Theory - Socialist Action

Financial Times admits capitalism hits your income

28th June 2011 Socialist Action 0

By Brian Jowells
In a serious admission the Financial Times, which cannot be accused of pro-socialist bias, has set out the facts on how capitalism, at least in the imperialist economies, now makes you worse off. In an article under the title ‘Spectre of stagnating incomes stalks globe’ it notes:

‘In the postwar years, there was a belief in developed economies that each generation could expect to have materially better living standards than their parents. Yet the outlook for income growth has rarely looked worse than it does today…

Lenin on the dynamics of the struggle against imperialism

4th March 2011 Socialist Action 0

By Alan Davies

Lenin emphasised that it is a fundamental error to conceive of the class struggle as between the working class of one country and the capitalist class of that country – of the British working class against British capitalism, of the French working class against the French capitalists, etc. Instead, Lenin noted: ‘The socialist revolution will not be solely or chiefly, a struggle of the revolutionary proletarians in each country against their own bourgeoisie – no, it will be a struggle of all the imperialist-oppressed colonies and countries, of all dependent countries, against international imperialism’ (Lenin V. I., 22 November 1919). Lenin’s point continually needs understanding and emphasising, particularly in imperialist countries.^¹

Lenin versus the early Lukács

10th February 2011 Socialist Action 0

The political current Counterfire, which has its origins in the SWP, has chosen to produce as one of its first publications Capitalism and Class Consciousness: the ideas of Georg Lukács by Chris Nineham (Nineham, 2010). Such a choice is highly interesting in placing theoretical concepts developed by Lukács in the early 1920s as a basis for the approach of Counterfire. These concepts were specifically rejected by Lenin in very strong terms – he referred to Lukács’s views as ‘purely verbal’ Marxism. As ideas of, or similar to, the early Lukács are the basis not only of Counterfire but of other currents, and as they reveal more generally a misunderstanding of Marxism, analysing why these ideas are wrong – and why Lenin so specifically rejected them – is of importance to more than simply small circles.

The new ideological crisis of capitalism

8th January 2010 Socialist Action 0

By Steve Wallace

The financial events of 2008–2009 inaugurated not only an economic but a new ideological crisis of capitalism. How deep this crisis will become depends on the development of the economic situation and the intervention of the political left. The character of this crisis, however, can be seen most clearly by placing it in an historical context.

Twenty years ago, in 1989–91, capitalism achieved enormous victories. It overthrew the non-capitalist economies in the USSR and Eastern Europe. The opportunity to achieve this was created by the final failure of the policy of ‘socialism in one country’ inaugurated by Stalin – with its economically utopian attempt to create a fully developed socialist society within the framework of a single state, its introduction of a fully planned economy in a short period by administrative means, and the political repression that followed from such policies.

Within the former USSR the objective result of this capitalist victory was, in literal terms, the greatest economic catastrophe in peacetime in history. The former USSR’s economic output fell by half, large parts of the former system of social benefits were destroyed, male life expectancy fell by almost ten years, tens of millions of women were forced out of work while prostitution and social degradation acquired massive dimensions, and war broke out in the southern states of the former USSR as the systems of economic and social protection that had protected the population of the Soviet Union were destroyed. The stupidity of those within the former USSR who had introduced this programme of capitalist restoration in the belief that it would ‘revive’ Russia after the Brezhnev ‘period of stagnation’ was shown in the fact that alongside this economic and social catastrophe the former Soviet Union was destroyed as one of the world’s great powers and it became subject to many new threats – which the US promptly started to exploit. The restoration of capitalism in the USSR therefore created an economic, social and political disaster for its population.

Marxism and the anti-racist struggle

24th July 2007 Socialist Action 0

First published: 24 July 2007

Those who suffer from an oppression are the only people who understand all its implications and ramifications. It is for this reason that it is a basic principle that women must lead the struggle against women’s oppression and sexism, that gay and lesbian people must lead the struggle against homophobia and, to take the subject of the present posting, that those communities oppressed by racism must have the leading role in the movement against it.

Racism is of course used to divide the whole of the working class. But above all, racism is a set of institutions and ideology which justifies the oppression and exploitation of the non-white majority of humanity.

Marxism, John Stuart Mill and the veil

23rd October 2006 Socialist Action 0

First published: 23 October 2006

Lenin, in The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, gave the classic formulation of the relation of Marxism to previous thought: ‘the genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism… (it) provides men… with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced.’ (Lenin, Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1977, Moscow, Volume 19, pages 21 –28.)