Review Article: Stalinism, Liberalism and British History

[p062] REVIEW ARTICLE Stalinism, Liberalism and British History by T. Brotherstone Ge: ‘rey Best, Mid-Victorian Britain 1851-1875. Noreen Branson and Margot Heinemann, Britain in the Nineteen-Thirties. (The History of British Society, edited by E. J. Hobsbawm. Weidenfield & Nicol- _son, World University Library, London, 1971, £1.50 per volume in paperback.) AS CAPITALISM’S crisis deepens and the working class prepares for power, so bourgeois scholarship declines. Genuine attempts to understand the past in an ali-sided way have to be abandoned for one-sided versions which do not challenge the (for the bourgeoisie) comfortable but entirely unhistorical assumption that capitalism is a fixed and eternal system. The most honest ‘liberal’ scholars respond to this situation by burying themselves in small-scale, detailed studies of particular events, which do nobody any harm and may provide Marxists with useful information— especially when they are researched with that admirable, if sometimes rather Staggering, diligence which is the best feature of liberal scholarship. But a drowning bourgeoisie, accus- tomed to regard itself as cultured, demands more than this to console it in its dying moments. Before it sinks for the last time it has to see its own past flow before its eyes, presented in the most subjective fashion to provide maximum consolation. Demand for history books is there- fore at present high, the publishers . have their instructions from the market, and all but the most sincere and serious of the scholars are queueing up at the doors of the publishing houses, ball- point pens and portable typewriters at the ready. At best the general studies of the past which result display a frivolous obsession with style, which would have made the genuine stylists of bourgeois scholarship (especially in the 18th and 19th centuries) turn in their graves. (It’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it.) At worst these studies patch together subjective ‘inter- pretations’ which mischievously distort historical reality and serve the cause of perpetuating illusions and limited conceptions, upon which _ reaction thrives. The series of which two. early volumes are here reviewed displays both tendencies. It also opens the way for some analysis of the role of Stalin- ism in trying to help bourgeois scholar- ship out of its dilemma: how to write serious history without overcoming the intellectual blockage caused by the (to the bourgeoisie) necessary assumption of the fixed nature of capitalist society, and hence raising the question of the proletarian struggle for power. * E. J. Hobsbawm, general editor of The History of British Society, is the leading historian in the British Stalinist movement, one of a handful of intellec- tuals who joined the CP in the 1930s and 1940s and did not leave in the 1950s. He has kept his intellectual left foot in the Stalinist camp, contributing regularly to its ‘theoretical’ journal, Marxism Today, and his right foot (more elegantly shod) in the liberal debating chambers of the scholarly societies and university seminars. That he presents two distinct ‘images’ was clearly brought out in his recent contributions to the debate on the role of the Labour Aristocracy in the 19th century British labour movement. In his academic book, Labouring Men (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964) we were presented with a scholarly, amply docu- mented, empirical study purporting to find out who the Labour Aristocrats were, how many of them were there, what did they do, what did they earn, etc. Marxist theoretical writing on the subject was relegated to the role of a few comments providing an introduc- tory ‘framework’. (For a criticism of the Stalinist view of the 19th century Labour Aristocracy, see P. Jeffries, Workers Press, May 19, 1970.) But in his Marxism Today article, ‘Lenin and the Aristocracy of Labour’ (MT, XIV, July 7, 1970) none of the findings of this painstaking research was presented. For his Stalinist com- rades Hobsbawm confined himself to selectively quoting Lenin in the style originated by Stalin himself. No refer- ences were given, which was not surprising, since Hobsbawm’s explicit intention was to detach Lenin’s con- tribution on the role of the Labour Aristocracy from _ his—Lenin’s— (Marxist) understanding of the domin- ance of bourgeois ideology over the working class in capitalist society (p. 208). This led to the conception that: ‘Today...it is possible to separate what is of permanent relevance [to whom?] in Lenin’s argument from what reflects the limits of his in- formation or the requirements of a special political situation...’ (p. 210). Leaving aside the implications of the Stalinist formulation that Marxist analy- sis is dictated by ‘the requirements of a special political situation’, it is clear that Hobsbawm’s stress on the limits of Lenin’s ‘information’ opened the way for the argument that since Lenin (naturally) had no information about the British labour movement in the 1970s his writings on the reactionary role of the Labour Aristocracy and the trade union bureaucracy which was recruited from it are of limited ‘permanent relevance’. This revelation Fourth international Winter 1971/72

[p063] REVIEW ARTICLE Stalinism, Liberalism and British History by T. Brotherstone Ge: ‘trey Best, Mid-Victorian Britain 1851-1875. Noreen Branson and Margot Heinemann, Britain in the Nineteen-Thirties. (The History of British Society, edited by E. J. Hobsbawm. Weidenfield & Nicol- son, World University Library, London, 1971, £1.50 per volume in paperback.) AS CAPITALISM’S crisis deepens and the working class prepares for power, so bourgeois scholarship declines. Genuine attempts to understand the past in an all-sided way have to be abandoned for one-sided versions which do not challenge the (for the bourgeoisie) comfortable but entirely unhistorical assumption that capitalism is a fixed and eternal system. The most honest ‘liberal’ scholars respond to this situation by bent themselves in small-scale, detaile studies of particular events, which do nobody any harm and may provide Marxists with useful information— especially when they are researched with that admirable, if sometimes rather staggering, diligence which is the best feature of liberal scholarship. But a drowning bourgeoisie, accus- tomed to regard itself as cultured, demands more than this to console it in its dying moments. Before it sinks for the last time it has to see its own past flow before its eyes, presented in the most subjective fashion to provide maximum consolation. Demand for history books is there- fore at present high, the publishers have their instructions from the market, and all but the most sincere and serious of the scholars are A eg up at the doors of the publishing houses, ball- point pens and portable typewriters at the ready. At best the general studies of the past which result display a frivolous obsession with style, which would have made the genuine stylists of bourgeois scholarship (especially in the 18th and 19th centuries) turn in their graves. (It’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it.) At worst these studies patch together subjective ‘inter- pretations’ which mischievously distort historical reality and serve the cause of perpetuating illusions and limited conceptions, upon which _ reaction thrives. The series of which two early volumes are here reviewed displays both tendencies. It also opens the way for some analysis of the role of Stalin- ism in trying to help bourgeois scholar- ship out of its dilemma: how to write serious history without overcoming the intellectual blockage caused by the (to the bourgeoisie) necessary assumption of the fixed nature of capitalist society, and hence raising the question of the proletarian struggle for power. * E. J. Hobsbawm, general editor of The History of British Society, is the leading historian in the British Stalinist movement, one of a handful of intellec- tuals who joined the CP in the 1930s and 1940s and did not leave in the 1950s. He has kept his intellectual left foot in the Stalinist camp, contributing regularly to its ‘theoretical’ journal, Marxism Today,. and his right foot (more elegantly shod) in the liberal debating chambers of the scholarly societies and university seminars. That he presents two distinct ‘images’ was clearly brought out in his recent contributions to the debate on the role of the Labour Aristocracy in the 19th century British labour movement. In his academic book, Labouring Men (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964) we were presented with a scholarly, amply docu- mented, empirical study purporting to find out who the Labour Aristocrats were, how many of them were there, what did they do, what did they earn, etc. Marxist theoretical writing on the subject was relegated to the role of a few comments providing an introduc- tory ‘framework’. (For a criticism of the Stalinist view of the 19th century Labour Aristocracy, see P. Jeffries, Workers Press, May 19, 1970.) But in his Marxism Today article, ‘Lenin and the Aristocracy of Labour’ MT, XIV, July 7, 1970) none of the dings of this painstaking research was presented. For his Stalinist com- rades Hobsbawm confined himself to selectively quoting Lenin in the style originated by Stalin himself. No refer- ences were given, which was not surprising, since Hobsbawm’s explicit intention was to detach Lenin’s con- tribution on the role of the Labour Aristocracy from his—Lenin’s— (Marxist) understanding of the domin- ance of bourgeois ideology over the yomuns class in capitalist society (p. 208). This led to the conception that: ‘Today...it is possible to separate what is of permanent relevance [to whom?] in Lenin’s argument from what reflects the limits of his in- formation or the requirements of a special political situation...’ (p. 210). Leaving aside the implications of the Stalinist formulation that Marxist analy- sis is dictated by ‘the requirements of a pean litical situation’, it is clear that Hobsbawm’s stress on the limits of Lenin’s ‘information’ opened the way for the argument that since Lenin (naturally) had no information about the British labour movement in the 1970s his writings on the reactionary role of the Labour Aristocracy and the trade union bureaucracy which was recruited from it are of limited ‘permanent relevance’. This revelation Fourth International Winter 1971/72

[p064] must have been a relief to a Stalinist leadership falling over backwards to cement its treacherous and oppsrtunist alliance with the left bureaucrats in the trade union movement today. The new series, which Hobsbawm has edited, carries his career a stage further. Although he wrote neither of the books reviewed here himself, as general editor he is responsible for the choice of authors. For the two 19th century volumes which have so far appeared he has turned to eminent academic colleagues, leading liberal historians Professors J. F. C. Harrison and G. F. A. Best. For the 1930s, how- ever, Hobsbawm has chosen political colleagues. Noreen Branson _ edits Labour Research, a journal closely connected with the Stalinist movement; and Margot Heinemann, now a univer- sity teacher, once had the same job. In Britain in the Nineteen-Thirties, the acknowledgements (p. x) are a roll-call of CP members and associates; the (very) brief bibliography (pp. 326-328) reads more like a list of books on the shelf of an ageing radical making a half-hearted attempt to keep up-to- date, than any sort of check-list of recent research. * In this series, Hobsbawm has attempted to introduce his intellectual left foot to his intellectual right foot. What becomes increasingly clear is the nature of the ‘contribution’ which Stalinism has made not only to con- tinued physical domination of the bourgeoisie over the working class, but also to the domination of bourgeois thought-control over the minds of his- torians and other intellectuals. Stalinist historians (including those who left the CP in protest against the effects of Stalinism without ever settling accounts with its causes) have made valuable contributions to knowledge through their research work (ex-CPers Chris- topher Hill’s God’s Englishman, and E. P. Thompson’s Making of _ the English Working Class spring to mind). But their method is essentially that of the liberal empiricist with certain ‘Marxist insights’ added on to help them over the stifling uncertainties which increasingly bar the most honest liberal scholars from any meaningful generalization. Hill announced the programme of this self-styled ‘Marxist’ school of history-writing in 1948 in an article which set out to ‘suggest certain ways in which a better understanding of Marxism would be of assistance to historians and’ students of history at the present day’. (Modern Quarterly, 3, 1947-1948, p. 52.) Historical material- ism was to be redtced to a few tips for bewildered (bourgeois) historians, divorced from the struggle of the working class for power. Hobsbawm carried the same approach further and placed it on the patriotic basis so beloved of the exponents of separate national roads to socialism in Marxist Quarterly (2, 1955, p. 25): ‘Marxists... believe that their method alone enables us to provide a successor to the old “Liberal- Radical” view of British history Stalinism, Liberalism and British History which will be adequate in science and scholarship, while giving the citizens of this country a coherent picture of our national development = and answering their questions.’ In other words the standard patriotic, one-sided, and increasingly reactionary historical method of the liberal bour- geoisie in Britain (Whig history) had become out-of-date: Marxism was the method through which a more credible version could be patched together. Hobsbawm soothed the doubtless troubled minds of his academic col- leagues who might have had some inkling that Marxism was something to do with the proletarian struggle for power. That possibility was not men- tioned in his article, and he concluded reassuringly: ‘There is room for discussion and co-operation between Marxists and non-Marxists...[on the ground of dissatisfaction] with the lack of a general view of the British people’s progress and with the marked con- servative bias—implicit or explicit— of much history-writing of the past twenty-five years.’ The most recent results of that dis- cussion—which might have been en- titled, ‘How Can Marxism Help Bour- geois Scholarship Out of Its Impasse Without Disturbing the Foundations of Bourgeois Society?’—are seen in the series now under review, for which Hobsbawm has = grand-paternal respon- sibility. But it may be noted in passing that the Hobsbawm synthesis has not, in its most recent version, been greeted with much favour by that maverick radical-reactionary spokesman of the non-conformist intellectual Establish- ment, A. J. P. Taylor: in the Observer (March 21, 1971) he announced that the Harrison and Best volumes made him proud to be British, but dismissed Branson and Heinemann as a com- munist tract! Stalinist apology would be nearer the mark. A whole chapter on the un- employed scarcely mentions the role of the CP in the NUWM, and certainly makes no analysis of the disastrous policy of setting up a separate un- employed workers’ movement instead of uniting the working class by demanding that the trade unions organize the un- employed. Mild criticism of the CP’s sectarian ‘left turn’ in the late 1920s is used not to uncover the historical roots of the Stalinist ‘zig-zags’ of this period, but to apologise for the pre-1926 policy of covering up for the lefts on the TUC leadership, which led to the treacherous CP slogan ‘All Power to the General Council’ in the General Strike (p. 88). * No reference is made to the require- ments of international Stalinism which dictated not only the left turn of the late 1920s, but also the popular front policies after 1935—praised by Branson and Heinemann, their eyes firmly fixed on the present Stalinist line, as leading to ‘a good deal of practical unity on the . left from 1935 until 1939’ (p. 91). Even when Branson and Heinemann mention the role of CPers in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War they present this as simply an interesting contribution of the British people to international radicalism, and have the effrontery to ignore altogether the Stalinist policies which ensured that the sacrifice of these comrades was to be futile. Indeed so firmly is the Branson- Heinemann volume set in the philistine traditions of British radicalism that they are incapable—despite sotto voce lip-service to Marxism—of offering any serious analysis of the context of inter- national capitalist crisis in which the history of British society in the 1930s must be set if it is to be understood. All we get here is the standard school- textbook-type introductory chapters on economic and political background, as a prelude to a schematically arranged succession of chapters on _ various ‘aspects’ of the thirties, into which a certain amount of more or less useful information is fitted. The idealist method of Branson and Heinemann means that they see the past as a fixed pageant which they describe in a manner quite divorced from any serious analysis of the real movement of forces in capitalist society. Hence the significance of the ‘thirties’ —a living warning of what decadent capitalism is — becomes completely obliterated in their complacent assump- tion that it was all just an unpleasant experience in the history of the British people which can never happen again because nobody (including the capi- talists, presumably) would put up with it. The book ends with the hoary cliché that the Second World War welded the British people together and made them determined never to return to the conditions of the 1930s (p. 325). This is petty-bourgeois idealism carried to the most cynical extreme. No analysis of the forces which caused the depression or the war: instead a great deal of ‘progressive’ wishful thinking designed to divert the working class and its potential allies from grasping that the programme for survival of capitalism today is precisely a return to the thirties—and under historical con- ditions in which the changed position of British capitalism in the world places fascism as well as mass unemployment on the agenda. * But Branson and Heinemann cannot face up to historical lessons which pose the question of the working class taking the power in Britain, because that is something that can only occur if the lie-machine of Stalinism and its allies is smashed by the working class under revolutionary leadership. ‘Mid-Victorian Britain’ should be a much more comfortable theme for bourgeois historians to deal with than the 1930s. But, though Professor Best admits that the ground he covers is well-trodden by other historians (p. xiii), he makes a constant pretence of lack of confidence in approaching his task. This is because he is deter- minedly wedded to the methods of empiricism and impressionism. He seeks an ‘ideal, “agreed” definition and explanation of mid-Victorian British society’ (p. xiii), but states, that: ‘History knows no way of approach- 99

[p065] ing that ideal goal but by the trial- and-error method of repeated range- finding salvos from historians with firm enough attitudes and large enough vision to enable them (perhaps) to measure range and en- force pattern and proportion .. .’ (p. xiv). The empirical method of the British bourgeoisie, once a progressive force in struggle against the metaphysical im- peratives of the feudal social order, has reached its end-point of reactionary idealism. For all his hopes for an agreed version of history in the distant future, Best is really saying that the history of British society cannot be grasped by anyone; all we can hope for is an endless succession of ‘patterns’ of events dreamt up in the minds of his- torians. The worthy professor’s inten- Sive study of the period he writes about, he consistently suggests, in no way qualifies him to understand the past any better than anyone else. In this way he absolves himself from any responsibility to educate his readers. The more you know, evidently, the less you understand. Best ends his book with an extraordinary brazen statement of ignorance, greatly praised by A. J. P. Taylor in his Observer review: ‘We are all in the dark.’ A remarkably frank admission of the death of liberal scholarship. The point is, of course, that there are certain intellectual candles (or 200 watt bulbs) which Best, isolated from the real movement of forces in capi- talist society because he is unable to grasp the need for the working class to overthrow capitalism, deliberately ignores. His index contains the names of a host of Victorian intellectuals and of present-day scholars whose names are unlikely to ignite even a spark of recognition outside the ‘specialist circles’ of the university. But two well- known names are conspicuously absent —those of the greatest ‘mid-Victorian scholars’ of all: Marx and Engels. References to Marxism are not en- tirely absent from the book, however, and when they come, they are an apt reflection of the all-pervasive anxieties of the liberal bourgeoisie today. Best’s 100 central theme is of course the relative social calm of this period of British history (1851-1875), when, on the basis of world-leadership in industrialization, the British bourgeoisie had the re- sources to ‘buy off’ a whole layer in the working class—the ‘labour aristocracy’. Best gives some excellent contemporary quotations to show the effects of this: a complacent bourgeoisie able to use the leftovers of the feudal aristocracy to occupy the positions of government, and hence to preside over a social order giving the appearance of a semi-feudal stability, behind which the bourgeoisie proceeded on their forward profit- making march at the expense of the mass of the working class. * Although Best’s book scarcely men- tions the working class (in the section ‘The Making of Livings’ he attempts to analyse it out of existence), what con- stantly lurks beneath the surface of his ‘impressions’, and what clearly disturbs his intellectual equilibrium, is the essentially relative and temporary nature of this period of class peace. Despite the calm, he writes, there were jarring notes, including ‘a lot of drunkenness, violence, harshness and selfishness...’ and also ‘some plain Marxist class hostility [!]’ (p. 232). And the whole edifice of mid-Victorian stability was crumbling, he admits, by the end of his period, ‘,.. eroded by the semi-subterranean forces of economic and social change {the working class?], some of which we have seen welling up (or re- surfacing) during the later sixties and early seventies. Of the major forces of this ultimately irresistible com- plex, only Marxist socialism and militant feminism were not yet con- spicuous by 1875’ (p. 284). Reality here peeps through the liberal scholar’s impressionism, hostility to Marxism and fear of the working class. The period of British history when Lord Palmerston could claim to lead ‘a nation in which every class of society accepts with cheerfulness the lot which providence has assigi.ed to it; while at the same time each individual of each class is constantly trying to raise him- - self in the social scale, not by violence and illegality, but by preserving good conduct and by the steady and ener- getic exertic ) of the moral and intellec- tual faculties with which his creator has endowed him’, was a brief one. The revolutionary traditions of the British working class were temporarily, though not completely, submerged after the defeat of Chartism in 1848. They were already re-emerging under impact of the world crisis of capitalism begin- ning in the 1870s. And under the impact of the infinitely intensified crisis of the 1970s these traditions come surging to the surface more dramatic- ally than ever before, finding material expression in the largest working-class demonstration on February 21, 1971 since the days of Chartism ,and finding conscious expression in the struggles of the Workers Press. It is this movement of forces which accounts for the confusion of liberal scholarship so clearly expressed by Best’s book. Only through a turn to the working class today, which means building the revolutionary party, can the realities of British history be grasped unfettered by the shackles of bourgeois idealism. Best is writing about the heyday of a doomed society. Because he cannot see the revolutionary role of the working class in that society, he is reduced, for all his voluminous learning, to naive expres- sions of humility and ultimately an admission of total ignorance. Yet for all his impressionism certain aspects of reality peep through. Best’s book lacks the mechanistic approach, the conscious omissions and distortions of the Stalinist-dominated Branson- Heinemann volume. What we have in this series clearly presented are the alternatives placed before anti-revolu- tionary scholars today, if they seek to avoid mere antiquarianism, and to make some pretence of explaining the world: open admission of deepening confusion, or open distortion. It is fitting that a leading Stalinist academic should preside over the most recent attempt in the field of history to synthesize the two approaches. Fourth International Winter 1971/72

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