Slowly but surely to socialism?

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Clive Bradley reviews 'Rethinking Socialism: A Theory for a Better Practice', by Gavin Kitching •Some of Kitching's arguments are very similar to the later writy at ky Kates 1927 the hope of spend ds and expansionary the capitalist mode of production, the better are the prospects for the social system that. will succeed it... This may sound paradoxical to those who believe that socialism will arise from a 'collapse' ', from the 'failure' or the 'bankruptcy' of capitalism. But it does not confliet with the conception that expects the victory of socialism not from the economic decadence of capital, but from the growth of numbers and the increase in moral, intellectual and political strength of the Soda st socialist Fight the Scargill gets it right inside sunscribel Jet SOCIALIST ORGANISER each week delivered to vc for 3 months; £8.50 for 6 months; and £16 Be latest Women's Fightback - 10p plus 16p postage, GAVIN Kitching is a British academic Marxist who has written some important and penetrating work on the Third World, including an enormous and brilliant study of Kenya.

Now he has ventured into the realm of 'practical polities' with a book on left strategy in Britain.

His major argument is this: the whole of the British (and for that matter international) socialist movement is 'wasting its time' The ideas of socialist orthodoxy are wildly out of tune with the ideas and aspirations of the people socialists are claiming to be fighting for, and whose support socialists are supposed to want.

Worse, socialists today have failed to understand the nature of contemporary capitalism and so have failed to base their strategies on reality. And worse still, socialists are in general psychologically incapable of putting their ideas across to their audience.

Kitching's solution is reinstate an evolutionary gradualist perspective at centre of socialist politics thought about socialism."

In case you wonder why such a perspective needs to be reinstated, it should be added that reformisd He believed very 'reformism' firmly that socialist transformation does involve class . . . 'struggle' of a real and sometimes nasty sort." He accepts the Marxist analysis of the capitalist state (that is that it is a class state which cannot be transformed by the working class), and, presumably, accepts the basic revolutionary programme for the destruction of that state.

But he argues that to get from here to there would take, literally, hundreds of years, and that particular he revolutionary left has failed to understand the nature of the preparatory work necessary. That, at least, is what I take to be the point of his argument.

Kitching accuses the left of a number of serious weaknesses.

1. It has failed to register major changes in the composition of the working class itself.

The numbers of educated workers (the 'middle class in non-Marxist terminology) have grown; the traditional manual working class' has declined, at least numerically. This has changed the actual and potential 'constituency' of the Left.

Instead of recognising this fact and building on it, the Left has been stricken by guilt about Get SOCIALIST door by post!

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its 'petty-bourgeois' social base ana trea, against the tide suppon amongst an increasingly irrelevant section of workers.

Comic militancy of "industrial' workers. But such militancy is all.

By Marry Kent's Stase MAAL wroe l caused by a 'cataclysmic' conception of the transition to history, so to speak, to build socialism, which sees capitalist crisis (i.e. economic collapse) as the 'moment' of revolutionary This therefore leads to transformation. knee-jerk support for the econ- For Kitching, on the contrary, socialist advance is easier in times of capitalist boom (more not necessarily progressive at on which in a moment).

4. In general, therefore, the 3. This is compounded and/or left is good at knowing what it is against, and bad at knowing what it is for. This 'romantic anti-capitalism' particularly bad because it has no economic theory beyond liberal Keynesianism, collapses in the face of the ideological offensive of monetarism and so contributes to the isolation of the Left and fawo the 'ideological domination' of the working class. 5. The Left has failed to Women understand how to make socialist advance within capitalism.

According to Kitching, particularly in a situation in which increasing differentiation within the working class makes a appeal common 'class consciousness' to very difficult, the left needs to develop workers' conceptions of themselves as citizens.

That is, socialists need to develop any and every tendency the Left, but that does not make the whole argument valid against the whole of the Left.

But in any case his argument against 'cataclysmic' socialism seems wrong to me.

Kitching's arguments hinge around the assumption that socialism is only possible in societies which are a) wealthy, and b) have a working class (defined broadly) which is educated, self-disciplined, materially well-off and (his term)

imaginative enough to sustain it.

Consequently socialism is not possible if a) the society is poor, or b) the working class is none of those things.

According to Kitching, the problem in Britain today is lack of education, self-discipline, imagination, etc., in the working class. Before we can fight for socialism, we have to provide the basis for such a fight. One example of how to do this, Kitching believes, is provided by the Lucas Aerospace Alternative Plan.

In other words, the crucial component of the fight now for democratic socialism is to deepen the democratic involvement in all spheres of life under capitalism, where possible at the expense of the capitalist, so weakening the institutions of capitalist power, and undermining the mass passivity upon which capitalism depends.

And since conditions of capitalist crisis make this more difficult, Kitching argues we should "quite consciously offer whole-hearted cooperation with capitalism but in return demand concessions which aim quite consciously to change the fundamental nature of capitalism."

The argument that socialism requires abundance is hardly ise, nor the idea that 'socialproperly speaking is incompatible with underdevelopment. But the idea that therefore there are no limits to the 'progressiveness' of capitalism (in the sense of continually laying the basis for socialism) or that socialism 'matures within the womb of capitalism' virtually forever -and can only do so if capitalism is flourishing - is something else again. (And its antecedents are not encouraging: it was a central theme of Karl Kautsky in the 1930s).

Kitching does not at all consider the point that so long as capitalism can deliver the goods, workers are unlikely to want to think about or fight for an alternative world order.

It is precisely in conditions of crisis that workers need answers more and more desperately about how to fight and win, now. Piecemeal bargaining becomes more and more utopian and revolutionary answers more and more relevant.

For a Marxist to argue that at such a time we have nothing to offer but a programme to shore up the system because it is in our interests for it to solve its crisis is self-defeating.

Socialists cannot simply ride out the crisis in the calm knowledge that the following boom will help the advance towards socialism. By any definition of the working class, or of which section of it is most important, the following boom can only come about if the working class is seriously defeated.

We are today in the middle of a serious international class war which our class is not winning.

onward march of capitalism, which brings an ever more cultured and 'imaginative' working class which is ever more potentially socialist.

In fact it is difficult to understand what real function Kitching sees for the left.

Kitching claims that all radical movements - not only socialists, but also the women's movement - have a conception of bringing the tablets down from on high, which alienates potential support.

Kitching's chapter of feminism is considerably more strident in tone than the rest of the book, and deals at great length with how people ought to dress. But that aside, if Kitching is so opposed to socialists LAST week, I wrote about the killer smog • of 1952 and also about the role of ammonia from wet nappies in causing cot death.

As a follow-up, "Ariadne" in New Scientist wrote about the deaths of animals from smog during an agricultural show at Olympia in 1952.

Many prize animals died, but the pigs were not affected.

Unlike the other animals, they were kept overnight at the exhibition hall, bedded down on straw. Not being house-trained, they peed and pooed copiously on the straw. The bacteria in the latter broke down the urea in the former, making clouds of the smelly alkaline gas, ammonia.

Now, the gases in smog are things like nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide, both acidic.

When they met the alkaline ammonia, they combined with it, making solid particles of ammonium nitrate and sulphate. This cleared the air (and incidentally made excellent fertilisers).

Human kindness

NOT only does human milk contain just the right mixture of nutrients for a baby, it also contains antibodies that protect babies from bacterial infections.

But that's not all. It has recently been discovered that human milk also contains chemicals that kill parasitic protozoa.

Protozoa (things like the amoeba), though microscopic, are actually more similar to animals than bacteria. So chemicals that kill bacteria usually have no effect on disease-causing protozoa.

Now a highly potent substance has been found in human milk that kills a protozoan called Giardia Lamblia. This protozoan causes giardiasis, a common gut disease affecting children. It causes a debilitating and even life-threatening diarrhoea. Some children become chronically No.28 December 1983 Paper of the women's campaign • Movement for Women's for Women's Fightback Fightback Rights Rights presenting their own ideas as 'truths' (which is separable from the issue of improving how we communicate those ideas) then I wonder why he has written 178 pages himself. Doesn't he believe that what is written in these pages is true?

Presumably he does want to win 'converts' - he won't like the term, but anyone trying to convince anyone else about anything can be characterised in this way.' But he identifies no actual role for socialists in the unfolding development of democratic citizen control.

The book is well-written readable, and it raises some real questions. Unfortunately the answers, such as they are, are wrong. infected for years.

The chemical that kills Giardia is therefore very important for protecting babies. It is not formed in cow's milk, further support for critics of the baby-food companies trying to spread bottle-feeding in the Third World.

The drug of choice for treating giardiasis has some nasty sideeffects leven if it can be obtained):

Bombs to excavate UNDER the US Freedom. of Information Act, documents have been released showing that the US seriously planned to set off 173 Hiroshimas-worth of A-bombs to excavate a highway.

The project was deemed "technically feasible" and was due to take place in 1966. Luckily it was called off.

The feasibility study thought that little damage would result since the site was in the Mojave desert. But recent research into "nuclear winter" scenarios suggests that the 20 groundbursts would raise enough dust to cause a significant drop in temperature in the Northern hemisphere, with several severe winters (but some spectacular sunsets). This is on top of an increase in cases of leukaemia, etc.

Three years old Next week marks the third anniversary of the SO Science Column, still the only regular science column on the Left.

Elsewhere in this issue you will notice appeals for more effective fund-raising to keep SO going. I would like to suggest to readers that, if you have enjoyed reading the Science Column over the last one, two or three years, you might like to show your appreciation by giving a little extra for your SO next week, either to your SO seller, or to me, c/o Science Column Birthday Prezzie, 214 Sickert Court, London N1.

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