Reform of practices about the cruel use of animals to test commercial cosmetics does of course not seem to have very much to do with the Trotskyist theory of permanent revolution. It appears trivial as I noted in my post. It would hardly pass a mention in social conversation with Tariq Ali.
It is at the other end of the scale of reforms to the ones I have also argued, to LP's shock, horror and disgust, for the takeover of landed capital and for the socialization of international financial transactions, to start to get a handle on finance capital at a global scale.
Not only because it annoys LP so to quote Lenin, but because it is centrally relevant to current world wide strategy, let me quote Lenin's reproof to Kautsky: "The distinguishing feature of imperialism is the domination, *not* of industrial capital, but of finance capital..." (Imperialism and the Split in the Socialist Movement October 1916).
Therefore the distinction that LP so abhores on principle, that I keep making, between finance capital, industrial capital and landed capital, with the aim of slicing up the enemy and taking over the means of production, is relevant in theory as well as in practice.
On the apparently trivial level of cosmetics, millions of working people are concerned about the accountability of the capitalist industry for cruelty to animals, people for whom LP I sense fundamentally has no respect, but who are resources for the overall global revolution. A concession by industrial capital to them, strengthens their hand and their determination to go further.
While many animal rights activists are purely reactive, they may show considerable determination, breaking existing law to make their point.
To refer to Lenin again, (perhaps someone could give LP a copy of Left Wing Communism - an Infantile Disorder over the festive season), "The alternation of parliamentary and non-parliamentary forms of struggle, of tactics of boycotting parliament and tactics of participating in parliament, of legal and illegal forms of struggle, and likewise their interrelations and connections - all of this is distinguished by an astonishing richness of content."
But LP dismisses this richness of content with his usual proud phrases (Lenin again) against any sort of reforms on the grounds that this would always promote illusions, like presumably the 10 Hours Bill did:
>The only way serious assaults on humanity and nature are going to be
>eliminated is when the thieving, warmaking, ecology-despoiling capitalist
>class and their puppets lose their political and economic power. Fostering
>illusions that any real change can take place while they still rule the
>world is on the same moral plane as defenders of slavery in the 1840s who
>decried the radicalism of William Lloyd Garrison as "impractical."
What empty words. What inability on principle to engage with concrete reality and the concerns of ordinary people.
No wonder LP agonised about whether he should exchange friendly words with an attractive woman policeman. It's OK now: he can ask her if she is wearing the right brand of makeup. And who knows, she might be.
Chris Burford
London.