The twentieth
century has seen some world-shaking events none more so than in 1917 which saw
the successful October Russian revolution. While 1956 is not quite in that
ballpark, it nonetheless was a significant year by any stretch of the imagination.
It is to Hall’s credit that he spent so much time highlighting it. It is also
true that while other dates have been widely studied the 1950s and particularly
1956 have been under-researched.
The first
question any reader will ask is how one examines a whole year in one
medium-sized book. The answer, in this case, is very neatly. Part 1 is ‘Winter;
Part II is ‘Spring Part III is called ‘Summer and Part IV, Autumn’.
This
cleverness can, however, take you only so far. Although Hall writes in a very
accessible and exciting style, he has a limited understanding of the
significance of this year on future world events. Moreover, an even less
understanding of Stalinism, which diminishes his capacity to produce consistent
or groundbreaking work.
While Hall
narratively describes these events, it is to the detriment of a more analytical
study of the world in 1956. His book tends to end up as a collective mishmash
of events that have no real connection other than they happened in 1956.Hall is
too reliant on memoirs and secondary sources, which tend to blur out what Hall
thinks. The book tends to be written more from a journalist than a historians
point of view.
As One
reviewer states “1956 is enjoyable and informative, but it has limits. What is
missing is the sense of a bigger picture or a deeper rationale. Hall seems to
sense this, as he makes periodic efforts to provide a connecting thesis. He
ends his Prologue: "1956 saw ordinary people, across the globe, speak out,
fill the streets and city squares, risk arrest, take up arms and lose their
lives to win greater freedoms and build a more just world... It was an epic
contest that would transform the post-war world.
Five
Themes
At least five
significant themes need to be examined if a book about 1956 is to be any good.
First and foremost you would have to examine the explosive rise and dominance
of American Capitalism. Secondly the worldwide crisis of Stalinism.Thirdly the
catastrophic impact of the policies of the petty bourgois nationalist movement
especially in Latin America. Fourthly, The growth of Left-wing groups after
1956. Last but not least the response of the working class and the growth of
Trotskyism.
First
Theme-American Imperialism
Hall opens
the book with the firebomb attack on Martin Luther King. Hall’s writing on the
explosive Civil rights protest is separated from the very explosive rise of
American capitalism.The events of 1956 were a confirmation of Leon Trotsky’s
prognosis although writing in 1924 the Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky’s analysis
showed remarkable foresight ” From the power of the United States and the
weakening of Europe flows the inevitability of a new division of world forces,
spheres of influence and world markets. America must expand while Europe is
forced to contract. In precisely this consists the resultant of the basic
economic processes that are taking place in the capitalist world. The US
reaches out into all world channels and everywhere takes the offensive. She
operates in a strictly “pacifist” manner, that is, without the use of armed
force as yet, “without effusion of blood” as the Holy Inquisition said when
burning heretics alive. She expands peaceably because her adversaries, grinding
their teeth, are retreating step by step, before this new power, not daring to
risk an open clash. That is the basis of the “pacifist” policy of the United
States. Her principal weapon now is finance capital backed by its billions of
gold reserve.
“This is a terrible
and overwhelming force in relation to all parts of the world and particularly
in relation to devastated and impoverished Europe. To grant or to refuse loans
to this or that European country is, in many cases, to decide the fate not only
of the political party in power but of the bourgeois regime itself. Up to the
present time, the US has invested 10 billion dollars in the economy of other
countries. Of these 10 billion, two have been granted to Europe in
addition to the ten billion formerly supplied for its devastation. Now, as we
know, the loans are granted in order to “restore” Europe. Devastation, then
restoration: these two aims complement each other, while the interest on the
sums appropriated for both keeps flowing into the same reservoir. The US has
invested the most capital in Latin America which, from the economic standpoint,
is becoming more and more a dominion of North America. After South America,
Canada is the country which has obtained the most credits; then comes Europe.
The other parts of the world have received much less”.
Many of the
events described in Hall’s book were in some cases indirect products of this
new era. One more direct product was the Suez crisis. Which largely confirmed
America’s preeminence as a global superpower and the demise of one of Europe’s
leading bourgeois nations Britain.
Second
Theme-Stalinism
The second
point that needs to be examined is the USSR’s relationship with America. Many
processes were at work to bring about Khrushchev's actions in 1956.
However, the main one being that national autarkic economy of the Soviet
Union was rapidly disintegrating and was no match for the global reach of the
American Economy. Stalin’s theory that you could build a nationally insulated
economy within one country was coming to a bloody demise.
As Nick Beams
points out “Leon Trotsky, writing in his book The Revolution Betrayed traced
the origins of the bureaucracy and warned that its monopolisation of political
power, its nationalist doctrine of socialism in one country and the defence of
its material interests and privileges against the Soviet masses would lead
inevitably to the liquidation of all the gains of the 1917 revolution and the
restoration of capitalism unless it was overthrown by the working class.
Beams
continues "In that book, Trotsky refused to characterise the Soviet Union
as “socialist”. The Russian Revolution and the nationalisation of the property
had, he insisted, done no more than lay the foundations for the transformation
of the Soviet Union into a socialist society. Its future depended on a complex
series of national and international factors. The transition to socialism
depended on the interconnection of two processes. If the revolution, which had
begun by 1917, had extended to the advanced capitalist countries and if the
Soviet working class was able to overthrow the usurping Stalinist bureaucracy
then the USSR could evolve in the direction of socialism. However, if the
Soviet Union remained isolated and if the bureaucracy, in defence of its
material interests and privileges, continued to stifle the progressive
tendencies inherent in the nationalised industry and central planning, then the
Soviet Union would undergo a continuous degeneration, leading eventually to the
restoration of capitalism”.
In 1956 sections
of the Stalinist bureaucracy turned on its commander in chief and partner in
crime Stalin. Kruschev’s “secret speech” was hardly secret and was
not so much a political break with Stalinism but a mechanism in which to deal
with the raging political and economic crisis that gripped world Stalinism.
Khrushchev's
speech was typical of a man who was implicated in all the major crimes
committed by the Stalinist bureaucracy. One subject all the Stalinist
bureaucrats were in agreement was the correctness of the struggle against Leon
Trotsky the only leading Bolshevik not to have been rehabilitated by the
Stalinists. Khrushchev said “We must affirm that the party fought a serious
fight against the Trotskyists, rightists and bourgeois nationalists and that it
disarmed ideologically all the enemies of Leninism. The ideological fight was
carried on successfully ... Here Stalin played a positive role.”
Khrushchev
had a very limited understanding of what social forces he was inadvertenly
unleashing with his speech.Far from preventing revolution, he opened the
floodgates. His response was the same as Stalin and unleash terror on the
working class.
Third
Theme-Castroism
While Hall
does not glorify the growth of Castrism, he does not explain its ideological
roots or the enormous damage it did to the revolutionary aspirations of the
Latin American working class.
It is not
within the remit of the article to go into any great detail on Castroism, but a
few points can be made. It would not be an overstatement to say that Castroism
has been the subject of extraordinary misunderstanding. Some people portray it
as a movement towards socialism some say it is real existing socialism even
Marxism.
None of these
falsehoods is true. Castroism was not a movement of working class. It was a
movement based on the petty bourgeoisie of Cuba. When describing Castro as a
"petty-bourgeois nationalist" One is merely calling things by their
right scientific name.
As the
American Marxist writer Bill Vann states “Marx correctly stated that the
petty-bourgeoisie is incapable of independent and consistent political action.
Its inconsistency is a reflection of its intermediate social position. Caught
between the two main classes of society and continuously being differentiated
into exploiter and exploited, it is compelled to follow one or other of these
classes—either the proletariat or the bourgeoisie”.
Far from
leading to socialism throughout Latin America the working class there was lead
to defeat after defeat; the responsibility lies with the petty bourgeoisie
nationalists. An
examination of Cuba today is a sad confirmation of these defeats. Castro’s
brother is leading the country to a disaster by opening up the economy to the
rapacious nature of American capitalism.
Fourth
Theme-The New Left and 1956.
The political
and social crisis produced by the 1956 crisis of Stalinism opened new
opportunities for left-wing groups in Britain and globally. The break of
Stalinism’s grip on the working class led to new formations on the left.
The majority
of these formations were not that healthy and still clung to the ideological
baggage of the Stalinists.The Britsh Communist party lost a significant amount
of it working class cadre and a large section of its intellectuals such as EP
Thompson Christopher Hill, Raphael Samuel, John Saville to name but a few.
The historian
Eric Hobsbawm stayed in the Party and ended his days an admirer of Gorbachev.”
I have a lasting admiration for Mikhail Gorbachev. It is an admiration shared
by all who know that, however, for his initiatives, the world might still be
living under the shadow of the catastrophe of a nuclear war - and that the
transition from the communist to the post-communist era in eastern Europe, and
in most non-Caucasian parts of the former USSR, has proceeded without
significant bloodshed”
Samuel who
left at the same time as Hill formed a new Magazine alongside Stuart Hall.In
November 1956, he sent a letter to Stuart Hall suggesting they set up a
magazine called ‘New University Left,' Hall accepted the idea, but the magazine
went on to be called Universities & Left Review. To gain support for the
publication which would orientate not towards the working class but to
students, former CP members, fellow travellers, and various other left-wing
radicals Samuel sent letters to these forces appealing for money and articles.
Samuel and
Hall were both hostile to Trotskyism and refused to collaborate when the
Trotskyists of the SLL sought a joint political approach to the demise of
Stalinism.Healy’s initial response to the ULR was friendly, and he sought a
dialogue with them and other New Left groups. The ULR’s hostility to Trotskyism
soon became apparent.
Samuel said “There has been an incredible mushrooming of
inner-party groups. On the ultra-Left—the dissidence of Dissent—a dozen
‘vanguard’ parties, and as many tendencies and groups, compete for the honour
of leading a non-existent revolutionary working class”.
Similar
hostility was shown by E P Thompson and John Saville who formed the New
Reasoner magazine. Cliff Slaughter then a leading member of the SLL wrote
this overture to the first New Left. “Many others
in Britain, today besides contributors to LABOUR REVIEW, are consciously trying
to make a Marxist theoretical contribution to the socialist movement.Those
connected with the New Reasoner and Universities and Left Review number avowed
Marxists in their ranks, and some of their work is of great value.
However, in
the belief that theory is very important, indeed basic to the building of a
Marxist working-class leadership-and we assume that the editors of those
journals agree that this must be the primary aim of all of us-we think it vital
to state sharply where we different basic questions of theory and method, as
well as genuinely to try to find areas of common ground in research and common fronts
in current political struggles”.
Despite the
SLL’s comradely approach, this was not reciprocated by the New reasoner
editorial board,leaving SLL leader Gerry Healy to write “Comrade Thompson seems
to have cast away all the luggage, he was equipped with the Communist Party
except one soiled old suitcase labelled anti-Trotskyism.
Brian Pearce
won to the SLL out of the CP wrote warning of the dangers of founding an
organisation without thorough assimilation of the struggle waged by Leon
Trotsky against Stalinism was prescient. Pearce warned of the dangers of an
uncritical attitude by the ULR editors towards their past affiliation to
Stalinism and their hostility towards the orthodox Marxist in the SLL.
“Nothing
could be more dangerous today than a revival of the illusions which dominated
that ‘old Left.' One of the chief sources of the confusion and worse in ‘new
Left’ quarters, and in particular of their hostile attitude to the Socialist
Labour League, is to be found in the fact that though these people have broken
with Stalinism they have not undertaken a thorough analysis of what they
repudiate, have not seen the connection between the apparently contradictory
features of Stalinism at different times or even at one time, and so they
remain unconsciously open to influence by false ideas absorbed during their
period in the Stalinist camp”.
Fith Theme
-Gerry Healy and the Socialist Labour League.
The ULR was
not the only magazine around in 1957 that sought to gain political ground from
the breakup of the Communist Party. A magazine of an entirely different
political calibre was founded by Gerry Healy’s the Club forerunner of the SLL
(Socialist Labour League) called Labour Review.
The knockback
from the ULR did not stop the orthodox Marxists or Trotskyists in the Fourth
International from doubling their efforts to gain from the crisis within the
British Communist party. Healy continued to believe that Stalinism was a
counter-revolutionary force. The SLL won prominent figures such as Cliff Slaughter,
Tom Kemp, Peter Fryer and Brian Pearce out of the CP.
Conclusion
As an epitaph
to his book Hall wrote "many of those who took to the streets or called
for change, as well as those who defended the status quo, were aware of the
global context in which they were acting. Indeed, some sensed that they were
part of a larger interconnected story".
While it is
facile for one historian to entirely ditch his theory of historical events and
adopt another, I believe that if Hall had delved into the Marxist archive and
attempted to give his book on 1956 a more analytical and perspective driven
angle, then a better book would have been achieved.
