Communist Review Autumn 2010

COMMUNIST REVIEWCR★

●● Andrew Murray 21st Century Anti-Imperialism●● Lars Ulrik Thomsen Lenin’s Analysisof Imperialism – a Pioneering Work●● Gretchen Binus The Financial Crisis●● Hans Heinz Holz György Lukács:A Militant Humanist●● Richard Maunders Why the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact Was Necessary

Anti-Imperialism

Theoretical and discussionjournal of the Communist Party

Number 58 • Autumn 2010

£2.50

COMMUNIST REVIEWCR★

EDITORIAL BOARDMartin Levy editorJoginder BainsMary DavisJohn FosterMarj MayoGraham StevensonSteve SilverNick Wright

ADVISORY BOARDMichal BoñczaKenny CoyleRichard HartJohn HaylettKate HudsonJerry JonesEmily MannSteven MartinAndrew MurrayJean Turner

Advertising rates on request.Signed articles do notnecessarily reflect the views ofthe editors orthe Communist Party

Cover image: by Ssolbergj fromhttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anti-imperialism_sign.svg

Printed by APRINT

GRETCHEN BINUS was professor of political economy ofcapitalism at the Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg, and isa member of the editorial board of Marxistische Blätter, a theoreticaljournal published by the German Communist Party.

KENNY COYLE is a former deputy editor of Communist Review

HANS HEINZ HOLZ is a philosopher and theoretician of theGerman Communist Party and co-editor of the dialectical journal Topos.

JIMMY JANCOVIC is a longstanding communist activist, born inEgypt, where, he says,“the appalling conditions of the people andundemocratic puppet monarchy there at a time when we were

ostensibly fighting for democracy and Roosevelt’s Four Freedomsawoke an awareness of the reality of exploitation”RICHARD MAUNDERS is a retired teacher and a member of theNational Union of Teachers and of the Somerset Branch of theCommunist Party of Britain (CPB).ANDREW MURRAY is national chair of the Stop the WarCoalition and a member of the executive committee of the CPB MIKE QUILLE is a writer living on Tyneside.LARS ULRIK THOMSEN is a mechanic by profession, and amember of the Communist Party of Denmark since 1971

contributors

21st Century Anti-Imperialism

12 Lenin’s Analysis of Imperialism – a PioneeringWork by Lars Ulrik Thomsen

16 The Financial Crisis – A Consequence of State Monopoly Control of the Economy by Gretchen Binus

22 György Lukács: A Militant Humanistby Hans Heinz Holz A young György Lukács (pictured)

26 Why the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact Was Necessary by Richard Maunders

31 The Left and the State by Jimmy Jancovic

Theoretical and discussionjournal of the Communist Party

Number 58 • Autumn 2010ISSN 1474-9246

EDITORIAL OFFICE23 Coombe Road London CR0 1BD

tel: 020 8686 1659 • fax: 020 7428 9114email: [email protected]

web: www.communistreview.org.uk

contentsBy Andrew Murray page 4

32 Discussion: AResponse to AndrewNorthall by Kenny Coyle

33 Soul Foodselected by Mike Quille

THE ONLY REAL SURPRISE of theLabour leadership election was thenarrowness of the final majority. It wasalready on the cards that Miliband ii,rather than his elder brother, would winthe final ballot, but the outcome hashardly been a glorious success for the tradeunions. From the outset, there was nounified common strategy, as the GMB,Unite and Unison leaderships backed Ed M, while other unions supporteddifferent candidates. Then, as contenderswere eliminated in turn, the two brothers’shares of votes from members of affiliatedunions and societies stuck consistently ataround 3:2 in favour of Ed. So it is clear asubstantial proportion of union memberspaid little heed to their leaders’ advice –something which should give those leadersfood for thought.

But the problem actually goes muchdeeper. Whichever of the malecandidates had won, the outcome wasnot going to change the main policydirection of the Parliamentary Labourleadership – because all had been leadingrepresentatives of the New Labourproject. The rhetoric may now havechanged, but the underlying realityremains the same. Miliband E may saythat “New Labour is dead” and thatLabour has to change, but in hisobjective of unifying the Party he willhave to make compromises with his rivalsand their Parliamentary supporters.Indeed, in his first announcements sincebecoming leader he has distanced himselffrom the unions, stating that he will notoppose every government cut in publicspending, and failing to give

wholehearted support to the campaign todefend jobs and services.

In contrast, the 2010 Trades UnionCongress was a watershed. As CPBgeneral secretary Robert Griffiths said,the event might well be seen in future as“the class war Congress ….. Not in thesense that the TUC has declared class war but that it resolved to unite indefence of the working class against theTories’ class war.”1

All but one of the 700 delegatesendorsed composite motion 10,‘Defending Public Services’, whichrejected and deplored the government’spublic spending cuts, resolved “that allTUC affiliates will urgently work

together to build a broad solidarityalliance of unions and communitiesunder threat and organise a nationaldemonstration, lobby of Parliament andnational days of protest against thegovernment austerity measures” andcalled upon the General Council to“support and co-ordinate campaigningand joint union industrial action,nationally and locally, in opposition to attacks on jobs, pensions, pay orpublic services.”2

Joint campaigning has already begun,as shown by such developments as theformation of a Northern Region PublicServices Alliance, the launching byUNISON and PCS of a national versionof that, the rallies on September 29 inconnection with the European TUC Day of Action against Austerity, and thelobby of Parliament on October 19, just before the scheduled publication ofthe ConDem’s public spending review. Such joint actions need to be built in all communities, linking in with trades union councils, pensioners’organisations, faith groups, voluntarysector organisations and many more. However, that alone will not be enough.

The chasm between the fightingspirit at the TUC and the affiliatedunions’ approach to the Labourleadership tussle reflects the longstandingweakness of economism in the Britishlabour movement – constraining themain direction of trade union activitiesto the workplace, and largely leavingpolitics to the (Labour) politicians.Where were the union leaders whencandidates were seeking nomination?

communist review • autumn 2010 • page 1

editorial

➔

By Martin Levy

New Labour leader Ed Miliband Photo:Department of Energy and Climate Change

Why did they not throw their weightbehind John McDonnell, who wasarticulating their interests, and demandof their sponsored MPs that he be put onthe ballot paper? And, when that did nothappen, why did not more unions thanASLEF and TSSA support Diane Abbottwho, despite everything, still managed tosecure 12% of the affiliated trade unionand society members’ vote? The answer,of course, is that the union leadersadopted a minimalist approach, focusingon one or two sound bites instead ofseeking to win the heart and soul of thelabour movement for a change of course.It is the same approach that led to thedisaster of New Labour.

As the Communist Party of Britain observes in the draft resolutionsfor its 51st National Congress at the endof October,

“Every struggle by the workingclass is essentially political, andthis is even clearer when the classas a whole is under coordinatedand strategic attack, as now.”3

Failure to deal with the politicaldimension not only weakens the overallstruggle, but risks the possibility ofdiverting it down the road of the lesser oftwo evils, namely supporting Labourwith its commitment to make publicspending cuts on the scale of the

ConDems, but not quite so fast. Yet, asthe CPB also observes:

“In the context of an economiccrisis which, around the world, iseroding the basis of reformism andraising the urgency of an alternativeto the world capitalist system, [the] struggle must also attack thedeeper roots of social-democraticideology in the labour movement.The alternative to ‘New Labour’cannot be a return to the ‘old’Labour of the 1960s and 70s, buthas increasingly to focus on endingcapitalism and moving towards asocialist society.”4

A first step towards building thatalternative – whether or not the LabourParty can be reclaimed for it – is theinjection into the campaigning of a comprehensive set of policies. Unison’s ‘Million Voices’ campaign, andPCS’s ‘There is an Alternative’ havevaluable roles to play here, but arelimited by their narrow focus towards theservices in which their members work. A comprehensive alternative has to dealwith the economy as a whole, anddemocratic and social issues inconnection with it.

That is the value of the People’sCharter for Change. It is not a socialistprogramme but it starts to challenge the

power of the monopoly capitalist class. It establishes the class links between manyareas of struggle. It demands not justactivity and organisation but debate andeducation about how to move forward. It provides the basis for the promotionand development of a fuller alternativeeconomic and political strategy, such asthat articulated in the Communist Party’s‘Left Wing Programme’.

In working out the strategy formoving forward, it is essential to build anunderstanding of the real nature ofsociety in which we live. A second majorweakness of the British labour movement,and one very much linked to economism,is a lack of appreciation of the imperialistnature of the British state. For thatreason we are very pleased to include inthis edition of CR the James ConnollyMemorial Lecture on 21st Century Anti-Imperialism given by Andrew Murray. In this incisive article, Andrew traces thedevelopment of modern imperialismthrough several distinct phases over thelast 150 years, and argues that we must“not refrain from supporting those whoare fighting for their freedom under areligious flag just because we cannotidentify with them as comrades as easilyas we might have done with a previousgeneration of freedom fighters.”Defeating the ‘new world order’, he says,is a prerequisite for any lasting form ofsocial progress, and “Uniting the mass

page 2 • autumn 2010 • communist review

Photo:The People's Charter

movements against war and for socialjustice in Europe with the states andmovements fighting for social progress inLatin America and those struggling fornational liberation in the Middle Eastmust be the foundation for the renewal ofa progressive politics in the 21st century.”

In the following article in this issue,Lars Ulrik Thomsen from Denmark takesa theoretical perspective, defending thecontinued relevance of Lenin’s analysis of imperialism as a stage of capitalistdevelopment associated with the rise ofmonopoly capital and an enhanced rolefor the state. Referring to Lenin’s study of Hegel’s dialectics before writingImperialism, The Highest Stage ofCapitalism, he urges a major philosophicalundertaking as a preliminary to theanalysis of contemporary imperialism. In this context it is worth observing, asGerman philosopher Hans Heinz Holzhas done, that “During critical momentsof the revolutionary movement Lenin …frequently reassured himself of thephilosophical fundaments of his ownpolitical theory and practice.”5

Comrade Thomsen claims GretchenBinus as one of only a few economistsanalysing the current crisis in terms ofstate monopoly capitalism. In Britain wemight dispute that, especially considering

John Foster’s article in CR56,6 butProfessor Binus does have interestingthings to say. Her article fromMarxistische Blätter in 2009, reproducedin this issue of CR, demonstrates clearlyboth the way in which finance capitaloperates and the role of the state inpropagating its interests. Althoughfocusing partly on Germany, and writingbefore the recent round of austeritymeasures, she gets behind all the hypeabout massive state interventions as beingin the interests of the whole populationto disclose the finance capitalist nature ofsuch interventions, and their intention of safeguarding the system to thedetriment of working class interests.

The remaining contributors to thisissue cover a wide variety of topics. Hans Heinz Holz pays a warm, if notuncritical, tribute to Hungarianphilosopher and literary scholar GyörgyLukács, which some may find surprising,in view of comrade Holz’s previousarticles in CR on Stalin. Richard

Maunders gives a robust defence of thethe Soviet Union’s urgent need in 1939to sign the non-aggression treaty withNazi Germany. Jimmy Jancovic takes up the issue of the left and thestate, and Kenny Coyle responds tocriticisms in CR56 of his own discussioncontribution in CR55. Finally, in MikeQuille’s Soul Food column, we have a bumper set of readers’ poems and areview of Francis Combes’ anthology Common Cause.


■ Communist Review welcomes submission of articles (normally up to 5000 words),discussion contributions and letters – send to [email protected] will be reviewed by members of the Editorial Board and/or Advisory Board,and we reserve the right not to publish.

■

HARRY POLLITT, long-time leader of theCommunist Party, died 50 years ago this year, justa few months short of his 70th birthday. Writing inthe August 1960 edition of Labour Monthly, RajaniPalme Dutt paid tribute to his “unquenchableenergy”,“creative leadership” and “the persuasiveeloquence, cool logic and burning intensity of his

voice”. Harry Pollitt, he said, helpedbuild a generation of younger

militant leaders in the tradeunions, aroused “every section ofthe people to the common fightfor the defeat of fascism” andinspired the collective effort to

produce the very first edition ofThe British Road to Socialism.

“If he was able,” wrote Dutt,“to draw and hold crowds to hearhim as no other speaker in Britain,

it was not only because of hisgifts as an orator, or

because of hiscapacity forsimplepoliticalexplanation,

and for kindling enthusiasm, but because he wasclose to every man and woman in his audience and able to express for them their own hopes,fears and aspirations, and at the same time to givethe answer to their problems and show them theway forward.

“Above all, Harry Pollitt was the embodimentof incorruptible loyalty to the cause of the workingclass and of socialism. … There was no position inthe Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party,as the leaders in those early days did not fail toconvey to him, which could not have been his forthe asking, if he had consented to break with theMarxist party of the working class, withcommunism. But Harry Pollitt was not one ofthose who ‘haul the glorious emblem down’.For him there was no higher position in the entireworking class movement than that of GeneralSecretary of the Communist Party. He neverforgot the burning hatred of capitalism, imbuedfrom his earliest memories and only strengthenedby experience. He never weakened in hispassionate devotion and unquenchable confidencein the victory of the working class and socialism.”

COMMUNIST REVIEW SALUTES HIS MEMORY

HARRY POLLITT 22.11.1890-26.06.1960

1 Morning Star, 17 September 2010.2 http://www.tuc.org.uk/the_tuc/tuc-18526-f0.cfm. 3 CPB, Executive Committee Domestic Resolutionfor 51st National Congress, 2010, para 44.4 Ibid, para 63.5 H H Holz, Lenins philosophisches Konzept(Lenin’s Philosophical Concept), in Topos, Heft 22,2003, p 116 J Foster, Superprofit, the Super-Rich and theFailure of Britain’s Ruling Class, in CR56, 2010, p 8.

Notes

ames Connolly isevidently a man of ourtimes. He stood at thejuncture of three greatmovements one hundredyears ago, movements

which shaped the world of thetwentieth century.

First, he was an anti-imperialist whose fight for theemancipation of his nationfrom the British Empire led tohis glorious death. Second, hewas a socialist, immersed in allthe controversies of the risinginternational socialistmovement in the years beforethe First World War. Third, hewas a militant trade unionist,at the centre of the Dublinlock-out and the Great Unrestwhich marked the eruption offighting, class struggle,industrial organisation inBritain and Ireland alike.

Few people in the historyof the revolutionarymovement can claim such aposition. In the 94 years sincehis death many of his admirershave emphasised one or otherof these aspects of Connolly’slife and thought. In reality, of course, they were entirelyinter-related. National andsocial emancipation, through

all means from strike action toarmed uprising, was forConnolly an entirely integralproject, directed at theoverthrow of the imperialistruling classes, the British inthe first instance, theprerequisite for any progress,national or social.

When Connolly said that“the two currents ofrevolutionary thought inIreland, the socialist and thenational, were not antagonisticbut complementary”1 he wastaking an advanced position,compared with mostrevolutionary opinion of histime, the very opposite of theviews of Rosa Luxemburg, his comrade in martyrdom forthe cause, who was sweepingin her dismissal of Polishnational aspirations.

It is almost superfluous tounderline the contemporarysignificance of Connolly’s worka century on. The greateconomic crisis which has, likethe Great Unrest, marked theend of a belle époque for worldcapitalism, demands a strongtrade union response. WhatJames Connolly would make ofthe soporific social partnershipwhich has disarmed the

working class is easy to imagine,but so too is his likely responseto episodes like the sit-ins atWaterford Glass and VisteonComponents in Belfast.

The world crisis also urges on us a revival of thesocialist movement worldwide.That is still more challengingafter all the triumphs anddisappointments of thetwentieth century. Yet itremains the fact that the casefor socialism rests 90% on theshortcomings of capitalism,now on lurid display. The revival of interest in theworks of Karl Marx is awelcome consequence. Inrebuilding a mass socialistmovement, Connolly hasmuch to teach us too, both inhis determination to spread themessage among the workingclass itself and in the course of his own personal struggle ofideological self-emancipationfrom sectarianism, in his caserepresented by the now-forgotten doctrines ofDeLeonism, the leader whosearid and sectarian reading ofMarx considerably retarded thedevelopment of socialism inthe USA, where Connollylived for many years.

But it is the lessons ofConnolly and his times foranti-imperialism that I wish toaddress today. This hasbecome, of necessity, the centralquestion of world politics ofthis century. I am proud to bea leader of the Stop the WarCoalition, which has organisedthe biggest demonstrationsLondon has ever seen, inopposition to the imperialismof the British government.

The Development ofImperialismWhen we set out in Stop theWar nine years ago, we werereticent about calling the warsof Bush and Blair ‘imperialist’– not because we had anydoubts that they were, but forfear of being thought to belapsing into the jargon of theleft and losing a massaudience. Yet within a year ortwo, the term had become acommonplace. Millions ofpeople, even in the belly of thebeast, were ready, willing andable to call the enemy by itsproper name.

It is an imperialism whichof course James Connollywould have recognised. But that is not to say that it is


James Connolly Memorial Lecture 2010

By Andrew Murray

J

21st CENTURYANTI-IMPERIALISM


➔

exactly the same beast now asit was then. It would befoolish to attempt to cram thereality of today’s world backinto the framework of acentury ago. Imperialism isdifferent, and so is the anti-imperialist movementworldwide – different not justcompared to Connolly’s time,but compared to thirty yearsago, well within livingmemory.

The simplest and mostuseful definition ofimperialism that I have comeacross was given by the lateMarxist historian VictorKiernan, who wrote,“Imperialism today may besaid to display itself incoercion exerted abroad, byone means or another, toextort profits above whatsimple commercial exchangecan procure.”2

This definition has themerit of indicating both the source of imperialism in theimperatives of capitalism, andin laying stress on its politicalaspect as a system of worlddomination – the coercivedynamic. The synthesis of themobilisation of capital aroundthe world in search of thehigher returns required to keepthe system functioning and the

political expansion, via the useof the military apparatus aboveall, of the capitalist state systemseems to capture the essence ofthe process.

On that general basis,modern imperialism (that is,imperialism arising on amonopoly capitalist basis) hasdeveloped through severaldistinct phases in the last 150years and many of the insightsfirst developed by Connolly’scontemporaries like Hobson,Hilferding, Bukharin andLenin need reformulating ifthey are to help explain today’simperialism, shaped as it is bythe neoliberal offensive of thelast generation. A ‘newimperialism’ is announcedfrom time to time – all goodbookshops are filled withworks on the subject today.Indeed, the modernimperialism described at theturn of the 19th and 20th

centuries was often called‘new’ to distinguish it fromthe preceding phase of settleror mercantile colonialism, andthe still earlier empires ofantiquity and medievalism.

The imperialism studied inthe classic works had as itstypical features the creation ofthe joint-stock company withan enlarged role for banks in

circulating capital; the divisionof most of the world intocolonial and neocolonialspheres of influence; while the great majority of industrialproduction was retained in theimperial powers themselves.The export of capital, mostusually invested either in rawmaterial exploitation oressential transportinfrastructure, was the mainexpression of the search for ahigher rate of profit than thatpertaining in the centres ofworld economy. According toHarvard economist JeffreyFrieden3 in this period “theaverage rate of return onBritish investments abroadwas 50 to 75 % higher than athome”, and even higher in therailway industry, in whichforeign investment was twiceas profitable as domestic.Moreover, the governmentguaranteed the rate of intereston railway debentures inIndia, creating “privateenterprise at public risk”,much as the contemporarybank bailouts have done. The City, unsurprisingly givensuch rates and suchprotection, put £156 and£161 respectively into foreignand imperial companies forevery £100 invested

domestically in the periodbefore 1914. From such ratesof return, and the competitivedrive to grab access to thesuper-profit, a profound inter-imperialist rivalry emerged.

That rivalry led in turn tothe First World War, followingwhich the world system brokedown and was recomposed in the inter-war years. Fascism and the Second WorldWar itself had the effect ofsubstantially increasing therate of exploitation of labourin most of the developedworld (Britain being a notableexception), itself laying thefoundation for a new phase ofimperialism after 1945.

This next ‘new’ imperialismstarted on the twin basis of aconsiderable spatial contractionof the capitalist world marketwith the growth of Sovietpower and the Chineserevolution; and the emergenceof the USA as the undisputedhegemon in the capitalistworld, leading to an abatementof the inter-imperialist rivalrywhich had pushed the entiresystem to the point of collapse in the first half of thetwentieth century.

The typical economic actornow became the transnationalcompany and the shift of


The National Executive of the Irish TUC and Labour Party, 1914 (see Connolly, far left, and Larkin, seated second from right).

industrial production capacitybeyond the territories of the great powers began, slowly at first but acceleratingfrom the 1970s onwards. The economies of thosepowers became increasinglyoriented towards financialdomination within the worldsystem, although this shift wasmuch more pronounced inBritain and the USA, say, thanJapan or West Germany.Colonialism and the moreblatant forms of neo-colonialmanipulation were graduallydriven out, to be replaced inpart by the development ofelements of ‘ultra-imperialism’in the shape of globalinstitutions devoted, under US control, to maintaining the conditions for capitalistexpansion.

Stage two of the ‘newimperialism’ entered its ownphase of breakdown in the late1960s and 1970s as UShegemony eroded (in part aconsequence of the massivespending on the Vietnam war).30 years ago, a third of theworld declared itself socialist;in the big capitalist states theruling class ruled, of course,but with its freedom of action(in particular, freedom to raisethe rate of profit) intolerablycircumscribed, as it felt it, bypowerful labour movementsand an established welfare and Keynesian consensus;while in the liberated countriesof what was called the thirdworld as long as there was a second world, ambitiousplans for national economicindependence, or at least afairer world economic order,were still on the agenda. In the 1970s, imperialism wasbeing squeezed from all sides,as it had been in the periodafter 1918.

This called for a class-struggle counter-offensive, bythe ruling class. Rather thanfascism, which would haveengendered massive resistance(but was nevertheless imposedin Chile) or war (severelycomplicated as an option bythe strength of the USSR andthe existence of nuclearweapons) the ruling classes

began the neoliberal offensive,the supreme object being thetransfer of wealth from labourto capital worldwide.

The policies first pro-pounded by Thatcher andReagan since swept across theworld, powered by instru-ments as apparently diverse asthe US Department ofDefense, the InternationalMonetary Fund and RupertMurdoch’s media empire. Its economic record has beenmediocre to say the least –global GDP growth averagedover 5% before 1970, 4.5% inthe 1970s, 3.4% in the 1980sand 2.9% in the 1990s – butas an exercise in the reassertionof class power, it has been astaggering success.

As well as weakening orbreaking the power of labourin western Europe and NorthAmerica, this offensivecontributed to the collapse ofthe USSR and its allied statesin Europe. This in turn madethe imposition of a ‘new order’on the countries of Asia,Africa and Latin America allthe easier.

The collapse of the SovietUnion and its allied states notonly deprived the world of thehope (or fear) of an alternativeto capitalism in the here-and-now, it also opened the wayboth for capitalism to bringmillions of workers into thecircle of exploitation and forthe political ‘terms of trade’ tobe turned to the advantage ofthe centres of high finance justabout everywhere. It was thecrowning achievement of the neoliberal offensive.

This then was the basis forthe latest ‘new imperialism’,the one striving to master theworld today.

In his recently-publishedmasterly Companion to Marx’sCapital, the geographer DavidHarvey posits that today weare seeing “… a different kindof imperialism, which is notabout robbing values andstripping assets from the restof the world, but about usingthe rest of the world as a sitefor opening up new forms of capitalist production.”4

That would seem to me to be

an accurate evaluation of thenewest ‘new imperialism’.

Certainly, it defined thecontext for the ‘war on terror’which started to emerge underClinton’s presidency, attainedits military (and rhetorical)apogee under George Bushand is being recalibratedtoday. In a nutshell, this hasbeen an ambitious attempt tocreate an integrated worldcapitalist economy centred onUS political power, whichitself extracts a ‘rent’ for itsruling elite from the worldsystem in return formaintaining a military andcurrency domination for theruling classes of the world.The removal of any and allobstacles to the spread ofcapitalism within thatintegrated power structure hasbeen the central aim of thewar project.

NeoconservativeStrategiesThere has been an ideologicalfoundation for the project –Fukuyama’s famous Hegelian“end of history”5 asserting thathuman progress had reachedits terminus in liberaldemocratic capitalism,displacing of course Marx’scommunism. It hardly needsemphasising today that thisideological foundation iscracked. It has been subvertednot by a particularly strongchallenge on the politicalfront, but by the working out of its own practice,particularly the two neos – so all-conquering just a fewyears ago – neoliberalism andneoconservatism.

Neoliberalism has now hadan epic crash, a truth bearingexceptionally heavily inIreland (and let me say inpassing I do not thinkConnolly would have been allthat happy to hear the Irishpeople being praised by thehead of the European CentralBank in April 2010 for theexemplary way they haveresponded to the crisis).Neoconservatism is equallydiscredited – gorged on theblood of a million people inIraq, of course, but also

symbolically checked by thewar in Georgia in 2008 whichmarked the passing of the‘unipolar moment’ in worldpolitics, the unrivalleddominance of the US, ofwhich neoconservatism was apolitical expression.

The material foundationfor the new imperialism hasbeen the overwhelmingmilitary power of the USA,embodied in the fact thatWashington spends more onits armed forces than everyoneelse in the world put together.

On this basis, neocon-servatism devised differentstrategies, based wherenecessary on different alliances,for every region to make theworld safe for uninhibitedcapitalist exploitation.

Russia was to be keptweak, and the former Sovietspace fragmented andprevented from reintegration.That was the underlyingtheme of the so-called colour revolutions in severalformer Soviet republics,‘revolutions’ which are nowalmost universally discreditedand in considerable measurereversed.

China was to be keptencircled and pressured.Virtually the first act of thePentagon in the ‘war on terror’was to extend its network of military bases in Asia. Of course, isolating China wasnot only impossible but alsounprofitable for the US, butusing all methods to stall itsrelative rise in the world was aclear Bush priority.

European integration wasto be kept diluted to preventthe EU emerging as a super-power (a highly unwelcomeprospect from a progressivepoint of view, it needs to besaid). When Richard Perle,for example, advocatedTurkey’s admission to the EU,it was for the explicit purposeof rendering the EU politicallyincoherent and incapable ofchallenging US hegemony.

Africa was originally left toBritain and France, formercolonial empires, to control – asub-contracting system whichled to Blair’s war in Sierra


➔

Leone, propping up a corruptelite. Now, however, Africatoo is favoured with one of thePentagon’s globe-straddlingregional commands.

Latin America was for atime taken for granted, andindeed Bush came underconsiderable conservativecriticism for his neglect of the‘backyard’ because of hisconcentration on the MiddleEast, a neglect which the rightwing believed cleared thespace for the progressive andsocialist advances in a numberof states, Venezuela above all.

And then there was thegreater Middle East cauldron,the prime focus of the ‘newimperialism’ extending fromNorth Africa into South Asia.This, the most resource-richand politically-volatile regionin the world, has been thehardest to control in the post-1991 order. The US strategyhere has been to try and findnew ways, through directmilitary intervention andsupport for Israel, to maintainthe imperialist hegemony firstestablished after the FirstWorld War in the teeth ofresistance by most of theregion’s peoples, if not theirgovernments.

Little elaboration is nowneeded as to the consequencesof that policy. It has been themost infamous chapter inworld politics for a generationor more. The golden threadhowever, was the free market,the opening up of space to anintegrated capitalist worldeconomy, the drawing ofmillions – even billions – intowage labour, the privatisationof common assets, the freeflow of capital.

That is why, addingconsiderable insult to massiveinjury, the Republican partypraetorian guard dispatched toBaghdad to manage theoccupation of Iraq treated thestate as a sort of ‘ground zero’laboratory for the impositionof a privatised free marketregime more radical than theycould even dream of imposingon the USA itself.

Of course, it is reasonableto ask – is this still the US


Venezuelan presidentHugo Chavez with USpresident Barack Obama

agenda? I am not one of thosewho believe that the election ofObama represents nothing –that would be to belittle thetremendous impact of theworldwide anti-war movement,including within the US itself,and the struggle of the USpeople for social progress.

However, neither can we afford to be starry-eyed.On some issues, a differentpolicy is being followed –progress on nuclear disarm-ament, the start (only a start) to withdrawing from Iraq. On other issues, a better gameis being talked – Palestine, forexample – but nothing changesin practice. And then there areissues like Afghanistan, wherethe continuity with the Bushpolicy is near total.

Overall, it would be foolishto imagine that the strategicagenda behind the ‘new worldorder’ has been discarded oreven significantly dilutedunder Obama. So challengingthe over-arching imperatives of US power, looking past any shift in rhetorical gear, will remain the decisive issuefor the future – this remainsthe key to advancing on anyother agenda.

Religion andResistanceThe ‘war on terror’ hasinvolved several concurrentwars against countriesoverwhelmingly inhabited byMuslim people.

Does this make it, as someargue, a ‘war against Islam’?No. As argued above, it isrooted in greed, not God.The devouring dollarrecognises no religion, andthe only reason Bush’s ‘axis ofevil’ onslaught did not extendto a war against North Koreawas the latter’s possession ofnuclear weapons, not itsfailure to embrace theMuslim faith.

However, opposition tothe ‘war on terror’ at the sharpend has taken often a religiousform, with groups of explicitlyIslamist politics playing theleading part in the struggle toexpel the occupiers.

This fact has baffled some

people, and led them todefend occupation andimperialism on the groundsthat the latter are ‘secular’while the opposition is‘fundamentalist’. They havedamned the resistance tooccupation in Iraq, Palestine,Lebanon and Afghanistan asfundamentalist and sectarian.

Even if this were true (andit is for the most part not), itcould not justify the warswhich are being fought today.It is not a novel conundrum.Many times imperialist‘civilisation’ has beenconfronted by allegedlybackward peoples fighting fortheir own independence andself-determination.

The Victorian Britishsocialist leader William Morriswas a hundred times rightwhen he condemned Britain’swar in the Sudan as a “wickedand unjust war now beingwaged by the ruling andpropertied classes of thiscountry, with all the resourcesof civilisation at their back,against an ill-armed and semi-barbarous people whose onlycrime is that they have risenagainst a foreign oppression.”6

Morris was quite clear whenhe said that he would welcomea victory for the Mahdi inSudan as signalling that theSudan was once more underthe control of its own people.

That the burden of thestruggle against the ‘new worldorder’ is now being carried inmany places by religious ratherthan secular forces, and bymovements whose socialagenda is radically differentfrom ours (although thisdifference may be exaggerated)is one of the signal differencesbetween anti-imperialism nowand the anti-imperialism of thepost-World War Two period.

This difference needs to beacknowledged and theconsequences of it politicallyaddressed, but we should notlet it hypnotise us, still lessdivide us to the profit of theimperialists.

Some left-wing and liberalcritics of the resistance to theoccupations of Iraq andAfghanistan, for example,

appear themselves to bemesmerised by the religiousform of the struggle, takingthe so-called ‘fundamentalists’at their own evaluation,without looking at the actualmotivations, history, anddemands of those movements.To quote Terry Eagleton in hispolemic against eminentatheist Richard Dawkins:

“Dawkins seems tonurture a positively Mao-like faith in faith itself – inthe hopelessly idealistconception … that religiousideology (as opposed, say, tomaterial conditions orpolitical injustice) is whatfundamentally drives radical Islam.”7

Their objectives are, ofcourse, entirely secular and inmost cases are the sameobjectives as those longadvanced by nationalist,populist and socialistmovements in the past.Indeed, movements likeHezbollah and Hamas have tosome extent filled the vacuumcreated by the shortcomings,on the one hand, of thesecular left in the Middle East(above all its failure toconsistently articulate thenational aspirations of the broadest mass of people in societies where the workingclass has generally only been asmall proportion of thepopulation), and their brutalsuppression by imperialismand its local satraps on theother. At any event, thepopular support of these rising Islamist movementscannot be gainsaid.

Even al-Qaeda, which isundoubtedly rooted inreligious fanaticism, makesdemands which can be met inthis world, not the next. It isnot to excuse the horror of9/11 – nor to suggest that binLaden can form part of someglobal anti-imperialist alliance,which the anti-popularsectarianism of his politics andmethods entirely precludes –to point out that this atrocitywas not carried out to restorethe Caliphate or even toimpose the burqa on thewomen of the USA. It was

directed against the presenceof US troops in Saudi Arabia,the suffering of the Iraqipeople under the sanctionsregime, and the oppression of the Palestinians by theIsraeli state.

These may be good or baddemands, but they do notdepend on any particular viewof Islam or God. Merely todraw attention to this factdraws down the charge of‘root-causism’ – the attempt to look at the roots ofterrorism, rather than beingcontent simply to denounce itas an evil rooted in an unshak-able religious fanaticism.‘Root-causism’ is in fact the foundation of rationalpolitical debate of these issues.To quote Professor Eagletononce more, “all these potentialrecruits to al-Qaeda stem fromcountries that have long,discreditable histories ofEuropean domination orcolonial occupation.”8

On the point of root-causism, I take my stand withLord Salisbury, the greatVictorian Tory imperialist,who when invited to condemnthe Phoenix Park murders inDublin did so while alsoinsisting on “drawing out theclose connection between the crimes and the Britishgovernment policy which hascaused it”9 – the policy ofwhat he regarded asGladstone’s excessiveliberalism in handling theIrish question. So theimperialists are not beyond abit of root-causism whendealing with terrorism, whenit suits!

So we have to insist on notjust drawing out the closeconnection between all thesephenomena – ranging fromterrorist attacks to armedstruggles for independence –and the British and USgovernment policies whichhave caused them, but also notrefrain from supporting thosewho are fighting for theirfreedom under a religious flagjust because we cannotidentify with them ascomrades as easily as we might have done with a


➔

previous generation of secularfreedom fighters.

And it is worse than wrong– it is reactionary – to refuseto join hands with movementswhich are fighting imperialismand national oppressionbecause they draw religiousinspiration, while embracingblood-thirsty neocolonialsecularists.

For example, take thatleading apologist for the Iraqinvasion and song-and-dance-man for the military industrialcomplex, ChristopherHitchens. Is his support for awar which killed hundreds ofthousands balanced by hisstrident atheism?

Even the title of his anti-religious polemic isilluminating. God is notGreat is of course a reversalof a central Musliminvocation. Calling his bookOur Father is Not in Heavenwould have been braver in apredominantly (and oftenfundamentally) Christiancountry like the USA – toobrave, evidently.

To take another example,the Financial Times journalistJohn Lloyd denounced theStop the War Coalition forallegedly forming allianceswith Islamic groups which didnot respect rights for womenand gay people10 – whilehimself uniting with GeorgeBush and Dick Cheney,whose views on suchquestions would raise feweyebrows in Kandahar. If oneis to unite with people youhave disagreements with, it isbetter to do so for peace thanfor war.

It cannot be denied thatsome movements fightingimperialism are deeplyconservative on social anddemocratic questions. But the problem is exactlythat – social conservatism,not religion. Religion itselfcan often be allied to sociallyprogressive politics, althoughit can also sometimesdegenerate into sectarianism,which has always been usedby colonialists to divideopposition to their rule,from Ireland to Iraq.

Defeating the ‘NewWorld Order’Working through thosecontradictions, fighting for trade union freedom, forwomen’s rights, for democracy,are causes we should all standin solidarity with. But theycan only be attained throughthe struggles of the peoplethemselves in their owncountries, and above all theycannot be imposed at thepoint of a neoconservativebayonet.

We will certainly not makeany progress if we insist onuniting only with those whoaccept our maximum socialistprogramme, or with thosewho celebrate the EuropeanEnlightenment one-sidedly,not seeing that it not only co-existed with a worldwide reignof blood and terror visited onAsia, Africa, the Middle Eastand Latin America, but thatintellectual and politicalprogress in western Europe inlarge measure actuallydepended on the massacresand the pillage.

To state the obvious, theopposite of struggling forunity is acquiescing indivision. That is what unitesthe prosecution of the ‘war onterror’ abroad and the growingassault on the Muslimcommunities ‘at home’.Islamophobia is now rampantin Britain and many otherEuropean countries, with theMuslim minority under attackfor its lifestyle, politicalengagement, culture, indeedits very right to be.

This draws on a deep wellof imperialist racism and,since Muslims in Britain areoverwhelmingly also workingclass, it represents another wayto divide the working classagainst itself.

How the bankers mustsmile, as a distraction fromtheir troubles, when they seedispossessed and exploitedwhite workers marching underthe banner of the EnglishDefence League to expresstheir hopelessness by attackingMuslim people.

Muslim-baiting is also thethin end of the anti-civil

liberties wedge which hasformed another part of the‘war on terror’ fought on thedomestic front in the USAand Britain in particular.Measures like extendeddetention without trial may beintroduced ‘temporarily’against ‘just a tiny minority’but experience teaches thatonce on the statute book theywill remain to be deployedagainst ever-wider sections ofsociety indefinitely.

So this is a cause foreveryone who calls themselvesleft, or liberal. And it is partof the struggle against animperialism that has neverfought wars abroad withoutalso being forced to open adomestic front too.

How will the new worldorder be defeated? It will not– cannot – be the work of theleft in the west alone, or of thelabour movement in isolation.That is not only undesirable,but impossible.

It is a class issue, and notjust in the simple sense that allthe movements I havementioned are rooted amongstthe poor. Defeating the ‘newworld order’ is a prerequisitefor any lasting form of socialprogress. Nothing worthwhilecan be achieved under the global domination of the

Pentagon, Wall Street, the Cityof London, News Corp etc.

That is why I would drawyour attention to remarksmade in an interview by JulioChavez, a leader of Venezuela’sruling United Socialist Party,discussing the basis of apossibly soon-to-be-foundedFifth International:11

“Why is anti-imperialismbeing proposed as the commonelement and not just socialism?

“We say that this call has tohave a broad character, and it ispossible that in some countries,such as in the Middle East,there are organisations andmovements fighting againstsome expressions ofimperialism and Zionism assuch, but that are not socialistin essence, in the programm-atic sense. But, undoubtedly,they are fighting imperialism.That’s why we say that itcould be that in some Islamiccountries that do not havesocialism as an ideologicalelement, for example the caseof the Islamic Revolution ofIran, which is anti-imperialist, that this elementwill be an element that willconvoke as many parties,organisations, movements of the world to raise thebattle, the confrontation with imperialism.


“From this perspective ofan anti-imperialist character …it is possible to call as manyparties, movements, and cur-rents in the world … in orderto agree on a plan, a minimumtransition program, to moveconcretely towards a socialistproject at a world level.”

Let me say that while theIslamic revolution in Iran wasundoubtedly anti-imperialist,the anti-popular policies of theregime in Tehran have in largemeasure robbed it of thataspect, and complicate theworldwide struggle to preventthe extension of the war toIran. But the essence of thepoint more broadly seems tobe correct. Uniting the mass

movements against war andfor social justice in Europewith the states and movementsfighting for social progress inLatin America and thosestruggling for nationalliberation in the Middle Eastmust be the foundation forthe renewal of a progressivepolitics in the 21st century,founded on the defeat of theUS hegemonic project.

Can we do it? Let me endwith three quotes from JamesConnolly:

First, from the manifestoof the Socialist Party ofIreland: “The struggle forIrish freedom has two aspects:it is national and it is social.”12

I believe that reflection holdsgood on a world scale today

Secondly: “Old politicalorganisations will die out andnew ones must arise to taketheir place; old party rallyingcries and watchwords aredestined to become obsoleteand meaningless, and the fire of old feuds and hatredswill pale and expire beforenewer conceptions born of a consciousness of ourcommon destiny.”13

And finally, in answer tothose paralysed by an assessingthe balance of forces andforever waiting for another,more decisive, day: “But is thetime ripe? You never know ifthe time is ripe until you try. If you succeed the time is ripe ….”14

■ James Connolly MemorialLecture, given in Dublin, 15May 2010.


■

1 C D Greaves, The Life and Timesof James Connolly, Lawrence &Wishart, London, 1961, p 74.2 V G Kiernan, America, The New Imperialism, Verso, London,2005, p xv.3 J R Frieden, Global Capitalism,Norton, New York, 2006, p 50.4 D Harvey, A Companion to Marx’sCapital, Verso, London, 2010, p 332.5 F Fukuyama, The End of Historyand the Last Man, Penguin,1992.6 R.P Dutt, The Crisis of Britainand the British Empire, Lawrence &Wishart, London, 1953, p 321.7 T Eagleton, Reason, Faith and

Revolution: Reflections on the GodDebate, Yale University Press, NewHaven, 2009, p 110.8 Ibid, p. 101.9 A Roberts, Salisbury: VictorianTitan, Phoenix Press, London, 1999,p 26510 J Lloyd, at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/apr/14/lloydpiece.11 J Chavez, athttp://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5308 .12 Greaves, op cit, p 7513 Ibid, p 252.14 Ibid, p 369.

Notes

GET COMMUNISTREVIEWCommunist Reviewexists to encourageMarxist ideas anddebate. An annualsubscription (4 issues)guarantees each issue isdelivered to your door.Please send me a subscription to CommunistReview, I enclose

UK: £12 for 4 issues

EUROPE: £14 for 4 issues

OVERSEAS: £18 for 4 issues(Please pay by international money order)

Name

Address

Postcode

Country

Email

Return to: CPB 23 Coombe RoadLondon CR0 1BD

You may also subscribe via theweb site www.communist-party.org.uk.

Islamophobia: EDLdemonstration in March 2010

Photo from flickr by Belkus

PrologueThe process of dialectical materialism canbe compared with the work of an artist.He renders his motive on the canvas, and– if he is a gifted artist – he will not besatisfied by just reproducing that motive.He will try to get to the essence of hismotive, either by emphasising or pitchingpart of it. In a figurative sense, whathappens between the artist and his motiveis the material process. Dialectical logic isthe process in the head of the artist and,together with the reflection of reality,constitutes dialectical materialism.

This is beautifully expressed in one ofShakespeare’s sonnets (No 24):

“Mine eye hath played thepainter, and hath stell’d

Thy beauty’s form in table ofmy heart;

…Mine eyes have drawn thy

shape, and thine for meAre windows to my breast,

where through the sunDelights to peep, to gaze

therein on thee;”

This is dialectics in arts at its best. It gives the full richness of reflection and one that we can also find in thetheoretical works of the classics.

The American author FrancisFukuyama predicted in the 1990s thathistory had reached an end. Capitalism had prevailed as the finalanswer to all modes of production.1But history in general is unpredictableand is not governed by fortune-tellers.

The major changes in capitalism, andthe collapse of the socialist system in1991, have led to political reaction and amajor set-back for labour movement anddemocratic forces. But there is no reasonto distrust the future or to fear the greatchanges which our time will experience.Capitalism and imperialism create thefoundation for the coming socialistsocieties, not in a steady and evolutionaryway, but in catastrophic leaps andthrough revolutions, from one type offormation to another.

Class struggles of social forces are themakers of history. If we look at thehistory of capitalism, we see that theFrench revolutions of the 19th century

evolved in a contradictory fashion. The feudal system that collapsed in 1789was reinstated with the restoration of themonarchy in 1814, but the bourgeoisrevolution still prevailed. We knowsimilar events from all the other majorEuropean countries. What we see now inRussia and Eastern Europe is a capitalistrestoration, with fatal consequences forthe working people. But, like the FrenchBourbons, the power of the Russianoligarchs is only temporary.

1. Positivistic and ScientificAnalysisIn the late 1990s and with the beginningof the new millennium, a number ofnew works on imperialism werepublished, primarily written byAmerican, English and German authors.These writers are characterised by apositivistic outlook and, in contrast withLenin, by a lack of understanding ofdialectical materialism. Their analysisgives a picture of new tendencies inimperialism, but not in a scientific way.2It is as if Lenin’s works, which werepopular in the 1970s, have almost


By Lars Ulrik Thomsen

Lenin’s Analysis of Imperialism – a Pioneering Work

Currently fashionable theories on the left, such as the concept oftransnational capital, propose that the concept of imperialism, andmore specifically Lenin’s theory of imperialism, is out of date andirrelevant to the worldwide labour movement. However, carefulconsideration shows that Lenin’s theory of imperialism, which sees it asa stage of capitalist development associated with the rise of monopolycapital and an enhanced role for the state, is still the only solidfoundation for grasping the nature of today’s capitalist world economy,even with all of the changes that have taken place since Lenin’s time.

disappeared from the present debate.With a few exceptions, they are seen asirrelevant for contemporary analysis.

So anti-communism has achieved itsgoal of undermining the theoreticalfoundations of the labour movement. Our job must be to use the new publica-tions on imperialism, as far as possible, and link them into a new analysis. The lack of investigation using Lenin’smethod has had perceptible consequencesfor the labour movement. It leads tomiscalculations, as for example in theconcepts of liberalisation and globalisation.

In a scientific sense, these authors aregiving an incorrect picture of the presentstage of capitalism. The same applies tothe theory that transnational capitalismhas replaced state monopoly capitalism.

In contrast to these recentpublications, a very interesting bookappeared as long ago as 1968: FritzKumpf ’s Problems of Dialectics in Lenin’sAnalysis of Imperialism.3 At that timeKumpf was a lecturer in philosophy atthe Humboldt University in Berlin.

In his book Kumpf investigatesLenin’s work and method, contributingto the development of the scientificanalysis of imperialism. He starts byevaluating the most recent results indialectical logic, and presents variousopinions of Marxist lecturers on thesubject. This is a very valuable approach,because every new investigation has toverify its concepts and categories.

Kumpf studies the process that hasto be followed in the analysis, if theresult is to be in accordance withphilosophical logic. This includes the transition from the abstract to theconcrete, and the relation betweenformal and dialectical logic in theinvestigation. The book gives us a clearimpression of the depth and quality ofLenin’s work. It emphasises that everystep in the analysis must follow a specialprocedure to make the laws of motionvisible in capitalism.

This is the important differencebetween Lenin’s analysis and those ofother authors. Lenin does not justdeliver a number of pieces of factualinformation, but the actual substance ofthe matter is discovered and elaborated.

Kumpf also investigates the works ofauthors like Hilferding, Kautsky andBukharin who were contemporary withLenin. Kautsky came to quite differentconclusions from Lenin, leading to a splitin the labour movement, withconsequences for our own time.

In the third chapter of his book,Kumpf analyses the new forms of statemonopoly capitalism. He shows how –

despite of the efforts of the bourgeoisparties – it is impossible to solve the innercontradictions of the system. His mainthesis is that, although the monopoliesundertake a form of planning, overallproduction is still anarchical. This is animportant conclusion, because it gives usthe key to understanding why societymust change into a new formation.

Kumpf ’s work has to be seen in thecritical light of later philosophicalwritings. The way he examines therelationship between natural science andlogic requires closer analysis. His apologyfor making dialectical logic into aseparate discipline is in contradictionwith the work of E V Ilyenkov and hisDialectical Logic.4

2. Lenin’s WorkWhat distinguishes the Marxist analysisfrom other methods? It does not simplyregister the eventual changes, but goesdeeper and tries to show connections that are not visible to the naked eye.This was the method which Lenindeveloped in Imperialism, The HighestStage of Capitalism.

Before he started his analysis ofcapitalism, Lenin studied thedevelopment of philosophy fromantiquity to his own time. In particularhe studied Hegel’s dialectics, whichenabled him to develop a materialisticstandpoint. Without theseinvestigations, he would not have beenable to solve the analysis of imperialism.One of his great achievements was thedefinition of dialectical logic:

“Logic is the science not of externalforms of thought, but the laws ofdevelopment ‘of all material, natural andspiritual things’, ie, of the developmentof the entire concrete content of theworld and of its cognition, ie, the sum-total, the conclusion of the History ofknowledge of the world.”5

Lenin wrote Imperialism in the firsthalf of 1916, claiming a number ofdevelopments in capitalism, which wouldhave a decisive impact on the labourmovement in the 20th century. His mostimportant discovery was that thecentralisation and concentration ofcapital leads to the formation ofmonopolies, which due to their positionin the society become decisive in thegeneral development of socialproduction. As a result Lenin gave thefollowing short definition: Imperialism isthe monopoly stage of capitalism.6

This definition was elaborated in thewell-known 5 points which followed,rooted in the economic categories ofthose days. The condition for reaching


➔

“What distinguishes the Marxist analysis fromother methods? It does not simply registerthe eventual changes, but goes deeper andtries to show connections that are not visibleto the naked eye”

this conclusion was a comprehensivetheoretical study. This meant collectingbourgeois statistical data, studyingbourgeois authors and making athorough study of philosophy. New scientific discoveries had to be partof the definition and decide the contentof our terminology. This, Leninconcluded, was the only way to presentan adequate analysis.

In Imperialism, Lenin investigates thepreceding period in the history ofcapitalism, ie the transition from freecompetition to the emergence ofmonopolies. Subsequently he analysesthe changes in monopoly capitalism and the dominance of finance capital.By examining the accessible data, heshows how these changes in capitalismwill have far-reaching consequences forlabour. He concludes that the labourmovement should not submit toimperialism, but on the contrary,sharpen its inner contradictions to theoutmost. Only in this way canimperialism be fought and thetransition to a higher level of society be accomplished.

3.The Theory of StateMonopoly CapitalismCurrently, the theory of state monopolycapitalism has almost been forgotten.Only a few economists, such asGretchen Binus from Germany, areanalysing the present economic crisis byusing this method.7 By accepting thetheory of neoliberalism andglobalisation, most economists haveconcluded that it meant the terminationof state monopoly capitalism. The misunderstanding arises becausethis theory was perceived in a narrowway and only seen in a specific form.

Monopolies and finance capital donot follow the same course under allpolitical conditions. They are subject tothe laws of development of capitalism,and the changes in the relative strengthbetween the classes.

The present crisis in the worldeconomy confirms that the theory ofstate monopoly capitalism is still valid.It is national governments that promotesubsidies, political intervention andbailing out of the banks. They are tryingto mitigate the consequences of thecrisis. If the philosophy of neoliberalismwere still in force, then national

governments would not interfere in theway they do today.

What can we learn from Lenin’s workon imperialism? All the questionsdiscussed in it became the substance ofthe most important questions whichdominated the 20th century. That iswhy a new investigation has to build onthe method of his work.

In to-day’s society the new forms ofstate monopoly capitalism are one of thecentral issues for the labour movement.These new forms are no longer limitedby national borders, but defined byregional cooperation of states. That iswhy internationalism is so important forthe labour movement and has to bedeveloped in qualitatively new ways.Only by international cooperation will itbe possible for the labour movement, tobecome a counterweight to imperialismand state monopoly capitalism. It mustvisualise the difference between thespecific and the general: what isnationally conditioned and what has to

be raised through common claims ininternational fora.

The present crisis is also the crisis ofthe state monopoly capitalist system. It is symbolised by the legendary GreekKing Tantalos, who was chained in waterup to his neck. Every time he wanted todrink, the water level sank. Fruit hungover his head, but he could never reachit. Today capitalism has generatedunbelievable productive forces, whichsubmerge the markets with commodities.But, if there is no purchasing power tokeep the wheels running, millions ofworkers become redundant.

The depth of the present crisis is alsorooted in the deregulation andliberalisation of the economy. This deregulation has been claimed as the proof that the state no longer has thesame role as previously. In reality thispolicy was a means by which the imperialpowers dominated smaller countries.

The critical reader will object thatstate regulation had already been replaced


“The present crisis is ... symbolised by thelegendary Greek King Tantalos, who waschained in water up to his neck. Every timehe wanted to drink, the water level sank.Fruit hung over his head, but he could neverreach it.”

by monetarism in the 1980s. But thepromised free competition andliberalisation of the markets is refuted byeconomic facts. In the European Union,40 banks control 60% of the capitalmarket. Given the close connectionsbetween the big banks, there are in factroughly 10 banks that control 60% ofthe market.

This kind of monopolisation is to beseen in all vital sectors of the economy.It has been advancing by leaps andbounds, prohibiting effectivecompetition and price control, to thedetriment of consumers.Monopolisation has also been used toredistribute wealth in society, which alsotends to escalate the economic crises.

As a consequence of the current crisis,parties in the labour movement areproposing state intervention andsubsidises for banks and privateenterprises. In reality this is an attemptto reinstitute Keynesianism.8 But therelative success of that policy was under

the quite different circumstances of the1930s and the period after the SecondWorld War. Just to take one aspect, the scientific and technical revolutionmakes many of his predictions for theeconomy non-applicable. In contrast toMarx, Keynes did not consider newinventions as part of his theory.

An alternative approach could be theanti-monopoly strategy, which waslaunched in the 1970s. The idea was toconnect all democratic demands withcontrol of the big monopolies, givingnew rights to the people, andstrengthening democratic influence on alldecisions in society. This kind of policyis still applicable, but needs to becombined with a new analysis of thecontradictions in state monopolycapitalism and imperialism.

4.A New Analysis ofImperialismThe present conditions promote Lenin’swork on imperialism, and give us newinspiration for a contemporary analysis.Lenin emphasised that his work wasdominated by Tsarist censorship.Therefore he limited himself to theeconomic analysis of the war powers, andthe world economy as a whole.

Since his time roughly 100 years havepassed, with rapid developments in theeconomy and politics, which have changedthe world decisively. One example is theemergence of a socialist camp, which in the1980s comprised one third of the world’spopulation. Another is the scientific-technological revolution, and a third is thedislocation between the imperialist powerssince the Second World War.

That is why a contemporary analysiswill appear different from that in Lenin’stime. Referring to Kumpf ’s work, thenew analysis must comprise a majorphilosophical preliminary undertaking.The new results in science and the waythey were achieved must be investigatedin defining new notions and categories.

Here we are not short of ideas, becausethe discussion on ‘new thinking’ startedalready in the 1980s.

One of the great questions in those days was the relation between classinterests and common human values.Which should have priority? The solution is to determine the dialecticalrelation between them, and how prioritygrows out of the concrete analysis. These debates are still of great interest,because the labour movement has notreached a conclusion on this new topic.

The task that we face to day is evengreater, because the tensions in the state-monopoly capitalist system haveaccelerated immensely. All theseconflicts, and the collapse of the socialistsystem, lead to new formations andcurrents in the labour movement.

In the preface to the French-German edition of Imperialism, Leninmentioned a new internationalideological current – Kautskyanism.9Lenin’s criticism was directed towardsKautsky’s role in the SecondInternational and its collapse in 1914.

To-day we experience a new currentin the labour movement – a relapse toutopian socialism, an idealistic currentwhich has gained widespread influence.It is known by the name ‘New Left’ andemphasises the moral and ethical aspectsin the movement, downgrading thesocialist goal. Taking its inspiration fromformer Marxists, like the Frenchphilosopher André Gorz10 and others, itis hardly distinguishable from therevisionists of Eduard Bernstein’s time.

As Lenin had to fight Kauskyanism atthe beginning of the 20th century, so wehave to fight the utopian socialism of ourcentury. A new analysis of imperialismcan mean that the dialectical method willexperience a rebirth. Only by developingnew forms of dialectical materialism willit be possible to accomplish a trueunderstanding of the laws of motion in our society.


1 F Fukuyama, The End of History and the LastMan, Hamilton, 1992.2 See, for example: C Johnson, The Sorrows of theEmpire, Verso, 2004, and E M Wood, Empire ofCapital, Verso, 2003.3 F Kumpf, Probleme der Dialektik in LeninsImperialismus-Analyse: Eine Studie zur DialektischenLogik, VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften,Berlin, 1968.4 E V Ilyenkov, Dialectical Logic, ProgressPublishers, Moscow, 1977 (for a biography ofIlyenkov, see http://www.aworldtowin.net/resources/Ilyenkov.html – Ed). 5 V I Lenin, Conspectus of Hegel’s Book ‘The

Science of Logic’, in Collected Works, Vol 38, pp 92-3. 6 V I Lenin, Imperialism, The Highest Stage ofCapitalism, in Collected Works, Vol 22, p 266.7 G Binus, The Financial Crisis – A Result ofState Monopoly Control of the Economy, CR,following article (originally published in German asFinanzkrise – Resultat staatsmonopolistischerRegulierung der Wirtschaft, in Marxistische Blätter,2009, Heft 1, p 21).8 J M Keynes, The General Theory of Employment,Interest and Money, Macmillan, London, 1970.9 Lenin, Imperialism, p 192.10 A Gorz, Wissen, Wert und Kapital (Knowledge,Value and Capital), Rotpunktverlag, Zurich, 2004.

Notes

■

THE INTERNATIONALfinancial crisis is ubiquitous –it is occurring not only in theUSA and the EU. It isdrawing the whole worldeconomy into a chaos whoseentirety cannot yet be seen,and even leading wholecountries into statebankruptcy. Faced withturmoil on the financialmarkets, scenarios of fear andthe panic of capital,governments have franticallyput in place packets of statemeasures to support the banksand financial markets, tohitherto unknown financialdimensions. The increasingcalls upon the state, especially

by those who up till now havefostered the myth of the freemarket, are frequentlyaccompanied by demands for anew regulation of the financialsystem, for a new politicalframework of rules for thefunctioning of the capitalistmechanism. Bourgeoisscholars and bankers evenspeak of a ‘systemic crisis’, anddemand state guarantees for anendurable new order directedtowards securing the existingprofit system.

On the Left1 a lively debatehas arisen about the conditionof present-day capitalism.Here the question of thesystem is also put, but in

respect of other and totallydifferent aspects. They askwhether the state is returningand neoliberalism is stuck incrisis, whether state andeconomy are to be redefined orwhether indeed one can speakof a crisis of capitalism.

The crisis-charged shockto the total economic systemmarks a deep breach in thedevelopment of capitalism intoto. In the present politicalconfusion, however, effectivecounter-strategies are not to befound. But in all the publicityone tendency, grounded in thedevelopments and dominanceof the monopoly capitalistruling structure of society, is

becoming quite clear: the stateintervenes directly in theeconomy with all its economicand political power when theexistence of this system isthreatened or the conditionsfor investment of monopolycapital seriously worsen.Therefore there can be nosolution to the crisis in theinterests of the great majorityof the population, withoutgenerally endangering thissocial system.

State Interventions asa Life Necessity forAdvancingMonopolisationTo understand this serious


The Financial Crisis

A Consequence of State Monopoly Control of the EconomyBy Gretchen Binus

world economic upheaval weshould very briefly refer to thealmost forgotten theory ofstate monopoly capitalism. In the 1970s this concept,underpinned by fundamentalworks of Marxist scholars, wasa component of the analysis ofcapitalism among the whole of the Marxist Left.2 It con-nected with statements byMarx and Engels on thehistorical tendency of capitalistaccumulation, that the innercontradictions of capitalutilisation force capitalism evermore strongly to adapt to theincreasingly social character ofthe productive forces withforms of ‘social capital’,without being able to breakthrough the social order –shown in the building-up ofshare ownership in businessesand in the role of the creditsystem. With advancingmonopolisation of theeconomy, such forms of socialcapital develop into, or arenewly created as, economicmonopoly (“Everything hingeson economic monopoly”, asLenin said3) – ever asadaptation to changedconcrete historical conditionsand under the pressure ofsocial challenges. One maythink only of the developmentof finance capital or oftransnational or internationalmonopolies. And thisprovokes ‘state intervention’ever more strongly.

Rudolf Hilferdingcharacterised such a develop-ment at the beginning of the20th century. He wrote:

“Finance capitalsignifies the unificationof capital. Thepreviously separatespheres of industrial,commercial and bankcapital are now broughtunder the commondirection of highfinance, in which themasters of industry andof the banks are unitedin a close personalassociation. The basisof this association is theelimination of freecompetition among

individual capitalists by the large monop-olistic combines. This naturally involvesat the same time achange in the relationof the capitalist class tostate power.”4

The core of the statemonopoly capitalist theory is substantiated in thestatement that, with furtherdevelopment of the productiveforces and the rapid progressof the social division of labour,the yardstick of ‘private’monopolisation no longersuffices to secure theutilisation of capital.Consequently stateintervention has developed asa permanent feature.

“To the same extent asthe state powerbecomes economicallyactive, the extent ofmonopolisticrearrangement and ofbreaking up of thecompetitionmechanism enlarges.With all its branches,the state has the wholesociety as sphere ofactivity, totally incontrast even with thegreatest monopolies.”5

That the state is ever morecomprehensively incorporatedinto what takes place in theeconomy is a characteristicfeature of the development ofcapitalism in its totallymonopolistic phase. Also, theinternationalisation of capital,or globalisation, isunthinkable without this statemonopoly mechanism.Intensive relations with thestate are a life necessity formonopolistic expansion.

Nevertheless therelationship of the state and themonopolies is extremelyambivalent. On the one hand,the different lobbies of highfinance operate in competitionwith one another; on the otherthe intervention of the stateappears as independent fromthe concrete historicalconditions of social develop-

ment at any given time. In thisextremely confined network ofrelations the state in no wayfunctions as a simple executorof business interests. In itsrelative independence it has,now as ever, to safeguard total-social, profit-alienresponsibilities, it has to makesocial processes and conflictssafe for the benefit of the rulingpower configuration, whilehowever at the same timeaccepting as muchresponsibility as possible formonopolistic accumulation.State interventions in theeconomy are moreover subjectto the prevailing politicalpower relations and aretherefore subject to influenceby other social currents ormovements. Superficially, theregulating function of the stateappears as such with increasingextent; and the multiformityand novelty of its methodsoften appear, not as a capitalistprocedure for regulating profit,but rather as an intervention in the economy in the interestsof society.

The permanence of stateinterventions in the economycharacterises capitalism atevery level of its development,but with significant differencesin forms, weight and also inquality, as well as with variableapplicability. The arsenal ofstate control measures includesthe whole equipment of stateeconomic policy ofsubventions, tax measures andstate contracts up to directinterventions in the structureof businesses and the economy.Especially with ‘globalisation’,the narrow entwining of thenational economies hasincreased the scope andintensity of state interventionin the economic process.6That is becoming visible in thecooperation with internationalhigh finance of states andinternational organisations ofthe most diverse kind – such asinstitutions of the EuropeanUnion (EU), the Organisationfor Economic Cooperationand Development (OECD),the International MonetaryFund (IMF), the World Bankas well as world economic or

financial summits.It should be added that the

relationship of monopoly andstate does not only refer to thetotality of socio-economic andpolitical relations, but ratheralso directly to the setting ofemphasis in the formation of economic and social policiesand in their justification; ie the state interventions arebound up with differentvariants regarding directionand content.

The current discussionabout neoliberalism andKeynesianism reflects this.Both variants are based inprinciple on the same socio-economic foundation and inboth directions it is a matterof stabilising the capitalisteconomy on account ofeconomic crises or insufficientconditions for accumulationof capital. But they differ inthe placing of emphasis on theeconomic and socio-politicalinterventions of the state.

The neoliberal direction,originating from the 1940sand 50s and especiallystrengthened since the 1970sin most of the dominantcountries, can be described asa confrontational variant or asa radicalised model of utilisa-tion of capital. With theconcept of a long-termeconomic policy it is orientedtowards a ‘market economy’with ‘free competition’ ascentral categories and a ‘strongstate’ above the economy,which sets the basic conditionsfor utilisation of capital. It relies on a whole arsenal of measures favourable tocapital expansion, such asprivatisation of publicproperty, deregulation,cancelling state investmentsand taxation, destruction ofthe social security system etc.

Against this the Keynesianvariant – originating in theperiod after the Great Crisis of1929-32 and known in theUSA as the New Deal; or inGermany, Italy and otherindustrial countriesoriginating repeatedly fromthe post-war years until wellinto the 1970s as a valideconomic-political concept –

communist review • summer 2010 • page 17

➔

backs an anticyclical anddemand-oriented policy, inorder to stimulate theeconomy. It comprises state-financed investment,including via governmentborrowing, as well asguidelines on employmentand socio-political measures.Within the neoliberal dogma,this variant is certainly alsopresent with regard to militaryexpenditure and thearmaments industry.

Today, many on the Leftsee in the Keynesian variant,with its macroeconomicregulation, the opportunity for a reorientation of economic policy in thedirection of a more just society.The currently much discussed‘Swedish model’ shows thatthis direction of statemonopoly control offersdemocratic forces and the Leftthe possibility of introducingalternative ideas into theeconomy and society. It is atotally specific form ofnational state monopolydevelopment on the basis of asocial compromise betweenlabour, capital and the state,originating after the worldeconomic crisis of 1929 and a consequence of the politicalbalance of power, with strongtrade unions and a strongsocial democracy in Sweden.It indicates that, with a stronganti-capitalist political force,variants directed towards agreater degree of social justiceand to safeguardingemployment can at leastbecome accepted. However,unless the socio-economicfoundation substantiating thepower and political influenceof capital is substantiallychanged, then this model hasno permanence – as seen in thecurrent neoliberal direction ofeconomic policy in Sweden.

The Finance Market asa ParasiticAccompaniment toMonopoly ExpansionThe present depth of the crisisis the outcome of rigorousprofit-oriented control of theeconomy and society on thebasis of the neoliberal

alignment of economic andsocial policies. Variousmeasures of taxation policy,deregulation and liberalisationof the markets as well as alarge-scale privatisationcampaign have essentiallyimproved the return on high-finance capital, at the sametime however creating theconditions for a huge stock-market bubble. In no way,therefore, can one speak of thelast decades in terms of a‘dominance of rolling backstate intervention’. By meansof a whole number of laws andother methods, the state andits institutions have – most ofall in the last decade at thenational and internationallevel – favoured the expansionof firms into new andprofitable areas of investment.

We may refer here only tothe legislative measures of theGerman ‘Red-Green’government from 1998onwards. At the beginning of2001 the reform of corporatetaxation came into force, bywhich businesses are sparedannually about €12bn in taxpayments. Likewise, theintroduction of ‘tax freedom oncapital gains’ on the sale ofGerman businesses furnishedfurther taxation-linkedencouragements. In additionthere were billion-euro presentsto large-scale enterprises bysuspension of the wealth tax,reduction of the top rate of taxand the lowering of the tax onprofits. At the beginning of2004 the ‘InvestmentModernisation Law’ came intoforce. It made possible theadmission of hedge funds into Germany, with whichcertificates speculative dealingcould be pursued. Besides thatthe demands on the StockExchange were relaxed,investment possibilities onfunds were extended, trade inderivatives on real estatetransactions was permitted and‘bank supervision withjudgement by eye’ was allowed.

Also, within the EUframework, a multiplicity ofstate instruments was created,which with the completion ofthe financial services market,

above all, facilitated the entryof the major banks and otherhigh finance institutions intonew capital markets.Alongside flexible capitalregulations for businesses orthe valid credit assignments ofthe European Central Bank tobig business, we should alsomention especially theintegration of the financemarket. On the basis of theFinancial Services Action Plan1999-2005 (drawn up in1999), with a multiplicity ofmeasures, and the White BookFinancial Services Policies2005-10 as a sequel, togetherwith a far-going liberalisationof the capital market, thefinance market was broughtinto line with the expansion ofthe major banks into theEuropean economic space andwith an enormously appliedmobilisation of capital, byopening up profitable sourcesof finance. Even in the currentcrisis, the banks are able, dueto the recently slackened EUBalance Rules, to achieve taxgains and thereby preventhigher losses. Finally, interna-tional organisations such as theIMF, the World Bank and theInternational Bank for Recon-struction and Developmentwere pioneers of the neoliberalcourse. They connected thesupply of means of finance forprojects with the conditions, egprivatisations, which thecommercial banks and otherfinancial institutionsguaranteed via different typesof high-yielding finance.

On the other side of state-aided capital accumulation,there have been legallyenforced cuts in social welfarein all industrial counties overthe last few years. The out-come of such extensive‘reforms’ has been a shift in theprimary distribution betweenwages and profits in favour ofhigh finance, seen clearly in theincrease in the enormousprofits of the powerfulcorporations. Thus, inGermany, the share of profitsin the national income rosefrom 27.8% to 35.4% between2000 and 2007, while wagesstagnated and in real terms fell

on account of price rises andtaxation policy. Consequentlythe reduced purchasing powerno longer offered anyprofitable prospects forincreased earnings of businessesin the real economy. The flowtowards excessive profits in theliberalised profitableinvestment spheres on thefinance markets became atorrent, in particular via new‘innovative’ financial productswith promised super-returns.Banks, investment funds,insurance companies and thefinancial institutions ofinternational corporationspursued returns on the financemarkets to astronomicalheights (compared with sinkingprofit rates in the realeconomy), and strengthenedthe suction of investment-seeking capital into the finance sphere.

The neoliberal control –purposefully oriented to thebenefit of high finance throughthe exploitation of sources offinancialisation – has advancedthe worldwide overaccumula-tion of capital to a hithertounknown extent and hasextraordinarily broadened thefinance market. Enormousmasses of money have migratedthere in the last few years. The ISW Report FinanceCapital 7 illustrates this withthe following data frominternational institutions:

● The global privatefinancial resources, whichare administered by banks,funds, insurancecompanies and otherfinancial institutions roseover the period 1999-2007from $71.5 trillion tomore than $100 trillion.

● The financial resources ofthe dollar millionaires roseover the period 1997-2007from $19.1 trillion to$40.7 trillion.

● The institutional investorssuch as pension funds,investment funds andinsurance companies raisedtheir collective wealthfrom $21 trillion to $56trillion over the 10 years1995-2005.

page 18 • summer 2010 • communist review

The outcome of thisdevelopment has been anextraordinary increase in thegap between the real andfinancial economies. In 2007financial assets totalled $500trillion compared with a grossworld product of $50 trillion.This discrepancy indicates thedegree to which capitalism isdriven by the finance market,in order to maintain themaximum profit-orientedsystem against redistributionand expropriation.

The relative independenceof the financial sphere inrelation to the real economy isa general characteristic of thedevelopment of monopolycapitalism. It is the outcomeof the enormous advance inthe separation of theownership and function ofcapital with the tumultuousprogress of the productiveforces. It is the way in whichfinance capital can still realiseitself as centralised andmonopolised property. Only in the finance capitalistdetachment of ownership, andits concentration in newforms, does capital achieve thenecessary size, versatility andelasticity which allows it tointegrate itself nationally andinternationally. As Peter Hesswrote 20 years ago:8

“The characteristic roleof finance capital is notexhausted by thecorporations’enormously increasingsuperstructure ofimmediate credit. The tumultuous self-dynamics of thesecondary, tertiary etcmarkets for interest-bearing capital isessential. The marketsarising for thesebusinesses come aboutin differentiated waysand have differingconditions ofmovement andexploitation …. Banksand bank consortia,investment houses,money funds etc pushthemselves into themidst of all such

individual businesses,pressing on with thetrade and on that basisdrawing their profit.This is speculation tohuge extent, parasitismsquared – but both arenecessary in moderncapitalism.”

In the first rank of theprofiteers from thisdevelopment in theinternational finance marketwere the big banks whichdominate the market and havegained maximal returns from amass of ‘product innovations’.Thus die bank wrote, withrespect to an analysis for theyear 2006:9

“The trend isimpressive. In theirentirety the 1000largest banks knowonly one direction asregards returns andprofitability –upwards.” (see Table 1)

Furthermore, the mostrecent principal opinion of theGerman MonopolyCommission10 attests to thefurther strengthened positionof the largest German banks.Thus the 10 biggest creditinstitutions raised their marketshare, measured by the totalbalance of all creditinstitutions, from 47.7% in2004 to 51.3% in 2006.Deutsche Bank, as the biggestGerman monopoly bank and,in the rank of internationalfinance capital, No 11 amongthe 1000 most powerful banksin the world, was involved inthe finance débacle. Due toits international structure andcommitments in theinvestment sector, as well as itsposition nationally andinternationally in the bankinglobby, it is like a consultant forthe speculative investmentbusinesses of the US real estatemarket; and, through its creditpolicy vis-à-vis the IKBDeutsche Industriebank11 itwas complicit in its crash. At the same time DeutscheBank benefits from the crisis-charged situation, in which it

has converted dubious specialloans into core capital andthus increased its own equity.Through its growthprogramme it plans to expandEurope-wide into the privateand business customer region,with around 400 newbranches, in order to becomeindependent of a business‘susceptible to fluctuation’.

In conformity with theenormous accumulation offinancial instruments on themarket, the tempo of capitalconcentration has quickened.In the EU in 2006/7, 758mergers were reported by thecompetition regulator, morethan at the time of the massivewave of fusions in 2000/1.12

But the financial crisis is at thesame time the starting pointfor a further powerfulconcentration process, eventhough the private equitycompanies – which collectedmoney for their fundsworldwide, bought businessesand, tax-exempt by theTreasury, re-sold themprofitably – were affected by areversal in takeover volume atthe end of 2008, due to thecrisis. The centralisation offinance capitalist ownershipcontinues. Big companiesenter alongside their crisis-weakened competitors andstrengthen their position of power. Thus the Bank ofAmerica took over thefinancial services providerMerrill Lynch. The Frenchbank BNP Paribas took ashare interest in the damagedBelgian-Dutch finance andinsurance company Fortis for€14.5bn and has therebybecome the largest bank in theEurozone. Deutsche Bank hassecured entry for itself intoPostbank, and Commerzbankis taking over Dresdner Bankfrom the insurance companyAllianz AG. The latter in turnwants to take a share in thecrisis-ridden financial servicesprovider Hartford Financial.

While therefore, on theone side, a massive fortune incapital form can be amassedon the finance market and theinternational finance capitalistmonopolisation process goes

ahead, at the same time apowerful capital expropriationand destruction is takingplace. The culmination of thisprocess creates places forspeculative bubbles withbillions-worth depreciations.In October 2008 the IMFestimated that the banksneeded to write off $1.4trillion and that the global loss by finance businesses was $2.8bn.

Through its interventions,the state shares responsibilityfor this débacle in the financeworld. In all the developedcountries it has hastened thisprocess through its neoliberalpolicies. That has contributedto the fact that the financemarket, as an essentialcondition of the functioningof the economy, has becomethe hub of an uncontrolledpower of capital, with obscurebusinesses and uncontrolledgranting of credit.

Solution of the Crisisin the Direction ofStabilising the FinanceCapitalist SystemToday a qualitatively newsituation is arising forcapitalism, since the financialcrisis has, with the neoliberalcourse of state control, led the international economicsystem directly to the abyss.The consequences for thewhole of society are still by nomeans foreseeable, especially

communist review • summer 2010 • page 19

Table 1: Profits of the1000 Largest BankingFirms in the World

Year Profit/$US billions

1998 174.41999 309.72000 317.02001 222.82002 252.42003 417.42004 544.12005 645.12006 78632007 780.8

Source:The Banker

➔

the collapse of the financemarkets, ever more bound upwith the already longeroperating factors of therecession due to marketconditions. The threateningsituation thus presents, for thedominant high finance andthe representatives of itspolitical interests, a greatchallenge to the developmentof the state monopoly-shaped economic system. On account of the interna-tional dimension of the crisis,it is becoming patentlyobvious that the switches inthe control mechanism mustbe set in a different direction.However, in general a newindicative strategy is as yetneither envisaged nor visible.A change of attitude in thebourgeois camp has only justbegun. “One thing is certain”,said Nobel EconomicsLaureate Joseph Stiglitz in aninterview,13 “the philosophy ofderegulation is dead.”Nevertheless the firstannouncements of the rulingelites and the measures alreadydecided show that the hithertoneoliberal variant, as aradicalised model ofexploitation of finance capital,will be continued in amodified form.

The activities of the headsof state and government of theleading capitalist countries,and of the banking andbusiness associations as well,are breathtaking and hectic, asdocumented by the multitudeof meetings, summits andplans. Even if such proposalsas that of French presidentNicholas Sarkozy – forconstruction of a common EU economic government,due to the nationalcompetitive interests – turnout to be castles in the air, theheads of state of the industrialcountries are attempting morestrongly to find commoninterests in view of thethreatening situation. Indeed,in preparation for the G20world financial summit inWashington in November2008, the EU countries wereat least able to unite on thedemand for a reconstruction

strategy for the world financialsystem. Certainly theinternational financial summitof representatives of the mostimportant countries, whichaccount for 85% of theeconomic power of the world,has hitherto not brought morethan one declaration with afew principles of ‘proportionaland suitable regulation or atleast supervision’ and with the announcement of a‘comprehensive reform of thearchitecture of theinternational financialmarket’. But it emphasisesthat, in view of theinternational economic crisisand the political powersituation in the world, thebalance between commoninterests and rivalries,sustained by monopolycapitalist competition, isshifting somewhat more infavour of ‘internationalcoordination’ and ‘orderedmarkets’. This flows bothfrom the interest inmaintaining this profit-oriented order, as well as fromthe development of mutualeconomic relations in thechanging world. Despite thisthe conflicts of interestsbetween the states remainimmanent, since the currentnational solutions are above all also reached in the interests of strengthening thecompetitiveness of therespective dominating bigbusinesses.

The precariousness of thewhole situation for the furtherexistence of the capitalistsystem is clear from thegigantic means and measuresemployed to prevent theheadlong fall of the nationaleconomies. Never in thehistory of capitalist crises hasthere been such a massive stateintervention in the economy.And one thing is thereby clear:as necessary as may be theplans for a rapid stabilisationof the finance system, it is thetax-payers – not the profiteers– who will have to carry thecosts of the finance débacle.

The next struggles will bearound crisis management ofthe financial sphere on a

national basis. This is costingvast sums of money, which aremade available by the statesfor saving their financialmarkets, for bank guarantees,for financing equity capitaland buying up bad loans – intotal up to now estimated atmore than €3200bn. For theUSA €519bn, for GreatBritain €571bn, for Germany€500bn, for France €360bn,for the Netherlands €220bnand for Spain €100bn havebeen quoted.14 At the level ofthe European Union the EUCommission wants to helpbeleaguered member states viaa European rescue fund inexcess of €25bn. Hungary, thefirst such country, is gettingnot only €1bn from this fund,but also a credit of €6.5bn, as well as €12.5bn from theIMF and €1bn from theWorld Bank. Furthermore,other states such as Russia and China are affected by thefinance crisis unleashed in the USA and react to it withstate measures to safeguardtheir economies.

The finance capitalistcharacteristic of the massivestate intervention is evident inall the leading industrialcountries from the complexityof the measures applied. Thus in October 2008 a‘finance market stabilisationfund’ dated up to 2009 wasproposed by the FederalGerman government, andpassed within one week by theBundestag. With a ‘riskprotection shield’ in excess of€400bn and an allocated creditvolume of €80mn as well as€20bn for eventual losses, it isintended to restimulate thebanks and strengthen theequity basis of the creditinstitutions. The plan includesa range of technicalregulations, on legalentitlement, guarantee- andcredit-empowerment,recapitalisation of banks andchanges in drawing up balancesheets. Indeed, with theutmost delegation of powersfor the Minister of Finance,these regulations afford stateinterventions into themechanism of the finance

market, but are neverthelessclearly oriented to thestabilisation and strengtheningof the finance capitaliststructures. This is no wonder,since the bank lobbycollaborated in framing thisconcept. Taking part, besidesrepresentatives of theChancellor’s office, theMinistry of Finance and theBundesbank, were Klaus-PeterMüller, president of theFederal Union of GermanBanks (BdB), Deutsche Bankchair Josef Ackermann andCommerzbank head MartinBlessing.15 Thereby the plan atthe same time found supportfrom the whole ruling elite ofthe economy. It is emphasisedby the employers’ associationsthat the ‘correct direction’ hasbeen found for securing the‘system-supporting banks’ withmeans of credit.

Although the consequen-ces and the financial costs of this crisis are stillunfathomable, the rescuepackage, put together in greathurry, is being trumpeted inthe media as a measure in theinterests of the entirepopulation. Behind thepublicity, the content of thisaction as a capitalist methodfor safeguarding the monopolybanking sector’s profit systemtotally disappears. Because thesituation on the financemarket affects everyone, ‘trust’is courted, ‘confidence’ issought to for intercession, and– with a view to ‘social peace’– Federal Chancellor AngelaMerkel utters such emptyrhetoric as “We are doing thisnot in the interests of thebanks, but rather in theinterests of the people.”

The nationalisation orpart-nationalisation of banks isplaying a role for a time in allthe action plans of thedifferent countries. In theUSA the administration hasalready put a few financialinstitutions under state controland now has allocated $50bnfrom the budget for entry intothe banks, has taken overshares in the 8 largest banksand is the majority shareholder– 80% – of the largest


insurance company, theAmerican International Group(AIG). In Great Britain thestate is becoming a major bankshareholder: the governmenthas partly nationalised 8 of thebiggest banks. According tocalculations by financeanalysts, the financing of thisprocess by taxation willamount to £2000 per head ofthe population. The Italiangovernment wants ‘inemergency’ to take over sharesof institutions in crisis. In Spain a massive state fundof €50bn is being created,which can also take shares inthe banks.16 Also, an optionfor state participation isincluded in the ‘finance marketstabilisation fund’ of theFederal Republic of Germany,ie the state can participate in arecapitalisation of the banks, in which it gains active shareownership or ‘sleeping partner’interests. Meanwhile, inIceland the whole bankingsystem is under state controlon account of the enormousexternal debt.

There is no doubt thatnationalisation is a horrorstory for finance capital andprovokes alarm: after all, itsees its very existencethreatened thereby. But nationalisation is generallynot a socialist measure. As Frederick Engels wrote,state ownership does notabolish the capital relation,rather brings it to a head, “but concealed within it arethe technical conditions thatform the elements of thatsolution.”17 The banksaccordingly fear this measureas the Devil fears holy water.Even in the part-nationalisa-tion by the state they see aninfluence over their businessstrategy. “Naturally it iscatastrophic in terms ofregulation. But if the house isburning, you can no longerconduct fundamentaldebates”, was the opinion of one bank manager. Thegovernments are therefore alsohastening to make declarationsthat state participation is notan objective, rather only anecessary measure, which will

be reversed when the market isrestored to economic health.That underlines the fact thatthese state interventions torecapitalise the banks areprimarily measures tosafeguard finance capitalistownership, in order to preventthe possible ‘nuclear meltdownof the system’.

That state participationboils down to the socialisationof the losses of the banks, isshown by the first runs of therescue packages in a two-foldrespect. On the one hand, thesafeguarding measures of thestates are unconnected withany sort of decision-makingrights over the strategy orbusiness policies of the banks.On the other, in Germany theBundesbank has established asteering group for the financemarket stabilisation fund, andthis has, as refinancing sourceof the commercial banks, ashort route to the budgetarydecisions of the government.

The massive stateinterventions do not touch on the causes of the crisis,which is grounded in thedominance of the profitsystem. They document aboveall the incapability for asuccessful solution to thefinance crisis in the interests ofa population threatened byeconomic insecurity. However, at the same time theyunderscore the necessity of achange in the system ofcontrol. The ruling economicelites are accordingly orientingto a new ‘political framework’,to ‘a better set of rules’ whichwould henceforth safeguard the‘freedom of the market’. Thus Joseph Ackermann ofDeutsche Bank has beenpleading for an extremelynarrow relationship of thestate, the Bundesbank and thebanks, in order to safeguard thelocational advantage of thefinancial centre of Germany inthe world. At the same time,as head of the Institute ofInternational Finance (IIF), he demanded in a letter to theUS president and to therepresentatives of the worldfinancial summit G20 that“Aid packages must not be the

basis for a lasting greater role ofthe public sector in theinternational finance system.”18

The “technical conditionsthat form the elements of thatsolution” must nevertheless besomething entirely different,since we have to deal todaywith a significant breach inthe development ofcapitalism, a great instabilityof the whole system. It is notonly that the volume ofnationalisations – the largesthitherto in the history ofcapitalism – goes with thesocialisation of the losses tothe cost of the taxpayer andhas further aggravatingconsequences for the socialsecurity system. The financialcrisis with its state monopolysolution is ushering in a newsystem of expropriation andexploitation. Businessfailures, drives torationalisation, changes incorporate structures andassociated job losses, pressureon wages and the imminentshifting of the burden onto

the developing countries arethe general conditions forthat. The time is ripe for anew mode of regulation of theeconomic and financialsystem. This must – if onethinks only of the greatchallenges in the world suchas poverty and hunger, climateand energy – be internationaland democratic. Radical asthe reality, the Lefts and alldemocratic forces should goon the offensive andemphasise in publicity theneed for a state regulation inwhich the most powerfulfirms no longer determine the direction and which nolonger depends on the oldoutmoded finance-capitalistbasis with all its powerrelationships.

■ Published originally inGerman in Marxistische Blätter,1-09, pp 21-30, seehttp://www.neue-impulse-verlag.de/media/filebase/ausgaben/MB_1_2009.pdf. Translationby Martin Levy


1 The author uses, here andelsewhere, the German ‘die Linke’,and it is not clear whether this meansthe German political party of thatname or the Left generally –Ed.2 H Heiniger, Monopolkapital undstaatsmonopolistische Regulierung heute– Zur Aktualität der Herforder Thesen(Monopoly Capital and State MonopolyControl Today – On the Topicality ofthe Herford Theses), in Topos, 16, p 41ff (December 2000).3 V I Lenin, A Caricature ofMarxism and the Imperialist Economy,in Collected Works, Vol 23, p 42.4 R Hilferding, Das Finanzkapital,Berlin, 1947, p 408; seehttp://www.marxists.org/archive/hilferding/1910/finkap/ch21.htm .5 R Gündel, H Heininger, P Hess,K Zieschang, Zur Theorie desstaatsmonopolistischen Kapitalismus(On the Theory of State MonopolyCapitalism), das europaische Buch,West Berlin, 1967, p 323.6 cf H Heininger, L Maier,Internationaler Kapitalismus,Tendenzen und KonfliktestaatsmonopolistischerInternationalisierung (InternationalCapitalism, Tendencies and Conflicts ofState Monopoly Internationalisation),Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1987.7 ISW Report No 75:Finanzkapital ‘Entwaffnet die Märkte’(Finance Capital ‘Disarms the

Markets’), Institut für sozial-ökologische Wirtschaftsforschung,Johann-von-Werth-Straße 3, 80639München, September 2008, p 4.8 P Hess, Das Finanzkapital –Eigentumsform derProduktivkraftentwicklung imgegenwärtigen Kapitalismus (FinanceCapital – Property Form of theDevelopment of Productive Forces inPresent-day Capitalism), in IPW-Berichte, 9/1989.9 cf die bank, Berlin, No 10,October 2008.10 German Bundestag, 16th votingperiod, DS 16/10140, SiebzehntesHauptgutachten derMonopolkommission (17th PrincipalOpinion of the Monopoly Commission)2006/7, 19.08.2008, p 168.11 cf J Elsässer, Die gefährlichsteBank Deutschlands (The MostDangerous Bank in Germany), in NeuesDeutschland, Berlin, 8.10.2008.12 German Bundestag, op cit, p 34.13 Berliner Zeitung, 9.10.2008.14 Der Spiegel, 46/2008, p 61.15 Financial Times Deutschland(FTD), 12.10.200816 cf Volkseigene Bank (People’s OwnBank), in Berliner Zeitung,10.10.2008.17 F Engels, Anti-Dühring, in KMarx and F Engels, Collected Works,Vol 25, p 266.18 FTD, 11.11.2008.

Notes

■

AMONG MARXIST SCHOLARSGyörgy Lukács is nothing short of alegendary figure. His impact ranges fromstudies of literature to sociology andphilosophy, and none of his disciples –even if they are extremely criticallyopposed to him – could deny theinfluence which his passionate teachings,full of implications for practice, have hadon them.

The name of György Lukács is wellregarded in bourgeois scholarship also. It is bound up with the current debatesover ideological positions in theintellectual circles of our time, as well aswith the profound analysis ofphilosophical and literary developmentssince the Enlightenment. Lukács’s theses,unrelenting against establishedjudgements and militant as in the besttraditions of classical polemics, are thedynamite of scholarly discussions. Well-grounded in the most profoundexpert knowledge, and sustained by theélan of an exact method, uniting theory

and practice, Lukács can also exactrespect and regard from his opponents.

Who does not remember hisappearance at the RencontresInternationales of Geneva,1 where, as adiscussion partner and opponent ofJaspers2 and Starobinski,3 of Merleau-Ponty4and Bernanos,5 he made clear theconnection of politics with philosophy?Who has not read his polemic,Existentialism or Marxism?,6 writtenoriginally in French, with which hecontributed substantially to theovercoming of the nihilist tendency inFrench postwar philosophy? If Jean-PaulSartre, at that time an opponent of hispolemics, later together with Lukács ledthe struggle for the preservation ofhumanity in the world peace movement,then that book, which pointed out thefaulty reasoning in existentialism and theanti-humanist tendency of despair andloneliness, certainly helped Sartre find the way back to his progressive start at thetime of the anti-fascist struggle in France.

On Revolutionary PracticeThe clarity and precision which markedout the thought of György Lukácsallowed him to become a sort ofscholarly conscience for all those whohad lost their way or could not find it inthe labyrinth of the prevailing delirium.Thus his achievement, like those of allgenuine ground-breaking scholarship,lies not in the contemplation of theobject, but so much the more in hisactive influence on the development ofconsciousness. Whoever bears him inmind must lay emphasis precisely onthis influence, through which Lukácsbecame a major factor in the ideologicalprocess of the 20th century. Thecorroboration of his creative activity liesin this appreciation.

As a Marxist György Lukács wantedcognition to be political activity. He didnot want to pursue unworldly scholarship,but rather to translate theoreticallyscientific truth into revolutionary practice.It did not only occur to him to discover

A MilitantHumanist


On the 125th Anniversary of the birth of the philosopherand literary scholar György Lukács

By Hans Heinz Holz

what had been; from the past he sought thecoming into being of the present, in orderto understand the motive forces and factors of our time and at the same time todeduce the knowledge of their ownhistorically correct and necessary relation-ships. Not, what has become, but rather,what is needed, is the fundamental questionof all generally understood scholarship.Not the past but rather the future is itsconcern. And this future ought to bebetter. Thus the ardour of a great ideastands in the background of his work.

This short agile Hungarian, with thesharp-cut features and even more sharplytailored intellect, was always a fighter.Already his early writings, put togetherbefore the First World War, includedintellectual dynamite. They belong tothe movement of awakening politicalconsciousness of those years, which brokewith the old forms of knowledge and art,which rejected the existing order ofsociety, which brought about arevolutionising of temperaments andprepared the ground for the politicalrevolution, true to the principle, ‘Theavant-garde stands on the left’. Later Lukács spurned his first works, Souland Form, The Theory of the Novel, Historyand Class Consciousness; he rejected ‘avant-gardism’ and expressionism, evensurrealist montage, as forms ofdegeneration of literature, and placed inopposition to them the classical ideal ofan integral realism (in the sense ofThomas Mann). Nevertheless, even inthe alteration of his views, he remainedfilled with the impulse of his youth, animpulse which pushed him towardsactivation of theory, which understoodscholarship and art as a means ofchanging the world and wanted totranspose them into political deed.

Classical Heritage as a Plumb-LineThus, for György Lukács, cognitionbecame activity. Twice he took part insocial upheavals: on one occasion asCommissar for People’s Education in therevolutionary government of theHungarian communist leader Béla Kun at the end of the First World War; for the second time briefly as Minister ofCulture in Imre Nagy’s cabinet – not forthe first time in his life losing his way – in the fateful autumn days of theHungarian counter-revolution of 1956.The overthrow of the revolution in 1919by the Horthy-fascists forced him intoexile. In 1956 he was permitted, after ashort period of banishment, to return toBudapest; and, in the course of JanosKádár’s pacification policy he was able to


➔

continue his academic work. Today hiscollected works have been published inGermany, first in Luchterhand-Verlag andcurrently in Aisthesis-Verlag. Summingup, as it were, his long life in theconfusions of our era – erring, seeking,engaged – the octogenarian Lukácsannounced a comprehensive study onMarxist ethics, to which elaborationhowever he was unable to return.

For more than 20 years Lukács wasengaged in struggle against fascism. His attachment to the Enlightenment,his criticism of irrationalism under thetitle The Destruction of Reason, hisdispute with Hegelian philosophy, wereaimed at mobilising powers of ideologicalresistance against Hitler barbarism. This passionate engagement forhumanitarian traditions and for a humanrealism of the future led him to theclassical heritage in literature, to Sir WalterScott and Honoré de Balzac, to Goetheand Tolstoy. In the world literature of the18th and 19th centuries he sought touncover the active forces of unalienatedhumanity, which could be a yardstick anda plumb-line for the present. In the 1930shis great literary-philosophical essays onrealism appeared. To this we should addthe political dispute with the Germanphenomenon: the essay on Prussianism,the studies on Nietzsche and Germanfascism, and on Hegel and Germanfascism. Indefatigable as a writer, whocontemplates and effectively conserves theintellectual heritage as an active power inthe debate around people’s living forms oftoday and tomorrow, György Lukácsploughed his own furrow.

Sociological ViewpointIn line with the general direction of hisactivity, Lukács developed a method ofhis own, which since then has foundfollowers: the sociological considerationof literature and philosophy, whichunderstands a work of art, and thecorresponding system of thought, as aresponse to the particular social situation,determined by the social structure of theera. A masterwork in the application ofthis method is his investigation of thehistorical novel. Here Lukács traces aliterary type back to its sociologicalbackground and shows how changes inthe way in which this type is organisedrelate to the change in the attitude tohistory, to the way in which this changeis a reflection of the historical process;and, as it happens, he thereby obtains ameasure of value for judging thehistorical novel, which can be derivedfrom its ‘social accuracy’. Walter Markov,an exact historian, certainly did Lukács

no injustice, when, in thecommemorative publication on his 70th

birthday,7 he attributed to the historicalnovel, critically received in such a way, anextensive objective value of perceptionover the boundaries of scientific history –and we can say that Bertolt Brecht’sposthumous novel fragment, The BusinessAffairs of Mr Julius Caesar, therebyprovides a proof of the example.8

Exposure as MethodThe ardour of the class struggle in noway mars the integrity of Lukács’sinvestigations; it sharpens much more theview of what is essential and converts themethod into a surgical instrument, whichlays bare the central agents of a life’sunity dedicated to the history of ideas.Thus, for example, in his fundamentalpresentation of the young Hegel, inwhich he made prominent therelationships between philosophy andeconomy, or in his criticism of Germanirrationalism of the 19th and 20th

centuries. The historical-philosophicalmethod here is that of exposure: thebombastic claims of the irrationalistphilosophies are reduced to their socio-historical conditions; and their socialfunction – camouflage, diversion,suppression of progressive development –is revealed. Alongside that stand hisworks which are devoted to realism in19th century literature. In these thepositive heritage of the past is madeprominent and a definitive perspective isbrought. The chief viewpoint is thereflection of the contradictory tendenciesand powers of the bourgeois world.

Thus Lukács’s literary- andphilosophical-historical works are thebroad basis for a comprehensivepresentation of the bourgeois world.Lukács deliberately restricts himself tothis social epoch. The questions ofantiquity, of the feudal society of theMiddle Ages, of the problem – tackled byMehring9 – of the origin of modern times are far from his consideration. His studies begin with the Enlightenmentand the period leading up to the FrenchRevolution and follow the course ofcapitalist society up to its extreme, fascist,form. Certainly no-one has penetrated asdeeply into the inner dialectics andambiguities of this historical developmentas did Lukács, who described in everydetail, and explained, the ideologicalreflexes of this process in reference to itsbase. Many of his judgements could yetbe disputed. However, the totalconception offers the most complete andconvincing picture of that period that hashitherto generally been given.

Polemical StyleTo the political-historical aspect ofLukács’s theory corresponds also a style ofhis own, which we could in a two-foldrespect describe as ‘polemical’: in asuperficial sense, as a polemic against theidealistic treatment of the history ofideas; but, in a deeper sense also, as apolemic with his very own subjectmaterial, as a critical laying bare of theweaknesses and the social sources oferrors of the great achievements of worldliterature, as an exposure of theconnection between the thought of thewriter and his position in the socialcontroversies of his time. Lukács was toogreat a scholar to be one-sided.

He recognised throughout that it isprecisely the political position of anauthor which can lead him to a literarilydeficient narrowness of ideas andpresentation, while inner conflict,creatively applied, allows the great varietyof a social situation to be betterpresented. Thus, for him, Zola is indeedpolitically clearer and more conscious,but Balzac is artistically richer, ‘morecorrect’, more realistic (in contrast to anaturalism not fully reflecting reality).For applying this mode of analysiscritically to the literature of ‘socialistrealism’, Lukács was reproached by hisMarxist colleagues.

From his historical studies onwards,Lukács had one essential systematicconcern: the aesthetics of works ofliterature. His encroachment into thedebate on expressionism in the 1930swas his first step towards working out hisconcept of realism. This category thenbecame ever more central for him, as hesharply demarcated it vis-à-vis naturalismand characterised it as the “discovery ofthe typical in the exceptional”. For him,realism in art is the reflection of realityby means of typical figures andsituations, in which reality is enhancedand clearly represented. His literary-historical essays lay bare the category ofthe typical in the empirical material; inhis History of Aesthetics10 he considers thedevelopment of the theory; but a finalsystematic work remains incomplete,likewise a magnum opus of the theory ofart in two thick half-volumes.

Emphasis of the SubjectiveFactorIt is a necessary restriction that themethod of ideological criticism can onlyapproach a work of art from one of manypossible perspectives. Questions of styleof language, therefore of syntax,metaphors, musicality, semantics, artisticconstruction, of the actual


‘workmanship’, remain outside Lukács’sconsideration. The sociology of literatureis obliged to and in fact wishes to ignorethe fact that a work of art is a closedrealm whose criteria lie within it. The sociology of literature brings itsjudgements on the subject matter in fromoutside, ie it is a heteronomous means ofcontemplation. Therein lies its limits, itsnecessity for complements. Only in hisadvanced years did Lukács bring forwardThe Individuality of the Aesthetic11 andbegin to investigate the relationshipbetween the ideological superstructureand pure ‘art for art’s sake’.

The revolutionary impulse withwhich Lukács started out stamped notonly his ideological-critical method, not only his polemical style. It wasmaintained much more directly in thegeneral – I may say ‘metaphysical’ –aspect of his theory. The subjectivefactor in history appeared to him alwaysto be a decisive factor, a prime mover.The dependence of consciousness on thesocial conditions did not signify for himthat consciousness could not also actupon these conditions to change them.

In this way history presented itself to him as complex subject-object dialectics,in which the person – in whom theobjective, contradictory, world andhis/her subjective, high-flying aspirations happen to meet – occupiesthe key position.

The life’s work of this great thinkerand fighter thus roamed over the spacebetween economics, philosophy andworks of literature. The reciprocalrelations between the economic base andthe superstructure of ideas wereinvestigated by the methods of historicaland dialectical materialism; the role ofobjective conditions and the function ofthe subjective factor were defined inrelation to each other and reconciledtogether. The application of a Marxistappreciation of history to literature – first attempted by him and in such acomprehensive way – has led tooutcomes which point the direction forall further pursuit of problems in the artsand humanities.

From the first writings of his youththe active factor in Lukács’s ideas wasmaintained; however, the carrying

forward of these ideas, the ‘class-fightinghumanism’, which is the nucleus of thistheory, sometimes loses sight of the realperson and solidifies into a schema – adanger from which Lukács himself alsodid not always escape. Thus, in his caseoccasionally, and more often with hisfollowers, the pregnant concepts of thesociology of literature become emptypatterns, with which only the skeleton,but not the human richness, of the workof art can be presented.

György Lukács was also worried bythis – and the significance and greatnessof his work is displayed by the fact thathe was able over and again to overcomehis own schematicism and to reproducethe whole unrestricted reality of human beings in his thinking.

■ Published originally in German inJunge Welt, 13 April 2010, seehttp://www.jungewelt.de/2010/04-13/019.php?sstr=En|streitbarer|Humanist,and also http://www.kominform.at/article.php/2010041220255934/.Translation, English bibliography andendnotes by Martin Levy


1 The Rencontres Internationales de Genève originated in 1946 on the initiative of a group of Genevapersonalities, “conscious of the need for resuming dialogue in a world in tatters”, see http://www.rencontres-int-geneve.ch/historique.html. The first Rencontres were around the theme of the “European spirit”, raisingissues of European unity and federalism, see http://www.memoriadellealpi.net/download/GRUPPO01~CD-Federalismo-FR/4.6.pdf. 2 Karl Theodor Jaspers (1883-1969), German psychiatrist and philosopher, often viewed as a majorexponent in existentialism in Germany, although he did not accept that label. After the Nazi seizure ofpower in 1933, he was considered to have a “Jewish taint” owing to his Jewish wife, and was forced to retirefrom his post at Heidelberg University in 1937. He and his wife were under constant threat of removal to aconcentration camp until Heidelberg was liberated by American troops. Seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Jaspers. 3 Jean Starobinski (b 1920), Swiss historian of ideas and medicine, and a literary theorist, as well as beinga qualified doctor and psychiatrist. He was president of the Rencontres Internationales de Genève from 1965to 1996. See http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Starobinski. 4 Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced byKarl Marx, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, in addition to being closely associated with Jean-PaulSartre and Simone de Beauvoir. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Merleau-Ponty. 5 Georges Bernanos (1888-1948), French novelist and essayist, considered one of the most originalRoman Catholic writers of his time. Originally a supporter of the right-wing Action Française, he broke offall contacts with it in 1932 and later denounced Franco’s revolt against the Spanish Republic. Seehttp://kirjasto.sci.fi/bernanos.htm .6 G Lukács, Existentialisme ou Marxisme, Nagel, Paris, 1948; English edition in Existentialism versusMarxism, G Novak ed, Dell Publishing, New York, 1966, pp 134-153.7 W Markov, Die Historie und ihr Roman, in Georg Lukács zum siebzigsten Geburtstag, Aufbau-Verlag,Berlin, 1955, pp 142-158.8 In the book, Brecht attempts to demystify the cult of the leader by means of a first-person account of aninvestigation in preparation for an official biography of Caesar, interpolated with extracts from Caesar’ssecretary’s diary, and charting Caesar’s rise to power through the role of the slave trade, and the economicstruggle between the City and the Senate. See reviews of the film based on the book, Geschichtsunterricht, byJ-M Straub and D Huillet, at http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2009/52/jean-marie-straub-and-daniele-huillet and http://www.constanzeruhm.net/portfolio/fate-of-alien-modes.phtml .9 Franz Mehring (1846-1919), German social-democrat, historian, friend of Karl Liebknecht and RosaLuxemburg, author of Die Lessinge-Legende (1892, The Lessing Legend) a study of the origins of Germanmiddle-class culture, and also of biographies of Engels, Marx and Dickens; seehttp://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/mehring/ .10 Possibly a reference to Lukács’s Ästhetik, work published in 4 volumes from 1972 to 1976.11 G Lukács, Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen, Luchterhand, Neuwied-Berlin, 1963.

Notes

■ Conversations with Lukács (with H H Holz, L Kofler, W Abendroth, T Pinkus), Merlin, 1974

■ Essays and Reviews, Merlin, 1983■ Essays on Thomas Mann, Merlin, 2007/1964■ Existentialism or Marxism, in Existentialism

versus Marxism, G Novak ed, Dell Publishing, 1966

■ Goethe and His Age, Merlin, 1968■ History and Class Consciousness, Merlin,

1971/1968■ Lenin: a Study on the Unity of his Thought, New

Left Books, 1970■ Marxism and Human Liberation: Essays on

History, Culture and Revolution, DellPublishing, 1973

■ Political Writings 1919-1929, New Left Books, 1972

■ Solzhenitsyn, Merlin, 1969■ Soul and Form, Merlin, 2007■ Studies in European Realism, Merlin,

1972/1950■ The Destruction of Reason, Merlin, 1980■ The Historical Novel, Merlin, 1962■ The Meaning of Contemporary Realism,

Merlin, 2006■ The Ontology of Social Being, 3 vols, Merlin,

2007/1978■ The Process of Democratisation, State University

of New York Press, 1991■ The Theory of the Novel, Merlin, 2003■ The Young Hegel, Merlin, 1975.■ Writer and Critic and Other Essays,

Merlin, 2007Extracts from some of these, together with a fewother articles translated into English (including hisReflections on the Cult of Stalin) can be found athttp://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/

Selected Works of LukácsPublished in English

■

ON 23rd AUGUST 1939 theSoviet Union concluded anon-aggression treaty withNazi Germany, popularlyknown as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The 70thanniversary of the treaty in2009 brought forth the usualanti-Soviet distortions andrewriting of history by themedia. One bourgeoishistorian, Orlando Figes,even had the gall to assert onthe BBC website that thepact was “the licence for theholocaust”.1 To suggest thatthe signing of the treaty wasinstrumental in causing thehorrific slaughter that befellthe people of Europe takeshis anti-Soviet ravings to thelevel of insanity. Figes claims– without the slightest shredof evidence – that the pactbegan “a reign of terror, massdeportations, slavery andmurder”. The Nazis hadbeen committing theseappalling crimes long beforethey invaded Poland,primarily against thecommunists and the left whowere leading the anti-fasciststruggle. Thousands ofcommunists and socialists inGermany were amongst thefirst to be sent to theconcentration camps, to betortured and murdered.

The signing of the treaty I submit was an absolutenecessity considering thesituation that the USSR wasforced into at the time. It isessential to examine the treaty,

not in isolation, but in contextof the fraught and dangerousevents which existed acrossEurope, threatening the veryexistence of the USSR.

There is little doubt thatthe Soviet government waswell aware of Hitler’sintentions towards theircountry. He made it clear inMein Kampf, writing:

“Germany will eitherbe a world power orthere will be noGermany. And forworld power she needsthat magnitude whichwill give her theposition she needs inthe present period, andlife to her citizens.…

“And so weNational Socialistsconsciously draw a linebeneath the foreignpolicy tendency of ourpre-War period. We take up where webroke off six hundredyears ago. We stop theendless Germanmovement to the southand west, and turn ourgaze toward the land inthe east .… If wespeak of soil in Europetoday, we can primarilyhave in mind onlyRussia and her vassalborder states. Thegiant empire in the eastis ripe for collapse.And the end of the

Jewish rule in Russiawill also be the end ofRussia as a State.”2

It must never be forgottenthat Hitler had manyinfluential supporters both in Britain and France whoviewed Germany as “a bulwark of the West againstBolshevism”. Lord Halifax,the Tory Foreign Secretary,said on 19th November 1937 that:

“the great services theFührer had rendered inthe rebuilding ofGermany were fullyand completelyrecognised …. He(Halifax) recognisedthat the Chancellorhad … been able, bypreventing the entry ofCommunism into hiscountry, to bar itspassage further West”.3

Halifax also thoughtGoering “frankly attractive,”and Goebbels very “likeable”.On one occasion he comparedHitler’s “mysticism” to that of Ghandi.4

The Tory government inBritain concluded a navalagreement with Germany in1935, allowing the Naziregime to increase its warshiptonnage, and to build moresubmarines. They agreed thisunilaterally – withoutinforming the French or theSoviet Union – in violation of

the Versailles Peace Treaty. Throughout the 1930s,

Hitler’s sympathisers in Britainand France said nothing asGermany re-armed and broketreaties. Hitler’s materialsupport for the fascistrebellion in Spain was ignoredand Mussolini’s invasion ofEthiopia was praised in certainConservative circles. “On theone hand were the millions of bloodthirsty tyrants .... On the other an honourableand humane army,” wrote thereactionary Lord Mottistonein The Times, 23/10/1935.5The “bloodthirsty tyrants”Mottistone was referring towere not Mussolini’s fascisttroops, but the Abyssinianpeople defending theircountry!

Mottistone was a memberof a pro-fascist club known asthe Anglo-German Fellowship,comprising, in its Secretary’swords, “of distinguishedrepresentatives of British BigBusiness who claim Hitler has an unanswerable case”.6The fellowship had over 1,000members, including scores ofpeers, knights of the realm, theGovernor of the Bank ofEngland, Montague Norman,and the editor of The Times,Geoffrey Dawson. Theserepresentatives of Britain’sruling class hoped Hitlermight be encouraged to turnhis attention east, towards the USSR. They had the earsof right-wing Torybackwoodsmen like R A Butler

Why the Molotov-RibbentropPactWas NecessaryBy Richard Maunders


MP and Lord WalterRunciman, an undisguisedadmirer of Hitler; both wereparanoid anti-communistsappointed by Chamberlain asforeign negotiators withGermany. In a note toChamberlain, Butler describedthe Chairman of the Anglo-German fellowship, theindustrialist Ernest Tennant, as“quite discreet and sincere.”7

Britain’s ruling class alsoregarded Germany as a rivalimperialist state that eitherhad to be weakened ordestroyed, preferably by war

with the USSR. It was hopedthat such an outcome wouldseverely reduce their powersand result in the Anglo-Frenchdominance of Europe.

The Soviet Governmenthad no illusions about theconniving of the British and French ruling classes. The latter did nothing in1936 when the Nazis marchedinto the Rhineland incontravention of the Locarnotreaty, despite the fact that theFrench Army with 100divisions at its disposal couldhave easily stopped the

German army that composedof just 4 divisions. Hitler lateradmitted this to the soon to bedeposed Austrian Chancellor,Schuschnigg, telling him,“France could have stoppedGermany in the Rhinelandand then we would have hadto retreat. But now it is toolate for France.”8 The adviceof the Tory government to theFrench was to ‘keep calm’ anddo nothing to upset Hitler. At the League of Nations theonly opposition to Hitler’soccupation came from theSoviet Union.

During the same year, with the support of Germanyand Italy, the fascist despotFranco started a bloodyrebellion against the legiti-mate government of Spain.Britain and France adopted apolicy of ‘non-intervention’,blocking arms shipments tothe Spanish Government fromcoming through France,however doing nothing to stopGerman and Italian armsshipments to Franco.

The Soviet Unionprotested against the policy asmeaning in effect freedom forGermany and Italy to organiserebellion and a blockade of the legitimate governmentof Spain.9 In solidarity withthe Spanish republicans theSoviet Union supplied aircraft,guns, ammunition andvolunteers. Thousands ofanti-fascist volunteers fromaround the world fought todefend Spain’s democracy.Despite the heroic fight putup by the Spanish patriots andmembers of the InternationalBrigades, Franco’s fascists,aided by the Nazis andItalians, eventually triumphed.There is little doubt that, ifthe British and French hadsupported the legitimateSpanish government, theoutcome for democracy andworld peace would have beenvery different.

The Tories in Britain andthe iniquitous Frenchgovernment did not want tobe seen aiding ademocratically elected left-wing government. This wasalluded to by Thomas Jones, a former Cabinet secretary.He wrote in his diaries thatPrime Minister StanleyBaldwin had told ForeignMinister Anthony Eden,“That on no account …musthe bring us in to fight on theside of the Russians.”10

After the unopposedoccupation of the Rhineland,Hitler turned his attention tothe annexation (Anschluss) ofAustria, which he had plannedalong with the invasion ofCzechoslovakia in 1936.Again Britain and Franceremained passive when, on


Molotov andRibbentrop signingthe non-aggressiontreaty,August 23,1939

11 March 1938, the Naziarmy, in defiance ofinternational law, jackbootedinto Austrian territory.Thomas Jones wrote in hisdiary that Baldwin considered“that we should not becompromised intoundertaking to protect Austriafrom falling into the lap ofGermany”, and “Lord Halifaxhad assured Hitler that Britainwould not intervene”.11

A treaty signed betweenBritain, France and Italy in1935, pledging to supportAustrian independence, wasnever invoked, and on 12March 1938 Austria ‘ceased toexist’. Consequently,“Germany’s territory grew by17 per cent, and its populationby more than 6,700,000people. Almost all the 50,000soldiers and officers of theAustrian army became part ofthe Wehrmacht.”12

Whilst the cowardsflinched the only nation tospeak out against the takeoverwas the Soviet Union. ForeignMinister Litvinov issued astatement, which included thepassage, “The SovietGovernment ... are ready, asthey have always been, to takepart in a collective action ofsuch a scope that it could aimat stopping the furtherdevelopment of aggression andat eliminating the increasingdanger of another world-wideslaughter.”13 Chamberlainflatly rejected the proposal.He had no intention ofupsetting Hitler or of aligningBritain with the USSR.

After Austria, the roadleading to the sell-out ofCzechoslovakia in Munich wasnow open. On 26 March1938, the Communist Partyof Great Britain issued thefollowing statement:

“Faced as we are with afascist war alliancewhich is busilyengaged in seizingstrategic points for aswoop on Europeandemocracy and peace,Chamberlain’s policycan only be regarded asone of deliberate

encouragement toHitler to annex thegreat steel industry andarsenals ofCzechoslovakia, to addto the essential warmaterials whichFascism grabbed inAustria and Spain.”14

At the time Czechoslovakiahad the fourth largesteconomy in Europe includinga large arms industry.

France, the USSR andCzechoslovakia had signedmutual assistance pacts in May1935, but containing acondition that said “only in sofar as help shall be furnishedby France to the party that isthe victim of aggression, when conditions anticipatedby this pact obtain”15 – i.e. theUSSR could only act tosupport Czechoslovakia ifFrance did as well. In thesecircumstances, “Chamberlain,his personal advisers inEngland and Bonnet, theFrench Foreign Minister,along with the Frenchestablishment had only onefear – that of findingthemselves engaged in aEuropean war against FascistGermany and Italy, twocountries of ‘order’, and onthe same side as ‘Bolshevik’Russia, the centre of disorderand subversion”.12 Ratherthan entertain any notion ofcoming to agreement with theUSSR to thwart Hitler’sambitions, they wouldaccommodate him and agreeto sell out Czechoslovakia.

The license for thetakeover of Czechoslovakiawas handed to Hitler via theMunich treaty. The reac-tionary Governments ofBritain and France werewholly responsible for themost shameful and sordidbetrayal of a nation in history.Hitler had been encouragedby the cowardice and servilityof the two European powers.They had the means andpower to stop him muchearlier, but lacked thewillpower to act. As the US correspondent WilliamShirer wrote, “Perhaps most

important to Hitler was the demonstration again that neither Britain nor France would lift a finger tostop him”.16

British and French policywas criticised at the time bythe US ambassador inMoscow, who warned in anote to President Roosevelt’spersonal adviser, HarryHopkins:

“Chamberlain’s policywhich is pushing Italy,Poland and Hungaryinto Hitler’s arms, mayend by disgusting theSoviets to such adegree that it willinduce Russia to cometo an economicagreement and apolitical truce withHitler. … Thereactionaries inEngland and Francewill presently, in theirdespair, beg for Soviets’support, but perhaps itwill be too late, ifbetween now and thenthe Soviets growutterly disgusted bytheir attitude.”17

Bourgeois historians rarelymention the direct assistanceoffered by the Soviet Unionto the Czechoslovaks. At theheight of the Munich crisis,Soviet President Kalinin saidthat the great resources of theUSSR would be madeavailable for those who resistaggression, and he made clear,“If our country is asked to do so, it will honour itsobligations towardsCzechoslovakia to the lastletter”.18

The sincerity of the SovietUnion’s desire to aidCzechoslovakia wasemphasised by the delivery of60 bombers to the country in1938. Winston Churchillwrote in a personal note at thetime that the Soviet Unionwas willing to send thirtydivisions to help bolster theCzech army and “would havebeen a substantial deterrentupon Hitler ... the Soviet offer was in effect ignored.

They were not brought intothe scale against Hitler, andwere treated with anindifference – not to saydisdain – which left a mark onStalin’s mind.”19

The public in Britain andFrance were kept in the darkabout the Soviet propositionmade in September 1938 byLitvinov to hold a tripartiteconference between the USSR,France and Britain to agree therendering of assistance toCzechoslovakia.

Answering a question fromthe French foreign minister,Georges Bonnet, as to whatthe USSR would do “if therewas a clash between Pragueand Berlin?”, Litvinov repliedthat the USSR would honourthe pact it had signed withFrance and Czechoslovakia in1935. The other questionBonnet asked was how wouldthe USSR be able to sendtroops to the aid of theCzechoslovaks as there was nocommon border between thetwo countries? Both Polandand Romania had refusedpermission for Soviet troops to cross their territory.Litvinov replied that hisgovernment would “neithergo through nor fly over Polishor Rumanian territory unlessit obtains their consent”. He suggested to Bonnet thatFrance try to obtain a right of passage.20 Bonnet did andwas rebuffed.

Poland’s reactionarygovernment made it clear thatthey would never allow theRed Army to cross theirterritory in order to aidCzechoslovakia and any Soviet aircraft entering theirairspace would be shot down.They were hopeful of getting a piece of Czech territorywhen the Germans took over.In May 1938, Poland, underpressure from Germany, hadassembled an invasion force ofthree divisions of its army andone brigade on the northernborder of Czechoslovakdistrict of Teschen. Before theMunich sell-out the SovietUnion warned Poland of theconsequences of aggressionagainst the Czechs and


threatened them withretaliatory measures.

The Soviet Union waskept out of the Munichmeeting, and disgracefully noteven told about it until afterthe sell-out agreement hadbeen signed. Under pressurefrom Chamberlain, Francereneged on its treaty, and theCzechoslovak leader PresidentBeneš was taken in by the false assurances ofChamberlain and FrenchPrime Minister Daladier.

The Sudetenland wasgiven over to the Nazis. The Germans never had to firea shot to get their troops pastthe strong line of Czechfortifications. Polish troopsoccupied Teschen, and soonafterwards Poland received 60million marks from Germanyas a ‘gift of friendship’ for thepurpose of buying equipment.Fascist Hungary also occupieda part of Czechoslovakia.

The CzechoslovakCommunist Party heroicallyresisted the Nazis with a greatcost to lives. At the time ofthe sell-out its membershipwas 75,000, but it doubled insize swiftly, with many of itsmembers forming partisanbands and organising anti-fascist resistance. Thousandsof communists and anti-fascists were rounded up andshot or shipped off toconcentration camps inGermany. The entireCommunist executive were

arrested and executed. As theCPGB predicted, the great armsfactories of Czechoslovakia fellinto Nazi control andstrengthened German resources.When Germany invadedFrance, many of the tanks they used were made at theSkoda factory.

This is the very briefbackground of some of thedouble-dealing andskullduggery that went onbehind the backs of theSoviet Union and provokedthe signing of the Soviet-German pact.

It is a fact that the USSRthroughout 1938-9 pressedthe West for a system ofcollective security acrossEurope to prevent Germanand fascist aggression. The British and Frenchgovernments put obstacles inthe way of every attempt andproposal made by the USSR.As historian Mark Arnold-Foster observed in his famouswork The World at War, “The summer of 1939 offeredChamberlain his last chanceof averting a war withGermany by forming analliance with Russia.”21

Instead Halifax told theBritish Cabinet’s ForeignPolicy Committee, “we had tomake a choice between Polandand Soviet Russia; it seemedclear that Poland would givethe greater value.”22

Chamberlain made known his“considerable distrust” of

Russia, but he was becomingworried about the growingopposition to his policy ofappeasement in Westminster.On 8 May 1939, the newSoviet Foreign Minister,Molotov, told the BritishAmbassador in Moscow thatit appeared to him thatBritain did not seem eager foragreement and Soviet policywas liable to be altered.

The British governmentmade a one-sided proposal tothe Soviet Government:“Britain wanted Russia’s helpif an attack on Poland led to aGerman attack on Britain andFrance but was not preparedto help Russia in the event of aGerman attack on Poland”.23

William Strang, who was headof the Foreign Officedepartment, was sent toMoscow. After strainednegotiations he reported backthat “the fact that we haveraised difficulty after difficultyon points which seem to theminessential has created animpression that we may not beseriously seeking anagreement”.24

The British did send ajunior negotiating team toMoscow by a slow cargo boatin August 1939. Recentlydeclassified Sovietdocuments show that atthese negotiations the USSRoffered to deploy more thana million troops to theGerman border if Britainand France would agree to ananti-Nazi alliance and ifPoland would allow the RedArmy to cross its territory.25

Even then the British team,led by anti-communistAdmiral Drax, had noauthority to sign a pact.

It was clear to the USSRthat neither Britain norFrance had any seriousintention of signing anagreement and that aproposal from Berlin for aSoviet-German non-aggression pact had to beconsidered. The Germansdid not have the full resources

to attack the USSR.However, if the Soviets hadrefused this proposal, theymight have provoked Hitlerinto attacking them and theMunichites would “have beenrubbing their hands withglee, for their dreams ofpushing Hitler against theSoviet Union would be muchnearer to realisation”.26

In 1939 the border of theSoviet Union with Poland ranclose to Minsk and Kiev. The White Finns sympatheticto Hitler were close toLeningrad and Romania’sborder was close to Odessa.Judging by the attitudesdisplayed by the British,French and US governmentsthere was no guarantee thatany of those powers wouldhave come to the aid of theUSSR if the Nazis hadinvaded. At the same timeJapan had been sabre-rattlingin the east and had invadedManchuria, and the USSRhad serious concerns aboutfighting a war on two fronts.The Soviet-German pactforestalled this possibility, andgave time for the Soviet Unionto build up its armaments. Itwas only in 1940 and 1941that production of T34 tanks,anti-tank weapons and newdive-bombers began.

If the Germans hadinvaded in 1939, in allprobability the Soviet Unionwould have eventually beenvictorious, although the cost inlives and damage might havebeen even greater than thatwhich befell the Soviet people.If, however, “the Soviet Unionhad indeed fallen before theNazi hordes – and it was thisthat the ‘Western democracies’were hoping for – Hitlerwould have easily crushedFrance and Britain andtogether with Japan pouncedupon the United States. The history of our planetwould have been thrownseveral centuries back.”27

On 3 July 1941, after theNazi attack on the USSR,Stalin explained the purposeof the non-aggression pact inthe course of a nationwideradio broadcast, as follows:


Nazi propaganda map aimed atshowing the German speakingareas in Czechoslovakia in themid 1930s.

“It may be asked, howcould the SovietGovernment haveconsented to conclude anon-aggression pactwith such perfidiouspeople, such fiends asHitler and Ribbentrop?Was this not an erroron the part of theSoviet Government?Of course not. A non-aggression pact is a pactof peace between twostates. It was preciselysuch a pact thatGermany proposed tous in 1939. Could theSoviet Union declinesuch a proposal? Ithink that not a singlepeace-loving state coulddecline a peace treatywith a neighbouringcountry even if thatcountry is headed bysuch monsters andcannibals as Hitler andRibbentrop …. What did we gain byconcluding the non-aggression pact withGermany? We securedour country peace for ayear and a half and theopportunity ofpreparing our forces torepulse fascistGermany.”28

Even up to the day beforethe signing of the pact theFrench government had been

trying to get some agreementfrom the obdurate Polishgovernment to allow theSoviet Union to come to theiraid in event of Germanaggression. Beck, the PolishForeign Minister grudginglyagreed to it but only when heknew that Ribbentrop was inMoscow and no such aidwould be forthcoming. He “believed that Poland hadmore chance of reachingagreement with Hitler”.29

The Polish Ambassador toFrance, Lukasiewicz received a message from Beck whichstated that Poland had nomilitary treaties with theSoviet Union and had nointention of signing any.30

This was sent ten days beforePoland was invaded.

It is not possible in thisarticle to examine the entirediplomatic and politicalscheming that was happeningat this time. The motivationshowever are clear. The Westhad the aim of trying toaccommodate Hitler whilstencouraging him to move east.They viewed communism as agreater threat than fascism.All attempts by the USSR tocarve out a mutual allianceagainst Hitler were turneddown. Only the opposition inBritain (including WilliamGallacher, Winston Churchilland David Lloyd George)supported an alliance with the USSR.

On the signing of theSoviet-German pact, Britishhistorian A J P Taylorreasoned:

“However one spins thecrystal and tries to lookinto the future from thepoint of view of 23August 1939, it isdifficult to see whatother course SovietRussia could havefollowed. The Sovietapprehensions of aEuropean allianceagainst Russia wereexaggerated but notgroundless. But, quiteapart from this – giventhe Polish refusal ofSoviet aid, given too theBritish policy ofdrawing outnegotiations in Moscowwithout seriouslystriving for a conclusion– neutrality, with orwithout a formal pact,was the most thatSoviet diplomacy could attain.”31

The German occupationof Poland in September 1939,giving it a strategic base forthe intended invasion of theSoviet Union, made itessential for the USSR tocreate a buffer zone betweenits borders and the Germanforces. On 17 September,after the Polish Government

had fled to Romania, the RedArmy entered West Belarusand West Ukraine – territoriesin Poland that had been‘annexed by force’ from Russiain 1920 – in order to preventthem from being occupied byGerman forces.

Ivan Maisky, the Sovietambassador in Britain at thetime, wrote in his memoirsthat “the entry of the RedArmy into the eastern part ofPoland on 17 September, iewhen the Polish State ceasedto exist, represented genuinesalvation for the Ukrainiansand Belorussians living therefrom all the horrors of theNazi invasion.”32 Becomingpart of the USSR meant thepeople had the right to freeeducation, free health care andother social amenities. Their counterparts in the Nazioccupied territory weresubjected to brutality, racialoppression, imprisonment andbestial murders.

The Molotov-Ribbentroppact was not a joint declarationof war against Poland, as hasbeen claimed by revisionists inPolish and reactionary circlesacross Eastern Europe, andeagerly parroted by anti-Soviethistorians in Britain. It was atactic forced upon the Sovietgovernment that had seen all itsattempts to create an anti-fascistalliance frustrated by the leadersof Britain and France plus those in the USA.


■

1 O Figes, Viewpoint: the Nazi-Soviet Pact, athttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8214391.stm2 http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch14.html 3 Documents and Materials Relatingto the Eve of the Second World War, Vol1: November 1937-1938 (From theArchives of the German Ministry ofForeign Affairs), Foreign LanguagesPublishing House, Moscow, 1937-8,pp 19-20.4 J Lukacs, Five Days in London,May 1940, Yale University Press, NewHaven, 2001.5 I Montagu, The Traitor Class,Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1940,p 44.6 Ibid, p 39.7 Lukacs, op cit.

8 W Shirer; The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, BCA, London, 1985,p 327.9 A Rothstein; The MunichConspiracy, Lawrence and Wishart,London, 1958, p 32.10 T Jones, A Diary with Letters 1931-1950, Oxford University Press, 1954.11 M Arnold-Foster, The World atWar, Collins, 1973, p 21.12 A Mertsalov, Munich: Mistake orCynical Calculation?, Novosti Press,Moscow, 1988, p 8.13 H Nogueres, Munich, or ThePhoney Peace, Weidenfeld & Nicolson,London, 1965, p 374.14 Rothstein, op cit, p 231.15 Nogueres, op cit, p 35.16 W Shirer, The Rise and Fall of theThird Reich, Simon & Schuster, New

York, 1990, p 353.17 Nogueres, op cit, p 380.18 Rothstein, op cit, p 174.19 W Churchill, The Second WorldWar, Vol 1, Houghton Mifflin,1948, p 104.20 Nogueres, op cit, p 59.21 Arnold-Foster, op cit, p 24.22 N Henderson, History Today, Vol47, October 1997.23 Arnold-Foster, op cit, p 27.24 Documents on British ForeignPolicy, 1919–1939, ser 3, Vol VI:1939, London, 1953, pp 423,425–26; cited in V I Sipols,Diplomatic Battles Before World War II,Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1982,online at http://leninist.biz/en/1982/DBBW313/4.2.4-Alternatives.25 N Holdsworth, Sunday Telegraph,18 October 2008, at

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/3223834/Stalin-planned-to-send-a-million-troops-to-stop-Hitler-if-Britain-and-France-agreed-pact.html.26 V Berezhkov: History in theMaking: Memoirs of World War IIDiplomacy, Progress Publishers,Moscow, 1982, p 15.27 Ibid, p 16.28 http://historicalresources.org/2008/07/26/joseph-v-stalins-radio-broadcast-july-3-1941/.29 A J P Taylor, The Origins of TheSecond World War, BCA, London,1972, p 261.30 Shirer, op cit, p 537.31 Ibid, p 268.32 I Maisky, Memoirs of a SovietAmbassador; The War 1939-43,Hutchinson, London, 1963, p 10.

Notes

The Left and the StateBy Jimmy Jancovic

I READ WITH PLEASURE a numberof recent contributions in the MorningStar, both as articles and as letters, whichquestioned and even challenged theprevailing statist attitudes of the left.

For some time I have felt that this isone of the weaknesses of the leftworldwide, particularly at this time. It is understandable that, at a time whenthe Establishment is calling for ‘less state’as part of an ultraliberal policy, the leftshould counter this with a defence of thestate and turn to a demand for ‘morestate’. Understandable but not correct.

One of the reasons for the failure ofsocial democracy – and of the SovietUnion – was the way in which forms of public ownership were run in abureaucratic and totally undemocraticmanner. While Marx opposed anarchismas a form of struggle to change society, hisidea of communism was certainly notstatist. Indeed he considered that aclassless society inevitably involved thewithering away of the state.

When Marx talked of the‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ he notonly considered it a transition stage butalso used the term to imply the socialdominance of the working class, in thesame way that the capitalist classdominates society under capitalism. He was certainly not using it to implythe kind of fascist regimes that we saw in the 20th century – which didn’t exist in his days!

The repressive and dictatorial regimesof his time were all monarchical –repression was inevitably associated with kings or emperors, not dictators.With his classical education, he wouldhave associated the term dictator with theRoman emergency measure of placingpower – for six months only – in thehands of a single consul instead of two,when faced with military disaster.

Indeed, the question of the state isone of the oldest questions facing theleft: how does the radical left, that wingof the socialist and labour movement thataims at transforming society and not justtinkering with it, deal with the state?Must we overthrow it, adapt to it – or,

as in the ex-Soviet Union’s last,Brezhnevian, phase – become a tool ofthe state bureaucracy?

In the early years of the 20th centuryit was above all the social democrats whowere the most statist and the communistswho tended to favour a cooperativesociety – a ‘cooperative commonwealth’,in fact (using the word ‘commonwealth’in its original republican sense, not itsmodern imperialist one).

One of the crucial differences withinthe labour and socialist movements andtrends has always been their differentattitudes to the state. Indeed, it oftenwas the issue that divided the left fromthe right within the movement.

As far back as the 1860s, there weredifferences in Germany between Lassalle’sand Marx’s supporters, the formerconsidering Bismarck’s creation of a staterailway network and some social securitymeasures as first steps towards socialism.Marx, however, considered the first wasjust a service to capitalism (broadeningand strengthening the internal market byimproving the transport and circulationof goods and raw materials) and saw thesecond as a means of keeping theworking class quiet and obedient.

In much the same way, the Fabians inBritain (Shaw, the Webbs, H G Wellsand, later, Herbert Morrison) sawsocialism as a bureaucratic network (partnational, part municipal) rather than the‘cooperative commonwealth’ envisagedby the more Marxist groups like the SDF,the ILP and Morris’s Socialist League.1

Indeed, until the 1930s, it was thereformists who were the avowed statists2

and the communists who wantedworkers’ control and grass-rootsdemocracy – which was just what madethe ‘soviets’ (spontaneous grass rootsassemblies of workers, peasants andsoldiers) so different and original – at first …. The French communists –and certainly the CGT! – were evenstrongly tinged with anarcho-syndicalismin the 1920s3.

Indeed, this anarcho-syndicalist trend applies to many other communistparties in less industrialised countries.

(In Britain this phase was characteristicof the early stages of the IndustrialRevolution – the Luddites, Rebecca’sDaughters etc. It faded with thedevelopment of trade unionism andChartism.)

It was also true of many LatinAmerican countries. It was certainly truethat in India, communism was at firstindentified more with ‘social banditry’(dacoits) than the TU movement – atleast until the Meerut Conspiracy trial.Indeed, in the form of Maoism, it is stillan important trend in a number ofIndian states.

It was also true of the first UScommunists. Until the 1930s and therise of the CIO, the main militant tradeunion movement there was theInternational Workers of the World, theIWW. It should be remembered thatmost of the USA, until the 1930s, had anunderdeveloped rural economy, withsmall family farms carrying out a form ofsubsistence agriculture similar to that ofthe European peasantry – Steinbeck’s


The Grapes of Wrath is set against just thisbackground. Industrial capitalism wasstill very localised in the USA until theSecond World War – which, in a way,was a major factor in the nationwideindustrialisation of the USA.

It was the success of the first Soviet 5-Year Plan, at a time when the advancedcapitalist countries were suffering frommass unemployment and rising fascism,that brought many of the communistparties to adopt (and, indeed, embrace)statist attitudes.

Today, faced with the neoliberalslogan of ‘less state’ (but not less policing,nor less repression, nor less armed foreignaggression! ie the most typical andnegative aspects of the state) manyMarxists seem to have forgotten this and tend to be arguing for ‘more state’.

This is a lame return to the statist attitudesof the early social reformists – ironicallyenough, just as the latter are nowbecoming increasingly neoliberal! – albeitrepressive and militarist neo-liberals ….

Indeed, one of the problems in most‘advanced’ capitalist countries is the factthat social attitudes are regressing tothose of the 19th Century – even slavery,

in a number of forms, both domestic andindustrial, is making a comeback!

It is most important that the radicalleft, in its fight against ultraliberaleconomics, should not fall into the socialdemocratic trap of appearing to supportor advocate the kind of bureaucracy thatwrecked both social democracy and theSoviet Union.


Discussion: A Response to Andrew NorthallBy Kenny Coyle

COMRADE ANDREW Northall (CR56, p 33), in reply to my commentson an article by Hans Heinz Holz(CR55, p 30), claims that I quote “Stalinout of context to claim that ‘his idea’ ofthe state remaining in the period of fullcommunism is ‘in completecontradiction of Lenin’s understanding’.”

He asks rhetorically if I hold “theview that the Soviet Union could nothave reached the position of fullcommunism whilst remaining encircledby capitalism? This would be similar tothe ultra-left argument against ‘socialismin one country’”, Andrew says.

My argument would be similar tothe ultra-leftists if socialism and fullcommunism were in fact the samething, but since they are not, it isn’t.

Socialism, the lower phase ofcommunism, can be built in onecountry and specific embryonic formsof it were indeed built in the SovietUnion and a number of other states.But my underlying argument is that thiswas far from being an advanced formof socialism – it was a socialism of avery basic type.

I do not say this to disparage theHerculean efforts of the Soviet andother peoples but simply to underlinethat socialism involves more thansimply bringing the commandingheights of the economy into socialownership, more than central planning,more than eliminating capital and profitas the driving force of society, more

than eliminating exploiting classes.The path to socialism involvesdrastically raising the productivity oflabour, narrowing the gap betweenintellectual and manual labour in alltheir forms, continually broadening theactive involvement of working people inthe administration of their own stateand raising the cultural level of the massof people to greater and greater levels.

Andrew suggests that I believe that“the vast human, material, industrial andagricultural resources of the USSR wereincapable of being utilised and organisedin a socialist (sic) manner to satisfy thecomprehensive and essential needs ofthe people of the Soviet Union, withoutrecourse to external trade”.

Andrew is right, I do believe that.This is because an economy organisedin a “socialist manner” does not satisfycitizens according to their “needs” –that is after all the role of fullcommunism outlined by Marx in hisCritique of the Gotha Programme – butthat it should reward citizens accordingto their work, the “individual quantumof labour”, as Marx put it.

Second, I doubt very much that anycountry can achieve the ‘abundance’required for full communism simply byusing its own resources.

In the 1920s and 30s, relativelycommon things such as iron and coalwere the key components foreconomic advance. Today rare earthelements (REEs) such as neodymium,

lanthanum, terbium and cerium areessential for a whole range of productsfrom computers to catalytic converters,car batteries and wind turbines.

The geological territory of theformer USSR did not possesssubstantial reserves of these elements,although ironically People’s Chinadoes. Can we set a static benchmarkfor communism that does not takeinto account the dynamic, changingneeds of scientific advance? Could apredominantly coal-powered‘communist’ Soviet Union havepermanently kept at bay a nuclear-powered US or a solar-powered orfusion-powered imperialist state ofthe future?

In short, should the ‘communism’imagined in the 1930s be our targettoday?

The extent of the scientific andtechnological revolution since thedeath of Marx, Lenin, Stalin orBrezhnev, for that matter, posesexciting new challenges about how weshould organise a socialist economy,yet it also provides the material basisfor solving precisely the problems oflabour productivity and the division of labour that bedevilled previousthinking about the transitions tosocialism and communism.

Better to embrace and developthese new perspectives than to engagein what is little more than a nostalgicdefence of archaic speculation.

Notes

1 It is no accident that the Webbs, the epitomesof Fabian reformism, should have becomeenthusiastic admirers of the Soviet Union just at the moment when the state was becoming abureaucratic administrative machine and theoriginal grass-roots democracy of the soviets wasbeing replaced by a parliamentary bureaucracyunder the 1936 Constitution.

2 In UK the most typical example is thevirulently anti-communist Herbert Morrison.3 The industrial revolution reached France verylate. Even the Paris Commune was an uprising ofindependent workers and artisans, not industrialworkers. In 1914 France was still mainly rural and the French economy essentially agricultural.This remained largely true until the 1960s.

La Fête de l’Humanité- What is communism?- Communism is the earth turned

into a giant lawnfull of wild flowers for a country

feast, a festival of humanityfree and peaceful;

where all the peoples of theworld will be invited to freelyshare the happiness of theirspecialities

with bread, winemusicand poems, if they like.

This poem is by a contemporaryFrench poet called Francis Combes, andin this article I am going to share somemore of his work with you. As you willsee, his poetry, like that of so many othermodern poets, has been influenced byBertolt Brecht, the subject of the last

Soul Food column. But first, a couple ofthank-yous, and then let us read a fewpoems sent in by readers.

Thanks to all the people whoattended the workshop on Brecht at therecent Communist University. It wasgreat to meet readers of Soul Food, andget the opportunity to discuss Brecht,and what you might call ‘communistpoetics’, with comrades. It is a lonelyold life being a writer, you know:bashing out revolutionary poems in afreezing garret, with only 20 Gitanesand a bottle of absinthe for breakfastagain. So it was great to meet you – ithas given me a much better sense ofwho my readers are: intelligent,sensitive, thoughtful, kind andabsolutely immune to flattery of course.

Thanks also to all those whoresponded to the Do-It-Yourself BrechtPoetry Toolkit in the last column, eitherby sending in poems which followed thetoolkit, or more general political poems.I hope you enjoyed writing the poems asmuch as I enjoyed reading them!

I received quite a lot of poems, halfpoems, ideas for poems, and even awhole book of poems from one reader.There isn’t room to print all of them,and some are too long for this column,so I am going to hold some back inreserve for future columns. For now, I am just going to share with you a fewof the poems I have received.

To start with, some poems which arefairly directly modelled on the Brechtpoems in the toolkit. First, one from areader in Durham, an employee ofSainsbury’s (CEO: Mr Justin King), who understandably prefers to remainanonymous ….


SOULFOODA regular literary selection

➔

Selected by Mike Quille

ProphetJustin, King of Kings at

Sainsbury’s!His face, smiling and fresh,is seen everywhere in Durham.Where is he now,as we stock the shelves and slice

the ham?Is he parking trolleys,or answering queries with Bill

and Mary?Maybe fetching carrots or

weighing haddockwith Jean and Michael?He’ll be taking out rubbish with

Sam,or mopping spills with Ivan.As he said to Mr Humphreys

at 8.13he will be increasing profits.From the notice boards in Durham he smiles encouragement, and drives us to make his profit.

Here’s a poem from Michael Wooferin York, modelled on Brecht’s poem The Price of Milk:

The Ownership of the MediaThe media reveals to us crimes of war, global warming, breaking news and broadcastsleft, right and centre viewswith balance and impartiality.The corporations that ownthe media and fuel, cars and foodmust always, always seek to

further the profit of the shareholder.

The corporations that ownthe media and fuel, cars and foodmust always, always seek to

further the profit of the shareholder.The media reveals to us crimes of war, global warming, breaking news and broadcastsleft, right and centre viewswith balance and impartiality.

Here’s one from Tony Manville inDerby, a lovely little lyric on the‘domestic mode of production’, modelledon Brecht’s poem Sister:

MotherFold the darned and ironed

clothesBeside the tidied tableware.Lean for a moment on the linen

press.Release the morning’s labour in a

gentle sighAnd start again.

And here’s a looser, more metaphor-ical response to Brecht’s poetry, sent in byBob Gallagher from North London:

MeasurementEver noticed that everyday event?If not, don’t worryOnce I didn’t, and now I’m telling

youEver noticed something

concerning a tape measureThe metal sort? The heavy sort

requiring a committed hand?One dayEngaged on a taskUseful to yourself but others tooYou pull the sharp-edged ribbon

free-running from themysterious case

And for a reason not now orever under your control

Back At a speed too quick to measureBackAt the whim of the sealed

unrevealing holderThe indifferent unapologetic

sourceBack the tape is snatchedIt’s a shiver, isn’t it?An epic flick of inevitabilityAll we others should not ignoreIn all humanity.

This one is a more general politicalpoem, from Connie Fraser in Brighton:

Today in South AfricaIt was so long ago,I cannot rememberwhat it was like to be born,yet I think perhaps todayis like that day.

Today for the first timein all the years of my life,I am given a choiceof who is to be my boss.

I will go to the pollsand consider the nameand the face,then I will make my markor my cross,and I will go homehaving done this thing,this great and simple thingfor the first time.

So I think I know nowwhat it is like to be born,to open my mouthfor my first big lungful of airand then to expel it, yellingand making them hear.

Oh, today they will all have tolisten

to me and to you and to us,and today they will have to seethe sounds of our voices on paperand to count each one of our

choices,for what we decide todaywill bewill be.

… and the last poem in this briefselection is from a collection called For The Inquiry, by Nigel Mellor fromNewcastle. It is available as a freedownload on www.nmellor.com or as abook from Amazon at £8.99.

MightThey are tough nowAnd so sure of themselvesThat we even begin to accept itBecause they don’t try to hideAnd they don’t care who sees.They are so confidentAnd that’s what makes us weakBut when the change comes(and it will)The truth will shiftBecause they are wrongIt just happens thatFor a timeThey have the power.

Thanks again to all those whoresponded. I will be sharing some morereaders’ poems in future columns, butmeanwhile please continue to respond towhat you read, by contacting the editoror myself at [email protected].


Francis Combes

Common CauseIn this column, over the last few issues, I have tried to share with you manydifferent kinds of example of what mightbe called ‘communist poetics’: poetrywhich is saying something, expressingsomething, about something which isrelevant and helpful and part of thestruggle, the work, maybe evensometimes the joyful pleasure, of tryingto establish communism on this planet.

There is no better contemporaryexample of this kind of approach thanthe poems of the French writer FrancisCombes. In a recently publishedcollection, Common Cause (translated by Alan Dent, Smokestack Books,£12.95, ISBN 978-0-9560341-8-2),containing over 300 poems, Combesranges over a variety of themes linked tothe communist project, includinghistorical figures, situations, ideas andspecific events.

To read the poems is to hear thevoices and ideas of a whole variety ofpeopIe who have taught or acted outcommunist thinking, including Socrates,Spartacus, Jesus, Thomas More, Blanqui,Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Picasso, Brecht andmany more. The poems have a varietyand suppleness of tone, ranging fromconversational to meditative, lyrical todidactic, angry, accepting, humble,proud. Above all, perhaps, the poems arehopeful. They express a kind of bruisedbut resilient optimism which flows froma realistic, compassionate, committedengagement with the world. And theclarifying strength of Marxist conceptsshines through the poems, appearingnow and again like half-submerged rocksin mountain rivers.

Here are a few examples from thecollection. I have tried to present themin a kind of thematically linked sequence,but the wonderful variety of subjectmatter, approach and tone in Combes’poems will always overpower any rigid,overdetermined editing, just as the ideaof communism has survived theimperfect twentieth century attempts torealise it in practice.

From Account of ThomasMore’s Earthly Journey

Realist thinker, astute adviser,lawyer accustomed to settling

practical questions,he wrote Utopia because the

most fundamental problemsof his societycouldn’t be solved under the

system of property.Many of the ideas of his book

were put into practiceUnder capitalism …. For

example, colonies whoseusefulness he’d imagined.

But also in the countries of actualand scientific socialism

(which all the same set no storeby the dreams of the utopians).

Such it was, for example, in thecase of sending young peopleto the countryside,

to perfect their education andhelp in the fields,

or the general austerity of habitsand forced labour for the anti-social.

(A very liberal idea in a countrywhere theft and vagabondagewas punished by death.)

But many of his suggestions(and some of the most beautiful)

are still to be realised.

The Old Beast Utopia– For those of us who claim to

believe in scientific socialismthe old hope of Utopiahas kept us blind a long time.(We know full well, however,that what went on therewas no Dream.But hope was always strongest.The light of the future flooded

the skylike the Northern Lights.The entire landscape was

transformed ….The factories, the fields, the

chimneys,the muddy holes of the great

building sites

and even the mud,everything took on, thanks to our

visionthe look of dawn.)– We have to have done with

Utopia;send the old bag of bones to the

knacker’s yard!– But if you kill the winged beast

of the dreamman ceases to marchtowards a little more light.(The dream is necessary;it simply has to be kept on a

leash.)

Report on the Progress ofFreedom

When slavery was inventedit was undoubtedly progress(because rather than making

them workthe custom previouslywas to eat captives).When serfdom appearedit was also an advance(because slavesover whom they had the right of

life or deathwere often half-hearted in their

workand productivity suffered).In the same way, when serfdom

was replaced by taxationand little by little wage labour

was establishedit was a great step forward.Free at lastto sell to any biddertheir arms, their hands, their

brainson the open labour marketmen, women and childrencould more easily be exploitedby factory ownersand, by their free will, be

enchainedin the hulks of industry.We still have to decideby what new advanceof freedomwe are going to replace wage

labour.

The EmblemThey took to Lenin in his office in

Smolny(a boarding school for girls turned

into the Bolsheviks’ HQ)a sketch book, full of designs for

emblemsfor the very young Soviet

republic.To symbolise the union of

workers and peasants



the artist comrade had drawna hammer crossed with a sickle.And standing erect between them,a sword was meant to representthe determination to defend– in the spirit of the dictatorship

of the proletariat –the new state of workers,

peasants and soldiers.Lenin,who was no choirboyhad the sword removed.(Ends mustn’t be confused

with means).

On Means and EndsIf you can’t respond to force by

the power of ideasrespond with force.If you can’t respond to non-

violence with non-violencerespond with violence.If you can’t respond to lies by

telling the truthrespond with a lie.But if you do(which is easy to avoid by sticking

to principles)take care that force, violence

and liesdon’t end up winning the day.

The OpeningWhen they opened the doorand then the windowsthe house collapsed.Who’s to blame?The architect?The building materials?The workers?Or whoever opened the

windows?

Berlin ’89In the middle of Berlin, near the

Town Hall

a cockstride from the formerReichstag,

just after the fall of the Wall,on the plinth of the monument

to Marx and Engels(where you see Marx sitting,

looking profound, solid and sombre

and Engels, standingfaithfully behind)an anonymous hand has written

these words:“We’ll do better next time.”

From The FifthInternational

This is an old idea,and no longer in fashionAll the sameThe nineteenth century marches

on our heels.London is a golden cuff-linkhuge and brashsticking out of a crumpled

smoking jacket.Everywhere in the streets– as in all streetsin very modern and democratic capitalist capitals –men and women are sleeping

under cardboard.Fallenfrom the pockets of smoking

jackets on the tarmac of towns

like pinches of tobacco,as worthlessas dandruffyou brush off your shoulders.

In Praise of FriendshipTo rediscover those we

haven’t lostwho we didn’t missand who didn’t miss usbut to rediscover them

and find how precious that is.

To exchange words that don’tmean much

or to set the world to rights.To get together under a wild

vine trellisin a precise place on the planetto drink a glass of claret togetherto swim naked under the stars.

Simply, to be there when itmatters

(everybody can do that).

To listen to one another tounderstand one another totalk to one another not tocontradict each other

nor to confirmbut to weave a stronger netand to go fishing in the world’s

troubled waters to catch thesilver fish of happinesseverybody needs.

Friendship isn’t enough to changethe world;

but can the struggle to make theworld more friendly

do without friendship?

As ever, responses in the form ofletters, emails and above all real, live,newly born poems are very welcome – in Brecht’s style, Combes’ style or in any other. Send to the Editorial Office or [email protected]

Junk food: an irregular cartoon strip

■

Thanks to Smokestack Books (www.smokestack-books.co.uk) for permission to reprint poems fromCommon Cause.

Acknowledgements

continued from p 35

I want to join the:

Communist Party Young Communist League

Name

Address

Postcode

Phone

Email

Industry

Age

Capitalism is in its biggest slump since1929. Britain’s banks have been bailedout to the tune of £1.3 trillion whileworkers are paying for the crisis with joblosses, public spending cuts, frozen payand home repossessions.

Return to:CPB 23 Coombe Road London CR0 1BD

You may also apply directly via the web site www.communist-party.org.uk,by following the link “Join”

JOIN THECOMMUNIST PARTY

RECENT PUBLICATIONS FROM THE COMMUNIST PARTY

Order online at www.communist-party.org.uk or by post to Communist Party of Britain at the address below

● 90 Years of Struggle:The Communist Party 1920-2010by Robert Griffiths and Ben Stevenson

● Britain’s Road to Socialism:draft new edition 2010

● The European Union: For theMonopolies, Against the Peopleby John Foster

● Classics of Communism No 6:On Communists and the BritishLabour Partyby V I Lenin

£2.50 each, includingpostage and packing

Does your daily contain top class news?...Or just the news the top class wants you to read!

58

9 771474 924000www.morningstaronline.co.uk

60p from newsagents

Date post:	10-Mar-2016
Category:	Documents
Upload:	communist-party
View:	240 times
Download:	0 times