Revolutionary socialism: its roots and its future, AWL Day School, 12 March
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Quote:Workers' Liberty day school
"Revolutionary socialism: its roots and its future"
Saturday 12 March
https://www.facebook.com/
events/758902957475284/ 12 noon to 5pm Reading and prior content:
Who was Trotsky?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=_Eyjyceo3vU
Who was James P Cannon?https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=sCm_NbMSfIY
Who were Max Shachtman and Hal Draper?https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=28aPyBrP0Yc
The event will be hosted in a private venue. Meet at New Cross Gate
overground station at 11.45 to be taken to the venue, or call 07784 641
808 or 07950 978 083 to get directions.and my excerpt from the Manifesto Chapter 4
Quote:The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.I think this cloak and dagger stuff will have to do with the fact that the AWL is try to re-enter the Labour Party and the Labour Party is trying to stop this:http://www.workersliberty.org/node/26346But Trotskyist entryist groups are nothing if not persistent. Having said that, I'm sure there'll be some Labour Party local officials who won't mind for the time being extra help in distributing their leaflets for the coming elections. According to the link, one of the AWLers expelled was told about this when she was out canvassing for Sadiq Khan as Mayor of London.
I think its a bit pathetic for a day school, normally this sort of secret venue is for antifa type meetings. Surprised the AWL don't ask you to 'wear a red rose'.Imagine SPGB conference being billed as "meet at Clapham North to be taken to venue."The syllabus is Trotsky-Cannon-Shactmann-Draper, no great men there then.
Actually, as Trotskyoids go, Shactmann and Draper weren't too bad. Both rejected the nonsense, endorsed by Trotsky himself, that Russia was some kind of "Workers State". Shactmann argued that it was a new exploitative class society (which he called "bureaucratic collectivism"). Draper recognised that it was a form of state capitalism.In 1962 Draper wrote an article on "Marx and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" which we recommended in one of our pamphlets. The article can be found here:https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1962/xx/dictprolet.htmland our reference to it is in this chapter of our 1978 (and 1969) edition pamphlet Questions of the Day::http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/questions-day#Marx_dictate
Since we are not adherents of the Great Men in history theory, we shouldn’t be too condemnatory that they wish to discuss some lesser mortals.I often use James Cannon when replying to Trotskyists and their mistaken ideas on socilaism:Q: Is it true that there is communism in the Soviet Union?A: No there isn’t any communism in the Soviet Union.Q: Is there socialism in the Soviet Union?A: No —well I would like to clarify that now. Socialism and communism are more or less interchangeable terms in the Marxist movement. Some make a distinction between them in this respect; for example, Lenin used the expression socialism as the first stage of communism, but I haven’t found any other authority for that use. I think that is Lenin’s own particular idea. I, for example, consider the terms socialism and communism interchangeable, and they relate to the classless society based on planned production for use as distinct from a system of capitalism based on private property and production for profit.”https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/socialism/ch02.htmLike our own comrade DannyL who makes use of the analogy of the family and by extension the human family to describe socialism, Cannon also does similar.Although gradualist and transitional Cannon explains:“ Emerging from capitalism, the transitional society, will carry over some capitalist methods of accounting, incentives, and rewards. People first will work for wages. They will be paid in money, backed by the gold in Fort Knox, for the amount of work performed. But after a certain period, where there is abundance and even superabundance, the absurdity of strict wage regulation will become apparent. Then the gold will be taken out of Fort Knox and put to some more useful purpose, if such can be found.When people will have no further use for money, they will wonder what to do with all this gold, which has cost so much human labour and agony. Lenin had a theory that under socialism gold could be used, maybe, to make doorknobs for public lavatories, and things like that. But no Marxist authority would admit that in the socialist future men will dig in the earth for such a useless metal.The accounting arrangements automatically registered by money wages based on gold will at a certain stage be replaced by labour certificates or coupons, like tickets to the theatre. But even that, eventually, will pass away. Even that kind of accounting, which would take up useless labour and be absolutely purposeless, will be eliminated. There will be no money, and there will not even be any bookkeeping transactions or coupons to regulate how much one works and how much he gets.Does that sound “visionary”? Here again, one must make an effort to lift himself out of the framework of the present society, and not consider this conception absurd or “impractical”. The contrary would be absurd. For in the socialist society, when there is plenty and abundance for all, what will be the point in keeping account of each one’s share, any more than in the distribution of food at a well-supplied family table? You don’t keep books as to who eats how many pancakes for breakfast or how many pieces of bread for dinner. Nobody grabs when the table is laden. If you have a guest, you don’t seize the first piece of meat for yourself, you pass the plate and ask him to help himself first.When you visualise society as a “groaning board” on which there is plenty for all, what purpose would be served in keeping accounts of what each one gets to eat and to wear? There would be no need for compulsion or forcible allotment of material means. “Wages” will become a term of obsolete significance, which only students of ancient history will know about. “Speaking frankly”—said Trotsky—“I think it would be pretty dullwitted to consider such a really modest perspective 'utopian’.” ”https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1953/socialistamer.htmUseful quotes to have in your armoury
Similar quotable quotes can be found in Ernst Mandel though not in Trotsky himself (I'm convinced that he couldn't see any difference between state capitalism and socialism).
Cannon wrote:Emerging from capitalism, the transitional society, will carry over some capitalist methods of accounting, incentives, and rewards. People first will work for wages. They will be paid in money, backed by the gold in Fort Knox, for the amount of work performed.This shows Cannon's dogmatism as it reflects Trotsky's call in his The Revolution Betrayed (1936) for a gold-based rouble to be introduced in Stalin's Russia. What is odd is that Cannon should have written this in 1953 at a time when even capitalist states had abandoned backing their currencies by gold (though the gold exchange standard for international trade still continued for another 18 years).I don't suppose there are many Trotskyists today who envisage a gold-backed currency in the early stages of their so-called "transitional society" (i.e a state capitalism ruled by their vanguard party) but you never know. There might be a Trotskyist sect somewhere that still clings to this.
Quote:Lenin had a theory that under socialism gold could be used, maybe, to make doorknobs for public lavatories, and things like that.Nor do i think there are many modern-day Leninists who would support building toilets with the gold, eitherhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/nov/05.htm
Quote:When we are victorious on a world scale I think we shall use gold for the purpose of building public lavatories in the streets of some of the largest cities of the world. This would be the most “just” and most educational way of utilising gold for the benefit of these generations which have not forgotten how, for the sake of gold, ten million men were killed and thirty million maimed in the “great war for freedom”, the war of 1914-18, the war that was waged to decide the great question of which peace was the worst, that of Brest or that of Versailles; and how, for the sake of this same gold, they certainly intend to kill twenty million men and to maim sixty million in a war, say, in 1925, or 1928, between, say, Japan and the U.S.A., or between Britain and the U.S.A., or something like that.But however “just”, useful, or humane it would be to utilise gold for this purpose, we nevertheless say that we must work for another decade or two with the same intensity and with the same success as in the 1917-21 period, only in a much wider field, in order to reach this state. Meanwhile, we must save the gold in the R.S.F.S.R., sell it at the highest price, buy goods with it at the lowest price. When you live among wolves, you must howl like a wolf, while as for exterminating all the wolves, as should be done in a rational human society, we shall act up to the wise Russian proverb: “Boast not before but after the battle”.But i bet it is a better way of commemorating the sacrifice of workers than dreary old war memorials and annual poppy wreaths…
ALB wrote:I don't suppose there are many Trotskyists today who envisage a gold-backed currency in the early stages of their so-called "transitional society" (i.e a state capitalism ruled by their vanguard party) but you never know. There might be a Trotskyist sect somewhere that still clings to this.I suppose this goes to that strain of 'Marxism' that about revealing the 'true' value of goods, as exposed in the form of Labor Vouchers normally.
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