He is to Socialism what Groucho was to Marxism

My wife Caroline put the Communist Manifesto in my Christmas stocking one year. I had never read it before and I found it offered the best possible explanation of what the world was about that I had ever read. It pointed out that the real conflicts in the world were not between black and white, men and women, Muslims, Christians and Jews, Americans, Russians and Chinese; it was about the conflict of economic interest between 95 per cent of the population of the world, who create the world's wealth, and the 5 per cent who own it. I think of Marx as a prophet: the last of the Old Testament prophets. And we should think of him as a teacher. Many political leaders, such as Stalin, have tried to steal him, but he is immune to that, because ideas survive without requiring the endorsement of kings, emperors, dictators or presidents. Karl Marx discovered it all long before I did, and I am very grateful to him

So near and yet so far, but beware these are the words of a seasoned political con-man, one we interviewed nearly thirty years ago. We have been warning our class of such jumped-up moralists long before this particular one was born:

"...Fastening upon the cruder manifestations of working class instinct - he gives this instinct a Bourgeois Reformist turn and so hampers its growth. As 'breadth of thought' and 'toleration' he conceals the shallowness and superficiality common to his class: under the name of socialism he preaches State-capitalism. In place of Revolution he urges Reform. Upon the half-hearted and partially conscious efforts of the workers to organise the political party of their class he fastens as a 'leader' - and all development is arrested..." (Socialist Standard, July 1906)

We have repeated this message ad nauseum for over a century. And say again, "enough is enough. If the working class would behave like thinking human beings, instead of like sheep, then bougus shepherds like Benn would no longer fleece them." (Socialist Standard, April 1981)

But do not accept what we have to say: consider what this political equivalent of a snake oil salesman is selling you along with our reply:

The irony of Tony Benn's position is that by dismissing as impossible Marx's conception of a society without state or government he ends up in the same contradictory tangles as the "establishment" he seeks to criticise. This is all the more unfortunate since his only grounds for dismissing Marx's particular contribution to the working-class movement is a warning, attributable to Lord Acton, about the effect of power on those who exercise it. Lord Acton, and even Benn himself, may be able to vouch for the dangerous effects of possessing power, but for the working class as a whole it is not a pressing problem. The democratic seizure of social power by the whole community will not be prevented by members of the privileged class who currently hold it warning us of such dangers.

The first stage of Benn's argument is clear and correct. Defenders of capitalism distort marxism because they fear it. He lists six aspects of marxism on which such fears are based: the understanding of the class struggle, the nature of the state, social consciousness, opposition to nationalism, opposition to religion and the use of democratic channels for a revolutionary transformation of society. Defenders of capitalism, he argues, fear these strengths held by Marxism as a way of looking at society, and therefore label it as violent and anti-democratic in order to discredit it.

Taking these points in order, consider first Marx's class analysis of society. In the world today, as in Marx's day, there are broadly speaking two social classes with conflicting interests facing one another: the buyers and the sellers of labour power. In other words, the employers and employees. Workers in Britain share a common interest with their fellow workers in other countries, and not with British bosses. Yet all of the policies ever advocated by Benn and the party of which he is a leading member are based on a denial of this first, fundamental principle of marxism. When the Labour Party speaks about, "us" coming out of the EEC or having import controls or tax re-adjustrnents, they are talking about British employers, with their workers faithfully in tow. Such an unequal alliance is based on the nine-tenths of the population who have to work for a living (or sign for the dole) continuing to work not for each other, not for the commnunity as a whole, but for the companies and nationalised industries which steadily accumulate the proceeds of our labour.

Next Tony Benn points to Marx's theory of the state. You do not need to read three volumes of Capital to understand Marx's key point, that the police, army, courts and prisons do not and cannot run in the interests of all. They are the means of coercion, the violence which lies at the roots of a society in which a minority monopolises social power. Here again, we find a sad rift between marxist principles and capitalist comprornise. Benn and the Labour Party offer us a "People's state" in which we will still be beaten up, locked up and kept down, only this time it will really be in our own interest at last, because we will have voted Thatcher out and Foot in.

Thirdly, Marxism "arouses political consciousness". Marx argued that while it is highly necessary for workers to organise in democratic trade unions in order to prevent the downward pressure on wages and the worsening of work conditions, it would also be necessary to organise a political movement to abolish the wages system itself. (See his Value, Price and Profit, 1865.) Yet over the last few years, together with the politicians of all of the other parties of capitalism, Benn has been promising to increase the level of employment. He has not devoted a single line in any of his speeches to Marx's idea that the struggle over wages and jobs should be extended into a struggle to end the very system of employment itself.

The revolutionary potential of marxist thought is indeed based on its global appeal. As the expression of the universal interest of the working class of the world, the abolition of capitalism means the end of all national boundaries. How does this relate to the cause championed by Benn, that "we British" should "get out of Europe"? His is merely a reactionary plea on behalf of British industrial interests who may profit more outside, rather than inside, the European Common Market. Getting workers to line up and take sides on such issues is in principle no different from King Edward and the Kaiser lining up "their" workers to fight their First World War.

Fifth, marxism is feared because it is anti-religious. Perhaps Marx's main contribution to philosophical thought was to advance beyond earlier forms of atheism, to develop a coherent theory which could in itself explain the historical rise and decline of religion. It is well known that Marx described religion as the opium of the people, but what he said merits quoting more fully:

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless eonditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion, as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions..."

Marx made his criticism of all religion and idealism clear enough, one might have thought, to avoid being redrawn as the "last of the Old Testament prophets". Benn's main concern in relation to Marx is to rehabilitate the reputation of religious morality, which he feels is missing from Marx's materialism. He is right - it is missing, but not for the reason he thinks. Far from describing the universe as being composed solely of economic forces, Marx acknowledged the enormous forces of human consciousness in the shaping of human history. But rather than bow blind to the dictates of "reason" and "morality" and "conscience", he sought to transcend these categories and understand how they arose.

The sixth and final feature of Marxism to which Benn refers is the possible transformation of the ballot box from an "instrument of trickery" (as Marx called it) into an "agent of emancipation". Marx repeatedly referred to the self-emancipation of the working class, without leaders, as the necessary precondition for a socialist (that is, communist) society. Again, in this regard, the party Benn urges us to vote for was set up as a trade union pressure group in parliament and to this day continues to base its support on workers acting as followers, voting for leaders to solve the problems of capitalism without genuine, majority, democratic action.

Having warned us of those who present a distorted picture of what they oppose even though they "have never studied Marx", Benn proceeds to caricature marxism as a mechanical economic determinism. In one sense, we are told, Marx was a "utopian" because he envisaged the end of the oppressive state machine. A familiar but thread-bare dichotomy is set up between democratic, parliamentary, reformist action and violent, anti-dernocratic, revolutionary action. So the "establishment" distortion of marxisrn as terrorism is ultimately endorsed here too. The third choice, of politically conscious workers using democratic channels to institute volutionary change, is overlooked, even though it had been referred to as one of the six strengths of marxism. Instead of opposing the religious ideology exposed by Marx, Benn writes of "inherent rights" and "moral values and obligations" as the basis of socialism, and of the need to reform the "actually existing socialist societies".

The Russian government may call itself socialist. The Nazis also used the term. Does this mean that the description has to be accepted? There are no "actually existing socialist societies", and the suggestion serves to fuel the pens of "the establishment" already referred to. By stating we must always retain the state, earlier defined as "an expression of the interests of the established order", Benn gets into considerable confusion. The Russian government depends on "state enforcement" and yet it is referred to as "socialist". Morality is introduced as a comfortable promise, for innocuous moderation to be dressed up as radical change. And yet morality has traditionally been what the ruling class call on when they want the majority who produce but do not possess to pull our weight even harder. It is the denial of our self-interest as a class. The attempt to define what is "good" and what is "bad", what we "should" or "should not" do has baffled philosophers for centuries, precisely because there are no such moral absolutes. Decisions about what is desirable and what is not are arrived at subjectively by different individuals and classes through the constantly changing development of human history.

Religion tries to solve the problem by inventing an all-powerful force which lays down for us what we should and should not do, with the most terrible tortures threatened for those who disobey this crude, primitive, moral law. In the case of christianity, which Benn holds up as the model morality to be adopted by socialists, those whose scientific perception made it hard for them to have blind faith and worship one of their fellows were threatened with nothing less than everlasting hell-fire. The morality Benn supports has been upholding property society for thousands of years, by consoling the poor with the virtues of thrift and hard work and the hope of receiving some charitable crumbs from the rich. Christian morality does not involve the ending of the class division between rich and poor. As long as there is a need for wealth to be "redistributed" from rich to poor, it follows that these two classes of people still exist. The Bible, which is the only source-book for the "moral teachings of Jesus", does not stop at openly defending slavery, property, profit and war.. To add insult to injury, it offers the following advice to the millions who are starving:

"Go to the sea and cast a hook, and take the first fish that comes up, and when you open its mouth you will find a coin." (Matthew, 17.27)

Small wonder that Bakunin felt moved to write, "If God existed, it would be necessary to abolish him".

What, then, is the Marxist theory of morality and religion? "For too long" Marx wrote "has religion explained history; let us with history explain religion." Like so many others, Benn tries to excuse his idealism according to which history is made by free-floating moral absolutes, by first painting Marx as being a crudely rnechanical materialist who "seerned to identify all social and personal morality as being a product of economic forces". But this was not case. It was Marx who found the dialectical balance to solve these contradictions. He referred to "the reciprocal action of these various sides on one another" (The German Ideology. Of course, marxism recognises that the conditions of life in society determine the modes of thought rather than the other way round, otherwise the hungry could simply think themselves full overnight and be satisfied. But it is the developing class consciousness among workers which itself becomes the material force for creating a new society:

"Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call cornmunism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence..."liberation" is an historical and not a moral act, and it is brought about by historical conditions." (The German Ideology)

Having effectively dismissed Marx in both the genuine and the distorted forrns, Benn finally advocates the reform of the Eastern bloc so that it appears a little more like the West, and the reform of the Western bloc so that it appears a little more like the East. What we are left with is layer after layer of compromise, with materialism softened by morality, capitalisrn cushioned by a paternalistic state sector, and socialism turned into the distant millenarian hope of nationalising the heartless sentiments of the world's religions.

C SLAPPER

(Socialist Standard, March 1983)