strategy to take this raw anger into a movement that can defeat the austerity measures and pose the question of working class power. We are not interested in repeating the errors of the anti-war movement. That is not the politics we espouse and it is not how we work. There is no dichotomy between direct action and building a mass-movement. They a complimentary, you can’t have one without the other.
The anti-war movement would have dissipated with or without the SWP and the CPB leading it into liberal pacifism. It’s mass character was dependent on the split in the ruling class over the war and the belief that the war could be stopped. The problem was not having a peaceful demonstration of two million. The problem was what happened with that political momentum. They should have called strikes, occupations and sabotage against the war. I am sure you agree with this.
Consciousness does not get altered simply by struggle and the realities of capitalism. If that was the case then we would be living in a communist society. Consciousness is molded by material conditions and the through the competition of ideas and programmes within society. Communists not only have to draw out the lessons of our experiences but propose how we get from resistance to revolution.
Bakuninist,
In the article I wrote that, “thus far the movement has existed as a motley collection of people and ideas working together in an often anarchic fashion against the cuts.” This was not intended as a slight at the movement thus far. It’s been invigorating seeing so many new faces involved in activism and the fact that no one group has thus far hijacked the movement is a great and I think the moment anyone from upon high stars dictating to the movement what it should be doing than the movement is doomed.
However we are at the stage where the movement needs to start developing a more political perspective if its not to fetter out and communists should making helping people understand that the crisis is a crisis of capitalism not just some greedy bankers or some such liberal conception of the crisis.