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Discussion Bulletin - Letter from Laurens Otter
Coll. Fm. Ho., Wellington, Salop., Dear Comrade, I am interested by your basic idea, anything that would draw a clear line between the libertarian Left & the rest, and which would convince the sectarians of the libertarian Left that their real enemies are those outside that line not their rivals within it would be beneficial, but I think your proposal as it exists falls down; on the one hand it is over-simplified in its rejection of the motives of others, & on the other hand, it would need a more hard & fast, objective definition, of who constitutes the libertarian left than you give, if it is to work. I think for one thing you would need to spell out a better case against reformism; there are reformists who only want a few palliatives within capitalism, (& obviously they can be dismissed in the terms which you use,) but the main stream of those whom socialists call reformists, have always been people who suffer from the misconception that capitalism can be gradually reformed, until it no longer exists. That is no doubt a fallacy, but it doesn't mean that those who hold it (particularly those who have just come to socialism, & just joined the ranks of the reformists,) do not really want to achieve a society with neither private ownership nor state ownership, & do not appreciate that when such is achieved the state would wither away, Mutatis Mutandis what applies to social democrats, applies equally to Greens. By the same token the Leninist conception of the transitional state may be a fallacy [obviously I believe it is,] (and it may well be true that by the time someone is a leader of a Leninist, they know full well that it's a fallacy and are just using a theory for their own power ends,) but there are undoubtedly sincere and honest younger Leninists who believe that theirs is the only effective way of achieving a society of common ownership. Indeed I would go so far as to insist that you will find small dissident Leninist factions, who have considered anarchist, councillist, "impossibilist," etc., objections to Leninism, accept some of what we say, & are prepared to accept that checks and balances need to be inserted into their Leninism, while arguing that they believe that Leninism is more true than any other theory. Again it is not sufficient for us (if we are attempting to draw a line such as you want) to talk of all Leninists as if they consciously reject our aim of a libertarian socialist society, Nor should the Leninist (or other) conception of the Transitional State be too closely identified with the similarly sounding "Transitional Demands," (which again are equated with Leninist theory though it's possible to show that Luxemburg & others who were perhaps nearer us than Lenin also thought in such terns.) A transitional demand is defined as one which aims at mobilizing mass action, which, if that action succeeds, would make the transition from one society to another. Obviously the prevailing Leninist interpretation of this, is that a seemingly reasonable, reformist demand is made, but it cannot be implemented in the reformist context, since its implementation would call in question the realities of power. Posing a transitional demand in that way may well be considered authoritarian. It appears to presuppose that the working class are morons there to be fooled. So we can say absolutely those who would pose a demand in that way are at least potentially authoritarian. But what about those who did not pose it in the first place, but who, supporting both the ostensible reforming aim & the undisclosed (by the launchers,) ulterior revolutionary aim, join the campaign, explaining all the while to their fellow campaigners that if they are serious they must realize that it involves more than just demanding a reform? Let me give you an example. Obviously no government (or governmental system) would willingly abandon its major weapon of coercion, (& if it so did unwillingly, that would only be because it was about to be overthrown anyway,) so unilateral nuclear disarmament is a transitional demand. It is just untrue that the activist members of CND were only concerned with "excesses" of militarism and capitalism. Though, at the time, sectarian pacifists & anarchists thought that saying: "You do not cure measles by scraping the spots," was adequate argument against work in CND; there was a simple answer: "Most people realize they need medical advice when they see the spots." Many people who had grown up believing that war is a necessary evil, (who would have taken it as self evident truth that "Hitler had had to be resisted" & wouldn't have understood the case that Hitler was just the product of an evil economic, state & military system, prevalent throughout the world,) & so, were conditioned not to consider the anti-militarist case, could, nevertheless, see that the arguments posed in favour of nuclear weapons did not add up. Once they started to question this, and joined in the arguments provoked by CND, they went on to question more. So though no doubt the initial inspiration which brought most people to CND, may well have been that they said: "thus far & no further." They were immediately faced with the problem - "You cannot fight tanks with bows & arrows, nor nuclear weapons with tanks," - so, the campaign conferences straight away began expanding the policy, and in the case of the British CND, after 24 years wrote a policy statement saying "In the modern age war must be abandoned." That doesn't alter the fact that the people who founded the CND Campaign hadn't even seen it as a transitional demand. They said (quite openly in the New Statesman) that what they wanted to do was to "harness the radicalism of youth," in order to "rebuild the Left" [of the Labour Party] which in turn would enable them to get "a better compromise" with Gaitskell [the Labour Leader] & that in order to do this, they "needed to harness the radicalism of youth" which could best be done by "posing an impossible demand." "Unilateral nuclear disarmament was such a demand" & so they were launching the campaign on that slogan, (though they tried to make the demand implicit rather than explicit and were outvoted at the founding conference on that.) Those with libertarian and revolutionary aims (anarchists, pacifists & marxist humanists,) who joined the campaign, did so, saying to their fellow campaigners & to those we canvassed as part of our campaign work, "We cannot achieve unilateral ND, unless we change the whole nature of society, abandon the aim of war altogether, & that in turn means challenging the whole state system." We made many converts on that basis. We never pretended that ND could be achieved as a reform within otherwise unchanged society. So I insist that this was a revolutionary libertarian strategy, even though it involved campaigning within the context of a movement based on a transitional demand. Most campaigns based on a transitional demand are probably susceptible to that sort of intervention. ----- In saying why I think your line on policy is insufficiently clear, may I risk appearing rude & sectarian, & illustrate it by reference to your party--or rather its British co-thinkers--not as an intended attack but because it provides us a place where we both know the material. I was once, [Winter '47-'48] a candidate member of the SPGB, remained in toucb witb party members when I ceased to be a candidate member, & bave known Eddie Grant & otber, now leading members of the party, for fifty years. While it has long been the characteristic facet of SPGB propaganda that the party does not believe in a transitional workers' state/government, this does not in fact appear in the party's "Declaration of Principles," & the plain reading of the wording of clause six of those principles would suggest the need for such a state/government. So though an anarchist may know that most of those who are now influential within the SPGB may not intend to form a government, (& those of us who know the process involved in joining, may be aware that those who advocate a transitional workers' state might now have difficulty in joining, there is no guarantee that that will remain the case. It is not just a question of saying because rejection of the transitional state does not appear in the Declaration of Principles, that Declaration is in fact compatible with many forms of Leninist or similar theory, and so the party cannot logically permanently debar all Leninists from membership, unless it changes that declaration. Look at the recent secession that formed the SPGB(r). Though the latter party would also claim that it rejects any idea of a transitional state, the arguments that it has published disagreeing with the main SPGB on that point, show that it does believe in a government; it just says that this is not a transitional government. (It may be difficult to see how a government which supposedly is making the transition to socialism, is not transitional, but that testifies to the fact that there is a semantic misunderstanding.) Given that most of the members of the SPGB(r) were very prominent members of the SPGB, from the early 60s to the late 80s, the fact that these leading members can & did believe that despite the fact that in its litt. (though not in its Declaration of Principles,) the SPGB generally repudiated any belief in a transitional society, this was nevertheless compatible with advocacy of a government that would in fact supervise the transition to socialism;[and?-fg] testifies to the fact that the repudiation of a transitional government does not necessarily mean for all party members, what the more anarchist-inclined members might think. "That as the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must organize consciously & politically -for the conquest of the powers of government, national & local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into an agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic & plutocratic." Clause 6 - Declaration of Principles Of course when that was first adopted the SPGB was a dissident faction within the De Leonist tradition and so the implication was that the government proposed would be by some form of industrial union federation; later when the SPGB turned round and argued that it could not-so far in advance of the event--endorse a blueprint, De Leon's or any other, the party didn't notice that though its motivation, in dropping SlUism, was libertarian, it was left, having dropped it, with a Clause promoting a purely governmentalist perspective. Later in Tony Turner's time he argued that mass refusal to join the forces & similar bodies would make capitalist government unworkable & that in a sense, [since?-fg] Clause Six was--like the General Strike--a Sorelian political "motivating myth", working for it would make it unnecessary. While Eddie Grant says Clause Six only operates to take away the legitimacy of the anti-socialist forces, though elected, socialists would never actually attempt to form a government, but would add directly (roughly on council-communist lines,) to reorganize society. Fair enough--that is certainly an anarchist strategy, [but?-fg] I am not certain that it is wise to give that sort of notice to the capitalists of the date on which the workers intend to act; but I can agree that that is a libertarian socialist strategy & would happily give it the appropriate kite-mark & it's not for me to judge whether that is a permissible interpretation of the Clause. But on the other hand: (1) I spoke to a party branch about three years after the split. Though the majority of those present attacked the minority party in vindictive terns, they all, with the exception of the Chair--the only person who did not condemn the seceders out of hand--insisted that socialism could only come about through the actions of a government. Nothing they said distinguished this government from a transitional regime; one said that the transition might well take millenia, (two people said "hear, hear," & as the chairman could not impartially disagree, no party member repudiated the idea.) (2) If you read Dave Perrin's book you will have noted that he avoided discussing the issues dividing the SPGB(r) from the majority party, &, when elsewhere, he had to touch on the subject he gave no hint that that had been an important issue of recent debate within the party. Elsewhere again it appeared that he considered the party had made too much fuss in repudiating transitionalism & implying that obviously some form of government transition was inevitable. (3) When I quoted Eddie's gloss on the Clause, one SPGB member, professedly on the extreme libertarian wing, so mucb so that be claims the term anarcbo-socialist for the party, with whom I mistakenly tbought I could work, a few years back, said "well yes, the state would be overthrown that way, but then we'd have to restore it & have elections, so as to elect a socialist government. So presuming that this was all to conform to Clause Six, he envisaged that the workers would overthrow capitalism by direct action, so that there would then be no government, but then the SPGB would restore capitalism so as to be able to have a government ("... government ... exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class,") & would then have elections to produce a government which would supposedly then abolish capitalism! (4) I would suspect that less than a third of the SPGB would agree with Eddie, Adam & others in totally rejecting any idea of a government. No doubt the rest would repudiate the concept of a transitional workers' state, but that may well be due to a failure to understand what the Leninists say. Obviously I am not competent to comment on the make up of the WSP-USA. As I said above, I cannot see valid grounds under which your tradition could permanently refuse to allow all dissident Leninist factions to join you, if there were conditions which made them think it was worth their while so to do. Obviously as each faction joined, the criteria would be relaxed to allow more mainstream Leninists to join, so that long before you will be in a position to contemplate an electoral victory, you will be taken over by governmentalists. Years of capitalist and pre-capitalist society have alienated governmental systems from ordinary people; there is no known way of maintaining an external mass control over elected members and imposing a mandate on them; (any attempt to do this in Britain under our existing system is construed as "contempt of parliament" and trade union officials who have done no more than threaten to withhold their financial support from M.P.s they had sponsored have been sent to prison; so that any elected government is going to be divorced from its constituency. If there is to be an SPGB governmental transition, by definition, capitalism will still exist when it is first elected. There can be little guarantee that a government so elected will remain socialist long enough to make any change; far more likely that its members will decide (as have all previous supposedly radical governments) that they understand the needs of the workers, better than the workers do themselves.
Fraternally,
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