In Celebration of Das Kapital (Part II)

[p009] We must be clear about what it is we celebrate after 100 years of Capital. We do not pay homage or tribute to particular aspects of Marx’s findings in the field of political economy; nor to Capital’s ‘brilliant predictions’ or its ‘strong points’. We mark the centenary of Marx’s major contribution to political economy not as followers or admirers of Karl Marx but as Marxists. That is, we see this work not as an academic work but as a weapon in the present struggles of the working class. It is not, in any case, a question of ‘refuting’ Marx, but of developing his work as part of the struggle of the working class for Socialism. In particular it is necessary to defend Marx from his ‘friends’ who wish in fact to separate him out from the movement he struggled to build and for which he ‘sacrificed health, happiness and family’. There can be no ideological co-existence between the work- ing class and the petty bourgeoisie no matter how ‘sympathetic’ they may be towards the proletariat or even towards Marxism as they conceive of it.

In celebration of Das Kapital (Part 2) IN THE FIRST part of this article we examined the relationship of Marx’s work in political economy to the Classical School of Economics. In Capital, Marx is able to tackle and solve the problems posed by the leading representative of this school, Ricardo. Marx is able to explain all the surface phenomena of the capitalist system in terms of his ‘starting point’, the commodity, on which is based his value theory, the labour theory. Marx is able to do this because he realizes that Ricardo saw this as too simple a problem. Marx shows that it is not adequate merely to counter- by Geoff Pilling pose the appearance and the essence of the pheno- mena of the capitalist system, nor merely to de- monstrate the inter-relatedness of the categories of political economy. What is required of politi- cal economy is a tracing of the manifold and complex connections between these categories. Thus whereas Ricardo, starting from the com- modity, tries to explain all the phenomena of the bourgeois mode of production at the commence- ment of his work, Marx only deals with these sur- face manifestations at the very end of Volume Ill. He is able, postulating even the commodity,

[p010] to understand the totality and movement of the entire system. But he does not start with this totality. He understands it only on the basis of the social relations established in production and is therefore able to establish the power and validity of the method of dialectical and historical materialism. All the categories of the system are traced back to their essence in the relations of production. This is why the corner-stone of Marx- ist political economy is the theory of value. It is no accident that the strongest critics of Marx, perhaps most notably BGhm-Bawerk, have attacked the theory of value head on. A law upheld in divergence Marx’s treatment of his value theory also illu- strates the process of concretization which under- lies Capital. In Volume I Marx assumes that com- modities exchange at prices determined directly by their embodied labour ratios. But in Volume III he deals with the complex connections between price, that is the form which value takes in capi- talist economy, its outward appearance, and value. He shows that, given varying organic com- positions of capital in the different branches (a product of the tendency towards uneven develop- ment in the economy) on the one hand, with a tendency for an average rate of profit to establish itself in the economy on the other, commodities cannot exchange directly at their values. Having stated the problem it would appear as though the theory of value were in irreconcilable opposi- tion to the real phenomena of the capitalist system. We appear to be left with the choice of either overthrowing the labour theory of value, and with it the whole of Marx’s work in this field or with renouncing the attempt to understand the dynamics of the system. But this was not a ‘dilemma’ for Marx as some of his readers imagine. No! Marx shows that the law of value is upheld precisely through a divergence of prices from values, but a divergence which is explicable in terms of the law itself, which is ‘law governed’, that is. Marx justifies this treatment of value (that is a movement from value to price) not only theoreti- cally but also historically. In his important ‘Appendix’ to Volume III, Engels is concerned to refute those followers of Marx who saw value as a necessary starting point, theoretically, but nonetheless a fictitious one. As he notes of these people ‘they do not make sufficient allowance for the fact that we are dealing here not only with a purely logical process, but with a historical process and its explanatory reflection in thought, the logical pursuance of its inner connections’. Engels shows in his sketch of the history of value that the assumed equality of ‘price’ and ‘value’ which underpins the analysis of Volume I, was historically speaking a correct starting point. He further suggests that this relationship holds good from the very beginning of exchange right down until the 15th century. He also indicates that the ‘rate of profit’? emerges as a result of the guild system, one of the chief aims of which was the establishment of an equal rate of return for all the guild members. He further shows how this rate of profit developed in relation to merchant and then industrial capital, with the emergence of each new category involving the destruction of the old relationships. He insists that the trans- formation of ‘value’ into ‘price’ must not be seen formally but as a real historical process, a ques- tion ignored by many writers. Thereby the conversion of values into production prices is accomplished for exchange as a whole. The conversion therefore proceeds according to objective laws, without the consciousness or the intent of the participants. A blindly-working average It was certainly not a question of Marx having to overcome ‘problems’ in his analysis of value, to ‘explain’ why price should deviate from value or price of production. He shows that the capi- talist system demands this very divergence as part of its very functioning. This once more serves to illustrate the dialectical method of Capital and also establishes the unity of the theory of value with the theory of accumulation and crisis. Briefly, Marx sees capitalism as based upon anarchy, a system which while incapable of con- scious social regulation, is ‘planned’, but only through the assertion of the law of value. Each branch of the economy produces commodities, with each. firm struggling to increase its share of total surplus value. But at the same time the total social demand remains an unknown magni- . tude. Competition depreciates below value those commodities which in kind or amount are not useful for immediate social requirement. In other words only through the continual deviation of values from prices can the value of commodities be established. Price must necessarily have a dif- ferent aspect from value, which it represents, just as ‘the King usually looks quite different from the monarchy which he represents’. Thus the law of value asserts itself precisely through a series of crises of over- and under-production, as a ‘blindly working average’. Fourth International, February 1968

[p011] It was because of the impossibility of any con- scious a priori regulation of production, because the law of value operates ‘behind the back of the participants in the productive process’, that Marx was unable to make concrete predictions about the exact course of capitalist development in all its details. The equalization of the rate of profit in the different branches of the economy with vary- ing organic compositions of capital proceeds only through a struggle between the branches in which the relationship between values, prices, and prices of production is established as a result of this process. It is important to establish the unity of Marx’s work in Capital. This is true especially of the re- lationship between the law of value and the ‘law of motion’ of the system. Most commentators on Marx, even those ‘sympathetic’ to him have failed to do this. These writers normally provide an exposition of the theory of value on the one hand and a separate theory of crisis on the other. In fact this amounts to little more than an ‘exten- sion’ of the Classical conceptions. Marxism is not Ricardian economics with a theory of crisis tacked on the end. The key to understanding the unity of Capital is to understand the importance of the distinction between the ‘use value’ and > ‘value’ of the commodity. As Marx points out in relation to Ricardo, the Classics, while often draw- ing a formal distinction between these two sides of value, did not develop this side of their work or realize its true implications. For Marx, ‘use value’ is not merely an aspect of value, nor merely a pre-requisite for value. A commodity unites, in itself, use value and exchange value (value). Surplus value as the differentia specifica Marx shows, in Chapter 7, Volume 1, that the very driving forces of the capitalist system dis- rupt this unity. ‘Use value, is, by no means, the thing qud on aime pour lui-méme in the produc- tion of commodities.’ by the capitalist only incidentally: to the extent that they are the depositories, the material sub- stance of exchange value. The driving aim of the capitalist is to produce not merely use values, or even values, but surplus value. The incessant drive to produce surplus value is the differentia specifica of the labour process under capitalism. Capital has not invented surplus labour. ... It is, however, clear that in any given economic formation of society, where not the exchange value but the use value of the product pre- dominates, surplus labour will be limited by a In celebration of Das Kapital Use values are produced given set of social wants which may be greater or less and here no incessant thirst for surplus labour arises from the nature of production itself. Production for profit The general aim of production (as it appears in all social systems) is, under capitalism, over- ridden and dominated by the particular aim of production, production for profit, which is the motor force and regulator of the accumulation process. This is the importance, after he has dealt with the role of money, of the schema M-C-M’ as an expression of this process of accumulation. Marx shows that crises arise because the aim of production is governed not by use values but by surplus values, that capitalism is a system of pro- duction not for use but for profit. On the other hand, as we have noted, this ‘social demand’ cannot be ascertained beforehand by the producers of commodities. The law of value is only established after continual pro- cesses of trial and error in which production is brought into line with demand. This process necessarily involves periods of ‘over production’ in response to previous phases of ‘under produc- tion’ in which the division of social labour time, between the branches of the economy, reflected in the law of value, operates as this unconscious and uncontrolled process. Planning takes place via the law of value and not through human agency. It is equally necessary to insist upon the unity of Marx’ work in political economy with his view of the class struggle. Volume III opens with an important passage in which Marx explains this unity. In Volume I he has dealt with the basic and immediate processes of production without regard to any secondary effects or outside influ- ences. In Volume II he develops this analysis by dealing with the effects associated with the rate of turnover of capital and their implications for the analysis outline in Volume I. In Volume III Marx makes clear that it is not now a question merely of providing a synthesis of this earlier analysis. His work . .. must locate and describe the concrete forms which grow out of the movements of capital as a whole. In this actual movement capitals confront each other in such concrete shape, for which the form of capital in the immediate process of pro- duction, just as its form in the process of circula- tion, appears only as special instances. The various forms of capital, as evolved in this book, thus approach step by step the form which they assume on the surface of society, in the action of different capitals upon one another, in competition, and in 7

[p012] the ordinary consciousness of the agents of pro- duction themselves. Land, Labour and Capital Marx shows in Volume III that the form taken by capital in society is that of the three ‘factors of production’, land, labour and ‘capital’, with their corresponding revenues, ‘rent’, ‘wages’ and ‘interest’ (taking ‘profit’ as the ‘wages of super- intendence’). He shows that these alleged sources of annually available wealth belong to widely different spheres. ‘Capital’ is not a ‘thing’, not the sum of material and produced means of sub- sistence; it is the means of production, but the means of production monopolized by a separate class in society, confronting living labour power as products and working conditions rendered independent of this labour power. ._ On the other hand ‘land’ is not a source of value, nor of surplus value. Similarly ‘labour’ in the abstract is divested of all relations to any specific mode of production. The famous ‘formula’ (that is land, labour and capital as the three ‘factors of production’) embraces ‘capital’ which is historically and socially determined with ‘land’ and ‘labour’, both of which are elements of the real productive process which, in their material form, are common to all modes of production. We can usefully contrast the method of treat- ment of these questions at the opening of Volume III with that at the start of the whole work. In Volume I Marx is concerned with the mystifying character of social relations under commodity production. He returns to these questions at the end of the work, but now deals with them speci- fically from the point of view of conditions of developed capitalist commodity production. He shows that more complex questions have to be dealt with at this stage. The emergence of capitalism involved an enormous development in the production of rela- tive surplus value through.a great increase in the productive power of social labour. But these powers now appear to be transferred from labour to capital. For the capitalist himself surplus value appears to arise from the very process of circu- lation rather than production. This illusion is in turn reinforced by two other factors. The capitalist sees his profit as contingent upon his selling (and cheating) ability in the sphere of circulation and secondly, ‘added on’ to his costs is the time which his resources are tied up in circulation, this appears as an ‘independent’ factor which arises from the very nature of capital. The treatment of circulation in Volume III also illustrates the same method. In Volume II Marx demonstrates that circulation cannot be the source of value; it can only act as a negative barrier to the formation of value and surplus value. He at this point also examines the history of the theories of the circulation process in the literature of Classical economics. But when con- sidered in Volume III from the point of view of the consciousness of the capitalist—that is not ‘objectively’ as in Volume JI—it appears quite differently. The ‘laws’ of circulation appear to be regulated by chance and accident and Marx shows that the capitalist, from his individualist point of view, is unable to grasp them objectively. The conversion of the general category ‘surplus value’ into its component parts and the formation of a general rate of profit further obscures the real relations underlying the forms taken by wealth in bourgeois society. Surplus value in the form of profit is no longer related back directly to that portion of capital invested in the purchase of labour power from which it arose, but is related to the total social capital. Marx also stresses at this point (which flows, from his analysis earlier in the work) that the rate of profit is regulated by laws of its own which permit, and indeed require it, to change while the rate of surplus value remains unaltered. Further, with the forma- tion of an average rate of profit, profit is divorced from the actual exploitation of labour in the different spheres of production. Two levels of abstraction This illustrates one of the great achievements of Marx, an aspect of his work which he him- self considered one of the strongest points of the Critique and Capital: the treatment of surplus value independent of its forms as profit, interest, ground rent, etc. Having dealt with the law governing the formation of surplus value in Volume I he is later able to examine the laws which regulate the division of the mass of surplus value into its component parts. In Volume III, that is, he is able to concentrate on the laws which produce and sustain the appearance of wealth in bourgeois society. He is able to show that the ‘regular hash’ in which the Classical School found itself when dealing with these ques- tions stemmed from a failure to work at these two levels of abstraction. Marx is therefore able, at the. end of Volume III, which we must remember was never com- pleted, to establish the relationship between his critique of the bourgeois political economy and Fourth International, February 1968

[p013] the class struggle. Volume III ends, in other words, with the real relationships of production, but as they appear in bourgeois society. But these appearances, the starting point for the vulgar economist, are understood in a new way. The movement of ‘appearances’—part of the ‘super- structure’ are explained in terms of the ‘base’ (the social relations of production). Having traced the real sources of revenue of the three great classes back to the real relations of production estab- lished under the capitalist mode, Marx is able to establish the connection between these revenues and the classes who depend upon them. This is why Capital ends with the famous but incomplete chapter ‘Classes’. The owners merely of labour power, owners of capital and landowners, constitute the three big classes of modern society based upon the capitalist mode of production The general structure of Capital, as examined above is perhaps best summarized by a quotation from one of Marx’s letters to Engels (April 30, 1868): At last we have arrived at the forms of appear- ances which serve as the starting point in the vulgar conception. . . . But from our point of view the thing is now seen differently. The appar- ent movement is explained. . . . Then the whole movement takes this form of appearances. Finally since these three (wages, ground rent, profit (in- terest )) constitute the respective sources of the in- come of the three classes of landowners, capitalists and wage labourers, we have, in conclusion, the class struggle into which the movement and the smash up of the whole business resolves itself. Progress of class struggle and ‘special pleading’ It. is now possible to see why Capital was Marx’s most important single work. Capital was a critique of political economy. This is not to be taken as synoymous with a ‘criticism’. All earlier writers, from the time of the Physiocrats, had ‘criticized’ their predecessors, just as Smith had criticized the French School and was, at a later stage, to. be criticized by Ricardo. All these ‘criticisms’ had been directed towards the estab- lishment of a more consistently bourgeois view of the law which governed the production and distri- ‘bution of wealth in capitalist society. This work was increasingly ‘objective’ only to the extent that the development of capitalism was synonym- ous with ‘progress’, with the growth and expan- sion of the productive forces. Marx shows, in Theories of Surplus Value that this phase comes to an end in the 1820s, when the objective aspects In celebration of Das Kapital of the Classical economists are increasingly re- placed by special pleading. These developments were intimately related to the progress of the class struggle and the emergence of the working class as a coherent and independent force ranged against the whole of bourgeois society. Capital is not, therefore, a criticism of bour- geois economics ‘from within’. It represents an attack on the most fundamental premises of Classical economics. Hence Marx’s opposition to those ‘Ricardian Socialists’ of the 1820s who used Ricardo’s teachings as a basis for their attack upon the capitalist economy. Marx stands opposed to the idea that an economic science, inherited from the bourgeoisie, can be an adequate weapon to arm the working class in its struggle to overthrow the capitalist order. It was not a question merely of eliminating the bias and error in Ricardo, taking over his labour theory of value and adapting this for the purposes of socialist propaganda. Such notions rapidly paved the way to idealism and utopian conceptions of socialism, as Marx shows with greatest clarity in his cricitism of Gray. Marx insists that the ‘appearances’ of the bour- geois order do not stem from mere _ illusion. Under capitalism the working class is alienated from the fruits of its labour which stand opposed to it and dominate over it as a ‘second nature’. These are appearances, but necessary appearances, which do not disappear merely by uncovering their roots in the antagonistic relationships in production. As Marx notes about the ‘discovery’ of the law of value as the starting point for the understanding of price: this ‘discovery’, while removing all appearances of ‘accident’ in the pro- cess of value and price formation does not alter the mode in which this law asserts itself. ‘The relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations between things.’ (Emphasis added.) In Volume III the same point is returned to, this time in conditions of fully developed capitalist commodity production. Marx shows how capital appears to the capitalist, land to the landowner and labour to the labourer as three and distinct sources of their individual revenues, but he adds: . They really are so in the sense that capital is a perennial pumping machine of surplus labour for the capitalist, land a perennial magnet for land- lord, attracting a portion of surplus value pumped out by the capital. ...

[p014] ‘Capital’ is productive because it is coercive against labour, because it expresses the antagonism between the monopolization of the means of pro- duction in the hands of a single class confronting wage labour. The production of surplus value rests not on ‘economic facts’ but upon the institutional and class structure of the bourgeois system of production. Conclusion Thus Capital is not a treatise about the ex- ploitation of the working class. This is not the kernel of Marx’s work: neither he nor capital invented surplus labour. Exploitation is a neces- sary part of capitalism as the last antagonistic form of social production. It is not a question of ‘criticizing’ the laws of bourgeois political the epoch of 10 In Defence of Marxism by Leon Trotsky In the course of building the Fourth International, Trotsky played a leading part in the early years of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) of the USA. Almost from the very beginning in the SWP, there developed factions and platforms respond- ing in their own impressionist, non-Marxist way to the many changes in world politics and the class struggle in America in imperialism and _ Stalinism. Marxism’, written between September 1939 and August 1940, now published for the first time in Britain, is the record of Trotsky’s struggle against the first great wave of reaction of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals who had joined the SWP. Price: Soft cover 10s. 6d. Hard cover 21s. NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS LTD., 186a Clapham High St., London, SW4. economy as summed up by Ricardo. Rather it is a matter of overthrowing these laws through the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois order. Marx’s conclusions in Capital are united with his critique of Feuerbach as the highest expression of contemplative materialism. Capital is therefore truly critical of capitalist production in that Marx goes beyond the cate- gories of this mode of production, establishing that it is a historically limited and transient social system. It is because in Capital Marx overthrows the starting point of bourgeois political economy and arrives at a new theoretical starting point that this work was and is the weapon of the working class, the class which is forced, as a necessary part of its existence, to strive, in prac- tice, to advance itself and humanity beyond the confines imposed by the capitalist order. ‘In Defence of Fourth International, February 1968

[p015] Marxism Stalinism = In Britain 1920-26 by M. Woodhouse Part 2 The Social Democratic Federation THE MARXIST tendencies which existed in the period immediately prior to the formation of the CPGB stemmed from the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), the only Marxist party which existed in 1900. The Marxism of the SDF was an extreme form of the essentially arid and dogmatic Marxism of the main parties of the Second Inter- national in this period, most notably the German Social Democrats and their ideologue, Kautsky. In Britain the adherence of the SDF to formal aspects of Marxism, rather than to its use as a method for understanding society in order to actively inter- vene in its transformation, was more clearly revealed than in Germany, where the SPD had a mass following. In Britain the SDF was able, to a limited extent, to play the role of awakening the class consciousness of sections of the working class and of helping to develop the understanding of the need for independent political action, but this was hampered by the sectarianism of the SDF leadership. Work was undertaken by the party rank-and-file often quite spontaneously at local level and irrespective of the attitude of the party leadership. Such work was often carried out in close co-operation with non-Marxist ‘reformist’ organizations, e.g. the ILP and the Clarion Scouts, and in many areas the SDF, in organization and political outlook, closely resembled the ILP. Activities of this sort could be very fruitful in creating the conditions for the emergence of inde- pendent political consciousness among workers; the actions of SDF branches in relation to the London County Council and parliamentary con- stituencies in the East End of London were very significant in this respect.’ But such activities were undertaken largely intuitively in response to the growing feeling of the need for an independent working-class party. In the absence of any guidance from the leadership of the SDF the party’s local branches were not acting upon a political estimation of the role Marxists could play in the formation of a mass working-class party that would initially be purely reformist and ‘labourite’ in consciousness. Such a party, as Engels clearly realised, was a necessary first step for the development of revolutionary conscious- ness, but to transcend this stage a creative appli- cation of Marxist theory to the question of chang- ing reformist to revolutionary practice was re- quired. The work of the local SDF branches met the first of these requirements but to meet the 1 See P. Thompson, Liberals, Radicals and Labour in London, Past and Present, 1964. 11

[p016] FREDERICK ENGELS second the dogmas of the SDF leadership and the sectarian methods flowing from them had to be overcome: as Engels noted, writing in the early 1890s on the position of the SDF and Fabian Society: . . . both in the SDF and in the Fabian Society the provincial members were better than the central body. But that is of no avail as long as ,-. the attitude of the central body determines that ~ of the Society Sectarianism . To a large extent, the leadership of the SDF was drawn from a section of the bourgeoisie and upper reaches of the petty-bourgeoisie who were disorientated by the collapse of the mid-Victorian boom, the ‘Great Depression’ and the relative economic decline of Britain, and who derived from Marxism a series of formulae which predicted the imminent collapse of capitalism and indicated salvation through the revolutionary action of the working class, suitably led by these converts to Socialism from the privileged classes. For a number of advanced workers, particularly in Lon- don, who were moving under the impact of the depression from Liberal-Radicalism to Socialism, the theories of Hyndman, with their emphasis on the need for a revolutionary party for-the working 12 class, completely separate from the two estab- ‘lished bourgeois parties, were distinctly attrac- tive. For some of these workers, Harry Quelch is the best example, the strategy established by Hyndman for the SDF in the 1880s became almost a religion, an immutable expression of the abso- lute truths of Marxism; as Engels expressed it, writing to Sorge in America: The Social Democratic Federation here shares with your German-American Socialists the distinc- tion of being the only parties who have contrived to reduce the Marxist theory of development to a rigid orthodoxy. This theory is to be forced down the throats of the workers at once and without development as articles of faith, instead of making the workers raise themselves to its level by dint of their own class instinct. That is why both remain mere sects... inevitability and automatism Holding that the collapse of capitalism was an inevitable and automatic process, the leaders of the SDF adopted for themselves the role of the ultimate inheritors of state power when the col- lapse occurred. To play its revolutionary role correctly, therefore, it had to remain doctrinally ‘pure’ and free from compromise with reformist tendencies in the Labour movement. In a period when significant sections of the working class were beginning to move towards political action independent of the two bourgeois parties as well as towards a major extension of trade unionism, the leadership of the SDF stood aside from such developments. Work in the trade unions was at best self-defeating, if not irrelevant; they could play no part in the transition to Social- ism in that, by bargaining for better wages, they supported the wages system and thus capitalism. Partly under pressure from the membership of the SDF and partly in the hope of playing the chief role in the formation of a united Socialist party, Hyndman and the leaders of the SDF participated in the negotiations leading to the establishment of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC), but within a year, when it was found impossible to convert the trade union-dominated LRC to a specifically Socialist programme, the SDF with- drew from the LRC. There was much to justify Engel’s assertion, as far as the leaders were con- cerned, that ‘... the SDF is purely a sect. It has ossified Marxism into a dogma and, by rejecting every labour movement which is not orthodox Marxism .. . it renders itself incapable of ever 2 Marx and Engels; On Britain, p. 576. 3 Ibid. p. 582. Fourth International, February 1968

[p017] becoming anything else but a sect...’ * The chief responsibility for the sectarianism of the SDF devolved upon the small clique of founder members who dominated the executive by the turn of the century; Hyndman, Belfort Bax, Burrows and Quelch. The maintenance of their hegemony depended not only on their operation of a fairly tight bureaucracy but also on the fact that no alternative to their political theories was seriously advanced within the SDF. The period after 1900 was to see increasing opposition to the leading clique, from those who broke away to form the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) and the Socialist Party of Great Britain (1903-4) and from those who wanted a return to ‘ginger group’ activities within the Labour Party, but there was never any theoretical understanding of the poli- tical significance of the ‘Marxism’ of Hyndman; the approach to Marxism which the opposition groups adopted was very much of the type evolved by the SDF over the previous period. The political manifestations of the ‘Marxism’ of Hyndman and his colleagues in fact produced among their opponents in the SDF membership reactions that were wholly empirical in charac- ter. Hyndman’s theories ‘did not work’; better _ ways had to be found. Such attitudes derived very largely from the practical experience of the SDF’s sectarianism. Treating Marxism as a set of dogmas, the leadership were unable to apply Marxism as a method to the day-to-day needs of the party in its work among the working class. The SDF con- sequently tended to vacillate between ultra-revolu- tionary and purely reformist policies and appeared thoroughly opportunist in practice. After the dis- appearance of the expectation of cataclysmic re- volutionary upheavals in the 1880s, the SDF’s revolutionary strategy rested wholly upon the concept of a peaceful, parliamentary transition to Socialism. The work of the SDF came to be based almost wholly upon parliamentary and local electioneering. Vital though this was as part of a general strategy for awakening working-class political consciousness, so far as the SDF leader- ship was concerned it represented the totality of their activities. In its day-to-day practice, there- fore, the SDF appeared as reformist as the ILP, but, because of its sectarian approach to the unions, far less influential. Moreover, in the absence of any theoretical understanding of the connection between participation in local govern- ment (where the SDF did obtain successes) and the creation of working-class political conscious- ness, the SDF members elected to public positions tended to become wholly involved in the routine Marxism and Stalinism in Britain (Part 11) of local government, trapped. within its limita- tions, and their political outlook increasingly moulded by this limiting experience. The Socialist Labour Party The Socialist Labour Party was formed as a breakaway of several Scottish branches of the SDF (with a few in Southern England) in opposi- tion to the growing opportunism of the SDF leadership. The break was of significance not only in that it represented the outcome of mounting opposition to the Bax-Hyndman group by young working-class militants, but in its association with the current struggle within the Second Interna- tional against revisionist and opportunist tenden- cies. The issues involved in the debate at the International’s 1900 Congress on the entry of Millerand, the French Socialist, into the French government at the height of the Dreyfus crisis were brought directly into the struggle within the SDF which culminated in the formation of the SLP in 1903. The support given by the SDF delegation at the Paris Congress to Kautsky’s resolution allowing participation in bourgeois governments in specific circumstances (the ‘india- rubber’ resolution) was strongly attacked by mili- tants at the 1901 Annual Conference of the SDF, particularly by the Scottish delegates soon to take the lead in forming the SLP. The support of the SDF leadership for Kautsky’s resolution was clearly considered support for opportunism, and was coupled with the growing evidence of the opportunist practice of the SDF in Britain. Opposition to revisionism, therefore, or, more accurately, to its practical aspects, was an integral part of the movement of working-class militants in the SDF to a revolutionary position. Empiricism However, the reaction against the SDF was purely empirical. It was attended by none of the theoretical investigation of the roots and nature of revisionism currently being carried out by Rosa Luxemburg. The SLP looked instead for a form of organization which would permit more direct access to the working class, which would lead to a more direct confrontation with capitalism than the ‘parliamentarianism’ of the SDF and which would permit the preservation of the revolutionary purity that had attended the struggles of the SDF — 4 Marx and Engels, On Britain, p. 574. 5 For details of the formation of the SLP, see Tsuzuki, The ‘Impossibilist Revolt’ in Britain, International Review of Social History, 1956. 13

[p018] in its early years. In its policies the SLP carried over from the SDF an adherence to Marxism as a set of formulae, not a guide to action, to be safe- guarded from reformist corruption by a rejection of all forms of tactical alliance with reformist or- ganizations within the Labour movement, trade unions and political parties alike. The SLP thus represented what was really an intuitive reaction against that process whereby organized sections of the working class were being adapted to capital- ism via the medium of trade union and political bureaucracies, and with its ideas of revolutionary action through the establishment of industrial unions the SLP sought to by-pass this growing bureaucracy. At the same time, the reaction against bureaucracy in the Labour movement was accompanied by a hostility to the permeation of the movement by Fabian ideas, particularly to the ultimate goal of Fabianism, collectivist bureau- cratic capitalism. Against the ‘state socialist’ ideas of the leaders of the ILP and Labour Party, which the SLP saw as the vehicle for this form of col- lectivism, was posed the conception of a Socialist system based upon the direct control of produc- tion by the working class through their industrial unions. Connolly (who was intimately connected with the formation and early development of the SLP) clearly characterized this system and the process whereby it would be created: . In the light of this principle of Industrial Unionism every fresh shop or factory organized under its banner is a fort wrenched from the capitalist class and manned with the soldiers of the revolution to be held by them for the workers. On the day that the political and economic forces of labour finally break with capitalist society and proclaim the Workers’ Republic these shops and factories so manned by Industrial Union- ists will be taken charge of by the workers there employed and force and effectiveness given to that proclamation.. .§ Connolly, positivism and idealism The concept of Socialist revolution set out by Connolly, as J. T. Murphy noted’, powerfully influenced every revolutionary movement in Britain up to the formation of the CPGB, and Connolly’s schema was very characteristic of the Marxism of these movements. Such Marxism was permeated with positivist and idealist assump- tions. It saw in Marx’s writings the best descrip- tion of the capitalist system and drew from this description the clear fact of the class struggle between workers and employers, based on _ in- dustrial exploitation. The state, government and 14 = SSRIS JAMES CONNOLLY political parties were mere reflexes of this basic fact of the industrial class war, and although both Connolly and the SLP stressed the need for politi- cal (i.e. parliamentary) action in order to awaken working-class political consciousness, the emphasis was placed on the primacy of industrial organiza- tion for both immediate and eventual revolu- tionary ends. As a general perspective for working- class action there was nothing here with which a Marxist could disagree, but in the practice of the SLP this perspective was reduced to an _ ideal scheme which was inextricably linked to the mechanical approach of the SLP to Marxism. The movement of the working class towards a revolutionary position was seen as an automatic reflex to the development of capitalism from an individualistic to a monopoly form. As owner- ship became concentrated and employers nation- ally organized, so the working class would see the need for the establishment of industrial unions, embracing all the workers in an industry, in place of the old, narrow, craft unions. As the quotation from Connolly indicates, the very process of con- structing such unions would lead the working class towards the conquest of power; the process was automatic, and the transition to Socialism would occur, through an undefined cataclysmic upheaval, when the working class was fully organized. in industrial unions. The role of the party in this process was necessarily limited and 6 Connolly, Socialism Made Easy. 7 J. T.:Murphy, Preparing for Power, p. 90. Fourth International, February 1968

[p019] essentially propagandist. It existed to make clear to the working class the nature of capitalism and the need for class, not craft, industrial organiza- tion to confront the bourgeoisie. The SLP existed, in fact, like the SDF, not to give leadership on day-to-day issues as an expression of a fully con- sidered Marxist position on current problems, but to awaken in the minds of workers the idea of revolutionary socialism and the idea of how to organize to achieve it. Spontaneity and propagandism The expectation was that, if instructed sufficiently well, the working class would spon- taneously move towards a revolutionary position through the adoption of the ideal organization, the industrial union. The description given by T. A. Jackson of the working of an SDF branch in this period equally well applied, with a few minor changes, to that of an SLP branch and indicated the purely propaganda role of the party: The normal SDF branch numbered something between a score and fifty—the regular attenders at a branch meeting being somewhat better than a dozen. The customary routine was, after the Minutes and correspondence, to fix arrangements for the Sunday propaganda meetings, and for any weekday meetings there might be. The life activity of the branch centred around these propaganda meetings. . The speeches at these open air ‘meetings usually took the form of a general state- ‘ment of socialist aspirations, a general criticism of capitalism and its evils, and a special applica- tion to current happenings—particularly the doings of the local Borough or Town Council .. 2 Syndicalism Inevitably, so brief a characterization of the theory of the SLP is over-rigid, but essentially it was this theory that the SLP developed in the years before 1914 in its attempt to find a direct, revolutionary road to the working class. More- over, the importance of the contribution of the SLP to the theory and practice of the revolution- ary movement in Britain should not be under- estimated. Despite the miniscule size of the party itself, the propaganda of the SLP had considerable influence in shaping the outlook of the leaders of the industrial ferment of the immediate pre-war period. In a period of deepening class struggle, when young militants were looking for new forms of organization, the theories of the SLP, widely circulated in a series of excellently produced pamphlets by the Socialist Labour Press, had con- siderable attraction and played no small part in