This is the second book of a two-part memoir from the renowned political scoundrel Tariq Ali,[1]
The book is
a bit of a car crash from an editorial standpoint. Hoping from different
subjects and containing significant family memories. Born into a prominent
family in Lahore, Ali’s uncle was the chief of Pakistan’s military intelligence.
Ali remained heavily tied to the Pakistani ruling elite.
He was
friends with Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto. In his 2008 book, The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American
Power, Ali wrote, “I knew [Benazir Bhutto] well over many years. The People’s Party
needs to be re-founded as a modern and democratic organisation, open to honest
debate and discussion, defending social and human rights, uniting the many
disparate groups and individuals in Pakistan desperate for any halfway decent
alternative, and coming forward with concrete proposals to stabilise occupied
and war-torn Afghanistan. This can and should be done.”
From a
political standpoint, given that Ali has been involved in countless major political
betrayals, his use of the phrase “You Can’t Please All” for his book title exhibits
a tremendous degree of cynicism on his part.
The book
reels off several key political events without revealing Ali’s political
involvement, such as the revolutionary upsurges of 1968–1975. He was an eyewitness
in Moscow to the fall of the Soviet Union. His book on the subject is dedicated
to Boris Yeltsin. He became close friends with the bourgeois nationalist Hugo
Chavez.
The
narrative is littered with anecdotes, reflections, notes and stories. It contains
several portraits of fellow Pabloites, such as Ernest Mandel and Pseudo-left intellectuals,
and collaborators who founded and relaunched New Left Review: E. P. Thompson, Perry Anderson and
Robin Blackburn.
You Can’t
Please All has been heavily reviewed in all major bourgeois media outlets. On
the whole, the book has been met with favourable reviews. Pseudo-left groups
such Counterfire have been especially fawning with Chris Bambery writing “ Reading
You Can’t Please All, I was reminded of a saying we have in Scotland that
someone is a ‘Man O’Pairts’, as one definition puts it, ' an all-rounder, broad
in knowledge and at the same time practical.’ Tariq Ali is certainly that: an
agitator, a historian and a theorist; novelist, playwright and film-maker;
gourmet, cook and a traveller; debater and polemicist and more. “[2]
Ali began
his early political life in the International Marxist Group, the British
section of the Pabloite United Secretariat, whose fundamental opposition to
Trotskyism centred on its rejection of the counterrevolutionary role of
Stalinism and the need for a political revolution in the Soviet Union, instead
attributing to the bureaucracy a progressive political mission.
In the book,
Ali mentions his enormous political debt to his friend and mentor, Ernest
Mandel. Mandel (1923 –1995) was the long-time leader of the revisionist United
Secretariat. Born in 1923 in Frankfurt, Germany, he joined the Trotskyist
movement in Belgium after the outbreak of the Second World War. Following the
war, and still in his early twenties. His early life was dominated by his
opposition to the theory that Stalinism had a progressive role to play in
revolutionary politics. He renounced his previous opposition to Stalinism because
of the emergence of Pabloism in the late 1940s.[3]
Max Boddy
makes these central points: “ Mandel’s embrace of Pabloism did not flow from an
incorrect economic theory, but the reverse. His economic analysis was based on
his rejection of the revolutionary role of the working class as the gravedigger
of capitalism. Mandel adapted to the restabilisation of bourgeois rule after
the immediate post-war crisis. He put forward that the contradictions which led
to the breakdown of world capitalism in 1914, and which propelled the working
class into revolutionary struggles, had been overcome. Mandel sought to provide
the economic justification for the rejection by Pabloism of the revolutionary
role of the working class. He claimed capitalism had reached a new stage, in
which the imperialist powers had resolved the inner contradictions that
resulted in the barbarity of the early 20th century. He initially referred to
this new period as neo-capitalism.”[4]
Ali’s political
life in the International Marxist Group was supplemented by his involvement
with the radical magazine New Left Review and the Pabloite publishers Verso.
NLR’s origins lay in the merger of Universities & Left Review, run by ex-Stalinist
Raphael Samuel and Cultural theorist Stuart Hall[5]
alongside E.P. Thompson’s The New Reasoner. Apart from Perry Anderson, the
majority of the founding members of the NLR were members of the IMG.
The orientation
championed by the ULR and The New Reasoner was not towards the working class
but to the radicalisation that was taking place inside the universities, and
young people were the prime target of the editors. While rejecting a revolutionary Marxist
perspective, they sought to attract young people to the magazine on an entirely
utopian socialist basis. Their uncritical absorption of the method of the
Frankfurt School theorists meant, in essence, that Samuel and the ULR shared
the same theoretical premise that the working class was not an agency for
revolutionary change. They instead took on board critical theory, which saw the
"emphasis moved from the liberation of the working class to broader issues
of individual agency." E.P. Thompson also shared this orientation.
The Marxists
inside the Socialist Labour League and its publication Labour Review conducted
a fight against the left radicalism of Samuel, Hall and E P Thomson. It opposed
the various ideological trends that emerged from the collapse of Stalinism;
these trends became known as “Western Marxism”. Foremost amongst them was the
publication New Reasoner, which in 1960 became the New Left
Review. Founded by former CPGB historian E.P. Thompson, its supporters
claimed to be developing a “humanist” and English version of Marxism that
repudiated Lenin’s theory of the vanguard party, which was blamed for the
emergence of Stalinism.
The SLL’s
Brian Pearce warned of the dangers of founding the New Left Review without
thorough assimilation of the struggle waged by Leon Trotsky against Stalinism.
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. He writes, "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 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".[6]
During the
entire 800 pages of this book, Ali never explains anywhere any of his “political
peregrinations”. As David Walsh writes, “ Why he supposedly adopted Trotskyism
in the late 1960s, or why he abandoned it some years later; why he wanted to
disrupt Labour Party activities at one moment and later tried to install
himself as a member. He embodies the French expression, “Before 30 a
revolutionary, after 30, a swine!”—except, in his case, the swinishness
developed early on and just grew.”[7]
Ali still
plays lip service to political events and is rolled out at meetings and
conferences to deliver his political pearls of wisdom, but in reality, he is
merely looking for “ greener pastures” and has become a major bourgeois
commentator and gun for hire. When asked in an interview what the left can do
today, he comments.
“Starmer is
dreadful. I’m in no doubt that his policies will create a space that, at the
moment, the far right will try to fill. We need to respond. But we can’t simply
do what we did in the past, in the same ways. In the 1970s, the Anti-Nazi
League and Rock Against Racism were vital, but the world has changed, the
situation is different, and we need appropriate responses.
It won’t be
easy, but you know it wasn’t always easy in the 1960s and 1970s. It took time
to build the anti-Vietnam War movement. We were constantly under surveillance
and harassment from the state.
Over the
last few decades, we have witnessed the growth of dynamic movements, like Stop
the War. Today, the struggle around Palestine has brought large numbers into action.
The horrors of Gaza, the complicity of the Western governments in the
slaughter, and the scale of the resistance movement on the streets will shape a
generation.
But we need
to think about organisational outcomes, establishing networks and rebuilding a
progressive political alternative.
For the
left, the Labour Party is finished. We should encourage the small number of
left Labour MPS (especially those who had the whip removed) to work with the
Independent MPS and together to try to offer an alternative vision and voice
for me aside and said, “Look, I’ll tell you what the problem is. This isn’t
Spain, which is part of Europe. This is a country far away. So, just
transporting you guys over for political propaganda would cost us a lot of
money, and we don’t have that much. Then, we have to make sure that you guys
are protected. Because this isn’t a war fought with rifles, the Americans are
bombing us all the time, they will kill some of you.”[8]
As David
Walsh writes, it is the response of a middle-class freebooter who has lost his
audience. Now officially “a former Marxist,” Ali had even less responsibility
toward the working class than when he was a member of the International
Executive Committee of the “United Secretariat” of the Pabloite “Fourth
International.”
Notes
1. Ernest Mandel, 1923 –1995- A critical
assessment of his role in the history of the Fourth International- This
collection of three lectures by David North places United Secretariat leader
Ernest Mandel’s political contributions in the context of the struggles within
the Fourth International during and after World War II. Mehring Books- $3.00
2. The Heritage We Defend 2018 edition
of the foundational 1988 work by David North, chairman of the International
Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, contains a new preface, photo
section, and an extensive glossary.
3. Mr Tariq Ali’s Radical Mumbo Jumbo-
Workers Press March 7th 1972 https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/workers-press-uk/n707-mar-07-1972-Workers-Press.pdf
[1] keith-perspective.blogspot.com/2025/04/street-fighting-years-by-tariq-ali.html
[2]
www.counterfire.org/article/you-cant-please-all-memoirs-1980-2024-book-review/
[3] See The Heritage We Defend- David North, Mehring
Books.
[4] The ICFI’s exposure of Ernest Mandel’s
“neo-capitalism” and the analysis of the global economic crisis: 1967–1971-
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/09/09/rvtn-s09.html
[5]
Cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1932-2014): A
political career dedicated to opposing Marxism- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/03/05/hall-m05.html
[6] Some Lessons from History: The Left Review, 1934–1938
(November 1959) https://www.marxists.org/archive/pearce/1959/11/left-review.htm
[7] UK’s Stop the War Coalition: A bogus antiwar movement
in the service of the Labour Party-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/11/30/stwc-n30.html
[8]
Rashid Khalidi The Neck and The Sword
Interviewed by Tariq Ali-New Left Review May\June 2024https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii147
