Socialism 2007: A Taster

This weekend sees four gatherings of the far left taking place. Millions of key strokes have been spent on "official" Respect and Respect Renewal, and discussion lists haven't been able to move for the constant adverts for the Labour Representation Committee. In this melee, the Socialist Party's annual event, Socialism 2007 has been somewhat overlooked. This is a shame as chances are this will be the biggest gathering of the four, and will feature debate on practically every issue under the sun. It comes as no surprise that AVPS endorses the weekend without reservation. If you're planning on attending one of the others, because we're spread over two days, you could always attend on the Sunday. Still not convinced? Well, I've appended an old and slightly edited report I posted on the UK Left Network last year on Socialism 2006. Enjoy!

I've been asked to contribute my thoughts on the sessions at Socialism 2006 to tonight's branch meeting, so I hope comrades won't mind me sharing them with the good folk of the UKLN.

The first session I attended on the Saturday afternoon was Robin Clapp on materialist dialectics. About 30 comrades listened to a short lead-off aiming to demystify some of the crap that has congealed around dialectics over the years and set out in easy to understand terms what it's all about. The ensuing discussion was quite varied touching on the 'spontaneous' dialectics of scientists working in the field of 'hard' sciences, the relationship between dialectics and historical materialism, and whether there can be a place for morality in a world view that rejects outside interventions from deities, ghosts and aliens.

The second meeting was Sunday morning's question and answer session on the BNP with Alistair Tice. Well it was billed as such but what really took place were a series of short debates around a number of questions - can the BNP still be described as fascist, is the state an anti-fascist ally, is no platform still the best way of tackling them, and what can we as socialists do to fight them. All contributors to the debate agreed that the BNP remained fascist, but that it had adopted a right wing populism in an attempt to draw a simple demarcation between the white working class on the one hand and the New Labour state, the rich, and minority populations on the other. There was also broad agreement the state cannot be used as any repressive 'anti-fascist' measures it adopted would invariably rebound back onto the left (though one comrade offered a dissenting voice). Most debate however came over no platform - some argued it was out of date and no longer reflected the strength of the BNP on the ground, while others suggested it need be enforced by the workers movement wherever possible. However during the course of the discussion both positions showed some flexibility and I would suggest a consensus began to emerge around viewing no platform as a tactic requiring skillful application if we are to undermine the BNP's support. Also, Unite Against Fascism did not come in for blanket condemnation. Though it was criticised for its liberal anti-fascism comrades from SP branches not in a position to contest the BNP at the ballot box argued it was sometimes necessary to support UAF campaigns, depending on the character of their interventions. A comrade from Cumbria made this point, arguing his local UAF branch comprised a number of experienced militants.

The afternoon session saw Tony Saunois and Peter Tatchell take the platform on homophobia and LGBT liberation. As the Tatch was late Tony gave an overview of the distance LGBT issues have travelled over the last 25 or so years but also drew attention to continuing inequalities and discrimination LGBT people still experience. He also condemned those who've sought to label Tatchell as a racist for having the temerity to raise LGBT issues in relation to some Islamic countries and Jamaican dance hall music. I can't remember what comrade Tatchell said in his opening (lack of caffeine got the better of me I'm afraid) but I think he covered the same general ground. From the floor comrades raised a number of points about homophobia, but for me two questions stood out. One comrade raised the issue of biphobia and transphobia within the gay and lesbian scenes and asked what cde Tatchell thought about it. Thomas House (in a lengthy contribution ;)) challenged Tatchell about his membership of the Green party. The comrade cited the example of Brighton where Green councillors had voted for the housing stock to be taken into arms-length management. This measure would have the effect of making the material circumstances for LGBT residents less secure and therefore less able to challenge homophobia. Unfortunately I had to leave before the end so I never heard his replies (it would be interesting if comrades there could fill me and the list in).

The final session was the mighty show down between SP comrades and the massed ranks of the International Bolshevik Tendency. The provocatively-titled meeting, 'Why the Socialist Party is not Socialist' quickly assumed the trappings of an event destined to go down in the annals of sectarian lore. At first it seemed we could look forward to farely dull polemical fare, four SP comrades vs the eight or so IBT'ers, but then it soon brightened up. Five or six cpgb's and some supporters piled in, then some more SP comrades no doubt attracted by the blaze of publicity this meeting had on the UKLN and elsewhere. And then the piece de resistance - the Sparts turned up. After the collective groan had subsided Barbara Duke opened the meeting. Michael Wainwright outlined his reasons for leaving the SP, which pretty much followed his critique carried on the CWI's website. For those who haven't read it this turned around the PCS pensions issue, the character of transitional demands, the enabling act slogan, and the demand on democratic control of the police. This 'reformism' and 'centrism' was despite the 'revolutionary subjectivism' of many SP comrades, he argued. Alan of the IBT (and also self-confessed UKLN lurker) came next and recapitulated pretty much the same criticisms. Tina Becker from the cpgb spoke first from the floor touching similar points - the necessity of a revolutionary minimum-maximum programme, and so on. However much to my surprise most of her polemical fire was aimed at the IBT, criticising both cde Wainwright for the manner of his limp exit from the SP as well as hopping on board an organisation with a lot less internal democracy! Spart legend Eiblin McDonald came next with a few tame criticisms of the SP before really laying into the IBT. Needless to say no Spart intervention would be complete without an off-beam contribution, which she duly supplied in bucketloads. I can't remember much about what she said except she finished off by noting how IBT guru Bill Logan was expelled from the Sparts for gross moral turpitude (chortle). Given the Sparts' famous abusive internal practices this was really pots and kettles stuff, something not missed by guffawing SP comrades. Paul Hunt's contribution met the Wainwright/IBT critique head on. Once again cde Wainwright was criticised for not bothering to conduct a political struggle in the SP for his views. Then cde Hunt defended the SP's approach to transitional demands by noting the importance of relating them to the existing consciousness of the class. He suggested the types of r-r-revolutionary slogans the IBT favour (of the 'smash the cops' type) hardly constitute a skillful application of the transitional method.

These 3 contributions more or less set the tone for what was to come from the floor. cpgb's Phil Kent and Simon Wells spoke, the former suggesting 5 minute contributions weren't long enough to get a proper dialogue on our politics going, while cde Wells (fresh from his SWP expulsion) argued for the necessity of the rank and file to hold their leaderships to account. Another Spart chimed in, deciding the actions of the IBT at a 1,700 strong Mumia Abu Jamil rally in New York several years ago was an appropriate contribution to make at a meeting ostensibly about the politics of the SP. Colin for the SP responded to some of the points raised and IMO gave a good account of what revolutionaries should be doing in 21st century Britain. A couple of IBT'ers joined in too but I have to apologise to these comrades as I can't remember what they said. I managed to make my two pennies worth, drawing an analogy between the origins of the IBT from comrades who had left the Sparts without a political struggle and cde Wainwright's gravitation toward them after a similarly unserious exit (the Sparts loved that one - am I the only non ICL'er to have ever been applauded by them???). I also asked how the IBT implemented their unique understanding of the revolutionary method in the here and now, and how they managed to square their not participating in the Campaign for a New Worker's Party or before it the Socialist Alliance (which they denounced as 'left-populist') with their earlier entry into Scargill's SLP.

After this I had to leave. However I hear that in response to criticisms cde Wainwright argued he had "too much work on" to conduct a struggle for his views (he still found time to plunge into Militant's archives to dredge up quotes from 1981 and 1985 editions of the paper!). Also apparently Alan made an angry reply (swearing 3 times forsooth!) to the polemical mugging the IBT got. All hilarious stuff.

Debating the Russian Revolution

90 years ... and one day since the October Revolution, Keele Socialist Students organised an evening with Dave Griffiths of the Socialist Party and Pat Deutz of the Socialist Party of Great Britain to debate the events and legacy of the Russian Revolution.

Dave heralded the revolution as one of the greatest events in human history. It signalled the first attempt to wrest control of the blind social forces that had hitherto operated as if behind the backs of the human race, and as a species we stand a head higher for the experience. Dave then gave a short account of the revolutionary process in 1917. With the outbreak of the February revolution, the Russian masses entered the stage of history. The condensation of contradictions arising from peasant and workers' grievances, the continued Great Power oppression of nationalities, and the devastation and dislocation of the war saw the masses dispense with the autocratic senility of Tsarism. But the second act in the revolutionary drama, October, was not pre-ordained. History is not a script. The process culminated in the transfer of power to the soviets as a result of political struggle and the experience of the masses - the Bolshevik programme was the only one that met their aspirations. It must also be remembered that 90 years on, the Bolsheviks were quite aware Russia was far from ripe for socialism, but the revolution could be the harbinger of a Europe-wide socialist revolution - which it very nearly was. It's also worth remembering that the initial phase of the revolution saw universal suffrage, the parcelling out of lands to the peasantry, and a cultural flowering never seen before or since in Russian history. As we know, this revolutionary democracy was snuffed out by civil war exigencies, general backwardness, and bureaucratisation; but we can never pretend the alternative to revolution was a parliamentary democracy with Kerensky at its head. The brutality of the counterrevolution gave an insight into the alternative, an alternative of massacres, pogroms, and dictatorship.

Pat laid out her what the SPGB stood for, which is socialism and nothing else. The only route to socialism is for the overwhelming mass of the working class to understand what it is and be prepared to start organising society around their interests. So, returning to the Socialist Standard of August 1918, that issue pointed out 80% of Russian society was composed of the peasantry and by contrast, the working class was tiny. So setting aside the question of consciousness for the moment, was Russia ready for socialism? As Marx and Engels believed socialism could only be built on the foundations of the most advanced capitalism, Russia could not become a socialist society. True, the masses did enter the stage of history between February and October, but they were not and could not be pursuing socialist aims. This suited Lenin and the Bolsheviks fine because they held workers were capable only of trade union consciousness and therefore needed a revolutionary elite to lead them to the promised land. Unfortunately, this promised land could only be state capitalism. Other parties were banned by the summer of 1918 and the institutions of radical democracy were displaced as the imperatives of state capitalist development assumed priority. Such state-led authoritarianism laid the groundwork for Stalin and with it, the identification of his regime with genuine socialism. Herein lies the tragedy of the whole experience.

The floor opened to comments and questions. A number came up concerning the relationship between Leninism and Stalinism, the role of unions in the revolution, why Stalinist regimes tended to be extremely brutal, what concrete advice - if any - did the SPGB offer the Bolsheviks, and what does the Russian revolution mean for us now fighting for a socialist society in 21st century Britain?

Responding directly to the SPGB position, S, from India, said she'd heard many times how Russia "wasn't ready" for revolution. But then, who is ready for revolution? If capital has to be mature, are the USA and UK any more ready for socialism? She then when on to ask if backward countries are the weak links in the world chain of imperialism - if they are to break, who are we to decide whether a country is "not ready"? M, of KSS, defended the SPGB's position, noting socialism has to be international. Also, because wage labour had existed in the USSR (implying the expropriation of surplus value by the bureaucracy, acting as 'collective capitalist') meant capitalism was alive and well there under Stalinism. A of Stoke SP argued that the Bolsheviks managed to condense the anger and experience of the Russian working class, and showed his exasperation how Pat could dismiss them as "not conscious" after going through 10 months of revolutionary upheaval and struggle. If they weren't conscious, how did the one avowedly revolutionary socialist party succeed in winning the mass to its banner?

After the debate, Pat responded first by pointing to Russia's backwardness and reiterating her point that socialism requires material abundance. She also picked up on M's point on wage labour. As surplus value was being realised throughout the Soviet Union's life, the overturns of 1989-91 were not a restoration of capitalism. Furthermore, under Stalinism the bureaucracy had effective ownership and control, despite what the constitution and the statutes said. Top bureaucrats could access special shops for the elite and could pile up several salaries akin to the common bourgeois practice of possessing several part-time directorships at once. In sum, nationalisation of the means of production cannot mean socialism. Turning to the question of revolution in Britain, she evoked the SPGB's strategy of winning a parliamentary majority for socialism to mark the passing of power from the bosses to the workers, and inaugurate the beginnings of the new society.

Dave's reply looked at the nature of the revolution. He argued revolution is as much a part of social evolution as piecemeal change. But whether a revolution assumes a peaceful or violent character depends on the balance of class forces and the extent of working class organisation. The latter is really crucial - where the balance has been fairly favourable but the class isn't sufficiently organised and united, such as Germany, China, Spain, France, Iran; at best the class is defeated, at worst the revolutionary process is drowned in blood. Responding to Pat and echoing S, Dave argued the SPGB were guilty of trying to fit the revolution into a pre-conceived schema. When it didn't fit, they withdrew support. He also disputed the continuity between Lenin and Stalin - the red terror was an outcome of civil war necessity, whereas Stalin's crimes were committed in the pursuit and consolidation of power. Finally, turning to the fate of the revolution, because it ended in Stalinism and eventual capitalist restoration, need the Russian workers have bothered? The SPGB answered no. What this amounts to in practice is revolutionary abstention from struggles that don't meet its strict criteria. To finish off, Dave called on all present to study the revolution themselves and recommended Trotsky's three-volume history as an excellent place to begin. As Churchill's condemnation put it, "never has evil been so dazzlingly presented", stands it in good stead.

From the chair, I then rounded off the meeting with a revolutionary call ... to attend the postgrad bar, where comrades continued the discussion deep into the night.

Putting Sociology in its Place

There are a few loose threads dangling from my last post on public sociology, concerning disciplinary identity, the interests of sociology, and the position of the researcher.

Just to recap, the tendency toward public sociology as a political and ethical turn in the discipline (a tendency that aims to link sociology to mass publics outside the academy by seeking to assist progressive causes directly, or producing research that could attract a large audience), is potentially problematic for Fuller. In the rush to be popular and/or useful for others, he asks whether sociology risks losing something distinctive along the way. Is there a danger of 'the sociological' being annexed to whatever political project the public sociologist is pursuing?

It is a valid question to ask. For example, some in the public sociology camp appear to have embraced the problem Fuller identified. To take one example, Randy Stoecker in a 2005 paper, 'Rethinking Public Sociology' makes the case for a radical public sociology that eschews traditional practices, where research questions, methodological decisions, writing up, and dissemination were the purview of the researcher. Instead, sociology should empower by changing the relations of knowledge production. The top-down pedagogical model needs to make way for participatory research where the key decisions are made by the participants themselves, thereby building their understanding of their socially constituted circumstances and capacity to change them. Hence participatory, or organic, public sociology cannot avoid being about social change. Going further, this orientation requires a wholesale transformation of sociology. Students are not empty vessels to be filled with the nuggets of sociological wisdom, they must learn through role play and reflexive, experiential learning. One's attitude to fieldwork dispenses with instrumental and should be about building alliances with communities, community organisations, and other social movements. And most controversially, it means turning one's back on many aspects of the disciplinary field currently constituted - such as ending sociological stardom, and the practice of building careers on the back of colonising knowledges.

Whatever one thinks of such a programmatic turn, Fuller is right in so far as the sociological position is subordinate to the interests of research participants. Of course, Fuller is not the first to have highlighted this problem. A number of sociologists entirely hostile to public sociology have discerned this implication in Burawoy's original document, and have shamelessly indulged in often crude red-baiting in their attacks on him. But none are so blind as those who refuse to see. Unsurprisingly, Burawoy's critics have very little to say when the neoliberalisation of the academy puts pressure on a section of sociologists to undertake policy research for institutional and/or corporate clients. Do questions around outside interests and the subsumption of disciplinary identity not apply in these cases? Does research-for-cash guarantee scientific outcomes, while research out of political and ethical commitment results only in opinion? Motes and beams spring to mind.

That said, Fuller certainly doesn't fall into this camp, just because he's concerned with the autonomy of sociology. Returning to last week's talk, his argument was that to be an effective public intellectual in sociology, one should concentrate on the sociology and not allow the bright lights of punditry become the be-all and end-all. The notion of autonomy held out by Fuller implicitly follows that articulated by Bourdieu and adhered to many in the anti-public sociology camp. That is, autonomous sociological practice allows for truth-telling: the revolutionary quality of the enterprise lies in its laying bare social processes and power relations abstracted out and therefore shorn of the mystification wrapped around them in the everyday. For Fuller, what guarantees sociologists the ability to do this is tenure. Unfortunately, the decline in tenured positions in favour of the short-term contract seriously undermines autonomy, and therefore the opportunity to engage in sociological truth-telling. The competition for jobs combined with the Research Assessment Exercise forces all academics - not just sociologists - to play their disciplinary games. The whip hand of funding render more explicit one's interest in the "disinterested" pursuit of sociological knowledge, and its shaping according to the logics of the field.

Clearly, Fuller believes sociological autonomy is a good in itself, but what is this good? The fact this good exists is a supposition shared by all sides of the public sociology debate. Even Stoecker's vision of organic public sociology rests on an unspoken premise that the sociologist is autonomous and free to pursue the agenda his envisages. However, as Fuller has noted the decline in tenure narrows the opportunities for the bulk of sociologists. Perversely, the freedom to do participatory research is only really an option for those in commanding positions in the field. So this good is a rare resource, a key objective that career sociologists must aim for. A second and related question is do sociologists have a real interest in autonomy, even if it is a core stake? How is it distinctive from other interests outside of the discipline, and can it work to mask the interests of others inside sociology?

We've already noted how defenders of academic/professional sociology tend only to get excited about outside interests when the question of excluded/marginalised publics are raised. The policy work carried out, which takes place in the absence of their raised voices, is unsurprising when you consider sociologists occupy coordinates in social space Bourdieu terms a 'dominated dominant' position. This is to say that as part of the academic apparatus and by virtue of the privileged place it occupies in the education system, it affords position holders certain cultural and economic advantages compared with the population at large. But as dominant positions go, sociology is subordinate in the academy to most other social science disciplines (psychology, political science, and economics spring to mind). Its endeavours do not enjoy the same profile and its work lacks the same sorts of policy influence, even when commissioned by institutional actors. However, these material circumstances the discipline finds itself in have become internalised as part of the natural landscape of the field - the subordinate position of sociology, the with-strings funding ties, are more or less accepted as part of the rules of the game. To decry the role of funding elites is to kill the goose who lays the golden egg. On the other hand, some in sociology have reacted unfavourably to marginalised interests precisely because they do not appear with the same immediacy or effect on the operation of the disciplinary field.

In this regard it's useful to examine the notion sociologists do have distinctive interests not tied to elites or other groupings. Burawoy has argued that because sociology is about the study and theorisation of social relationships, we have a real material interest in defending the social from commodification and attempts to displace them by administrative systems. Sociology therefore stands or falls with civil society. For example, there is a correlation between there not being a Saudi Sociology Today or Korean Peoples' Journal of Juche Sociology and a lack of civil society in both countries. In my opinion, though one can abstract such an interest, there is nothing particularly distinctive about the need to preserve civil society when you observe the practice of community groups, trade unions, campaigns, NGOs, political parties, the media etc. demands the same thing. Rather there is an homology of interest.

What the public sociology debate has done is succeeded in laying bare the interests that structure the sociological field in stark fashion. Sociological autonomy, a key stake in this debate, can no longer be presented as a mystical ideal. While it is clear that from the standpoint of the individual sociologist the autonomy of tenure gives one a freedom to intervene and engage with a variety of issues, one can be under no illusion that autonomy means freedom from interests. Even the position of refusing to take a position remains a position, and is very much tied to certain interests.

But sociology need not be the plaything of interests from either above or below. Whether explicitly public or unashamedly academic, sociology needs to be conscious of the biases and the conditions in which the construction of sociological research takes place. It needs to be open about the interest a sociologist has in pursuing a particular research trajectory and the relation they have with the objects of the research. And it must also be aware of the likely knowledge effects of dissemination - the question of who gains? Do participants gain? Does the knowledge constitute a public good? Do hostile groups and/or elites benefit from it in some way?

This kind of reflexivity, or what Bourdieu termed 'the sociology of sociology' is something I've tried to accomplish in relation to my own PhD research, and how this pans out as the thesis finally emerges from a mountain of transcripts, scribbles, and confused thoughts will be returned to somewhere down the line.

The Parting of the Ways

I did promise Brother S I wouldn't be blogging on the Socialist Workers' Party for a while as comment and speculation has ripped through leftblogland like wildfire. But there's certainly a case for AVPS adding its two pennies worth now the camps have formally announced their intention to separate. November 17th will see two Respect conferences going ahead - the 'official' Respect conference for the SWP and its one or two hangers-on, and 'Respect Renewal' gathering for practically everyone else.

A lot of comment has understandably fixated on the minutiae of meetings and emails, but it's also heartening to note a lot of comrades contributing to the discussion  are trying to draw the necessary lessons by examining the split's roots in the politics of Respect. Well, at least that's what one side of the split is trying to do.

This certainly isn't the case with the SWP. I'm gobsmacked how the SWP leadership appears oblivious to how it's gotten itself into this situation. There is absolutely no self-reflection or awareness of its role in polarising nearly everyone in Respect against it, and it is shameless in its repetition of criticisms made of Respect from the outset, which it earlier would have denounced as Islamophobic. It whinges about Respect's trajectory away from basic socialist positions, and yet does not acknowledge the role played by the SWP leadership in systematically voting them down. And as for its recent discovery that Galloway has not been accountable to Respect, has the SWP been living under a rock? Who bares primary responsibility for letting this state of affairs persist for so long?

On all these matters there is nothing but silence. The leadership knows everything but learns nothing. Farcically, this looks set to continue. For example, the SWP's chief demand is "let the members decide" at Respect's conference, while brazenly stacking conference with delegates from its organisation. Can it not understand how some would find this sort of behaviour deeply alienating? And what will this rather sad event amount to? Something akin to a revivalist meeting with the SWP and a few fellow travellers congratulating each other about "winning" Respect and driving away the "opportunist" and "communalist" elements is most likely. You can almost see it now. In the months ahead, to save face, the SWP's Respect will be heavily pushed and probably a big effort will be made at next year's local and London elections. But in the long term, an organisation representing no one but the SWP has no future. It may be a useful bargaining chip if the SWP enters into negotiations with other left forces, but as a straight front it will not, and cannot be allowed to have any independent life.

As for the SWP itself, it has come out of this faction fight badly bruised. It's reputation lies in tatters, it's absurd Respect petition has made it a laughing stock, and most damaging it has lost a layer of experienced activists. But the SWP is not facing an imminent demise. It has proven to be an extremely durable organisation, despite the 180 degree turns and outright volte-faces it has imposed on itself over the years. Plus the SWP continues to occupy a certain niche on the far left, ensuring a steady stream of activists to replace those who have dropped out. Without a doubt, the SWP will remain a sizeable presence for many years to come.

So much for the SWP, what of the Renewing Respect grouping? It may lack a large pool of disciplined activists, but I think it has far more potential than the SWP's vehicle. Judging by the steady stream of documents on Socialist Unity, it is significant that a broad consensus has emerged around the lessons of the Respect experience and working with the SWP. In an earlier post, I speculated it was united only in opposition to Rees et al. But it seems the struggle has impressed upon everyone the need for unity on a basis stronger than lowest-common-denominator politics and a laissez-faire attitude to elected representative's behaviour. How the new formation will be able to make Galloway and the Tower Hamlets councillors accountable remains to be seen, but if they are overcome positively, this could give Renewing Respect the kind of legs among the wider left that Respect mk I lacked. 

The direction of this project will be decided on November 17th, and I think there is every reason for optimism that a step toward a new, viable left formation will be made. I sincerely hope that the Socialist Party sends a team along to offer our comradely regards, and that this is reciprocated at our Socialism 2007 event, just down the road.

Branch Meeting: Socialism in One Country

At this evening's Stoke Socialist Party branch meeting, comrade D delivered a short lead off on socialism in one country. As Keele Socialist Students are hosting a debate between SP and Socialist Party of Great Britain speakers on the Russian Revolution next week, this served as an ideal primer.

D began with the origins of the term. He explained it was coined by Nikolai Bukharin to justify measures Russia took to strengthen itself after the revolutions in the West had failed in the aftermath of the First World War. Its promulgation coincided with his championing of the New Economic Policy. For those not familiar with NEP, this was an attempt to get the economy going after the period of severe dislocation brought on by civil war and war communism. Here, whole swathes of the economy had fallen into bartering and the state was more or less forced to seize what it needed to combat the counter-revolution. NEP tried to get things going again by introducing limited market reforms and allowing production for profit in some agricultural and some industrial sectors. Though Lenin at the time acknowledged this was a step backwards, Bukharin made a virtue out of necessity and equated this necessary development with the building of socialism.

As we know, after Stalin had dealt with his opponents to the left; the right, including Bukharin, were systematically removed from power in the late 1920s and NEP gave way to forced agricultural collectivisation and industrialisation. Market relations were forcibly and brutally liquidated as production was subordinated to the dictates of the bureaucratic plan. Nevertheless, socialism in one country suited Stalins designs and a number of his works were retrospectively doctored to make it appear as if he'd originated the concept. Most famous is the chip-chopping of his 1924 lecture, Foundations of Leninism. Here, passages asserting socialism would only come through the combined efforts of many countries were deleted in favour of the possibility of it being built within the borders of the USSR.

Moving to the discussion, F argued the experience of Stalinism, how it developed, and the baleful effects it had on the international workers' movement are key parts of our history that every socialists should address - not least because there remains a popular identification of socialism with the Stalinist regimes. D added it remained important we understand the ins and outs of the issue.

P, playing devil's advocate, asked to what extent were the features we associate with Stalinism forced on the soviet government by circumstances? If, for instance, the Left Opposition had won the faction fights of the early 20s, wouldn't Trostky have been as authoritarian? Possibly - the same problems the bureaucracy faced would have been there, but on the other hand, if the Left Opposition programme of democratisation and the rejuvenation of the soviets was implemented, these contradictions could not have played themselves out in the same way. The grotesque deformations of the personality cult, the purges, the show trials, and the mass use of slave (gulag) labour would unlikely have taken place under these circumstances.

In his contribution, A turned to bourgeois and "radical" accounts of Stalinism that attribute dictatorship to Bolshevism's political DNA. Such arguments are distortions of history because they ignore the conjuncture at which the Bolsheviks came to power, and suppose an essential continuity between Bolshevism (as a revolutionary Marxist tendency in the Russian working class); and Stalin's Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a party of managers, bureaucrats, and careerists. After the civil war when party membership was opened up, these were the elements that flooded into it and it was they who provided a material base for the rise and consolidation of the Stalinist dictatorship.

Looking at the lessons of Stalinism for socialists in Britain today, it's obvious to even the dogs in the streets that circumstances are very different from Russia in 1917. D noted the absence of a peasantry and the crushing preponderance of a well educated, mobile, and highly communicative working class means the objective situation is far riper for socialist transformation. It is highly unlikely the Stalinist experience could be repeated, given these conditions. However, P added the other key lesson is the centrality of democracy to our politics. Just as socialism in one country is unthinkable, socialism without democracy is not socialism at all. It has to be at the heart of our understanding of what a socialist society could look like, and in our practice as socialist activists in the here and now.

The Perils of Public Sociology

About 40 people turned up to hear Professor Steve Fuller give a talk on the role of the public intellectual, as part of an ongoing series of lectures on public sociology put together by the University of Birmingham's Sociology Department.

Fuller kicked off the discussion by defining his problem. Though many academics fancy themselves as public intellectuals, at best most have a frosty attitude towards those who are. He suggested not many natural scientists are comfortable with Richard Dawkins' media antics, and it seems sociologists are equally unimpressed by the ubiquity of Frank Furedi. Quite ironic when you consider the different kinds of 'public intellectual' roles played by each of sociology's founding fathers and other early key figures - Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Comte, Spencer, Simmel, etc.

Fuller's contention is that sociologists who've played the public intellectual in the recent past have tended not to leave much of a legacy current generations of sociologists and students can make use of. Fitting into this unfortunate slot are post-war writers like C. Wright Mills, Daniel Bell, Raymond Aron, and Alvin Gouldner. Whereas all these sociologists had an impact outside of the academic field, they are seldom discussed today.

Take the example of Raymond Aron. In France, he positioned himself as a kind of anti-Sartre. Whereas Sartre would bang the drum for Marxism, the USSR, and Maoism; Aron defended liberalism and urged support for the USA and NATO in the cold war. One of his chief arguments was that likelihood of nuclear war was an ideological bogey, and used proto-rational choice arguments to demonstrate how neither side had any self-interest in disappearing under a mushroom cloud.

Herein lies the rub for Fuller. Aron may have found fame in his life time as a public intellectual, but his pursuit of this career came at the expense of his sociological legacy. As much of Aron's media output was concerned with making a liberal case for NATO, and given it was this camp who won the cold war, can there be any wider sociological value in returning to these writings? Aron therefore was a victim of his success, and as a result is not highly regarded in the sociological canon. Contrast this with the fate of his student, Pierre Bourdieu. Though by no means an ivory tower academic, Bourdieu refused to play the media celebrity game and instead concentrated his efforts on building and ambitious, innovative, and rigorously materialist sociological research programme. Bourdieu did not have Aron's or Sartre's contemporaneous fame, but his legacy has now become a key theoretical stake in the sociological field.

Therefore for Fuller, a sociologist who is also/aims to be a public intellectual has a choice to make. The tensions between academia and media are such that one cannot straddle the two fields unproblematically. Bourdieu, Giddens, and Habermas may have had an effect on public debate in their respective countries, but this was a byproduct of their academic activities and not due to media appearances.

It is for this reason why Fuller has a problem with the whole public sociology debate. Just as there is conflict between the demands of the media and the demands of academia, there too will be friction between academia on the one hand, and the kinds of advocacy/activist-inspired research work self-defined public sociologists engage in. If sociologists are producing work articulating the standpoints and interests of oppressed and marginalised groupings, however laudable these objectives are, where does that leave sociology? Can it only engage with publics by being the mouthpiece of others? Is there anything distinctively sociological about such work?

If we believe there is a distinctive sociological enterprise that is worth pursuing, an 'independent' sociology requires academic autonomy, which in turn requires an expansion of tenured positions. Unfortunately, the prevalence of short term contracts in the HE sector destroys any incentive for sociologists to try and present their ideas outside of academia, as the acquisition of jobs becomes increasingly bound up with numbers of papers and books published, citation counts, and so on. Any turn to public engagement, let alone a full scale programme of public sociology, can only really be the province of those who've reached the top of the profession. For PhD students, early career academics, and other short-term'ers, riding the academic and the public horses simultaneously is very difficult indeed.

As a socialist and a researcher engaged in what could be called an activist or, to use the academic jargon, a movement-relevant PhD, I'm less pessimistic about the promise and prospects of public sociology in our neoliberal climate. I'd also take issue with his ideas around the independence of sociology as a discipline. The questions asked of Fuller were quite interesting too, but I'll take those questions up in a future post.

What Could a New Party Look Like?

You can reasonably argue that the British left has been undergoing a process of recomposition and regrouping since the early 90s. Since then, formations and campaigns have come and gone that have, to some degree or another, brought sections of the left together on a political basis - the Socialist Labour Party, Socialist Alliance, Scottish Socialist Party, Respect, John4Leader, Socialist Green Unity Coalition, Campaign for a New Workers' Party, etc. And this is nothing to say of the various, smaller attempts at cohering the ultra left, so lovingly documented by the Weekly Worker.

Without spending time picking over the bones to locate the failures or the stillborn character of these initiatives for the moment, you could say there are two - at times complementary, at times contradictory - processes going on. On the one hand, there is the attempt by the left to reach out and rebuild a mass audience for socialist politics through the establishment of a mass workers' party (be that outside of the Labour party, or by somehow steering that body to the left); and on the other, moves to cohere Marxists around a number of revolutionary positions. However, it seems to me very little thought has been given to what any resultant formation is likely to look like.

On the one hand, this is a sensible position to take. Marxists are not Mystic Meg-types, who spend their time staring at the works of the old beards in the hope History will reveal them the future. We can say what we would like to happen, but this isn't the same as saying what is likely to happen. Given the balance of forces at the moment and our collective inability to build something durable and attractive outside of the Labour party that appeals to all socialists, let alone those who have yet to reach socialist conclusions, any new formation is far from likely to tick all the boxes we'd like to see ticked.

It's fair to say there's a broad consensus on the blogging left around democracy, accountability, transparency, participation, and the defence of basic socialist ideas. If anything, this consensus has sharpened as the SWP's attempts to bureaucratically enforce its will on Respect are repeatedly exposed to the full light of day. Quite rightly, socialists inside and outside the dispute are appalled by its mendacity, authoritarianism, and complete inability to work with others on anything approaching an equal footing. So, for many, it's unsurprising that commitment to this way of organising is a litmus test for a new left alternative to Labour.

But as things stand, a left alternative of this character is unlikely to emerge, at least initially. As many have noted, there are increasing numbers of unions outside of the Labour party without a political voice. This looks set to be exacerbated by the recent postal strike - regardless of the eventual outcome of the dispute, it is not likely the membership will accept continued CWU support for a government who has nothing but contempt for postal workers. If these unions do get their heads together and start venturing into the broader political arena, chances are their alternative will be bureaucratic and subordinate to the sectional and administrative interests of those unions. Bob Crow may be a good class fighter, but he wasn't exactly known for his strident opposition to the SLP witch hunt when he was a prominent member. This is not the only problem. Not only will you have the unions wanting to keep a tight grip on their new vehicle, it will inevitably attract those for who treat the labour movement as a career ladder. Remember those hideous right-wingers from your old CLP and union meetings? They're as likely to jump on board a new party as any good socialist. Let there be no illusions - the struggle does not end with the setting up of a new workers' party. In many ways, it's just the beginning.

Of the second process, the process of Marxist regroupment, again a lot of Marxists are rightly holding out for an organisation that puts democracy at the core of its politics. A multi-tendency revolutionary socialist party that allows an open clash of opinions and factions is the only sensible basis on which revolutionaries in Britain today can unite together in one organisation, while simultaneously being rooted in our class. The failure of the smaller, more 'open' groups, such as the AWL, CPGB/Weekly Worker, and the comrades around the Campaign for a Marxist Party to cohere themselves into anything more united, despite the ritual exchange of dozens of polemics, must ultimately lie in their failure to have a common class orientation. Only through joint work over a period will the real basis for a lasting unity be laid.

Dave Osler has recently laid out what he'd like a 'rational Marxist current' to look like. Again, it is to be democratic and open, it is to eschew the kinds of certitude long characteristic of the Trotskyist tradition, aim to renovate and innovate Marxism, and engage with the analyses and insights stemming from other radical, though not nominally Marxist traditions. He concludes that "a modern Marxist grouping needs to be loose, libertarian, and Luxemburgist ... Members may belong to the Labour or Green parties, leftwing parties or no party at all, to whatever extent holding a card facilitates such tasks".

In my opinion, the kind of organisation Dave is holding out for is on a hiding to nothing. In the first place, to what extent would such a libertarian Marxist current be an advance on what we already have? The majority of internet-travelling Marxists in Britain regularly read and debate with each other, be it on blogs, discussion lists and boards, and journals. I would also like to think that every Marxist already pushes their socialist politics as they are doing their own political thing in their groups, unions, campaigns and what have you. In the second place, how could this libertarian Marxist current come together, and stay together? I suppose there is nothing stopping prominent left bloggers plus others convening a conference to explore this and set up a loose network, but in the absence of consistently working side by side, the current could be prised apart by the different concerns and arenas of intervention Marxist activists work in.

If you want an organisation that is consistently democratic, that demands accountability. Then you cannot escape having some notion of discipline, which of course leads back to those dreaded words: democratic centralism. I think it was Sartre who once wrote that Marxism was the inescapable horizon of our times. For Marxists, the same is true of Lenin's contributions on the party question. Revolutionaries shouldn't seek to emulate the Bolsheviks post-1921, or the much-maligned model Lenin argued for in What is to be Done? Our model should be the Bolshevik party that, in the midst of some of the most difficult work socialists can ever face, still managed to operate an open press with open polemic and open factions (some of whom had their own factional press). No one can argue this was not a disciplined party that did not get things done.

If you believe the orthodox Marxist view that the working class has to be organised as a political party in order to achieve its liberation, then I for one cannot think of a party structure more suited to the tasks of socialism in 21st century Britain. This is how a rational Marxist current should look, but as noted earlier, we can say what we would like to happen, but this isn't the same as saying what is likely to happen. Nevertheless, going back to Lenin, back to the experience of the Bolsheviks is an essential part of building what is necessary - a revolutionary working class socialist party.

All Flu'd Up

Oh woe is me, I've contracted the flu, which means a report I was going to write on yesterday's West Midlands cadre school for Socialist Party comrades will have to wait. One thing I do recommend if you've got the flu - do try to avoid doing a stall, especially when it's bloody freezing.

Instead of writing a post, I've been trawling the web for leftist blogs. So AVPS welcomes Complex System of Pipes, For a New Left Party, Histomat, Left Click, Louise Ashworth, Madam Miaow, Rebellion Sucks, Sit Down Man, The Cedar Lounge Revolution, Theft is Good, and Unrepentant Communist to the blog roll. I think that's everyone! If you have a left blog, drop me a line and you'll be added.

On a final surprising note, I was very pleased to see AVPS come in at 23 on Socialist Unity's hot 100 of left blogs. Many thanks to the SU comrades, the bung is in the post.

Fascism and the White Working Class

In his report back from last weekend's Socialist Party national committee meeting, brother A noted our friends the British National Party had come out in favour of the postal workers.

In a press release on their website (dated 11th October), the BNP writes

"Postal workers have a good case. They are striking to defend their pension scheme. They are striking because the pay deal of 6.7% over two years is actually a pay cut when you take real inflation into account. They already earn £80 a week below the national average wage! They are striking because Royal Mail is seeking to make unfavourable changes to their terms and conditions to compete with private companies who are cherry-picking the most profitable areas."

It continues;

"The Brown regime is hell-bent on continuing the Blairite policy of liquidating the Common Wealth of this country, wrecking public services by turning them into private profit centres for giant corporations. Inconvenient though the postal strikes are, the postal workers are in the forefront of the battle against doctrinaire privatisation."

If the BNP were half-way serious about their support, then where have they been throughout the strike? For a party who claims to be the authentic voice of the white, British working class; it has been notably absent from picket lines outside sorting offices, MDECs, depots, and post offices.

Of course, this support is purely demagogic. It was only a short while ago the BNP were denouncing the CWU for supporting posties' rights not to deliver their poisonous electoral material. This is the very same BNP who said firefighters "must forego their ambiguous position of using strike action as a means of leverage in pay negotiations" at the height of the FBU's dispute with the government! With friends like these ...

These kinds of opportunistic lurches to the left has a long pedigree in fascist politics. Like all on the far right, the starting point of their politics is the nation or 'the race'. Anything that threatens to sunder the essential unity of that category is a threat that must be dealt with. For example, New Labour are quite happy to dismantle public services and oversee the direct subordination of more and more civil society to the dictates of capital, and the government has had no qualms opening the borders to East European workers. Furthermore the working class as a whole is politically disenfranchised and is expected to forego the few crumbs from the rich's table it could expect in the past. Therefore it appears from this standpoint as if the Blair/Brown regime has time for everyone but the white working class. In BNP 'thought' this section of the working class is excluded precisely because it is the salt-of-the-earth repository of the British nation, and so they tailor their propaganda accordingly. This is not the whole of the BNP story as the fascists can also rely on significant support from sections of the middle class, but this discourse has clearly struck a chord in many working class communities up and down Britain. It helps explain how the BNP can poll very significant results in areas it has never stood in before.

But this strategy can only go so far. It's all very well winning support from white working class voters in periods where it has had the political stuffing knocked out of it, but quite another when it moves into action to prosecute its interests. This is why the BNP are never seen on workers picket lines - the logic of class action cuts against their idea of an indivisible nation/race. It's obvious to anyone who has taken industrial action that workers must stand together, regardless of gender, race, and sexuality in order to win. The BNP's nationalist rubbish tries to deny this by posing a common national interest between worker and boss, and seeking to divide workers by whipping up prejudice and hatred.

Fundamentally, however the BNP wishes to dress up, its "radicalism" is deeply reactionary. The British nation it defends is not the one of rebellion, of the general strike, the miners' strike, and the poll tax struggle; but the Britain of colonial brutality, class privilege, imperial bigotry, and capitalist exploitation. They offer the working class nothing but the whip and the chain.

The Scramble for Antarctica

For the Morning Star, its Communist Party of Britain, and the remaining detritus of official communism, yesterday was a good day. At long last, New Labour has achieved one of the policy goals beloved of British Road'ers everywhere: Britain is finally exercising an independent foreign policy. Sort of. The BBC has reported the Foreign Office has drawn up plans to prosecute its imperialist claims to the Antarctic sea bed.

You could say this has almost become voguish for the remaining great maritime powers. Over the summer we had Russia's ludicrous stunt of planting a flag on the Arctic sea floor to lay claim to the continental shelf on which northern Siberia rests. In recent days, the melting of sea ice has made the North West Passage navigable by boat, leading Canada to quickly lay claim to the route to head off US designs. Global warming, combined with increasing energy demands means the polar regions and the sea bed will increasingly be the focus of an unseemly scramble.

Looking at the new British claims, the government seeks to extend its sovereignty over a thousand more square miles of sea. But as if to allay objections on environmental grounds, the BBC quotes a spokeswoman as saying "It would be a claim in name only, we wouldn't act because doing any mineral exploitation contravenes the [Antarctic] treaty". How nice of them! She goes on, "it is essentially to safeguard for the future and if [the treaty] is abolished in the future we will have safeguarded our claim to that area". Ah, so at the moment Britain will honour its treaty obligations, but reserves the right in the future to allow Shell and BP in to do the dirty if the treaty falls apart. Small wonder the quoted Greenpeace spokesman replied "When the UK is supposed to be leading the charge on reducing carbon emissions, they are in fact leading the charge half way around the world for a new oil rush".

He's not wrong. Foreign office bureaucrats are preparing for similar claims off western Scotland and around the Falklands and South Georgia.

Capitalist states seeking out and securing real or potential resources is nothing new, nor is the spectre of conflict arising from competing claims. All that is different is the peculiar inhospitality of the environments that are the focus of these efforts. If you look at the political geography of Antarctica, already it is divided up between eight states, with Chile and Argentina contesting the vast majority of British-held territory. But there still remains a fairly sizable chunk of territory approximately the size of France going unclaimed, which no doubt is being eyed by various governments as I write. And as claims are being drawn up, it seems likely studies are being undertaken to determine the feasibility of military bases to protect those holdings. In the blink of an eye, the last wilderness on Earth could be turned into an armed camp.

Because militarisation and environmental despoliation are inseparably bound up with the way capital operates, socialists need to be ever more clearer and more imaginative in getting our message across.