Stalin and his close associates Anastas Mikoyan and Sergo Ordzhonikidze in Tbilisi, 1925

---

The human dictates the theory; the theory doesn’t dictate to the human

Dear Alex,

Humane Socialism can be extremely radical because it appeals not to some abstract, reductionist pseudo-scientific analysis of the ‘mechanisms’ that determine the way people and societies behave, but because it admits to the fact that despite class interest and allegiances, all human beings have the spark of a conscience and can act on it.

Humane socialism is against the idea of communism as Moloch. It is against this idea of progress, and history as Morlocks eating the Eloi; against the idea of a great communist class Moloch crushing all the undesirables under its wheel (whether or not they have committed any crime yet) because by their class origins they are infected with some kind of original sin.

Whereas you, a self-styled ‘real communist’, a radical petit bourgeois intellectual, now present yourself as the vanguard of the working class (after having argued the case for the Trotskyist purity for years) you now shill for another kind of unpopular Puritanism. I have no idea why the state bothers to persecute your CPGB-ML. Your Puritanism has made your party unattractive to the masses you would like to lead, and if we get fascism in the UK in the end, it will be partly the fault of the CPGB-ML.

The litmus test here for the CPGB-ML is to swallow lots of Stalin. Because only ‘real’ communists will like Stalin, right? And, according to the CPGB-ML, we must also fervently support the North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un.

Now this reminds me of a Salafist Egyptian Muslim who was once a colleague of mine. He was the kind of person who would accuse others of being kafir, a Takfiri who would point the finger at other people at the drop of a hat because they were not able to believe three impossible things a day before breakfast. What are the things you would like us to believe? What’s the CPGB-ML credo?

1. That Stalin only did what he did because he had to.

2. That he only killed the people that he should have killed.

3. That your kind of embittered and irrelevant intellectual, and the bitter and irrelevant people who are drawn to you, will somehow lead the masses into a necessarily bloody revolution.

---

In this bloody revolution, of course, people like me will (deservedly) have their heads sliced off, and people like you will have streets named after them because of their rigorous and pure doctrinal exegesis of the works of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin—and Enver Hoxha—and because of their calls to working class action and revolution. In the UK? Haven’t you read enough about imperialism to know that this is ridiculous? So you and yours long for the collapse.

My belief, however, is that while there is no such thing as ‘humane capitalism’ in the end, there is such a thing as humane socialism. If I were a home-grown Brit like you, perhaps my humane socialism might be a little wet, because the words “humane socialism” would be cover for sell out and accommodation. But we forget.

Britain was an empire, and within our society are not only the people who were stuck here at the core of empire and whose world was circumscribed by the Atlantic, the North Sea, the Irish Sea, and the Channel, but the people who have the experience of empire in their bones. There are many of us—millions, in fact, of many different origins—and we are the vanguard because we understand empire and imperialism and exploitation and war on the periphery, and because our families have been persecuted and jailed and banned and tortured, and because we are in a position to join the dots intellectually in order to oppose imperialism. Meanwhile, the British Trade Unions stay schtum about weapons contracts to Ukraine and Israel because it would mean losing jobs.

Of course, there are also those of us who are a little drunk and exhibitionist because of their ‘privileged’ understanding—perhaps they come from a family of intellectuals and cross cultures and get a little too intoxicated by their insights, a little too messianic. Mad as a box of frogs, one CPGB friend explained.

The radicalism of the ‘humane’ in humane socialism is the radicalism that there is in any human being, despite their initial class allegiance, when his or her or their conscience is awakened. It is not a radicalism you can reconstitute from the dry pages of some well-fingered communist Torah.

The humanism in humane socialism is alive, and for us the horse (the human) comes before the cart (the scripture).

The human dictates the theory; the theory doesn’t dictate to the human.

And if a petit bourgeois intellectual changes allegiances and, instead of becoming an apologist for fascism and capitalism (in the last resort), becomes a Marxist; or if some bourgeois factory owner like Engels has enough intelligence and soul and understanding to betray his class in the name of humanity and become a communist, then there is hope for all of us. So can all people act on their consciences without having some embittered former call centre worker tell them that: whatever they think, whatever they feel, however much they understand, whatever they do, they are doomed, doomed! Doomed to acting in the interests of their class and doomed to being thrown into the dustbin of history.

Now, what did the little Salafi tell me when I said I liked many of the ideas of Islam? He tried to think of his own Kim Jong Un, his own little Stalin litmus test to put me off, and said:

‘Ah, but if you are a Muslim then you believe that in the final days after the world has been destroyed, sperm will rain down from heaven and humans will grow from the ground at the command of God.’

Really, my little Salafi?

And what Stalin did was all for the good? And Kim Jong Un is a hero? Really, my little Salafi?

Communism never really took off in the UK not only because the UK was the centre of empire and key sections of the working class were bought off and signed up to colonise and exploit and manufacture in its name, but because it was a continental philosophy that grew out of the German intellectual tradition. English classical music is pretty shit in comparison to German classical music, and British philosophy is pretty shit in comparison to German philosophy.

But there is a long tradition of radical, revolutionary socialism on these islands without Hegel. We were the first to cut the head off our king, and the ordinary people of the New Model Army agitated for it.

Rather, I would use an analogy from the time of the Civil War (the first English Revolution).

Revolution comes in a number of different packages. One of them is Puritan and the other is Quaker. The Puritans are the witch burners and believed in their heart of hearts in the fires of hell and damnation and in original sin. They were intolerant and misogynistic and a lot of other unpleasant things—against trans rights.

The Quakers, on the other hand, believed not in acting according to some stricture someone somewhere had written down in a book, but on acting on conscience. The result was quite good, better than expected. Unlike the Puritans, when push came to shove they opposed slavery, were for the rights of women, had some semblance of equality between genders, were not involved in the genocide of native Americans, and were more respectful of workers’ rights.

Now, I understand that the Quakers were in fact apologists for capitalism and hypocrites in many ways, but the Quakers (unlike the Puritans) argued for acting on conscience, and that led them in the right direction and away from tyranny and the Gulags, which the Salafist call centre Stalinist asks us to believe were a jolly good thing.

And you are not in a position to dictate to me or anyone else what is right and wrong, my Puritanical, scripture-fingering, Salafist-like, Stalin-loving, Kim Jong Un-admiring, bald-and-bearded, Lenin-imitating Proletarian friend.

All the best,

Richard Steinhardt

---

Richard Steinhardt is a committed socialist and a radical humanist and has published in the Morning Star and a variety of other communist and socialist publications. He believes that human conscience and understanding should always precede dogma and deterministic formulas posturing as ‘social science’.