John Crump (1944 to 2005)

The author of this pamphlet deserves a brief note in his own right as a comrade who consistently, throughout his life, promoted the cause or revolutionary communism.

I recall John as a fellow member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain back in the late 1960's writing some of the more interesting and positive articles on the events unfolding over that period (including one memorable article on the events of Paris in May '68). As one of the youngest editors of their journal the Socialist Standard he contributed, along with Adam Buick, to a brief spurt of articles and discussions that sought to break the mould of that organisation in a number of small but important ways.

Unfortunately, that organisation was too stuck in its ways to fully accomodate these efforts by some of the new influx of younger members and we, along with some others around the country, began to organise a loose faction within the SPGB that vigorously challenged its ideas about class struggle and workplace organisation, parliament and elections, womens and gay liberation and more. John, along with the rest of us, became more open to some of, what appeared to us, to be similar ideas to our own in the anarchist and council communist traditions and some of the newly emerging ideas of groups like the Situationists and the Italian autonomists.

We were far from expressing consistent collective views but were seen as a threat non-the-less to the stabillity of the SPGB. A handful of us (other than John) were expelled and others left shortly afterwards.

These 'heretical' ex-members then formed a new group called 'Social Revolution'. An early pamphlet of the group entitled 'A Contribution to the Critique of Marx' was written in 1974 by John Crump and produced jointly with the British based 'Solidarity' group. It opened up a healthy theoretical debate, although I recall being critical of some of its conclusions at the time. John continued as an active member of our group contributing a number of articles to our journal.

When the group entered into a lengthy period of theoretical and organisational debate with the 'Solidarity' group, eventually merging into 'Solidarity for Social Revolution', John was less than enthusiastic, considering their 'communist' credentials none too convincing.

As it turned out he was probably right as a further split eventually occurred leading to the formation of the 'Wildcat' group and subsequently the 'Subversion' group. John continued to keep in contact with us and contributed to one of our Subversion weekend schools on 'State Capitalism' with a pamphlet on 'The State and Capital in Japan'. He also inspired one of our regular comrades to investigate and subsequently write about the 'Anti Parliamentary Communist tradition in Britain' in a book, pamphlets and various articles for both Wildcat and Subversion.

John wrote and had published a number of important books, either on his own or with other comrades. Of particular note were:

'The Origins of Socialist Thought in Japan', 1983.
'State Capitalism: The Wages System under New Management' with Adam Buick, 1986.
'Non-Market Socialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries' Editied with Maximilien Rubel, 1987.
'Hatta Shuzo and Pure Anarchism in Interwar Japan', 1993.
'Nikkeiren and Japanese Capitalism', 2003.

He also contributed many articles in political and academic journals throughout his life.

John remained a defender of the 'thin red line' of comrades dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism on a world scale and the development of a free, stateless society without the wages and money system, but alway eschewed the sectarian and dogmatic politics of the small group. He was an inspiration to us all.

Mike (Manchester), 2008