BOOK REVIEWS
Karl Marx: Early Texts: translated and edited by David McLellan (Basil Blackwell). 25/- (p&p 3/-) from Red Books.
In the 1930s, "Marxism" became fashionable among a large section of the intellectuals in Europe and America. It largely took the form of fellow-travelling with the Stalinised Third International. Even the trials of the 1930s failed to shake the loyalty of all but a few of these fellow-travellers. Here and there a protesting voice was heard. Some, like Koestler, turned from Marxism to unbridled anti-communism. A few others, unwilling to throw the baby out with the bathwater, claimed to discover in the younger Marx of the early 1840s a "more critical and undogmatic humanism" than in the [illegible] Marx and, of course, in Bolshevism, which [illegible] were now beginning to equate with Stalinism. [illegible] own—especially through the writings of Leon Trotsky—even the most devoted fellow-traveller [illegible] his eyes to the nature of the regime [illegible] their own past [illegible] this [illegible] tendency received a[illegible] events in Poland and Hungary in 1956/7.
This neo-Marxism even became respectable. Courses in Marxism were instituted at universities which had never before even included it in their curriculums. The whole intellectual world seemed suddenly to be debating Marx's theory of "alienation", while ignoring his writings on economics and dismissing dialectical materialism as so much "metaphysical hot air", there was increasing interest in Marx as a "humanist" and respect for his profound understanding of history and human nature.
To these people it appeared that there were "two Marxes" and an irreconcilable clash between the early writings and the mature system of Marx's later years. The "Young Marx", according to these newly fashionable thinkers, was first and foremost a philosopher rather than an economist.
This collection of Marx's earlier works should [illegible] the "two Marxes", which the neo-Marxists claim to have discovered, simply show how little they really understand Marxism, despite their intellectual pretensions. What is true, of course, is that his thinking developed and matured over the years. Marx was no ivory-tower philosopher shut up in the reading room of the British Museum, as so many assume. He, with Engels, was passionately involved in [illegible]. They learned from actual events and [illegible] their analytical method dialectical materialism [illegible] change the world and not merely to explain it. [illegible] of these writings leaves no doubt about the unity of Marx's thought after he had broken with the idealistic conceptions of Hegel.
As David McLellan points out in his valuable introduction, there is no justification for those who claim that alienation as a concept was central to Marx's early thought but abandoned by him later. Daniel Bell, for example, has said that "whereas in the young Marx there was a double vision of the nature of alienation ... Marx's thoughts developed along one narrow road of economic conceptions of poverty and [illegible] while the other road which might have led to new, humanistic concepts of work and labour, was left unexplored." McLellan replies that "not only the concept but also the term itself occurs on several occasions in Capital". In Vol. 1 (p.432 Moscow Edition), Marx writes: "the character of independence and estrangement which the capitalist mode of [illegible] as a whole gives to the instruments of labour and to the products, as against the workman, is developed by the means of machinery into a thorough antagonism". McLellan goes on to say that "it is not only a question of terminology, the contents too of Capital is a continuation of Marx's early thoughts. The main theme of Volume I of Capital, surplus-value, rests on the equation of work and Value that goes back to the concept of man as a being who creates and the conditions of his life—a conception outlined in the Paris Manuscripts." (1844) Marx the philosopher, Marx the economist, Marx the revolutionary socialist, was one, the unifying thread being dialectical materialism.
Any doubt which may still have existed about the continuity of Marx's thought was finally laid to rest by the publication of Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie (Elements of a Critique of Political Economy). Written in 1857, mainly for the purpose of clarifying his own thinking, this 1,000-page draft served as a basis for Critique of Political Economy (1859) and of Capital (1867). Marx himself wrote to Lassalle that the Grundrisse represented "the result of 15 years' research, that is to say the best years of my life."
Early Texts is essential reading for all who want to thoroughly understand Marxism and the development of Marx's thought. It is an excellent collection and lucidly translated.
C van Gelteren.
Guerrilla Movements in Latin America [illegible]
For many who have been overawed by the fact that Latin America is an extremely large geographical entity, thousands of miles away and therefore a trifle difficult to study in detail, Richard Gott's book will provide a useful [illegible] Colombia, Peru, and of course Bolivia. This somewhat limits the scope of the book; for instance Nicaragua and Uruguay, where the [illegible] are both active and, within their own terms of reference, partially successful, are mentioned only briefly, and that too only in the concluding chapter as though an afterthought. Neither is there any reference to the guerrilla experience in Brazil and Argentina, which is rather unfortunate, as developments and changes in these two countries to a certain extent determine the future of the rest of Latin America, and without an analysis and balance sheet of their respective revolutionary movements it is impossible to grasp the totality of the struggle.
However, despite these failings the book provides certain useful documentary information relating to the role which the Stalinist parties and formations have played in Latin America. The betrayal of the Guatemalan C.P. which found itself quite at home when it came to supporting the candidacy of liberal members of the bourgeoisie for various positions, but which adopted ambivalent positions towards the guerrilla struggle, and which withdrew party cadres when total manipulation of the struggle could not be ensured, is well documented. A similar, but in the final analysis a more treacherous, role was played by the Venezuelan C.P. The situation in Venezuela was so obviously pre-revolutionary that the C.P. was forced despite itself to set up a guerrilla front. While this front included a certain number of non-Stalinist radicals, its political and military policies were decided by the Venezuelan C.P. Despite this, the C.P. leadership in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, could not totally control the actions of the FALN (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional) in the countryside. The latter engaged in what the Party was later to term "ultraleftism" and "adventurism". With a "reactionary" President replaced after an "election" by a "less reactionary" one (the degree of his reaction depending, of course, on his attitude towards the C.P.), a convenient excuse came into existence. The new President announced publicly in his inauguration address that if the C.P. was prepared to renounce "violence" [illegible] the Committee of Venezuelan Stalinism announced: "We the Communists again say to the country: if an all-embracing amnesty is declared, if public liberties are restored, if the right to legal action for the banned parties is restored, if officers jailed or exiled because of their nationalist positions are readmitted into the armed forces with full rights, then political struggles in the country can be directed along peaceful paths."
From now on the Venezuelan C.P. were to move rapidly rightwards. A slanderous campaign was begun against the guerrilla leader Douglas Bravo who was not allowed any rights inside the C.P. Several months later he broke with the party as did numerous other militants. This led Fidel Castro to publicly denounce the C.P. as having betrayed the guerrillas. The Cuban state began to help the guerrillas directly. The Venezuelan experience demonstrated even to the blind that the Latin American C.P.s were no different from their European counterparts. With a few exceptions the "peaceful road to socialism" became the norm, and while similar positions in Europe at least enabled revolutionary militants to attack the reformism of the C.P. and engage in fierce polemics, in a continent like Latin America many C.P.s are quite happily prepared to betray the "ultralefts" to the oligarchy and its repressive forces. Polemic is thus avoided. The total degeneration of the Communist Parties in Latin America is ably and painstakingly demonstrated by Richard Gott.
Where Gott does make mistakes is in his remarks regarding the "Trotskyist" movement. He fails to acknowledge the fact that the "Trotskyists" who, by their lunatic (literally) sectarianism and bad faith, completely alienated themselves from Yon Sosa's guerrilla detachment and as a result were expelled, in fact belonged to a faction led by Juan Posadas. The latter did not in any way represent the mainstream of the world Trotskyist movement, a fact which Castro also preferred to ignore when he made his celebrated, but completely indiscriminate attack on "Trotskyism" at the Tricontinental Congress in Havana in 1966. ('The Cuban Posadistas were attacking the Cuban government for building workers' flats, when they felt that the state should have been concentrating on building underground nuclear shelters to prepare for the coming holocaust!). This lapse by Gott is somewhat unfortunate and inexplicable as he is undoubtedly aware of the "Trotskyist" tendencies outside the Fourth International and has written about them elsewhere. A similar mistake is made regarding Peru: in this case Gott categorically states that Hugo Blanco ended his connection with the "international Trotskyist movement" when in fact what Blanco did was to cease contact with the Argentinian [illegible] "...ist" group [illegible] the International Executive Committee of the Fourth International, which waged a worldwide campaign to secure his release and in doing so probably saved him from almost certain death at the hands of the oligarchy.
What Gott does demonstrate conclusively is that the reason why Blanco could not maintain his peasant base was because of the lack of a fighting unit and he speculates that if the guerrilla bands which sprung up later had existed at the same time as Hugo Blanco was heading the peasant struggle, the picture in Peru could well have been different.
While the entire book contains a great deal of valuable information, the chapters on Bolivia are without doubt the most perceptive, and here Gott writes from an intimate knowledge of the territory (he was the first journalist to identify Guevara's dead body) and a deep sense of commitment to the struggle itself. He explains how the political/economic situation in Bolivia combined with its vigorous revolutionary tradition made it the most obvious country in Latin America where a revolutionary overthrow of capital seemed possible. Those militants who think that Bolivia was simply a name on a small piece of paper which Che pulled out of a hat should carefully study the background of the country.
However, what Gott is quite unable to explain is why Che Guevara, who understood better than any other Cuban leader the real nature of the C.P.s, made the fatal mistake of imagining that an alliance with the Bolivian Stalinists led by Monje was a practical possibility. It was precisely this fact which ensured that Che's plan was doomed from the beginning, and to appreciate this fact one has to understand the global role of Stalinism. The links of the Cuban state, or rather its dependence on the Soviet Union, meant that Monje had to be consulted, but surely a revolutionary of Che's experience should not have depended on Monje and the C.P. to provide the urban network so essential for any real success. Gott also is probably not aware of the fact that the POR (Revolutionary Workers Party, Bolivian section of the Fourth International) offered Che their support from the first day of the struggle. Che cabled Havana for approval, but by the time the Cubans replied in the affirmative, the game was already played out and Che's group was encircled by the gorillas. It is possible that if the comrades of POR had been involved in the [illegible], Che would still have been alive today. Their knowledge of the territory and their numerical size could well have been decisive.
The defeat of the Bolivian guerrilla, symbolised dramatically by the death of Che, should be [illegible] of the Latin [illegible]. Defeats are not uncommon in struggle, no matter where or how it takes place. The important fact is that we must learn from these defeats and ensure that they are not repeated. Gott correctly quotes Marx as saying "With the exception of only a few chapters, every more important part of the annals of the revolution ... carries the heading: Defeat of the Revolution!"
What succumbed in these defeats was not the revolution. It was the pre-revolutionary [illegible] appendages, results of social relationships which had not yet come to the point of sharp class antagonism ... "In a word: the revolution made progress, forged ahead, not by its immediate ... achievements, but, on the contrary, by the creation of a powerful, united counter-revolution, by the creation of an opponent in combat with whom only, the party of overthrow ripened into a really revolutionary party."
But Gott continues to maintain that the foco could still work, when in fact the whole experience of the guerrillas over the last ten years suggests the very opposite. What is needed is a strong, disciplined, Leninist organisation, based in both the cities and the countryside and capable of sustaining the armed struggle by its roots in the masses. The guerrillas have not been wrong in recognising that throughout Latin America there exists a pre-revolutionary situation. The imperialists have recognised this as well, which is why they are prepared to permit experiments in "military reformism" in Peru and Bolivia and of "parliamentary socialism" in Chile. They see them as medium-term solutions to contain mass struggles and from that point of view they are correct. But this situation cannot last long. The military reformists will soon begin to feel the pressure; Allende will either make decisive moves to pull Chile out of the capitalist world market (in which case we will see a civil war with likely U.S. intervention) or what is more likely, he will simply become a Chilean Harold Wilson.
As Marxists we abhor impressionism and therefore, while we must take into account the manoeuvrings of American imperialism and its puppet regimes, we cannot afford to lose sight of our own objectives. We have to understand that a pre-revolutionary situation exists in Latin America despite the twists and turns of the bourgeoisie. The weakness of the guerrillas has not been that they have misjudged the objective situation. It has been exactly the reverse: they have not made the adequate preparations to ensure that the subjective factors were capable of meeting the needs of the objective situation. Richard Gott is a bit confused about this himself or else he would not write off not only the peasantry, but also the urban proletariat in Latin America. To make a revolution neither a party nor the best-prepared of focos can substitute its own consciousness for that of the class. They can take steps to develop and arouse working-class consciousness, but that is a completely different story. Impatience is no substitute for theory and only an extremely short-lived substitute for practice.
Rural guerrilla warfare without an organisational base in the urban working-class is a recipe for disaster and if there isn't even an adequate base in the countryside, then the disaster is multiplied. To think that certain aspects of the Cuban experience can be repeated mechanistically is to abandon the dialectical method. It would be absurd to think that U.S. imperialism has not learnt the lessons of the Cuban Revolution.
The whole question of organisation, therefore, becomes paramount. Unless revolutionaries have the perspective of building a combat Leninist organisation from the very start they can succumb to political confusion under pressure from "organisational centrists." Of course it goes without saying that revolutionary marxists have to participate in the struggle. They have to help in its preparations and coordinations. They have to be ready to intensify the struggle. In Latin America or rather in many other parts of the semi-colonial world as well, this is the best way to build revolutionary organisations. To simply proclaim the superiority of a programme from the side lines is to fetichise the programme and consign oneself to being a propaganda group indefinitely. It is in fact to caricature revolutionary marxism. Even in Argentina, where the urban proletariat is extremely powerful and where there have been more General Strikes than anywhere else since the Second World War, the failure of these strikes to develop insurrectional forms demonstrates not only the necessity of armed struggle for the seizure of power, but also the need to prepare for it.
Only if Latin American revolutionaries understand and grasp the importance and the necessity of organisation will we be able to say that they have understood and learnt the real lessons of Latin America's 1905. Only then will they be able to lay a firm and solid basis for the extension of the Cuban revolution to the rest of the continent, thus freeing not only their own oppressed masses from the yoke of American imperialism, but also freeing the Cuban Revolution from the oppressive weight of the Soviet bureaucracy.
G. Camillo
50 Years of World Revolution (1917-1967): An international symposium edited by Ernest Mandel. (Merit Publishers. [illegible])
This Symposium is necessary reading for all who want to acquaint themselves with the best in current Marxist thought. The introduction by Ernest Mandel alone is almost worth the price of the book. It ranges over the whole vast field of the revolutionary movement since the Bolshevik victory in 1917 and shows how richly our epoch deserves the name "The Age of Permanent Revolution". Despite the defeats, the setbacks and the betrayals, the international working class and their allies in the Third World continue the struggle which can only end with the destruction of capitalist imperialism.
In his analysis, Mandel shows how Lenin and Trotsky prepared the way for October because they, almost alone among their contemporaries, understood the real nature of the situation. Lenin forged the weapon which would ensure that victory—the Bolshevik Party. Trotsky, with his Theory of Permanent Revolution "made clear the only form the seizure of power could take in (backward) Russia—that is the establishment of the [illegible] allied to the poor peasantry." By 1917, Lenin had also come to this conclusion and the result was his famous "April Theses" which was the blue-print for the October Revolution. Trotsky, for his part, had abandoned his illusions about an ideologically loose party united with the Mensheviks—since when, as Lenin put it, there has been "no better Bolshevik".
Unfortunately, most of the other leading Bolsheviks only superficially learned the lessons of October—or regarded the Russian experience as "exceptional"—and have applied (or rather, misapplied) some of Lenin's pre-1917 conceptions to revolutionary situations in other countries, with disastrous results for the proletariat. It was left, first to the Left Opposition in Russia, under the leadership of Leon Trotsky, then to the Fourth International, to continue the ideas of Bolshevism. This collection of articles is a good reflection of the ideas of the Fourth International. All the writers are leaders of the International or, in the case of the Americans, leading members of parties in very close association with the Fourth International. (The laws of the United States make international affiliation illegal).
Luis Vitale, a well-known Chilean revolutionary communist, goes back to Marx and Engels and shows how their fundamental prediction—that socialism would supplant the capitalist system—has been confirmed by history. This theme is taken further by Livio Maitan of Italy, whose article on "The Theory of Permanent Revolution" shows that it was in direct line with ideas already developed by Marx and Engels—even the name "The Revolution in Permanence" was first used by Marx. He deals [illegible] Trotsky on this issue, differences which were resolved in the "April Theses" and in an even more emphatic manner by the October Revolution itself. Maitan also deals with the post-Lenin controversies about the Theory of Permanent Revolution and indicates that events in Cuba and China have vindicated the theory.
Sirio Di Giacomaria, another leading Italian Trotskyist, deals with the "Three Phases of the Russian Revolution", and draws from it three principal lessons: 1) The absolute necessity for socialist revolution; 2) the necessity of building a revolutionary party in which theoretical and practical work are based on a democratic relationship between an elected leadership and a conscious and militant rank and file; 3) the necessity of developing the tactics to bring the masses to attack the bourgeois state without hesitation at the most favourable moment.
Ross Dawson of Canada deals with the rise and fall of the Third International, while the German Trotskyist Georg Jungclass writes on the tragedy of the German proletariat, led to defeat by Stalinism and Social Democracy. This is a valuable article, all the more so because of the very clear definition of fascism which it contains, in contradiction to the loose and often irresponsible way in which the term is often used.
The Argentinian Marxist, Nahuel Moreno, deals with the developments of the Chinese and Indo-Chinese Revolutions. The theory of Permanent Revolution is effectively used to show how the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27 began as a reflection of the revolutionary upsurge which followed the Russian Revolution and argues that the Revolution which brought Mao to power "cannot be explained except by the revolutionary pressure of the European workers and the attitude of the Americans in the armed forces" following World War I. He discusses the lessons of the failure of the 1927 revolution and the consequences of that defeat, and goes on to deal with the eventual victory of the Chinese Communists and the subsequent developments. He shows how that victory was followed by an intensification of the struggle in Vietnam and concludes that the safety of the deformed workers states in Asia (as in the Soviet Union) can, in the final analysis, only be secured by the victory of the world revolution, and, in the first place, in the main capitalist countries—most importantly the United States.
Hugo Gonzalez Moscoso, general secretary of the Bolivian section of the Fourth International, deals with the lessons of the Cuban Revolution. Cuba once again shows that the revolutionary process does not go by stages. He deals very effectively also with those who would deny the proletarian nature of the Cuban revolution because it was not led by a Leninist Party.
George Breitman applies the Leninist teachings on the national question to the black liberation struggle in the United States and shows how the role of the black liberation fighters is "akin to the leading role of the insurgent colonial masses at this stage of the world revolution". It also served as the trigger which set in motion the wave of student revolts which surged through the campuses.
That there is no "third way" based on a mixed economy for the underdeveloped countries of the world is the theme of the article by Sitaram B. Kolpe, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party of India. The tragic developments in Algeria, Ghana, Indonesia, etc. have effectively shown where this "third way" leads as compared to the revolutionary direction taken by Cuba and China.
George Novack gives a lucid outline of how to apply the laws of uneven and combined development to the world revolutionary process. Fernand Charlier of Belgium discusses the roots of bureaucracy and how to fight it. Ernest Mandel makes a valuable contribution on "Economics of the Transition Period", while Joseph Hansen deals with the relevance of Marxism-Leninism for today. Pierre Frank, a member of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, traces the history of proletarian internationalism and shows that for "true revolutionary Marxists, proletarian internationalism is not a sentimental notion that falls apart at the first sound of rifles, cannon and bombs (but) a fundamental concept ... which has deep objective roots; a concept whose application the capitalists dread."
James P. Cannon, leading United States Trotskyist, makes crystal clear that without the vanguard party as organiser and director there can be no thorough-going proletarian revolution. The building of such a party is no easy task. Cannon shows the tremendous difficulties encountered by the world Trotskyist movement over the past three decades. The presence of [illegible], wealthy Labour, Social Democratic or Stalinist organisations, exercising bureaucratic control over the labour movement, has to be overcome. Of particular interest is his reference to the tactic of Marxists going into mass parties for extended periods (entrism) with the aim of creating, consolidating and expanding the initial cadres and establishing firm ties with the advanced elements, with the ultimate objective of building a new mass revolutionary party of the working class. He shows the pitfalls in this kind of work, but concludes [illegible] is a necessary tactic at certain times.
CVG
'The Irish Tragedy: Scotland's Disgrace' by John MacLean, published by the John MacLean Society. ([illegible])
As one of MacLean's sole surviving associates, Harry McShane says in the introduction, "It seldom happens that a pamphlet dealing with [illegible] political events merits re-publication fifty years later on the grounds of its appropriateness. This is that kind of pamphlet."
Published originally in 1920, and distributed in 20,000 copies all over Scotland by MacLean's "Tramp Trust Unlimited" (a small group of roving socialist agitators), the pamphlet sets out to reveal the facts about the brutal suppression of the Irish struggle at that time. Fired with anger at the use of Scottish troops to crush the Republicans, MacLean heaps fact on fact, tearing away the hypocritical excuses of the government of the day.
But he goes further than mere accusation, he attempts briefly and simply to explain to Scottish workers the economic reasons for the attempt to retain a hold on Ireland. This he explains in terms of rivalry between the USA and British imperialism: as Harry McShane explains, a common theme among Marxists of his day, and one which Trotsky emphasised.
But one of the most interesting aspects is MacLean's understanding of the nature and significance of the Irish struggle, which he explains thus: "Should Ireland get a Republic, the class war will then burst out and be fought out till Irish Labour wins and establishes Communism finally again in the 'Ould Counthrie'." "Ireland's victory is obviously the undoubted prelude to Labour's triumph throughout the World, when robbery shall give place to justice in the mighty Communist Commonwealth."
In other words, MacLean, like Connolly, saw the victory of the Irish national struggle as the prelude to a rapid victory of the socialist revolution. If this concept is not a developed expression of the permanent revolution, it is nevertheless very far from the Stalinist "two stage" theory, and offers further proof that this reactionary concept was artificially grafted onto the Irish struggle in later years.
Robin Mor
A Plea for a Labour College for Scotland by John Maclean (John MacLean Society, 1/6)
At first glance this little pamphlet might appear to have a rather limited interest. John MacLean is little known outside Scotland, and his address to a long-forgotten conference, which founded [illegible] college, might not seem to be of [illegible].
But even from the point of view of learning about MacLean, the pamphlet is valuable. He was, after all, the most important figure in the mass workers' struggles on Clydeside, during and after the First World War; the most extreme revolutionary situation Britain has known. The relevance of this address to those struggles is underlined by the fact that MacLean was prevented from giving it in person. On Sunday 6th February 1916, six days before he was due to deliver it, he was arrested and incarcerated in Edinburgh Castle, charged with subversive activities (i.e. telling the workers the truth about the war).
That fact that, on Clydeside in particular, the repression directed against the workers during World War I should lead to revolutionary ferment is no accident. The long patient work done by MacLean and others like him in educating workers about the nature of capitalism meant that thousands of them were able to see the connection between their economic problems, the speed-up in the factories, repressive legislation, and the imperialist war which was slaughtering workers on the battlefields of Europe. They transcended the narrow trade union consciousness of the rest of the British working class, and saw the solution to their problems in terms of revolutionary struggle. The fact that they did not have the leadership capable of formulating a strategy to direct and guide that militancy does not alter the importance of what was achieved.
[illegible] in Action: A Sociolo[gy] [illegible] Industrial Relations [illegible] Banks (Faber and Faber)
Anat[omy] of a [illegible] — A Hist[ory] of G.E.C., [illegible] and English Electric. [illegible] and Marriot (Johnathon Cape 75s)
Both these books in effect [illegible] features of capitalism. It [illegible] comment on the state of bourgeois research that Jones and Marriot give a far better account of contemporary capitalism than does Banks.
Banks's book is in fact in many ways a most curious effort. Firstly the book is not at all about what its title says it is. The section on industrial relations is in fact only an incidental part of the book, most of which is devoted to a general discussion of everything from the problems of motive forces of the Chinese revolution (p.139-158) and Lenin's theory of the Labour aristocracy (p. 218). It is [illegible] as a book on industrial relat[ions] [illegible].
Unlike most non-Marxists who write on Marx, the author actually does appear to have read something other than Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies. He thus avoids falling into any of the usual "Marx was relevant to the appalling conditions of the 19th century but not today" type of argument. He thus for example gives a reasonably good definition of Marx's definitions of social formations when he says that "... what on the Marxist analysis distinguishes slavery, feudalism and capitalism from one another is not the fact that the ruling class uses the system to its own advantage, but the different ways in which it is done. If there has been a managerial revolution in some Marxist sense of the term, it must be because the managers have introduced [illegible] new way of extorting surplus value from the workers." Unfortunately, having said this he then plunges into a garbled version of Burnham's The Managerial Revolution (which as the erudite know is itself only a garbled version of Bruno Rizzi's La Bureaucratisation du Monde. From this point on the discussion becomes singularly uninteresting.
The problem is that Banks, like Burnham but unfortunately for him unlike Marx, believes that Marxism can be broken down into a set of separate postulates. Thus for example he states a possible theory of the Russian Revolution in terms of two separate premises. This means that [illegible] connection between economics, politics, sociology, philosophy, etc. in Marxism and cannot therefore give an account of any [illegible] that Marxists use. This renders the book virtually worthless apart from a few pieces of empirical information scattered around its pages.
The Oliver and Marriot book is a very different kettle of fish altogether. Perhaps the most startling thing in it is the way in which [illegible] deals with the existence of cartels and mono[poly] [illegible] what a load of rubbish the "conventional wisdom" of capitalism is. The first chapter reveals clearly the origins of the Electrical Industry—it is simply entitled "The Lamp King".
The working of cartels and modern capitalism [illegible] "[illegible] Cowdray's Whitehall Securities ... Lord Poole, English Electric's financial adviser, is also a director of Whitehall Securities [illegible] One such firm was Kleinwort Benson, and there was a Kleinwort partner, Reginald Maudling the former Conservative Chancellor of the [illegible] director, Alexander Hood, was a director of [illegible] Sir Archibald Forbes, chairman [illegible] Bank, and Lord McFadzean, chairman of British Insulated Callendar's Cables ... brushed shoulders with Lord Caldecote, chairman of British Aircraft Corporation".
Again we have a very clear understanding of the role of profit in a capitalist economy. This is beautifully summed up in the penultimate paragraph: "Thus the shareholders of English Electric, which with sales of £411 million in 1967 had been much bigger than either AEI (£260 million) or GEC (£180 million), ended up with, at the very best, one-third of the equity of the combined three companies. That is the measure of the premium for better GEC profitability and for the Weinstock touch." (The Weinstock touch of course consisting of the ability to make these bigger profits.)
We also have marvellous examples of bourgeois ideology at work. Consider for example the title of Chapter 8: "AEI: The Years of Prosperity (1930-53)". What other system than the capitalist could consider the years of the slump, of the war, and of post-war reconstruction, years of prosperity! Here we have a perfect example of how the making of profit is totally unconnected to the needs of society.
Remarkable too are the examples of sheer lying and hypocrisy by the capitalist class. My [illegible] unions kicking up a fuss about the merger. [illegible] on Barbara Castle, who as Secretary of the Department of Employment and Productivity would have a crucial say in the Government decision. Sir Jack ... went bearing a letter signed by Lord Nelson and Lord Aldington promising full consultations with the unions concerning any possible [illegible] that might arise from the merger. They promised to initiate 'immediate discussions between Sir Jack Scamp and national Trade Union leaders concerning arrangements for consultations on matters arising from the merger with a view to maintaining and [illegible] communications between [illegible] and management'."
I trust that the 12,000 workers sacked from GEC were grateful for the immense amount of trouble that went into ensuring that they lost their jobs in a suitable way and not through any rash actions.
All in all, this book is just about the best description of the capitalist system that we are ever going to get from a "reputable" source. As for the problem of the price, well, I suggest that you put in a request to your public library before the Tories make the charge for borrowing books from there almost as much as the cost of the book itself.
Alan Jones