Clifff Slaughter is a Marxist from the Trotsky school. He was a long time member of
the Revolutionary Workers Party and I recall his input into Marxist discussions
within the party which I tried to follow from my prison cell in an era when I
regarded myself a Marxist. Now in his 80s it would seem challenging for an old
dog to be taught new tricks. The interesting thing here is that rather than
being taught new tricks Slaughter has opted to learn them.
This review of a Marxist work initially featured on the People and Nature blog on 22 October 2013
- We must revise what needs to be revised – Cliff Slaughter.
In
his aptly named book The Bonfire of Certainties, Slaughter
puts it starkly: humanity faces a crisis which he stresses the necessity of
averting and repeats the time honoured Rosa Luxemburg pearl of the future being
either socialism or barbarism., both mutually exclusive.
Marxists,
unfortunately, have been making this call for as long as anyone can remember
only for Pollyanna to trump Jeremiah. On one occasion with biblical style
imprecision, the date of the collapse of capitalism was predicted. Consequently
there is a tendency not to hear them whey continue to sound alarms, even in the
conditions of today when there is compelling evidence to indicate that the rich
and the powerful have opted for a date with destruction and are
prepared, in the words of István
Mészáros, to subject all potential dissent to extreme authoritarian
constraints’ in their drive to get there.
The
influence of Mészáros, a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, is
noticeable throughout this book, perhaps more than intellectual autonomy would
licence. It helps foster a view that Slaughter is driven by his concern for the
future to search for an intellectual Messiah to deliver the world from the sin
of capitalism. There is essentially nothing wrong with the perspective of Mészáros,
more a hint of overdependence on the part of Slaughter.
The reader is told that social democratic reformism
has collapsed and we are faced with the ‘withering away of the Welfare state.’
Unemployment is a globally structural phenomenon rather than a conjunctural one:
meaning it is not a temporary but self-correcting blip, given a bit of time,
austerity and a few adjustments here and there.
Echoing the seeming nostalgia of Eric Hobsbawm, a very non-Trotskyite
Marxist, Slaughter bemoans the absence of a global state to apply the brake.
The role of agency features as a central problematic
for the author. The working class as an agent of change has been such a central
part of Marxism that it becomes unthinkable to drop it while at the same time
maintaining authentic Marxist credentials. Slaughter tackles the problem by assuming
when he should be demonstrating.
Another
given is that Marxism still provides the answers, that Marxists will be central
to any struggle, and that Marxism is not as Foucault once suggested in The
Order of Things a time specific phenomenon that ‘exists in nineteenth
century thought like a fish in water: that is, it is unable to breathe anywhere
else.’ Despite the sheer awesomeness of Marx’s thoughts he has been poorly served
by his followers, something he realised with his comment ‘I am not a Marxist.’
The sects have raised doubts in many minds about the potential of Marxists to
be central players in any radical societal transformation.
I
have read a bit of Marxist literature lately, well, more than I am normally
inclined to read. I find the use of some language a turn off, a means to
conceal rather than convey. Recently I completed For Marx by Louis
Althusser, written 50 years ago. The language seemed archaic and at times
Slaughter repeats the problem. Danny Morrison once coined the term Marxist Esperanto
to describe some of the writing that was appearing in a Sinn Fein internal
discussion periodical, Iris Bheag,
mostly through contributions from the prisoners. I thought then he had a point and I think he
still has. So when Slaughter refers to a crisis of overdevelopment in the
capitalist countries and then goes on to characterise that as a ‘unity of
opposites’ accompanied by much Marxist prolix it induces the same weary shrug
that often greeted ill informed attempts to regurgitate the works of the communist ideologue, Maurice
Cornforth, in prison.
Slaughter in seeking a revolutionary way forward,
overlooking the phenomenon of revolution all too often appearing as nihilism, attacks
the notion of democratic control, arguing that the state must be swept away. He does not address how this opens up the
space for the type of party he is at pains to avoid: the vanguard party which
as sure as night follows day will move to strengthen the repressive apparatuses
of the state and deliver society and socialism into yet another gulag of
barbarism.
Time
and again throughout this book the author strikes out at the notion of some
vanguard party ever leading the people and bringing to them consciousness from
without, which usually means from above. He sets out his stall clearly in the first
page with his observation that ‘some of us Marxists did not hold sufficiently
fast to the need always to put the truth first.’ He is critical of the notion
that the Leninist concept of a vanguard party can be reproduced in all
conditions, hitting out at suggestions that some self appointed leadership can
ever come equipped with all the answers.
He demands a thorough settlement with past conceptions of ‘revolutionary
leadership’ and rejects the consequentialist perspective of the ends justifying
the means, while approvingly quoting a French Trotskyite who in the 1980s spoke
of ‘the end of the age of the commissar.’
This
can be no easy nettle for the author to grasp hailing as he does from the
Trotskyite tradition. Trotskyite groups are world renowned for their factionalism and
incessant sectarian squabbling. This is
enervating for any radical movement. How many activists have given up in
despair after attending Left unity meetings only to see the participants
gleefully tear lumps out of each other and determinedly failing to make any
point other than the necessity of stripping the flesh from each other’s back? The Cedar
Lounge Revolution website, a seemingly conscientious Left endeavour, explained
one answer it got when delving into the schisms of the Irish Left: 'the Left
hate each other more than they hate Capitalism!' Many observers of the scene would
find that hard to dispute. Slaughter expects to be attacked by some of his
comrades on the left for such heresy but dismisses it with a shrug of his
experienced shoulders.
For
all his protestations to the contrary Slaughter’s attempt to set out a
blueprint for the future waxes utopian and reinforces what he said on his opening page
that the book will seem ‘over-ambitious.’
The
defence of communism – that it has never been defeated, it just merely has
never existed – will hardly fly. Given
the public consciousness it might as well be proffered that Nazism would have
been okay had it been implemented properly. People simply don’t draw that type
of distinction, seeing it as academic in its failure to address the massive
crimes against humanity inflicted by vanguard parties hoisting the banner of
communism.
It
seems that by applying the free time concept of Marx from Grundisse the freeing up
of time caused by increasing technological advances leaves a potential strategic
space for revolutionaries which they might just realise through involvement in an
ill defined symbiosis of the 2009 Guadaloupe manifesto and an International
Plan for Development. But this seems proffered more in hope than expectation. It
is not only the devotee of the sect who will find problems here. While
Slaughter acknowledges that the Plan cannot be squandered by allowing a
vanguard to seize control of it, preferring the internet to be at its core, that in itself is insufficient to enhance its prospects for success.
Relying on something like the Copenhagen Accord to guarantee funding seems an
even more dubious proposition.
In
spite of finding fewer plausible answers in the book than I had hoped for, it
was nevertheless refreshing to read a veteran activist trying throw out the
bathwater but keep the baby, to innovate in a way that avoids abandonment, to
avoid being trapped in dungeon of sterility while ensuring the breakout does
not lead to the poacher becoming gamekeeper.
Cliff Slaughter has shown through is unremitting hostility to
authoritarian vanguard parties and self perpetuating leaderships that it is
never too late to learn or try a new approach. At this juncture, describing
what is wrong rather than prescribing what is right, a crucial part of Oskar Negt’s ‘oppositional public space’, is perhaps
the true zenith of Marxist expectations.
Cliff Slaughter, 2013. Bonfire of the Certainties. Published
by lulu.com. ISBN 9781291213218
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