Iain McKay debates Trotskyists

Iain while no means pro-SPGB does have a real understanding of the SPGB position and is a useful ally in criticising the Left by exposing it as being non-marxist, whereas, the SPGB truly reprsents the view of Marx on politics and revolution and elections. In other areas such as calculation in kind there is also an overlap with Iain. But we did incur his ire when we were critical of his book on Proudhon. He is another anarchist where it might be fruitful to invite for a comradely presentation and exchange of different views rather than be openly hostile towards.

Yes, he does understand that Marx was not anti-elections and say that Marx’s political position is closer to ours than to the Leninists’, and he does delight (and delight us) in using Marx and us against them. Pity he’s got a bee-in-his-bonnet or a mental block or whatever it is about Proudhon who was a “free market anarchist” and virulent critic of communism.His claim that Marx pinched the concept of surplus value from Proudhon is absurd. Marx himself pointed out that Proudhon himself had been preceded in this by various English writers who employed Ricardo’s labour theory of value to show that workers were exploited (easy enough to do if you start from the premise that only labour is the source of value as where else could profits come from?).