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I have just checked and found I have a copy of the original 1880 French version of Engels’s Socialisme Utopique et Socialisme Scientique, published by a Left Communist group (Le Mouvement Communiste) who comment in their introduction that it does not include the editorial changes Engels made for the German version.
I have to confess it reads better in the context of today. But Engels explains in the text itself of the German edition why he had made the changes — it was to distinguish his position from “the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State out of hand” (a better translation would be “overnight”) as well as those who talked of a “free State”.
I also have a French translation of the German version published by the French CP with tendentious subheadings inserted including abolition of the “class State” (to fit in with the official Stalinist position that the Russian State was a non-class one). But even that translates the second reference to the State’s disappearance as “the political authority of the State goes to sleep” (“entre en sommeil”).
Patrick Cockburn, who is generally good on these things, doesn’t think the Taleban have changed their barbarian ways. He also makes the point that they are essentially a Pashtun movement which last time they were in power made Kandahar the capital of Afghanistan and tried to make Pashto the main official language (the main language is Dari, a dialect of Persian). He says that if they try this again the civil war will continue.
Meanwhile the Mad Mullah who leads the Taleban is back in Afghanistan, hoping no doubt to be installed as the Emir of Afghanistan. I can’t see the other ethnic groups accepting that either.
The occasion for the 1984 resolution was that one of the 16 had written about the “gradual decline” of the state. Most members were opposed to this but the resolution went too far in the other direction by talking of the “immediate abolition” of the state. So it wasn’t just the 16 who voted against it. I did too for instance. But it wasn’t for this that they were to be expelled (it was for repeatedly and deliberately refusing to carry out a conference resolution, backed by a Party poll, on the use of the various names under which the party was known). However, that resolution was a stick they used to beat us, accusing us of having become anarchists. Eventually, after 20 years, those of us opposed to it managed to get it rescinded and the previous, long-standing Party position restored.
The Greens have been in coalitions in a number of states, notably in Germany but also in Ireland and Belgium. So they have already participated in the administration of capitalism just like the more conventional capitalist political parties.
Not that the being in the “Scottish Government” is same, as this is not in charge of a state but only of an administrative unit within a state and has no coercive power at its disposal. Most of its money comes from the UK state which allows it how to spend it. I have always referred to its equivalent in Wales (which has even less powers) as the Welsh County Council. The Scottish Parliament is not that much different.
Still, it is something we need to capture as well as the state of which it is a part, in accordance with our view that the working class should organise “for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local.”
I don’t think there is all that of a change in Engels’s position. Right from 1847 Marx and Engels had insisted on the need for socialists to win control of political power and use it to end capitalism. They never envisaged the immediate abolition of the state (the public power of coercion) even though they envisaged its disappearance once the division of society into classes had been ended; socialism would be a stateless society. The question was how long this would take.
One reason they were not in favour of the immediate abolition of the state was that they anticipated that it would be needed to deal with a “slaveholders’ revolt” by the capitalist class. But there were also economic reasons to do with how socialised the productive forces were.
Engels was realistic enough to accept that this might take some time in the 1880s, so there would be a period during which the socialist working class would be in control of the state but not unchanged. As he says in one of the quotes in the article, as soon as they win control the working class should lop off its undemocratic elements and completely democratise it before using it to end class ownership (and deal with any slaveholders’ revolt).
We ourselves have made the point that there is a difference between translating Engels’s German as “withers away” (as favoured by Moscow) and “dies out” (the more literal translation). So that point has been noticed before.
Although for some 20 years from 1984 we were committed to the “immediate abolition of the state” this was finally rescinded in 2004 when Conference passed the following resolution;
“That the 1984 Conference Resolution, ‘This Conference affirms that socialism will entail the immediate abolition and not the gradual decline of the State,’ be rescinded and replaced with; ‘That as the State is an expression of and enforcer of class society, the capture of political power by the working class and the subsequent conversion of the means of living into common property will necessarily lead to the abolition of the state, as its function as custodian of class rule will have ended. Those intrinsically useful functions of the state machine will be retained by socialist society but re-organised and democratised to meet the needs of a society based on production for use.’”
In short, the working class only needs to retain the state for as long as it takes to end class ownership of the means of life, which today needn’t take very long. The purely administrative and non-coercive aspects of the ex-state would then be integrated into the democratic administrative structure of socialist society.
This reminds me of why my Sun-reading brother-in-law opposed the Iraq war — because it would result in more foreign refugees coming in. Talk about being right for the (very) wrong reason.
Interesting as you say. I wonder whether they will be investing their own capital in this or money that has been lent to them. Probably the latter I guess.
And why not? Banks are in business to make money by borrowing it at one rate of interest and lending it at a higher rate. But if they can get a higher return from using the money they borrowed to get an income in some other way, that makes business sense even if it is no longer banking in the strict sense.
Even before this they will have been lending money to people to buy-to-let and sharing in the rental income through the interest the borrower pays them. Now they are going for the whole rental income.
A bit of a problem for the thin air school of banking as you imply.
The Governor in exile of The Afghan central bank recounts an amusing incident when Taleban officials turned up at the bank and asked to see its financial assets, presumably assuming that they would be in the form of notes and coins which they could lay their hands on. Most of it of course is held abroad in the form of other country’s government bonds.
No doubt Saudi and other Gulf billionaires will continue to contribute some money to promote their version of Mohammedanism but this probably won’t be enough.
I heard an expert on the television say that over half of those employed in Afghanistan worked for central and local government making the state the biggest employer (most people in Afghanistan are peasants or petty traders). These will need to be paid.
The Taleban are going to have to govern within the constraints of capitalism, on which sharia law has nothing to say except that profits are ok as long as they are not called interest. After all, Mohammed was a rich merchant.
So while the Taleban are in military control of (most of) the country, the outgoing clique that used to run the country still have some bargaining chips in money and a bureaucracy without which capitalism cannot be administered.
So there must be a compromise.
This article from 2015 discusses the subsequent development of state-capitalist grouplets in Afghanistan. No idea if or to what extent it is wishful thinking.
Like we speculated :
“After president Ghani’s escape on Sunday, one of the few figures from the previous regime still publicly resisting Taliban rule was the former vice-president, Amrullah Saleh, who declared himself the rightful caretaker president. Saleh, who is believed to be in hiding in Panjshir valley, north of Kabul, one of the few districts that has not fallen to insurgents, said on Twitter that he would “under no circumstances bow” to “the Talib terrorists”. He received online promises of support from accounts that said they belonged to government soldiers, along with posts saying troops loyal to the memory of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance assassinated by two al-Qaida operatives just before the 9/11 attacks on the US, were converging on Panjshir to form a “Resistance 2” movement.”
We shouldn’t forget that it was a Labour government that committed the UK to join the American imperialist adventure in Afghanistan. Another reason for not having anything to do with that party except outright opposition. They support capitalism and imperialism as much as the Tories.
If YMS is right then the political and military leaders of Afghanistan are to be given credit, not condemned as Biden did last night, for deciding not to engage in a civil war. That spared thousands of lives and, anyway, why should they die to defend US imperialist interests?
It is unbelievable that the whole of the Afghan army has disintegrated. There must be some units left, probably composed of Tajiks, Uzbeks And Hazara who are not going to accept exclusive rule by the Pashtuns (who only make up about half the population).
The Taleban leaders seem to realise this with their declarations that they are seeking to form an inclusive government. They will also have to accept that the 2020s are not the 1990s. Their fighters are not the same as then. In fact most of them don’t seem old enough to have been part of those who oppressed the people last time. And they all seem to have mobile phones. Even I didn’t have one in the 1990s. True, they are led by sinister priests with black turbans who may wish to try to impose what they did last time. I doubt if they will get away with imposing the mad mullah who leads them as the Emir of Afghanistan. We will see.
At least the US is trying to do better than Germany when it was being defeated at the end of the last world war and had to withdraw from the countries they had conquered. They left those who had collaborated with them to their fate.
According to this, Hume also held a labour theory of value. That all new wealth is produced by humans working on materials that originally came from nature is obvious and that this was reflected in prices was accepted by early theorists of capitalism including David Ricardo who was himself a capitalist. It was only when capitalism’s defenders realised the implications of this that they dropped it.
More added to the Edgar Hardcastle Internet Archive, from the Second World War period:
The Materialist Conception of History September 1940
Trade relations after the War February 1942
Are the Workers better off during the War? March 1942
The future of Sir Stafford Cripps March 1942
Post War Trade April 1942
Population and Social Progress June 1942
A Challenge to Mr. Bevin on Post-War Reconstruction August 1942
China takes up the White Man’s Burden November 1942
Some Socialist points on the Beveridge Report December 1942
Where Reformism fails March 1943
No unemployment after the end of the War? April 1943
A Critic of Marx’s Economic Theories December 1943
Divide and Rule. Idiotic Squabbles of British and American Miners’ Leaders, September 1944
