Reply to Paul Cockshott on socialist political economy

["Jurriaan Bendien" <bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Paul,

You wrote:

"Solidarity was a mass working class movement with a Thatcherite neo-liberal
leadership, whose program could only be capitalist restorationist."

This is in my opinion an economic-determinist interpretration which I do not
share. Solidarnosc's basic demand was for free and independent trade unions,
which they were raising while at the same time the Thatcherites were
smashing the British miner's strike in 1984, following an intended plan by
the influential strata of the British bourgeoisie, which had earlier been
revealed in an issue of "The Economist" magazine (which is, incidentally,
cited by Daniel Singer in his book about Mitterand's France called
pessimistically "Is socialism doomed ?").

When Lech Walesa became president, it was clear that he did not have any
solid vision of economic policy, or a viable strategy, and within about two
years, his popularity was reduced to near-zero. He had the "gift of the
gab", but no substantive analysis and strategy to solve problems with. That
is why I say it is important for us to do good analysis, and provide good
theory about socialist political economy and culture, and that this is
critical for any future political success, I have reviewed some of the
literature for myself in the past, for example, but often I find it is
marred by academic cretinism and bad ideas about the meaning of planning,
culture, democracy, prices, markets, management and exchange. This is
something to work on more in the future.

In several books and speeches, Winfried Wolf (whom I discussed with in 1984,
before he joined the PDS) described the evolution of Solidarnosc (see
Polen - der lange Sommer der Solidarität Band 1 und 2, mit Steffie Engert
ISP-Verlag, Frankfurt (1981) and Polen - der Winter gehört den Krähen
ISP-Verlag, Frankfurt (1984)) and so did Daniel Singer, in The Road to
Gdansk (Monthly Review Press). A close friend of mine, a trade unionist from
New Zealand, also spoke personally with Josef Pinior around 1988 and told me
about it.

>From this type of evidence, just watching TV and reading what people like
Walesa, Kuron, Michnik, "Smuga" and others actually wrote and said over
time, it is clear that political views within Solidarnosc evolved a lot (for
a chronology of Solidarnosc, see
http://www.solidarnosc.gda.pl/english.htm ). The people that Kuron
associated with were definitely socialist for a long time, and in fact the
US SWP published some of their stuff in English early on. It is just that,
over time, they could not see any other option than market economy to
establish a rational relationship between costs, prices and incomes. But
this was mainly lack of theory and lack of strategy, and naivity about
bourgeois plundering of public assets and bourgeois primitive accumulation.
You need to do that research work beforehand, not when you are the
government.

It is true that the US government did try to spy, influence, bribe and
bankroll elements within Solidarnosc and within the Catholic Church
favouring American interests, as against socialist elements (same as in the
USSR and other East European countries where they violated democratic
principles and disrespected national sovereignity), but obviously the CIA
cannot mobilise millions of people, they cannot even do it in Iran, all they
can do is infiltrate an already existing political movement, and try
influencing the leaders, if they can. But basically the CIA's ability is
increasingly limited to killing people, anti-democratic manipulation and
bribes, because people do not believe American theories anymore, these just
create poverty and exploitation for the many and wealth for the few.

You wrote about:

"1. The absence of any political tendancy arguing for a credible
   socialist political economy."

This I agree with (see above). But then you say:

"2. The absence of any clear understanding of the program for the
   democratic revolution both by the opposition intellectuals who
   were irredemiably reactionary in their conceptions, and by
   the communist intellectuals who were totally imobile."

Well I actually did go out to do some shopping today, although I am tired,
but what you say is not quite correct. There were various different currents
in Solidarnosc, including progressive liberals, anti-communist socialists,
reformist communists, social democrats, catholics, and so on. It started
mainly with the workers, and then the intellectuals joined in. The reason
why the movement grew so large, was because it touched a real nerve among
the broad population which hoped for real civil freedoms (including
religious freedoms), greater economic efficiency and democratic rights,
which the Stalinist-type regime did not provide.

The Stalinist system was not premised on effective economic democracy and
workers self-management, and this, apart from the excessive emphasis placed
on developing a heavy industry sector, excessive bureaucracy, and long
working hours, was the single largest cause of economic inefficiency,
leaving aside scarcities in particular areas, military expenditure and the
blocking of trade by the main industrialised countries. Any socialist
economic theory which does not understand the economic significance of civil
rights and cultural freedoms is doomed, as was explained quite clearly by
Michel Raptis and Ernest Mandel in various works.

Many Marxists in my experience do not know how to argue effectively for
socialism, they can only criticise the bad policies of the bourgeoisie, they
don't know what socialism means. I have a pamphlet by John Molyneux from the
International Socialists called "The future socialist society" and this is
just totally simplistic stuff, it just talks about "nationalisation" and
"workers power" n a ritualistic way but it says nothing real and substantial
about forms of association, property forms, economics, democratic procedures
or anything. No intelligent worker accepts this stuff anymore, it attracts
only 15 year olds. Even if I start to discuss problems of everyday life,
such as holidays or pop music, then the Marxists are freaked out, they don't
want to discuss it, and they have little to say about it, they don't have an
analysis of that, or a point of view on it. In the Dutch Socialist Party,
people don't believe that sort of thing anymore. In the LCR, the
Rifondazione, the Cuban CP and so on they don't believe that either. All of
these parties are anti-Stalinist incidentally.

You wrote:

"Socialist revolution always has come out of war, but most often out of a
war started by the ruling class",

but what is interesting is that you don't mention anything about workers
uprisings against the communist bureaucracy, such as East Germany 1953,
Hungary 1956, or Czechoslovakia 1968. Nor do you mention Portugal 1974 or
Chile 1971-1973. Your book makes many important points, but on many topics
it is a bit sketchy unfortunately, and I noticed in the past sometimes you
adopt bourgeois viewpoints such as a Ricardian theory of "comparative
advantage" which is supposed to explain world trade. In the real world,
world trade does not conform to the Ricardian theory at all. You reject the
existence of imperialism and when the US forces or Israeli forces annex
other people's property or bomb them it's just not imperialism according to
you. If the USA, Canada, Australia and Japan buy up New Zealand, it is just
not imperialism to you. I disagree with that, and I think your view is not
very realistic.

"Well that is obviously the case but it could hide a multitude of different
political positions"

Yes, but I am questioning whether this is necessarily a bad thing ? My
experience of many self-styled Marxists is that their political skills are
abysmally bad, not necessarily at the individual level, but at the
organisational level, because they do not understand the basis for political
unity socialists should have, or what organisation is for. They are just too
doctrinaire. The Greens understand this much better, and this is why they
are politically often more influential, because they are able to relativise
the role of ideas in politics better and pay attention to culture. Marxists
are always talking about "recruiting people to the Marxist programme" but
very few people are interested in that, they would rather go to church, a
mosque, or a temple for their edification and spiritual health. What we need
to explain better is what socialism is, and that requires good research.
Many people do want socialism, but they do need to know clearly what it is
about.

You said:

I agree that the work has to be done by marxists in these countries.
I have contacts with a Czech group who have published my and allins
stuff in czech. We tried to get it published in russian and hungarian
in 1989 but the circumstances were then not ripe.

That's great, because your book is important and useful. I wish there were
more books like that. I aim to write one before I am dead, but that book is
different from most of the literature I know about, because it would be
based more on Marx's idea (which I think is a bit different from what most
Marxists say it is, because I think they don't understand basic economic
questions, lacking a quantitative understanding of the problems) and on the
real historical experience with economic management, democratic procedures
and trade in the last century or so. My own book is more about assembling
the solutions which already exist, but which the blind Marxists refuse to
see, because they are too busy bible-bashing and postmodernising.

regards

Jurriaan




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