Karl Marx: sixth campist

Eric Lee’s column in Solidarity 626 gives a potted social-democratic history of NATO, and all but makes the claim that Karl Marx would have supported NATO against Russia, as he supposedly supported “British and French troops in the Crimean War” against the Tsar.

Solidarity and Eric Lee both trace our political inheritance back to the erstwhile American Trotskyist Max Shachtman, who fought for independent working class politics in the face of a Trotskyist movement which lent its support to the imperialist Russian state, but in old age moved towards the right and supported American imperialism against its Russian counterpart. Our Max Shachtman is that of 1946, whereas Lee’s is that of 1971.

We cannot dispute Lee’s claim to the political legacy of Shachtman’s final years. However, we should fight a bit harder to keep Marx’s legacy to ourselves.

Marx and Engels did not support the European powers against Russia in the Crimean War. Just as revolutionary socialists during the Cold War promoted the working class as the third camp against the Western and Soviet imperial blocs, Marx too heralded it as the “sixth power” against the various empires of the world:

“But we must not forget that there is a sixth power in Europe, which at given moments asserts its supremacy over the whole of the five so-called ‘great’ powers and makes them tremble, every one of them. That power is the Revolution. Long silent... awaking from its slumbers... A signal only is wanted, and this sixth and greatest European power will come forward... This signal the impending European war will give...” (Hal Draper wrote about this in more detail here).

Much of what Eric Lee has written for Solidarity is great, such as his recent pieces on strikes in Cambodia and Lithuania. He can hardly be blamed for also writing articles that go against our politics: if I were given regular space in a newspaper whose purpose and ideas I was at odds with, I would use that opportunity to cause maximum aggravation.

In the face of an ongoing Russian invasion, many on the British left have acted as if NATO and Russia are equal aggressors in this war: this is dishonest and risible. However, NATO is our enemy, not an ally of convenience against Putin.

Pete Boggs, Lambeth