From Professor David Bates, Professor in Contemporary Political Thought and Subject Director of Politics and International Relations at the School of Psychology, Politics, and Sociology.

The ‘flagging’ of Norman Geras’ 1989 essay ‘’ by Reading University is something which must be addressed. The case highlights the deeply problematic and often contradictory applications of Prevent legislation. The responses to this case however do not respect adequately the radical character of Geras’ work.

Norman supervised my PhD at Manchester University from 1997-2000. When I first met him in 1997, he described himself as a ‘liberal-Marxist’, though by then I think he was better described as a ‘left-liberal’. By the time he wrote his last book Crimes Against Humanity: The Birth of a Concept (2011), there was little remaining in Norman’s work which could be described as Marxist.

Norman started his career as a Trotskyist of sorts. He was an active member of the International Marxist Group (IMG). Other high profile members of this group included Tariq Ali, who Norman was to clash with in later years, particularly in relation to the Falklands war which Norman supported, and Ali opposed.

Norman’s wonderful book The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg (1976) – which won the prestigious Isaac Deutscher prize – emphasised what we might describe as the liberal aspects of Luxemburg’s work, along with a radical commitment to the project of human emancipation. Important essays such as Marx and Human Nature: Refutation of a Legend (1983), and the ‘Controversy Concerning Marx and Justice’ (1984) developed these themes further. Many of Norman’s former comrades were critical of his refusal to reject key liberal assumptions; for them ‘liberal-Marxism’ was an oxymoron.

Geras was to move further from the position of his Trotskyist former comrades, with explicit support for military intervention in Iraq (Geras supported intervention in 1990 and in 2003). On his death in 2013, the Socialist Review published an obituary which read:

‘Norman Geras died an apologist for imperialism and had spent the last decade and more trying to justify Bush’s and Blair’s drive to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. That said, it would be a mistake to dismiss all of his work because of where he ended politically. For in the decades before he became a warmonger, Geras made important, if flawed, contributions to Marxism that deserve rereading today.’ (http://socialistreview.org.uk/385/norman-geras-1943-2013 )

Much of the recent response to the Reading censorship has also been problematic. Norman is viewed almost exclusively through the lens of his later work. Nick Cohen writes:

‘Geras was an inspirational politics professor at Manchester University, and a polemicist and moral philosopher of exceptional insight. He devoted much of his energy to opposing the murder of civilians, and lost many friends on the left in the process.’ (https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/11/the-censorship-of-norman-geras/ )

It is Norman Geras the principled moral philosopher which receives the attention of Cohen and others. This is – somewhat ironically – to de-radicalise Norman’s work. Yet ‘Our Morals’ – the text on which the recent controversy focuses – is a transitional text which develops a type of egalitarian commitment one would not find in the pagers of the Spectator. The text draws heavily on Marxist-inspired arguments. The very title is a play on the title of Trotsky’s 1938 text ‘Their Morals and Ours’; indeed, Norman deals directly with Trotsky’s controversial arguments.

Norman rejects terrorism, and specifies strict limitations on what might be regarded as the legitimate use of violence. For example, Norman supports a right of rebellion against state oppression – but this is a mainstream view in political philosophy.

Yet Norman is clear and precise in his critique of the injustices created by capitalism. The failure to refuse such injustice is not to be neutral – rather it is by omission to support such injustice.  ‘Our Morals’ is a text of the left. Take a passage such as the following:

‘Many people who call themselves socialists think capitalist societies are marked by grave injustice, and many of these many think also that some of it is systematic rather than incidental injustice. If we are right to think this, those of us who do, then the right of revolution against grave injustice yields a right of revolution against capitalism.’ (https://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5565/2463)

Yes Norman was increasingly sympathetic to types of liberal argument. And perhaps liberal-Marxism is an oxymoron. Yet, we ought not to overstress the liberal moralism in Norman’s work in such a way that we ignore the Marxist influences therein. To do so ignores his egalitarian insights, his commitment to human emancipation, and ultimately de-radicalises his arguments. We ought to continue to read Norman’s work; I will continue to recommend his many books and articles to my students. But please don’t read Norman’s work as anodyne moralism; he deserves more than that!