Chris Harman, 1942-2009

Chris Harman, 1942-2009

A personal tribute by Alastair

(links at end of article)

It is with great sadness that I hear of the death of Chris Harman.

He died on the 6th November in Cairo. He was one of the most prominet Marxists in this country. He joined the International Socialists, the forerunner of today’s SWP, in the early 1960s and was to remain a leading member until his death. In his time he was editor of International Socialism Journal and Socialist Worker newspaper.

I am sure that over the next few days there will be many tributes to him in the blogosphere for in his forty plus years of militancy he made himself one of the most widely respected figures on the left. This is my tribute.

I cannot claim to have known him though I met him numerous times. Certainly he did not know me.

But looking back I have realised that his work has had more influence on my political development than I had ever really had cause to consider. and I am just one of many. This unsurprising given his stature an activist and thinker.

He was always one of my favourite writers and speakers. He was not it must be said a great orator. He lacked the rhetorical flourishes that so many embellish their speaking with. This was his strength though. He more than made up for these weaknesses with his enthusiasm and forensic argumentation. He always cut through straight to the heart of the matter and then applied his sharp analytical skills to it. There was nothing superfluous in what he said.

The first article I read in the first ISJ I bought, No. 37, was his Glasnost Before the Storm by him and Andy Zebrowski. His writings on the Soviet Union in the years of perestroika and the fall of the eastern bloc were among some of the best written. I think his analysis turned out to be a more realistic than most of the analysis produced by the left at the time which veered from dewy eyed optimism at the prospects of Gorbachev’s rule to paralysing depression at the collapse.

What I read probably contributed to my decision to study Russian at university and helped inoculate me against both the bourgeois triumphalasim and left wing retreat in that subject area.

His writings on the Eastern Bloc always had at their heart not just a analysis of the nature and structure of the soviet system but an unremitting focus on the fact that these were repressive societies that inevitably generated working class opposition to them. His Bureaucracy and Revolution in Eastern Europe, first published in 1974 and later reissued as Class Struggle in Eastern Europe, is almost without peer on this subject.

His analytical powers on this area can be seen for instance in his 1977 articles on Poland which fairly accurately predicted the crisis that erupted in 1980-81 and which nearly unseated the regime.

Though monstrously oppressed by one-party police states when the workers moved they moved far and fast. In Europe in the post-war period only twice did genuine movements of workers councils as an alternative system state power appear, in Hungary in 1956 and Poland in 1981. The story he told of the incredible struggles fought by the workers of Eastern Europe and their incredible revolutionary potential have no better telling than in this work.

The Eastern bloc is starting to pass into historical memory as a generation is now reaching adulthood that were born after the fall. But the story of so-called “socialism” in the Eastern bloc is central to understanding the twentieth century and its fate key to understanding where the working class and left is today.

Another seminal work on revolutionary history was his magisterial history Germany: The Lost Revolution. It is another work that is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the history of socialism in the twentieth century.

But he didn’t just write such blockbusters. His pamphlet How Marxism Works is still to my mind the best short introduction to Marxist politics. It is another must-read for any young socialist.

These were among his works I read as a youngster. And while I was as university I also had the opportunity to read the entire back catalogue of old the series of International Socialism and the new series of the ISJ and the Socialist Review. He was a stalwart contributor to all these journals. It almost goes without saying that under his editorship Socialist Worker was probably the best paper on the left.

His last book was Zombie Capitalism, an analysis of the economic crisis.

He made a massive contribution to Marxist politics in this country. His literary output was prodigious. And all of it dedicated to the single task of developing Marxist thought and building a revolutionary organisation.

His loss is a great loss to the left in this country and internationally.

My condolences go out his partner, Talat, his family, friend and comrades.

Links

For a selection of his articles try the Chris Harman section of the Marxist Internet Archive. These include his 1967 article How the Revolution Was Lost (later published as a much read pamphlet) and Party and Class (1968).

Also here are his two articles from 1977 on the Polish regimes crisis (part 1, part 2) and the two artices by him on Gramsci which were later published as the pamphlet Gramci Versus Reformism (part 1, part 2)

There are also numerous other articles by him in the old series of International Socialism, of which he was editor of for a time: 1958-68, 1969-74, 1975-78.

Many of his writings for the second series of the ISJ are also on-line and can be found in the ISJ index. (There are still a number of articles by him such as The Myth of Market Socialism which are excellent and I hope go on line in the future) The index is a bit complicated so here are some links to some of the more notable articles:

Base and superstructure (1986) (.doc)

The state and capitalism today, ISJ 51 (1991)

The Return of the National Question ISJ 56 (1992)

The prophet and the proletariat, ISJ 64 (1994)

Anti-capitalism: theory and practice ISJ 88 (2000)

Engels and the origins of human society, ISJ 65 (1994)

From Bernstein to Blair: one hundred years of revisionism ISJ 67 (1995)

The Crisis of Bourgeois Economics ISJ 71 (1996)

Globalisation: A Critique of a new Orthodoxy, ISJ 73 (1996)

Anti-capitalism: theory and practice

Beyond the boom, ISJ 90 (2001)

Argentina: rebellion at the sharp end of the world crisis, ISJ 94 (2002)

The workers of the world, ISJ 96 (2002)

Analysing Imperialism, ISJ 99 (2003)

And from the third series:

The rise of capitalism, ISJ 102

China’s economy and Europe’s crisis (2006)

From the credit crunch to the spectre of global crisis (2008)

The slump of the 1930s and the crisis today (2009)

To buy some of his major books such as Lost Revolution-Germany 1918-23, How Marxism Works, he Fire Last Time: 1968 And After, Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis And The Relevance Of Marx, go to the Bookmarks site and search “Chris Harman”

Class Struggles in Eastern Europe seems to be out of print you’ll have to try it here or here

New coalition of the left is go

Click picture to download leaflet

Here is the official launch leaflet for the new coalition to fight the general election.

There will probably be more news on the coalition at tomorrow’s conference on working class representation organsied by the RMT at the Camden Centre.

To download the leaflet as a PDF, click here.

A left challenge in the General Election

It is hardly a secret that for the last few months talks have been going on regarding a united left wing challenge in the forthcoming general election. Involved have been the backers of the No2EU slate put up to fight the Euro elections, namely Bob Crow and the RMT, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party of Britain.

On the other hand not much has been said about the talks publicly… until now.

An statement by the Socialist Party’s Executive Committee has now posted on their website on precisly this subject.

Clearly the project is not yet the finished article, but it is to be welcomed.

Many have lamented the failure of the left to create an elctorally viable force during the last decade.

And the lack of a left alternative is now more obvious than ever. As the Labour Party’s base amongst ordinary working class people disintegrates the gainers have been a revivied Tory Party and even more worryingly the BNP.

This move to the right cannot be stopped by Labour, it is what started it. Labour politicians seem to be ever more determined to out Tory the Tories on everything from immigration to drugs.

In the economic sphere their rediscovery of “Social Democracy” is an illusion conjured up by those desperate that a Tory governement is just around the corner. It doesn’t stand up to any serious analysis.

The Labour Party is no longer a form of progressive anything in government. It has become merely “the human face of neo-liberalism”. As a party based in the working class, it is a dying force.

Here at the Junius Blog we maintain that what is needed is a new party of the working class based on the politics of socialism. This is the only way that not only can the increasingly reactionary path being taken by all the main parties can be opposed. It is also the key way that all those who still believe in class politcs can be brought together to support the coming struggles in defence of public services and workers’ living standards.

Electoral politics won’t be the way to stop the coming assault by the ruling class, only struggle can do that, but millions of people do still believe in the “democratic process”. Either we can stand in the election and use it as way to bring together all those who want a fairer society, or we can abandon them to the “lesser evil” of voting Labour.

There have been many false starts in the left’s attempts at esatblishing a credible electoral force over the last few years. This was entirely predictable given the the way that thirty years of neo-liberalsim have rolled the left back. It was also going to be a rocky ride breaking people away from the party that has had an almost totoal monoply on working class representaion for nearly a hundred years.

But that is no reason to give up. The new proposed alliance might not live up to expectations, or it mght be a great success. Which it is depends on whether we throw ourselves into building it or just sit and wait for something more to our particular liking magically appears.

To read the statement on the Socialist Party’s website, click here

RBS: Low-paid Workers Pay The Price For “Fat Cat” Banking Crisis

A statement by Jerry Hicks on the threat to jobs at RBS. Jerry Hicks is a member of Amicus and was a candidate in that union’s General Secretary election

RBS: Low-paid Workers Pay The Price For “Fat Cat” Banking Crisis

Royal Bank of Scotland releases its quarterly results to the city after two shocking days for the workers where earlier this week RBS announced that 3,700 jobs are to be cut from UK branches.

Whilst large areas of the business are to be separated and sold off, including insurance, card payments, and over 320 branches, with no guarantees for the jobs of the tens of thousands of employees involved.

This is in addition to the 9,000 global job losses announced in April across RBS’s manufacturing division – the “back-office” operation of call centres, data processing and IT.

4,500 of these losses will be in the UK, and 600 have already gone in the UK IT department (roughly 20% of staff).

Piling on the pain, RBS’ decided in August to freeze the value of its “final salary” pension scheme at current levels of pay. With negligible recognition of any future pay rises.

This has been what the Government’s £45.5 billion bail-out has meant for call-centre agents, processing clerks and operational staff. Despite the bank’s image, the vast majority of the workers impacted by these attacks are low-paid and vulnerable.

Where has the money gone? Most of the money has been used to stop RBS going bankrupt, by improving liquidity and providing reserves of capital to offset against bad debt.

Yet the Government has stubbornly refused to intervene in the running of the bank, to leverage their 84% stake to make the bank serve society’s interests through and beyond the recession.

Even now, Alistair Darling will not guarantee that the Government’s modest targets for lending to families and small businesses will be met.

It is less well known that RBS plans to spend £10 billion over the next 5 years in a huge and highly risky investment programme to reduce operational costs through further job losses. RBS is targeting cost reductions of £2.5 billion per year, and it would seem to be our public money that is funding this aggressive attack on vital jobs, at a time of high and growing unemployment.

Jerry Hicks said “It is RBS’s workforce who are paying the price for the banking crisis, not the banking ‘fat cats’ who are already popping champagne bottles across the City again, while their staff will have to fight to protect their jobs, pensions and conditions.”

Unite is calling for a “Yes” vote in a consultative ballot over industrial action to stop the pension freeze, following on from a 98% vote amongst Barclays staff to protect their own pensions.

Jerry Hicks calls on the Government to “stop this jobs massacre by nationalising the bank, making it a public utility to serve the public interest, and one that continues to provide employment across the community. It has never been more obvious that we need a bank driven by social need rather than private greed.”

Ends: Notes to editor: Jerry Hicks legal challenge forced the election for General Secretary in the UK’s biggest union Unite Amicus this year in which he finished runner up. He is thought of as being a possible winner of next years election of the whole of Unite and is being urged by many to stand. For further information visit JerryHicks4gs.com

Jerry Hicks Can be contacted on:

Tel: 078 178 279 12

email jo@benefield.force9.co.uk

To visit Jerry Hick’s website click here

“You couldn’t make it up” (3) Terrorism law used against protest

Just in…

“A hearing is pending in the Royal Courts of Justice, London, on Wed. 21st, October at 10.30am, at which Scottish & Southern Energy is applying for an injunction against Steve Acheson. The Injunction is being sought to prevent Steve from protesting at Fiddlers Ferry power station about his dismissal from the project because of the now notorious construction industry blacklist.

This injunction is under the Prevention of Terrorism Act & seeks to show that Steve, as the 1st respondent, & others unnamed [as second respondents], by their constant picketing of the site represent a threat to the energy supplies of this country.

The basis of the application is that by picketing the site he is committing a Trespass because he & others are on the Firm’s property; that having issued leaflets to workers on the site calling for ’direct action’ he is ’inciting’ the workforce to commit acts contrary to the national interest which may impact on energy supplies & that he has, at times, acted in a way that might have intimidated the workforce.

Their is no mention in the company’s deposition to the Court that he was formerly employed by them, nor that his picket represents a campaign against blacklisting.
If this goes ahead it will have consequencies for the whole trade union movement.
Blacklist Support Group will be protesting at the Royal Courts of Justice in The Strand from 9:30am in support of Steve Acheson.

Steve is a trade unionists NOT a terrorist
Blacklisting is a Human Rights Issue
Defend Trade Union Rights”

The Communist Party and the General Election

There has been some speculation in the blogosphere on the role of the Communist Party of Britain in the successor initiative to NO2EU and standing candidates in the general election.

The article below is a report on last weekend’s meeting of the CPB Executive Commitee.

It appeared in today’s Morning Star. It also appears on the CPB website.

‘Time to resist ruling-class offensive,’ say communists Sunday 18 October 2009 Printable Email “Whichever government is elected at the next general election, the ruling class offensive will continue to unfold,” Communist Party general secretary Robert Griffiths told a special meeting of the party’s executive at the weekend.

“Big business and its politicians are determined to maximise monopoly profit, cut and privatise public services, undermine trade unionism and further restrict democratic rights to make workers and their families pay for getting Britain out of capitalism’s crisis,” he pointed out.

“But a Tory victory would deepen demoralisation within the working class and a Cameron government would go even further than new Labour in its reactionary policies,” Mr Griffiths argued.

“A Labour victory, on the other hand, might produce a government more amenable to mass pressure for policies such as those in the People’s Charter, enabling the labour movement to go on the offensive instead,” he said.

The Communist Party executive called for the formation of local grass-roots campaigns for the charter and its policies for public ownership, wealth redistribution, a greener economy and full employment, urging a big turnout for the People’s Charter conference in London on November 21.

“It is not too late to compel the Labour government to change course, ditch neoliberal policies and challenge big business profiteering in the interests of the mass of ordinary people,” Mr Griffiths insisted.

The special meeting also decided, with only one vote against, to pursue further discussions with a range of left and labour movement organisations to establish a general election coalition to fight leading new Labourites and the fascists, as well as the Tories.

“The struggle against reactionary ideas and policies in the labour movement, including in the Labour Party, needs to be sharpened, not compromised or avoided,” the CPB executive committee declared. Britain’s communists will also stand independent Communist Party candidates and take part in the Unity for Peace and Socialism alliance with domiciled communist and workers’ parties from overseas.

The special executive also urged active solidarity with the postal workers due to take national strike action on Thursday and Friday. It also called for protest letters and actions against the BBC for inviting BNP fascist leader Nick Griffin to appear on Question Time later this week.

Shaming.

Two reports in two days, and each absolutely shaming.

The first is on the Yarl’s Wood detention centre. It has appeared in some of the media and there was a report on it on Channel Four news last night. (links at end of article)

A report has been published in Child Abuse & Neglect: the International Journal by child care specialists who examined 24 children aged between three months and 17 years detained at Yarl’s Wood.

They found that 73% of the children had suffered significant emotional and behavioural problems since being detained. These included weight loss, sleep disturbance, nightmares and bed wetting.

not surprising as they had been effectively imprisoned, many having seen their parents taken away in hand cuffs. Some had been separated from their main carer including a 20 month year old baby.

This report was complied in 2006 and a follow up study urged. nothing has happened since.

The detention of children has continued despite calls by childrens’ charities and MPs for the practice to end. This year 470 children have been detained despite the fact that, as one of the report’s authors states there is “no clear evidence to indicate that detention is necessary in order to prevent families from absconding, more humane alternatives to current practice must be explored”

Yarl’s Wood is run for profit by Serco.

For those outside life maybe freer, but equally tough.

An article in today’s Guardian throws a little light on the life of asylum seeking family in Manchester.

It tells the story of Shakira and Farzana Begum. They somehow have to live on £92 a week benefits. This is 30% less  British claimants get. Shakira cannot wok even if she wanted to, as an asylum seeker she is forbidden to take paid employment.

Living on this kind of money makes life on long pathetic and shaming grind. Every decision about money becomes a desperate choice. The article is an searing indictment of the way people are forced to live in Britain  in 2009 and should be read by anyone with a social conscious.

It is a story that shames this country, as is the story of Yarl’s Wood.

But even more than that it is a story that shames the Labour Party. It is a party that is meant to stand for the poor and the oppressed. And it has been in power for twelve years.

What can be the excuse be? These are not policies inherited from the Tories. These are policies that they have implemented and in the process batted away criticism from charities and their own MPs.

Stories like these make that idea that Labour might still be the “People’s Party” sound like a sick joke.

To watch Simon Israel’s report on Channel 4 News click here.

To read the Guardian article on Shakira and Farzana click here

The German Greens’ “Jamaica Coalition”

Distribution of seats in the Saarland Landtag (parliament)

This blog has commented before on the rightward evolution of the German Greens.

It comes as no surprise therefore that in the German state of Saarland the Greens have now decided to form a so-called (after the parties respective colours) “Jamaica” coalition. It is forming an administration with the conservative Christian Democrats, and the free-market radicals of the liberal Free Democrats.

The politics of the Saarland, Germany’s smallest state, were shaken up in at the end of August the state’s parliament.

Both the tow main parties did badly. The CDU dropped 13 percentage points and the Social democrats dropped six.

The reason it hit the headlines though was the astounding breakthrough made by the Die Linke (“The Left”). It jumped 19 points to gain 21% of the vote. This of course the home state of Oskar Lafontaine, leader of Die Linke and former SPD candidate for Chancellor.

The free-market FDP gained four points. The Greens went up 0.3 of a point, winning just three seats.

But between the CDU on the right, and the SPD and Die Linke on the left, the Greens’ three seats made them the kingmakers.

Up until now the Greens have been seen as being on the “left” and have been in national government with the SPD.

As has been pointed out on this blog the Greens are a party who’s membership and base is thoroughly middle class (as Perry Anderson put it, the Greens have become the party of “bourgeois bohemians”). Its politics might seem left, but fundamentally they represent a break from ideas of class and their philosophy is a radical variant of liberalism.

This has meant that it is contradictory, and has tended to try and face both ways at once. But as with most of the European Green parties it has become ever more integrated into the system and have moved steadily to the right.

Saarland may be a small state but the future possibility of such a “Jamaica” coalition at a national level has been under discussion for a while in Germany. This is a step in that direction, as has been recognised by much of the German media.

Such as step would bet the final death-knell for the idea that the Greens are a party of the left.

The problem facing us in this country is the death of the Labour party as a party of the working class. The question arises of whether the Greens and their politics can make a contribution to the rebuilding of working class politics or whether they lead away from it, to a liberalism of the “left”. The warning from Germany needs to be taken seriously.

Links

Der Spiegel on the “Jamaica” coalition (in English)

Perry Anderson, A New Germany, New Left Review

A. Stevens, Are the Greens an Alternative? The Junius Blog

Survey of articles on the rise of Die Linke

A New Hope in Germany, analysis of the German election results

“Everything must go!” Brown’s closing down sale

Crypto-communist and creator of The Tote: Winston Churchill

To follow up his conference speech in which he put “clear red water” between him and Cameron, Brown has decided to flog off another whole bunch of public assets.

Just to prove how much more in favour of the state he is than the Tories he is selling off the government’s 33% stake in Urenco, which supplies equipment to enrich uranium for the nuclear industry, the Dartford Crossing, the Channel Tunnel rail link, and a whole load of government land and property.

He will also be selling The Tote. This of course was created as a nationalised company in 1928 by the crypto-communist Winston Churchill.

Of course selling them off in the current depressed market means that whoever buys them will be getting them for a knock down price. So not at all like the privatisations of the 1980s!

And what beckons for the unfortuante workers of these firms? The same as has happened in every other privatised industry: “down-sizing”, wage cuts, the undermining of conditions and the strangling of trade union activity. How they must welcome being freed from the shackels of the state.

At least one trade union leader seems to want to do something about this. Bob Crow stated that “A recent poll showed that over 70% of the public oppose rail privatisation and the voters will be rightly angry at any move to knock down to the highest bidder the last major piece of the rail network still in public hands. This smacks of sheer desperation by the Labour government and dredges up memories of the darkest days of the Thatcherite privatisation mania.”

The Great Game continues

An article in today’s Observer gives an interesting overview of relations between the USSR’s most important successor states: Russia and the Ukraine.

with the international financial system almost collapsing, a global recession, a new US president, continuing war on Palestine, and in Iraq and Afghanistan…

It is not surprising that attention has strayed once again from what is happening in the states of the former Soviet Union. For a few weeks last year the world was forced to sit up by the war in Georgia, and then lost interest again. Last week’s report on that war shared the blame around: Georgia started it but Russia over-reacted. It only stated the conclusion that most observers had already come to.

But then trying to understand what is happening there is still, in too many ways like trying to understand the riddle wrapped in an enigma that Churchill described.

The politics of the successor states, and their interrelations, continues t be a place of smoke and mirrors where no-one’s motives are entirely what they seem to be.

Certainly under Putin, and now under the Putin-Medvedev regime, Russia is reasserting itself. It is once again making sure that its writ runs in what is still referred to as the “near abroad”. And now Russia’s gaze is turning again to the Ukraine, the independence of which it acquiesced in as unstoppable, but never really accepted as legitimate.

And Ukraine seems to be ripening for the picking as it slides into ever deepening political and economic crisis.

Few in the Ukraine it seems would want a return to the Soviet Union.  But the ruling class of that country was fully integrated into that of the Soviet Union. A situation that has in some ways not changed since. The country’s different political forces are little more than fronts for groups of biznesmeny who are still entwined with the state.

The political gyrations of Yulia Tymoshenko are just one of t he more prominent examples of this phenomenon. A “self made” billionaire she has shifted from being pro-Russian, to anti-Russian firebrand of the Orange revolution to Russia’s favoured choice for the Ukrainian presidency.

This should come as no surprise. She is a native of the Dnieprpopetrovsk in the heavily industrialized, and mainly Russian speaking, east of the country. It is where she became the “gas princess” and one of the country’s “energy oligarchs”. Her business partners and collaborators read like a who’s who of the Ukrainian elite.

The region was the base of Leonid Kuchma. The former boss of the massive Yuzmash missile factory he was to become the president who’s corrupt and undemocratic regime was the target of public anger in the so-called Orange Revolution.

Dnieprpopetrovsk has been the seedbed not only of the much of today’s Ukrainian elite but of the Soviet Unions’ before that. Leonid Brezhnev was party boss of the region and the cronies he packed the CPSU’s Central Committee with were known as the Dnieprpopetrovsk Mafia.

Volodimir Sherbitsky, the Ukraine party boss was another of this gang. When Kuchma won the presidency, it was only the same old gang reclaiming what they thought was rightfully theirs.

Viktor Yanukovich, the defeated candidate in the election that had been fixed for him to win, is from the Donbass, the equally industrialized region next-door to Dnieprpopetrovsk. Another famous son of the region was Nikita Khrushchev, who was of course ousted by his fellow Ukrainian and protégé Leonid Brezhnev in 1964.

The intricacies of post-Soviet politics seem to fit Churchill’s description. But they are also a source of instability as Russia continues to try and reassert itself in what it believes to be its back yard, and in the face of opposition from local elites, distrusting populations and western powers who often each seem to be pursuing differing and contradictory agendas (for some of the complications of Germany’s relations with Russia you could read a previous post here).

Either way the region continues to be unstable and a violent clash between Russia and Ukraine is now being seriously discussed as a possibility in the future.

The ramifications of which the world will not be able to forget as quickly as last years brief war with Georgia.

This isn’t necessarily what the Observer says but the article is definitely worth a look. To read it click here.