Tony Cliff

[jbm7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Jim Monaghan)]

Another obit on Cliff. Hope this does not upset anyone
Jim Monaghan


Obituary

Tony Cliff - a leading figure on the British Left

Alan Thornett

TONY CLIFF, who died on Sunday April 9 at the age of 82, was a major
figure
of the far-left in Britain and internationally. He built an organisation
in
Britain, which during the 1990s, has been by far the biggest on the
far-left.

Whilst I have had a range of disagreements with his politics and analysis
the contribution he made to revolutionary politics in Britain was clearly
substantial. His energy and integrity will be greatly missed and the
workers? movement will be the poorer without him.

I first met Tony Cliff nearly 40 years ago when I was a young shop steward
in the car industry in Oxford and still a member of the Communist Party,
even if a dissident one. There were two Trotskyist organisations in Oxford
at the time the Socialist Labour League (SLL) and the International
Socialists (IS).

The SLL was a growing organisation which had won the leadership of the
Labour Party?s youth organisation the Young Socialists, and was recruiting
young people in quite large numbers and had an impressive trade union
intervention in some parts of industry. The IS was a much smaller
organisation seeking to build itself a base in industry. The major
problems
with the SLL?s internal regime were not apparent to us at that time.

My growing interest in Trotskyism, along with other militants from the car
industry, was triggered by contact with a group of SLL students in the
University.

In the same period we had a discussion with Tony Cliff as well. He came
and
addressed a group of us from the car plants. We were unconvinced by
Cliff?s
rank and fileist politics, and IS?s consequent reluctance to take
positions
in the trade unions and shop stewards movement.

Support

Of course it was key to build support amongst the rank-and-file. But to
build only amongst the rank and file, and as a result leave key leadership
positions in the hands of the right-wing to be used against the
rank-and-file never made sense to us.

The other issue of disagreement was on the theory of ?state capitalism?.
Tony Cliff had long rejected Trotsky?s analysis of the Soviet Union as a
degenerated workers? state, set out in Revolution Betrayed, in favour of
the
idea that it had been state capitalist from some point in the second half
of
the 1920s.

We proposed a debate between Tony Cliff and SLL leader Gerry Healy on the
issue, but in the end it took place with Healy and a local member of the
IS.

Our decision to join the SLL a couple of years later was based on our
rejection of Tony Cliff?s two key ideas, rank and fileism and state
capitalism.

Cliff rightly pointed to the Stalinist nightmare, at a time when it was
not
so easy to do so. He concluded that what had happened in the Soviet Union
was not that the power had been taken from the working class by a counter
revolutionary bureaucracy on the basis of existing property relations, but
that the mode of production had changed back to a form of capitalism -
state
capitalism. The bureaucracy were now a new ruling class extracting surplus
value and accumulating capital as capitalism does.

This led him to conclude that there was nothing at all to defend in the
USSR
and that it was as much an imperialist power as the USA. The practical
application of this theory came when he took a position of neutrality in
the
Korean war, but it is a position which was not carried through
consistently.

The IS/SWP was not neutral in the Vietnam war but correctly opposed US
imperialism and later developed a more consistent anti-imperialist
position
whilst maintaining its ?Neither Washington or Moscow? slogan.

Tony Cliff saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR
and
the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe as a massive vindication of the
theory of state capitalism. This view was shared by the SWP as a whole,
and
it gave them confidence at a time when the Communist Parties went into
free
fall in many countries including Britain and sections of the far left drew
pessimistic conclusions out of these events.

The SWP was unencumbered by the events because it regarded those regimes
as
capitalist anyway. Nothing had changed, and this confidence gave SWP
members
an advantage.

But you did not have to be a state capitalist to be unencumbered by the
fall
of the wall. The problem was for those who had attributed something
progressive to Stalinism.

Trotsky characterised Stalinism as a counter revolutionary force on a
world
scale. But he also argued that whilst control of societies by the working
class had been destroyed, the mode of production had not been changed. He
therefore called for a political revolution to overturn a parasitic
bureaucracy, not social revolution to overturn a capitalist bourgeoisie.

Confirmation

In my view it is this analysis of Trotsky?s which was confirmed so
convincingly by the collapse of the USSR, not the theory of state
capitalism.

This is shown in the immense problems encountered in re-capitalising the
Russian economy. Even 10 years later the capitalist mode of production
does
not predominate in the former Soviet Union. Most of the population
survives
by various forms of barter and individual subsistence production: many
still
have no contact with the market at all.

Of course Russia and the other ex-USSR countries have rabidly
pro-capitalist
governments. And they have an emerging comprador capitalist class. But
whilst that represents the existence of a capitalist market in parts of
the
economy, non-capitalist social relations continue to predominate.

Collectivised property relations have been broken up and dislocated, but
capitalist social relations have not been established to replace them as
the
dominant mode of production. Governments exist which defend capitalist
social relations of production but lack the political or economic
conditions
to make them a reality. And the social layer in power remain a
bureaucracy,
even if their foremost ambition in life is to become capitalists - and
many
of them already have albeit of the gangster variety.

Wherever you stand on state capitalism the relevance of the debate is
diminishing in today?s world. And the political situation Tony Cliff
leaves
behind today is very different to that which prevailed during much of his
time building the IS and the SWP in Britain.

Political alternative

Whilst the defeats of the 1980s hang over the workers? movement, and the
level of strikes remains at an all time low, a real possibility of
building
a political alternative to Blairism and to reshape the left is beginning
to
present itself.

Stalinism has fragmented and its influence has declined: the far left has
a
greater weight within the left as a whole.

It is to his great credit that Tony Cliff recognised these changes and
emerging opportunities in the last months of his life, and fully backed
the
London Socialist Alliance.

The organisation he built, regarded by many as insular for a very long
time,
has partly opened itself up to a dialogue, joint work, and collaboration
with other sections of the far left. It would be a tribute to him for this
to continue towards the construction of an effective alternative to the
rightward march of new Labour.