John MacLean question
Jun 4 2009 14:46
In some random browsing I ran into a letter MacLean wrote Lenin in 1921 in which he seems to be implying that the UK was working up to a confrontation with the US possibly over Ireland. Does this strike anyone else as daft as it does me? Overall the thing sounds a bit paranoid, was this his general style?
http://www.revolutionarycommunist.org/wweb/macleanindexfiles/1921-oll.htm
Jun 6 2009 21:38
#2
Maclean did suffer a sad decline in his later years (not least towards Scottish nationalism) but his writings (for example "The War after the War") show him to be far more astute and rounded Marxist than the rather dismissive comments of afraser. In that text he is not an aficionado of overproduction per se but of the how the operation of the law of value led to imperialism and to imperialist war.
Jun 18 2009 13:07
#3
Agree with Afraser and Cleishotham about Maclean. A real force within the workers' movement when it was strong. His period in prison had a profound effect upon him physically. His drift towards Scottish nationalism expressed his decline, but that should not detract from the contribution he made to the workers movement.
In the early 80's I was able to read his correspondence kept in the National Library of Scotland. The most moving letters to his wife and children from his time in prison, a real sense of a man in deep emotional pain.
As for the idea of war between the US and Britain the Communist International had similar ideas at the same time. With the defeat of German imperialism, the main imperialist rivals were these two countries.I am no historian but I do not think there was much love lost between them, particularly given the US had bleed the British treasury dry before joining the war.
In WW2 there was certainly a lot of rivalry and undermining by both imperialist powers. Kolko's The politics of war is very informative on this.
Jun 18 2009 13:18
#4
Ops
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Yes it was. The Communist Party denounced MacLean as being insane once he left them. Letters like that are why they could get away with that accusation.
MacLean was a revolutionary Marxist, and had the same style as they have then and today (socialism or barbarism, every recession as a crisis of capitalism, crisis of overproduction making ever greater imperialist wars essential, end of the world is nigh, etc.). That went well in 1916-19, but seemed outdated in his last few years, and his influence shrank then.
There was/is occasionally slight rivalry between US and UK governments. Around that time there was excited talk in the US of a naval arms race between the two countries. It all ended peacefully with the Washington Naval Treaty in 1921-22 and with the UK ending its alliance with Japan in 1921-23.