New Interventions

Volume 12, no 1, Spring 2005

Current Business Sinn Fin and the IRA Iraq Quackery and Education Popes New and Old Election Issues Boycotting Israel Andrew Coates, The Left and the End of Secularism Has the British left forgotten its secularist obligations? Martin Carroll, Socialists and the European Union Does European integration offer an opportunity for the left? John Plant, On the Buses A wry look at the consequences of Ken Livingstones transport policies Theodor Bergmann, Germany Today A veteran German Marxist looks at the working-class movement in Germany Adam Buick, One Hundred Years of the SPGB The Socialist Party of Great Britain at its centenary Alan Woodward, Another Dimension on Workers Councils Anarchists, syndicalists and workers councils Chris Gray, Max Weber and Revolutionary Socialism Max Webers critique of socialism and bureaucracy John Plant, Faceless in the Cloud A look at Londons recent exhibitions Dave Renton, The Limits of Direct Action Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the Industrial Workers of the World James D Young, Jim Connell (1850-1929) The man who wrote The Red Flag Reviews German Communism, counterfactual history, the Yugoslav catastrophe, Howard Hughes 1 17 22 28 34

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Current Business
This edition of New Interventions went to the printers just prior to the general election. The next issue will carry material on the significance of the results. Further on in this section, Mike Jones looks at some of the key issues that emerged during the pre-election period. What Now For Sinn Fin? EVER since its inception, the Peace Process in Northern Ireland has been considered by the British media to be in a state of crisis. This is not really accurate, as the process could only be in crisis if there was a real threat on the part of the republicans to return to armed struggle. That can be effectively ruled out, as there is clearly very little desire on the part of the Catholic population of the Six Counties, including many amongst Sinn Fins constituency, for a resumption of war, and the leadership of Sinn Fin know that very well. At it is, its Sinn Fin that has been in trouble. Allegations of the IRAs involvement in the huge Northern Bank robbery were immediately made not only by the traditional enemies of republicanism on both sides of the border, but by British government ministers and senior officials of the British state, and, despite strenuous denials by Sinn Fins leaders, the evidence points towards the IRA having been responsible for the robbery. The murder in a pub brawl of republican sympathiser Robert McCartney by IRA members has greatly accelerated the already growing disenchantment with the movement amongst Sinn Fins Six Counties constituency, and the republicans case was not helped either by Sinn Fins prevarications or by the IRAs offer to blow away those responsible. There are several reasons why Sinn Fin has been singled out for attack. Firstly, the main parties of the Twenty-Six Counties see it as a destabilising factor, in that an increased vote for it would enable it, as a result of the Irish voting system, overly to influence governmental coalitions, or even to become a serious competitor. Secondly, the unionist parties, particularly Ian Paisleys Democratic Unionist Party, wish to humiliate the republican movement as much as possible. Having demanded ever tougher concessions each time the republicans have conceded, Paisley & Co now feel that they can really grind Sinn Fins nose into the ground. As for the British ministers and civil servants statements, it would appear that they have taken a conscious decision to force the issue with Sinn Fin: either break from the IRA, or be disqualified from the political process in the Six Counties. A first move has been to deprive its Westminster representatives of their not inconsiderable stipend. The IRA is essentially redundant. It played a necessary role in defending Catholic areas in the Six Counties against Loyalist thugs, and it then took on the British state in a romantic and futile attempt to reunify Ireland. Now that Sinn Fin has implicitly accepted partition with its endorsement of the Good Friday Agreement (which, with its huge endorsement right across Ireland, showed that the South doesnt want to integrate the North, or at least not in its present state), and put the armed struggle behind itself, what possible use is there for the IRA? A guerrilla force is only of use if it actually engages with the enemy, or remains a potent threat. Not surprisingly, with no political perspective other than Sinn Fins

vague aspiration for Irish reunification sometime in the distant future, sections of the IRA whose volunteers were engaged in dubious activities in order to finance the organisation and who can find no place within Sinn Fins political structures have lost their political direction and have degenerated into outright criminal gangs. Similarly, many of the nationalist population in the Six Counties who once looked to the republican movement for protection against loyalist thugs now see the unaccountable activities of the IRA in their communities as an imposition. Anti-IRA wall-slogans referring to the Rafia have been appearing. Can Sinn Fin cut itself away from an armed movement with which it has been and remains intrinsically linked, but which is now redundant and increasingly an embarrassment and a barrier to its political ambitions? It is not impossible, especially when one considers that the political establishment in the Twenty-Six Counties can more-or-less be tracked back to factions of the Irish republican movement who repudiated the armed struggle and came to accept partition. Why should the current leadership of Sinn Fin be any different to those who preceded them? The problem here is that it is very difficult to tell how much leverage Sinn Fins leaders have over the IRA, and what they can offer the IRA in exchange for its disbandment. National liberation movements are essentially a ruling lite in waiting, fighting for the chance to defeat an occupying power and to take over the state once the latter has withdrawn. The guerrilla fighters of the movement often become the military and police forces of the liberated state. This option is not open to the IRA, as none of the existing police or military forces have any intention of recruiting superannuated Provos. Some, as noted above, are directly involved in criminal activities. According to the Irish press, the republican movement has been buying heavily into public houses and hotels as a means of raising funds legitimately, but, one may add, also perhaps to give idle IRA men work as stewards, barmen and, of course, bouncers an Irish Publican Army? and it is possible that at least some of the proceeds of the Northern Bank raid were intended as a retirement or job-start fund for redundant volunteers. Another problem for Sinn Fins leaders is that splits within the republican movement have customarily been violent, with the factions sorting out disputes arms in hand. The civil war that wracked the Twenty-Six Counties during 1922-23 was a direct result of such a split. Should Sinn Fin be unable to prevent a breakaway of an intransigent faction that attempted to reignite armed activity, its leadership would come under tremendous pressure to support the inevitable police and military measures against the splitters, and in turn this would put Gerry Adams and his colleagues in danger of reprisals by the irreconcilables. Where do developments under the Peace Process leave the national question in respect of Northern Ireland? One the one hand, sectarianism, a direct product of British involvement in Ireland, continues to fester in the Six Counties, and this kind of ideological baggage can long outlast the erosion of the objective conditions of which it is a product. One problem with the Peace Process is that its institutional arrangements categorise the inhabitants as Catholic and Protestant, thereby upholding and extending the sectarian divide. On the other hand, there have been some significant changes. In the McCartney affair, Gerry Adams call for witnesses to speak to the Police Ombudsman in short, indirectly to inform the police represented a sharp break from the republican tradition of non-cooperation with the Six Counties authorities, and led to his being condemned in wall slogans as a tout. Ian Paisley has actually visited Dublin, and has not ruled out the possibility of being in a Six Coun-

ties government with Sinn Fin, so long as the republicans have been sufficiently humbled beforehand. Time will tell if the steady changes in the Twenty-Six Counties will undermine the old fears of the Catholic South on which Loyalism fed, and whether the disenchantment amongst Six Counties Catholics with republicanism will lead to a full-scale rejection, and thus on both sides lead to the transcending of the national question, that for increasing numbers of people ones religious/national identity will become increasingly irrelevant. The pressure is on Sinn Fin, as it were, to bite the bullet and start decommissioning the IRA. Voices from all quarters, from Washingtons White House to members of Sinn Fins own Six Counties constituency, have made this point clear. Sinn Fins leaders may be able to ride out this current crisis, if only by means of inertia, by the McCartneys campaign running out of steam, or by staging a robust response to any loyalist marching season shenanigans that will enable them to regain some credibility. But Gerry Adams knows that both his political ambitions and those of his party as a whole require Sinn Fin to make a final and irreconcilable break from paramilitary politics and activities. This was the clear message in his speech in early April. Sooner or later, the IRA will have to be disbanded. Arthur Trusscott Iraq: What Now? THE elections in Iraq were hailed by supporters of the Second Gulf War as a great success and a vindication of George W Bushs strategy. Opponents of the war have been lectured by the familiar gang of pro-war liberals and assorted New Labour cronies and groupies that the elections have proved the correctness of both Washingtons policies and of Tony Blairs forthright backing of them. However, we can stand our ground against them. Iraq is by no means a liberal democracy; nor is it likely to become one. Such a society is not defined purely by elections; it requires a lot more than that. It requires the social consensus and stability that is afforded by a governmental structure that is accepted as legitimate by the population, a sound economy, an operating social welfare infrastructure, and reasonably stable class and interethnic relations. None of this exists in Iraq, and one can add to these factors the insurgency and the US occupation, unemployment at over 50 per cent, welfare and social measures in a state of decrepitude (child malnutrition has nearly doubled under the occupation), erratic and unreliable water and electricity supplies, barely existent everyday law-and-order in many areas, and rife violent crime. The elections were a central ideological factor in US policy. This, of course, was for domestic consumption, to give the impression that the purpose of occupying Iraq is an act of selflessness, the liberation of the Iraqi people from a vicious dictatorship, thus allowing them to choose their own future. Only fools or charlatans can accept as genuine Washingtons new-found regard for democracy. History has shown how many times US governments have destroyed democracy in the interests of US foreign policy. Those in Iraq and in the wider world who considered that the elections were a disingenuous fraud were condemned by Washingtons errand-boys as terrorists or apologists for terrorism. Of course, only real obscurantists can oppose democracy, even of the most limited sort and, right on cue, the sinister Abu alZarqawi denounced the election as the devils work (if he is not an actual US agent provocateur, he behaves as one; his every act gives the impression of his being sent in by the CIAs Central Casting). The relative lack of assaults on polling stations reflected both the relative weakness of al-Zarqawis gang, and the fact that most Sun4

nis were boycotting this election, not elections in general. In Iraq itself, the elections were intended to result in a new government that would have some element of popular credibility by virtue of its being elected, but would be no more politically independent of Washington than the quisling provisional administration that it has replaced. Many of the constitutional procedures, not least in respect of the Iraqi economy, that were concocted by the occupation authorities require a two-thirds or three-quarters vote in the new National Assembly to be changed, and the seats reserved for the US-loyalists of the Kurdish bloc about double the Kurds proportional share of the countrys population: a reward for the Kurdish parties wholehearted support for US imperialism was an obvious piece of US gerrymandering intended to prevent an Iraqi government from effectively running the countrys affairs. The Shia parties, as predicted, did very well, with the predominantly Shia United Iraqi Alliance obtaining 48 per cent of the vote and over half the seats in the National Assembly. This is not surprising when one considers that the Shias constitute an absolute majority of the population. So did the Kurdish parties, for whom the election was a referendum for a de facto Kurdish state. The US puppet Iyad al-Allawi gained about 13 per cent, presumably reflecting those in Iraq who have benefited by the occupation. The Iraqi Communist Party, infamous for its support for the occupation, gained a measly two per cent. The post-election period saw a three-months-long series of squabbles in the Assembly as the various blocs, parties and notables jockeyed for position and tried to outmanoeuvre each other before managing to establish some sort of government. This is not surprising. The UIA is a very unstable bloc that encompasses relatively liberal and secular democrats to outright religious reactionaries linked with Iran who would like nothing more than a vicious theocracy imposing sharia law. The Kurdish bloc is predominantly two clan-based parties that both have a history of horse-trading and thuggery, including against each other. The strong-arm tactics Kurdish militias used against non-Kurds during the elections is not a good sign for a Kurdish states democratic credentials, particularly when the Kurds represent such an overwhelming majority in their area that their parties could not have possibly lost. In one respect, the election result has been the least of evils for Washington. A strong Iraqi government that reflected public opinion would call for a US withdrawal, which would defeat the USAs plans to use Iraq as the main base in its quest to dominate the Middle East. A governmental programme that broke the USAs grip over the economy and placed Iraqs prodigious resources under national control could also help to overcome to some degree religious and national divisions and social problems, and this would undermine the USAs declared reasons for occupying the country. A puppet government with no popular mandate would have no credibility or real power, and would be totally dependent upon the US occupation for its very survival. It would tie up a large number of US forces, and thereby restrict the USAs ability to stage other adventures. But a relatively weak government and a situation of a certain degree of instability actually works to Bushs benefit, as the former would need to rely to some extent upon US civil and military support, and thus provide Washington a justification to stay, without tying up too many US personnel. Its a neat trick: getting a new government elected that is ultimately reliant for its existence upon the continued occupation of the country and therefore will not call for a US withdrawal (or will call for an eventual withdrawal). In the meantime, Washing-

ton hopes that its vice-grip on the Iraqi economy will continue, and that sufficient reliable Iraqi police and military forces will be built up that will defend US interests in Iraq, thus freeing sufficient US military personnel for the future operations which it envisages in the Middle East and beyond. Leaving aside the US commentators who would like to see Iraq divided into Kurdish, Sunni and Shia states, the US administration cannot be altogether unhappy with the divisions that have arisen between Sunni and Shia Iraqis, as the latter could start to see the former as the major problem and the US occupation as a lesser evil. The sectarian attacks upon Shias that have occurred, be they upon politicians, clergy or ordinary citizens, have played to some degree into the occupiers hands, as has the rampant and uncontrollable crime. The Shia response to the big assault upon Fallujah last autumn was considerably less vocal than that to attacks of Sunni cities earlier in the year, and Kurdish militias actually assisted the US forces there, probably an unnecessary factor militarily, but definitely of great symbolic importance. However, the real question is whether this fragile equilibrium can survive in the longer term. There are many questions which not only remain unresolved, but are actually accentuated by the elections. If SunniShia relations deteriorate further, which is likely with a Shia-dominated government in place and continued sectarian Sunni resistance, then we will be facing increased instability, and could even see an unpleasant civil war. No government in Baghdad will happily allow the Kurdish parties to rule a de facto independent state, as it would wish to control all of Iraqs rich resources; and there is no doubt that the Turkish ruling class will resist any meaningful attempt at a Kurdish state in Iraq. The Shia and Kurdish blocs could well fall out over political factors or merely over the spoils of office, and are inherently unstable in and of themselves. Democratic norms will have little chance of thriving amidst the deep social problems pervading in Iraq, and governance in the country will almost certainly be based upon clans, militias, mosques and the like, with all the obvious dire consequences for democracy and the very coherence of Iraq as a nationstate. Genuinely democratic forces in Iraq, not least working-class and womens organisations, face a tough future. Bushs adventure in Iraq has been a foreign policy disaster that far outweighs any successes elsewhere, such as the pro-Western governments coming to office via various US-backed fluffy revolutions in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kirgizstan, or the acquiescence of Syrias rulers to Washingtons demand to withdraw from Lebanon. Bushs plans to use Iraq as a base to dominate the Middle East have been dogged with severe problems from the very start, and the Iraqi elections have given him nothing more than a brief respite. Washingtons troubles in Iraq and the wider Middle East are set to continue. Paul Flewers Quackery in the Classroom COMMENTING on Tony Blairs city academy programme at the National Union of Teachers conference a couple of weeks back, one delegate said, no doubt with the Vardy Foundations type of Christian fundamentalist schemes (of which Blair is highly in favour) in mind: Its throwing out rational thought and bringing in creationism. What next? A GCSE in spell casting? But we are there already. A quick look around the British academic websites shows that there are diploma and degree courses in whats popularly called complementary medicines.
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The University of Salford runs a Bachelor of Science course entitled Complementary Medicine and Health Sciences. Heres an extract from the prospectus: This programme will give you a foundation in Complementary Medicine and Health Sciences through a wide range of fascinating modules. The degree is relevant to people new to complementary medicine or established practitioners. The programme allows you to study, both theoretically and practically, with particular therapies such as Homeopathy and Reflexology in more depth. Luton University offers a Higher National Diploma in Complementary Therapy. This includes aromatherapy and reflexology. Luton also offers a Foundation Degree (Arts) Beauty Therapy, which combines aromatherapy and reflexology with Business Skills. The University of Derby offers a Bachelor of Arts in Complementary Therapies (like Luton, it does not include it in the sciences guilty feelings perhaps?). It forthrightly declares: The Holistic Massage pathway is accredited by the Association of Reflexologists and the International Society of Professional Aromatherapists. The Shiatsu pathway is approved by the Shiatsu Society. Successful completion of the programme allows the student to apply for entry to the relevant associations. Dr Stephen Barrett of the Quackwatch website says this about aromatherapy: Pleasant odours can be enjoyable and may enhance peoples efforts to relax. Indeed, I have an incense burner myself. He adds: However, there is no evidence that aromatherapy products provide the health benefits claims by their proponents. He states that shiatsu is a form of traditional Chinese medicine, a term that encompasses a vast array of folk medical practices based on mysticism, that uses the same methodology as acupuncture, but uses massage instead of needles. Like acupuncture, shiatsu is based upon criteria which are not scientifically validated. Barrett adds: Reflexology is based on an absurd theory and has not been demonstrated to influence the course of any illness. Done gently, reflexology is a form of foot massage that may help people relax temporarily Claims that reflexology is effective for diagnosing or treating disease should be ignored. As for homeopathy, Barrett calls this the Ultimate Fake, as its basis is utterly unsubstantiated. The US National Council Against Health Fraud issued this warning over a decade ago: Homeopathys principles have been refuted by the basic sciences of chemistry, physics, pharmacology, and pathology. Homeopathy meets the dictionary definitions of a sect and a cult Most homeopathic studies are of poor methodological quality, and are subject to bias. Yet here we have the University of Salford offering courses in this very subject, and declaring that successful students will be able to apply for entry into year two of the four-year part-time homeopathy professional training programme at the North West College of Homeopathy in Manchester and will also receive a certificate in Homeo-

pathic First Aid the mind boggles at that. Nowhere on these college websites is there a warning to the effect that informed commentators insist that these practices have no scientific validation and what benefits they may provide to patients are purely by way of the placebo effect. They are presented as being as valid and scientifically-based as standard medical courses. It is not unreasonable to ask whether material critically assessing the fundamental theoretical bases of these practices is presented by the course tutors to their students. These courses are not purely for ones own edification. Under the heading Homeopathy as a Career, the Salford site continues: We are collaborating with the North West College of Homeopathy so that students may undertake the theoretical part of homeopathic practitioner training on the CHMS degree and then go on to complete the clinical and theoretical training with the Northern College of Homeopathy, thus enabling the student to become a registered homeopathic practitioner. As we noted, the Luton website states that its Beauty Therapy course includes Business Skills along with aromatherapy and reflexology, presumably with the intention that successful students will be able to open their own practices offering such services in the local high street. Quack medicine and entrepreneurship doesnt that just sum up New Labour? Teaching spell casting at school seems just the ticket. Paul Flewers Pope John Paul II: A Reactionary in Shepherds Clothing KAROL Jzef Wojtya, known as John Paul II since assuming the office of pope in October 1978, will be remembered as one of the most significant, though certainly not the most progressive, figures in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope John XXIII, who preceded Wojtya as head of the Church by two papacies, is still revered by many Catholics for radically reorienting the church by convening the Vatican II Council, which directly fed the growth of what is known as liberation theology. From Vatican II the democratic notion emerged that the whole church laity and clergy were united as the People of God. John Paul IIs pontificate was organised as a conscious counter-revolution against Vatican II a winding back of the clock towards an archaic Catholicism politically aligned with violent terror against liberationists around the world. Wojtya was born in Wadowice, a small city 50 kilometres from Krakw, Poland, on 18 May 1920. During the Nazi occupation, he worked in a quarry while secretly studying for the priesthood in a clandestine seminary. William Johnston, who teaches Modern Church History at Melbournes Yarra Theological Union, thinks Wojtya felt exiled from the direction Europe took in the second half of his lifetime. Remember he grew up under, really, three dictatorships first Pisudski in Poland, then the Nazi occupation of Poland which was the worst anywhere. He grew up not many miles from Auschwitz, and then of course the Communists came in from 1945 on, Johnston told ABC Radio Nationals Religion Report in 2004. So this is not a man who ever experienced democracy, and his hopes for a post-dictatorship Europe have not been fulfilled. The closed world of Polish Catholicism under the heel of Cold War Stalinism

was staunchly patriarchal and anti-communist, but was warmly supported by masses of Poles as the one institution through which they could organise free of the bureaucratic Stalinist regime. After leaving Poland for the wider world and the peak leadership position within Catholicism, Wojtya never wavered in his Cold War mindset. His guiding beliefs were that communism is the greatest danger to Christianity, that only deferential obedience to the church hierarchy is the proper behaviour for the Catholic masses, and that collaboration with the great power designs of brutal capitalist temporal forces was the way to advance the banner of the faith. This, combined with aspects of medieval theology, directly conflicted with the waves of liberal thinking that swept the church following Vatican II. In Latin America, in particular, the freeing up of the Catholic structures combined with the example of the Cuban Revolution propelled masses of Catholic workers, peasants and lower-ranking priests into revolutionary formations such as Nicaraguas Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). This broad trend was characterised as liberation theology and was typified by grassroots democracy, an anticapitalist reading of the New Testament and egalitarian religious leadership. In Europe and North America, there were less radical but nonetheless democratic rumblings. In 1997, for example, 2.5 million German and Austrian Catholics petitioned the pope to admit women priests and married priests and abandon the churchs hostility to homosexuality; the Vatican was unmoved. John Paul II brought considerable energy and political acumen to his reactionary crusade. He made 104 pastoral visits outside of Italy, wrote five books, issued 14 encyclicals and was seen by literally millions of people. He was also a great cannoniser canonising 482 saints, more than any previous pope. His thinking was that by providing each nation with its own saint the Catholic tradition of incense and obscurantism could be revived. Bizarrely, one of those saints was the last of the Hapsburg rulers of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Emperor Karl, who ruled during the First World War. John Paul II also appointed 231 new cardinals, which has stacked the college that will elect the new pope with archconservatives. One of his great political alliances was with US President Ronald Reagan. In 1980, the gang that organised the Reagan for the presidency movement met in Santa Fe for a conference and issued a statement saying: US foreign policy should begin to confront liberation theology (and not just react to it after the fact). Unfortunately Marxist-Leninist forces have used the church as a political weapon against private ownership and the capitalist system of production, infiltrating the religious community with ideas that are more communist than Christian. Reagan, as president, quickly moved to form a united front with John Paul II against liberation theology. The pope fought the theology, while the Reagan administration and its Latin American allies murdered the liberationists. Among the fallen was El Salvadors Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered in 1980 by a right-wing death squad while saying mass. The Arena party, the death squads legal face, sent a delegation to the Vatican weeks before the assassination protesting against Romeros public statements in defence of the poor. While the Salvadoran people regard Romero as a saint, John Paul II attempted to ban any discussion of Romeros beatification for 50 years. However, popular pressure from El Salvador later led the Vatican to put off the issue for only 25 years.
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John Paul IIs preferred saintly role model was the Spanish fascist Josemaria Escriv, founder of Opus Dei, one of the reactionary and weird Catholic secret societies that the pope has used as weapons against progressives. After failing to discipline the Brazilian bishops, John Paul II simply started appointing Opus Dei members as bishops died. In this manner, he undermined one of the strongest bases of liberation theology. Australias most prominent liberationist parish, St Vincents in Sydney innercity suburb of Redfern, has been saddled with priests from another Catholic cult called the Neocatechumenate. There are some illuminating stories about John Paul IIs priests studiously avoiding contact with Redfern Aborigines. Reagan and John Paul II found another area of common interest in Poland when the Solidarity trade union movement burst into prominence in 1980. Vast sums were funnelled through the church into the Polish movement. The Vatican encouraged an activist priesthood in Poland that it moved heaven and earth to destroy in other areas of the world. According to Time magazine, a grateful Reagan agreed in 1984 to alter the US foreign-aid programme to comply with the Catholic Churchs teachings on birth control, specifically abortion and contraception. The capitalist news media has associated John Paul IIs personal popularity in Poland with the collapse of communism there in 1989. More than a decade after John Paul IIs blessed the restoration of capitalism in Poland, a public opinion survey in 2002 by the Public Opinion Research Centre found that 56 per cent of Poles said their lives were better under the 1970s Stalinist regime of Edward Gierek than they are today. In 2000, John Paul II made a rhetorical flourish of calling for an end to Third World debt through his call for a jubilee the mechanism by which debts were wiped out once every 50 years in ancient Jewish society. However, the Vatican never attempted to build a popular movement around its call. While criticising the excesses of capitalism, John Paul II feared communist revolution more. His real ideology was integralism the medieval idea that the state will rule the people and the church will guide the state. By assiduously aligning himself with the most reactionary elements of late twentieth-century power politics, John Paul II has left a profound crisis in Catholicism in his wake. Latin America was once overwhelmingly Catholic, but the US rulers have used their Protestant fundamentalist sects as weapons against liberationist Catholics there. Now 10 per cent of Brazilians are believed to be talking in tongues! In the developed capitalist countries, Catholicism membership continues to bleed as believers tire of the ridiculous strictures on their sexuality and democratic rights within the church. As Aids threatens millions in the crucified impoverished world and wars and indebtedness worsen, the Catholic Churchs lame responses are simply making it irrelevant. Barry Healy From Green Left Weekly, 6 April 2005. Pope Benedict XVI: A Committed Reactionary THE selection of Josef Ratzinger as the new pope shows that the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church is intent upon continuing along the same dogmatic conservative course for which his predecessor was notorious. Ratzinger was appointed to the priesthood in 1951, obtained a doctorate in the-

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ology in 1953, became a lecturer in theology at Munich University in 1957, and taught this subject in German universities until 1981, when he became the supreme guardian of the faith under Pope John Paul II. At first, he was a liberal, at least in Vatican terms, and played an important role in the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, when the church experimented with various liberalising reforms. However, the upheavals of the late 1960s led him to conclude that the world was going to the dogs, and, with all the zeal of the newly-converted, he rapidly moved to a hardline conservative position, and subsequently enjoyed a reputation as a no-nonsense enforcer of Vatican orthodoxy. From defending to some extent the right of dissent within the church, he rapidly became notorious as an inquisitor, turning on liberal theologians with an unseemly vengeance, whilst sponsoring the socially reactionary policies and theologically obscurantist doctrines which the last Pope so busily promoted. One of his main targets were the liberation theologists of Latin America, who combined their religious convictions with a strong social conscience that put them at odds with the repressive regimes in the area. Their radical convictions were too much for the likes of Wojtya and Ratzinger to stomach criticising the excesses of capitalism is one thing, transcending capitalism is quite another the whole arsenal of the Vatican was aimed at them, and they suffered a defeat from which they have never been able to recover. Reactionary Catholics were another matter, and it would not be surprising if Ratzinger was behind the canonisation in 2002 of Josemaria Escriv, the Spanish fascist and founder of Opus Dei, seeing that he was very impressed by this right-wing sect. It will be also interesting to discover if Ratzinger played any role in the Vaticans disgraceful attempt to cover up various child-abuse scandals involving Catholic clergy. There is a problem for the Vatican in that Ratzinger lacks the charisma of Wojtya. He is to his predecessor what Rajani Palme Dutt was to Harry Pollitt, the dour, publicly humourless eminence gris of the British Communist Party as against the apparently amiable front man with the common touch. Whereas Dutt and Pollitt worked for most of the time in tandem, here the cold theoretician and apparatchik has taken the place of the long-standing genial public face of Roman Catholicism. Ratzingers opinions are no different to Wojtyas, but it is unlikely that this backroom schemer will pull in the crowds in the way that his charismatic predecessor was so adept at doing. Fundamentalist theologians and clerics face a real problem. In most developed countries, the appeal of religion is by-and-large waning. Although there are growing groups of fundamentalists of all denominations, increasing numbers of people are becoming less hide-bound in their religious beliefs consider the declining birthrate in Italy or are rejecting religion altogether. If Roman Catholicism liberalises itself by permitting, for instance, married priests and women priests, or by easing its inflexibility in respect of divorce, homosexuality, abortion and (especially) contraception, it will suffer tensions and splits amongst the most devout. If it continues with its hard line, more and more believers will to some extent or another continue quietly to ignore the strictures which they feel are of no relevance to their everyday lives. In todays educated atmosphere, the old totalitarian methods of scaring believers with fire and brimstone in the afterlife will not work; many Catholics will consider themselves good Christians whilst ignoring key aspects of the teachings of their leaders. Under these circumstances, those clergy closest to the general congregation must either start to reflect its liberal practice in their preaching, or face losing

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credibility amongst it. How long can a church preach one thing whilst growing numbers of its members feel nothing wrong about practising the opposite? Whether it liberalises or, as is the case with the new pope, it remains staunchly conservative and inflexible, the Catholic Church faces the same problems that other religions face in the developed world. The growing moral vacuum that late capitalism engenders will not lead to a full-scale revival of traditional religion; indeed, although evangelistic and fundamentalist religious will grow and even flourish to some degree, as will mystical new age quasi-religious currents, Catholicism will continue to decline. It is stagnant in Latin America, and is growing only in Africa and some parts of Asia. It is perhaps only a matter of time before Catholics in the growth areas start to recognise the connection between the spread of Aids and the Vaticans stance on contraception and begin to challenge the churchs teachings. Like his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI is a committed reactionary. He is an enemy of social progress. His outlook and policies on a wide number of issues will be opposed by large numbers of people around the world, and many of them will be quietly ignored or subverted by not inconsiderable numbers of members of his own church. Cheney Longville General Election Issues IN the political field, omitting the Asian Tsunami, it seems to me that the most significant events was the US attack on Fallujah, which razed most of the city, said to be as big as Wolverhampton, to the ground. Media coverage was strictly controlled, so we saw little the US didnt want us to see, and the press hasnt really reported what went on in depth. Socialist Worker used an eye-witness report from an Iraqi doctor that brought down its website, so many hits did it produce, and it was reproduced in other European newspapers. The US troops first stormed the general hospital and arrested the medical staff (shown on TV on the floor handcuffed), and stole their mobile phones in order to prevent them communicating what was taking place. So the number of civilians killed was not reported. The resistance fighters put up a fierce, house-to-house battle, but large numbers probably left Fallujah. Fighting immediately broke out in Mosul where they seized control of the town. The US figures of dead fighters in Fallujah were doubted by journalists on the spot. Meanwhile, the inhabitants were left in tents or as guests with family members elsewhere. The destruction of a major city in the name of rooting out guerrilla fighters has no military sense, and can only be understood as either creating an example, or as revenge for the deaths of the four mercenaries and the failure of the previous revenge attack, where the US handed back control to the Iraqi forces, who, in turn, ceded it to the resistance. The attack and destruction of Fallujah must be a war-crime on a par with Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam, Coventry, Dresden, etc, yet the international outrage was muted, presumably due to the lack of objective reporting, owing to almost total US control through embedding. Al-Jazeera, of course, has been banned from operating in Iraq. Al-Arabiyas man in Fallujah was arrested by US forces for the duration of the battle. On 30 January, the Kurdish and Shia population of Iraq flocked to the polls, while the Sunnis, displaced from power originally handed them by the British, mainly boycotted them, and Turkomen complained of not being allowed to vote by their Kurdish neighbours. Lists had been cobbled together by backroom deals among the major figures in the various groupings, many candidates were wholly unknown and

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due to the security situation unable to meet the public. Some parties, or blocs, were favoured by the occupation forces. The election only came about at all due to the insistence of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shia cleric. Originally, the US had refused, claiming that the lack of reliable electoral rolls ruled out proper elections. The continuing insurgency and growing unpopularity of the occupation forced them to create some legitimate partners and give up relying on their clients imported from exile. The big winners were the Kurds and al-Sistanis United Iraqi Alliance, and negotiations have led to Jalal Talibani, the PUK leader, becoming president, while Ibrahim Jaafari, a Dalwa Party leader, is prime minister, and he will choose a government. Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister, boosted by Bush and Blair, was rejected by the voters, but has been brought into a coalition government. This will only exist for 11 months, and in the meantime a constitution must be agreed. The USA still dominates the country, and has made clear its intention to maintain a permanent presence in Iraq through a series of bases. Only the Kurds want the USA to stay, most Sunnis and a significant section of the Shia community will continue to struggle for their removal. The troops of more and more US allies, whose presence was symbolic, are withdrawing, so the demand for a British withdrawal should be stepped up. The four British soldiers found guilty of abuse that occurred two weeks after the end of the war, highlighted in the Osnabrck court martial, which ended almost two years later, claimed that they were sacrificial lambs, and in fact the case had all the appearances of a scapegoating publicity stunt. Those responsible for the sexual humiliation were not found, and no officers were punished. When an abuse case was exposed involving Danish forces last year, and an intelligence officer took responsibility and was sent home, it was pointed out in the media by another officer that hypocrisy was involved here, as Danish forces upheld the Geneva Convention on PoWs, but handed prisoners over to the British who didnt. And can it be coincidental that the abuse of prisoners has similar characteristics, particularly the sexual aspect? The Freedom of Information Act also brought the resignation letter of Elizabeth Wilmhurst, the Foreign Office deputy legal adviser, into the public realm. It had been censored, but the sensitive paragraph was then leaked to the media and allowed us to note that Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, had changed his mind at the last minute over the legality of the war, which, less than two weeks beforehand, in a 13-page written legal opinion, he warned, could be deemed illegal. According to the Butler enquiry, Goldsmith gave a judgement justifying the war 10 days later on 17 March, which was put to parliament, for which there appears to be no written version, as it was merely a summary. In any case, that is what Blair claims, while Goldsmith insists that the parliamentary answer set out his view of the legal basis for war, but denies that it was a summary of confidential legal advice (Guardian, 12 March 2005). Was there a written text giving a new opinion, or did he merely tell Blair what arguments might convince parliament and the public? The Butler enquiry criticised the casual way decisions were made by Blair et al, in the sense of no minutes being taken of meetings, as if this was a lapse rather than deliberate, and he has since promised to mend his ways. People who take no proper minutes are either amateurish or up to no good. Much more information is now in the public domain about the US torture Gulag, stretching from Guantnamo to Iraq and Afghanistan, including the use of

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Egypt, Jordan and Syria for rendition, that is, handing over prisoners for torture to death if necessary. Karen Greenberg and Joshua Dratel (eds), The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (Cambridge), just out and the subject of a review, along with Mark Danners book on the same matter, in the London Review of Books (17 February 2005), constitutes over 1200 pages of US government memos and reports which show how torture became policy, and how the law was used to justify it. A memo by Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee argues that certain acts may be cruel, inhuman or degrading, but still not produce pain and suffering of the requisite intensity to fall within Section 234As proscription against torture. To qualify as torture, the pain must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily functions, even death. The reviewer imagines an interrogator trying to decide at what precise point does inhuman and degrading treatment turn into torture, and asking: Are we there yet? Of course, one must note, Blair, Straw & Co all go along with this and utilise intelligence gained this way, as the ex-British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, revealed (see Red Pepper, April 2005). Although it has taken some time, the arguments around the internment without trial of the dozen non-British Belmarsh detainees, under the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act introduced by Blunkett in the aftermath of the events of 11 September, has increased awareness of the authoritarian trends abroad today. In 1998, New Labour made much fuss about making the European Convention of Human Rights part of British Law. Blunkett opted out of Article 5 of the Convention when introducing his law, in order to be able to imprison foreign nationals without trial. To do that he had to declare a state of emergency, and hence the hyping-up of terrorist threats and creation of a climate of fear. The collapse of the Ricin plot trial exposes, not an al-Qaeda plan, but something akin to a schoolboy jape with recipes copied from the Internet; one of the plotters a loner; his companion, softened up by Algerian intelligence and giving wholly incredible facts for the prosecution. Apparently, this plot was the cause of the tanks at Heathrow. The nightmare of the Belmarsh detainees eased once the Law Lords ruled that the detentions were illegal. To replace the law the government proposed control orders that would impose house-arrest on terrorism suspects, but it would now be applicable to all citizens, though under the same conditions: without trial, no charges, on the basis of reasonable suspicion. Strong opposition in both houses of parliament, particularly the Lords, led to it being amended slightly and in 12 months it will be reviewed, but it still represents a major attack on civil rights. Those affected as a result of dubious intelligence, and some of it obtained through torture elsewhere, cannot lead normal lives, and there will be no end in sight, yet the effectiveness of control orders is doubted by Ian Macdonald QC, one of the appointed advocates to the commission that oversaw the original law and who resigned from it in December, who sees them as cosmetic window dressing (see Red Pepper, April 2005). The general election campaign, which started officially following the Popes funeral, but has been running all year, resulted in the trade unions rallying around Blair. They are happy with the Warwick deal reforms being part of Labours manifesto. With Labour Party membership having halved since the first heady days of New Labour, and constituency activists unavailable for electoral leg-work, the unions are a key factor once more. The situation within the labour movement has been confused, the trends contradictory. Just a few months back, one could detect a shift to the left in the unions.

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This had been occurring over the past few years, and was reflected in a new layer of leaders coming through, a new militancy and even a will to struggle, even a recovery in membership, though whole sectors of the industrial working class have vanished and just under 30 per cent of the workforce is unionised. The old layer of leftist union leaders were demoralised and had become a liability due to the huge defeats of the Thatcher years. A whole new generation of members has since emerged, but the new left-wing leaders seem hesitant to struggle. Clearly the Thatcher years have imprinted a sense of fear of unleashing struggle. The emergence of this new layer of leftwing leaders gave a certain pleasure to the left and worried the employers and the Blairites, but the results in terms of better policies of a socialist tendency have been very meagre. Last years TUC gathering saw a shift to the left, and motions from left-led unions were adopted without resistance, on workplace matters and international affairs like the invasion of Iraq. Blair went to the TUC like a lonely man looking for friends. He refused to apologise for the invasion of Iraq, which many had predicted he would, and hed been advised to rebuild his links to the movement by just such a gesture, but went on to embrace the workplace rights accord reached between his party and the unions at Warwick at the party policy forum, saying: I come here to praise Warwick, not to bury it. Blair went on to tell delegates of the sums to be invested in healthcare and education, and received applause but no standing ovation. But what did the Warwick agreement actually represent? In his Comment column in the Amicus magazine for last September, Derek Simpson, the new leftwing general secretary, exhibited pride in what was achieved by the Big Four unions at Warwick. Apart from the ending of the two-tier workforce, he told the members that the government gave commitments on corporate manslaughter and to support the EU Agency Workers Directive. They promised action on skills. A new Women at Work Commission to implement mandatory equal pay audits, and more protection on pensions. Simpson conceded that more needs to be done, but saw a move towards the radical manifesto and progressive third term we ve been fighting for. I suppose that one can read from that just how modest the 50 or so commitments made at Warwick were there were promises of more holidays, too but also how modest the aims of the Big Four seem to be. At the Labour Party conference, the leadership suffered a defeat on the question of ballots of council house tenants transferring to housing trusts the demand was for an option to vote for the status quo on the ballot, which was adopted, but the leadership later announced that it would be ignored. The second defeat was the demand for the renationalisation of the railways. The government claimed that it would be too costly, but TSSA general secretary Gerry Docherty, the key proposer, insisted that it wouldnt cost a penny. One could just not renew the franchises as they expired. South-East Trains is already in public ownership after Connex lost the franchise, although the government plans to privatise it once more. The Labour leadership managed quite easily to defeat any opposition to its policy on Iraq, not least as a result of Blair meeting the leaders of the Big Four to persuade them not to back the anti-war motion, warning them that the Warwick deal would be off should they support it. In the meantime, Amicus has started merger discussions with the TGWU. The fused union would have 2.5 million members and be a considerable force. The GMB was also invited to join in the talks, but although Kevin Curran, the General Secretary, is in favour, a majority of GMB regional secretaries are opposed. Curran was

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seen as a Blairite when he ran for the post, but has been more militant than his predecessor John Edmunds, and been bracketed with the awkward squad. Earlier this year, the GMB Executive appointed a QC to examine ballot-rigging charges against supporters of Curran. Then, after sending a letter to the QC, Curran was suspended by the Executive for interfering with the enquiry. Like many other unions, the GMB has been losing members and consequently has serious financial problems. Curran has been cutting expenditure, and this is seen as a threat to the power, and possibly wellbeing, of the regional bosses. The proposed super union is also partly a response to membership losses, so it suits some GMB regional secretaries to cut Curran down to size. Of course, the union merger is often the alternative to struggle in coping with falling membership, and usually proves to be a short-term measure which, without struggle, doesnt actually halt the decline. Dissatisfaction with New Labour led to the RMT being disaffiliated, over its allowing Scottish branches to support the Scottish Socialist Party. However, with Tommy Sheridans resignation as SSP leader, a sense of crisis, coupled with its recent shift to a more nationalist position, the RMTs action might prove to be a dead end. So far, the only other union to abandon Labour is the FBU, whose membership demanded the break. The unrest, and the involvement of some of the left-wing groupings promoting it, has been checked for the present, and with a general election in sight the union leaders are looking to Labour, not to fringe movements. The only entry for 2005 on the trade union spot on the Respect website is a notice in March that the Eastern region of the FBU has voted to donate 1000 to the campaign. The union leaders are not going to rock the boat. Mike Jones Boycotting Israeli Universities THE unexpected decision of the Association of University Teachers Conference on Friday, 22 April to boycott two Israeli universities was a profoundly irresponsible act. Whilst Israeli universities obviously contain some right-wingers, Israeli academics as a group are far more critical of their government and its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and far more open to dialogue with Palestinians, than Israeli society as a whole. Nothing will gladden the hearts of Sharon and the hard-line Zionists more than such a boycott their whole political outlook might be summed up in the Millwall chant: Nobody likes us, and we dont care! Why was such an absurd decision taken? It is not explicable in terms of the internal politics of the union itself. The AUTs general political stance has always differed from that of NATFHE (the dominant lecturers union in the ex-polytechnics and Further Education colleges). The AUT has not publicly and collectively committed itself to the Stop the War Coalition or the Public Sector Alliance, and its belated links with Unite Against Fascism have been very low-key. In other words, it has not adopted the generic (and often incoherent) leftism associated with Mackneys leadership of NATFHE. In part, this may be because the SWP, influential in white-collar (or largely white-collar) unions such as Unison, the PCSU, the NUT and NATFHE, has not made much headway in the AUT. So the outcome cannot be explained simply in terms of a pro-boycott push by the SWP, as would have been the case had a similar development occurred within NATFHE. It is also worth noting that the AUT has only recently ceased to think of itself as a professional association, and has no record of industrial militancy. It hardly ever calls its members out on strike, and even then usually just for a day, and its threats about refusing to mark exams have

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usually proved empty bluster. As a result, its members pay and conditions have been steadily eroded over the last 25 years, and it has recently colluded in the end of national pay bargaining. Why has a union whose record of fighting for its own members is so abysmal, and whose general stance is far removed from Mackneys radical chic, suddenly taken such a controversial decision? It is hard to avoid concluding that it is part of a tsunami of Jew-baiting that has swept the British left from Blairs entourage via the London Mayor to Galloways followers; that it mirrors the images of pigs and Shylock/Fagin in New Labours antiHoward posters, Livingstones drunken tirade against a Jewish Evening Standard reporter and the eggs thrown by Respect supporters at elderly Jews attending a memorial service for the victims of Hitlers V2s. Tobias Abse

The Left and the End of Secularism

How Should Socialists Approach Religion
One reason why so many persons are really shocked and pained by the avowal of heretical opinions is the very fact that such avowal is uncommon. If unbelievers and doubters were more courageous, believers would be less timorous. It is because they live in an enervating fools paradise of seeming assent and conformity, that the breath of an honest and outspoken word strikes so eager and nipping on their sensibilities. John Morley, On Compromise, 1877 the workers party ought to have expressed its awareness that bourgeois freedom of conscience only means the toleration of every possible kind of religious freedom of conscience, while its own goal is rather the liberation of conscience from all religious spookery. Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875 THE Enlightenment has drained away. Secularism is dead. Transcendental belief cannot be eluded. So, amongst others, John Gray. Endlessly. (Radio Three, 16 December 2004) Outright opposition to religion was important in its time, writes Seamus Milne, but those fetishising traditional secularism fail to grasp the changing social meaning of faith. The left must show its solidarity with the Muslim victims of invasion, occupation and Western-backed tyranny and, in Europe, the rising tides of Islamophobia. Progressives should grasp that like nationalism, religion can face either way, playing a progressive or reactionary role. The crucial role is now within religion rather than against it. (Guardian, 16 December 2004) Warming to the theme of Islam as a universal bogeyman, Yasmin Qureshi (Adviser to London Mayor Ken Livingstone) defends religious rights (Morning Star, 15 December 2004). Livingstone claims that those who criticise Islamicist policies on gays and women have col17

Andrew Coates

lapsed faced with the reactionary European onslaught on Islam (Morning Star, 18 December 2004). The government is sufficiently concerned to introduce special legislation to ban incitement to religious hatred. QC Cherie Booth has courted publicity by taking the case of a Luton schoolgirl who wishes to attend lessons covered from head to foot in traditional religious garb. In the latest example of religious assertiveness, Birmingham Sikh demonstrators forcibly banned a play, Behzti (Dishonour), disrespectful of their sacred shrines. The State Church may one day be headed by the Prince of Wales, who declares his intention to be the Defender of All the Faiths. Clearly the Age of Reason has not yet dawned in the United Kingdom. Religious Causes, Religious Reasons For many years British socialists skirted around the issue of religion. The lefts approach has been dominated, firstly, by what can be called a natural history of religion.1 That is, the explanation of religious identification in terms of class, empire, domination and resistance. Religious identity has, naturally, been of importance in the conflict between nationalists and loyalists in Ireland. This has fuelled sectarian clashes, in which, however, Protestants and Catholics have been enmeshed in the wider disputes formed by the presence of the British state. The latter, not the former, have called for most comment. The global legacy of British imperialism has brought some further insight into the role of religious movements in adapting to, or resisting, colonisation. Seamus Milne is only repeating the dominant common-sense view of the left, that, depending on their alignment in these conditions, religious movements can be progressive or reactionary. Thus the liberation theology of figures such as Gustavo Gutierrez interpreted Christianity from the standpoint of the poor and oppressed. Their organising abilities drew acknowledgement from across the left. More recently this has led some to argue that the failures of the secular parties, of Stalinism, of Third World nationalism, have left the way open, in Muslim countries, for the revival of assertive forms of Islam. In transcendental dress, it nevertheless contains an anti-imperialist, and therefore progressive, content. Following the invasion of Iraq, this has increasingly affected the global Muslim community. This is far from a purely academic issue. The Stop the War Coalition has an alliance with Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), often regarded as a form of Islamicist conservatism. In England and Wales, the Respect Coalition has entered the electoral fray with an explicit pitch for the radicalised Islamic vote. Is this sociological, political and pragmatic method the right way for socialists to handle religion? Is Milne right to claim that religions have become sharply critical of the global system? It is well known that the politics of religious radicalism (in the sense of going back to the root of a conviction) are far from unambiguous. It does not imply a picture of a timeless form of oppressive Islam to note that Islamicism in various forms, from the Ayatollahs Iran, the Talibans Afghanistan to the Islamicist mouvance in North Africa, the Middle East and, indeed, Western Europe, has pursued an anti-democratic and reactionary course. Nor that Christian Socialism, with its own communitarianism, may encourage moral authoritarianism, as David Blunkett so thoroughly demonstrated. This can be easily accepted. For the left is apt at finding counter examples, liberal Islamicists, worker priests, anti-war vicars, New Age anti-globalisers. Far more difficult to digest is a second left approach to religion, the focus on
1. The distinction between causes and reasons for religious belief is taken from David Hume, Dialogues and Natural History of Religion, Oxford, 1993. See JCA Gaskins Introduction.

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the reasons for religion, their validity. Few bother to make the case even for scepticism. A rather stuffy air of old Thinkers Library books, Conway Hall and the nonsocialist rationalists, Bradlaugh and Colonel Ingersoll, hangs around the atheist cause. It is with some surprise that in the age of post-modernism that the Enlightenment of Voltaire, Diderot, Tom Paine, Kant and the Declaration of the Rights of Man (and Women) is now frequently invoked. Francis Wheen summaries it: the insistence on intellectual autonomy, a rejection of tradition and authority as infallible sources of truth, a loathing for bigotry and persecution, a commitment to free inquiry, a belief that (in Francis Bacons words) knowledge is indeed power.2 This may well be, as Engels stated, in Anti-Dhring, to idealise rationalism, to take thought beyond its social context. But surely the left should be concerned to establish a public framework in which these Enlightenment goals could be realised? What would the left be with Kants slogan: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding! Evidently when politics are increasingly intertwined with the forces that rest on tradition and authority, that is, revealed religion, such an aim is obscured. So, in Europe religious issues have more and more entered the public domain. Most dramatically, Holland was shaken to the core by the religiously-inspired murder of the provocateur and film-maker, Theo van Goth. More mundanely, the proposed European Constitution evokes faith, albeit fleetingly, after sustained pressure from the Churches. In France, efforts to maintain the secular nature of education by forbidding ostentatious religious symbols have raised (largely outside of the Hexagone) a sustained campaign in defence of Islamic conceptions of female modesty. Not that France is immune to the religious colonisation of politics. To widen his constituency to the pious of all creeds, the new head of the French Right, Nicolas Sarkozy, proposes to reform the separation of 1905 of Church and State. This is vigorously resisted by the Parti Socialiste (Le Monde, 18 December 2004). With a Cabinet filled with committed Christians, Blairs sister party has a contrasting policy: special faith community consultation on policy. Local government has seen a bigger role for religious bodies, in similar consultations. Far from challenging the waxing place of religion, the British left has, I have argued elsewhere, taken aboard relativism, and divisive multiculturalism, resulting in a rival communalist bid for Muslim support.3 Other UK-based religious groups are asserting themselves, from Sikhs to the (little noticed) presence of Christian Democrat candidates in elections. Some on the left appear to find it incomprehensible that people dislike the pretensions of the faithful in the political field. Secular hostility is written off as prejudice, notably against Islam. But every kind of religious party has the intention to legislate personal lives, and, increasingly, to impose limitations on freedom of expression. The legislation on Incitement to Religious Hatred seems, at first sight, reasonable. It will, the Home Office announces, sanction, under criminal law words, behaviour or material [which] must be threatening, abusive or insulting, and must be intended to, or likely to, stir up hatred. The hatred must be aimed at people of that group. Not an ideology. That is, hatred of a group of people, defined by their religious beliefs, or lack of beliefs.4 The ambiguity of these terms aside what is an insult, what is a group, what is religion? this would establish a uniquely privileged category of people, immune from the kind of criticism that normally falls on
2. 3. 4. Francis Wheen, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, Fourth Estate, 2004, p5. Andrew Coates, In Defence of Militant Secularism, What Next?, no 29, 2004. See the Home Office web-site.

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figures such as politicians, employers and celebrities. The term group effortless slides into that of institution, and from that it is a short step to consider holy functionaries immune to expressions of dislike. Already there are demands to outlaw any criticism of their religion notably from Muslim groups. Accepting such a special place for religious authority in society constantly erodes ethical autonomy, the ability to make decisions oneself, and the rights of free speech. Marxism and Religion One reason for the British lefts inability to cope with the issues of secularism and religion is Marxisms mixed heritage. Purely rationalist attacks on religion are widely held to have been superseded by this deeper analysis. Yet Marx and Engels did not write systematically on the topic. Two broad themes emerge. They range from a sketch of how religion in general arises, an historical account of the role of religion in class societies and a critique of purely political secularism. All are valuable but seriously incomplete. The first began in Marxs early works. It is a reworking of Feurbachs view that religious entities are projections of human nature (a stand with origins as far back as the pre-Socratic philosophers). Marx, while taking over many elements of sensuous Enlightenment materialism, replaced their bedrock concept of individuals with that of social relations, connections between people. Later analyses, developed by Engels, focused on a groundbreaking sociology of religious movements, making suggestive comparisons between early Christian sects and the utopian socialists. He went on to tackle popular risings in which the religious disguise is only a flag and a mask for attacks on an economic order which is becoming antiquated. In a different vein, Marx attacked the Church of England as a pillar of the Constitution and the tool of religious coercion.5 This, then is a brief critical account of the social causes of belief, though one that would hardly win many theological arguments about the existence or otherwise, of god. The second is a critique of political emancipation, which we would now call secularism. That is a neutral state based on law, which removes religion from the public sphere, but does not liberate civil society from private property. Or, in more general terms, forms of alienation, generated by capitalism, detach human species being and are the foundation of religious institutions. To Marx they cannot be abolished by political secularism. Only communism can do so. A later formulation of this point is found in the first volume of Capital: The religious reflections of the real world can, in any case, only vanish when the practical relations of everyday life between man and man, and man and nature, generally present themselves in a transparent and rational form.6 The idea that ordinary social relations, however logical, can ever be fully transparent is highly contestable. It is doubtful that one will ever see the innermost springs of human action. Or that one will see without deep analysis into the unintended effects of remote causes that touch on everyday life. Will even some general reign of rationality abolish transcendental faith? Religious irra5. Karl Marx, Early Writings, Penguin, 1975; Friedrich Engels, On the History of Early Christianity, in Lewis S Feur (ed), Marx and Engels Basic Writings, Fontana, 1972; Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles on Britain, Progress, 1975. One very underdeveloped area of investigation is the material foundation of Islamicism. This is far from being a spontaneous response to secularisms failures and Western oppression. The financial sources of Islamicist forces, in merchants and banking capital, are explored in Loretta Napoleoni, Terror Inc, Penguin, 2004. Despite its sensationalist title, this is a serious leftist study, and is recommended by Noam Chomsky. Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1, Penguin, 1976, p173.

6.

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tional experience itself has shown remarkable resilience, pops up frequently across societies, and often appears to be an intensely individual event. It would be better to reframe these claims more modestly. That socialism would encourage the withering away of religion, but that conscious effort would be needed to break up the irrationality of religious institutions. The vast areas of human social existence and experience that these categories cover should incite some humility amongst socialists about how exactly this should come about. It is indeed possible to find religious figures willing to agree that the public domain should be free and secular; less prominent are organised religions willing to let their political influence wane. The rights and wrongs of theological claims need to be discussed with a seriousness that goes all the way down. Avoiding such discussion, Marxs statements are regularly used to put off any challenge to religion, on the grounds that a communist mode of production will resolve the matter. Unfortunately, this resembles nothing more than the definition of faith: belief in things unseen. Marx and Engels writings were subsequently used to justify efforts to establish an atheistic state, above all during the early years of the Soviet Union. Their incomplete theory, which casts doubt on such a degree of assertive dogma, however, is also a strength in this respect. Far from setting out an iron doctrine of atheism, with a complete dialectical materialist ontology, they may point us in fruitful directions. Firstly, by providing a healthy warning that a purely legalistic approach to secularism, that leaves equal human rights formal declarations, cannot deal with the roots of religious influence or establish real equality. Secondly, that capitalism, the source of an individualistic civil society, produces mechanisms (alienation in the widest sense) that encourage the growth of religious institutions. That these are not products of the universal capacity of human minds to fantasise or speculate on questions of ultimate being, but the products of specific class structures. Their existence depends sometimes on coercion, but more usually on the consent that structures liberal capitalist democracies, and always on a degree of extracting unproductively the social surplus. Thirdly, that rational social arrangements are the best basis for resolving religious issues, though Marx could do no more than assert whether they would ever actually abolish all belief in a transcendental world. Modern Secularism The creation of rational institutions cannot, however, be postponed until communism. Far from dying, secularism is at the heart of modern debate, wished away by some, violently attacked by others. Islamicism is just one of the most explicit tests facing the left as it tries to grapple with a renewed religious political presence. Laws curbing free speech now on offer do not go as far as many of the god-intoxicated would like, and demands for separate religious legislation are likely to grow. It is not enough to understand the causes of religious movements, and it certainly is a gross error to take sides with one imaginary progressive religious trend. The objective should be to free the political sphere from the competing claims of exclusive faiths. In a sensitive overview of Islam and politics, Fred Halliday offers perhaps one of the best accounts of what is at stake: Secularism is part of, but conceptually distinct from, the issues of political culture and the relation between state and society it involves not only the exclusion of religion, but a climate of tolerance of debate, and the application for reason to social and legal life. Without it, not only do theologically sanctioned authoritarian texts take automatic precedence but
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more importantly, there is available an authority and atmosphere that denies the scope either for individual challenges to the state or for reasoned free discussion of the concept of rights. The central issue is not, therefore, one of finding some more liberal or compatible interpretation of Islamic thinking, but of removing the discussion of rights from the claims of religion itself.7 John Morley was not wrong to speculate that religious zealots would respond more forcibly and with greater clarity when their doctrines are overtly assailed. They claim to believe in free speech, except when it comes to attacking their most cherished beliefs. Who now stands against this claim? It was noticeable that all the main Birmingham political parties, and the entire local religious establishment, sided with the censors of Behzti. The forces of authority are as thick as thieves. Will the left change its attitude and stand for the spirit of Enlightenment freedom? Or will it retreat faced with the clamour of those who brandish theological texts? This is yet to be decided.

Socialists and the European Union

A Cage or an Opportunity For the Left?
ONE of the continuing indications of the current parlous state of the British left is its fixation on the UK or, in the Scottish Socialist Partys case, Scotland as the focus and horizon of political endeavour. Despite lip-service to internationalism, it would appear that the main organisations of revolutionary socialism in this country, plus a number of smaller ones, believe that a withdrawal by the UK from the EU would represent a step towards working-class power in these islands. Indeed it seems that the majority left-wing attitude to the EU is that it is a capitalist club which we would be better off outside although quite what political regime would result from a decision to leave the EU is a rather more uncomfortable subject, given the present attenuated support for the far left among the citizens. Recently, however, there have been signs of an alternative approach, one which rejects the little England viewpoint in favour of international initiatives designed to bring greater democracy to the EU. I have in mind three recent books which readers of this journal would be well advised to consult: these are Another World is Possible If by Susan George (Verso, 2004), The Politics of Empire, edited by Alan Freeman and Boris Kagarlitsky (Pluto Press, 2004) and Remaking Europe by Jack Conrad (November Publications, 2004). Of these three works, possibly the most interesting is Susan Georges. She is, of course, not British: she is an American progressive, and she sees an opportunity in
7. Fred Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation, IB Taurus, 2003, p157.

Martin Carroll

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what one might call a reversal of Cannings policy of the early nineteenth century. The British Prime Minister George Canning in 1827 famously said that he had called the New World into being to redress the balance of the Old (quoted by Elie Halevy, A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century, Volume 2, Ernest Benn, 1961, p247). Susan George wants to reverse the process, summoning a progressive Europe as an alternative pole of attraction to the conservative, neo-liberal and neoimperialist United States a very laudable endeavour. She pulls no punches in her advocacy of this course: To put the matter bluntly, I dont believe another world is possible without a Europe conscious of its indispensable role, determined to remain faithful to, and build upon, its roots, its culture and the more positive aspects of its history, especially its postwar history. Furthermore, unless we manage to construct such a European consciousness and, from that, a European social model very different from the American one, and unless we use such a model as the basis for that other possible world, not only will another world not be possible but Europe itself could well turn into a backwater one with beautiful churches, chateaux and good wines, but a backwater all the same. If Europe doesnt actively and consciously play the role of counterweight to the United States, politically, economically, socially and ecologically, then everything that matters will soon be decided and overseen by an iron-fisted hegemonic American leadership with velvet gloves optional. European capitalism will at the same time become vastly strengthened. (Another World is Possible If, pp109-10, emphasis in original) The current US leadership is clearly alive to the potential EU threat. Susan George notes that the EU now has 450 million people with a combined GNP of 9.6 trillion dollars, as against Americas 280 million people and GNP of 10.5 trillion (p111). The tactic is obviously to try to keep this giant rival as politically divided as possible, as witness the divisions over the invasion of Iraq and Donald Rumsfelds contemptuous reference to Old Europe (that is, France and Germany). Robin Cook reports: It was, therefore, no surprise to read that the neo-conservatives, emboldened by re-election, intend to deploy American pressure to derail development of a closer European Union. (Guardian, 12 November 2004) Susan George notes also the origins of the EU in a determination to avoid national conflicts leading to a war in Europe: One might also recall that the present European Community was founded in the 1950s on the principle that conflicts should be resolved peacefully, through the application of international law. This is less and less the attitude of the American leadership which is attacking the Europeans on everything from their hostility towards Genetically Manipulated Organisms to the reluctance of some of them to approve of invading sovereign nations. (p113) In the face of US pressure, Europe must unite in opposition to it:

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European citizens, and through them, European governments and institutions, must recognise that it is in their interests and in the interests of the planet to liberate themselves from the ideological and political grip of the United States administration Two and a quarter centuries after the US Declaration of Independence from Britain, Britain and with it the rest of Europe must declare its independence from the United States. European citizens will have to spearhead this transformation because their governments will almost certainly not do so spontaneously. (p116, emphasis in original) If this does not happen, the US imperialists will succeed in acquiring an even tighter grip: Through trade rules, America now aspires to control virtually our entire lives, from the movies we see to the food we eat The WTO lawsuit [on genetically modified food] is a direct threat not just to the food supply of Europeans, but also to their freedom to choose their own agricultural systems. (p127) Susan George has some specific proposals: European unity will be crucial and to reinforce it European governments must crack down on tax havens and the black economy as well as harmonise taxes so as to avoid the lowest common denominator, as in Ireland. They should take the initiative on taxing financial transactions, more than half of which concern the Euro and the pound, and use the product of international taxation to constitute a new fund for solidarity with the Southern priority countries and for maintaining and improving social services in the North. They should prove through incentives and through dissuasive legislation that its possible to have a dynamic economy that still preserves and enhances the environment. A social model that is inclusive and not based on fear (of losing ones job, of old age, of illness, etc) is the best guarantee of a successful economy and a cohesive society. (pp130-1) Messrs Freeman and Kagarlitsky note the emergence of a European imperialism in conflict with the USA: The Euro has been conceived as a rival world currency challenging the supremacy of the dollar. The European Security and Defence Initiative is an attempt on the part of European imperialism to break free from its military subservience to US imperialism. There are certainly immense obstacles that confront the EU in its quest to achieve equal status with the US, be it economically, politically or militarily. The effort is nonetheless there, and the rivalry is visible in different parts of the world such as Latin America (since the nineteenth century a hunting ground for the US, but where now Spain, followed by the other Europeans, has gained a serious foothold), Africa (traditionally a European sphere where the US is now increasing its clout), or even the Middle East. (The Politics of Empire, p136) The left is not necessarily the beneficiary of these developments, however:
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To be able to redistribute and repress effectively, the state needs to be as centralised as possible. Unification and integration of markets at the national level in early modern Europe was not achieved through loose confederations and democratic citizen participation but through authoritarian absolutist monarchies. In this sense the democratic deficit of EU structures in Brussels, so often mentioned by Eurosceptics, is exactly adequate to the economic and social sides of the European project. More, there is clearly too much democracy and citizens participation in a united Europe to make it work successfully and to realise the ambitions of its grand design. If the process of neo-liberal and market-driven integration is to be carried out successfully, it will bring about not a European Federation and even less a Europe of regions but a centralised European Empire. Whether this will happen in practice is a different question. The EU provides us with a classical case of combined and uneven development [But] While the core of the newly emerging Euro-bourgeoisie cant repress their nationally rooted partners, it can lead them. And having a common enemy is the way to assemble forces and exercise a successful hegemony. The logic of European integration makes the conflict with the US not only inevitable but also more and more structural, even institutional. The new empire will not emerge without challenging the old one. The crisis of the neo-liberal order demonstrates that resources of the global market are limited as well as the market itself. Overproduction and excess capacity, over-accumulation and the need for cheap resources to stimulate slowing down growth, all provoke stronger competition at every level from companies to international institutions. Competing capitalist projects could peacefully coexist as long as the system provided them all with enough resources. Now times change. Competition becomes rivalry. (p256) Jack Conrad attempts to pull the political threads of all this together in Remaking Europe. (Basically this is an update of his earlier Europe: Meeting the Challenge of Continental Unity, November Publications, 2002.) He identifies a motley assortment of opponents of British membership of the EU: marooned official communists, the Greens, George Galloway and, of course, the United Kingdom Independence Party. What draws them all together is the conviction that the nation-state is the subject of history. In the context of the Euro and a confederal European Union, both empire nostalgia and the national socialist utopia appear as exactly what they are ridiculous. (Remaking Europe, p63) Conrad correctly sees national socialism as a British autarky, and that imposed onto a capitalistically-advanced country fully integrated into the world economy. The result would be chaos as established markets and trading links close off and capital takes flight. (p63) (He does not mention the various countermeasures likely to be adopted by international capital in general and US imperialism in particular against a workingclass takeover of the EU, although presumably he is well aware of them. However, a Europe-wide onslaught on capital would surely stand a better chance of succeeding than an initiative confined to the UK or Scotland, for that matter.) Alan Thornett and the International Socialist Group come in for some especial-

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ly sharp criticism. Thornett is quoted as saying: We are for the dissolution of the EU or Britains withdrawal from it. It is a capitalist club designed to organise the restructuring and concentration of capital to the advantage of the bosses. But our aim is not a capitalist Britain outside the EU. We want a socialist Britain in a socialist Europe. (Even More Unemployment: The Case Against EMU, London, no date, p11) Jack Conrad, of course, is well aware that the existing EU is a capitalist club, but comments acidly: In the ISGs distorted perspectives a capitalist Britain which has recovered its mythic national sovereignty over fiscal, legal and political matters by severing its organic links with Europe in no small part by the working class joining or backing the Europhobic camp would be a major contribution to a future United Socialist States of Europe. Xenophobic and narrow-minded British nationalism is thereby painted red and made over in the imagination into a vehicle for progress. (Remaking Europe, p64) Possibly the key sentence in Conrads book is the following: Much to the chagrin of our national socialists neither a Stalin-type command economy nor the social-democratic state any longer represents a coherent alternative to existing neo-liberal capitalism theoretically. (p81) This proposition needs to be supported by further argumentation and evidence, but it seems plausible to me. The floor is open. It all depends, of course, on what changes one wishes to make to the system, and under what sort of political arrangements. As far as full-blown socialism is concerned, international action is essential: Conrad appropriately quotes Marx and Engels in The German Ideology to the effect that communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples all at once and simultaneously (p84; see Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Volume 5, p49 and/or The German Ideology, Lawrence and Wishart, 1965, p47). (It was for this reason that arrangements were put in hand for the Communist Manifesto to be translated into some half dozen languages upon publication.) Conrad seems realistic when he asserts that: Britain cannot operate effectively in the world in isolation from Europe. Nor can Germany, France, Italy or any other EU country. Only together can they hope to withstand or match, let alone out-compete, the US and Japan. (p96) Here we find Jack Conrad sharing a certain amount of common ground with Susan George although there are also profound differences between them, as both would acknowledge. Jack Conrads perspective is set out in the following passage: Given the relative economic and military strengths of the competing countries in todays world, the varied levels of working-class organisation and consciousness, and the likelihood that the tempo of the struggle for socialism will proceed unevenly in the future, one must conclude that the
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best hope of withstanding the concerted global might of the US counterrevolution lies in securing a united revolutionary Europe. From here socialism can be defended and the flame rapidly spread first perhaps into Russia, China and India, then Africa and Latin America, and finally to the US itself. (p104) One might quarrel with the apparent Europo-centrism of this vision, but it has the merit of identifying a clear target and outlining to some extent a way in which it can be achieved via the gaining of a majority of seats in the European Parliament for a Communist Party of the European Union (see pp68-9). This communist parliamentary majority would then proceed to dispense with the Council of Ministers and the Commission, and act as an EU ruling body. A recent article by Nick Davies in the October/November 2004 number of Workers Action points in the same general direction. Davies writes: Socialists would be seeking to link up with workers throughout the EU and, crucially, with those workers in Eastern Europe currently excluded from fortress Europe, to fight against privatisation, for the defence of jobs and services, and for the transfer of power from the Commission and the Council of Ministers to the European Parliament. Jack Conrad and the CPGB have a full programme for the EU which is perhaps worth quoting in full. For a republican United States of Europe. No to the Brussels constitution. Abolish the council of ministers and sack the unelected commissioners. For a single-chamber, executive and legislative, continental congress of peoples, elected by universal suffrage and proportional representation. Nationalise all banks in the EU and put the ECB under the direct democratic control of the European congress. No to the stability pact and spending limits. Stop privatisation and so-called private finance initiatives. End subsidies to, and tax breaks for, big business. Tax income and capital. Abolish VAT. Yes to workers control over big business and the overall direction of the economy. Yes to a massive programme of housebuilding and public works. For the levelling up of wages and social provisions. For a maximum 35-hour week and a common minimum income. End all anti-trade-union laws. For the constitutional right to organise and the constitutional right to strike. For top-quality health care, housing and education, allocated according to need. Abolish all restrictions on abortion. Fight for substantive equality between men and women. End the Common Agricultural Policy. Stop all subsidies for big farms and the ecological destruction of the countryside. Nationalise all land. Temporary relief for small farmers. Green the cities. Free urban public transport. Create extensive wilderness areas forest, marshes, heath land preserve and rehabilitate animal and plant life for the enjoyment and fulfilment of the population. No to the Rapid Reaction Force, NATO and all standing armies. Yes to a popular, democratic militia, equipped with the most advanced and destructive weaponry.

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No to Fortress Europe. Yes to the free movement of people into and out of the EU. Full citizenship and voting rights for all who may wish it who have been resident in the EU for longer than six months. For the closest coordination of all working-class forces in the EU. Promote EU-wide industrial unions, for example, railways, energy, communications, engineering, civil service, print and media. For a democratic and effective EU Trade Union Confederation. For a single, centralised, revolutionary party: that is, the Communist Party of the European Union. This programme would appear to need some additions, and it also contains one or two questionable formulations. For example, should we really be against all spending limits? Why abolish VAT? Why only temporary relief for small farmers? Despite this, many of the programmes provisions point in the right direction. As I see it the following argument emerges from this survey: 1. US imperialism is currently going through a markedly aggressive phase, likely to bring about increasing restrictions on the freedom of citizens of countries other than the USA, as of US citizens likewise. 2. Sections of European capital are already in conflict with US imperialism in one form or another. 3. Europe can play a crucial role in opposing US imperialism. 4. Socialism in one European country is not a viable option. 5. European workers must unite in order to democratise the EU and turn it into a set of institutions run for the benefit of the majority of Europes populations. As far as I can see, this makes sense as the only practicable socialist policy for Europe.

On the Buses
Farewell to the Routemasters and a Sour Welcome to the Benders
AS above, so below inscribed Hermes Trismegistus on the Emerald Tablet. No longer the case, however, if you are so unfortunate as to be a user of one of the London bus routes where Ken Livingstone has inflicted his notorious bender buses, because there is no upper deck any longer. It takes a true master of contradiction to attempt to reduce traffic congestion by providing vehicles that take up more road space than their predecessors, which require two lanes instead of one to turn a corner, and which have reduced numbers of seats and so have to travel more slowly to ensure the safety of standing passengers. The facts as set out by City Cyclists website Routemaster: 72 seats, five standing passengers allowed; bender: 49 seats, 86 standing allowed. Livingstone has got away with forcing more passengers to stand for more of the time a trick that even the odious Connex couldnt pull off. What is more, such seats as there are have severely reduced leg-room, and an average-sized male adult will find himself bulging out of

John Plant

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his seat into an overcrowded aisle. So even if you do get a seat, you will not be able to utilise your travel time in reading. Livingstone shows the same contortionists skill on many occasions of course for example, when opposing Blair by heaping praise upon him, or when supporting the anti-globalisation movement by encouraging police brutality against it. We cheerful Cockney sparrers have learned to chuckle wryly over such things while pecking at our national dish of chicken tikka massala. Reflecting glumly on our national decline as barometered in the Olympics, we wonder if we wouldnt do better with synchronised ducking and diving set up as an Olympic sport. (Perhaps Paula Radcliffes problem was that she imagined she had run into the congestion charge zone.) Early in his first mayoralty, Livingstone spoke much and loudly about recruiting and training bus conductors, and of buying back Routemasters to deploy on London bus routes. (These excellent vehicles are still running reliably in many areas, having been sold off by London Transport to be replaced by expensive, unreliable and uncomfortable alternatives. The Park Royal factory where they were made was closed in one of the early waves of de-industrialisation of the London economy. The docks, gas-works and railway maintenance facilities went at the same time, and now all need to be reinstated at great expense because of their obvious environmental advantages.) Passengers overwhelmingly supported these proposals they all prefer buses with conductors because they are safer and quicker, and because the Routemasters are much more reliable than any later bus designs. Of the Routemaster/conductor plan, after a short burst of activity it was put into reverse and in the immortal words of Bob Dylan: Nothing was delivered. To illustrate the deterioration in the bus service that is mapped in the line from Routemaster to bender bus, I will report the experience of a friend temporarily unable to drive as a result of a work accident that left him using crutches for a few weeks. He needed to travel about a mile and a half, from Forest Gate into Stratford, to collect medication. He could have taken a minicab, and if the issue ever arises again, will certainly do so. He was puzzled, on arriving at his nearest bus stop, to find that it had been moved some 20 yards down the road. The bus shelter, however, occupied its traditional location. This presented my friend with his first quandary if he waited in the shelter (naturally the acid-rain was falling gently from heaven), would he have the time to get to the bus stop on his crutches before it made off again? And if he did, would he not be at the back of the queue, behind those willing or equipped to stand at the stop in the rain, and also behind those in the shelter who could get to the stop faster than he, regardless of the time spent waiting? There were complications to the evaluation of this problem. The first of these was that the new stop had been built in a muddy puddle, generous in both its width and breadth. Its depth could not easily be ascertained. Doubtless the contractors installing the new stops had been given specific instructions about their work, which did not refer to factors other than location. The second complication was that the new stop was located next to an assembly of especially noisome municipal bins, the contents of which were spilling over onto the small area of pavement not occupied by the puddle. My friend, a man of insatiable curiosity (a characteristic not unconnected with his temporarily having to use crutches), did not yet understand why the bus stop

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should be so unaccountably separated from the shelter. Bus Stop and Shelter go naturally together, like New and Labour, like Livingstone and presume. What presumptuous man had set them asunder? Looking about him, my friend noticed a gang of what appeared to be transport officials in day-glow safety jackets, standing together under a tree and recording vehicles with clicking devices on clipboards. Discerning a potential Anglophone among them, he asked her the reason for moving the bus stop. It was to accommodate the new, long, bender bus, which would otherwise have blocked the delivery bay of a nearby shop. Shelters would be moved later, but the company that puts the advertising on the shelters had to give their agreement first. It occurred to my friend that the shop for which such consideration had been given had been vacant for some years, and was near-derelict. It might have been possible to delay the relocation of the bus stop until such time as the shelter could be moved, the puddle drained and the bins relocated. However his interlocutor had resumed her diligent clicking. The question of where to wait for the bus was not yet exhaustively set out. The bender bus has three doors, each of which serves both as entrance and exit. Livingstones edict requires passengers to make use of them all. Consequently, a passenger has first to decide which of the three available doors gives the best chance of access to the reduced number of seats. Secondly, he or she must guess at the position where the middle and rear doors might be when the bus stops, since only the position of the front of the bus is made clear by the bus stop. Other passengers with more experience or superior faculties may well guess better, and consequently compete more effectively for scarce seats or standing space within reach of handrails. But experience and accuracy will only be of value if the driver stops his bus with its head accurately aligned with the bus stop, and where only one bus is present. A competitive scramble for space on the bus is the inevitable result, and this is rendered all the more squalid by the need to cross the path of those passengers attempting to alight (alight is a wonderful verb that applies only to London buses nobody ever alights from Concorde or the Woolwich Free Ferry) from the bus at the same time. My friend reflected that a parallel to this situation would be like arriving at the Post Office and finding a series of queues, each for a different cashier. The aspirant client would have to join one of the queues not knowing whether, when he reached the front of the chosen queue, the cashier would have any stamps, postal orders, road tax discs or whatever. Did this sequence of observations at least give my friend the full map of the problem of where to stand to wait for the bus? Far from it. There are two buses that my friend could have taken from Forest Gate to Stratford, numbers 25 and 86. It is the 25 that has been converted to the bender system, while the 86 continues to be operated with front-entrance double-deckers. These have one entrance at the front and one exit in the middle. Any rational calculation of where to stand to maximise your chances of being able to travel to Stratford would therefore have to give additional weight to the position at the front of the bus, to reflect the probability of an 86 arriving before a 25. The calculation would also require an hedonic modification factor to correspond to the greater number of seats on the double-decker than the bender. As the holder of an MBA, my friend was of course familiar with a wide range of techniques for the resolution of problems with multiple unknowns, but neither games theory nor decision trees yielded any clarity. It was fortunate that he had not wasted time on complex calculations, because a whole new dimension to the prob-

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lem, hitherto unsuspected, was about to reveal itself. A Livingstone edict some time ago had deprived passengers of the traditional right to pay their fares to the drivers of buses in Central London. Instead, they are forced to purchase tickets from a machine located somewhere in the vicinity of the bus stop. The 25 runs through Central London, and consequently Livingstone has taken advantage of the introduction of the bender buses to extend this restriction to the entire route. Competitive Scramble The 86 does not run through Central London, and at present therefore does not require passengers to pre-purchase tickets. The ticket machines are notoriously unreliable, frequently refusing perfectly good currency, and often dispensing incorrect change. Passengers therefore prefer to hedge their bets by not using the ticket machine until it is clear that a 25 is arriving earlier than an 86. At the bus stop where my friend was waiting, a bend in the road shortens the sight-line, so there is very little time available between seeing the 25 and having to be in possession of a ticket in order to board. A further competitive scramble among passengers is the result. Consequently, a new factor enters the decision about where to stand to wait for the bus should it be near enough to the ticket machine to be sure of being able to buy a ticket in the short time available? If yes, then the position adopted is less than optimal in relation to any of the three available doors. In such circumstances, of course, nobody observes the traditional civilised practice of queuing and respecting the rights of others who have waited longer. This is not entirely Livingstones fault, though he has done nothing to correct it. The habit of queuing for buses was mainly instilled in the working class during the so-called world wars, when the public transport systems were substantially disrupted by rival capitalist powers dropping bombs on them. It reflected the ethic of collective action towards a shared objective the defeat of a rival capitalist power whose characteristics and policies were presented as more hateful than those of the native capitalists. This habit was instilled in subsequent generations until the Thatcher era, when the ethic of competition was elevated, and it became not merely acceptable, but positively approved of, to shove aside the elderly, the sick, the pregnant, the disabled, in order to be seen to arrive early at work. The bender bus is a standard design used in several European cities, and is illsuited to the narrow streets and tight corners of London. It is manufactured in Germany by Mercedes Benz Evobus division, under the brand name Citaro. Livingstones expectations of Vorsprung durch technic received a sharp setback, however, when within days of their introduction the whole fleet had to be withdrawn from service, following a series of dangerous fire outbreaks, and alarming incidents where the concertina connecting the front and back segments tore open. In contrast to the massive capital inputs into these euro-benders, Colin Curtis, the original designer of the Routemaster (when working as London Transports vehicle engineering manager), has been unable to get any backing for his updated son of Routemaster design. Some cynics have recently suggested that the purge of the Routemaster and its replacement by the German bender is intended to impress the assessors of the competitive bids to host the 2012 Olympics. While Euro-standards (intended to improve accessibility for wheelchair users and other disabled) will require the Routemaster to be phased out long before the Olympics, they would still be legal through the process of assessment (and transport infrastructure is one of the judgement criteria).

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One can see that a Mayor ruthlessly set on winning the Olympics for London might be prepared to sacrifice large sums of money and the comfort and convenience of travellers, to make a favourable impression on the assessors. This seems to be the only credible explanation for the gadarene acceleration in the programme to inflict the benders on London. As recently as September 2002, BBC News was able to quote London Transport as saying the Routemasters will be in service for many years to come. It would appear that in Livingstones regime many means a little less than two. (Bear in mind this style of arithmetic when you are being sold on the long-term benefits of the Olympics. Those benefits that are intended to last for many years may turn out to be with you for a little less than two.) The wheelchair access argument is deficient. It is certainly true that the benders have platforms that can be extended to allow easy boarding or alighting for wheelchair users, people with pushchairs and other equipment for conveying offspring, and in theory at least for those carrying heavy luggage. In practice, they have to be operated by the driver, who will rarely be able to see down the crowded bus full of standing passengers. A common result is for the intended beneficiaries to be carried past their intended destination, until such time as they are able to attract the drivers attention. In addition, it is evident to any regular traveller on the bender that getting wheelchairs, pushchairs, etc, on and off the bus is only the beginning of the problem. Even if the aisles were not already crowded with the 86 permitted standing passengers (and of course the driver is in no position to count), they would not be wide enough to contain wheelchairs and pushchairs without blocking them completely. The outcome is obviously not the creation of a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere on the buses, but one of irritation and impatience. Inherent Alienation So with alienation inherent in the design, it is not surprising to see relations between passengers and drivers deteriorating. Passengers no longer see the drivers as fellow workers, but as machine-like elements in the oppressive bureaucracy. Drivers are able to slip into that role with increasing ease. For reasons unfathomable to man, the bus stop at Bow Church DLR station has been selected as the place where the 25 will wait if it is running ahead of schedule. On such occasions, the driver will stare zombie-like ahead, ignoring passengers enquiries as to why the bus is not moving, and why the doors are closed against recently-arrived passengers. Although I have not been able to find any reliable information, it is rumoured that union membership has plummeted among bus drivers. They clearly feel as alienated from the process as do the passengers. Just occasionally a human spark will glow among the embers. Recently at a bus stop near Mile End, I witnessed such an incidence on the 25 a black female passenger with one small child on foot and another in a pushchair had explained to the driver that the ticket machine had repeatedly rejected her banknote. The driver, a black male, had ordered her off the bus to retry the machine, and as soon as she stepped off had closed the door. Several passengers responded angrily, and one of them operated the emergency door handle. Together they refused to allow the bus to move off without the unfortunate woman and her children. Routemaster enthusiasts they are surprisingly numerous and coherent have been vocal but politically ineffective in their criticisms of Livingstones plans. Website http://73bus.typepad.com compiles anecdotes, snippets and gnomisms

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with a distinctly subversive tinge, and is well worth a look at for its inventiveness. It offers some interesting examples of creative vandalism. Militant cyclists, some of whom have been allies heretofore of Livingstones persecution of car users, are said to have produced stickers to transform the warning on the back of the bender to read Warning this bus is too long. In another example, this aimed at the tube, a perfect copy of the London Transport typeface adorns a platform seat with the message to impatient or delayed travellers, You might as well sit down and wait like the rest of us. City Cyclists, a web-site operated by and for determined cyclists in London expresses severe criticisms of the benders, and their position is echoed by the rather respectable London Cycling Campaign. (www.blagged. pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ citycyclists/bendy.html). There are also wistful web diaries by people who have been to different areas of London to travel on the last Routemaster on each route, as their preferred vehicles are withdrawn from service. It seems this became such a popular activity that additional buses had to be laid on. No doubt there were protracted theological discussions about which of these was truly the last. Web-site www.savetheroutemaster.moonfruit.com collates information on the campaign and drives it forward. Save the Routemaster points out the massive wasted expenditure on the renovation of Routemasters, which was only completed in March 2004, bringing them up to current emission standards. This can only mean that Livingstone was knowingly wasting our money on this programme, while making the deals to replace them with benders. But of course Livingstone and the GLA Labour Group are well insulated against all such polite opposition. He can be entirely confident that such locallybased criticism will never make it through the labyrinth of Labour Party policymaking from the disgruntled ward meeting to the smooth-suited sherry-swilling policy forums. In addition, they can always blame any problems on the privatelyowned bus companies that still masquerade as a public transport system for London. And their final line of defence is the impenetrable, impermeable, imperturbable bureaucracy of Transport for London. This organisation learned quickly from the referenda on joining the Euro. So when it finds that residents of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea dont want the congestion charge extended to their areas, or that residents of Ealing and Hounslow dont want a tramway disrupting the already fragile traffic system, they know what to do. Keep consulting the public until they get it right. Years ago, the Editorial Board of the dear old Socialist Press would always have insisted on me drawing the programmatic conclusions of an article like this, and presenting them as bullet points in boldface. They would have challenged me to point the way from disgruntlement to transitional demands to workers power. (The worker as consumer was always a problem for the orthotrots would they have supported the Australian commuters in their refusal to pay fares?) How would you do that these days? By all means make use of the samizdat-equivalent web-sites to support and encourage each other. Take every opportunity of creating difficulties for the bus companies and the transport bureaucracy keep passenger complaints pouring in and insist on responses, make a complaint every time a bus driver cuts you up, photograph drivers every time they violate the yellow boxes and insist they are persecuted with the same vigour as private drivers, sabotage the ticket machines, resist dictatorial bus drivers, etc.

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But the fact is that the Labour Party (behind the Livingstone stalking horse) has wasted millions of pounds of our (we being the victims of local taxation) money on new buses that were not and are not needed, with no electoral basis in their manifesto, no effective means of holding them to political account, and the result of which is a very severe reduction in the quality of the service. And its not just a question of a cynical waste of money on near-worthless assets. Local authorities do that all the time the only original feature of Livingstones bender scam is its scale. The significant change that Livingstone has been able to achieve on behalf of New Labour is the radical dehumanisation of the working class in the process of travel to and from work. Eventually there will be big political bills to be paid. Buses and trams have been used as the basis of spontaneous barricades for at least the last hundred years (eye-witness accounts of street-fighting in the Moscow and St Petersburg of 1905 attest). With the exception of a couple of urban motorways, there is no road in London that cannot be stopped by a bender bus slammed across the road, levered onto its side and set on fire. Their predilection for bursting into flames makes them ideal for this purpose.

Germany Today
The Present Condition, Perspectives and Problems of the German Labour Movement
EVER since 1998, Germany has been ruled by a RedGreen government. After a few cosmetic repairs of the measures of the preceding coalition of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the so-called liberals of the Free Democrats (FDP), the new government introduced a neo-liberal policy in all fields, called the reform of the welfare state. Step by step, the system of social security was further dismantled, and this process is being systematically continued. All social payments old-age pensions, sickness and unemployment allowances are being reduced, while the method of contributions is being fundamentally changed. Hitherto, employers and employees contributed 50 per cent each; now the employers part is frozen, while the employees part is rising. Old-age and health insurance are partly privatised; employees are compelled to sign up with private insurance companies to supplement the now entirely insufficient and declining payments from the public schemes. We face a concerted attack from the government, the organisations of the industrialists and the media on all achievements of the struggle of the trade unions. Working hours are extended in times of rising unemployment! holidays are cut, salaries and wages are lowered. Worst are the attacks on the unemployed. Statutory payments are stopped after one year; payments from the thirteenth month are means-tested and have been radically cut to 345 Euros a month below the poverty line. In foreign policy, the government follows the line of its predecessor. It actively joined the aggression against Yugoslavia, which was broken into small pieces. For

Theodor Bergmann

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this military intervention lies were produced that were similar to the lies of Blair and Bush for the war in Iraq. The German Minister of Defence, Rudolf Scharping, of the SPD, invented a Yugoslav horse-shoe plan that called for the eviction of all Albanians from Kosovo. No trace of this plan was found; and it is entirely forgotten today. The government joined the war in Afghanistan, and gives active support to the US war in Iraq except for the dispatch of frontline soldiers. The German army has been modernised and equipped to be able to engage in peace-keeping and other missions all over the world. In addition to NATO commitments, a joint military force is also being slowly developed for intervention out of area (which means beyond the defence and protection of Germanys own and NATO territory). As a reward for what the government calls taking higher responsibility and enforcing peace, it aspires to a permanent seat on the World Security Council, hitherto reserved for the five victors of the Second World War. At home, the Minister of Home Affairs tightens all controls both against Germanys citizens and against refugees and immigrants who are knocking at German doors. Step by step, bourgeois democracy is being undermined by the use of lobbies, corruption on the highest level, government committees outside of parliament, the capitalist media monopoly, which implies capitalist hegemony, and an administration, judiciary and police openly biased against the working class. For this I shall give two examples. During the strike of the metalworkers in eastern Germany in 2003, scabs were flown into the factories by police helicopters. Open-air demonstrations of neo-fascists are always permitted and protected, while left-wing demonstrations face bureaucratic barriers and often a hostile police force. There is no difference between the strategy of the present government and its predecessor, just as there is no difference between the government and the two capitalist opposition parties. They support most of the governments measures; they merely ask for more of them and for their faster implementation. The leaders of the industrialists organisations praise Schrder, and encourage him to continue in the same direction. The difference with the former government is that the RedGreens have been far more successful in integrating the trade unions and in politically coordinating the SPD in its strategy. Some people claim that Schrder has no clear strategy and direction, which is allegedly proved by quarrels between his ministers and frequent changes in government measures. This is nonsense. The clear aim of the government is to support the efforts of industrialists and bankers. They use the deep economic crisis and the weakness, acquiescence and submission of the reformist union leadership to roll back all the achievements of working-class struggles. It is an open offensive on the part of German capitalism. This offensive is supported by an almost total mediamonopoly (what Gramsci called hegemony), and by the fact that almost all the reformist leaders have accepted and internalised the thinking and arguments of the capitalist class. The Bourgeoisies Arguments The bourgeoisie claims that Germanys economic competitiveness in the world market is threatened, in spite of the fact that the only real competitor German industry has in the field of world exports is Japan, and that great enterprises can afford to lose billions on purchasing half-bankrupt firms abroad. Thus the car-maker Daimler bought Chrysler and half of Mitsubishi and part of Hyundai. The same is true for Siemens, Deutsche Bank and Mnchen Re-Insurance and many others.

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Furthermore, the industrialists complain that German wages and social security fees are unbearable, even though they make billions of profits. Exploiting the fear of growing unemployment, they now systematically blackmail the employees with the threat: either you accept lower wages and unpaid overtime 40 hours and more as against officially 35 hours, or we transfer our production lines to low-wage countries. The threat can only be partly realised, but the fear of unemployment has already had a real effect. Until two years ago, there was the Alliance for Employment, Training and Competitivity. Under government guidance, the leaders of the capitalists and the trade unions held several meetings. The former promised rather, deceived the union leaders by the promise that they would create jobs under the conditions of very moderate wage demands. No new jobs were offered; on the contrary, unemployment rose and continues to rise all the time. Now, after the servile behaviour of the union leadership, this alliance is entirely forgotten; the attacks of the industrial managers are open and direct, and their demands are growing. The free press accompanies the attacks with the wise and beautiful argument: when we work more hours, we shall create more jobs in the long run. The freedom of the big capitalists to own and rule the media gives them the means to stupefy and to deride us. The neo-liberal strategy slowly shows its effects. Before the general elections, the SPD had promised social improvements. The opposite was put into practice after its narrow electoral success. The response is that many thousands of members are leaving the party, hundreds of thousands of voters deserted the SPD during all the elections in 2004. But even the electoral defeats have not changed the mind of the SPD leaders. Schrder insisted that there is no alternative to his strategy, thus there is also no need for any debate. He assured his party that he would not waver and would continue with this inevitable modernisation and reform, even if a defeat in the next general elections became a possibility. The day after the last defeat he joined a meeting of the industrialists; their leader Rogowski praised him and encouraged him to continue on his way. He blamed his opponents on the left, saying that they intend to topple his redgreen government. Thats another mendacious argument, as we can be quite sure that it is his strategy that will bring about a defeat in the 2006 elections, and not his few critics in the SPD and the many critics in the unions, whether his strategy is on the way to destroy the last remnants of social democracy, although the SPD even 13 years ago was an outstanding cultural achievement of the working class. The same existential threat hovers over the unions. During the last 12 years they lost more than one-third of the membership due to inactivity and rather too much cooperation with and servility towards our class enemies. But even today the unions are the largest, most important and potentially democratic organisations of the working class, originally founded for the protection of their class interests. The membership is still around eight million. The decline of both the SPD and the trade unions, which are dominated by the SPD, seems to me to be the logical final phase of reformism. Its history began in 1898 with Eduard Bernsteins revision of Marxism, which was eagerly accepted by the union leaders. The reformist theories fit well together with the ascent of capitalism and the electoral victories of the SPD, the formal recognition of the unions by their capitalist counterparts and the growth of our organisations. Some reformists seriously extrapolated that when the SPD won the majority in the central parliament it would introduce socialism by a parliamentary vote. It was also the time of a rise in the liv-

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ing standards of the workers. The next step was taken in 1914, when the majority of the SPD leadership joined the war policies of Imperial Germany, and believed at that time that the capitalist state also was ours. The move of 1914 revealed a deep ideological split, which later had to be followed by an organisational split. The next step was the cooperation of the SPD leaders with the defeated army in the bloody oppression of the revolution of 1918. In the party conference in Leipzig in 1925, the programme was adapted somewhat to fit its actual tactics: no more talk of social revolution, and only gradual progress towards socialism by reforms within the limits of the bourgeois constitution. After the defeat of the German working class with Hitlers victory in 1933, there was a very brief period when some leftists in exile confessed the errors of the party and demanded that the SPD should once more become a revolutionary party. This spell, however, was very short-lived, no more than an interregnum, until the leadership from Berlin was able to take over the reins again in exile. After this, the road to further revisionism was taken. After 1945, the reestablished SPD in the Western zones under the leadership of Kurt Schumacher was strongly anti-communist and anti-Soviet Russia. In 1959, at the party conference in Bad Godesberg, a new programme was accepted, omitting all mention of socialism and confirming that the SPD as a peoples party would fight for reforming capitalism. The political leader on this road was Herbert Wehner, a former ultra-leftist communist. When the SPD later formed a coalition government in Bonn with the Christian Democrats in 1966, and thereafter with the Free Democrats in 1969, it implemented a pure capitalist line in all fields. This period lasted from 1969 to 1980. After 18 years of the chancellorship of Helmut Kohl of the CDU and several changes of the SPD chairmen, in 1998 the SPD again won the general elections and formed a coalition with the Green Party. But the SPD is not red anymore; and the Greens are not green, as I sketched out briefly before. Clearly, there is no inner-party democracy in the SPD whatsoever. In the higher levels of the party cadres, no one expresses any criticism of the neo-liberal policy of Schrder and his assistants. The social structure and composition of the membership has changed in a lengthy process. Real workers have largely left the party, which is now largely composed of lower-middle-class employees of government and public services. And the leadership has wholeheartedly accepted the idea that they represent the centre of the society. They feel integrated into the capitalist state and responsible for the modernisation of the economy, which means (stripped of the Orwellesque doublespeak) supporting the capitalist attack on working-class standards, a maximum reduction of the social security system, the privatisation of all profitable branches of services and the ascent of German capitalism as an important power in world politics. Schrder, Mntefering and Benneter, the troika leading the SPD, emphasise all the time: There is no alternative! Therefore there is deep dissatisfaction, but no debate. In the upper ranks of the SPD and among its approximately 250 members of parliament, there was only one, Mrs Larcher, who dared to oppose the militarist decision in 2002 to join the war against Afghanistan. She resigned from parliament and left the party. I cannot see anyone in the party in this bureaucratised stratum who is willing to lift a red flag, like Karl Liebknecht did in 1914. This, however, does not at all reflect the real mood of the working-class masses.

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The Situation of the Trade Unions A similar division is visible in the trade unions. (We have to understand that the situation is different from the one in the British unions. In Britain, the general secretary or president is really elected and sometimes replaced. In our unions and in our most democratic country of the world, a union leader once elected, mostly the only one nominated to be elected, remains in office until retirement.) A small part of the membership might be or might have been happy until now with the standards achieved, until the new comprehensive attack on these standards took place. A large part, however, of the membership is deeply dissatisfied and takes its distance from this government. In the lower ranks of the union employees and among a large part of the shop stewards there is deep dissatisfaction with the leadership and a desire is apparent for another strategy, one of active resistance and confrontation, of the real use of our tools of pressure and defence. Several local committees of leftist trade unionists sprung up in 2003 and 2004, and a certain coordination has been achieved in a loose network and a small network newsletter. This network is called Alle gemeinsam gegen Sozialkahlschlag (All United Against Abolition of Social Security). It plans its activities on nation-wide basis, and tried to channel all local and regional activities into another day of large demonstrations in November 2004. This left current in the unions looks for allies outside of the unionised workers and employees, among the groups of jobless and among the new social movements. The actually best known is Attac, which both cooperates with and partly tries to dominate the rising protest activities. The new social movements are clearly an important factor just at this moment. My criticism and doubt is briefly summarised in two main points. Attac is even less democratic than the unions. It is volatile and has no clear structure, and is not really elected by the rank-and-file. It is not at all really anti-capitalist and socialist in its programme. It is a very heterogeneous body. A New Election Alternative The dissatisfaction with Schrders capitalist offensive and the hitherto close collaboration of the union leadership has led to the emergence of the Wahlalternative Arbeit und soziale Gerechtigkeit (Electoral Alternative: Employment and Social Justice). It intends to offer an alternative to the SPD in the forthcoming general elections, nominally planned for 2006, and might later form a party. Its formation is in its first stage, and its programme not yet clear. Thus, it is difficult for the moment to evaluate it. However, it responds to the deep unrest and dissatisfaction of the working class (including the unemployed and the old-age pensioners) with the government. This group is largely supported by lower functionaries of the two largest unions, the metalworkers and service employees. The Party of Democratic Socialism is mainly rooted in Eastern Germany, and has not taken root in Western Germany. After the electoral defeat in 2002, it picked up a bit in the late spring elections of 2004 for the European parliament and some regional elections in the east. This success was, however, achieved as a result of a quite low turnout of the voters. Thus, a similar success in 2006 is not assured at all. The PDS and the electoral alternative, mentioned above, will have to join hands and establish a joint list, if they want to overcome the five per cent barrier. (The electoral law demands either winning three constituencies or five per cent, if the partys votes in all constituencies are taken into account.) The official Communist Party, the DKP, lost 90 per cent of its membership dur-

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ing the late 1980s, because it rejected any self-criticism and reform. There are at present a few signs of self-criticism beginning. The Industrialists Broad Offensive The latest developments in the leading economic sector and its leading enterprises are significant for the aims of the industrialists and the attitude of the metal-workers union. In the spring of 2004, a new wage agreement was signed first for the metalworkers of the pilot district of Baden-Wrttemberg. The union made several concessions extended working hours, some cuts in the extra payments (night-shift bonus, Christmas bonus, etc). All wages should be raised by 2.7 per cent in 2004 and by 2.79 per cent in 2005. A few weeks later, the countrys second-largest employer, Daimler Chrysler, declared that the workers around Stuttgart should lower production costs by 500 million Euros, otherwise 6000 workers would be fired and the production of some models transferred partly to South Africa and to northern Germany, where wages are lower. A storm of protest rose in the workshops, spontaneous strikes took place, during which the workers in some factories left the lines and blocked a main highway. A few days after this protest, Berthold Huber, vice-chairman of the metal-workers union, took the negotiations in his hands and signed a new agreement. The main points were that the workers renounce the agreed increase of 2.79 per cent in 2005, and all non-productive workers (cleaners, canteen and similar services) would be excluded from the higher salaries of the metal-workers. As an equivalent, the enterprise promised no firing of employees until 2012, if the economic conditions are favourable (!); the management would forego altogether four million Euros of their remuneration after they raised it by 130 per cent in 2003! Thus, the workers will contribute 496 million Euros. Naturally, many enterprises will now follow this example of successful blackmail, achieved with the full cooperation of the union leadership. The encouragement for the industrialists implies disillusionment and deep disappointment for the union membership. The new agreement, which supersedes the earlier agreement of 2004, was signed by the union negotiators without any democratic legitimisation. Neither the workers nor the wage committee were involved, or were even consulted. Furthermore, a deep split has been created between producers and services on the workshop floor, this also flouts the principle of our union: one workshop one union. The Lessons I shall try to summarise the lessons. 1. Reformism in politics and economy is possible in good weather only, and it is advantageous for the bourgeoisie, because cooperation with the capitalists limits the necessary demands of the workers. It is even more harmful to the workers in times of economic crisis. 2. The bourgeois state is a class state and acts always in the interests of the capitalists. The reformists are accepted, and tolerated in government for the dirty work they do; when this is done, they might be kicked out. 3. Capitalism cannot be stripped of its characteristic features. The system is one of maximum exploitation and profit maximisation, and is prone to frequent crises. It creates and welcomes mass unemployment. The reformist ideal of an educated, domesticated, restrained, organised capitalism is unrealistic. The system is tame only when labour is strong and can instil fear in the capitalists. The ap39

4. 5.

peal to patriotism, morality and ethics of our capitalists and managers is a primitive joke. The idea of economic democracy in a capitalist society, first developed in the 1920s, and revived as Mitbestimmung (co-management) of workers representatives in the management of factories and enterprises, is unrealistic. The neo-liberal strategy of the SPD, accepted and supported by the union leadership, undermines the trust of the members and voters, and might finally destroy the basic organisations of labour. The special (undemocratic and secret) type of negotiations with the employers undermines the self-confidence of the workers, and harms solidarity on the shop floor and damages classconsciousness. Unsolved Issues

There are two main issues for which we still have to find internationalist solutions, if we want to prevent the introduction of nationalist propaganda: the effects of globalisation and the transnational mobility of capital and capital goods. There is no reply yet to the threat of transfer of production lines to low-wage countries whether this is feasible or only an empty threat. The national reply given by the German union leaders the lowering of salaries and cooperation and joint responsibility for the competitiveness of German capitalism might inter alia support nationalism and hostility against our peers in the poorer countries. The nationalist reply of the majority of union leaders in the US Buy American campaign also cannot be ours. The internationalist reply might contain the following components: 1. Checking the assertions of the management and finding arguments against them. 2. Refuting the demands for higher profits. 3. Demand shorter working hours as a counter to the firing of employees. 4. Creation of jobs in an enlarged public sector, which is not micro-economically profitable, but is vital for maintenance and improvement of our livelihood. 5. Active protection of the workshop plant and equipment against dismantling. Here we might learn from factory occupations in Germany after 1945 against dismantling, and in France in the 1960s and 1970s. 6. As the bourgeoisie and government reject these demands, we must aim at a non-capitalist, that is, a socialist society. One of the main effects of neo-liberal strategy is the undermining of solidarity at all levels national and international. Our strategies of both defence and offensive should be based on international solidarity. This should be both the goal and the instrument of our socialist strategy.

One Hundred Years of the SPGB

ON 12 June 2004, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, more popularly known as the SPGB, even though, despite Militant, it now prefers Socialist Party, marked its cen-

Adam Buick

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tenary, making it by far the longest-surviving political party in Britain calling itself socialist. Anglo-Marxism If the SPGB has survived for this length of time, it must have been because it filled some need, or at least some niche, in working-class politics in Britain. But what need? The SPGB has been described as being in the tradition of what Eric Hobsbawm once called Anglo-Marxism. This would be a Marxism that arose in English-speaking countries, with their well-established conditions of political democracy, and which not only envisaged the working class making some use of existing political institutions to win control of political power, but which also emphasised that the main task of a socialist political organisation was in preparation for this education, or making Socialists as one prominent Anglo-Marxist, William Morris, used to put it. Besides the SPGB, it would cover the Social Democratic Federation, the Socialist League, the De Leonist Socialist Labor Party of America, the Socialist Party of America and the Socialist Party of Canada. The SPGB was one of the products of what Chushichi Tsuzuki, in an article that appeared in the International Review of Social History in 1956, called the impossibilist revolt in the SDF (the other product was the Socialist Labour Party of Great Britain, founded in Scotland the year before at a meeting chaired by James Connolly and which regarded itself as the exact equivalent in Britain of the SLP of America). The impossibilists, as they were dubbed by the leadership of the SDF, were dissatisfied with two things in particular: the domination of the SDF by a clique around HM Hyndman, who had founded the organisation 20 years previously, and which reflected its lack of internal democracy; and its opportunist concentration on trying to obtain certain reforms of capitalism as supposed stepping stones to socialism. Significantly, these were the same two issues over which William Morris and others had broken away from the SDF at the end of 1884 to form the Socialist League. The SPGBs inaugural meeting was attended by some 140 people, mainly members and expelled members of the SDFs London branches. While the SLP could boast of having its inaugural meeting chaired by James Connolly and attended by Tom Bell and Arthur McManus, two future leaders of the early British Communist Party, and by one future Labour MP (Neil Mclean), present at the SPGBs were two future Labour MPs (Valentine McEntee, who ended up in the House of Lords, and George Hicks, who as the leader of the building workers union, had been TUC chairman in 1927), another early Communist Party leader, journalist and writer (TA Jackson), as well as a future supporter of Larkins Irish Transport and General Workers Union and its Citizen Army (Con Lehane, also known Con OLehane and Con OLyhane) and a syndicalist pamphleteer who worked with Tom Mann (EJB Allen, whose pamphlets still feature on anarchist web-sites and anthologies). Whatever else this may or may not indicate and whatever the SPGB thought of their subsequent political trajectory (which wasnt much of course), this at least shows that the meeting that took place a hundred years ago to found the SPGB was not one that had no relevance to general political developments in England and Ireland, since both McEntee and Lehane (the SPGBs first General Secretary and a fluent Irish speaker) had previously been members of the Irish Socialist Republican Party which James Connolly took the lead in forming in 1896 as the equivalent in Ireland of the SDF in Britain.

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Although the term Anglo-Marxist is not entirely inappropriate, the SPGB was also influenced by Continental Marxism, by (of course) the German Social Democratic Party and its main theorist, Karl Kautsky (three of the SPGBs first four pamphlets were translations of parts of Kautskys Erfurt Programme, the fourth was by William Morris). But also, perhaps not so obviously, it was influenced by the French Guesdists, as the Marxists in France were known after Jules Guesde who had been instrumental in setting up the Parti Ouvrier Franais in 1880 (and whose declaration of principles was drafted in Marxs study). A number of articles translated from Guesdists appeared in the pre-First World War issues of the SPGBs journal, which is still going, the Socialist Standard. Except on reforms and on patriotism, the SPGB and the Guesdists Parti Socialiste de France (as the POF had become in 1902 before merging in 1905 into a united social democratic party in France, and after which the SPGB was probably named in preference to Social Democratic Party, the other possible name discussed at the inaugural meeting) shared a number of key positions, in particular on the imperative need for the working class to gain control of political power before trying to dispossess the capitalist class (the political expropriation of the bourgeoisie must precede its economic expropriation, as the Guesdists used to put it). This led both the Guesdists and the SPGB to be quite opposed to anarchist and syndicalist direct action, and talk of taking and holding the means of production by industrial action alone, as counter-productive, not to say suicidal. This distinguished both groups from most of the other anti-revisionists in the intransigent Marxist tendency within international Social Democracy with which the early SPGB identified itself, such as Rosa Luxemburg and Anton Pannekoek who did try to incorporate the mass strike into socialist tactics. Despite this, Red Rosa received a favourable mention in the Socialist Standard in 1907, which translated and published part of her speech at one of her trials. Peaceably If We May A distinguishing feature of the SPGB, as compared to the various Leninist parties and groups that have existed in Britain since 1918, has been its typically AngloMarxist insistence on the existence, as a precondition for socialism, of a working class imbued with socialist understanding You cant have socialism without socialists and that, once a sufficient majority of workers have acquired such understanding, they can, and should, use existing elective political institutions to win control of political power with the sole purpose of abolishing capitalism and ushering in socialism. This position has been caricatured by the SPGBs Leninist opponents as meaning that the SPGB has been committed to a mere pacific, constitutional, parliamentary road to socialism, and has led to it being dubbed the Small Party of Good Boys. Actually, the position of the founder-members of the SPGB was the same as Marxs as outlined by Engels in his preface to the English edition of Capital in 1886, that is, that, although in Britain the working class might well be able to win control of political power entirely by peaceful and legal means, it would most probably have to use this to suppress a pro-slavery rebellion as the capitalist class could be expected to resist their expropriation. In other words, the socialist revolution as a complete change in the basis of society would be legal and constitutional, but not necessarily entirely peaceful. In fact, the early members of the SPGB didnt think that in practice it would be peace-

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ful, but that the working class would have to use the state to overcome capitalist resistance. After all, 1904 was only 33 years after the bloody suppression of the Paris Commune, the anniversary of whose proclamation the SPGB used to celebrate every 18 March until the First World War. Today, SPGB members are more inclined to discount the possibility of a violent capitalist opposition to their legal expropriation, but it is not a pacifist organisation, the old Chartist slogan peaceably if we may, forcibly if we must still being its official policy. This rejection of insurrection and civil war as a means of winning political power will probably have been a factor in the SPGBs continual existence. The working class in Britain, though it has never advanced much if at all beyond a trade unionist and reformist consciousness, has at least understood the importance of the vote, and has never seen the idea of a violent insurrection to seize power other than as, to be frank, completely bonkers. Thus, there has been a place for a revolutionary socialist party that agreed with this position and based its policy on it, a place the SPGB has filled. Ironically, in contrast to the SPGB (which only contests elections on the maximum programme of socialism and nothing else, that is, without any programme of vote-catching reforms to capitalism), when Trotskyist organisations contest elections as they have increasingly from the 1970s on, it has been the SPGB that has had to accuse them of electoral opportunism for entering in full into the electoral game of putting themselves forward as a group offering to implement reforms of capitalism (some manifestly impossible) for workers if only workers would elect their candidates. Against Reformism, but not Reforms This refusal to advocate reforms has been the other distinguishing feature of the SPGB, though one that has been less understood by other working-class militants and by the working class generally. Actually, the SPGB is not opposed to reforms as such how could a party composed of workers and committed to the working-class interest be opposed to any measure that improved, however marginally and temporarily, conditions for workers? but to reformism in the sense of a policy of actively seeking reforms. The SPGBs policy is not to advocate any reform, but to advocate only socialism. As a corollary of this, it has also always refused to work with any other political party or group, but, on the contrary, has expressed hostility (as Clause 8 of its declaration of principles puts it) to all other political parties. This has earned it a reputation for sectarianism, but, in its terms, this position is only logical: the only basis for cooperating with some other party would be in a campaign for some reform, but campaigning for reforms as such is precisely a policy that the SPGB rejects. The SPGB in fact argues, as did William Morris in his Socialist League days, that if its reforms you want the best way to get them is to go for revolution as, faced with a strong movement demanding socialism, the capitalist class will offer all sorts of reforms in a (futile) bid to buy off this movement. It is also the official SPGB policy that a minority of Socialists MPs might vote, under certain circumstances, for reform measures proposed by other parties. This policy was adopted in 1911 at a time when many, including SPGB members, thought that socialism was a not too distant likelihood, and that the situation of what a minority of Socialist MPs should do was therefore a live issue, not the academic one that the SPGB members had later reluctantly to admit that it was. Today, this posi-

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tion only has symbolic significance in showing that the SPGB is not opposed to reforms as such, a policy that has been challenged from time to time from within the SPGB by those who were and which led to small breakaways in 1911 and again in 1991. Trade Union Action on Sound Lines Nor is the SPGB opposed to trade unionism, as is sometimes imagined in Trotskyist circles. Many of the early members of the SPGB were active members of craft unions in the London area, such as the Operative Bricklayers Society. Indeed, the SPGBs rulebook was clearly based on that of a small craft union, and its practice of allowing any member to attend meetings of its executive committee was also that of a preFirst World War bus workers union (a practice which survives in the SPGB to this day, and in fact applies to any member of the public). When the SPGB was founded, one big issue concerning militant workers was whether or not to replace the trade unions by industrial unions and how (internal reform or forming a separate union?). The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was to be founded a year later in Chicago committed to anti-trade-union industrial unionism, and the other impossibilist breakaway from the SDF the SLP was soon to embrace the socialist industrial unionism of its elder brother in America. SPGB members were not immune to such ideas, and a motion was proposed at its first annual conference to set up a socialist union, in opposition to the existing trade unions, as soon as SPGB membership had attained 5000. This motion was not carried (but even if it had been it would still not be operative since SPGB membership has never exceeded 1200), and, in the end, the SPGB adopted the policy, which still applies, of its members participating in the existing unions and supporting any action of theirs on sound lines (opposition to employers as the class enemy, solidarity with other workers, officials subject to democratic control, non-affiliation to the Labour Party, etc). Thus, the SPGB avoided the mistake of the American SLP and of the CPGB during the Third Period after 1929 of dual unionism, that is, of trying to form revolutionary unions to rival the existing reformist unions, though some SPGB members were involved, on an individual basis, in breakaway unions from TGWU on the buses and in the docks in the 1930s and 1940s (other SPGB members remained in the TGWU). As a result of these early controversies and of practical common sense, the SPGB officially stands for workers organising both economically (to keep production going during the period of social reorganisation) and politically for socialism, and so is not a pure and simple parliamentarist party, even by its own standards. Marxism not Leninism The SPGB has always regarded itself as being in the Marxist tradition, fully subscribing to the labour theory of value and the materialist conception of history. Right up to the 1950s it used to organise education classes in these subjects very much in the tradition of Stuart McIntyres proletarian science. Besides the works of Marx and Engels, the SPGB encouraged its members to read others by Kautsky, Plekhanov, Dietzgen and Lafargue and later even works by Bolsheviks such as Stekloffs History of the First International, Lozovskys Marx and the Trade Unions and Bogdanovs A Short Course of Economic Science. This does not mean, as has sometimes been claimed, that the SPGBs Marxism can be dismissed as that of the Second International, if only because the SPGB, after
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attending the 1904 Amsterdam Congress as an affiliated organisation, did not renew its affiliation, and by 1910 had completely written off the Second International as of any use to the cause of socialism. So August 1914 came as no surprise to it, as it did to Lenin. On the other hand, the SPGB never became Leninist. In fact, it has always regarded Leninism as the doctrine embodied in particular in Lenins What Is To Be Done? and State and Revolution as a deviation from and a distortion of Marxism. Despite this, at the time, the SPGB expressed a certain admiration for Lenin for the Bolsheviks policy of trying to stop the war on the Eastern Front and for his having understood, as against the Left-Wing Communists, that, in the circumstances of an isolated and backward Russia, socialism was out of the question and that therefore Russia could not avoid having to pass through capitalism, even if in the form of a state capitalism (see Lenins speech in 1918 and again in 1921 when the NEP, which explicitly recognised this, was adopted; see the article from the July 1920 issue of Socialist Standard at www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/centenary/bolshevism(1920).pdf). It has to be said, however, that today most SPGB members take a less indulgent attitude towards Lenin, seeing him as an architect of the state capitalist regime in Russia that survived until 1991 Lenin led to Stalin. It was the SPGB and not Tony Cliff, as the old International Socialism Group and the Socialist Workers Party claimed that pioneered in Britain the description of the former USSR as state capitalist. This was more on empirical than theoretical grounds: the SPGB simply continued to describe Russias economy as state capitalist as Lenin had done, even after Lenins successors, Trotsky as much as Stalin, came to describe it as some sort of Workers State. The evidence produced for this was the continued existence of the wages system, commodity production, and state bondholders. The latter illustrated what was perhaps a weakness in the SPGBs original position, of pointing to evidence of the existence of features of private capitalism to argue that Russia was state capitalism. Credit for developing the theory that a privileged, exploiting class could exist without legal private property rights vested in its individual members, that is, that it could own and exploit collectively as a class, and that this was actually the case in the USSR, can indeed go to Trotskyist and Trotskyoid dissidents such as Bruno Rizzi, Max Shachtman, James Burnham and Raya Dunayevskaya. Like Cliff, the SPGB was happy to take this on board, though rejecting the view embraced by Cliff that Russia only became capitalist in 1928. In the SPGBs view, the Russian economy had never ceased to be capitalist, with any change that might have taken place in 1928 being political rather than economic (which of course, ironically, is also the orthodox Trotskyist position). Socialism Today Obviously conditions and the perspectives of SPGB members are rather different today from what they were a hundred years ago. Then, the early members (mainly young men in their 30s) clearly expected to see the cause of socialism make rapid progress and emphasised the determinist elements in Marxism that enabled them to see socialism as inevitable. Today, SPGB members (even those in their 30s) are much less sanguine about the inevitably of socialism, regarding it more as a desirable possibility. This of course makes it depend more on human will and humans (workers) making a conscious choice to establish it. Some might see this as making socialism a moral issue rather than an inevita-

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ble working-class reaction to capitalist conditions (and from time to time some SPGB members have explicitly argued this), but it is not easy for members of an organisation that has found itself having to campaign for a hundred years for socialism without it happening implying, as this does, that its early members (as well as Marx) were wrong or at least wildly over-optimistic to sustain a belief in the inevitability of socialism. A hundred years ago, socialism, however vaguely understood, was seen by millions of workers all over the world as the hope of humanity. Today, thanks in large measure to what happened in Russia, millions of workers perceive socialism as something that has been tried and failed. So, today, the SPGB has a much harder time making socialists. Nevertheless, socialism as the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, with production solely for use not profit, and distribution on the principle of from each their ability, to each their needs still retains for millions some of its original connection with equality and democracy and still remains, despite current popular opinion, the Hope of Humanity. To mark its centenary, the SPGB has published a book, entitled Socialism or Your Money Back (a more or less clever pun on the SPGBs position that socialism necessarily involves the disappearance of money), a collection of 70 articles from the Socialist Standard over the period of 1904-2004 on key events and trends in the twentieth century. It is available from booksellers (ISBN 0 9544733 10) or directly from the SPGB at 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.

Another Dimension on Workers Councils

A Reply to Glyn Beagley
GLYN Beagleys article Workers Democracy in the Revolutionary Process (New Interventions, Volume 11, no 4) is welcome because it opens a debate on the contentious subject of political leadership and revolutionary industrial action. But when reading it, I quickly detected that someone was missing from the story and that was the anarchist worker who made up a big part of Europes workforce after the First World War. A further survey of the reading references confirmed the absence, as practically all were Marxist-Leninists. There was plenty to disagree with in Glyns article, but I shall concentrate on rectifying both omissions. As Glyns opening paragraph makes clear, the intention is to explore the subject of workers councils, so our first aim is to examine their origins. The concept of workers control, for want of a better word, appears in the writings of the anarchists Pierre Proudhon and Michael Bakunin.8 Their followers argued at the meetings of the first International Working Mens Association for the extension of workplace or-

Alan Woodward

8.

See Alan Woodward, Marx, Bakunin or What?, What Next?, no 28, 2004.

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ganisation with this in mind.9 The theme remained a central part of the libertarian defence against the encroachments of the state and the political party in the policy and practice of the anarcho-syndicalist movement. From Tom Mann in Britain10 to Shifu in China,11 workplace control was as crucial to the anarchists as the struggle for the dominance of the revolutionary political party was for the Marxist-Leninists. A quotation from 1922, unfortunately rather long, illustrates the concept at the heart of anarchism: Revolution is the creation of new living institutions, new groupings, new social relationships: It is the destruction of privileges and monopolies, It is the new spirit of justice, of brotherhood, of freedom which must renew the whole of social life, the moral level and material conditions of the masses by calling on them to provide, through their direct and conscious action for their own future. Revolution is the organisation of all public services by those who work in them, in their own interests as well as the publics. Revolution is the destruction of all coercive ties: it is the autonomy of groups, of communes, of regions. Revolution is the free federation brought about by a desire for brotherhood, by individual and collective interests, by the needs of production and defence. Revolution is the constitution of innumerable free groupings based on ideas, wishes and the tastes of all kinds that exist among people. Revolution is the forming and disbanding of thousands of representative, district, communal, regional national bodies which, without having any legislative power, serve to make known and to coordinate the desires and interests of people near and far, which act through information, advice and example. Revolution is the crucible proved in the facts and lasts so long as freedom lasts, that is until others, taking advantage, of the weariness that overtakes the masses, of the inevitable disappointments that follow exaggerated hopes, of the probable errors and human faults, succeed in constituting a power, which is supported by an army of conscripts and mercenaries, lays down the law, arrests the movement at the point it has reached, and then begins the reaction.12 This was written by Errico Malatesta, no doubt with the events in Russia in mind for the last paragraph. The antipathy between the Marxist-Leninist and the anarchist went back a long way, and was still keenly felt after 1917. So when Glyn writes that the political tasks which confronted Lenin how to free the working class from political domination by reformist leaders, and the central tenets of Marxism the transitional programme, the united front and the democratic centralist party are all geared to one over-riding objective: to turn the base
9. 10. 11. 12. See ibid. Geoffrey Ostergaard, The Tradition of Workers Control, 1997. Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in Chinese Revolution, 1991. Vernon Richards, Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, 1977.

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of the working class against its traditional leadership in an attempt to carry through social revolution, it is clear that this may have been true for a brief period during 1917, but thereafter the aim was to break the revolutionary syndicalist parties/unions, and recruit their membership.13 The commitment, or rather non-commitment, of the new Bolshevik state to workers management and democracy has been analysed extensively already.14 Workers councils the workplace kind were all very well in winning the revolution in October, but after that were soon to be amalgamated into party-dominated trade unions. The soviets, the first step up from the direct bodies, were quickly bypassed as the State Council of Peoples Commissars took over.15 And thats without the mass strikes in St Petersburg factories in 1921, 16 the suppression of the Kronstadt soviet and the Ukrainian workers collectives,17 the imprisonment of anarchists,18 the 118 simultaneous insurrections,19 etc, etc. Not much workers democracy here, plenty of counter-revolutionary repression by the Bolsheviks. Regarding Germany, Glyns account stops short of the developments after the formation of councils in November 1918. For example, at the inaugural conference of the German Communist Party (KPD) in December, delegates decided against the policy of contesting parliamentary elections and participating in the existing trade unions. This rejected proposal, inspired by Moscow, was backed even by Rosa Luxemburg, who was soon to be assassinated by the military on the orders of the German Labour Party, the SPD. The response of the Bolshevik-backed new leader Paul Levi was to expel the majority of the KPD, who went off and formed their own council communist party, the German Workers Communist Party.20 We need to summarise a bit here. The net result of the Leninist-inspired reversion to the old policies of the disgraced Second International was that there were by 1922, in addition to the Third (Communist) International, the Red Trade Union International (RILU) and its sub-groups, Internationals of both council communists, the KAI,21 and anarcho-syndicalists, the IWA.22 Another case of hidden history.23 On Spain, Glyns analysis, though fuller, is simplistic about the nature of the anarchist workers union, the CNT, in the run-up to the fascist coup in 1936. Two organisations, of diametrically-opposed views, had been formed on either side of the main union. A section who were basically reformists formed a group, Los Treinta or the Treintistas, in August 1931. Born out of the militarist repression of 1923, this was a trade-union-oriented tendency, interested in collective employment
13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. Jan Appel, The Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution, 1990. The best source for this is Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers Control, 1917-21, 1970. Harry Ratner, Premature and Diseased From Infancy?, New Interventions, Volume 8, no 2, 1997. Ida Mett, The Kronstadt Uprising, 1976. Daniel Gurin, Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, 1970. Voline [VI Eichenbaum], The Unknown Revolution, 1990. Ibid. Richard Gombin, The Radical Tradition: A Study in Modern Revolutionary Thought, 1978. Appel, op cit. Marcel van der Linden and Wayne Thorpe (eds), Revolutionary Syndicalism: An International Perspective, 1990. For another view, see C Longmore, The IWA Today: A Short Account of the International Workers Association and its Sections, 1985.

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negotiations, and accommodating to capitalism. An old hand, Angel Pestaa, soon established a Syndicalist Party to participate actively in elections, in spite of the libertarian tradition. Perhaps in anticipation of this, a revolutionary political group had formed in 1927, the Iberian Anarchist Federation, or FAI.24 Comprising experienced and practical activists like Buenaventura Durruti, this acted rather like the political party advocated by the council communists, as distinct from the dominant Bolshevik kind.25 The fascist invasion in 1936 posed a crisis for Spanish anarchism. Despite reforming for unity, their theory had no answer for the new situation were they to defend old-style representative democracy against the fascist Franco by joining the government, or press on with the anarchist policy, structure and activities and the bid for workers revolution? They opted for the former, as is well known, and the military forces, aided by the Spanish Communist betrayal, were able to crush them, despite over two years of spirited resistance. For our purposes, a most interesting development occurred within the minority of the CNT. An affinity group, the Friends of Durruti, formed after the killing of Durruti, quickly learned the lesson of the imminent defeat of the Republican armies, and proposed a revolutionary committee to retrieve what remained of workers power. This alienated the official CNT and FAI leadership, who were committed to defending capitalism through the Popular Front government, and who called for the Friends of Durruti groups expulsion. The rank and file of the anarchists, interestingly enough, refused to agree. There was also a substantial opposition from the international anarchist movement. In fact, the Friends of Durruti formulation fits exactly the council socialist concept of a wide workers mass movement with a parallel revolutionary committee, rather than the traditional Marxist-Leninist model.26 So much for the thumbnail sketches of the councils and revolutionary situations in three countries. Before concluding, it is worth noting that a full account of workers councils would include: The magnificent role of councils in opposing imperialism as in China in 192527, Ireland in 1920-21, Algeria in 1962-64, and Chile in 1974. The resistance to the right wing and fascists in Spain in 1936, France in 1936 and 1968, and Portugal in 1974-76. Workers organisations against state-capitalist Russia, as in Hungary and Poland in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and even the perverse case of the statesponsored councils in Yugoslavia in the 1950s. Interesting incidents like the councils in the American general strikes in 1947,27 and in Japan in the same years.28 More recent insurrections like those in Iran in 1979, Poland in 1980, and Argentina in 2002.29 It is important to note that my characterisation of Glyns selective view of history
24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. Stuart Christie, We, The Anarchists: A Study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) 1927-1937, 2000. Abel Paz, Durruti: The People Armed, 1976. Agustin Guillamon, The Friends of Durruti Group 1937-1939, 1996, translated by Paul Sharkey. As told by George Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight, 1994. Joe Moore, Japanese Workers and the Struggle for Power, 1945-1947, 1983. For reading references on these, see Alan Woodward, Readers Guide to Workers Council Socialism, 2003.

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and his one-dimensional political analysis is not a personal dereliction of duty amid an otherwise sound framework. Such one-sidedness or chauvinism can be found in big political organisations. For example, the Socialist Workers Party, openly Marxist-Leninist, displays an overt form of party chauvinism. Their treatment of the substantial and articulate Chinese anarchist movement in the 1920s is a case in point. We can examine three books. Nigel Harris, now outside the SWP but an erstwhile editor of the prestigious International Socialism journal, wrote the standard text about Mao & Co, but has quite a bit of background information. There are several references to Confucius and even the exciting novel Water Margin gets two mentions. There is, however, no mention of anarchism, syndicalism, libertarianism or anything related to this area of political thought. Even a section on pre-Marxist socialism is silent. Maos thought is examined at length, but his acknowledged debt to his youthful, anti-Leninist ideas is not.30 Charlie Hores otherwise excellent book on the Tiananmen Square massacre has a similar blind spot regarding those who were to the left of the revolutionary party. More popular in style, it has a section on further reading, which is still selective but unusually open. Without mentioning political ideas, the veteran anarchist Wang Jingwei is quoted, but only as a nationalist KMT leader.31 Maos China: An Economic and Political Survey, an early publication by Tony Cliff, uses Communist sources severely to criticise the socialist credentials that Maoism claimed for some decades. Packed with detail, it remains untypically silent on his political adversaries.32 Finally, lest it be thought that I am banging a drum for the anarcho-syndicalist dimension, let me state that my affiliation is to a further dimension, that of council communism, or workers socialism, as it is now called. Briefly, in the interests of equity, and without chauvinism, I shall outline some details: The concept of the workers councils as both the means to overthrow capitalism and to provide a base in the social revolution and the new society, a prefigurative role. Structures of workplace assemblies, workers councils, elected sub-groups, and workers control, as the first stage in this. Construction of a nation-wide federal organisation of workers councils like the Russian Central Council of Factory and Workshop Councils is the next priority, a workers government in embryo. The establishment of workers military units or militia to repress the inevitable capitalist counter-revolution, like the council communist/anarchist Red Army of the Ruhr in 1918.33 A political party, or parties, to coordinate the process, as a safeguard against Party centralisation, from before to after the revolution. An international movement to consolidate the new society.34
30. 31. 32. 33. 34. Nigel Harris, The Mandate of Heaven: Marx and Mao in Modern China, 1978. Charlie Hore, The Road to Tiananmen Square, 1991. Tony Cliff (writing under his real name Ygael Gluckstein), Maos China, 1957. For an antidote, see Dirlik, op cit. Appel, op cit. Serge Bricianer, Pannekoek and Workers Councils, 1978.

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I am writing in anticipation of further debate in the tradition of this journal. Glyns article raises some interesting perspectives on a neglected subject which could be beneficially pursued. Alan Woodward is a member of Workers Socialism.

Max Weber and Revolutionary Socialism

WHEN Bruno Rizzi gave his most important work the title The Bureaucratisation of the World it was published in French in 1939 as La bureaucratisation du monde he was following in a political and sociological tradition established in France, Germany and Italy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a tradition which arose to a great extent in response to the rising political and intellectual influence of Marxism. Such influence, and a desire to combat it, can be seen in the work of Emile Durkheim (1859-1917) with his The Division of Labour (La division du travail, 1893), in Robert Michels Political Parties (original German edition, 1911) with its assertion of the Iron Law of Oligarchy, and in Max Webers meticulous dissection of bureaucracy combined with his assertion of its inescapability. The harrowing experiences of the peoples of the Soviet Union under Stalin in the 1930s necessarily led to a further strengthening of this tendency, and with the formal dissolution of the Union in 198991, such people turn confidently to their antagonists and to the world at large and declare: There you are, we told you so. One thinker who makes the most coherent case against any kind of revolutionary socialism is the distinguished German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920). Webers relevant writings can be found in Max Weber: Political Writings (Cambridge University Press, 1994). Weber is par excellence the analyst of increasing bureaucratisation in the advanced capitalist world of the late nineteenth century CE although he pinpoints the emergence of a trained state bureaucracy in the modern sense in the signorie (prince-governed states) of the Italian Renaissance, which made use of rational administration by officials who were (increasingly) appointed (Political Writings, p332, note 12). For Weber there can be no escaping the fact that policy requires administration in order to see it through: this happens in all mass states (Suffrage and Democracy in Germany, Political Writings, p127). Furthermore: Today increasing socialisation inevitably means increasing bureaucratisation. (Parliament and Government in Germany, Political Writings, p147) The process extends to political parties: the consequence of a democratic form of party organisation is the development of a staff of salaried officials (p150). This takes an appropriate form in different parties, for example: In the [Catholic] Centre Party [in Germany] the duties of the party bureaucracy are performed by the church apparatus or chaplainocracy. (p153) France seems an exception to this trend, but, giving vent to what sounds like

Chris Gray

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characteristic German disdain, Weber maintains that in France the whole parliamentary misre stems from the absence of bureaucratised parties (p154). Even in the USA, where the Jacksonian spoils system originally meant government by amateurs, the technically-trained official has become the norm (p152). In Germany, similar developments extend to interest-groups attempting to influence legislation. Here the real work is done to an increasing extent by the paid employees and agents of all kinds (p155). It is impossible to buck the trend: Bureaucracy is distinguished from other historical bearers of the modern, rational way of ordering life by the fact of its far greater inescapability. History records no instance of its having disappeared once it had achieved complete or sole dominance in China, Egypt or in a less consistent form in the later Roman Empire and Byzantium, except when the whole culture supporting it also disappeared completely. Relatively speaking, however, these were still highly irrational forms of bureaucracy Compared with all these older forms, modern bureaucracy is distinguished by a characteristic which makes its inescapability much more absolute than theirs, namely rational technical specialisation and training. The ancient Chinese mandarin was no specialist official: on the contrary, he was a gentleman with a literary-humanist education (p156) If the analysis holds, then there are formidable consequences for the operation of enterprises under state ownership: Wherever the trained, specialist, modern official has once begun to rule, his power is absolutely unbreakable, because the entire organisation of providing even the most basic needs in life depends on his performance of his duties. In theory one could possibly conceive of the progressive elimination of private capitalism But what would it mean in practice? Would it perhaps mean that the steel housing (Gehause) of modern industrial work would break open? No! It would mean rather that the management of businesses taken into state ownership or into some form of communal economy would also become bureaucratised. Is there any appreciable difference between the lives of the workers and clerks in the Prussian state-run mines and railways and those of people working in large private capitalist enterprises? If private capitalism were eliminated, state bureaucracy would rule alone. Private and public bureaucracies would then be merged into a single hierarchy The situation would resemble that of ancient Egypt, but in an incomparably more rational and hence more inescapable form. (pp157-8) Weber identifies two sources of the officials power: specialist training and privileged knowledge of the arcana of a given policy area. The only counterweight in a system of parliamentary democracy lies in the investigative power of parliamentary committees the model here being the UK House of Commons. Regarding specialist political knowledge, Weber writes: It is a private matter and purely coincidental if this kind of knowledge also has its exponents in parliament, or if members of parliament can obtain information privately from specialists in individual cases. For the purpos-

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es of controlling the administration, this will never take the place of systematic cross-examination (under oath) by experts before a parliamentary commission with powers to summon the relevant departmental officials. This kind of cross-examination is the only way of guaranteeing the control and comprehensiveness of the questioning. The Reichstag [as of 1917-18 when Weber was writing] lacks the right to do this. Constitutionally, it is condemned to amateurish stupidity. (p178) The situation is identical as regards special information at the bureaucrats disposal. As in the state, so also in private industry: The true sovereign, the shareholders meeting, has as little influence on the management of the business as a people governed by professional officials, and those who have the decisive say in the policy of the firm, the board of trustees dominated by bankers [the German experience] only give economic directives and select the men who carry out the administration, without having the technical expertise themselves to manage the business (Betrieb). (p326) As in the state and private industry, so also in the political parties, especially the socalled Workers Party: Thanks to modern mass propaganda, electoral success depends on a rationalised party organisation on party officials, party discipline, the party exchequer, the party press and party advertising. The organisation of the Social Democratic Party has often been described; its forms are democratic, but it is centralised and more tightly organised, embracing a much larger proportion of the voters who might possibly vote for it. (pp211, 213) Robert Michels famously called the German Social Democratic Party a state within a state; Weber calls it merely the most strongly bureaucratised party (p216). The foregoing analysis affords Weber a base from which to attack all left-wing varieties of anti-capitalism socialism, syndicalism, anarchism, you name it. His position is set out in a pamphlet entitled Socialism (Der Sozialismus), published in Vienna in 1918. The pamphlet is substantially the written version of a talk to AustroHungarian army officers delivered in June of that year (see Political Writings, pp272303). Much of it is taken up with points already covered in this article, but there are some additions which require comment. For example, Weber defines socialism as an economy from which profit is absent (p285). This is in one very real sense erroneous at least as far as Marxs view of the matter is concerned. We have to distinguish between profit as surplus value appropriated by the capitalist and profit as surplus over cost (which is what Tony Crosland used to say was all that profit ever amounted to). This latter form of profit is present under socialism, as can be seen from Marxs Critique of the Gotha Programme, where Marx lists a long series of deductions which have to be made from the total social product in the process of distribution funds for the replacement of means of production, and so forth. In order to make these deductions, the product must realise a value greater than its cost of production, hence surplus over cost. It is not possible here to go into all the criticisms that Weber (like Messrs Edu-

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ard Bernstein, Bertrand Russell, GDH Cole and others) makes of what Marcus Roberts has called Marxs special theory of capitalism (see Roberts, Analytical Marxism: A Critique, Verso, 1996, pp139-56). These relate to such topics as the growth of intermediate strata between the capitalists and the working class, and to the greater tractability of economic crises ironic that Weber should put this forward just prior to the stock market crash of 1929. More germane to our current discussion is Webers contention that in the Germany of his day there existed almost no germ cells of organisations capable of running a socialist economy only the SPD and the trade unions. We have already seen what Max Weber thought of the SPD. As for the trade unions, clearly syndicalism was not seen as a solution either: It would be a grave error to think that a trade unionist, however highly trained, even if he has been at his job for years and knows the working conditions perfectly, therefore understands the running (Betrieb) of the factory as such, since the management of all modern factories is based entirely on calculation, knowledge of demand and technical schooling all things which need increasingly to be practised by specialists, and which the trade unionists, the real workers, have absolutely no opportunity to learn about. Therefore, whether they like it or not, they too will have to rely on non-workers, on ideologues from the intellectual strata. (p298) Our obvious counter-argument is that all this was known to the advanced Russian workers and to the Bolsheviks in 1917, and caused them to employ non-worker specialists in precisely the above role in the hope that ultimately the workers would acquire the necessary expertise. Webers pamphlet on socialism appeared when the Russian revolution was still in its early stages, and he died in 1920, so we have no overall assessment of the revolution from him. What we do have is an apparently rather prescient passage bearing on the degeneration of the revolution: Anyone who makes a pact with the means of violence, for whatever purpose and every politician does this is at the mercy of its specific consequences Anyone wishing to establish absolute justice on earth by force needs a following in order to do so, a human apparatus. He must promise these people the necessary inner and outward prizes rewards in heaven and earth because the apparatus will not function otherwise. Under the conditions of modern class-warfare the inner rewards are the satisfaction of hatred and revenge [which one should not have CG], of ressentiment [resentment] and the need for pseudo-ethical feeling of being in the right, the desire to slander ones opponents [not necessary, the essential thing is to deprive them of excess power] and make heretics out of them [unfortunately, that is necessary]. The outward rewards are adventure, victory, booty, power and prebends. The success of the leader is entirely dependent on the functioning of his apparatus. He is therefore dependent on its motives, not his own He can only keep control of his following as long as a sincere belief in his person and his cause inspires at least some of the group, probably never in this life even a majority of them. Not only is this faith, even when held with subjective sincerity, in many cases merely the ethical legitimisation of the craving for revenge, power, booty and prebends (and let no one try to persuade us differently, for the materialist interpretation of history is not a cab which may be

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boarded at will, and it makes no exceptions for the bearers of revolutions!) but the emotionalism of revolution is then followed by a return to traditional, everyday existence [compare Mayakovskys poem The Philistines], the hero of the faith disappears, and so, above all, does the faith itself, or it becomes (even more effectively) a part of the conventional rhetoric used by political philistines and technicians [Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev]. This development comes about particularly quickly in a war of faith, because these are usually conducted or inspired by genuine leaders, prophets of revolution. For it is one of the conditions of success in this, as in any apparatus subordinate to a leader, that things must be emptied and made into matters-of-fact (Versachlichung), and the following must undergo spiritual proletarianisation in order to achieve discipline. This is why the following of a man fighting for a faith, when it begins to rule, tends to decline particularly easily into a quite ordinary stratum of prebendaries. Anyone wishing to practice politics of any kind, and especially anyone who wishes to make a profession of politics, has to be conscious of these ethical paradoxes and of his responsibility for what may become of himself under pressure from them. He is becoming involved, I repeat, with the diabolical powers that lurk in all violence. (The Profession and Vocation of Politics, 1919, Political Writings, pp364-65) Despite its obvious resonance, this passage fails to register in full the Russian experience. In particular, it misses the severe economic dislocation of the time, which was not easy for the Bolsheviks to deal with, and which would have presented equal difficulties to their Menshevik and anarchist critics if they had held power; it misses also the two souls of socialism in Lenin his avowed espousal of popular democracy (The State and Revolution) and his Jacobinism (seen in What Is To Be Done? and in his championing of the revolutionary vanguard). One should recall also the isolation of the revolution and the casualties suffered by the Russian working class in the Civil War. Furthermore, can we not say that if the revolution is followed by a return to traditional everyday existence then at that point it has failed? Weber says that it has to happen like that, but, for all the compelling detail of the analysis, he does not specify exactly why: he tries to establish a universal law of behaviour of the revolutionary apparatus (which is admittedly not as revolutionary as it purports to be, but is not necessarily as intractable as he makes out). The explanation is too pat, as it stands. Weber says in his pamphlet that: Every working class will always return to socialism in some sense or other. The only question is whether this socialism is one that can be tolerated from the point of view of the interests of the state (Political Writings, p302). This seems a backhanded recognition of the fact that, as Herbert Marcuse has written, Webers celebrated rationality is in fact capitalist through and through to see this one has only to read Karl Polanyis The Great Transformation, an equally rational work which arrives at an entirely different conclusion. Because Max Webers version of rationality is a capitalist one, workers are bound to rebel against it. (For one thing, there seems to be no overt recognition in Weber of the phenomenon of alienation, of the dehumanised drudgery that passes for work for large numbers of people in our

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society). Insofar as any regime claiming to overthrow capitalism fails to tackle this question and especially if it tries to restrict political freedom at the same time workers are bound to come into conflict with it. The signs are that the left is at long last beginning to get to grips with these problems. This brings us to steps which need to be taken in order to counteract the omnipresent evils of bureaucracy. It is a law of politics that if certain requisite actions cannot be performed by one set of agents, then, if they are performed at all, it is another set of agents who do so for example, if industrialisation cannot be carried out by the bourgeoisie, then the task falls to another class. Hal Draper in The Revolutionary Thought of Karl Marx has some pertinent observations on the inability of the average bourgeois to manage affairs of state: the average bourgeois, absorbed in the day-to-day running of his business, simply has little or no time for societys overall affairs, whatever his decided preferences or views on this or that. Unfortunately Drapers observations apply equally, even a fortiori, to the proletariat, which is prevented by its enslavement to the labour process from developing the expertise necessary to rule, and likewise not given the time and education which it needs in order to do so. Marx was right in the third volume of Capital: the realm of freedom begins where the working-time period ends. Given the exigencies of the capitalist mode of production, then, political power in its planning and executive aspects necessarily falls to specialists professional politicians and civil servants. Weber regards such a state of affairs as permanent (the iron cage), but this is not necessarily the case. To start with, institutional structures are needed which can act as conduits of the needs and initiatives of ordinary workers Pat Devines Democracy and Economic Planning attempts to specify them, based on the idea of negotiated coordination of production decisions. But if we seriously want to make it possible that every cook can govern as Lenin and CLR James put it, then the working-class party (or parties) must ensure that people acquire the techniques necessary to realise their political goals: the party must not merely devise policy for the broad masses, it must enable those masses, as individuals, to formulate such policies themselves. Hence what is needed is a process of education in which the party, or whoever, as a good teacher, aims to make itself eventually redundant: My job is not to tell you the right answer, it is to show you how to find the right answer. All this is, of course, by no means easy, and the historical experience of democracy is not that encouraging see Thucydides on Athens, the Italian city-states, the English Civil War period, Rousseau on the freedom of the English people (only to be found at the point where it misuses its power to choose members of Parliament), de Tocqueville on America, etc. But if we think politics is too important to be left to the politicians, then we have to go down this road. Clearly, if such a goal is to be sought, then the educational system must accommodate it: there is no point in exhorting people to take charge collectively of their own affairs if they lack the necessary means to do so, and the sooner and earlier the requisite skills are acquired the better. Hence training in the appraisal of statistics and in experience of government decisions in various areas of policy is a must for everyone if every individuals opinion is to count in matters of state. Even more importantly, civil servants must be required to make available the relevant information in a form accessible to all. This is not just a matter of freedom of information or open government. The Circumlocution Office is notoriously

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adept at providing a semblance of full information which can nonetheless be so arranged as to make it impossible to see the wood for the trees and some academics tread the same path. Citizens cannot possibly make recommendations as to how the countrys educational institutions (for example) are to be financed if they do not know the existing financial arrangements: these should be easily retrievable and readily understandable to anyone of average intelligence. Finally, as regards forms of ownership of enterprises, the emphasis should be on establishing cooperatives here it is possible to draw on and build on the experience of the UK in the 1970s, Lucas Aerospace being the outstanding example. Ken Coates has written extensively on this topic. Boris Kagarlitsky also has some useful remarks to make on the subject in The Politics of Empire. He writes, inter alia: Cooperatives and municipal enterprises are creating the primary infrastructure for a new economic participation. But they cannot remain selfsufficient, in isolation from one another. Local control is ineffective if each site operates separately from the others. A unifying network and democratic coordination are essential. (Alan Freeman and Boris Kagarlitsky (eds), The Politics of Empire, Pluto Press, 2004, p271) Sceptics may question the efficacy of all these measures. I say: lets try it. If it doesnt work, we will have to find a system which does. However, all said and done, the present system is hardly ideal, and its getting worse rather than better. In the words of Susan George, another world is possible. If

Faceless in the Cloud

A Look at Londons Recent Exhibitions
I can walk down the street and theres no-one there, though the pavement is one huge crowd. The Cream, 1966 FACES in the Crowd is an exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, lavishly sponsored, in support of a somewhat diffuse art-historical thesis concerning trends in depiction of humans in the urban setting. Cutting first to the bottom line, as I was taught to do in the GLC bureaucracy, do I recommend this much-reviewed show? Only if you can see it at substantially less than the full (8.50) price. The show is concerned to document changes in the ways of depiction of the human figure, particularly but not exclusively the human face, influenced by and set in the changing urban frameworks of the last century. Life in the cities brings forward the mass of the people as a set of subjects for the artist. In summary, the exhibitions flimsy thesis is not sustained, but there are certain works on display that you would be well advised to seek a cost-effective opportunity to see. The heretical heuristic for this show, as for the whole London art industry

John Plant

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in the last decade and a half, is the older the better. You need proceed no more than half way through the Whitechapels ground floor to see what is worth seeing. Encouragingly, several reviewers employed by the major press have correctly identified the splendid Manet that immediately faces the visitor as the high point of the show. This Bal masque lOpera depicts what would these days be referred to as a meat market, in which top-hatted and dark-suited young men of obvious means encounter masked women and (literally) bare-faced demi-mondaines. If Manet has any concerns about the injustices in the depicted transactions, he has adequately staunched his heart. He has, in fact, included himself in the crowd, not in any evidently successful situation. The catalogue essay recognises how significant is this trick of switching between subject and object for the survival of art through the twentieth century. Its just a shame that the selection of material does not address the question adequately. Why, for example, having letraset-graffitied the walls with quotes from Baudelaire, omit Joyces pivotal remarks on Turpin Hero? And having included a video-loop of Vertovs Man with a Camera (always good to see, but nobody is going to stand for over an hour to watch it on a 10-inch screen while shoved about by tourists and suburbanites), on the strength of its self-referential final scene, could no space have been found for at least one of Hitchcocks cameo self-portraits? Among the paintings in the first section of the show can be found the most and the least challenging items. If I see another lurid expressionist caf scene this decade, screaming at me that beneath every face is a skull, that rich, fat people eat copiously while the poor and thin go hungry, it will be more than enough. If minor works of Ensor or Grosz continue to lurch, gibbering at me out of Bond Street troves it might easily be enough to destroy my enthusiasm for the revival of figuration. On the other hand, any gallery that can present even a half-size show of Jack B Yeats that matches the quality of his boxing scene would do London a massive favour. And if the Fine Art Society would get their act together and give us a Sickert show that met the standard set by his sinister theatre interior in this exhibition, instead of so incessantly peddling his (voluminous) studio-sweepings, they would rise inestimably in our league table. I had thought that the Estorick had achieved enough impact on London curators that if they could not select first-class work, they could at least display well what they could get of Italian futurism. Wrong again, back to the bar. The Carra and Boccioni items on display here so far undersell themselves compared to the catalogue reproductions that it is impossible to understand their original onslaught. Picasso is represented by a very run-of-the-mill cubist Harlequin. Something earlier would have played to the exhibitions theme much better. Three Bacon portraits are almost impossible to look at because of the unprofessional lighting and highly reflective glass. The Soviet material on show is rendered curiously lifeless by its setting. Rodchenkos portrait of his mother is, in my estimation, the best photo-portrait ever. Here it is cluttered around with other pieces that make it hard to see, and the insipid print offered here does not do the work justice. Klutsis (Klucis as the catalogue will have it) agit-posters are always good to see again for the force of their design, but their relationship to the thesis of the exhibition is not clear. Enthusiasts for agit-visuals will already be familiar with the Heartfield and Modotti material selections, and with Capas famous image of Trotsky speaking in Copenhagen. As it moves into the postwar period and subsequently into the taming of the

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avant-garde, the strength of the material declines rapidly, and I will not tire with specifics any reader who has patiently come this far with me. Two recollections I brought away with me from the show, before adjourning next door to the anarchist bookshop. Firstly, Bruce Nauman contributes a video piece based around the story-telling routine It was a dark and stormy night. A tortured clown on video recites the reiterative narrative. Hardly original. Sitting next to the item was a security guard sitting so as to safeguard the work in two rooms. When I passed him first he was chuckling to himself whenever the narrative looped to a new start. Depressed by most of the show I adjourned to the caf to read the catalogue perhaps I had missed something. Nearly an hour later, I passed the guard again. He was still chuckling at the same point in the loop. Whichever agency provides the guards, please note, this man deserves a bonus. Second, the caf itself. A group of elderly gallery visitors had drawn the correct conclusions from the show. They stood in the entrance to the caf gazing at the clientele with the distanced observation that the exhibition had taught them was la mode. Looking Back at 2004 The year of 2005 may well be the year that the London art market returns to figuration and (at last) away from the inanities that parade themselves under the false flag of conceptualism. All the most worthwhile exhibitions in London during 2004 were overtly figurative (dejargonised, that means pictures of things, people or places). The year opened with the closing weeks of the excellent show at the Imperial War Museum of Eric Ravillious almost entirely neglected by the critics and not even listed in the Guardian Guide. (The temporary exhibitions of art at the Imperial War Museum are almost always worth a look. In recent years, the Spanish Civil War graphics and the Nevinson shows were particularly memorable.) Ravillious precise, light-touched observations of World War Two were exactly the hors doeuvre required for the years diet. Edward Hopper at the Tate Modern was almost certainly the most successful exhibition of 2004, and an inspired piece of timing. Now obviously major galleries and institutions do not switch their exhibition plans around at short notice, in response to fluctuations in the FTSE or MORI polls. A major exhibition involving the borrowing of works from around the world will require five or more years of planning and negotiation. The programmers of the Tate Modern will not have worked through scenarios that predict the unravelling of the new world order and identified Edward Hoppers urban angst as just the right flavour for the summer of 2004. But what can change rapidly, reflecting the mood of the times, is the response of the mass audience. And they turned out by tens of thousands, to share a sense that behind the faade of everyday life there lurk, and not too far buried, isolation, betrayal, depredation. Similarly, the Hayward Gallery hit gold with its Eyes, Lies and Illusions, providing a kind of philosophic placebo to a mass audience that had already learned not to trust anything they could see, in the course of a year that took them through the Gilligan affair, Abu Graib and the re-election of Bush, and culminated in the disgrace of Blunkett. The Royal Academy offered the reactionary face of figurative art, in the person of Tamara de Lempicka, who fled the straightened life of revolutionary Russia in 1919 for the more congenial decadence of Paris. She quickly established herself as

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one of the most popular painters of the time, exploiting the clear imagery of the Art Deco period. Without doubt, she achieved a skill in paint handling and also in composition (within a very limited range of portrait types), but her first large exhibition in London rather ruthlessly exposed her deficiencies in anatomy and perspective. What the cataloguer liked to see as her artistic progress consisted in finding the tricks to conceal her deficiencies in technique. As to any deepening of her insight, you might as well look for it in the Saatchi collection. Lempicka set out to be rich and a friend of the rich. She succeeded at least in the former whether such people can truly be said to have friends as against temporary allies or partners in lust must be open to doubt. Almost the entire corpus (not an accidental choice of word) of her work consists of portraits of the rich or their friends. Prominent among her subjects were diasporadic Russian aristos, including two of the murderers of Rasputin. I had thought there was little one could say of Lempicka and her sickly circle that would invite stronger condemnation. I reckoned without the resilience of the gallery quarter behind the Royal Academy. Less than 200 yards away there skulked an exhibition of Erts bloodless decorative trivia. Lempickas decadents at least had the merit of actually doing things indulging, consuming, neglecting, betraying and being seen to pay the price. Erts art would appear never to have got past the stage of drawing surreptitious attention to its own naughtiness. And Looking Forward at 2005 Most of the major exhibitions scheduled for the year ahead would appear to develop the trend towards restoring the position of figurative art. Tate Britain will doubtless have an enormous success with Turner, Whistler, Monet, due to open in February, to be followed in October by Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec. Tate Moderns summer big earner will be a Frida Kahlo exhibition, and their winter follow-up of Henri Rousseau will solve Christmas card problems for many thousands of suburban parents. Even the Saatchi Gallery, for a decade the Fagins kitchen of reputation art, is said to be gearing up for a season of exhibitions of real painting. Working on an earlier draft of this article, before seeing this announcement from Saatchi, I wondered whether the trend to figuration could beat the market power Saatchi was putting behind the conceptualists. I wrote that the real longterm level of marketability of much of the material in the Saatchi collection must be questionable. There were some cynics who saw the fire at the Hackney art warehouse (the bonfire of the inanities) as a smart move by the Saatchi collection to convert their holding into cash (via insurance) without the trouble of taking the product to market. Which means in effect that you and I will have paid for the Saatchis losses, through increased premiums. You can be sure that no insurers are going to knock the Saatchis no-claims bonus when they can more conveniently pass the cost through to the average punter. Setting aside the ability of the Saatchi collection and the annual farce of the Turner Prize to manipulate the top end of the art market, it is not surprising that when economic or political difficulties threaten the apparent stability of the capitalist system, the smart money switches to investments with a reliable long-term track record. Remember dear old Maynard Keynes scurrying to Paris, pockets bulging with the highest-rated guarantees, to snap up a huge collection of Degas while German heavy shells began to fall on the city.

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The Limits of Direct Action

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the Industrial Workers of the World
THE past few years have witnessed the birth of a new politics. The movement has revealed itself on the streets, in huge international protests. Seventy thousand marched against the World Bank at Seattle in 1999, 250 000 against the G8 at Genoa in 2001, 500 000 against a Europe of capitalism and war at Barcelona in the spring of 2002. But what were the historical roots of such insurgency from below? This article concentrates on one previous instance of a movement which was also motivated by a philosophy of direct action, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies). The IWW began as an alliance between radical trade unionists in the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) and socialists from the two most important North American parties, the Socialist Party of America (SPA), led by Eugene Debs, and the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) led by Daniel De Leon. Yet the IWW was not just the unification of what already existed. The process of unification created something that was greater than the sum of its parts. James P Cannon describes the IWW as more than a union. It was also a revolutionary organization whose simple and powerful ideas inspired and activated the best young militants of its time, the flower of a radical generation.1 The Wobblies recruited through free-speech fights in Seattle, Washington in 1909, and mass strikes in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912 and Paterson, New Jersey in 1913. If you believed that the workers deserved justice, then the Socialist Party was the party to join. The Industrial Workers of the World was the movement for people who wanted to fight. The politics of the IWW are discussed in this article through a study of the life of one of their leaders, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Few people within the movement have led more tumultuous lives. Born in 1890 to a family of Irish socialists, Flynn was a teenager when she met Emma Goldman, and was encouraged by her example to play a role in the workers movement.2 She mounted her first soapbox in 1905, becoming a fiery champion of the oppressed. Flynn was first arrested in 1906, charged and released. In 1907, Flynn left school to became an organiser for the IWW. During 1908-14, Flynn led a series of strikes for the Wobblies. In 1914, Flynn helped to found the Workers Defence Union (WDU) to defend IWW and other socialists against state repression. One of the WDUs proudest moments was to publicise the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, two anarchists who were framed and murdered by the American state. In 1926, Flynn helped to lead the Passaic New Jersey textile strike. Afterwards, she joined the American Communist Party. For many years, Flynn was a leading figure
1. 2. JP Cannon, The IWW, New York, 1967, p9; see also M Dubofsky, Big Bill Haywood, Manchester, 1987, pp36-8. Much later, in 1910, Emma Goldman dedicated one of her books to Flynn, the finest American woman rebel. Their correspondence is held among the Elizabeth Gurley Flynn papers in the Tamiment Institute Library in New York, roll #4201.

Dave Renton

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in the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She was expelled from ACLU with the first hint of McCarthyism in 1940.3 Arrested a dozen times, Flynn remained a prominent Communist until her death in 1964.4 Flynns situation speaks to the condition of our times. For by her own account, Flynn was a classical Marxist trapped by chance at the head of a syndicalist tide. It is useful to compare her to Big Bill Haywood, one of the leaders of the IWW, and another self-defined socialist. Bill Haywood was elected to the National Executive of the SPA, and chosen as a delegate to the 1910 Congress of the Second International. On his return to America, Haywood remained a socialist, signing up for a nationwide lecture tour sponsored by the International Socialist Review. Yet despite all these signs of orthodoxy, Haywood was attracted by the radical politics of the IWW, declaring in a debate in 1911 with his SPA comrades: Those of us who are in jail those of us who have been in jail care not what you say or do! It is our purpose to overthrow the capitalist system by forcible means if necessary. 5 Haywood joined the Wobblies, and was expelled from the leadership of the Socialist Party. Yet although Big Bill Haywood left the SPA, this does not mean that he abandoned socialism. He argued that the IWW represented the best desires of the international working-class movement. In his words, Industrial unionism is socialism with its working clothes on.6 Bill Haywoods life was a bridge between two traditions which are often described as hostile which is also how Flynn also presented herself. Yet the reason for choosing Flynn is not just to celebrate a radical life, but also to highlight some of its contradictions. One exists in the record of her life. Flynns autobiography was first published in 1955. By this time, she had been a member of the American Communist Party for nearly 30 years. Her account contains elements of mature thinking, self-denial and political censorship. It is different from her life as it was experienced at the time. The second, linked, contradiction existed within her strategy and indeed the strategy of her organisation, the IWW. The Wobblies never really decided whether they were a trade union, a party, or a movement. Flynn resolved the contradictions of IWW strategy subsequently in her memoir, by arguing that the IWW would have done better to become a party like the Bolsheviks. Yet her account of Bolshevism contained its own hidden spaces. The purpose of this account is not to resolve any of these contradictions on paper, but simply to point out some of the gaps that there were, both in the story of Flynns life, and in the politics to which she adhered. Flynns memoir was first published in 1955, under the title of I Speak My Own Piece. The imprint was Masses and Mainstream, one of the Communist Partys inhouse publishers. At the time it came out, Flynn was serving three years in jail as part of the McCarthy witch-hunt. Readers were informed that this was the first volume of a two-volume autobiography. This book ends with the period of 1920 to 1927 and my close identification in those seven years with the struggle to free Sacco and Vanzetti. Meanwhile, a second book would deal with my period of inactivity, due to illness, and my careful examination and evaluation of my 21 years of previous activities, which led me, to my mind logically and irrevocably, to join the Com3. 4. 5. 6. C Lamont, The Trial of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn by the American Civil Liberties Union, New York, 1968. HC Camp, Iron in Her Soul, Pullman, Washington, 1997. Dubofsky, Big Bill Haywood, p58. Cited in S Salerno, Red November, Black November: Culture and Communism in the Industrial Workers of the World, New York, 1989, p38.

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munist Party in 1937. Yet Flynn was already 65 years old at the time that the first book appeared, and the second volume was never completed. Following her death, a new edition of the book was published, its title chosen to reflect her earlier career, and indeed the balance of her book. Flynn again became The Rebel Girl, the name of a Joe Hill song dedicated to her in her youth.7 In the 1955 version of her memoir, Flynn was careful to insist that what she had written was faithful to the original emotions of the time. I have tried to write this first book from the viewpoint and in the context of my experiences at the time, avoiding superimposing the viewpoint of the writer at the age of 65, which will be fully developed in the second volume.8 Yet this is too simple her book was written long after the events it described, and its account was necessarily different from what she experienced at the time. There at least two points at which tensions can be detected between her own life-story, and that which appears in her memoir. The first relates to the balance of socialist and anarchist thinking in her early life. The second concerns the events of her departure from the IWW. Red or Black? In her autobiography, Flynn was careful to present herself as a loyal and orthodox socialist. Such an account was by no means untruthful, but in her book it does serve to ease the path towards her later conversion to Communism. Flynn made much of the Marxist education that she received as a teenage socialist when she first came into the movement. Among the books which she read at this time, Flynn specifically mentioned The Communist Manifesto, Engels Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, On the Family, Private Property and the State, also Marxs Value Price and Profit, and Wage, Labour and Capital. She also listed such other staples of the movement as Mary Wollestonecrafts Vindication of the Rights of Women and August Bebels Women and Socialism.9 Why was Flynn able to read so many of the classics? Her parents were members of the Socialist Party. Flynns influences included the Irish socialists James Larkin and James Connolly, both of whom stayed at her familys Bronx flat.10 This account begs the question of why Flynn chose to work within the very unMarxist IWW. One reason she hints at may have been the evolution of her familys politics. Before she joined the movement, her father Tom Flynn had helped to establish an Irish Socialist Federation as well as a Socialist Unity Club, and he was briefly an organiser for the IWW.11 At its creation, the IWW seemed to represent the best unity of all socialists, therefore she was just following in her fathers footsteps. Perhaps the question is not so much why did Flynn join the IWW but rather why did she drift away from the socialist parties, at whose rallies she had previously spoken? Flynn did not answer this question directly in her memoir. Instead, we have a speech she made in 1962. Asked this question, she gave an answer which is compatible with the
7. 8. 9. 10. 11. EG Flynn, I Speak My Own Piece, New York, 1955, p11; EG Flynn, The Rebel Girl, New York, 1973. Flynn, I Speak My Own Piece, p11. Flynn, The Rebel Girl, pp41-2. S Rowbotham, Women in Movement: Feminism and Social Action, London, 1992, p159. Connolly was later employed as an IWW organiser in New York. For his time in the American movement, see K Allen, The Politics of James Connolly, London, 1990, pp57-82. Flynn, I Speak My Own Piece, pp63-7.

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account in her memoir. The problem, she explained, was the attitude of the Socialist Party. She did not leave the SP, it left her. All of us of the younger generation were very impatient with it. We felt it was rather stodgy. Its leaders were, if you will pardon me for saying so, professors, lawyers, doctors, ministers, and middle-aged and older people, and we felt a desire to have something more militant, more progressive and more youthful and so we flocked into the new organization, the IWW.12 Flynns description of the people who joined the SP was also a description of its politics. The party defined socialism as opposition to big trusts. It was strongly influenced by the reformist right and centre of European socialism. The party had a most inflated belief in the ability of the ballot box to deliver change, declaring: When 10 million American citizens will quietly drop a demand for the means of production into the ballot box, the capitalist army will have no foe but themselves and their riot bullets will be harmless as childrens marbles.13 It seems obvious that being a good socialist, the IWW was more appealing to Flynn. Yet when we move beyond the record of her memoir to other sources, we find that the balance of Flynns socialist and anarchist ideas was more complex. There were times when Flynn was placed in positions where she had to choose between socialism and syndicalism. Her responses then were uneven. For example, in August 1906, she was arrested alongside her father Tom Flynn and members of the Socialist Unity Club. The New York Times maintained that the reason for Flynns arrest was that theatre-goers had observed a red flag, perceived as a symbol of anarchism, being flown above the American flag. But the red flag here was actually a pennant bearing the word Unity to represent the Socialist Unity Clubs efforts to seek a merger between the Socialist Party and the Socialist Labor Party. Interviewed afterwards, the firebrand libertarian gave a textbook defence of Marxism: I am not an anarchist but a thorough socialist. First, socialism is the study of human development of the human race that is, the facts of class struggle and economic progress. Secondly, it is the analysis of the past so as to foretell what the next step will be in human development. Thirdly, it is collectivism, what we will believe this next step will be, public utilities owned and organized by the people.14 Then there were other occasions when Flynns ideas were more black than red. One such was the occasion in 1907 when Daniel De Leon and the SLP were expelled from the IWW. There seem to have been two factors behind their expulsion. The first was simply the general conduct of the SLP which tended to see all such joint work as
12. 13. 14. EG Flynn, Memories of the Industrial Workers of the World, speech delivered at Northern Illinois University, 8 November 1962, text available at www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5202/ rebelgirl.html. Cited in Allen, The Politics of James Connolly, p68. New York Times, 23 August 1906; New York Globe, 23 August 1906; New York Herald, 23 August 1906. There are cuttings from this protest among Flynns papers, in roll #4200.

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a means for vindicating the partys existing positions. Yet having sought to achieve influence over the movement, De Leon and his comrades went out to win acceptance for positions markedly at odds with IWW practice. The first such was the claim that there was a fixed limit set upon workers ability to win concessions under capitalism. Here the SLP foundered upon the pro-strike instincts of most delegates, several of whom were prepared to quote Karl Marx in defence of their anarcho-syndicalism! The second argument the SLP made was that some kind of Labour political action (that is, voting) was required as part of the armoury of the movement. It was at this stage that Flynn intervened, arguing that the IWW constitution should rule out of hand all support for political parties: The present preamble with its contradictions had been the cause of much discussion and confusion, and among the membership of the IWW there were so many different versions as to the meaning of political action and few only are able to explain it. Political action had today no power in itself, and thousands are disfranchised because they are out of employment and travelling through the country in search of work.15 The report of this meeting records that Flynns speech won the applause of the intransigents in the so-called Overalls Brigade. Whatever she was arguing anarchism or anarcho-syndicalism the subordination of politics was not Marxist. Another moment in Flynns life which makes little sense in the context of her autobiography is her pamphlet Sabotage: The Conscious Withdrawal of the Workers Industrial Efficiency. Here sabotage was defined as the withdrawal of efficiency either to slacken up and interfere with the quantity, or to botch in your skill and interfere with the quality, of capitalist production Sabotage is not physical violence, sabotage is an internal, industrial process it is simply another form of coercion. First given as a speech, this text was published as a pamphlet in 1915, to support a New York socialist and occasional IWW activist Frederic Summer Boyd, who was sentenced to five years for advocating industrial damage.16 Ironically, Frederic Boyd soon changed his stance, and Flynn was later inclined to view him as an agent provocateur paid for by the state. What was Boyds crime? During the Paterson strike, he was said to have told the silk workers that if they went back to work, and they were placed next to scabs, they should add vinegar to the mix so that work could not be resumed. In her pamphlet, Flynn pointed out the sheer hypocrisy of the charge. All the time, the employers would use cheap materials, including tin, zinc and lead to adulterate the quality of silk. From the point of view of the customers, who were the real disrupters? But it is clear from Sabotage, that Flynn would have been much happier, if only Boyd had adopted slightly different tactics rather than tell the workers to ruin the goods, they should have reduced the chemicals for adulteration, and produced materials of the finest quality. That was the sabotage which would have hurt their boss! In her memoir, Flynn dismissed her pamphlet, saying that it had bobbed up like a bad penny ever since.17 But it would be wrong to separate this contentious episode
15. 16. 17. PS Foner, The Industrial Workers of the World 1905-1917: Volume IV of History of the Labor Movement in the United States, New York, 1965, p111. Boyd later signed a petition for pardon, and Flynn retaliated by accusing him of cowardice, but by this stage the pamphlet was already out. Flynn, The Rebel Girl, p163.

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from the rest of her work at the time. Her argument in 1915 was that workers would always resist capitalist exploitation. There was no ought about this process, it was the only sensible response to speed-up and automation. If anyone was to blame, it was the bosses for subjecting workers to impossible and inhuman conditions. Flynns defence of sabotage was part of genuine IWW politics, and not something that she could write out later. Leaving With Her Head Held High? A second controversy concerns Flynns departure from the IWW. Again this episode is under-written in Flynns account. By now Flynn had been an activist for 10 years, without a break. She showed increasing signs of fatigue. The excitement of agitation may have dulled on her. By now, she had travelled to every regional centre, met every leading activist, taken part in every important strike. There was little left in the movement that was new to her. There are also signs that she was coming into more frequent conflict with Bill Haywood, the Secretary of the IWW. From 1914, Flynns autobiography records increasing tensions with the movement. She uses the phrase ultra-left to describe Haywoods tactics. As before, it is hard to know how much of this is her genuine emotion from the time, and how much is a rationalisation of her changed politics 40 years on.18 Flynn argues that her departure occurred as a result of events at Mesaba in north-eastern Minnesota, the biggest iron-ore mining region in the world. Flynn and her lover Carlo Tresca led a big strike there. But five organisers were arrested. In a complex process of legal negotiations, Flynn secured the release of five IWW organisers from arrest, by persuading three striking Montenegrin miners to plead guilty to charges of killing a policeman during a riot.19 This was a complex piece of pleabargaining which nearly came unstuck. Flynns chapter is titled A Solomons Decision.20 The judge offered to detain the men for no longer than three years, and a guilty plea was offered in return, but on appearing in court the men were sentenced to between five and 20 years. As it happens, the men were released on time, but all concerned lived in a state of panic, as the replacement prosecutor denied all knowledge of the bargain. The decision was unpopular with many strikers. Leaflets were circulated at Mesaba suggesting that she had let others suffer in order to save her friends, Vincent St John and her lover, Carlo Tresca.21 So Flynn was already on the way out. But she actually decided to leave in the autumn of 1917 following disagreements among the leadership of the IWW, as to how they should resist state persecution. By 1917-18, the movement was at its height, but the level of repression had also reached a high pitch. Workers on the Pacific Coast planned strikes for eight-hour day. But strikes were cut short by the declaration of war in the autumn of 1917.22 Hundreds of Wobblies were arrested, and 166 were charged with producing anti-war propaganda. Flynn and Tresca had previously argued that the IWW should defy wartime arrests. But when the leadership demanded the right to appear in court, they broke rank. Bill Haywood maintained that leading Wobblies should surrender to federal
18. 19. 20. 21. 22. Camp, Iron in Her Soul, p74. Patrick Renshaw, The Wobblies, Garden City, 1967, pp175-6. Flynn, I Speak My Own Piece, pp199-203. Fred Blossom, Materials from Elizabeth Gurley Flynn 1922-23, in Anderson Collection, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs (ALUA). Flynn, Memories of the Industrial Workers of the World.

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authorities. He probably believed that the IWW could win in court, as he himself had done when on trial previously, and in this way bring new publicity for the movement. Flynns preferred tactic was to argue that the defendants should fight on a case-by-case basis. Flynns strategy was based on a combination of political savvy and self-interest. More clearly than Haywood, she realised that the authorities would not lose a court battle in wartime. Flynn also had the name to make such a tactic work. Indeed her lover Tresca had to get off, the threat of deportation back to Italy was much more dangerous for him than the likelihood of a jail sentence in the USA.23 This is how Flynn defended her decision in her memoir: It was a tragedy and I believe an avoidable one that all of these splendid workingmen should have been sewed up in this manner in one case, without at least a fight against it. The key phrase is in one case Flynn argued that there should have been several. Her account then continues with details of a plan floated by the National Civil Liberties Bureau to postpone the trial. She does not suggest that the government expressed any strong interest, but she does argue that the IWW leadership should have backed the project, all the same. Their disinterest she explains in terms of their primitive anarchist politics. The IWW was gripped by Leftism of the most extreme type. For a Communist audience in the 1950s, such an explanation may have been persuasive. Yet most subsequent commentators have found that it was Flynns conduct and not Haywoods which requires explanation.24 So Flynn, Tresca and Joe Ettor managed to extricate themselves from the main show-trial by arguing that their period of membership of the IWW did not cover the date of charges, as they had already been expelled after Mesaba. Flynns decision appeared to many colleagues as a moment of political cowardice, and it was a choice that she would regret. But she was not the only one to make a wrong choice. Once the show-trial had found the defendants guilty and the sentences had come in, Haywood and eight comrades jumped bail and fled to the Soviet Union. Haywood died there, a broken man. Flynns mistaken decision in 1917, and Haywoods departure, were burned deep into her memory. Later in the 1950s, Flynn insisted on staying and fighting McCarthyism, when several friends desired to flee. Indeed in this context, Flynns generous excuse of Haywoods conduct takes on extra layers of meaning: Prison can kill and does maim the human body. Let those outside never forget that.25 The Limits of Direct Action This article has already mentioned Flynns endorsement of sabotage in 1915. This pamphlet is the closest we come to a statement of intent both for Flynn and for the movement. Yet sabotage was highly controversial on the American left. In 1912, Eugene Debs was expelled from the Socialist Party in part for advocating sabotage, a charge he denied. In his words: I am opposed to sabotage and to direct action The foolish and misguided zealots and fanatics are quick to applaud such tactics and the result is usually hurtful to themselves and the cause they seek to advance. 26 The IWW endorsed sabotage in 1914, although this decision was reversed in 1917.27
23. 24. 25. 26. 27. The account here of Flynns departure is based on Camp, Iron in Her Soul, pp74-83. Flynn, I Speak My Own Piece, p226. Ibid, p226. DE Winters, The Soul of the Wobblies: The IWW, Religion, and American Culture in the Progressive Era 1905-1917, Westport, 1985, p31. See the discussion in Flynns papers, #4201.

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How did the idea of sabotage connect to the philosophy of the IWW? Whatever the influence of Daniel De Leon and other Marxists, most Wobblies were philosophically anarchists. They rejected in practice at least one distinctive argument associated with Marx, namely that socialism could only conquer after a revolutionary transfer of power. The Preamble to the IWW Constitution made clear the belief that the task of supplanting capitalism could begin in the present day: It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for the everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism has been overthrown. By organising industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.28 The most important phrase here is undoubtedly the last. But how possible was it to create a different society within the shell of the old? Whether they endorsed the work of Marx or of some earlier revolutionary tradition, those who criticised this idea could point to its long practical failure Owens model factories, the Chartist land colonies, early American communalism surely each of these movements had been crushed by the pressures of a hostile capitalist world. Under capitalism, every part of life was to be integrated into market relationships unless there was a total revolt. John Reed, a journalist and an early American Communist, described how the Wobblies theory worked: The characteristics of an IWW strike are these: the workers are discontented; they are either unorganized, or their unions will not support their demands. A spontaneous strike movement occurs. The IWW is called in to take charge. Now that the strike was underway, other workers in local trades would be called out in sympathy with the first group. The leaders of the strike would preach the necessity of a revolutionary war against capitalism. Even at the end of a victorious dispute, no truce would be signed with the employers. No contracts or agreements must be signed with the employers; the working class must be free to strike whenever the opportunity comes.29 While recognising the IWW as the advance guard of the American proletariat, Reed insisted that the comrades still had much to learn from European socialism. Crucially, he argued, the Wobblies were wrong to dismiss Marxs arguments for a political revolution. The new society could not be achieved through successive industrial victories. Workers could win and win, but the more that they won, the more determined the capitalist class and its allies would be in resisting them. Ultimately, capitalism was a total way of running society which incorporated an economic, political, social and domestic order. Real power could not be won in industry alone. There is a similar idea in the account given by William Z Foster, a leading Wobbly who argued that revolutionaries should be willing to work in nonrevolutionary unions. Foster later became a prominent Communist, and his charac28. 29. Preamble to the Constitution of the IWW as amended 1908, in JL Korblush, Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology, Chicago, 1908, p13; also see R Darlington, Revolutionary Syndicalism: An International and Comparative Analysis, Salford Papers in Sociology, no 31, April 2001. J Reed, The Fighting IWW in America (1920), cited in J Newsinger, Shaking the World: John Reeds Revolutionary Journalism, London, 1998, pp221-40.

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terisation of the IWW links to the idea that a superior model has been found: In its basic aspects, syndicalism, or more properly anarcho-syndicalism, may be defined very briefly as that tendency in the labor movement to confine the revolutionary class struggle of the workers in the economic field, to practically ignore the state, and to reduce the whole fight of the working class to simply a question of trade union action. Its fighting organization is the trade union; its basic method of class warfare is the strike, with the general strike as the revolutionary weapon; and its revolutionary goals is the setting up of a trade union state to conduct industry and all other social activities.30 The future Trotskyist James P Cannon took a similar line: Not the least of the reasons for the eventual failure of the IWW as an organization was its attempt to be both a union of all workers and a propaganda society of selected revolutionists in essence a revolutionary party. Cannon insisted that a party and a union must play different roles, Two different tasks and functions, which, at a certain stage of development, require separate and distinct organizations, were assumed by the IWW alone; and this duality hampered its effectiveness in both fields. Cannon, Foster and Reed all believed that the IWW was superseded by higher forms of organization the Communist Party of the early 1920s. Indeed Cannon claimed that Bill Haywoods flight to Russia was the practical expression of this view.31 Where does Flynn fit into this argument? One answer is that she dodged the question. Her pamphlet Sabotage defended the practical actions that workers tried as individuals to get back at their boss, when external conditions made a strike impossible. Yet it did not take this tactic beyond the position of the individual. Flynn propagandised for the self-activity of workers in the movement, without asking where that energy should finally be directed. The pamphlet neither called for the expropriation of the ruling class, nor demanded an insurrection against the state, nor suggested any other way. Flynn left that question, and tiptoed round the side. Working on the terrain of propaganda and not strategy, high theory was left to others. Another reading might be that Flynn resolved the dilemmas of the movement over time. In her memoir, Flynn described herself as a socialist at the beginning of her political activism in 1906, in the middle and at the end. Flynn wrote as if having decided that Marxism was about persuading workers to rise in revolutionary struggle, she then joined that party which best understood this method, in practice, if not in theory. And having chosen the IWW, she then set out to convert the others to her views. Yet this account is far too simple. We have already witnessed Flynn siding with the most syndicalist wing of the IWW in hostility to De Leon and the SLP. In her day-to-day activity she worked most happily with several pure anarchists, not least Carlo Tresca. There is also her pamphlet Sabotage to explain. If she was working as
30. 31. Foner, The Industrial Workers of the World, p20. Cannon, IWW, pp12, 26.

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some kind of deep-entrist within the movement, then the politics of the IWW undoubtedly had its effect on her, infusing her with a belief in spontaneity over organisation, and strikes now against revolution in the future. What she lacked was a strategy for turning the small battles into great conflicts, but in this absence, she was hardly alone. The movement would have gained from more defeated heroines on her scale. Conclusion If the anti-capitalist movement continues to grow, then undoubtedly it will generate more activists with the same politics as the early Flynn. Her defence of sabotage was that it extended the tactic of direct action into the workplace. Even if strikes lost, they could be continued inside the factory, and workers would continue the class struggle despite everything. How such a politics is ultimately judged must surely depend on wider conceptions of the role of socialists or revolutionaries. Flynns politics was all about activity the self-activity of the working class. Flynn was a member of a revolutionary trade union. In her speeches, she regularly criticised the dominant strategies of the Socialist Party. Flynn attacked the leaders of socialism but even as she did so, Flynn called herself a socialist. How could Flynn be both a revolutionary socialist, and a critic of orthodox socialism? In her defence you might argue that socialism is above all a movement of working-class people, to abolish poverty and want. It is for this goal that the socialist cause exists, as Flynn recognised. Her radical, activist politics captured the fighting essence of socialism far better than the evolutionary pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die reformism of the Socialist Party in America, and Germany, and Italy, and France, and everywhere indeed that the tactics of the Second International won out. The question remains, however: of how to lead from class skirmish to triumph?

Jim Connell (1850-1929)

Disaffected Celts and Red Flags
The Origins of Celtic Socialism JIM Connell was born at Kilskyre, Crossakiel, County Meath, in 1850. A Fenian and a prominent member of the Irish Land League, he came from a rural background. Inheriting the Irish Celts ingrained anti-English nationalism and love of the land, he wandered through the Slieve Bloom Mountains between the age of 12 and 19. At the age of 12, he was already a competent poacher. In his book The Confessions of a Poacher, he wrote: At the age of 19 I removed to Dublin, and hard work and want of opportunity for a long time banished all thoughts of sport. In the course of years I found my way to London, and there easier circumstances and proximity to well-stocked preserves excited afresh the desires of earlier days. When he first came to London in the 1870s, the iconoclastic left-wing agitator formed
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James D Young

a friendship with Michael Davitt, and Connell became the secretary of the first English branch of the Irish Land League in Poplar, in London. An active member of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) from the 1880s, he was soon at loggerheads with HM Hyndman and the dominant Marxist leadership in the metropolis of British capitalism. Temperamentally a hot-blooded Celtic rebel, a poet and, above all, a character with the traits of an actor, he remained permanently opposed to British imperialism for the rest of his life. Though not enough is known of his biography, Connell was, according to Henry Boylans Dictionary of Irish Biography (1978), a sheep farmer, labourer journalist, and self-taught lawyer. He came to London at some point in the 1880s, and he wrote The Red Flag in 1889 under the inspiration of the Irish land struggle and under the influence of the Russian revolutionaries Stepniak, Vera Zasulich and Sofiya Perovskaya, whom he met in London, of the Chicago anarchists and of the London dockers strike. By the late 1880s, he was already identifying with James Connolly and the predominantly Scottish and Irish left-wing or impossibilist critics of Hyndmans London-controlled SDF. Connell moved to Glasgow about 1890 or 1891, and spent the remainder of the decade living and agitating in the second city of the infamous British Empire. In their book Creative Revolution of 1919, Eden and Cedar Paul, the English communist historians, described Connells role in the 1890s and very early 1900s in fostering the Marxist education of the members of the SDF at the same time as he was criticising Hyndman and the English leaderships softness towards British imperialism. As the Pauls explained: The first attempt at independent working-class education in Britain had no such [French] origin. W Nairn of the SDF organised Marxist classes on the Clyde as long ago as the 1890s. Nairn died young, and the work was carried on more systematically by George Yates and Jim Connell, who led the left wing of the Scottish SDF against Hyndman and [Harry] Quelch. In a sometimes inaccurate and generally unsympathetic reminiscence of Connell in the Irish Labour News in 1936, Mrs Katherine Gatty wrote: It was in these early years in Dublin that Jim Connell met a man much older than himself, called John Landye, an entirely self-taught philosopher, who would, like a peripatetic Irish Socrates, gather about him a group of intelligent and inquiring proletarian youths, with whom he would discuss all the problems of the universe during the interminable Sundays spent in tramps through the Wicklow Mountains, or on long winter evenings in some small crowded Dublin pub. It was through Landyes influence that Jim became so able a debater and so attractive a speaker. Gatty recalled that she had rented a room from Connells wife on Denmark Hill, near Camberwell Green, in the 1880s. In those years, Connell spent his time speaking at meetings or going out poaching at nights. Connell did not abandon his sympathetic attachment to the Irish cause; and, in retaining his inherited Irish nationalist sympathies and integrating them with the ecumenical Marxism of the Second International, Connell was a more complicated socialist poet and writer than Gatty, then a young journalist, understood. Reserving her most dismissive comments for her concluding paragraph, Gatty said:

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Though he was so typically the stage Irishman, Jim Connell was not among Irelands great emancipators. The Celtic renaissance owes him nothing. His Fenianism, his socialism and his Theosophy, I think, were nebulous. Gatty did not like him, and her account of his life was sometimes inaccurate. On 21 December 1889, the British socialist newspaper Justice had published A Christmas Carol entitled The Red Flag to the air of The White Cockade, by J Connell. As an exiled Irishman living in London, the world-famous strike for the dockers tanner or sixpence in 1889 was the most immediate event inspiring him to write his revolutionary song about the struggle against the centuries-old martyrdom of labour. It was sung in Glasgow and Liverpool the following Sunday, and it eventually became the hymn of the British Labour Party. During the London dockers strike in 1889, Connell worked alongside such colourful socialists as Tom Mann and John Burns. Within a few years, Burns moved to the right of official Labour politics, became a Radical Member of Parliament and the first working-class member of the Cabinet of a British government. Contributing A Portrait of John Burns to Justice in 1895, John Leslie, the Scottish-Irishman, wrote: And yet, it is sad to see one who might have been so useful, after we had educated him, thus turn round and, in order to obtain the full reward of his treachery, do his utmost to harm the cause which none knows better than he does is the only hope of the class which he has deserted and betrayed. Burns had been characterised during the socialists struggle for free speech at Trafalgar Square, London, in 1888 as The Man Who Carries the Red Flag. Although he did not write many revolutionary songs, Connell was sufficiently outraged and stimulated by Burns that he produced a poem entitled Lord Lavender. John Bulls Historiography In the book Industry and Empire: An Economic History of Britain since 1750, published in 1968, the British Communist Partys historian Eric J Hobsbawm devoted his penultimate chapter to the Other Britain of the Celtic fringe. Just as he ignored John Maclean, the famous Clydeside socialist, so he did not even mention Big Jim Larkin or James Connolly. Although he mentioned neither Robert Tressell or Jim Connell by name, Hobsbawm referred to them indirectly by asserting that an Irishman wrote The Red Flag, the anthem of the British labour movement, and the best British working-class novel, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. As we have seen, The Red Flag was written during the great London dockers strike of 1889, and its publication in Justice, organ of the SDF, guaranteed Connells immortality and place in the Pantheon of Labours mighty dead. Even so, labour historians have shown surprising little interest in this important Irish socialist. By 1895, when the leaders of the SDF were denouncing John Burns as a renegade and a traitor, the revolutionary words of The Red Flag were becoming too unsettling for Anglo-Saxon socialists like Hyndman. So Hyndman persuaded AS Headley to adapt the words of The Red Flag to the hymn Tannenbaum or Maryland. Enjoying a history of its own, Connells revolutionary song or hymn The Red Flag was reprinted, together with The Internationale, in The Socialist Sunday

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School Song Book in 1910. In the following year, it was reprinted in The Socialist Sunday School Hymn Book. In the best-known version of The Red Flag, the opening verse triumphantly asserts that: The peoples flag is deepest red; Its shrouded oft our martyred dead, And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold Their hearts blood dyed its every fold. Then raise the scarlet standard high! Within its shade well live and die. Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, Well keep the Red Flag flying here. In the final verse, the words are intended to inspire all those who wanted a new society of equals: With heads uncovered swear we all To bear it forward till we fall, Come dungeon dark, or gallows grim, This song shall be our parting hymn. Like many of his anti-Anglo-Saxon Celtic Irish counterparts on the anti-imperialist left for example, James Connolly, shot by the British during the Easter Rising in Dublin, and John Maclean, the famous Clydeside socialist Connell was at once an Irish nationalist and a socialist internationalist. Though he hated English imperialism (as distinct from English working folk), he viewed the whole historical evolution of mankind as a tragedy based on the martyrdom of labour. In the second, thoroughly internationalist, verse of The Red Flag, Connell identified with working folk throughout the world who were struggling for their freedom. As he put it: Look round, the Frenchman loves its blaze; The sturdy German chants its praise; In Moscows vaults its hymns are sung; Chicago swells the surging throng. However, when I interviewed Bob Selkirk, the veteran pre-First World War anarchist, foundation member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and selfconfessed Stalinist, in 1973, he told me that the third verse of another untitled Connell song in The Socialist Sunday School Song Book had been scratched out by the British communists in the late 1920s because it was being interpreted by the anarchists as an implicit criticism of a Russia without Soviets. It was interesting that the Scottish-Irishman Leslie was the SDFs expert on the Irish question. Educated by the Catholic priests, he was a brilliant self-taught scholar. In 1896, when Connolly founded the short-lived Irish Socialist Republican Party in Dublin, Leslie sided with Hyndmans denunciation of Irish Socialist Republicanism. When Connolly did not form a branch of the SDF in Dublin, he provoked Hyndman. Writing in Justice in June 1896 under his pen name of Tattler, Hyndman said that Connollys talk of winning complete independence from all connection with the British Empire sounded a bit out of place in a socialist manifesto. In 1896 as in 1898, Leslie shared the London leaders repudiation of Irish national independence.

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Connells immortal contribution to the Celtic renaissance was not just expressed through his defence of Scottish and Irish independence in the face of Hyndmans Anglo-Saxon triumphalism; it was lodged in his neglected pamphlet Brothers At Last: A Centenary Appeal to Celt and Saxon of 1898. When he lived in Glasgow for most of the 1890s, Connell led the struggle against Hyndmans pro-imperialist policies and attitudes within the SDF. Hyndman would not publish Connells pamphlet Brothers At Last, and it was published by the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in Glasgow. As well as identifying the imperialist role of the British jailer and hangman in Ireland, Connell also highlighted his own thorough internationalism. Focusing on the experience of Ireland as a subject nation within the British Empire, he argued that: In a country politically free, or in other words self-governed, Nationalism necessarily means that and nothing more; but in a country politically enslaved and socially enslaved, Nationalism frequently means Revolt against injustice. The Irish people naturally attribute the misgovernment and maladministration from which they suffer to their British governors and administrators, and thereby make a national of what should be a class quarrel. In contrast to the leaders of the SDF, he understood the links between class, race and ethnic identity from a socialist viewpoint. Attacking British imperialism for the exploitation of the Irish, the Egyptians, the Afghans, or the Zulus, Connell hoped that the workers in Britain and Ireland could be brought to understand one another. Although he insisted that we of the Socialist Party have the world for our country, he was not prepared to wait for the British workers to grant freedom to the Irish. In his most radical programmatic statement, he proposed: The ILP places on its programme National Independence for Ireland. Let National Independence be clearly defined as meaning not the unintelligible Home Rule of the political time-servers, but absolute National Separation. A major factor behind the dispute between the predominantly right-wing Hyndmanites and the left-wing critics of the pro-imperialist London leadership was the national question of the Celtic fringe. Unsympathetic to the agitation for Scottish or Irish independence, Hyndman and Quelch in particular refused to celebrate the national rising of the United Irishmen in 1798. So, although Connell was still an active member of the SDF, it was left to the ILP in Glasgow to publish his pamphlet celebrating the centenary of the Rebellion of the United Irishmen in 1798. At that time Connell was a very picturesque figure with a larger than life personality. He was a typical Irishman of high stature with great talent for action, and, in Robert Haddows words, a large open good-natured face, a humorous mouth, concealed by a long bushy moustache, which he was in the habit of keeping in order by the back of his hand. In an article in the Glasgow socialist newspaper Forward in March 1939, the veteran Scottish socialist Martin Haddow recalled: In outward appearance he was equally picturesque; a rough tweed suit, a

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blue shirt with a particularly flaming red tie and an enormous black felt hat with a wide brim such as was never seen in Glasgow before or since and sometimes a pair of orange socks After a few years of wandering up and down the country giving lectures (indoors and outdoors) on socialism to the heathen, as he called the proletariat, Jim settled down in Glasgow. The Pearces gave him a job travelling for their particular brand of wine. Being Irish, they thought he would have some influence over Irish publicans, but they were mistaken, as most licence-holders are strong Conservatives. He was a famous poacher, philosopher and poet, and his name will be forever associated with The Red Flag. Moreover, Connell was an expert at getting publicity or advertisements for himself, and in 1898 (the same year as the ILP in Glasgow published his antiimperialist pamphlet) the big commercial publisher William Reever published his booklet The Truth About the Game Laws: A Record of Cruelty, Selfishness, and Oppression. Then in 1901 Arthur Pearson published his small book Confessions of a Poacher, a second edition was produced a year later, and the two editions sold over 80 000 copies in less than two years. Before most of the leftist members like the Irish Celt James Connolly and the Scottish Celt John Carstairs Matheson resigned from the SDF to form the De Leonist Socialist Labour Party (SLP), they were sympathetic to the agitation for Scottish Home Rule from an internationalist perspective. The Glasgow residents William Gee, the full-time Scottish organiser, and Connell were ultra-critical of the rightwing London leaders of John Bulls very English SDF. So, when he spoke at the annual conference of the SDF in 1901, Gee asserted that in spite of the canting, hypocritical gang of Presbyterians in the Land of Cakes, yet in the near future Scotland is destined to take a more prominent place under the Red Flag than England is. Yates, Gee and Connell remained in the Hyndmanite organisation. In agitating within the SDF for national independence for Scotland and Ireland, the left-wing Celts despised Hyndmans pro-British imperialist policies and programmes. Gee was another colourful character. When he attended congresses of the Second International in various European cities, he always wore the kilt. Close to Connells anti-imperialist Celtic outlook, Gee contributed an article to Justice in 1901 in which he compared the revolutionary spirit of the Scots to the tame, respectable socialism of Hyndman and Quelch. However, when the predominantly Celtic Left resigned from the SDF to form the De Leonist SLP, Connell remained in Hyndmans organisation. Sympathetic to many of Daniel De Leons criticisms of the reformist policies and pro-English imperialist attitudes of such men as Hyndman, he regarded De Leon as a sectarian university professor. When De Leon addressed a meeting of the infant British SLP in London in October 1904, Connell was there to challenge him. In a partisan report in The Socialist, organ of the SLP, it was stated: Then a gentleman next to the platform rose to put a question. It was evident from his demeanour that he was more anxious to display his oratorical powers than to gain knowledge. In strident tones, and with growing excitement, he began to criticise the lecturer. He agreed with all De Leon had said; but did De Leon imagine it was anything new? De Leon ought to have stayed in America. Before he could get any further his voice was drowned by the Chairmans bell and by shouts from different parts of the
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hall to sit down. This was enough to raise the Celtic blood to boiling point. What! I have waited politely here for two hours, and now I am not to be allowed Again his voice was drowned. This was too much. The belligerent and choleric bard (it was Connell, author of The Red Flag, by the way) rushed upon the platform, seized the chair and struck a tremendous attitude of defiance. De Leon, less perturbed than any, had, the whole time, regarded the excited orator with calm, reflective kindness. The Easter Rising, the Bolshevik Revolution and James Ramsay MacDonald At the beginning of January 1917, Jim Larkin, who was living in Chicago, edited and published a new Irish Worker from his stronghold in the American city of Chicago. In the 17 March issue, Larkin published a short article by Connell supporting the Easter Rising as a peoples rising. Endorsing Larkins view that the Rising was an antiimperialist revolt, he emphasised the anti-capitalist consciousness of such socialist leaders as Connolly. Iconoclastic and rebellious, Connell saw the Easter Rising and the Bolshevik revolution as the culmination of what he had struggled for since the 1880s. When the SDF had become the core of the new British Socialist Party (BSP) in 1911, Connell played a role in the latter. Supporting the Bolshevik revolution, he remained on the left without joining the CPGB. In May 1920 he contributed an article to The Call, the organ of the BSP, entitled How I Wrote The Red Flag. While he remained on the left of the international socialist movement for the rest of his life, he wrote little. It was in May 1920, however, that he contributed his article to The Call on how The Red Flag was conceived against the background of international classstruggle socialism from below. In one significant paragraph, he said: The Editor wants to know how and where it was written. In a train between Charing Cross and New Cross, during a 15-minute journey, the first two stanzas, including the chorus, were completed, and, I think I may say, the whole of the song mapped out. After I got home I wrote more, and little remained to be done after that. Next day I made some slight additions and alterations, and the day following I sent it to Quelch. Then, after listing the factors responsible for inspiring The Red Flag, including his strong sense of Celtic identity, he expressed sympathy for the hanged Chicago anarchists in 1887. Connell continued: Their innocence was afterwards admitted by the Governor of the State of Illinois. The widow of one of them, Mrs Parsons, herself more than half a Red Indian, made a lecturing tour in this country soon afterwards. On one occasion I heard her tell a large audience that when she contemplated the service rendered to humanity she was glad her husband had died as he did. Yes, I heard Mrs Parsons say that. The reader may now understand how the souls of all true socialists were elevated, and how I got into the mood which enabled me to write The Red Flag. Anticipating the question about whether he had speculated about the songs immortality, he said:

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Did I, when I wrote it, think that my song would survive? Yes. The last line shows I did: This song shall be our parting hymn. I hesitated a considerable time over this last line. I asked myself whether I was not assuming too much. I reflected, however, that in writing the song I gave expression to not only the best thoughts and feelings of every genuine socialist I knew, anarchists of course included. I decided that the last line should stand. Connells touch of anarchist disaffection did not endear him to the SDF, CPGB or the Labour Party, and he was marginalised by the Bolshevik revolution. He was more of an anti-Establishment poet and rebel than he was a revolutionary Marxist. Moreover, outraged as late as 1920 by the success of Headley and the dominant London leadership of the SDF in interfering with the songs music and revolutionary spirit, Connell said: There is only one air which suits the words of The Red Flag, and that is the one which I hummed as I wrote. I mean The White Cockade. I mean moreover the original version known to everybody in Ireland 50 years ago. Since then some fool has altered it by introducing minor notes into it, until it is now nearly a jig. This later version is the one on sale in music shops today, and it does not suit my words. I suppose this explains why Adolphe Smith Headley induced people to sing The Red Flag to Maryland. Maryland acquired that name during the American War of Secession. It is really an old German Roman Catholic hymn. It is Church music and was no doubt composed, and is certainly calculated, to remind people of their sins, and frighten them into repentance. I daresay it is very good music for the purpose for which it was composed, but that purpose was widely different from mine. Defiant and rebellious to the end, the Irishman who enjoyed good company even on the terrace of what Lenin called their House of Commons refused to make his peace with the established social order. Conclusion Popular in post-1916 Dublin, and in the South of Ireland, The Red Flag had inspired the left during the holocaust of the First World War. In her article on Jim Connell, Mrs Katherine Gatty said: The Rand miners in South Africa went to the gallows singing it. It was sung in the House of Commons, and heard in the Dublin Mansion House. A Scottish MP declared that The Red Flag did more for socialism on the Clyde than anything else. Certainly, The Red Flag dominated gatherings of socialists all over Britain and haunted ruling classes everywhere; and in the early postwar years, before Ramsay MacDonald became the first Prime Minister of a minority Labour government in 1924, he tried to rid the Labour Party of the Irish Celts revolutionary song. In an article Jim Connell: Memories of the Man Who Wrote The Red Flag, Robert Murray, the Scottish socialist, wrote:

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During the years I was in Parliament [1922-24], it was the custom of Jim Connell to pay fairly frequent visits to the House of Commons. He was then as striking a figure in dress and aspect as in the old days. He spent many hours on the Terrace and there with other older campaigners Jamie Stewart, George Hardie, Bob Smillie, Duncan Graham and others he would fight the old battles over again. George Hardie delighted to draw Jim out on his poaching exploits, and especially on the wonderful feats of his lurcher dog Bleucher. But this is the point I want to chronicle George had one trick, which played over and over again always roused The Red Flag poet to bitter wrath. Jim hated the tune to which the song was sung. He himself had chosen the Scots [Jacobite] air The White Cockade for it, as a marching tune, but Keir Hardie at least he got the blame for it fitted the words to the mournful tune Maryland. The culprit had not been Keir Hardie, for the Irish author and revolutionary sentiments of The Red Flag had not come out of the Labour Party, anyway. Replying to a private criticism made to him by the King in 1924 on his accession to office as Labours first Prime Minister, James Ramsay MacDonald attributed this event to a few of our extremists. A few extremists or not, in the same year of 1924, MacDonald tried to get rid of The Red Flag as British Labours anthem. To quell the latent protests from the left of his own party, he organised a competition to find a substitute Labour anthem. In due course, the judges, John McCormack and Sir Hugh Robertson, reported that none of the 300 entries was as good as The Red Flag. By then the SDF was a small, isolated sect on the fringe of the British labour movement. After 1920, when Connell contributed his article to the Call, there was no real space for independent Irish rebels like Connell. To the great delight of the elderly Connell, The Red Flag remained as the socialist anthem of Labour in Britain and abroad. As a militant and unrepentant Celt and man of the extreme left, he had lived in London, the heart of the British Empire, for many years. He died on 8 February 1929. Unlike Leslie, who always belonged to the so-called internationalist wing of the SDF, Connell was not dedicated to, in Carstairs Mathesons words, internationalism as a sort of international jingoism. Connell never lost his attachment to the black socialism of the Celtic fringe. Connells death in 1929 occurred during a transitional stage of the development of the labour movement internationally as well as nationally. So, the deaths of both men were largely ignored during the years of their deaths, though Connell attracted slightly more attention in 1929 than Leslie had gained in 1921. The death of Connell, immortal author of The Red Flag, was largely ignored by the Irish and British labour press. However, in speaking for the leadership of the ILP, the editor of the New Leader, paid a three-sentence tribute to Connell when he said: The death of Jim Connell, the author of The Red Flag, will be received with regret in every part of the world. Whatever may be the literary merits of The Red Flag, the tune and its words breathe the everlasting spirit of freedom. In a short obituary in the Sunday Worker, the editor said that whenever Connell, the great rebel, appeared in public during the last phase of his life, it was the signal for a great demonstration. This obituary focused on Connells attendance at Tom Manns

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birthday dinner in 1928, and it simply ignored the fact that Leslie always refused to join the CPGB. In his brief tribute to the author of The Red Flag, the editor praised the socialist faith of the poacher-poet who published his Confessions of a Poacher and the Truth About The Game Laws without acknowledging Connells denunciation of British imperialism, his support for the Easter Rising of 1916 as a socialist revolt or his support for Irish, Scottish and African Home Rule, or his reservations about soulless bureaucratic Russian communism.

Reviews
August Thalheimer and German Communism (Revolutionary History, Volume 8, no 4), Porcupine Press/ Socialist Platform, 2004
IT seems reasonable to assume that readers of New Interventions will have a fair degree of knowledge of the history of socialism, and will, therefore, derive pleasure from the various issues of our sister journal Revolutionary History, if they are not already acquainted with it. Acquainted or not, they will certainly find much to their advantage in the latest issue of this latter magazine, which is largely devoted to Germany in the period between the First and Second World Wars. This issue is the first to appear since the untimely death of the magazines founding editor Al Richardson: in this reviewers eyes it lives up to the high standards that he set. Featured are not only a number of works by the insufficiently known August Thalheimer, a leader of the German Communist Party from its inception until late 1923, and also a piece by Ottokar Luban outlining Rosa Luxemburgs attitude to the Berlin Uprising (the so-called Spartacus Uprising) of January 1919. The standard view has for a long time been that Rosa was quite simply opposed to the rising. According to Paul Frlich: She regarded the situation as still not ripe enough to justify the attempt to seize political power. (Rosa Luxemburg, Pluto Press, 1972, p290) Luban argues, however, that she changed her mind in view of the scale of participation by the Berlin workers in demonstrations shortly before the action commenced. Evidence for this comes from Wilhelm Pieck, who records that at a meeting of the KPD Central Committee on Tuesday, 7 January 1919: Comrades Luxemburg and Jogiches pressed for a more resolute leadership of the struggle and clear slogans. This detail was excised from later printed reports of the proceedings, apparently in order to contrive the legend that the majority of the KPD Zentrale and Rosa Luxemburg rejected the call for the overthrow of the government. Rosa spelt out the steps she thought should be taken in a subsequent leading article in Die Rote Fahne on 8 January. Lubans article is followed by an interesting excerpt from the memoirs of one Karl Retzlaw, one of the KPDs founder members, covering the period from the right-wing Kapp putsch of 1920 to the disastrous Communist insurrectionary attempt of 1921 known as the March Action. This is valuable, but the various pieces by August Thalheimer are essential reading for anyone who wishes to grasp the course of German history in the interwar period. The first, entitled 1923: A Missed Opportunity? effectively disposes of the legend (fostered by Trotsky and repeated by his followers) that Germany in 1923 was ripe for revolution just as Russia was in

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1917. I do not propose to outline the reasons that Thalheimer advances against this notion, but will simply observe that in my opinion he succeeds in proving that: In 1923 a Communist victory was prevented primarily by the timely concessions of the bourgeoisie, and only secondarily by errors of the party and its leadership. A further piece by Thalheimer is entitled The Fifth Congress of the Communist International and its Results. Thalheimers remarks on this are followed by his criticism of the draft programme put forward at the Sixth Congress in 1928, entitled The Strategy and Tactics of the Communist International. These assessments contain many instructive observations, but perhaps the most interesting is his analysis of fascism, which appears in the piece on the 1928 draft. Particularly pertinent is Thalheimers comparison between the movement led by Louis Bonaparte in France and the fascism of the twentieth century: Thalheimer notes both similarities and differences. It is interesting that Thalheimer categorises the Poland of Pisudski as a fascist regime. In view of disagreements and uncertainties on this question among Marxists, Thalheimers observations are valuable if all too brief. There is much worth mentioning for example, the treatment of the question of transitional demands but those interested should read the magazine itself. I cannot recommend it too highly. Chris Gray

Andrew Roberts (ed), What Might Have Been: Imaginary History From Twelve Leading Historians, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004
COULD history have happened otherwise? A question of more than passing interest to those of us concerned with how the world might be changed. Its a question that seems to preoccupy some historians too. At least those who have taken to the speculative game of counterfactuals, that is, discussing various historical What Ifs, such as the outcome of the Second World War or whether JFK would have withdrawn troops from Vietnam. Professional historians have always been interested in counterfactuals. In recent years, however, imagining different historical possibilities seems to have a new respectability. This book is not the first work of its kind. In 1997, there was Virtual History edited by Niall Ferguson, followed by various What If programmes on the BBC. In What Might Have Been, Andrew Roberts takes the line that counterfactuals are useful in stressing the importance of individuals to history rather than impersonal forces like culture, the economy and political structures. Remove an active individual or two, and the world is significantly different. This echoes certain writings of the philosopher Isaiah Berlin in the 1950s. One of his bugbears then was historical determinism, the idea, often ascribed to Marxism, that history is made by extrahuman forces and fits a logical timetable with an inevitable destination. Though everyone believes, youd suppose, that all events have a cause (the wind blew and the apple dropped on Newtons head), Berlin sought to decry a determinism that was a search for laws about human beings: if the Army deserts the Dictator, a revolution will always follow. Yet, did anyone ever believe that such automatic cause and effect was how things worked in human society? Perhaps the religious teacher John Calvin comes closest with his schema that even before we were born the Almighty had predestined us either for One Place or the Other. On the other hand, Karl Marx in fact reckoned that the society of his day faced

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a choice of socialism or barbarism, while no socialist afterwards argued that the Revolution had a deadline. Struggle was after all the watchword. Its just that some may have spoken and acted as if certain times (like the 1930s) made revolution more likely than others. What about Marxs precursor GWF Hegel? Didnt he believe that the cosmos was hurtling down the tracks of time to something called the Absolute Idea? Hegel posed the Absolute Idea as the moment when Thought (human) finally coincided with the Cosmos (material), that is, when human thought finally understood everything and therefore controlled everything, which is not a bad description of the goal Western Science is supposed to have. However, Hegel considered that this had been reached in his lifetime, that is to say, the self-knowledge of the Absolute had occurred in his brain and was recorded in his books, just as perfect Freedom had been reached in Prussia. The future had already happened. If no one concerned with history has ever believed in an inevitable future, no one can dissent from the idea of its having possibilities. Roberts, however, claims more for virtual history than pointing out that things could have been otherwise. Roberts and Ferguson earlier both argue that it focuses our mind on a neglected or forgotten determinant. For Roberts, this is the individual human actor; for Ferguson, the supremacy of the accidental. In the last issue of New Interventions, my colleague Paul Flewers mentions What Might Have Been in a Current Business note. He too disagreed with the books assertion that Marxism had no room for individuals making a difference. An important figure in a key position, a leader in fact, can be decisive, an idea dear to Roberts. However, even Roberts admits that, for example, Winston Churchill was not essential, as a leader, to the British war effort. An Attlee or other head of an anti-Fascist coalition government could have done that job just as well. Roberts point is that only Churchill supplied the lions roar, in other words, come up with an effective language of defiance for Britain at that time. In a recent book, Blairs War (Polity, 2004), David Coates and Joel Kreiger argue that it was the current PMs roar, his rhetorical eagerness to appear the USAs No 1 ally after 11 September 2001, that reduced his leeway to decline when it came to the non-UN-sponsored, unilateral, invasion of Iraq. Harold Wilson had a bit more leeway in the 1960s over refusing to send a token British force to Vietnam. Yet this never implied a lack of commitment to the special relationship. It has always been a bedrock of Labour Party foreign policy (going back to Ernest Bevin in the 1940s) that Britains world role is ensured by a strong alliance with the USA. For many of What Might Have Beens contributors, such extra-individual forces as international relations, factions, movements and unavoidable conflicts are less responsible for events like the English Civil War than the actions (or mistakes) of prominent individuals. In other words, remove Charles I (or his stupidity) and there would have been no Battle of Naseby. However, even in their individual-centred accounts, virtual historians depend on more than an altered turning point. The consequences imagined will reflect hidden assumptions on the part of the writer about such crucial factors as the balance of power within a society (or an lite), the appeal of certain ideas and the tendency of particular social structures. This is illustrated by the two different accounts in What Might Have Been of what might have happened if Stalin had withdrawn in the face of the German invasion of Russia in 1941. In his introduction, Andrew Roberts speculates that if Stalin had withdrawn, the Politbureau and the Soviet people might have collapsed before the Nazi invasion. Hitler would thus have gained control of Russian oil, a turning point for the whole war. One of

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the books other contributors, Simon Sebag Montefiore, disagrees. Stalins withdrawal (and trial and execution by the Politbureau) would have led to the Communist Party under the chair of Molotov still chasing the Wehrmacht out of Russia, and going on to carry out all the postwar purges too, right on schedule. The difference between the two accounts is their different evaluations of the strength of the system, not the essential nature of its most prominent individual. Is there any way, then, if we are to do virtual history, of distinguishing the useful imaginary counterfactuals from the fallacious? Roberts is curiously silent on how historical studies could use counterfactuals to teach us something to our advantage. In Virtual History, Ferguson advised that in playing the What If game, historians should distinguish on the basis of Probability. Not everything is possible, and its a rule of the game to acknowledge this. The Vikings discovering America cannot immediately set up the Library of Congress. Take the Iranian revolution of 1978. Perhaps the Shah could have continued to rule Iran, but how many changes would have had to have been to prevent the revolution that occurred? It might not have happened if someone (!) had carried out the murder of every outraged Shiite, every oppressed worker and every dissenting exile. A revolution might still have been on the cards sometime while the Shah remained the spoiled client of Imperialism. Ferguson favoured the probable, and went on to argue that doing counterfactuals makes us aware of the role of chance in history. As Benjamin Franklin said, because of a lost nail in a horseshoe a battle could be lost. One idle soldier then could lose a battle. Fergusons introduction is more substantial than Roberts, but he ruins it by ending his piece with a call for chaostory, writing history that shows how everything depends on chance. This would not only exclude impersonal forces (such as the aforementioned Imperialism), but the decisive role of motive, skill and design. Our chaostorian doesnt, however, follow this grandly outrageous manifesto in his own historical work. On opening at random his recent book Colossos, I found the statement that the problem with developing countries in Africa is that they do not have the right institutions. One might agree or argue that Africans are poor for more than local reasons, but there is certainly not much room for individual creativity or accidents in locating the prime fault in the wrong machinery of government. Fergusons declaration that history is all down to chance breaks with an emphasis in both conservative and radical approaches that diplomatic, factional or social outcomes come about through struggle. Perhaps it does chime in with a feeling in this Age of Risk and Terror that we are now all at the mercy of Fortune, those unexpected chains of causation that intervene to disrupt our lives at any point, from redundancy to tsunami. To focus, however, on the unique aspects of a situation, the intervention of forces you cannot plan for, goes against any attempt to learn something from the past. However, people who are not professional historians persist in trying to learn from the past (their own or societys). The Allies after the Second World War did not content themselves with observations about how their predecessors of 1914-18 had got things wrong. They sought lessons applicable from that learning principally not to extract excessive reparations from the Germans, a lesson given greater urgency by the USAs growing hostility to the Soviet Union and the need for a united capitalist bloc. Some lessons, its true, are glib, inapplicable or wrongly applied. For example, the threat to the Russian Revolution didnt come from the likeliest-looking Napoleon figure (Trotsky), but from patriotic bureaucrats. Yet, we need to have some idea of where to look to find the possible wrong turnings if we are not just to

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meander, hence the centrality of theory, of having ideas about how things change. One purpose then of posing counterfactuals may help in asking how other possibilities didnt happen. Why did Germany not remain at peace after the First World War? Why was there not a strong middle-class liberalism in Russia? Why didnt Britain manage to hang on to the Empire (they tried their damnedest from India to Kenya)? Of course, you may not need an entire essay of What If imaginary to bring out these issues, but they are worth raising. The demand for chaostory may also owe something to the theory of Chaos in physical science, the concept that a confluence of factors, including small trivial ones, can lead to non-predicted outcomes. Indeed, did anyone predict the recent Asian tsunami? One word Ferguson uses to describe chaostry is that it is stochastic, meaning determined by a random distribution of probabilities. Just because we dont believe things are inevitable, we still dont need to go to the other extreme and assume they are random. The victory of Chelsea FC over Newcastle United the other day was not inevitable (in fact the Blues lost), but it wasnt random either. The likelihood of the top team in the League winning was lessened by such factors as the weather, injury, that it was an away match and, dare one say it, a few bad decisions by the ref. If all these had been the same but the opponents had been Watford, does anyone disagree that the likelihood would have been even greater of a Blues win? This isnt power worship even Arsenal dont win all the time but given the nature of the contest (and state of the pitch), you can still predict tendencies, another word for possibilities. The likeliest possibilities might be called by another name: necessity. What must happen unless impeded. In an historical work of 1937, JG Randall in Civil War and Reconstruction asked the (counterfactual) question: need the war between the US government and the Southern Confederacy have happened? Randall thought not, but the historian Pieter Geyl took him to task for neglecting the imperatives that led to the clash. The uncompromising demands of an influential party in the South for the return of escaped slaves from free states led to the odds stacking up against the continuation of peace. Apart from a few abolitionists (who thought it would help the slaves), not many wanted such a clash between the slave-owning states and the freemarket ones, least of all the pragmatic Abraham Lincoln. When it finally came to war, the odds were also against the under-armed South. As my colleague Dawna King said when we discussed this (and in response, as it were, to Benjamin Franklin): One soldier can lose a battle, but one soldier cant win a war. There had been unexpected interventions like the activities of the belligerent abolitionist John Brown that brought the Civil War closer, indeed could be said to have acted as a trigger. But just as a trigger needs a gun and bullet, chance needs something to work on. For example, in Evolution Theory there is a recent hypothesis about why soft sea creatures grew hard shells. Investigation found that there is a protein in the body that if released can grow hard matter on the body. Millions of years ago, this may have been released by accident. However, the excellence of shell for survival purposes resulted in sea creatures that could stay around long enough to have offspring. Accident had a successful outcome (continuation of the species) because of the necessity of shells to survival. The US Civil War may not have been triggered if it had only been a case of the coexistence of two systems, two incompatible structures. The arrangement might indeed have continued. However, when the Confederates were denied the extension of their system and consequently sought to leave the Union, secession was a challenge to the state that it could not accept and

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remain the state. It was a question of authority and fundamentals. An historical process combines personal and impersonal, individual initiative and fundamental conflict, the unexpected and the institutional. Its what people call dialectic, an approach that doesnt exclude chance or personal skill, but acknowledges the ground of inherent contradiction and the balance of forces in any situation (how necessary the shell, how ripe the revolution?). History doesnt have a track, but has various possible roads. Imagining the roads not taken may certainly help. For example, the way Japan might have turned out if it had been colonised and ruled like Africa or India, and therefore not developed a capitalism of its own. What If fiction, such as Philip Roths The Plot Against America, can give us an appreciation of what it might be like to live in a different society. The writing of actual history, however, means always coming back to the roads that were taken and the full account of why they were; in Japans case, the lack of mineral wealth or huge trade profits that would excite colonising interest. This is the study of history, an account of not just whims or accidents, but the full circumstances and balance of forces at any particular moment. This approach doesnt make socialism inevitable, but it does mean that the problems of a capitalist globe are not virtual; they wont go away, though there is still the possibility of dealing with them. Mike Belbin

Kate Hudson, Breaking the South Slav Dream: The Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia, Pluto Press, 2003
KATE Hudsons book aims to explain the emergence of Yugoslavia in the aftermath of the First World War as the continental empires broke up, as the fulfilment of a long-held dream rooted in nineteenth-century romanticism and nationalism, its brief existence and recent disintegration. She focuses on the role of foreign states. Chapter 1 looks at the establishment of the first South Slav state, its class structure, and how that was reflected in political parties, as well as the nationality question, and identifies the problems. She points up the popularity of the Communist Party, the only major party to affirm a Yugoslav identity superseding the assorted religious, ethnic or regional particularisms. That popularity existed in the most developed areas of the country, such as the Vojvodina and Dalmatia, and also in the most economically backward areas, notably Montenegro and Macedonia where it topped the poll (p22). Hudson sketches out the development of the Croatian Peasant Party, a typical example of the radical, populist, peasant-based parties which came to prominence in the region at that time (p20). It even affiliated to the Krestintern, the peasant equivalent of the Comintern, mistakenly termed Profintern by Hudson. In Chapter 2, Hudson describes Yugoslavia in the Second World War. Quoting Susan Woodwards Balkan Tragedy (Washington DC, 1995), a study she leans on (as do many writers tackling the subject), though critical of its omission of the role of foreign powers, she locates the anti-fascist struggle led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia as a revival of the nineteenth-century nationalist anti-imperialism the Yugoslav identity. Chapter 3 covers the Tito years. Hudson explains the difference between Nation and Nationality and how the constitution dealt with it. The two largest of the latter category were the Albanians of Kosovo and the Hungarians of the Vojvodina. As neighbouring nation states existed, no republic was granted, but autonomy was

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permitted within Serbia under the 1974 constitution. Like many authors sympathetic to Yugoslavia, she is critical of that constitution because it encouraged nationalism and undermined Yugoslavism. That was the opposite of its intention. Kosovo and Vojvodina obtained virtual republic status, Yugoslavia was defined as consisting of eight constituent units, the provinces receiving a legal status within federal law. For example, there were eight seats on the federal presidency. Hudson sets out the US economic assault upon Yugoslavia in Chapter 4, beginning from 1984 when the Reagan administration targeted the country within its aim of overthrowing communist regimes and integrating them into the world market. Within Yugoslavia, measures designed by the IMF during the 1980s were leading to austerity and a deterioration of living standards. The aim was to secure the privatisation and dismantling of the public sector. With the winding up of the Cold War and the reintroduction of capitalism in Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia no longer served any purpose for the West, and it now stood in the way of US and German interests in the region. But while the USA at first favoured the promotion of a free-market Yugoslavia, Germany was working to break up the country. The IMF-led reforms required a recentralisation of economic policy, the reversal of the 1974 constitutions decentralisation. This was resisted in both the wealthier republics and in the poorer ones. Nationalist arguments were used by the republican leaderships, in Slovenia at first then in Croatia. The economic crisis of the 1980s hit Kosovo particularly hard. The significant developments during the previous decade, that had led to over two-thirds of the membership of both the provincial Communist League and police being of Albanian origin by the end of the decade, brought about a rise in nationalist activity and sentiment (pp65-66). Unemployment there was more than double the national average, the great majority of the jobless being young people. Although nationalist activity was met by repression, in other respects the Albanian community had a full range of rights. Indeed writes Hudson they predominated in all public sectors, including the Communist League, police and courts, and so the conflict within Kosovo at this point was between Albanians. (p67) Serbs began to leave the province due to a sense of discrimination and seeing no future for themselves there. Hudson sketches out the rise of Slobodan Miloevi, and sees him as upholding the socialist sectors of the economy. She refers to the former state socialist countries, which would seem to indicate an uncritical attitude towards states otherwise termed really-existing socialism, barrack-room socialism, or even Stalinist states, in order to indicate criticism. Quoting an article by ex-US Ambassador to Yugoslavia Warren Zimmerman, in which he gave negative impressions of Miloevis personality, as well as commenting on Tudjman, the latter was said to have overseen serious violations of the rights of the Serbs, and has denigrated the Holocaust, but as opposed to Miloevi, he really wants to be a Western statesman. Hudson sums up: Tudjman could be backed because he was essentially pro-Western, whereas Miloevi had to be broken, because he was not. (p70) Chapter 5 examines how the various republics responded to the crisis. For example, in Serbia there was simultaneously a powerful reaction from some sections of the community against the liberal market policies of the federal government and a positive attitude towards the IMF recentralisation policy, plus mounting anger about the perceived ill-treatment of Serbs within Kosovo (p73). Miloevi keyed into this, and in September 1990 Serbia adopted a new constitution that removed the autonomy granted in 1974, although all its citizens were defined as equal,

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whereas elections in Croatia elevated Tudjman to the presidency and his HDZ party into government, which then set about creating a state for Croats that removed key rights of the 600 000-strong Serbian minority. Serbs were pushed out of their posts in the police, the administration and enterprises. Meanwhile, the federal government of Ante Markovi was trying to keep Yugoslavia together, and his pro-Western freemarket orientation was supported by the IMF, USA and Britain. He founded a party to contest federal elections, but none took place as Slovenia and Croatia were determined to break away. In the summer of 1990, Tudjman began to organise paramilitary units. In October, the Autonomous Region of Krajina was declared around Knin. On 28 May 1991, Croatia announced the formation of a regular army. In February 1991, the Krajina Autonomous Region seceded from Croatia, and a referendum in May voted to remain in Yugoslavia (entirely legal under the Yugoslav constitution, this act was portrayed negatively in most of the Western media). Slovenia seceded on 25 June 1991, to be followed by Croatia the day after. Hudson points out that under international law this step was, in fact, illegal, because the international frontiers of Yugoslavia were recognised under the Final Act at Helsinki in 1975 (p86). There was a halfhearted attempt by the JNA (federal army) to defend the border posts of Slovenia, but it was attacked by assorted Slovene military forces. Again this was entirely legal, and had the political will existed the JNA could have prevented the secessions. The first war, in Croatia, is the subject of Chapter 6, and Hudson correctly asserts that without the encouragement or acceptance of the Croatian secession by various countries, some sort of negotiated arrangement which would either have maintained some form of Yugoslavia, or allowed a peaceful dissolution could have been worked out (p89). She quotes a number of sources detailing German activity, including providing arms and even aircraft, reportedly from ex-GDR stock, in defiance of the international embargo. Regarding the intervention of the JNA to help local Serbs in Vukovar, she argues that although Croats predominated in the city, Serbs did in the region, and quotes JNA leader Veljko Kadijevi, that the borders of the new Yugoslavia should be where there was a majority of Serbian people (p95). Serbs were said to inhabit between a third and a quarter of Croatia. Tudjman knew that Croatian forces were no match for the JNA, so his strategic aim was not a military but a political and diplomatic victory. Territory lost could be regained later, meanwhile friendly news media would present an anti-Serb case (the Croatian government had a top US PR firm advising it). For example, on 25 August 1991, Croatian forces attacked a JNA base in the Bay of Kotor. In response, Montenegrin JNA forces fought their way along the coast up to Dubrovnik. An image was presented to the Western public of Serb aggression resulting in massive damage to the old city, whereas in reality it was relatively unscathed. Thus the attacks on Vukovar and Dubrovnik were dramatised, and to an extent even provoked (p97). Germany recognised Slovenian and Croatian independence in late 1991, and succeeded in pressing the EC to do so in early 1992. Hudson looks at all the outside efforts to manage the break-up and how standards demanded at first were relaxed or dropped altogether. The Badinter Commission, set up by the EC on French initiative, not only played a sorry role, but arrived at some strange decisions. Yugoslavia was declared to be a state in the process of dissolution. Agreeing with another writer, Hudson remarks that this concept, previously unknown in international law, justified the dismantling of the borders of a sovereign state, while proclaiming the borders of the successor states inviolable. Yugoslavias legal existence was being nulli-

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fied. Quoting the same writer, she reminds the reader: The Titoist constitutions made peoples, not territorial entities, the bearers of sovereignty in Yugoslavia. By conflating the right of peoples to self-determination (the subject of huge controversy in international law) with the right of republics to secede unilaterally, Badinter created a formula for assisting the break-up of the federation. (p101) By accepting the nationalist definition of the conflict, the EC contributed not only to the break-up of Yugoslavia, but also to ensuring that it would take place in violent circumstances (ibid). Chapter 7 deals with the next war Bosnia. Hudson gives the USA prime responsibility for the war, as it pushed the EC towards recognition before negotiations that could have met the concerns of all parties were concluded, pointing out that throughout the war the US systematically blocked peace initiatives by encouraging the Izetbegovi regime to hold out for more territory (p103). The USA determined the outcome that led to the present protectorate ruled autocratically by one Paddy Ashdown. The Izetbegovi regime was portrayed as multi-ethnic, as a victim of Serb aggression. US PR methods spoke of concentration camps and rape as policy, but in reality all sides had detention camps and a UN report concluded that a total of approximately 2400 rapes had taken place, committed by all sides in the conflict (p104). The number of deaths brought about by the war was vastly exaggerated. Hudson goes over the issue of Izetbegovis Islamism, but points out that religious believers in Bosnia-Herzegovina overall were lower, at 17 per cent, than in most other republics (Muslim identity was more a cultural, social phenomenon), and the Muslim tendency to concentrate in urban areas made them generally more educated, liberal and cosmopolitan than other ethnic groups, while Croats and Serbs tended to be more predominantly rural based (pp106-7). Hudson writes that Izetbegovi had indicated a desire to remain within a modified Yugoslav federation (and took part in talks with the Bosnian Serbs and Miloevi organised by Adil Zulfikarpai of the moderate Muslim Bosniak Organisation to that end, and was ready to sign an agreement, but according to Norah Beloff, following a trip to the United States he backed out and denounced Zulfikarpai as a traitor (pp109-10). A referendum among the Bosnian Serbs was in favour of remaining in Yugoslavia. The Badinter Commission ruled that a referendum on independence for Bosnia would need positive support in all three communities, just as demanded by the Bosnian constitution. However, this was ignored when, on 3 March, following a referendum boycotted by the Serbs, independence was declared by Izetbegovis government. The EC then organised a conference in Lisbon to try and find common ground between the three communities in Bosnia before recognising independence. However, only days after signing it, Izetbegovi disavowed his signature, followed shortly after by Mate Boban (the Croatian government-appointed leader of the Bosnian section of the HDZ). This change of mind by Izetbegovi took place after a meeting with the US Ambassador Warren Zimmerman The US scuppered the Lisbon accords, preferring to dictate its own settlement in Bosnia rather than accept an EU initiative, [and] on 6 April, the US succeeded in pressurising the EC into recognition of Bosnia before an effective political settlement was in place. Commenting on three reasons given by Woodward for the US attitude, and that of Germany regarding Croatia, Hudson prefers the third: that of wanting to assert themselves within the Euro-Atlantic Alliance (pp111-2). Having failed to attain a free-market Yugoslavia,

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the US focussed on Bosnia. As predicted, war broke out and the three communities began to carve out their territory. The UN set up UNPROFOR for humanitarian purposes. In September 1992, David Owen on behalf of the EC, and Cyrus Vance on behalf of the UN, began to seek out the possibilities of a peaceful settlement. In the end they came up with a plan to divide up BiH into 10 ethnic cantons. Although Miloevi supported the plan, the Bosnian Serb Assembly rejected it, and Owen then sought out another solution, together with Thorvald Stoltenberg. In August 1993, they presented their plan, which gave 52 per cent of the republic to the Bosnian Serbs, 30 per cent to the Muslims and 18 per cent to the Croats. The Serbs being mainly rurally-based occupied more land than their numbers would suggest. The plan was accepted by all sides, but the Muslims insisted on clarifying the details. Meanwhile the war continued: It subsequently became apparent that the US was encouraging the Muslims to hold out for more. (p115) Hudson goes into some of the myths linked to the siege of Sarajevo, like the Bosnian government orchestrating incidents to set up the Serbs often provoking them to retaliation, which would then be recorded by the worlds media and the shelling of friendly targets. She states that incidences of Muslim forces attacking friendly targets, or shooting Muslim civilians, in order to blame the Serbs, were not uncommon, including the infamous breadline and marketplace massacres in Sarajevo, in 1992, 1994 and 1995. In all three incidents internal UN investigations revealed that Bosnian Muslim forces were responsible. (p116) The Bosnian Serbs lacked a sophisticated PR agency and were portrayed only as perpetrators of unpleasant deeds, never as the victims too. For example, when Croat and Muslim forces virtually eliminated the Serbs in Mostar, it was barely considered newsworthy, just like the fact that Serbs had previously been driven out of Srebrenica by Muslim forces led by Naser Ori. Gorazde equally could be mentioned. In a BBC TV Panorama programme, General Sir Michael Rose showed houses without roofs which Muslim propaganda put down to Serb shelling, whereas the houses had been made uninhabitable after 12 000 Serbs had been forcibly removed earlier in the conflict. In a talk to the Royal United Services Institute on 30 March 1995, Rose said that he understood the necessity of a government struggling for survival having a propaganda machine but not that the international media should become part of that machine (David Owen, Balkan Odyssey, 1995, p119). Distortion of reality hinders a just solution. The events that led to the Dayton Accords are sketched out. With US help, Croatian forces drove the Serbs out of Slavonia and the Krajina; through Nato, it bombed the Serbs to an agreement. Kosovo is the subject of Chapter 8. Hudson concedes that the Kosovo Albanians had legitimate grievances, but these were manipulated by the West in order to dismantle the remaining parts of the socialist economy. The real conflict, therefore, was between the US-led Nato and the Yugoslav state. (p123) The UK (KLA) was a marginal Albanian secessionist group which used terrorist methods against both Slavs and its Albanian rivals. It engaged in criminal activity, particularly drugdealing, and police, drug and intelligence agencies in Europe and the USA had noted the fact. In 1996, the USA established a virtual US Embassy in Pristina, and subsequently the UKs image would be transformed. Apparently its PR was handled by the same US firm that worked for the Croatian and Bosnian governments Ruder Finn. But the German intelligence service (BND) had already been supporting the UK before the US involvement, and Hudson quotes the retired Admiral Elmar Sch-

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mahling of the military counter-intelligence service, to the effect that the BND played a very important role in supporting terrorist groups in Serbia trained KLA fighters, picked their officers and gave them weapons (p125). The OSCE mission led by William Walker became a cover for US aims. It was he who discovered the faked Raak massacre. Of course, the team of Finnish pathologists saw no signs of a massacre and were puzzled as to how the 45 corpses arrived there. Walker surely set the scene. The Rambouillet talks were also a part of Madeline Albrights plan, and Hudson points out that it was the KLA military commander Hashim Thai (who led the Albanian delegation) and Rugova was his deputy. The Yugoslav delegation had accepted Albrights text but rejected Appendix B, which included the right of Nato forces to have free range throughout the whole of Yugoslavia (p120) a provocation designed to give grounds for the war Albright believed necessary. The war was not only outside Natos charter, but was illegal according to international law, under which it was an act of aggression. Hudson goes into these arguments, noting too that the Rambouillet text demanded that the economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free-market principles which included the sale of Yugoslav federal property (p131). She describes the results of the war and writes of a number of high-profile blunders by the Nato forces, in which she includes, among other things, the bombing of the Chinese Embassy and the bombing of the Belgrade television station (p132). Nato defended its bombing of the TV building, and the excuse of outdated maps for the embassy bombing is too silly for belief. It was deliberate a message. China helped Yugoslavia regarding communications, it is said. Since then weve seen the bombing of al-Jazeera in Kabul and Baghdad to censor reporting. Nato was not very successful against the VJ (Yugoslav Army), but killed far more civilians. It also targeted the economic and social infrastructure of Serbia. The major industries and transport network were bombed. The petro-chemical plant at Panevo was destroyed, causing much pollution contrary to the rules of war. Hudson explains such destruction as indicating the longer-term economic interests of the US in Yugoslavia, as reconstruction work would provide major leverage for Western countries (p133). The Russians persuaded Miloevi to accept a peace deal after 79 days of bombing, although the outcome constituted acceptance of the compromise Miloevi offered before the war (p135). Today nothing has been resolved in Kosovo, hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Roma and other minorities have been driven out of the province, corruption reigns, and BBC TV News 24 reports that exUK commander Ramush Haradinaj, one of the top gangsters, has become prime minister. And the USA has a huge base there. Chapter 9 looks at the bringing down of Miloevi and what came after. Hudson points out that the Miloevi regime was not a dictatorship, as put about by Western governments and the media: Opposition political parties, and civic organisations, continued to operate throughout this period, and the independent media continued to publish and broadcast. (p140) Miloevi had been elected and remained popular during the 1990s. He lost some support at the end due to his having pulled the plug on Serb nationalists in Croatia and Bosnia, and the retreat from Kosovo. She believes that from 1995 Miloevi appeared to attempt to consolidate the left within Serbia, moving away from the more nationalist framework that had prevailed during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, and he leaned more on the United Left, which originated in the JNAs refounded Communist League, and was an alliance of twenty-one parties, mostly leftist or Yugo-nostalgic and was strongly antinationalist(p141). Hudson questions the democratic victory that replaced Mi-

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loevi with Kotunica as president, as it was brought about with considerable funding and help from US and EU sources. Djindji became prime minister, but unfortunately for the West, whose client he was, he was assassinated. Since then another US client, the corrupt Shevardnadze, has been replaced by a fresh one in Georgia, and a new client has emerged in the Ukraine, all aided by similar methods. The last chapter deals with the show trial of Miloevi. The Hague Tribunal was set up originally as a propaganda tool. Miloevi was declared guilty during the war, and since then evidence to prove his guilt has been sought. Apparently, the USA wishes to wind it down now and cut off funds. Hudson finished her book before the prosecution case was over, so it will be best to look closer at the trial elsewhere. However, it is worth making the point that Miloevi was only charged with one crime that supposedly took place before Nato unleashed its war the faked massacre at Raak! The other charges are related to deeds perpetrated after the war began. Nato, of course, has not been charged with any crimes by its own tribunal. On the whole, I think Hudsons book achieves its aim, and sketches out the key facts in the rise and fall of Yugoslavia. One might disagree with this or that evaluation, but in the main her analysis is one I agree with. Her arguments could have been strengthened here and there by the use of more European sources, and I would criticise a certain laxity in precision vis--vis sources. For example, note 42 in Chapter 4, a speech by Miloevi on 28 June 1989, we are not told where one can find this key speech, and note 18 in Chapter 8, and note 44 in Chapter 10, both refer to the Rambouillet Accords, but again, where can the reader find this text, we are not told. Mike Jones

Martin Scorsese (Director), The Aviator

DESPITE screenwriter John Logan and director Martin Scorseses best intentions, The Aviator is very much like the Spruce Goose of the films climax: a lumbering, illconceived mess. Since they apparently didnt understand the true story of the white elephant flying boat that is represented as a soaring engineering achievement, it should come as no surprise that they would get nearly everything else wrong about Howard Hughes. Not only do they truncate the biography of this paradigm of American capitalism, leaving out the tawdry details of his dealings with the CIA and his various corporate crimes throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s; they also airbrush and prettify his earlier life to the point where it amounts to a lie. The idea for this biopic came from Leonard DiCaprio, who plays Howard Hughes. Despite having progressive politics, especially on ecology, he was unwilling to see Hughes in his proper historical context. DiCaprio was only interested in the mans speed fixation, his desire for privacy and his psychological quirks. Furthermore, John Logan turns Hughes into a kind of a libertarian hero after the fashion of Ayn Rand. Despite his willingness to expose all the personal tics and foibles of this very odd subspecies of the American bourgeoisie, it is obvious that Logan and everybody else associated with this project want the audience to cheer for Howard Hughes at the end of this film. We have come a very long way from the days of Citizen Kane. If anything, Scorsese seems intent on making the same kind of film that another cutting-edge Italian-American director made a while back. Francis Ford Coppolas Tucker of 1998 is a biopic of Preston Tucker, an auto manufacturer whose visionary plans for a car with safety belts and other features unheard of in Detroit at the time were shot down by hidebound, reactionary enemies in the business class. At the
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time, critic Roger Ebert said that you get no sense of what made Tucker tick. He, like Scorseses Howard Hughes, is seen from the outside. Ebert also said that it was hard to avoid the impression that Coppola saw himself in Preston Tucker, who was also a kind of genius thwarted by lesser mortals. With Howard Hughes, the parallels are even more obvious since his career began as a film-maker. Referring to Hughess Hells Angels, a film about First World War aviators, Scorsese told the Telegraph: He was a cocky guy and he bucked the system in terms of independent film. In other words, he was a predecessor. The Aviator begins with the making of this film. It is fairly accurate in terms of showing the young Howard Hughes overweening ambitions to make the ultimate film about air war. He is seen as the ultimate risk-taker who proves his detractors wrong, especially Noah Dietrich (John C Reilly), who he had hired to run Hughes Tool. Dietrich warns him that mounting expenses might bankrupt the company his father founded and which was the source of his unlimited wealth. Scorsese depicts the films premiere as a triumph of the plucky young producer/director. What the film covers up is the fact that the film actually lost $1.5 million, an immense sum in 1930. Nor does the film dramatise the death of mechanic Phil Jones, who was strapped to a spinning plane and instructed to operate smoke pots to give the impression of a burning plane. Pilots working in the film warned that this was too dangerous. They were correct. Jones missed a cue to parachute from the spinning plane, and fell to his death in a ploughed field. Hughes was all to willing to take risks, but apparently at other peoples expense. The account of Jones death and other factual corrections in this review are drawn from Donald L Barlett and James B Steeles Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness. Bartlett and Steele might also be known to you as the authors of America: What Went Wrong and other critiques of American society. In other words, they are the perfect biographers for a subject like Howard Hughes. True to biopic traditions, The Aviator dwells on Hughes romances with movie stars like Katherine Hepburn and Ava Gardner. Hepburn is played by Cate Blanchett in one of the most ill-conceived performances in recent film history. Anybody who has seen Hepburn in film will be startled by Blanchetts braying and repellent version of the actress, which evokes Martin Shorts impersonation of her on the old Saturday Night Live more than anything else. It serves to establish a contrast between the crude but honest Hughes character and the liberal phoneys in Hollywood he must have had to put up with. In a pivotal scene, Hughes is invited out to the Connecticut estate of Hepburns blueblood, liberal parents. At a dinner party there, they appear as repulsive as the Sean Penn marionette in this years Team America. Speaking down to Hughes, they spout slogan after slogan about the downtrodden poor. Before leaving in a huff, he tells them that they cant know anything about money because they were born into it. He, on the other hand, would have ostensibly worked for every penny he ever made. Since Howard Hughes was an heir to his fathers fortune, this confrontation does not quite ring true. All in all, the dialogue between Hughes and Hepburns family is a lost opportunity. A more gifted screenwriter would have drawn a more nuanced contrast, but since Logans past work includes The Gladiator and The Last Samurai, such hopes would be misplaced. Ultimately the romance between the two characters does not come alive, because we really dont know who Hughes is. Logan is content to paint a

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rather opaque figure, who only is energised and demonstrative when behind the joystick of an aeroplane. The dramatic heart of the movie involves a confrontation between Hughes and Maine Senator Owen Brewster, who was conducting an investigation into Hughes Aircraft and war profiteering in 1947. Brewster, played by Alan Alda, serves as the films villain. We discover that Brewers main motivation is to thwart Hughes ambition to fly his TWA airliners to Europe in order to compete with Pan American Airlines. Juan Trippe, Pan Ams president, is played by Alec Baldwin as a smoothtalking, aristocratic Yankee against the rough-hewn but honest Howard Hughes. Trippe has made substantial campaign contributions to Brewster in an effort to line up his support against any challenges to Pan Ams monopolistic ambitions. One has to wonder about the casting of Alan Alda and Alec Baldwin in these roles. Both are high-profile liberals in Hollywood. I doubt that Scorsese, Logan and DiCaprio sat down and made casting decisions based on this criterion, but nevertheless it serves the political subtext of the film willy-nilly. That subtext entails the clash of the risk-taking entrepreneur and the meddling forces of big government. This is an absurd construction because Howard Hughes rise to the richest man in the world in 1966 was marked all along the line by exactly the same kinds of influence-peddling. He was the ultimate insider who lavished huge campaign contributions on the likes of Richard Nixon in exchange for favours for his various corporations. No wonder the makers of The Aviator decided to end their story in the late 1940s. The truth about Howard Hughess later career was far too inconvenient. The film concludes with DiCaprio at the helm of the Hercules, an immense wooden flying boat that was intended to carry war material to Europe during the war, hence evading submarine attacks. This supposedly vindicated Howard Hughes, whose idea for such a huge plane was derided by men with limited imaginations. What the film fails to establish is that the idea for the Hercules (leaving aside its ultimate viability) came from ship-builder Henry Kaiser rather than Hughes. In 1942, Kaiser was dismayed that hundreds of ships were being sunk in the Atlantic by German submarines. In the summer of that year, he came up with a solution. A fleet of giant flying boats would guarantee the safe delivery of men and supplies to Europe. Long before Hughes entered the picture, newspapers were hailing the prospects of Kaisers flying boats. The Philadelphia Inquirer referred to Flying Freighters The Ship of the Future Will Fly Over the Ocean if the Nation Accepts Henry Kaisers Suggestion. When Kaiser approached Hughes in August 1942 with the idea, he discovered the younger man to be frail and exhausted. Hughes told the effusive Kaiser: I am very tired. I havent had any sleep Besides, youre crazy. After a couple of days, Kaiser was able to cajole Hughes into accepting his proposal. Perhaps Scorsese should have made a movie about Henry J Kaiser instead. Kaisers trust in Howard Hughes was misplaced. In 1942, Hughes Aircraft was little more than a boutique for bringing one or another of its presidents hobbyhorses to fruition, but not under the kinds of pressure other companies faced especially during wartime. It employed only a few hundred people, and it was run by cronies of Howard Hughes. Neil S McCarthy, who was in charge of the company, was a Hollywood lawyer and horse-racing enthusiast who had represented Hughes in past dealings in the film industry. He knew nothing about aviation. It is no wonder that the Hercules only flew two years after the war was over, with men like this in charge. Hughes himself was hardly to be seen most days, preferring to spend his

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time in Las Vegas with showgirls. Hughes Aircraft eventually turned into a powerhouse by supplying hightechnology communications and missiles to the Air Force in the 1950s. At the time, the company was under the leadership of much more qualified people. Hughes had evidently learned from his mistakes. If the creators of The Aviator had really immersed themselves in Howard Hughes biography, it is surprising that they did not abandon this project at the outset, especially Martin Scorsese, who is supposedly fiercely committed to the independence of film-making. In the early 1950s, Hughes had become involved in the film industry once again. As head of RKO, he was turning out pure schlock like his earlier work. Yet despite the inferior quality of films like The Outlaw of 1943, he would appear at first blush to be strongly protective of artistic freedom. A key scene in The Aviator depicts Hughes standing up to the censors over his right to show Jane Russells cleavage in this forgettable film. Unfortunately, Hughes did not believe that leftists should enjoy the same kinds of freedoms. In 1951, just as the witch-hunt was gathering steam, Hughes fired Paul Jarrico, who was hired to write the screenplay for The Las Vegas Story, an RKO film. Jarrico had been subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities to testify about communist subversion in Hollywood. Bill Gay, one of many Mormons hired by Hughes to look after his affairs, said: He felt that communism versus free enterprise was such an important issue in our time. It was one of the few issues in his life he felt that strongly about. (Cited in Barlett and Steele) Not satisfied with firing Jarrico, Hughes next went after Charlie Chaplin. In 1953, RKO decided that they would ban Limelight after the HUAC and the American Legion put pressure on movie theatres. In the case of RKO, this was like trying to break down a wide-open door. Shortly after his triumph in ensuring a smaller audience for Chaplins first movie in five years, Hughes and other red-baiters ganged up on Salt of the Earth, a movie about New Mexico strikers made by Jarrico, Herbert J Biberman and other blacklistees. In a letter to Representative Donald Jackson, Hughes declared his sympathies for the films banning, and he suggested a check-list for weeding out such subversive films in the future, to prevent this motion picture from being completed and spread all over the world as a representative product of the United States, then the industry needs only to do the following: Be alert to the situation. Investigate thoroughly each applicant for the use of services or equipment. Refuse to assist the Bibermans and Jarricos in the making of this picture. Be on guard against work submitted by dummy corporations or third parties. Appeal to the Congress and the State Department to act immediately to prevent the export of this film to Mexico or anywhere else. It is singularly disappointing that people like Martin Scorsese would commemorate such an enemy of freedom in the name of freedom. Louis Proyect

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