tonymcmahon@rostraconsulting.org

For most of the 20th century, large swathes of the world claimed to be socialist societies, founded on the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The Soviet Union, ‘eastern bloc’ countries of Europe, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and many other countries were officially transitioning from capitalism to communism.

Their economies had been largely nationalised with private monopolies replaced by a state-directed command economy. Marxism-Leninism was the state ideology. The working class was now in control of society (officially). Capitalists had been expropriated. Religion replaced with science. And it was only a matter of time before a socialist world was possible.

A very different political situation

The political Left throughout the world defined itself in relation to these countries. Some Marxists, often referred to disparagingly as ‘Stalinists’, lionised the Soviet Union. But other Marxists, usually called Trotskyists by their opponents, were highly critical of the bureaucracies that were clearly in control. In fact, they wanted a political revolution to remove the ‘apparatchiks’.

However, the Trotskyists couldn’t agree on what exactly had gone wrong with the 1917 Russian revolution and why a totalitarian bureaucracy had emerged in the Soviet Union and all its client states. Had the Soviet Union become “state capitalist”? Or was it a “degenerated workers’ state”?

When workers in so-called communists states rose up in revolt – Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1981 – were these genuine proletarian uprisings or reactionaries in the pay of the capitalist west?

Beyond the Marxist influenced left, there were non-revolutionary socialist and social democrat parties that argued for wealth redistribution and social justice within a capitalist framework. If capitalists played fair, there wouldn’t have to be a revolution. German social democrats called this “evolutionary” socialism and one of them even declared that he hated revolution “more than sin”.

My time as a Marxist in the 1980s

Once upon a time, I was immersed in the world of Marxism-Leninism…

Forty-five years ago, I joined the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS). The youth wing of the British Labour Party. A Marxist group, the Militant, was in control of the LPYS and I became a supporter. It was a period of economic crisis and political polarisation in Britain that seemed to demand radical answers. Some people became Thatcherites – I moved in the opposite direction.

The Labour Party was so horrified to have its youth wing taken over by a Marxist group that it hived off the students into a separate body, the National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS). This became a lively but vicious battleground between Marxists and reformists. I was at one conference where the police entered the hall and carried out delegates, and observers, by their hands and feet. Oh, those were the days!

Many of those NOLS operatives, battling the forces of Marxism-Leninism, went on to lead the Labour Party. Having spent more time fighting what they didn’t like – so-called “Trots” – it’s arguable that they didn’t spend enough time figuring out what they actually stood for, aside from vague generalities about social justice and equality.

By the end of the 1980s, to use the parlance of the time, I was “burned out”. Communism, in its Stalinist and Soviet form, collapsed – somehow taking Trotskyism down with it. Organised labour was gutted. Big politics was dead. But as we know, history plays strange tricks. And here we are in the third decade of the 21st century with ideology very much back in vogue. Though there are big differences with the 20th century.

Making sense of the past

For a century, socialists have been arguing whether the bureaucratic horror of Stalinism was the inevitable outcome of Marxism-Leninism or a distortion caused by the revolution not spreading globally.

Supporters of the Soviet Union praise the achievements of central planning yet it was abundantly clear by the 1970s that the Soviets were lagging behind western capitalism. Did this mean socialism had failed? And has this been studied enough?

Then there’s the analysis of Karl Marx himself. Much of what he wrote in the 19th century was based on the work of capitalist economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo. But is it badly out of date? For example, was Marx’s labour theory of value long ago supplanted by marginal utility theory? And does anybody care?

Finally, what are we to make of Marxists today who align themselves with theocratic regimes like Iran where workers’ rights, human rights, and women’s rights are severely compromised, to put it mildly? It’s also clear that some have failed to understand the nature of post-Soviet Russia under Vladimir Putin, turning a blind eye to his imperialist adventures.

Explaining Marxism as it was and what it has become is the humble task of this blog. Let’s see how I do! Your contributions very welcome.

tonymcmahon@rostraconsulting.org

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