AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON UNION 1OTH FEBRUARY 1969.
By James Greenlark
I expected this debate to be good knockabout sectarian stuff. But it was most stimulating politically. Cliff and Healy speaking together - dialectically fused - create political positions and conflicts far more revealing than Cliff and Healy could at their own separate meetings. Never having been a member of either sect, my initial sympathies were with the IS because of their greater apparent flexibility and academic bent. This debate gave me a different perspective which could not have appeared from any number of separate IS or SLL meetings. Despite Tony Cliff's wit and his fluency in pointing out the SLL's inadequacies, and despite the SLL's obvious theoretical sclerosis, the picture emerged of the SLL, warts and all, as a group which was more consistent and experienced in the problems of revolutionary organisation, making the IS look eclectic and fanciful in their theory and lightweight in their organisation. These are my subjective impressions of why this is so.
Cliff's major attack was on the SLL's lack of theory compared with IS's creative application of Marxism to modern capitalism (i.e. Kidron; Western Capitalism since the War). Within a relatively short historical period before 1917 Bukharin, Hilferding and Lenin produced works on imperialism. Now when the changes in capitalism were even faster than then the SLL had published nothing new since Trotsky died in 1940. "They have a fantastic printing house producing very good editions of old books" was one riposte: another was that the SLL had produced nothing on automation because Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky lived before automation was thought of. Then Cliff turned to some of the SLL's errors: they thought Attlee in 1945 was the Kerensky figure who would last about a year, supported Tribune in their anti- German campaign 1954-7, had Bessie Braddock on their editorial board, spoke of impending centuries of Stalinism in 1952, supported the soggy CND but boycotted the militant VSC. According to Cliff the SLL was both ultra left and
opportunist.
None of the SLL speakers returned to these specific accusations, nor to the attack on their absence of ‘modern' theoretical work. Other spealers such as Chris Harman (IS) took this up, demanding what the SLL's line was on Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Sino-Soviet split, Cuba etc. Superficially this is reasonable enough. However Healy did not respond to this challenge. He called it academic and piecemeal, and despite the cumbersomeness and monotony of his political vocabulary he did have a general line which was consistent and theoretically integrated: that is he did not need to reply to all the detailed arguments thrown up by the IS because the reply was implicit in the line he laid down.
Initially it seemed, at least to me, that Healy's flat footed and repe-~, titious approach would be no match for Cliff's rhetorical wit or John Palmer's theoretical ability. But eventually the atoms of the conflict moved their position and rearranged themselves to change the picture. Cliff's humour did pall and his speaking tricks become obvious ("Why did they do this? I'll tell you for why"); and the theory of the IS precisely because of its wide ranging character began to look like the patchwork of an unsystematic eclectisism.
Tony Cliff's boast that the IS - unlike the SLL - were not afraid to produce a volume of their collected essays and that he himself had dealt with Eastern Europe, Russia and China in his own writings, merely exposed their tendency towards the artificial academic approach that theory = publication. The SLL neither denied nor confirmed the ‘absence’ of this type of theory in their movement but the assertion that their theory derives from the working class struggles they are involved in hes potentially a far greater applicability and makes the IS look pastily academic. IS's latest theories may be hot from the presses and explain the very latest manifestations of capitalism - permanent arms economy etc. - but the method betrays weaknesses in its attempt to be a comprehensive world view. It is so up to date that it risks generalisation on too short a period, and despite the surrounding aura of ‘creative application of Marxism', the whole edifice rests upon the dogma of state capitalism, conceived in a sectarian struggle between Cliff and the SLL. Of course, both parties are dogmatic, especially on the state capitalism/degenerate workers' state controversy, and therefore their respective contributions are valueless theoretically: but the IS maintains with some success that it is the nondogmatic party because of its creative Marxism, and casts the SLL in the role of the protectors of a stunted Marxist orthodoxy. Later on I will maintain that the IS is paradoxically enough the more dogmatic of the two because of its abstracted theory, whilst the SLL's dogmatism does relate to a greater degree of revolutionary practice.
Cliff was eloquent and convincing on the new revolutionary temper of workers and students. For the last 20 years he said, revolutionary groups had been isolated; now at last the fragments were coming together. It was an attractive new dawn that he painted, but it dissolved as easily as it was built up when an old SLL member from the floor pointed out what they had been doing for the last 20 years (principally anti-reformism) - two decades of experience which Cliff glibly passed over as wasted. I am not arguing that what the SLL did in those years was even predominantly correct, or that the situation is not more hopeful now than it was then: simply that the intervention by this old militant showed up the speculative nature of Cliff's promises of future organisation. The political experience of the SLL in the "barren' fifties and early sixties is probably unique in Britain because it has meant pushing a non-reformist programme through constant contact with workers in immediate struggles. This experience has been digested and analysed, so that some members will know a great deal of the history of industrial struggles, as well es technical details about work and pay systems, and forms of exploitation. I would hazard that the IS have not the history of discipline or the work-level contact to accumulate such experience. Parenthetically one could say the SLL has probably had too little time to build up a formal theory and to argue academically with those who it thinks are not seriously revolutionary anyway, because it has been too occupied with political and industrial work.
Healy has an aggressive and noisy style of speaking. He emphasised that the differences were not just subjective and personal but actually had a class content. He rejected the IS's blanket approach to membership where the only condition of joining "Cliff's Group" was agreement on 4 points - for nationalisation, against imperialism, anti-trade union laws, and immigration laws. The SLL's position was that a programme was not just a series of demamds. It
2h,
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had to embody all the historic experiences of the working class that has gone into those demands. The IS had a light minded approach to theory altogether because it chose these demands in a political vacuum.
After dealing with the USSR and the reasons why Marxist-Leninists should continue to support it against the attacks of world imperialism Healy went on to the fission of the IS from the SLL. Although Cliff had formed his theories on state capitalism during the late 40's whilst still in the SLL, he did not break away to form the IS group until the period of the Korean War when the whole of the Labour movement stood with imperialism against the Communist world. This, he explained, was why the Cliff group was idealist and superficial from its inception. They took a theory based on ideal categories of capitalism/state capitalism which were wholly un-Marxian and used it in an opportunist way to attract support from the anti-Communist Labour movement. The SLL supported the North Koreans. Since then the dispute between the two groups has magnified to include all sorts of esoteric issues about the analysis of communism/capitalism, such as the "Trade Union Analogy" - the question of whether the simultaneous support of Britain and the USSR to both Federal Nigeria against Biafra and the Indian bourgeoisie v China confirms the thesis about "Kremlin diplomacy"; or illuminating dialogues on these lines.
SLL Cuba is not one of the socialist countries.
IS Why not? It has state ownership and planning like all the
other countries you acknowledge as socialist.
SLL Because there are no soviets.
Is But there have been no soviets in the USSR since 1927. etc. etc.
Of course all these issues - which only need one shout of "Czechoslovakia" "Hungary", or "Kremlin diplomacy" to be reactivated in sectarian minds - did or do have some real meaning and basis in fact. However to outsiders they are completely opaque in these real terms, even though the introduction of new issues and old ones can always be recognised by the baring of theoretical teeth. Only an avid reader of The Newsletter and Socialist Worker would know what each one was. I myself had never heard of the "Trade Union Analogy" before this meeting; apparently it is something to do with the fact that Russian bureaucrats/state capitalists have tanks whereas Western Trade Union leaders don't. But even if one did understand the terms, the arguments are cast in such dogmatic moulds that any flexibility of thought or fresh illumination of the question is quite ruled out. The categories are wholly static. The whole argument degrades history - as for example in the more well known 'Spot the Date' contest where sects define the point at which the USSR degenerated. Six months after 1917 are apparently enough for the Anarchists. The 'Solidarity' group found
Kronstadt too hard to swallow, so they defend the USSR up to 1921. The IS held on retrospestively until 192, when Stalin became ascendant, whilst the SLL go on until 1927 when Trotsky resigned. A type of academic Keystone Cops follows. For instance the IS has to defend Kronstadt and the USSR 1921-4 on one
chronological flank from Solidarity, but when the magic date is passed they can launch an all out attack on the SLL for the degeneracy which took place in 1924-7 when Trotsky still had influence. Whatever continuity of historical explanation there may be in any of the theories is destroyed by this mechanical argument over the dates.
Healy referred specifically to the question of the unification of left organisations. "When we talk of unity with an opponent organisation, it is to get rid of that organisation. We are in arms against you". The real reason for unity was to bring these groups like IS into the SLL in order to work out the political differences and draw them from an idealist position to a Marxist one. The SLL are pursuing a political attack on the IS tendency - which is the only reason they agreed to the debate at all = and unity will come at the conclusion of the attack, when the IS is absorbed into the SLL and has taken up its line. The SLL were not ‘unitymongers' on the basis of four points or anything else. The IS speakers said nothing on the question of unity, presumably because they regard it as more of an organisational than a theoretical one. However there was discussion on the related question of party discipline. The SLL take the view that they are a Leninist party because of their party discipline and their theoretical line, whereas the IS leans towards a Menshevik or social-democratic organisational theory because of its willingness to accept all who subscribe to the 4 points and may otherwise be inactive - e.g. Alasdair MacIntyre. Naturally both parties are anxious to maintain that their position is that of Lenin himself. Cliff maintained that the split between the
Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks was not over Article 1 of the Charter where the former wanted membership conditional on revolutionary activism, whereas the latter wanted to extend membership to all who agreed on certain broad socialist principles. The object of this is to show that the IS are not in the
opprobrious Menshevik position. Cliff further argued that the Bolsheviks before and during 1917 were a party of extreme democracy in contrast to the SLL which has no inner party democracy. He gave as an example the case of Zinoviev and Kamenev who revealed the plans of the October insurrection to Gorky's newspaper because they disagreed with the policy, yet they stayed within the party and went on to important posts. (Actually, Deutscher says on this point: "Lenin beside himself with indignation demanded the immediate expulsion from the party of the two 'strikebreakers of the revolution'. His demand fell on deaf ears..." Trotsky. Vol 1. pp 301-2) A second example was Bukharin and his erratic ideas, from which Cliff rhetorically concluded "If Lenin could tolerate Bukharin, we can tolerate the SLL". This sort of argument discloses the lack of contact between the two sides, since for the SLL the question never was whether separate political tendencies ‘could' fit together in one organisation. Similarly most of the shafts from the SLL were wide of the mark, although they concentrated more on putting the line than on distinguishing themselves from the IS. On the question of 'blanket' or 'disciplined' parties the evidence would appear to suggest that the SLL was following the Leninist line in its attitude to unity:
"(Lenin) was determined that Trotsky and Trotsky's friends should join
his party . Inside it, he was willing to accord them every democratic
right, to share with them his influence, and, as the record shows, to
allow himself to be outvoted on important occasions. But he was not
prepared to scrap his party and merge it with minor groups into a new
body." (1)
However the fact that the SLL may be closer to Lenin's view has a purely historical rather than a (contemporary) theoretical importance, and if the IS are in fact creatively applying Marxism it is hardly necessary to show that their theory corresponds to what Lenin wrote 50 years ago.
Can one come to a comparative assessment of the two groups? Are they just Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee as a speaker from the New Left Review suggested? My own feeling is that they are both irrelevant to the type of revolutionary activity we require now, and both likely to remain politically useless; but that the SLL is far more principled and theoretically consistent and has the embryo of a revolutionary party even if it is most unlikely to be fulfilled. In contrast the IS already discloses elements of opportunistic organisation and theory leading to a reformist party whose potential is much more likely to be fulfilled.
This may seem to be a rather sweeping generalisation. There are a number of different levels and subjects of argument at which I think it could be demonstrated. For example the SLL was prepared on principle to defend the "workers' bomb" before the liberals of CND, which would hardly have gained it great popularity. Similarly their very political approach to industrial struggles is considered naive by the IS who prefer to gain support for revolutionary measures gradually through pressing economic demands - "If you're asking for £1 a week more, why not £57". According to IS accounts the SLL go to the Joint Sites Committee and bore the workers silly talking about Trotsky. Assuming that the SLL are not in fact so stupid as to do this, the difference in approach does not mean that the IS would achieve the same result rather more subtly. Gradualism and economism may tactically be transitional demands, but historically they have been the rationalisations of social democrats: moreover they are a form of manipulation which soon becomes noticeable and - creates distrust, whereas a state of principle at worst may only produce indifference.
The IS, one feels, has less confidence in the argument: perhaps because they themselves as well as the audience need convincing, which is again why a gradualist line is taken in the first place. Quite likely the gradualism is a reflection of their own lack of revolutionary confidence and is rationalised as being a necessary tactic.
Critically one could suggest that the SLL only have their confidence in revolutionary politics because of an absurd and dogmatic faith ("heir theory and heritage is religious, kept in a box". Cliff) Overlooking - if possible - the exaggeration this brings up the central question of the whole dispute and the one which illustrates the distinction I drew between the SLL as revolutionary if ineffective and the IS as reformist. It is the role of theory.
The historical context within which the respective theories are formed is the decisive one for evaluating its political tendency. Both groups are part of the heritage of Stalinism, but in very different ways. THe SLL was part of the response of the Trotskyites to the reality of Stalinism. It was not merely the mirror image of Stalinism, but emerged alongside it from the reality of the Russian revolution. Because of this Trotskyism has a definite location in the historical praxis of revolution. This is both the strength and weakness of the SLL, because its origins were in a revolutionary struggle giving it a unique theoretical strength: yet at the same time the endurance of Stalinism (and capitalism) means that the theory is put into historical suspension if not entirely outdated. When he drew up his theories on the nature of the Soviet bureaucracy, Trotsky never envisaged that it would adapt to survive so long, essentially unchanged in terms of the SLL's theories. As
Marxists, the SLL are placed in a literally absurd position, whose irrationality comes from the same historical juncture as does the ‘absurdity' (for Marxists) of Stalinism - namely the situation of the CPSU in the twenties when the expected revolution in the West did not materialise. This is Marcuse's idea about Soviet theory, and the same thing is true of the SLL:
"It (Soviet theory) defies reason; it seems absurd. But the absurdity
of Soviet Marxism has an objective ground: it reflects the absurdity of
a historical situation in which the realisation of the Marxian promises
appeared =~ only to be delayed again - and in which the new productive
forces are again used as instruments for productive repression. The _
ritualized language preserves the original content of Marxian theory as
a truth that must be believed and enacted against all evidence to the
contrary..»eHypostatized into a ritual pattern, Marxian theory becomes
ideology. But its content and function distinguish it from the "classical"
forms of ideology: it is not "false consciousness" but rather consciousness
of falsehood, a falsehood which is "corrected" in the context of the
"higher truth" represented by the objective historical interest." (2)
Here the crucial differences in the role of theory for the IS and the SLL occur. Both are responding to the distortion of Stalinism which for any Marxist is a historical irrationality. The SLL recognise it to be an irrationality and maintain in spite of it a line which is recognisably Marxist Leninist.
"The ritualisation of this theory has kept it alive against the power of
factual refutation and communicated it, in ideological form, to a backward
and suppressed population which is to be whipped into political action,
contesting and challenging advanced industrial civilisation. In its
magical use Marxist theory assumes a new rationality." (3)
But the IS is effectively denying the irrationality (for Marxists) of Stalinism because they produce a ‘rational' theory of State Capitalism which is empirically based. The SLL's approach is to maintain the rationality of original Marxism and the irrationality of contemporary Communism: which, failing revolutionary changes, means they will remain prophets in the wilderness. The IS naturally appear more realistic and pragmatic in explaining the rationality of Stalinism but it is at the expense of making the original Marxist political economy irrational - that is at the expense of revising, not adapting Marx. Stalinism has meant that the ‘truth' (in the Hegalian sense) of Marxism is not fulfilled: the SLL maintains this truth despite the changing political situation, and thus appears to be very dogmatic. This does, whatever its faults, keep alive a form of insurrectionary Marxism. The IS adapts to the changing political situation by making the existent the rational and generalising on a short term historical reality (a theoretical approach which is organically connected to its political line of tactical expediency). This makes it more flexible but at the expense of a degree of eclectic and empirical theory which makes them nearly identical with traditional University socialists.
What is meant by ‘rational’ and ‘irrational' in this sense? Why is there an objection to this type of empiricist explanation or theory? How, for a materialist theory can anything be irrational providing it exists? The answer is that one cannot take Stalinism as a separate historical instance and build
a new and separate theory of political economy upon it. In fact Marxist theory is adequate to explain the 'peculiarity' of Stalinism and the Russian revolution, but as yet is has not been developed to the extent where it can clearly do so. In other words Marx's own political economy of (British) capitalism has not yet been extended to become a world political economy. For instance it does not account for the simultaneous existence of socialism ( in one or several countries) and capitalism. In terms of a Marxist theory of imperialism and underdevelopment, the reason why the Russian revolution occurred at all cannot be accounted for by IS or SLL type theories. There are in their theories superstructural-political conclusions drewn from the period of world imperialism - e.g. labour aristocracy - but there is no developed Marxist theory which explains how the contradictions of capitalism are exported, why to one place rather than another, and the feed back of these exported contradictions on developed capitalist economies. This situation is manifested in Marxist theory today by the meaningless split between the third worlders and the industriel proletarians. Meaningless, because there are no substantial connections elaborated in a dynamic theory - instead, especially for the New Left Reviewers, there is only a descriptive analysis dressed up as multifactorialism or overdetermination. Dialectically the connection must be between these two theatres. Most socialists, if questioned, would say that the situation of the Russian revolution in world political economy is that of the weakest link. But how in fact does this theory of the weakest link actually work? What are the concrete relations? Marxism, in terms of the capitalist political economy, in fact contains the genesis of such an elaboration of the new laws of motion, of the world political economy. The laws of pure capitalism were superceded before the completion of their motion - the owl of Minerva had flown out at dusk. Such a revolution in theory towards a world political economy which this new economic epoch implies would be a far more appropriate basis for a contemporary Marxist theory of capitalism/socialism than is a separate theory of the USSR as it developed under state capitalism or bureaucracy. In other words, we must develop Marxism and make it a world political economy inclusive of socialist countries instead of leaving it as a capitalist political economy, to which is adduced a separate theory of state capitalism. The theory of state capitalism is incompatible with Marxism and literally ‘revises' it because it is a case of eclectically tacking on a pre revolutionary theoretical category to the new developed stage of world
political economy. State capitalism is methodologically un Marxian because it abstracts capitalism from its particular historical location and uses it, like political scientists use 'totalitarianism', as an abstract category to be imposed on a situation which has developed beyond the historical limits of the capitalist epoch. Capitalism never occurs twice, just as histdry never repeats itself. The fact that the IS uses these abstract categories is both the result and the cause of its political expediency. The determinants of its political line are ephemeral and theoretically unhistorical, which is why they can be so easily used to justify short run reformist demands. Moreover they give little guidance to the future because there are no connecting links and no theoretical dynamic.
ts Deutscher: The Prophet Armed. Trotaky 1879 - 1921. p. 257. 0.U.P. 1954 2) Marcuse: Soviet Marxism. pp. 91 & 89.
(3) SbABs ec. 90k nai noe ate