Weekly worker letter
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The CPGB as Kautskyites always brings me back to this article https://libcom.org/library/renegade-kautsky-disciple-lenin-dauve
It has always seemed to me that the Party has never given Kautsky and the SPD the same critical analysis as we have to Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Sure, we have criticised Kautsky but somehow always added a conciliatory caveat or two which i haven't particularly noticed in our articles on Lenin (except for his obituary).Is it simply because of the Leninist legacy and the damage? Or a hang-over from our founding fathers sympathy for Kautsky's writings? Wasn't it from Kautsky we got the socialist consciousness will enter the working class from the outside via the intellectuals in the Social Democrat Party and Lenin merely seconded that. And was it not the SPD and Kautsky that endorse the twin programme approach of minimum and maximum demands – that the present-day Trotskyists adopted. Even the maximum demand is weak when he supports the continuance of money and wages. WW over the recent years has certainly revived an interest in Kautsky. Perhaps we should join in…. with daggers drawn to Kautsky's ideas.TBH, I find Kautsky a turgid read and not at all inspiring and always lay his books aside unfinished.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Is it simply because of the Leninist legacy and the damage? Or a hang-over from our founding fathers sympathy for Kautsky's writings? Wasn't it from Kautsky we got the socialist consciousness will enter the working class from the outside via the intellectuals in the Social Democrat Party and Lenin merely seconded that.Our party ("we") has never endorsed the view you attribute to Kautsky.Also, Kautsky's point was that socialist theories were originated by "bourgeois intellectuals" like Marx and Engels. This was wrong as, on the contrary, Marx and Engels became socialists through contact with ideas that had already been thought up by workers in France, Britain and Germany.I don't think Kautsky thought that this was a permanent process (your "will" enter), and that "bourgeois intellectuals" were still needed in his day to bring socialist ideas to the workers (though Lenin did, at least as concerned Russia), only that this was how these ideas originated in the first place (more "did originally" enter)..
Mea Culpa . That was me mis-speaking as politicians now say, ALB. I meant he – Lenin – got the theory in What is to be done
Hal Draper argued that Lenin was making explicit what was already implicit in the politics of the Second International generally and Kautsky in particular:https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htmOur disagreements with Kautsky and the Second International usually center on their reformism and state capitalist conception of socialism. But our insistence that the emancipation of the working class really must be the work of the working class itself (DOP 5) has not been fully recognised. It is an important repudiation of Kautsky and the Second International and one of our most important contributions to socialist politics. I'm not aware of any history of the SPGB which covers this ground.Lew
alanjjohnstone wrote:Good of WW to publish our letters, and i note Vin got one in too. (We might suggest a full article one day if we ask very nicely…perhaps next year for the Russian Revolution.)If the latest Weekly Worker is carrying 5 contributions by members or supporters, should we be selling copies of this issue at head office? Presumably a copy will be acquired for the archives or would doing so be redundant in the digital age?
Lew wrote:Hal Draper argued that Lenin was making explicit what was already implicit in the politics of the Second International generally and Kautsky in particular:https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htmOur disagreements with Kautsky and the Second International usually center on their reformism and state capitalist conception of socialism. But our insistence that the emancipation of the working class really must be the work of the working class itself (DOP 5) has not been fully recognised. It is an important repudiation of Kautsky and the Second International and one of our most important contributions to socialist politics. I'm not aware of any history of the SPGB which covers this ground.[my bold]These issues were also 'already implicit' in Engels' misreading of Marx's notions of 'materialism'. That's the source of Kautsky et al's cover for their politics.As you say about 'proletarian self-emancipation' (which was Marx's entire point), this also applies to philosophy and science, as much as to politics.One's politics determines one's philosophy, and one's philosophy determines one's science.If one isn't a democrat entirely in all social production, this non-democratic stance will be carried over into one's philosophy and science.Engels' 'materialism' provided a figleaf for all those who, from the very start, never thought it possible that this element of Marx's thought (proletarian self-emancipation) should actually involve all social production (thus, including science, knowledge and truth).Hence, today (and since Engels' destroyed Marx's insight), the 'Kautskyian/Leninist' elitist approach to 'the masses' has remained to be proclaimed as 'Marxism', by those who have no intention whatsover to actually let workers democratically decide about their own self-emancipation.Until these roots of the Second International's politics and 'figleaf philosophy' are uncovered, 'Marxism' cannot go forward.
From Lew's link to Draper:
Kautsky wrote:The vehicle of science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia [emphasis by Kautsky]…Many in the SPGB still agree with Kautsky, on this point.
http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1130/letters/ALB and myself had further letters publishedI see our earlier letters have elicited replies.Phil Sharpe's responds to us all and Jack Conrad gives an analysis of the socialism/communism difference and Arthur Bough concentrates in rebutting Vin's letter.I got things to do today so i will read them in depth and ponder how to answer.But as guests of WW we have to judge whether we have over-stayed our welcome or not.Perhaps it might be better if other members pick up the baton.
Quote:Phil Sharpe’s ‘market socialism’ is obvious nonsense (Letters, October 27). He uses an impoverished Russia and adoption of the New Economic Policy as proof. But the Soviet Republic’s strategic retreat back to the market has as much relevance for us today as does the Bolsheviks’ forcible requisitions of surplus grain from peasants under war communism or the suppression of free speech and banning of opposing parties.However, that does not mean that his Socialist Party of Great Britain critics are right (Letters, November 3). Together all of them unscientifically conflate socialism and full communism. As if, once the working class comes to power, we can instantly do away with every feature, every limitation inherited from capitalism. In fact, the struggle for the communist mode of production begins after the political victory of the proletariat and the establishment of a regime committed to socialism.Our starting point is therefore wage-labour, money and the market … under the rule of the working class. However, we seek to establish the communist principle of need.Contra the SPGB, the generally accepted Marxist term for this replacement of capitalism by communism, this period of transition from one mode of production to another, is ‘socialism’. Eg, in his Critique of the Gotha programme (1875), Marx distinguishes between a first, lower, phase of communist society and a higher phase (K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 24, London 1989, pp81-90).In the lower phase of communism the ruling principle is: “To each according to their contribution”. Individuals receive back from society – after necessary deductions – exactly what they have given in terms of labour contributed. There is, therefore, inequality because there is unequal labour time. Only in the higher phase does the principle, “From each according to their ability, to each according to his needs”, apply.When Lenin came to write his State and revolution (1917), it was “usual” to call the first phase of communism ‘socialism’ (VI Lenin CW Vol 25, Moscow 1977, p472). It was an orthodox Second International formulation. In other words, it was not the “opportunism” of Lenin and the Bolsheviks which introduced the distinction between socialism (communism – lower phase) and communism (communism – higher phase).As Marx recognised, life demands such a distinction. One can give the two phases of communism whatever name one likes – first and second, lower and higher, socialism and communism. What matters is the distinction.Jack ConradIn this reply to us, Jack Conrad (of the Weekly Worke itselfr) confuses two "transitions". The one from capitalism to the first phase of communism/socialism and the one from the first to the higher phase of communism/socialism. Marx, Engels, Kautsky and the others did envisage money, wages, coops, even capitalists, existing in the first transition but these would have disappeared by the time even the first phase of communism was established.But, given the quite different situation in terms of productive capacity and organisation today to the 1870s, it's pretty pointless basing what to do now on what Marx and Engels's assessment of the position then (150 years ago — it's as if they had based theirs on what things were like in 1720). Once a majority want socialism/communism the first transition can be got through very quickly (capitalism is only maintained by the laws of the state; as soon as these are abrogated so is capitalism and the first phase over).He is wrong, too, about the distinction between "socialism" and "communism". It wasn't "an orthodox Second International formulation" and he'd be hard put to demonstrate that it was. Not even Lenin himself made it before 1917.I suppose I'll have to send another letter making these points….
Good to know who you replying to, ALB….Phil Sharpe is floundering and flailing about …i may try and apply the coup de grace
ALB wrote:Good work Alan ! The lead letter attacking us and Marx together, though I see you've met your match in making short contributions.I'll write something about the absurdity of the claim that Marx was not against commodity production, when his criticism of this is the essence of his economic writings and even of his philosophical stuff about alienation. For him, capitalism was the highest form of commodity production, where everything including human labour power becomes a commodity. So the abolition of capitalism is the abolition of commodity production and all that goes with it (markets, money, wages, etc). "Market socialism" is an oxymoron and so are those who advocate it.I'll leave to Robbo (hope you're reading this, Robbo) to deal with Sharpe's (and von Hayek and von Mises's) claim that you can't organise the production and distribution of wealth rationally without having recourse to markets.Robbo did a good job on the WSM forum against the Anarcho- capitalists, he did mop the floor with their argumentation
Another selection of letters from ALB, Robbo and myself in WW. Robbo and i seemed to have attacked Phil Sharpe in a pincer movement with our two letters in regard to War Communism in the USSR. http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1131/letters/I'll be replying in friendly tones to Maren Clarke who seemed to have misunderstood my earlier letter. I don't think we have much of a disagreement.
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