the commune

The Commune introduction to a meeting on Anarchism, Marxism and the State, at the Sheffield Anarchist Bookfair 11th May 2013, by Barry Biddulph.

In the 1870′s, Bakunin in Marxism and the State, argued that the divide between Marxists and Anarchists was this: Marxists stood for the Peoples State (workers state) and Anarchists aimed for the destruction of the state. This was not a direct polemic with the views of Marx in the 1870′s. It was an indirect attack on Marx as the pope of German Social Democracy. Therefore, when Lassalle advocated the people’s state this reflected the views of Marx.

Bakunin went all the way back to 1848, and the Communist Manifesto, where we find the following state socialist position: “the proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e. the proletariat organised as a ruling class”.  (1) But this was described as outdated by Marx in 1872, “One thing especially was proved by the commune, that the working class cannot simply lay hold of ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purpose”. (2)

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Barry Biddulph says, in Britain, the political perspectives of the  trade union left have become associated with Keynesian state redistribution policies. The trade union bureaucracy and its radical supporters, have their own left Keynesian version of Ed Miliband’s Labour revamp of Benjamin Disraeli’s one nation compassionate Conservatism. They look to the Capitalist state to stimulate  investment and redistribute wealth. As Guglielmo Cachedi notes: “at present the most influential thesis on the left, sees the crisis as caused by under consumption and recommends Keynesian policies as a solution“(1). For some on the left there is an awareness that  Keynesian policies cannot end the slump, could intensify the crisis, and imply some kind of unity of capital and labour for a fairer society; but this first stage, which is understood to involve some kind of left government in a Capitalist state, is considered to be the only realistic way to fight Capitalism.

Carchedi has recently argued in the International Socialism Journal that  Keynesian measures “cannot end the slump, but they can surely improve Labours Conditions and given the proper perspective, foster the end of Capital”(2) But he fails to inform us how Marxism can be reconciled with Keynesianism, particularly in the light of his demonstration in the same article, with his Marxist multiplier, that the economics of Marx and Keynes are incompatible. But it does not prevent him from speculating that “from a Marxist perspective state induced capital financed distribution and investment policies need not carry the ideological content attached to the word, the community of interests between two fundamental classes”(3) It seems, Keynesian reformism or looking to the Capitalist state for reforms can be given a Marxist twist.  Sam Williams, gives a similar, if more inflexible tactical suggestion, that only when Keynesians have fully exhausted their project would a revolutionary perspective become realistic.(4)

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Class Struggle in the Context of Austerity

Capitalism & Crises

Marxism & Religion

Saturday 22nd September, 1pm to 5pm

Lucus Arms, 245a Grays Inn Road, London, WC1

We present here reports from anti-authoritarian communists in two different Spanish cities.  They appear here in English for the first time.  Elsewhere online there is another text, from Madrid, which is a worthwhile reflection on how revolutionaries can relate to the movement.

Indignados in Seville

I find it difficult to write about the movement of indignados in Seville and maybe that’s because I’ve been an activist for many years in this city. So I’m writing while aware that my opinions aren’t very representative of the movement as a whole. Read the rest of this entry »

Time: 7pm, Monday 13 June
Location: Freedom Bookshop, Angel Alley, 84b Whitechapel High Street [Map] (near Aldgate East tube)

See below for reading

Class struggle broke out on a massive scale in Italy after more than a decade of migration, speedups and mechanisation. The Italian miracle of the fifties and sixties meant a big increase in the number- and the power- of factory workers, through mass migration to the north.  Theorists talked about a new subject: the “mass worker”, especially the unskilled and semi-skilled young workers. The class struggle waged by these workers is especially interesting not just for its militancy but also for the forms that struggle took and the ways it was organised: hiccup strikes, chequerboard strikes, sabotage, occupations, base committees, mass worker- student assemblies… Read the rest of this entry »

This article was commissioned by Shift Magazine, a publication addressing the radical ecological direct action movement, to discuss the trade unions in the wake of the March 26th demonstration.  Because it addresses a readership who may not have much personal experience of union involvement, or a particular political orientation to labour militancy, aspects of it may seem obvious to regular readers of The Commune.  It was written in early April.

The ecological direct action movement has supported workers' struggles before: but is it time to do more than support from the outside?

In an age of austerity, at a time in which industrial struggle seems to be on the agenda in a way in which it hasn’t been for years, activists are asking questions about unions.  What can we expect from them?  How should we relate to them?  Why are they as they are? Read the rest of this entry »

Wednesday 8 June, 7pm

Housmans Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Road, London, N1 9DX (2 mins walk from Kings Cross station)

Ngo Van joined the struggle against the French colonial regime in Vietnam as a teenager in the 1920s, suffering imprisonment and hardship. But when revolution swept Vietnam at the end of the second world war, the Stalinists of the Vietnamese Communist Party took control and tried physically to eliminate other socialists and anti-colonialists. Van escaped this massacre, in which many of his comrades were murdered. From 1948 he lived in exile in Paris, where he took a factory job and participated in workers’ movements before, during and after the 1968 general strike.  [See here for a short online biography.]

Van, who died in 2005, wrote extensively about Vietnamese worker and peasant resistance, both to French colonialism and to Ho Chi Minh’s brand of Stalinism, helping to hand that history on to later generations.

In The Crossfire, published by AK Press, is the English edition of Ngo Van’s autobiography.

Hilary Horrocks, one of the book’s translators, will talk about this unique eye-witness account of a little-known aspect of the anti-colonial struggle, and read from Van’s vivid story of secret meetings, arrests, torture, battles and insurrection. Simon Pirani, who researched the history of Vietnamese Trotskyism and edited some of Van’s earlier English-language publications, will also speak. There will be plenty of time for questions and discussion from all.

Entry: £3, redeemable against any purchase

Enquiries 07947 031268. Housmans 020 7837 4473, shop@housmans.com

We are publicising this talk, but it is not organised by The Commune.