[page 30]
Reclaiming the Ground:
Christianity and Socialism y John Smith and othe Published by Hodder and
Stoughton, 1993, £5-99
Reviewed by Keith
Dickinson
HIS BOOK OF essays gives
some insight into the think-
ing behind the retreat of the Labour leaders from the socialist ideas that the labour movement was built on. In contrast are the essays of the Christian socialist contributors, who are genuinely striving to find a socialist alternative to Thatcherism and the market economy.
The concessions to Tory ideology of the Labour shadow ministers writing in Reclaiming the Ground are clear. Tony Blair, star of police conferences and shadow home secretary, argues that: "Chritianity is a tough religion... It is not utilitarian though socialism can be explained in those terms. It is judgemental. There is right and wrong. There is good and bad. We all know this, of course, but it has become fashionable to be uncomfortable about such language".
In stark contrast is the emphasis of Bob Holman in his essay damning the 'New Right': "Just as their Victorian predecessors began to worry about the health of the poor once cholera threatened the middle classes, so the New Right Tories worry not about poverty but the associated problems of crime, drugs, public
expenditure and
the threat to
traditional val-
ues"
His informa-
tive article also
expresses an ur-
gency which is
absent from la-
Book Reviews
bour and union leaders today. But then he is a neighbourhood worker in Glasgow's Easterhouse, dealing with the problems created by these Tory policies. His experience leads him, for example, to criticise "a social work system of which some parents are scared... with top managers on £50,000 running it"
What chance is there of such people identifying with workers' every-day problems? But this point applies also to the leaders of the labour movement - although it was obviously felt a little insensitive to mention it in this book.
BRECIANMING
THE GROUND
MIHT
It is sickening to see the power dressers' and career seekers at Labour Party conferences when you think of the struggle of the people who voted for them to maintain a reasonable standard of living. But John Smith's interpretation of the 'second commandment, calling upon us "to love our neighbours as ourselves', attempts to justify this. He condescendingly tells us "it does not expect a frail humanity to be capable of loving our neighbours more than ourselves: that would be a task of saintly dimensions" • Yet the present conditions of the working class, and the very existence of the organisations that they built to
improve them, were achieved precisely by people who put the interests of their class above their own.
While people starve in this world no one is free and no person can be totally at peace with themselves. In the meantime, no doubt, Labour leaders will continue to recommend 'saintlyhoods' or Knighthoods for the Robert Maxwells of this world.
John Smith's theme is continued by his parliamentary private secretary, Hilary Armstrong MP. She claims that "Jesus quite explicitly enjoined his disciples to fulfil the law of loving their neighbours as themselves, not instead of themselves"
She argues that "part of the gospel is definitely the genuine love of oneself and this can be justified as being "born of one's knowledge of the forgiveness and love of God". As this knowledge is self-contained and fully detatched - like the flats and houses these Labour leaders own! - it is a very convenient philosophy to rationalise their personal aggrandisement.
In contrast, the Christian socialist contributors see it as an important factor for leaders to live among and at the level of the working class. Bob Holman, for example, stresses that for the early Labour leader, George Lansbury, "Christianity and socialism were not confined to church and chamber, but were expressed in his daily living. His integrity became a byword. He refused all bribes, perks, honours, even a cabinet ministers pension. In the LSE archives I came across the Lansburys' Co-op savings book at the time of
Reviews • 29
[page 31]
Bessie's death and while George
was leader of the opposition.
They possessed £6.6s.3d. What a
contrast with those MPs who use
Parliament as a springboard to
consultancies, directorships and
lucrative posts in the media"
This is an important differ-
ence with the present day
leaders. However, even the high-
est personal principles and the
greatest contact with the 'grass
roots' are no substitute for a
clear theory and programme of
action.
That was why the 'danger' to
the right wing of Lansbury's ex-
ample was far less than that
posed by Terry Fields, Dave Nellist and Pat Wall, the Militant supporting Labour MPs in the last parliament who kept only that part of their salary equivalent to the average wage of a skilled worker, but who also defended the ideas and programme of Marxism. Is it an accident that these comrades are not mentioned as present day examples on the list of rank and file leaders who lived at the level of the people they represent?
In his essay John Vincent, using Jesus as a model of a 'political sharpshooter' who knocked down vested interests, says that this must be "done from alongside the poor and disadvantaged". The failure to do this, "if I might say it, is probably the greatest problem with British socialists, be they Christian or near-Christian. Within a lifetime, many have risen from being working-class people in industrial areas to being middleclass people in the suburbs...
"When such people shoot from the hip, they are defending vested interests indistinguishable from the Tories" he continues. "For a while, there were ex-working-class teachers and lecturers and social workers and professionals who retained a gut-based commitment to working-class socialism and the Labour Party. But what of the future? Don't you in the end speak from the base - the economic base - that you have secured for yourself?"
• Reviews
Market
New'technoloc
T.abour
Loving markets more than our neighbours.
The best of these are still fighting alongside other workers in Militant Labour. Their political commitment can be clearly seen by the personal sacrifices they make financially and in time given to the fight for our socialist programme, on the streets and estates and in meetings of the movement.
"Part of
the gospel is itely the oneself."
But you have to be convinced that such a programme means a change in society. John Vincent says that criticisms have been made about the RH Tawney lectures, the social historian to whose memory this volume is dedicated. Many contributors had dealt "with specific issues, rather than with the question of a final ideal or socialism; that it was easier for Christian socialists to shoot at unemployment or third world debt or monetarism or racism and so on, than it was to deal with larger questions which were in the origins of socialism... there is a need for anyone committed to a large ideal which is unachievable in their time to be on the look-out for everything that goes against that ideal or that achievement".
We wouldn't accept that so-
cialism is not achievable in our
time', although no one can give a fixed timescale. More important is how we campaign and organise to bring that achievement forward.
The right wing and trendy left always tried to condemn Militant supporters for raising the need to achieve a socialist society to ultimately solve most of the immediate problems faced. But in the process of the struggle for revolutionary change concessions can be forced from the ruling class which can bring about big reforms for a period - effecting the daily lives of workers - for fear of the working class taking over society.
As Bob Holman points out "George Lansbury spent 40 years trying both to improve and destroy the Poor Law"
The politicians in this book all emphasise that the Labour Party owes more to Methodism than Marxism. But there is no alternative offered to the Marxist analysis particularly with John Smith's heights seeming to be "the Scandinavian countries which should be emulated" - just when the whole edifice of their welfare state has fallen apart under the capitalist contradictions!
Nonetheless, Marxists can learn much by familiarising themselves with the ideas of their opponents, both inside as well as outside the movement, in books such as this.
[page 32]
The Fall of Yugoslavia
By Misha Glenny Published by Penguin, 1993,
£6-99 Reviewed by Dave Carr
ISHA GLENNY'S BOOK,
Mist pubished in June
1992 but recently updated, describes the spiral descent of the Bosnian civil-war into a hell on earth.
Over 100,000 have been killed. Nearly half of Bosnia's 4.2 million people have been made refugees. Thousands of women have been raped. Thousands imprisoned in concentration camps. Villages have been wiped from the map. Even in the relative safety of Sarajevo how do you survive un an average wage of two to five Deutschmarks (DM) when an egg costs DM4?
He identifies
flashpoints
that could
spark new Balkan
wars.
So who is responsible?
Glenny's book clearly shows the land-grabbing nationalist dictators of Serbia, Croatia and the
Queuing for bread in Sarajevo.
leaders of the Serbs, Croats and Moslems of Bosnia- Hercegovinia (BiH) as responsible for the carnage. But their crimes have been aided and abetted by the internation al community' ie the western capitalist powers of USA, Germany, Britain and France along with Russia and the minor regional powers of Greece and Turkey.
These powers, following the collapse of Stalinism, attempted to re-assert their former influence in eastern ognition of the new
Bosnian Serb leader Karadiz.
Europe. Recrepublics of
11. -
ex-yugoslavia stone of the foreign policy.
The result however has been a nightmare as the first major armed conflict in Europe since world war two exploded in their faces. The attempts to extricate themselves from this mess and minimise the potential for new Balkan wars have ignominiously collapsed.
One such plan, the junked Vance-Owen peace plan, is seen by Glenny as a "workable interim po-
Decame ine corner-
capitalist powers'
litical solution". Militant argued that the division of Bosnia-Heroegovina into ten cantons under Vance-Owen would set the seal on ethnic cleansing and guerilla warfare. Indeed as Glenny admits, the Bosnian Serbs and Moslems would have lost out under Vance-Owen. Hence only the Croats signed. The refusal of the Bosnian Moslems to accept the plan led to the collapse of the fragile military alliance between the Croat and Moslem militias in May 1993.
Finally, what are the prospects for peace? As war-weariness grips the working class then a movement from below could sue for peace but equally, the war could spread.
"Bosnia is finished but this is not necessarily the end of the war" , argues Glenny. Apart from a full-scale Serbo-Croat war he identifies four flashpoints that could spark new Balkan wars. The three Albanian communities in Albania, in Kosovo and western Macedonia; the Macedonian question; the struggle for regional hegemony between Greece and Turkey; and the armed conflicts in the former Soviet Union overlapping with the Bosnian war. Indeed the unravelling of the national question threatens to engulf
large chunk of
grisly repetition of Europe in history.
Reviews •
[page 33]
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