Marxist thinking old and new

by Robin McGregor

Revolutionary Democracy: New Series, Vol. 1, no, 2 (October 2024)  £7.50 including P&P from NCP Lit, PO Box 73, London SW11 2PQ

Once again, the latest edition of Revolutionary Democracy has arrived from New Delhi. Curiously the October 2024 issue has a number which has been used before so if this review inspires you to order a copy be sure to get the date right.
Slightly slimmer than normal it begins as usual with materials on recent political developments in India and neighbouring countries, with the dramatic events in Bangladesh getting a mention this time. 
An assessment of the five-week Indian general election kicks off this issue. The results saw the ruling Hindu fascist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, lose its majority, but it held on to power thanks to a recently formed alliance with two regional parties.  
This was due to farmers voting against the BJP’s neo-liberal policies, and opposition from minorities and lower caste Hindus about the BJP’s attacks on secularism and fears about the reintroduction of the caste system. Less positively the BJP’s setback was also due to a dispute with their paramilitary allies, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) who did not actively campaign for the BJP, but still supported them. However, the BJP retained huge support, particularly in its strongholds and its allies are firmly committed to neo-liberal policies. 
 Later in the journal there is a brief article exposing India’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Two articles from the pen of Badruddin Umar, Chair of the National Liberation Council of Bangladesh, discuss the overthrow of the Awami League sparked off by student riots about job quotas which the army refused to quell. He also gives a useful summary of the long-term background to these events. 
This is followed by the Turkish writer Mustafa Yalciner who offers an interpretation On Lenin’s approach to the national question as applied to contemporary Asia. 
Returning to India there is a horrific account of child labour on long distance Indian railway journeys. An article on the latest Union Budget for 2024-25 announced in July follows before this section concludes with an account of “Operation Clean Jharkhand”, which is the Indian state’s brutal attacks on the Adivasi peasants living in the eastern state which is a part of the attempt to crush the long-term Maoist rebellion.  
Two declarations on Latin America and the ongoing conflicts from the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Political Organisations (ICMLPO) are followed by the usual range of theoretical and historical materials.
 First we have the first part of an article A V Shchegolov on Lenin’s Criticism of Bogdanov’s Reactionary Sociological Views, which is a translation of a 1937 Soviet work. Unfortunately, and unusually for the journal, this does not come with any new editorial material which would put it in context. We hope this will be remedied when the second part appears.
 A few pages of poetry from Bertolt Brecht, Makhdoom Muhiuddin and Kaifi Azmi are followed by three archival pieces. The first of these is Correspondence between CPI and CPGB on the question of Pakistan and Indian National Unity, 1945 from the Labour History Archive & Study Centre, Manchester.
 This is a memo drafted by S A Dange of the Communist Party of India in November 1945 with a response by R P Dutt of the British party several months later. The discussion showed there were differences of opinion on the demand by the Muslim League for a separate state of Pakistan and on the amount of attention the CPGB devoted to the independence struggles.   
 Next is a 1948 Conversation between JV Stalin and Dolores Ibarruri on the Tactics of the Communist Party of Spain. Here the exiled La Pasionaria discusses such matters as uniting the fragmented resistance to Franco in Spain, anti-Francoists in Mexico and the little help the French communists were giving to their oppressed neighbours. Stalin gave some useful advice based on his earlier experience of working underground and in exile.
 Also from a Soviet source comes the brief Stalin - Zhou Enlai Talk, September 19, 1952 which covers matters such as the release of prisoners of war from the Korean war which was drawing to a close and China’s relations with its neighbours. 
 The issue concludes with a review of a book entitled Albania Challenges Khrushchev Revisionism, originally published in 1976, and now reprinted in Delhi. This is almost entirely based on Albanian leader Enver Hoxha’s writings about the important dispute which split the world communist movement. 
Revolutionary Democracy is a half-yearly theoretical and political journal published in April and September from India. It contains materials on the problems facing the communist movement, particularly relating to Russia, China and India, the origins of modern revisionism, the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and developments in the international communist movement.

Mao’s Quotations on the Market

by Robin McGregor

the bright red book

 Sixty and a half years ago, in May 1964 to be precise, the first edition of Quotations from Chairman Mao, otherwise known as the “Little Red Book” was first published. 
 This weekend a collection of some 200 editions and related material such as a set of printer’s stereotypes used to print the first edition in English is being sold by Peter Harrington, one of London’s grandest antiquarian booksellers at a book fair in Hong Kong.  
 A brief, but well-illustrated catalogue (on which these notes are based) can be downloaded from https://www.peterharrington.co.uk/blog. It carries the note “Price on Application” which means “Don’t even think about it”, but readers can spend an agreeable leisure hour learning about its publication history in China and beyond for free. 
 It was first issued by the General Political Headquarters of the Chinese People’s Liberation
Army (PLA), intended as a basic instruction manual for the political instruction of the army’s rank and file who had only obtained their liberation in 1949. 
 It was published many times in print runs of millions and frequently translated becoming something of an icon of 1960s radicalism. Like all icons it was more admired than understood in detail, particularly by foreigners. In China, the book unfortunately became seen by many as the entire body of Marxism rather than the basic starting point it was intended to be.
  Best known in its red vinyl 320-page 33-chapter pocket sized version, the book went through many changes in arrangement, binding and text with authorised and unauthorised editions from friend and foes. Parodies such as Chairman Blair’s Little Red Book (with an aptly blue cover) appeared in 2001 and the Little Red Book of Corbyn Jokes came out in 2017 to say nothing of the 2010 Little Red Book of Liverpool FC. 
 Experimental collections first saw the light of day in 1960 when the PLA issued a Quotations from Mao Zedong’s Philosophical Thought on the poor paper available at the time. The first version of the now famous work publicly appeared in a four million print run for army battalions but were soon in demand by civilian institutions. 
 The first edition appeared in a variety of bindings including wrappers and brown or red vinyl which both had small variations which delight bibliophiles.  
 The first edition had an introduction by Mao’s deputy, Lin Biao, (with a small but telling calligraphic fault) which was of course soon corrected and finally removed after his 1971 sacking. 
 For speed and economy they were printed by stereotype, solid plates of type metal cast from papier-mâché moulds taken from the surface of the type setting. This made large print runs of the first edition possible, but also ensured small errors appeared in large numbers. 
 Provincial governments and individual parts of the PLA produced their own versions. Among many others, in Inner Mongolia, a larger format was produced.  
 A second edition, with substantial revisions appeared in March 1965 from the press of the 
Heilongjiang Provincial Party Committee with some additions and cuts. A third, expanded edition, promoted by Lin Biao appeared a year later. 
 By then an estimated 28 million had been issued, some in large-format versions. The variations often show important political changes with excerpts mentioning out of favour individuals removed.   
 In April 1966, national party leadership took it over with a claimed 240 million copies by late 1966. A bilingual Chinese-English version appeared along with editions in many of the minority languages of China, and in Braille. 
 By 1972 10 million copies of translations had been produced by the Foreign Languages Press. These include an Albanian edition from 1967, three English editions between 1966 and 1972. An Esperanto version appeared in 1967 and a Danish one in 1970. Abroad unauthorised versions appeared, including one helpfully entitled Quotations From Chairman Mao-Tse-Tung. Danger! This Book is Communist Propaganda! From the Voice of Americanism publisher in California.  
 In China, modern reprints are sold to the tourists at prices greatly below that which Harrington expects. Apart from this collection Harrington is presently offering a first edition of the Quotations for £13,750, but readers with a more limited budget can buy a Mongolian edition for a mere £225. 

Problems of Peace and Socialism

by Robin MacGregor

Revolutionary Democracy :Volume Two, No. 2 (New Series) October 2023 
£5 plus £2.50 P&P from NCP Lit. PO Box 73, London SW11 2PQ

 Another issue of the Indian Marxist journal has arrived on these shores. It maintains now familiar format of articles on Indian affairs past and present, article from parties belonging to the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations (ICMLPO, plus materials from Soviet archives. This time there are slightly fewer, but longer articles than hitherto. 
With regard to contemporary Indian the issue opens with two short articles on violent attacks on tribal peoples in Manipur state and the increasing number of anti-Muslim pogroms which increasingly common features of Indian life under the BJP government. 
There follows two longer articles on India. The first offers a detailed critique of the latest national budget for India. The author found that beneath the predictable fine words, there are ill thought out programmes and discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities. An interesting study of India: Broken Legacies of the Land and Forest Rights Movement provides an account of the subject from pre-colonial times through the British Raj to the present day, noting that things did not improve very much after independence. 
  The centre-piece of this issue, occupying almost a quarter of the space is the Asiatic Mode of Production in South Asia: An Empirical Study by Tripta Wahi. The concept of the “Asiatic Mode of Production” is a much debated one in Marxist thought. It was invented by Marx, but was not developed by him to any great extant. It refers to societies where government power and prosperity depends on large scale irrigation systems which had to be maintained by peasants. Some critics (both Marxist and non-Marxist) say the concept is unnecessary and what it describes is simply a variant of feudalism common in Europe. The present article covers what was British Punjab in pre and colonial times. 
  An Interview of Qemal Cicollari, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Albania with a Brazilian journalist defends the reputation of Enver Hoxha and blames the fall of socialism in Albania on his successor Ramiz Alaia. Unfortunately parts of his comments about other present day “communist” parties in Albania tends to resemble Private Eye’s Dave Spart.  
A transcript of an August 1946 "Record of the Meeting Between the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, I.V. Stalin, and Members of the Delegation of the Labour Party of Great Britain” reports a two hour meeting in Moscow. The exchange of views was a polite one, so we should not read too much into Stalin’s comments including one to the effect: “That the Soviet Union advances towards socialism via its own, Russian way, which is the shorter one, while the British advance towards socialism by a longer roundabout, way, both of these ways being appropriate”. Interestingly Stalin had a more realistic view about the possibility of a return to power by Churchill than his visitors. This reviewer is happy to identify the delegates as party chairman Harold Laski, General Secretary Morgan Walter Phillips, Harold Clay, Assistant General Secretary of the Transport & General Workers Union, and Alice Bacon, the new MP for Leeds North-East. Hopes for better relations between the two wartime allies were destroyed by Labour Prime Minister Attlee who secretly authorised the production of British atomic weapons less than six months after the meeting.
  The issue concludes with two sets of historical documents. The first is Materials for the Draft Programme of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks drawn up in 1947 with comments by Stalin. This is given a helpful introduction by the journal’s editor Vijay Singh. While it has been published in Russian, this is the first English publication. Finally we have a reprint of a 1951 Communist Party of India pamphlet containing comments from various party branches  making Suggestions and Criticisms on the Draft Programme and Policy Statement of the CPI, 1951. This is followed by an internal Soviet Party document about it which was sent to Stalin’s for information before publication in Pravda. 
All in all another worthwhile issue. Occasionally a few concessions to non-Indian readers would be helpful, particularly for those of us who tend to forget that a lakh is 100,000 and a crore is 10 million.

21st Century Communism

by Robin MacGregor

The International Communist Movements – Annual Report 2019-2020: Academy of Marxism, Chinese Academy of Social Science ; Bari: Marx 21 Edizioni, 2022, 328 pp; €18:00 from: www.marx21books.com

This volume is a welcome collaboration between the Academy of Marxism, which is part of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and the Italian publisher Marx 21 Edizioni of Bari. CASS is not just another think tank, but plays an important role in shaping party and government policy in China.
    It is “an English and compressed version” of a work first published in Chinese in June 2020. Both Editors, Xin Xiangyang and Pan Jin’e, hold senior positions in the influential Academy of Marxism, while the individual authors and translators (all Chinese) share the same affiliation. It seems this is the second such report, but is the first to appear in English.
    In all there are fifteen chapters, plus an Appendix summarising recent developments in the world’s communist parties.
    The first by joint editor Pan Jin’e not only summarises the contents of the book but looks at the recent activities of various other parties such as the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. This is followed by an article on history of the Communist International which was established in 1919, and offers interesting reflections on its positive and negative impact on the communist movement, particularly on China. Two articles are devoted entirely to China; one outlines the achievements of the entire 70 year life of the Peoples Republic, while the other focuses on the May Fourth Movement, which in 1919 saw student protests in Beijing over China’s shabby treatment at the Treaty of Versailles spread like wildfire across the country resulting in a widespread interest in Marxism at the expense of reactionary traditional nationalism, which resulted in the foundation of the 50 strong Communist Party of China in 1921.
    These are followed by an account of the global balance of forces since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Despite the fall of socialism in the Eastern Bloc capitalism has not got all its own way thanks to China’s powerful economy which will be the anchor of a new order with “a community of shared future for mankind”.
    There are four articles on the recent activities of the ruling parties in Cuba, Peoples Korea, Laos and Vietnam. That for Vietnam covers the Communist Party of Vietnam in the run up to its 13th National Congress which took place in 2021. The two articles on Cuba and DPR Korea both focus on constitutional developments which both countries made in 2019, when the DPRK made important amendments to its constitution and Cuba brought in an entirely new one. Finally, that on Laos deals with the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party’s policy on developing the party’s cadres.
    The final section deals with recent developments of non-ruling communist parties. This starts with general survey of activities of Western European communist parties, their congresses and electoral activities. It does so fairly and, unlike some Soviet era publications on this theme does not pretend that they on the verge of revolution.
    This is paralleled by a similar piece on activities in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe where there have been some positive results under very difficult circumstances, particularly the legislation passed in some countries and in the European Union which brazenly equates the liberators of Auschwitz with its builders. This is followed by a useful summary of those parties involved in the European Left, which had as setback in the 2019 elections for the EU’s so-called parliament. This section also includes a more detailed account is of the Workers Party of Belgium which has had an unexpected electoral success.
    The article entitled “The Communist Party USA: 100 Years in Struggle for New Development” is interesting,but does not really live up to its title as it largely revolves round the CPUSA’s 2019 Convention. The informative article entitled at on “New Developments of the Japanese Communist Party” is more accurate. This gives a detailed account of the party’s recent policies, achievements and activities. The article does not shy away from addressing the party’s recent decline.
    On the whole the translations are decent enough with few obvious howlers, but on occasion a native English speaker should have been on hand to give a final polish. The title of the Belgian article is “Revival of the Workers’ Party of Belgium and its Enlightenments” could obviously have been improved upon.
    However, these are small grumbles which a reviewer feels entitled to make. The volume provides useful concise outlines of subjects which for British readers are normally below the horizon. We hope to see another volume, which is promised in the introduction before not too long.

Pages of Our History: Charles H Kerr & Co

Charles Hope Kerr

By Robin McGregor

Charles H Kerr & Co is not a particularly well-known name on this side of The Pond but it is possible that some readers will at have a few books from this Chicago publishing company on their bookshelf from when it was the main labour movement publisher in the days before the First World War.

Charles Hope Kerr was born in 1860, the son of a mathematics teacher at a boys’ school in the American state of Georgia. His parents were abolitionists helping slaves escape via the underground railway, an activity which forced them to take advantage of it and flee the state northwards, where his father became professor of Greek at Madison University.

Originally a Protestant Congregationalist, after graduating in Romance languages from his father’s university in 1881 Kerr started working as a clerk at a Chicago publishing house specialising in producing material for the Unitarian cause. Here he gained skills on which he built a long, productive, if not financially rewarding career.

Amongst his early achievements he dramatically boosted the circulation of the denominational paper Unity from 1,600 in 1883 to 8,000 by 1891. From 1886 it was published by a company bearing his name. The contents of Unity were not to the taste of the more conservative Unitarians, and even the more liberal ones were not pleased by Kerr penning a favourable review of an anarchist work in the pages of a Unitarian church journal.

This hastened his departure from Unitarianism and the company was re-established as an independent entity in 1893. One-thousand shares costing $10 each were issued. Of these, $500 was taken up by Kerr, a few wealthy supporters chipped in, but most went to supporters for whom the chance of discounts on future publications was the main attraction. A new monthly, first entitled New Occasions and then New Time, dealing with a mixture of progressive religious and secular views achieved a circulation of 30,000. When it was sold to its Editor it soon collapsed, suggesting that having Kerr’s hand at the tiller was vital.

The timing of the launch was not a good one: soon afterwards a trade depression struck. He managed to survive by appealing to supporters to invest small sums in what he described as a co-operative venture.

Although the company described itself a co-operative, it seems to be something of a one-man band, indeed not a few follow workers denounced him on this very point. In 1894 Kerr bravely published The Pullman Strike by William Carwardine, which was a sympathetic account of the recent important strike by the Chicago railwaymen that no other local publisher would dare touch as a result of pressure from George Pullman himself. This was just one book in an extensive list from a dazzling range of progressive viewpoints ranging from anarchism, bimetallism, evolutionism, feminism, and the Single Tax cause.

Kerr was never a man to adhere to a single cause for long. By the turn of the century he had abandoned his Populism for Marxism and became an active member of the most left-wing section of the Socialist Party of America.

This was the party, founded in 1901, that obtained 900,000 votes in the 1912 presidential election. It was an unsteady and varied coalition of socialists, trade unionists, municipal reformers, populist farmers, immigrants and a few Afro-American intellectuals. Despite winning mayoral positions and Congressmen, participation in elections was frowned upon by members of syndicalist tendencies. Its opposition to American participation in the First World War saw a few members leave in protest – but the Bolshevik Revolution presented another challenge, with many of those supporting it leaving to join the new Communist Party.

The Socialist Party had a national newspaper, the Appeal to Reason, that was commercially produced. This was a positive choice for the party, which feared that an editorial board would become an unwanted power in its own right. This also had the advantage of allowing Kerr to publish for the party but was never bound by its more right-wing leadership, and in turn the leadership was not embarrassed by any of Kerr’s mix of authors.

Much of his output took the form of pamphlets and small books in series such as The Pocket Library of Socialism and the Library of Science for the Workers, in distinctive red, new-fangled cellophane covers. The latter series included his best seller Shop Talks in Economics, written by his associate Mary Marcy in 1911. This was a basic introduction to Marxist economics, which sold two million copies and was translated into languages as diverse as Chinese and Finnish. These were priced very cheaply at five cents a copy, but $6 could allow branches to buy 1,000 copies of similar booklets.

On a much more ambitious scale he supported the massive task of translating the first complete English translation of the second and third volumes of Marx’s Das Kapital. Their familiar red-covered volumes were taken up by the London publisher Swan Sonneschein, who reprinted them frequently for decades. The publication of Socialist Songs with Music, the first such American collection, was a lighter product of his press.

His publications were generally small and cheap booklets, so they had little appeal for general booksellers who could not make a profit on them unless they could be sure of large sales. Instead, most of the business was by mail-order, with the books and pamphlets being advertised in his International Socialist Review (ISR) and other left wing periodicals, or sold via sympathetic unions and meetings of branches of the Socialist Party.

Kerr’s output was not limited to books and pamphlets. It produced educational playing cards, postcards and board games, but it is likely that the ISR was Kerr’s most important publication. Established in July 1900, it was originally a worthy intellectual publication with 800 subscribers. A revamp in 1908 with better paper and illustrations took circulation from 4,000 to a peak of 45,000 copies by 1911, boosted by such techniques as offering cheap copies of his books and pamphlets to new subscribers.

Regular subscription income from periodicals are often a mainstay for publishers because, being paid in advance, it gives a cushion for the more unpredictable income from book sales which, even if successful, only comes in after they are sold. It is reasonable to assume that a successful periodical allowed the company to produce low-margin books. A more unusual promotional offer made by Kerr was giving a phonograph to subscribers taking out a 25-year subscription.

Sadly, anyone taking up this offer would not have received a quarter-of-a-century worth of magazines. It closed in 1918 when the Federal authorities, armed with draconian war-time censorship powers, banned the ISR from the mailing system because it opposed American involvement in the First World War. Violent attacks on the Socialist Party by police and vigilantes had an indirect effect on Kerr as well as a direct one.

In 1917 a War Department spy visited Kerr’s shop hoping to buy anti-war literature to incriminate him but was told he could not because the book in question was banned. Instead he sent some other books published by Kerr to his bosses in Washington. They were not impressed to be sent older works by Marx and Kautsky and other 19^th century works that were not banned, and the translation of Plato’s Republic by Kerr’s father. In 1918 the Canadian government made it illegal for any Canadian to possess any literature published by Charles H Kerr & Co, under penalty of a $5,000 fine or five years' imprisonment, a worthy if back-handed tribute to his work.

Rising paper costs and disruption of the transatlantic trade in the early war years hit the company and the circulation of the ISR declined.

 Apart from this, Kerr was badly hit financially when the union leader Bill Haywood unexpectedly fled to the Soviet Union whilst out on bail when appealing against a 20-year sentence. Kerr had contributed substantially towards the bail fund, which was, of course, lost.

This and the subsequent violent and legal repression of the Left in the Red Scare after the war ensured that the later history of the Company was at best one of only marginal significance.

Exhausted from his tireless and financially ill-rewarded labours Kerr finally retired at the age of 68 in 1928, but not before handing over the firm to the Proletarian Party of America (PPA), which had emerged from the left-wing part of the Michigan section of the Socialist Party of America. Kerr himself spent the last 16 years of his life in retirement living in Los Angeles with the sister of Mary Marcy before dying in 1944.

The PPA was the sort of regional party that found Communist Party discipline irksome. In the 1930s Kerr’s company published only a few new books, mostly by the PPA’s leader, but its backlist of classics kept it in business.

The Communist Party’s own International Publishers was founded in 1924 and soon took over the task of publishing the works of Marx and Lenin, aided by the Party’s contacts with the Soviet Union. With his background, it is unlikely that Kerr would have taken well to Bolshevik discipline.

The PPA finally closed in 1971 but the publishing firm remained in the hands of some Chicago radicals attached to the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Instead of being wound up as expected, it found a new niche market of publishing works of labour history that included several chronicling the battles it took part in. Its looks as though its last book was published in 2015 because the page on the publisher’s website for forthcoming books is blank.

Readers interested in seeking more details should consult Allen Ruff’s We Called each Other Comrade: Charles H Kerr & Company, Radical Publishers. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press 1997 and 2011, which is the standard history of the firm but is a bit weak on the relatively unimportant post-First World War period.