My claims to have scanned in 100% of my files yesterday was premature – it turns out I still have quite a few more to do before I can get on with uploading everything properly. In the meantime I’m actually unable to upload any more pdfs directly until the University increase my webspace! Shouldn’t be too difficult to manage, but could mean a day or so not being able to expand my Archives. I’ll hopefully have something typed up tomorrow evening for your delectation.

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I’ve scanned in the totality of my research thus far, so now begins the laborious task of chronologically ordering and arranging the data on file and uploading it into the new ‘archive’ section on the blog. Still in the rough stages of this process so far, but i’m now getting tantalizingly close to the point at which I can start piecing together an actual narrative summary (perhaps even a timeline!) of events as they unfolded. In the time being, here’s the first of a standard-issue letter sent out to potential international supporters of the SRG as it was setting itself up in late 1950, this one in particular directed towards a group of Germans (Jungclas and Lenz).

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Hi Guys,

Sorry for neglecting this place as of late. A mixture of Marxism 2010, moving around all over London, then to Stafford, and making a failed push on Warwick archives before settling into a three-day family party in Baswich have left me pretty strapped for time. The first bundles of pdfs should be up on the site later this evening, just to show I haven’t just been lazing around doing nothing, and here’s one to keep everyone warm.

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This was taken from International Socialism no# 100, 1977, as a prologue to Duncan Hallas’s article ‘Trotskyism Reassessed’. For the uninitiated I think it sums up alot about state-capitalism and the IS’s tradition in layman terms. One of the most prominent criticisms of the thesis lies in the suggestion that the term ‘capitalist’ is quite simply an incorrect adjective with which to describe the economic structure of the Soviet Union, China, Yugoslavia, North Korea, etc. A ‘Marxist’ analysis, it is argued, takes great significance from the absence of a free bourgeoisie in these so-called ‘workers’ states’, the subsequent absence of cost rationalization in certain industries, and the absence of individual capital accumulation.

Of course, it is obvious that these factors influence social interactions within said nations. However for the millions, the relations between worker and employer experience only marginally different dynamics; where profits are the predominant motivator in capitalist production, ‘targets’ were the main form of motivation for the managers of Soviet factories. For those officials, opportunities for promotion through the ranks of their business were supplanted by opportunities for promotion through the ranks of the Party and bureaucratic elite. The avenues for personal material development were more controlled; more limited (both materially and in terms of variation) however the same singular principles of material rewards and fear of deprivations made up the method with which the state pressured its population into work.

Sure, this process may have been less mindless, less rapacious than its capitalist counterpart; it may have provided a more secure, stable and socially conscious set of principles by which the nation’s manufacture and general labour were invested (though certainly not without their geopolitical influences). But, on a day-to-day level, this ‘socialism’ in no way possessed workers with the ability to control their own lives, have a say in their existence, or exist as individuals with the potentials to be something other than productive machines. Fundamentally, it was the scholastic academia of contemporary mid-century Trotskyism which forced the state-capitalist faction to split, and their total avoidance of a humanistic understanding of human relationships. Fetishistic economic characterisations were allowed to overwhelm the more individually oriented Marxist notions of alienation, expropriation and even emancipation, taking the Fourth International beyond the pale, and unable to appeal to a new generation of socialists.

capitalism · communism · Duncan Hallas · north korea · socialism · Societ Union · State Capitalism · tony cliff · USSR · Yugoslavia

Hi guys, just a post to keep the blog warm. I’ve been scanning in the documents from my last trip to the archives (which is actually a much easier process than I initially envisaged!) however seperating the pdfs into separate files is another matter entirely… does anyone have any free source (or otherwise ‘affordable’) software that can easily break up pdf files into constituent parts? I’m using Adobe Acrobat Pro 9′s free trial at the moment, but that only lasts for 30 days.

I’ll be heading down to Marxism for Saturday morning, so if anyone fancies having a word about the ‘project’ then I’m sure alot of us will be gathering around the same place. I’ll add a ‘contact’ page to the site for queries and contributions.

Hopefully, after my next trips (another trek over to the Senate House archives, and a trip to the Modern Records Centre in Warwick) I’ll be able to start properly ordering the data, and creating a coherent narrative around the IS’s development. Until then, however, I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with my varying and sometimes disparate entries. Glad to see some discussion in the comments box, and I’d like to encourage anyone ‘lurking’ to contribute if they see anything of interest.

I’ll try and pop in one of my ‘separated’ pdf’s this afternoon.

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Jumping back to 1951, there’s some interesting (though not totally related) notes on the development of international links, in the minutes from the National Committee (22-23rd September) followed closely by a re-assessment of membership criteria.

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“In view of his greater knowledge of this subject, RT led discussion. He fave a comprehensive report covering State Capitalist connections in many countries, and in other countries where tendencies were moving towards the theory. The basic document was being printed in France, Bolivia, and probably Germany. RT stressed the importance of international collaboration. He made proposals that 2 pages of each SR be given to International News, and agreed to be responsible for the distribution of SR internationally. Agreed that RT to be in charge of 2 international pages. He gave information re Johnson-Forrest’s recent break, General discussion and questions took place on the report.

Resolution

After discussion on KT’s report of Grant-Deanite negotiations, PD moved the following resolution:-

“We believe that the world Trotskyist movement is divided into defensism and anti-defensism. The defensists capitulate to Stalinism; the anti-defensits are the only real Bolsheviks, headed by Natalia Trotsky. We declare that we will not make any fusion with any group that stands for the defence of either Russian or American imperialism.”

This was agreed unanimously, and agreed that it be sent to all branches immediately.

PM raised the original organisational resolution on membership, and the fact that D.H. was the only member to gain more members. Discussion followed on this, and arising out of it, E.H’s position was raised, and London members gave information re their branch’s actions concerning this comrade. Probationary membership was discussed, and agreed that this item go on the agenda of next NC.

In view of EH’s position the question of producing “Organise Unity” arose. RT moved that it be produced, and this was carried 6-2.

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Apologies for those who may have been expecting a post on Friday and Saturday; I’m back from London now and the movement messed up my work pattern abit. Returning to my (now photocopied) files, I’ve found some of the documents I was referring to on my first ‘Specialization/etc’ post. The main one is taken from the ‘minutes of a meeting’  held on the 13th November, 1950, under the sub-heading ‘Correspondence’.

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“From Jean, re literature, and giving details of literature covered in her area. Also re her TU; AW to write advising her to join CSCA or NUPE. Informtation also sent on education, S.F., contacts.

A further letter from Jean was read, re “S.R.”, and languages covered by comrades. AQ to write and thank them.

From T.V. branch on comrades’ expulsion from Richmong Group. Reply to be sent by AW. (Endorsed)

From Manchester, giving information on their branch, and enclosing cash. These two letters had gone astray before reaching Bham. Arising from these letters, a discussion took place on the question of whether we are to consider ourselves a Tendency or Party, with a view to accepting, or not accepting, W. Statist and Schachtmanites as members. After discussion AW moved that we circularise all branches to the effect that the Secretariat discussed this problem, and that at the NC in December the Secretariat will move a resolution that our grouping is to have the discipine of a party, therefore S. Capitalism will be the position put in public. This will exclude W. Statists from membership. This was agreed. Further to the letter from Manchester, MP moved that they be asked to justify their work in the Peace Committee, or clarify the position to us on this matter.”

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The theme recurs consistently, and there is alot of discussion (and what seems to be a very distinct analysis) between what SRG members expect to achieve as an intellectual organ of the left or as a party. The position was reiterated strongly by a meeting of the Secretariat held 18th of February, 1952, and strongly resolved in favour of remaining a specialized body, under the heading ‘S.R.’

“P.M. moved K.T. be business manager for S.R. This was agreed.

A letter was presented from the printer O. Amey, as this was of a technical nature it was the wish of the meeting it be left until after the N.C.

On the nature of the S.R. all comrades present were of the opinion that we must resist any attempt to make it an agitational organ.

It was agreed that should the N.C. decide against our views, we should resign as the Secretariat as we are not prepared to accept political responsibility

(Signed) P. Downey
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Hopefully most of these will be scanned in on pdf format by tomorrow, so you’ll be able to read them firsthand.

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Trying to catch up with my missed post from yesterday, and engage a little with some of the discussion arising from the comments box, here’s an (unfortunately incomplete) letter to a state-capitalist faction member from Sam Levy. The copy I’ve got begins from page three of 5.

… In the Labour Party, the Healyites have acted as a left cover of the Stalinist fellow travellers with the ironical result that what possibilities they may have had as a left wing anti-Stalinist force is gone. Yet in Britain, conditions are relatively favourable for such a position.

Being conscious of the unsatisfactory line of the International raising the slogan “Defense of the Soviet Union” etc, I think you tend to go to the otherside. We are (and I presume you are) for the defense of the property forms in Russia, Eastern Europe and China, but at the same time it is necessary to make our position as clear as possible even if we function as a propaganda group (as in most cases we do) and convey many ideas to the few. By raising the question of the Defense of the Soviet Union as they do, they must necessarily link themselves with the Stalinists. The argument that it will make their approach to the Stalinists much easier is sheer balderdash, the contrary is true, it will convey Stalinist ideas much easier to the Trotskyists. I’m afraid, they have been taught by the three brass monkeys. For my part, like the Stalinists, I honestly believe that Stalin will fight to the best of his ability to preserve his vested interests.

Your suggestion, that these countries should not be called ‘Workers States’, because workers states should have workers’ management as well as nationalised industries is incorrect, because it reflects an ‘Ideal’ or ‘Norm’ Workers State. History is proving that the transition so far is not going through the ‘Norm’. What determines the character of the social system, is the economic foundation; i.e. capitalism by private property, transition to socialism by nationalisation (reference is to the determining economic aspect, not to small sectors.) That which determines the superstructure on the economic foundation are the political structures. Under transition to Capitalism, and Capitalism itself, we have Absolute Monarchy, Bonapartism, Bourgeois Democracy, Fascism. Bourgeois Democracy and Fascism both remain capitalist states, though it would be political suicide to identify them, and not realise their difference. The same is true of the States under nationalised property. Therefore, we must declare they are ‘Workers States’, but at the same time we must differentiate and explain.

You will find enclosed our document on Stalin. In the main I agree with it, though I think its scholastic and tends to take a negative attitude, not showing sufficient alternative to Stalinism; that is briefly my personal criticism of the document. Maybe, after you have read it, we could have some discussion on it. By the way, I wonder if you could get in any copies of Fourth International Material (particularly in English, that you could spare and send to us, as we do not recieve any at all).

Your position that we should work in or around the Fourth International I agree; that is one of the reasons why I went to Paris and tried unsuccessfully to contact Gabriel. But most of the members in our group disagree, they argue, that nothing could be done with the I.S. [International Secretariat] (which I agree) that it would make little difference whether we tried to contact the Fourth now, or five years time, whereas in my opnion we have a position and the best place to express it would be in or around the Fourth.

Comradely Yours,

Sam Levy

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Apologies to all who might have been expecting a blog post yesterday – in the end I had to move all my belongings from my temporary base near Euston all the way to Clapham, and set up shop here.

I’ve unfortunately been informed that the British Library’s near complete collection of early Socialist Reviews is being moved into a new archive space, which will render it inaccessible for around 2 months. This has put me in limbo abit, so for the next few days I’ll probably just be re-reading the sources I’ve already had printed and updating the blog. Thought I’d best catch up on yesterday’s missed post though, with the Cliff faction’s own response to the expulsion of ‘Jones’ (as Ian Birchall’s comment on the previous post has ascertained, this is the pseudonym for Percy Downey) in their ‘Letter to the Members of the B.S.F.I.‘

As every member knows, the B.S.F.I. [the Club] is undergoing a deep crisis. In the political field the crisis is expressed in capitulation to Stalinism. The Korean supplement of the S.O. [Socialist Outlook] might have been written in King Street; capitulation to reformist centrist tendencies:- for nearly two years uncritical support was given to Ellis Smith and Brockway until they walked out on us. Now the story is being repeated with S.O. Davies, Emrys Hughes and Figgins: ignominious crawling before Tito. This in spite of the fact (which the leadership hides from the membership) that the Yugoslav leaders have never once taken back their words that their killing of the Trotskyists in Yugoslavia as fascists was justified (for example, the Yugoslav Embassy in London writes in an issue of 23rd September 1949 about the Rajk trials: “… the notorious Trotskyist Justus”, “Trotskyist and Gestapo-like…” etc).

The twin of the betrayal of Marxism ideologically is accompanied by the complete abandonment of democratic centralism. A week before the Club conference a motion was put, based upon trivial grounds, to expell E.G., who has for 22 years been a member of the International and one of its leading theoreticians. Only the fear of exposing themselves led the leaders of the Club to postpone the decision on this motion for two months after conference. There can be little doubt that they will carry out their threat of expulsion. Comrade J.D. was expelled earlier quite unjustifiably. Without agreeing politically with either E.G. or J.D., we, the group of comrades who consider Russia a state capitalist country protested against this bureaucratic handling.

Now the blow has fallen on Comrade P.D., for many years an active, devoted member of the Club and one of its best known trade union militants. The reason given for his expulsion is that he put forward in public a position on Korea different from the Stalinist Korean directive of the S.O. The position he put forward was very similar to that John G. Wright put forward in public on the pages of the “Militant” (J.G.W. is lucky to be outside the jurisdiction of the leaders of the B.S.F.I). P.D. is expelled, therefore, for putting forward a position on Korea which, whether he knows it or not, is identical with that put forward by the State Capitalist Group. Voting on the motion for P.D.’s expulsion took place under the direct threat of expulsion for any member voting against the resolution. Five comrades voted against P.D.’s expulsion, each of whom has a long and creditable history of service in the Trotskyist movement. In the event, these five comrades were suspended and given one month to reverse their position. Furthermore it should be noted that the motion for P.D.’s expulsion was carried by seven votes to six. Included in the total of seven for the motion was the vote of comrade J.W. of Coventry.  This comrade has just reappeared in our midst after one of his periodic lapses of membership. In contradistinction to the attitude of the leadership towards E.G., J.W. has immediately resumed full membership rights, and was co-opted at the instigation of the leadership into the Birmingham branch immediately after the first signs of opposition appeared in that branch. It merely remains to add that J.W. is a devoted disciple of the leadership.

This, coming on top of the refusal of the leadership of the B.S.F.I. to circulate a document of our group before Conference, or to accept any new members into the organisation who do not accept that Russia is a workers’ state, shows the heights of bureaucratism the leaders of the B.S.F.I. are prepared to scale.

The members of the B.S.F.I. who oppose this betrayal of Marxism both on political and organisational planes are threatened with bureaucratic expulsion from the organisation one by one.

We cannot but declare: “An injury to one is an injury to all”. If the leadership of the B.S.F.I. does not offer reinstatement to the Birmingham comrades we will all be forced to join them, and lay the formation of a genuine, revolutionary, democratic Trotskyist party.
Signed in the name of the State Capitalist faction by its delegates in the recent Conference of the B.S.F.I.

J.S. (West London Branch)

J.H. (Thames Valley “)

T.M. (Manchester “)

On the basis of the available sources, I find it interesting that I actually disagree with the early state-capitalist group’s notion of democratic centralism in this piece; it would appear to me that iterating in public a line distinct from that of your organization is a near definitional breach of the concept, and though expulsions may be deemed harsh and autocratic, the theoretical principle behind it is correct. However, I am also aware (mainly through non-Healyite Fourth International sources, such as those from the former Workers’ International League) that the build-up to the split was conditioned by a climate in which serious discussion of the state capitalist thesis was never allowed nor given a platform. Obviously, in a situation where a group is never given an effective internal platform with which to take their arguments to the membership, there is no compulsion on behalf of said group to accede to the demands of the ‘central line’ in public. However, it’s a shame that the IS’s perspective on the question of democratic centralism (in reference to their split from the Club) hasn’t appeared to crop up in fully fleshed-out form the documents I’ve found. Hopefully I’ll be having some discussions with ‘survivors’ in the coming weeks, which should give me a more detailed (and balanced) account of the political processes by which the decision to break ranks with the Club was made than can be gathered through surviving documentation.

democratic centralism · Gerry Healy · lenin · revolutionary party · swp · the club · tony cliff · trotskyism

Sunday Sept 3rd
Dear Comrade,
Comrade Morris and I are calling a summons meeting of the Club this coming Wednesday, September 6th, to be held at Morris’s house at 7.45 p.m.
This serious step arises because on Saturday September 2nd, comrade Jones, placed a motion at the Trade’ Council which is in fundamental opposition to the club line on Korea. This person did not raise his line even at the previous Club meeting although being fully aware of his [unintelligible] tone at the Trades Council. His action represents a flagrant breach of discipline and an open attack on the Club.
Consequently at the Club meeting we shall charge Jones with this and shall move his expulsion from the Club. Every member must attend this meeting – all other work must be thrown aside for this night.
We have informed comrade Burne and he will be present at this meeting on Wednesday night.
Yours Fraternally
Mann.

This letter, presumably from 1950, marks the purge which pushed the future IS tendency out of the Revolutionary Communist Party for good. After tolerating the state capitalists as an internal faction for over a year, the Healyites turned on them as a group once their theories turned into concrete activity. Although the above-mentioned crimes of Jones and the rest of Cliff’s group did indeed constitute a gross breach of party discipline, the basis for it had arisen gradually, mainly in response to the leadership’s refusal to allow fully fleshed out debate on the state capitalism thesis within the organisation. This Stalinist distortion of Leninist organizational structures is commented upon and referred back to many times in the early Socialist Review Group’s open letters to Club members (of which an example will be uploaded by next week) and remained a concurrent feature of Healy’s tendency (through Socialist Labour League to Workers’ Revolutionary Party).

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On a separate note, I’ve noted that these fairly arbitrarily selected samples from my daily readings aren’t really making for a cohesive picture of my research as a whole. I’ve got my first photocopies back today, and over this weekend I’ll be ploughing through them ready for scanning in by the beginning of next week, so hopefully I’ll be able to construct a more sold framework for how I display the work.

Gerry Healy · north korea · socialism · State Capitalism · SWP Tony Cliff · WRP