| www.tonybenn.net |
| Democracy and Marxism |
Though I was not introduced to socialism through a study of Marx, and would not describe myself as a
Marxist, I regard it as a privilege and an honour to have been invited to deliver this Lecture in memory of
Karl Marx. The intellectual contribution made by Marx to the development of socialism was and remains
absolutely unique.
But Marx was much more than a philosopher. His influence in moving people all over the world to social
action ranks him with the founders of the world’s greatest faiths. And, like the founders of other faiths,
what Marx and others inspired has given millions of people hope, as well as the courage to face
persecution and imprisonment.
Since 1917, when the Bolsheviks came to power in the Soviet Union, we have had a great deal of
experience if national power structures created in the name of Marxism, and of the achievements and
failures of those systems. Some of the sternest critics of Soviet society also based themselves upon Marx,
including Leon Trotsky, Mao Tse-Tung, Tito and a range of libertarian Marxist dissidents in Eastern Europe
and Eurocommunists in the West.
This lecture is concerned with only two aspects of Marxism.
First, the challenge which Marxism presents to liberal capitalist societies which have achieved a form of
political democracy based upon universal adult suffrage; and second, the challenge to those societies,
which have based themselves on Marxism by the demands for political democracy.
It is, I believe, through a study of this mutual challenge that we can get to the heart of many of the problems
now confronting the communist and non-communist countries, and illuminate the conflicts within and
between different economic systems and between the developed and the developing world.
Before I begin, let me make my own convictions clear.
1) I believe that no mature tradition of political democracy today can survive if it does not open itself to the
influence of Marx and Marxism.
2) I believe that communist societies cannot survive if they do not accept the demands of the people for
democratic rights upon which a secure foundation of consent for socialism must ultimately rest.
3) I believe that world peace can be maintained only if the peoples of the world are discouraged from holding
to the false notion that a holy war is necessary between Marxists and non-Marxists.
4) I believe that the moral values upon which social justice must rest, require us to accept that Marxism is
now a world faith amd must be allowed into a continuing dialogue and with other world faiths, including
religious faiths.
5) I believe that socialism can only prosper if socialists can develop a framework for discussing the full
richness of their own traditions and be ready to study the now considerable history of their own successes
and failures.
The evolution of British democracy
If an understanding of socialism begins- as it must- with a scientific study of our own experience, each
country can be begin by examining its own history and the struggles of its people for social, economic and
political progress.
British socialists can identify many sources from which our ideas have been drawn. The teaching of Jesus,
calling upon us to ‘love our neighbour as ourselves’ acquired a revolutionary character when
preached as a guide to social action. For example, when, in the Peasents Revolt of 1381, the Reverend
John Ball, with his liberation theology, allied himself to a popular uprising, both he, the preacher, and Wat
Tyler, the peasant leader, were killed and their followers scattered and crushed by the King.
The message of social justice, equality and democracy, is a very old one, and has been carried like a torch
from generation to generation by a succession of popular and religious movements, by writers,
philosophers, preachers and poets, and has remained a focus of hope, that an alternative society could be
constructed. The national political influences of these ideas were seen in 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th
centuries, and in the revolutions in England, America, France and Russia, each of which provided an
important impetus to these hopes. But it was the industrial revolution, and the emergence of modern Trade
Unionism in the 19th century which provided a solid foundation of common interest upon which these
utopian dreams could be based, that gave the campaigns for political democracy and social advance their
first real chance of success.
If British experience is unique – as it is – in the history of the working class movement, it lies in the fact
that the Industrial Revolution began here, and gave birth to the three main economic philosophies which
now dominate the thinking of the world.
The first was capitalism. Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations developed the concept of modern
capitalism as the best way to release the forces of technology from the dead hand of a declining and
corrupted feudalism, substituting the invisible hand of the market and paving the way for industrial
expansion and, later, imperialism. The Manchester School of liberal economists and the liberal view of an
extended franchise combined to create a power structure which still commands wide support among the
establishment today.
The second was socialism. Robert Owen, the first man specifically identified as a socialist, also developed
his ideas of socialism, co-operation and industrial trade unionism out of his experience of the workings of
British capitalism.
And the third was Marxism. Marx and Engels also evolved many of their views of scientific socialism from
a detailed examination of the nature of British capitalism and the conditions of the working class movement
within it.
Yet, despite the fact that capitalism, socialism and Marxism all first developed in this country, only one of
these schools of thought is now accepted by the establishment as being legitimate. Capitalism, its
mechanism, values and institutions are now being preached with renew vigour by the British establishment
under the influence of Milton Friedman. Socialism is attacked as being, at best, romantic or ,at worst,
destructive. And Marxist is identified as the anti-Christ against which the full weight of official opinion is
continually pitted in the propanda war of ideas.
The distortion of Marxism
The term Marxist is used by the establishment to prevent it being understood. Even serious writers and
broadcasters in the British media use the word Marxist as if it were synonomous with terrorism, violence,
espionage, thought control, Russian imperialism and every act of bureaucray attributable to the state
machine in any country including Britain, which has adopted even the mildest left of centre political or
social reforms. The effect of this is to isolate Britain from having an understanding of, or a real influence in,
the rest of the world, where Marxism is seriously discussed and not drowned by propaganda, as it is in our
so-called free press. This ideological insularity harms us all.
This continuing barrage of abuse is maintained at such a high level of intensity that is has oblitereated –
as is intended – any serious public debate in the mainstream media on what Marxism is about. This
negative propaganda is comparable to the treatment accorded to Christianity in non-Christian societies.
Any sustained challenge to the existing order that cannot be answered on its merits is dismissed as coming
from a Marxist, Communist, Trotskyite, or extremist. All those suspected of Marxist views runs the risk of
being listed in police files, having their phones tapped and their career prospects stunted by blacklisting,
just as those who advocate liberal ideas will be harassed in the USSR. Those who openly declare their
adherence to Marxism are pilloried as self-confessed Marxists, as if they had pleaded guilty to a serious
crime and were held in custody awaiting trial.
Even the Labour Party, in which Marxist ideas have had a minority influence, is now described as a Marxist
party, as if such a statement of itself put the party beyond the pale of civilised conduct, its arguments
required no further answer, and it’s policies are entitled to now proper presentation to the public on the
media. One aspect of this propaganda assault which merits notice is that it is mainly waged by those who
have never studied Marx, and do not understand what he was saying, or why, yet still regard themselves as
highly educated because they have passed all the stages necessary to acquire a university degree. For
virtually the whole British establishment has been, at least until recently, educated without any real
knowledge of Marxism, and is determined to see that these ideas do not reach the public. This constitutes
a major weakness for the British people as a whole.
Six reasons why Marxism is feared
Why then is Marxism so widely abused? In seeking the answer to that question we shall find the nature of
the Marxist challenge in the capitalist democracies. The danger of Marxism is seen by the establishment to
lie in the following characteristics.
1)Marxism is feared because it contains an analysis of an inherent, ineradicable conflict between capital and
labour – the theory of class struggle. Until this theory was first propounded the idea of social class was
widely understood and openly discussed by the upper and middle classes, as in England until Victorian times
and later.
But when Marx launched the idea of working class solidarity, as a key to the mobilisation of the forces of
social change and the inevitability of victory that would secure, the term ‘class’ was conveniently
dropped in favour of the idea of national unity around which there existed a supposed common interest in
economic and social advance within our system of society, whether that common interest is real or not.
Anyone today who speaks of class in the context of politics runs the risk of excommunication and outlawry.
In short, they themselves became casualties in the class war which those who have fired them claim does not
exist.
2)Marxism is feared because Marx’s analysis of capitalism led him to a study of the role of state power as
offering a supportive structure of administration, justice and law enforcement which, far from being objective
and impartial in its dealings with the people, was, he argued, in fact an expression of the interests of the
established order and the means by which it sustains itself. One recent example of this was Lord Denningâ
€™s 1980 Dimbleby Lecture. It unintentionally confirmed that interpretation in respect of the judiciary and is
interesting mainly because few 20th century judges have been foolish enough to let that cat out of the bag,
where it has been quietly hiding for so many years.
3)Marxism is feared because so it provides the trade union and labour movement with an analysis of society
that inevitably arouses political consciousness, taking it beyond wage militancy within capitalism. The
impotence of much American trade unionism and the weakness of past non-political trade unionism in Britain
have borne witness to the strength of the argument for a labour movement with a conscious political
perspective that campaigns for the reshaping of society, and does not just compete with it’s own people
for a larger part of a fixed share of money allocated as wages by those who own capital, and who continue to
decide what that share will be.
4)Marxism is feared because it is international in outlook, appeals widely to working people everywhere, and
contains within it’s internationalism a potential that is strong enough to defeat imperialism, neo-
colonialism and multi-national business and finance, which have always organised internationally. But
international capital has fended off the power of international labour by resorting to cynical appeals to
nationalism by stirring up suspicion and hatred against outside enemies. This fear of Marxism has been
intensified since 1917 by the claim that all international Marxism stems from the Kremlin, whose interests all
Marxists are alleged to serve slavishly, thus making them, according to capitalist establishment propaganda,
the witting or unwitting agents of the national interests of the USSR.
5)Marxism is feared because it is seen as a threat to the older organised religions, as expressed through their
hierarchies and temporal power structures, and their close alliance with other manifestations of state and
economic power. The political establishments of the West, which for centuries have openly worshipped
money and profit and ignored the fundamental teachings of Jesus do, in fact, sense in Marxism a moral
challenge to their shallow and corrupted values and makes them very uncomfortable. Ritualised and mystical
religious teachings, which offer advice to the rich to be good, and the poor to be patient, each seeking
personal salvation in this world and eternal life in the next, are also liable to be unsuccessful in the face of
such a strong moral challenge as socialism makes.
There have, over the centuries, always been some Christians who, remember the teachings of Jesus, have
espoused these ideas and today there are many radical Christians who have joined hands with working
people in their struggles. The liberation theology of Latin America proves this and thus deepens the anxieties
of church and state in the West.
6)Marxism is feared in Britain precisely because it is believed by many in the establishment to be capable of
winning consent for radical change through its influence in the trade union movement, and then in the
election of socialist candidates through the ballot box. It is indeed therefore because the establishment
believes in the real possibility of an advance of Marxist ideas by fully democratic means that they have had to
devote so much time and effort to the misrepresentation of Marxism as a philosophy of violence and
destruction, to scare people away from listening to what Marxists have to say.
These six fears, which are both expressed and fanned by those who defend a particular social order,
actually pin point the wide appeal of Marxism, its durability and its strength more accurately than many
advocates of Marxism may appreciate.
Marxist, I regard it as a privilege and an honour to have been invited to deliver this Lecture in memory of
Karl Marx. The intellectual contribution made by Marx to the development of socialism was and remains
absolutely unique.
But Marx was much more than a philosopher. His influence in moving people all over the world to social
action ranks him with the founders of the world’s greatest faiths. And, like the founders of other faiths,
what Marx and others inspired has given millions of people hope, as well as the courage to face
persecution and imprisonment.
Since 1917, when the Bolsheviks came to power in the Soviet Union, we have had a great deal of
experience if national power structures created in the name of Marxism, and of the achievements and
failures of those systems. Some of the sternest critics of Soviet society also based themselves upon Marx,
including Leon Trotsky, Mao Tse-Tung, Tito and a range of libertarian Marxist dissidents in Eastern Europe
and Eurocommunists in the West.
This lecture is concerned with only two aspects of Marxism.
First, the challenge which Marxism presents to liberal capitalist societies which have achieved a form of
political democracy based upon universal adult suffrage; and second, the challenge to those societies,
which have based themselves on Marxism by the demands for political democracy.
It is, I believe, through a study of this mutual challenge that we can get to the heart of many of the problems
now confronting the communist and non-communist countries, and illuminate the conflicts within and
between different economic systems and between the developed and the developing world.
Before I begin, let me make my own convictions clear.
1) I believe that no mature tradition of political democracy today can survive if it does not open itself to the
influence of Marx and Marxism.
2) I believe that communist societies cannot survive if they do not accept the demands of the people for
democratic rights upon which a secure foundation of consent for socialism must ultimately rest.
3) I believe that world peace can be maintained only if the peoples of the world are discouraged from holding
to the false notion that a holy war is necessary between Marxists and non-Marxists.
4) I believe that the moral values upon which social justice must rest, require us to accept that Marxism is
now a world faith amd must be allowed into a continuing dialogue and with other world faiths, including
religious faiths.
5) I believe that socialism can only prosper if socialists can develop a framework for discussing the full
richness of their own traditions and be ready to study the now considerable history of their own successes
and failures.
The evolution of British democracy
If an understanding of socialism begins- as it must- with a scientific study of our own experience, each
country can be begin by examining its own history and the struggles of its people for social, economic and
political progress.
British socialists can identify many sources from which our ideas have been drawn. The teaching of Jesus,
calling upon us to ‘love our neighbour as ourselves’ acquired a revolutionary character when
preached as a guide to social action. For example, when, in the Peasents Revolt of 1381, the Reverend
John Ball, with his liberation theology, allied himself to a popular uprising, both he, the preacher, and Wat
Tyler, the peasant leader, were killed and their followers scattered and crushed by the King.
The message of social justice, equality and democracy, is a very old one, and has been carried like a torch
from generation to generation by a succession of popular and religious movements, by writers,
philosophers, preachers and poets, and has remained a focus of hope, that an alternative society could be
constructed. The national political influences of these ideas were seen in 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th
centuries, and in the revolutions in England, America, France and Russia, each of which provided an
important impetus to these hopes. But it was the industrial revolution, and the emergence of modern Trade
Unionism in the 19th century which provided a solid foundation of common interest upon which these
utopian dreams could be based, that gave the campaigns for political democracy and social advance their
first real chance of success.
If British experience is unique – as it is – in the history of the working class movement, it lies in the fact
that the Industrial Revolution began here, and gave birth to the three main economic philosophies which
now dominate the thinking of the world.
The first was capitalism. Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations developed the concept of modern
capitalism as the best way to release the forces of technology from the dead hand of a declining and
corrupted feudalism, substituting the invisible hand of the market and paving the way for industrial
expansion and, later, imperialism. The Manchester School of liberal economists and the liberal view of an
extended franchise combined to create a power structure which still commands wide support among the
establishment today.
The second was socialism. Robert Owen, the first man specifically identified as a socialist, also developed
his ideas of socialism, co-operation and industrial trade unionism out of his experience of the workings of
British capitalism.
And the third was Marxism. Marx and Engels also evolved many of their views of scientific socialism from
a detailed examination of the nature of British capitalism and the conditions of the working class movement
within it.
Yet, despite the fact that capitalism, socialism and Marxism all first developed in this country, only one of
these schools of thought is now accepted by the establishment as being legitimate. Capitalism, its
mechanism, values and institutions are now being preached with renew vigour by the British establishment
under the influence of Milton Friedman. Socialism is attacked as being, at best, romantic or ,at worst,
destructive. And Marxist is identified as the anti-Christ against which the full weight of official opinion is
continually pitted in the propanda war of ideas.
The distortion of Marxism
The term Marxist is used by the establishment to prevent it being understood. Even serious writers and
broadcasters in the British media use the word Marxist as if it were synonomous with terrorism, violence,
espionage, thought control, Russian imperialism and every act of bureaucray attributable to the state
machine in any country including Britain, which has adopted even the mildest left of centre political or
social reforms. The effect of this is to isolate Britain from having an understanding of, or a real influence in,
the rest of the world, where Marxism is seriously discussed and not drowned by propaganda, as it is in our
so-called free press. This ideological insularity harms us all.
This continuing barrage of abuse is maintained at such a high level of intensity that is has oblitereated –
as is intended – any serious public debate in the mainstream media on what Marxism is about. This
negative propaganda is comparable to the treatment accorded to Christianity in non-Christian societies.
Any sustained challenge to the existing order that cannot be answered on its merits is dismissed as coming
from a Marxist, Communist, Trotskyite, or extremist. All those suspected of Marxist views runs the risk of
being listed in police files, having their phones tapped and their career prospects stunted by blacklisting,
just as those who advocate liberal ideas will be harassed in the USSR. Those who openly declare their
adherence to Marxism are pilloried as self-confessed Marxists, as if they had pleaded guilty to a serious
crime and were held in custody awaiting trial.
Even the Labour Party, in which Marxist ideas have had a minority influence, is now described as a Marxist
party, as if such a statement of itself put the party beyond the pale of civilised conduct, its arguments
required no further answer, and it’s policies are entitled to now proper presentation to the public on the
media. One aspect of this propaganda assault which merits notice is that it is mainly waged by those who
have never studied Marx, and do not understand what he was saying, or why, yet still regard themselves as
highly educated because they have passed all the stages necessary to acquire a university degree. For
virtually the whole British establishment has been, at least until recently, educated without any real
knowledge of Marxism, and is determined to see that these ideas do not reach the public. This constitutes
a major weakness for the British people as a whole.
Six reasons why Marxism is feared
Why then is Marxism so widely abused? In seeking the answer to that question we shall find the nature of
the Marxist challenge in the capitalist democracies. The danger of Marxism is seen by the establishment to
lie in the following characteristics.
1)Marxism is feared because it contains an analysis of an inherent, ineradicable conflict between capital and
labour – the theory of class struggle. Until this theory was first propounded the idea of social class was
widely understood and openly discussed by the upper and middle classes, as in England until Victorian times
and later.
But when Marx launched the idea of working class solidarity, as a key to the mobilisation of the forces of
social change and the inevitability of victory that would secure, the term ‘class’ was conveniently
dropped in favour of the idea of national unity around which there existed a supposed common interest in
economic and social advance within our system of society, whether that common interest is real or not.
Anyone today who speaks of class in the context of politics runs the risk of excommunication and outlawry.
In short, they themselves became casualties in the class war which those who have fired them claim does not
exist.
2)Marxism is feared because Marx’s analysis of capitalism led him to a study of the role of state power as
offering a supportive structure of administration, justice and law enforcement which, far from being objective
and impartial in its dealings with the people, was, he argued, in fact an expression of the interests of the
established order and the means by which it sustains itself. One recent example of this was Lord Denningâ
€™s 1980 Dimbleby Lecture. It unintentionally confirmed that interpretation in respect of the judiciary and is
interesting mainly because few 20th century judges have been foolish enough to let that cat out of the bag,
where it has been quietly hiding for so many years.
3)Marxism is feared because so it provides the trade union and labour movement with an analysis of society
that inevitably arouses political consciousness, taking it beyond wage militancy within capitalism. The
impotence of much American trade unionism and the weakness of past non-political trade unionism in Britain
have borne witness to the strength of the argument for a labour movement with a conscious political
perspective that campaigns for the reshaping of society, and does not just compete with it’s own people
for a larger part of a fixed share of money allocated as wages by those who own capital, and who continue to
decide what that share will be.
4)Marxism is feared because it is international in outlook, appeals widely to working people everywhere, and
contains within it’s internationalism a potential that is strong enough to defeat imperialism, neo-
colonialism and multi-national business and finance, which have always organised internationally. But
international capital has fended off the power of international labour by resorting to cynical appeals to
nationalism by stirring up suspicion and hatred against outside enemies. This fear of Marxism has been
intensified since 1917 by the claim that all international Marxism stems from the Kremlin, whose interests all
Marxists are alleged to serve slavishly, thus making them, according to capitalist establishment propaganda,
the witting or unwitting agents of the national interests of the USSR.
5)Marxism is feared because it is seen as a threat to the older organised religions, as expressed through their
hierarchies and temporal power structures, and their close alliance with other manifestations of state and
economic power. The political establishments of the West, which for centuries have openly worshipped
money and profit and ignored the fundamental teachings of Jesus do, in fact, sense in Marxism a moral
challenge to their shallow and corrupted values and makes them very uncomfortable. Ritualised and mystical
religious teachings, which offer advice to the rich to be good, and the poor to be patient, each seeking
personal salvation in this world and eternal life in the next, are also liable to be unsuccessful in the face of
such a strong moral challenge as socialism makes.
There have, over the centuries, always been some Christians who, remember the teachings of Jesus, have
espoused these ideas and today there are many radical Christians who have joined hands with working
people in their struggles. The liberation theology of Latin America proves this and thus deepens the anxieties
of church and state in the West.
6)Marxism is feared in Britain precisely because it is believed by many in the establishment to be capable of
winning consent for radical change through its influence in the trade union movement, and then in the
election of socialist candidates through the ballot box. It is indeed therefore because the establishment
believes in the real possibility of an advance of Marxist ideas by fully democratic means that they have had to
devote so much time and effort to the misrepresentation of Marxism as a philosophy of violence and
destruction, to scare people away from listening to what Marxists have to say.
These six fears, which are both expressed and fanned by those who defend a particular social order,
actually pin point the wide appeal of Marxism, its durability and its strength more accurately than many
advocates of Marxism may appreciate.
| In May 1982, Marxism Today featured a lecture given by Tony Benn on his analysism of Marxism and it's influence on the British Labour Movement. Although elements of the text have been rendered obsolete due to the collapse of the Soviet States in 89, much of this remains clear and is a great insight of how Marxism fits with Bennite Socialism. If you would like a copy of this article in a microsoft word format then email us. |
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