John Crump

How close was France to a socialist revolution? - John Crump (1968)

Paris May 1968

One of the most amusing reports to come out of France during the recent unrest was of one panic-stricken capitalist, convinced that his class was about to be expropriated, who loaded his car with over £1 million in cash and made a dash for the Swiss border. But his terror, ridiculous in retrospect, was matched by a corresponding euphoria in left-wing circles. Anyone accustomed to thinking along Bolshevik or anarchist lines was convinced that "a revolutionary situation" had developed and, in Britain at any rate, there were several groups declaring that the socialist revolution had started.

Marx and Engels and the 'Collapse' of Capitalism - John Crump (1969)

Marx Cartoon
In 1786, three years before the outbreak of the French Revolution, Gracchus Babeuf wrote:
 
"The majority is always on the side of routine and immobility, so much is it unenlightened, encrusted, apathetic . . . Those who do not want to move forward are the enemies of those who do, and unhappily it is the mass which persists stubbornly in never budging at all."
 
The events of 1789 disproved his gloomy predictions but, by the time Babeuf became prominent, the reaction was already setting in.

Rosa Luxemburg and the Collapse of Capitalism - John Crump (1969)

Rosa Luxemburg

Fifty years ago on 6th January began the hopeless Spartakist rising against the Social Democrat government of Germany. It led to the brutal murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, two well-known and courageous opponents of the first world slaughter. Luxemburg, as an opponent of both reformism and Bolshevism who understood the worldwide and democratic nature of socialism, had views on many subjects near to those of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. However, there were certain basic differences between our views and hers.

The Thin Red Line: Non-Market Socialism in the Twentieth Century - John Crump (1987)

paul petard - telescopes
To find a coherent set of ideas which are subversive of capitalism, and which do offer an alternative to production for the world market, one must turn to the 'thin red line' represented by … anarcho-communism; impossibilism; council communism; Bordigism; situationism… …there is a basic set of socialist principles which these currents share. Initially, four such principles can be identified. The currents of non-market socialism are all committed to establishing a new society where: (1) Production will be for use, and not for sale on the market. (2) Distribution will be according to need, and not by means of buying and selling. (3) Labour will be voluntary, and not imposed on workers by means of a coercive wages system. (4) A human community will exist, and social divisions based on class, nationality, sex or race will have disappeared. Let us clarify these four principles for those readers who may not immediately grasp all their ramifications.

The Alternative to Capitalism - Adam Buick and John Crump (1987)

If state capitalism is not socialism, what is? In other words, if state ownership and management of production does not amount to the abolition of capitalism but only to a change in the institutional framework within which it operates, what would be the essential features of a society in which capitalism had been abolished?

What is Capitalism? - Adam Buick & John Crump (1987)

paul petard - cubicles

In this pamphlet we shall identify the essential features of capital­ism and then go on to discuss state capitalism and the nature of the capitalist class. We shall be describing in Marxian terms, concisely but thoroughly, the economic mechanism and set of social relation­ships that constitute capitalism. We believe Marx’s analysis to be in general still valid even if, the institutional forms of capitalism have changed from those of Britain in the nineteenth century which Marx studied.