A Future That Works

A Future That Works
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Monday 16 May 2011

Challenge that British Marxists parties face

If the British Left are to have any credible chance of success they have to work with the European and Scandinavian Left or following a narrow sectarian nationalist approach which will fail. Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky understood this fact a hundred years ago, it’s just as true today as it was then, this is the challenge that all British Marxists parties face.

8 comments:

  1. ‘‘Since the end of the 19th century capital has become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, through a process of merger, take-overs, financial crises. This has led to a situation where a small number of capitalists companies control whole sectors of the global economy’’. (Little p20, 2011)

    Lenin argued that we must ‘‘take advantage of bourgeois democracy which, compared with feudalism, represents great historic advance, but not for one minute must [We] forget the bourgeois character of this ‘democracy’, its history conditional and limited character. [We must] never forget that the state even in the most democratic republic, and, and not only in a monarchy, is simply a machine for the suppression of one class by another’’. (Lenin sited in Little p23, 2011)

    Communist Review issue 59

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  2. If we accept the argument that the state is an instrument of class power then the logic of dialectic-materialism would indicate that we need to use the European and British parliament and therefore the British Marxist-Leninist parties have to engage with the European super-state of which the British state is a member state as a part of Britain’s Road to Socialism. Therefore as a Marxist and Leninist my argument is that historical and dialectical materialism leads to the conclusion that the British ‘Left’ parties must be allied to the European Left parties if they are scientific socialist parties otherwise they are what Lenin called infantile or utopian socialist.

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  3. Only an internationalist solution can work whether it’s a solution that favours the capitalist or working classes remains up to those who lead the forces of capital and labour and their ability to put theory into practice. The last thirty years have seen the theories and practices of the capitalist elite winning, can the Marxist-Leninist theoretician’s ideas be used as effectively by the leaders of the working classes equal that of those who implemented the theories of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism from the late 1970’s to the present day?

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  4. If we look at the EU one of the things that’s what’s wrong is the ‘one model fits all’ which doesn’t take account of social and economic differences between nation states such as Greece and Germany and that within its economic and political structures Germany as a more developed nation exploits the less developed nation states to the east and south for its labour, resources and markets. What I believe was the Leninist argument is that like Marx he saw the developed nations of western and northern Europe and Scandinavia pulling the less developed nation states to the east and south up to their level within a socialist European federation. This is why Lenin argued that nationalist and chauvinistic patriotism isn’t the correct Marxist strategy unlike the developing nations which in included Eastern and Southern Europe. (Lenin’s Collected Works Vol. 23 p38 cited in N Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought Vol. 2 p65, 66)

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  5. What Lenin was arguing was that where capitalism hasn’t consolidated itself internally by destroying feudalism, national liberation movement are an appropriate political and economic part of the strategy towards socialism, defending native cultures and freedom from exploitation by the developed nation states of capitalist imperialism. What Lenin was arguing is was that in the developed nation states national unity should be replaced by class unity. (Lenin’s Collected Works Vol. 23 p59 cited in N Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought Vol. 2 p67) The reactionary ethos of capitalism becomes (has become) manifest in both the developing and developed nation states in the highest stage of capitalism as 'foreign and home policy as imperialism strives towards violations of democracy and towards reaction'. (Lenin’s Collected Works Vol. 23 p43 cited in N Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought Vol. 2 p67)

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  6. Militarization and violence increasingly becomes the way capitalism solves domestic and international social and economic problems as jingoism becomes part of the ideology that underpins state and class power in the interest of international finance capital as individual and collective rights are eroded. This is according to Harding at the core of Lenin’s theory of imperialism and monopoly capitalism and his conclusion that the class struggle in the developed world must take an internationalist rather than nationalist form rather than allying itself with the parasitic oppressive and regressive nation state which has maintaining the wealth and privileges of the capitalist political and economic elite as it objective. From a Marxist and Leninist standpoint there isn’t any rational for nationalism and chauvinistic patriotism in a developed imperialist state like Britain.

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  7. The historical and geographic material-dialectics of the hegemony of globalization and international finance capital have been driven over the last thirty years by neo-liberal economic theory and the neo-conservative state and global governance by the IMF, WTO and World Bank. The task of Marxists/Leninists is to analyse the historical and geographic dialectics of the bourgeois state/supra-state and institution of global governance and unite the working classes of the advanced nation states as a new historic bloc. The political and economic elite of capitalism see the state as providing the legal framework and police/army to enforce marketization and privatization on the peoples of Britain, Europe and Scandinavia through national, regional and global governance.

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  8. Marxists and Leninist who argue for a nationalistic, chauvinist patriotism have failed to understand Marxism, Leninism and the material-dialectics of international finance capital. And are therefore acting as reactionary trade-union bureaucrats holding back the labour movement and working classes of Britain by allying themselves with the most reactionary political groups in Britain they are preventing and chance of advancing towards socialism. This is why I argue from a Marxist and Leninist position that the AGS, CPB, SP and SWP should/must form a left front like the Front de Gauche in France and be a part of the EL and GUE/NGL led by Pierre Laurent national secretary of the Parti Communiste Français and Gabi Zimmer Die Linke MEP as part of a strategy to stop and reverse the neo-liberal economic and neo-conservative political agenda of the EU, ECB and IMF and the three main political parties of Britain.

    http://leftalternatives.myfineforum.org/sutra18869.php#18869

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