[La mere half-page later he is accusing us…]

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La mere half-page later he is accusing us of nothing less than... silence -on the capitalist state!

Such methods of polemic are nothing better than dragging Marxism in the mud, as the following - more central - examples will show.

The series begins with an attempt by Banda to paper over the cracks exposed in the WRP's version of "Marxist philosophy" by Cde Thornett's Second opposition Document and by an article in Socialist Press | no.41 * taking up the reply to this document by G.Healy. The sentence to which Banda, like Healy objects is the following: "All knowledge begins from the struggle of man against nature, now in the form of the class struggle -the conflict of revolutionary theory in the form of the Party with spontaneity in the form of the class"

This is the only quotation from Thornett taken up in Banda's first article, and is deliberately isolated it comes tron it foots section. dealing with the way in which the WRP substituted interminable abstract and academic though heated debates on philosophy for any concern whatsoever for programme and the party's practice in the class struggle, specifically its orientation towards the working class and the unions.

DIFFERENCE This was a fundamental difference that emerged between the cadres now in the WL, for whom words of Lenin and Enes, an ude to action" and the WRP léadership, for whom philosophy became (during a period of political degeneration within the movement) a rational isation of the WKrs separatior rom the class, and its inability te penetrate the unions.

Banda sums up this contempt for programme and rigid separation of theory from practice when he writes in part 7: "the struggle for the dialectic is the struggle develop him, mogrande 15 dive oped in abstract debate on philosophy, rather than philosophica understanding tested and developed at each point in the fight for programme in the daily struggles of the working class. Ideas for Banda are worked out in the head and then presented to the class in the form öf ultimatums.

Yet while this is the idealist philosophical position of the WRi leadership they have to dress it ur as Marxism in order to befuddle and discipline WRP members. One of the most abused works of Marxism in this process is Volume 38 of Lenin's Collected Works (the Philosophical Notebooks).

On the basis of quotations snatched from this volume the WRP leadership attempts to create a prestige: an aura of authority. Yet this in itself is a degeneration from thift Slaughter (WRP CC member) Cally davs wrote in 1962, for instance, Lenin on Dialectics: "Anyone undertaking G. Healy and actress Vanessa Redgrave:

WRP becoming a sect of middle class study of Lenin's Notebooks will have to have beside him [NB, emphasis added] Hegel's Logic; only in this way can one see the continuity between separate notes and extracts. Even without this, Marxist students will find many of Lenin's brief notes very stimulating and worth detailed study... But these notes and extracts are part of a single project, and are therefore best taken as a whole, read through and reworked several times by the student in the light of his own knowledge of Marxism and of Lenin's own writings and actions" • [p7] This insistence on seeine the necessity to enrich theory through practice is correct, and is the position of the WSL. Banda however, desperate to defend Healy's "philosophical" jungle of snippets and distortions, has to throw this aside. Thus we read(part 3): "Before one can understand Lenin, says Westoby wagging his finger at Logic. Indeed one can only read Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks in "parallel' with Hegel's Logic, according to this arrogant and politically shallow man. Quite the opposite is the case[!]" [emphasis added] Where does Slaughter stand question now?

WILDS

Throw away your Hegel (and your Lenin) and follow Banda, therefore, into the wilds of philosophy and such gems of clarity as this: "Dialectical thought concepts are now entering matter through us via the self impulse of the universal movement of matter. As this takes place we arrive at the moment o: actuality which is causality. Lenin explains that "The unfolding of the sum total of the moments of Actuality NB equals the moments of dialectical cognition (Lenin, Collected Works Vol 38, p158). At this dialectical moment of causality, the cause (essence) cancels itself into the effect (abstract thought already posited in us as a part of a previous dialectical proc ess). Likewise the effect cancels itself into the cause. This is the only way to grasp the dialectical relationship between man and nature". [emphasis added] On such a passage - which closely reproduces one in Healy's Notes..... - we can only be brutally irank. In our opinion it is simply gobbledygook. It has nothing to do with 'grasping the dialectical relationship between man and nature' or with the struggle for an understanding of Marxism within the revolutionary party. It simply strings together - without the slightest explanation - a series of categories from several hundred pages of Hegel's Science of Logic. Being culled from a piecemeal and opportunist reading of Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks it gets them nopelessly confused. If Banda - or Healy, who has so far made no public reply in writing - think they can explain with reasonable clarity (and brevity) what they mean by, for example, 'the cause (essence) cancelling itself into the effect (abstract thought already posited in us)', our columns are open to them. In our view the only purpose of such passages is to establish on a bogus theoretical basis the authority of the WRP leadership which, in the field of programme and practice in the national and international wor kers movement, is now completely bankrupt.

Banda continuously retreats from any analysis of class questions into the abstract realm of "philosophy" ". Thus man's development in unity and conflict with nature through production is separated rigidly by Banda from present-day class society, and the Jorm now taken by man's struggle with nature. Man's unity with nature remains what it always was - that man (like the material world itself) is a material being and a part of the universal movement of matter. This is elementary Marxism, which we do not need Banda to tell us. But clearly Banda needs reminding that man's struggle with nature goes through a historical development, at the centre of which is the development of the means of production which in turn force changes in the relations of production - different forms of society, It is this struggle which has developed man and his knowledge of the world, whilst at the same time changing the world he lives in.

Indeed rocks, plants, animals, the oceans and the air all share the same "unity" with nature as Man. They are all material bodies. Yet only Man has developed tools, production relations, knowledge and the material class struggle. If our "philosophy" is not to descend to the meaningless and the general therefore it must advance beyond discussing the general conditions for man's development of knowledge, to the process of struggle through which that development takes place.

Banda pulis back from this step and indignantly protests: "Westoby wants to 'prove', using the authority of Lenin, that the struggle of opposites is more fund amental, 'more essential' than thei unity"

This is a crass one-sided distort ion of our article on Healy's revis ions of Marxism. But even giver this, has Banda stopped to conside the content of what he is saying How does he reconcile his presen position with Lenin's extensiv quotation from Hegel in the Not books which includes this key passage (stressed and restressed a previous SLL/WRP cadre schooli summer camps)? "But it has been a fundamenta prejudice of hitherto existing logir and of ordinary imagination if idealism that Contradiction Lie conflict] is a determination having less essence and immanenci than Identity [ie 'unity']; but in deed, if there were any question o rank, and the two determination: had to be fixed as separate Contradiction would have to be taken as the more profound an‹ more essential. [emphasis added For as opposed to it Identity is on! the determination of simple immed iacy, or dead Being, while Contra diction is the root of all movemen and vitality, and it is only insofa as it contains a contradiction tha anything moves and has impulse and activity. " [C.W. p139] Banda and Healy want to leav us then with 'unity', 'Identity' 'dead Being' cut off from the livin struggle of opposites.

REVISION

A central revision of Healy Slaughter and Banda is that thes make man merely a part of an ob jective natural process, eliminatin therefore the need for a leadership rooted in the working class, exercis ing leadership over real sections o the class. The ending of capitalisn is thus viewed by the WRP in similar way to the erosion of a clif by the sea or the sprouting of a ber of daffodils, as a natural proces. within which conscious preparatio: becomes irrelevent. This is done b: sophistry. Banda writes: "At one point Westoby makes th astonishing remark that 'Healy thu reduces the class struggle to a mer "natural process' . Now if the clas struggle is not a 'natural process what is it? Tell us, Mr Westoby; i it a supra-natural process! ...His u of the word 'mere' serves 'merely to cover his tracks"

No, Mr Banda, the struggle c classes is a natural process withi which Marxists fight for leadership Healy belittles this fight and w exposed his position. But no: Banda assures us that the road t the dictatorship of the proletaria is just a natural process, and th role of the WRP is merely t observe and correctly identify tha process, while throwing a fe ultimatums at the working class.

Trotsky began the Transitional "The world political situation as whole is chiefly characterised by historical crisis of leadership of th proletariat"

NATURAL"

For Banda and Healy howeve the situation is now simply a stag in the 'natural process' toward socialism, the universal movemer of matter" towards the dictatorshi of the proletariat, which will presi mably irresistably drive worke towards the WRP (despite its refus to put forward or fight for polici to develop and train new layers ‹ workers). The Transitional Prog amme is thus reduced by the WR to a few handy phrases and i

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the Oxford 'uneducated' WRP, one must have read Hegel's Science of