Weekly Worker 421 Thursday February 28 2002
Letters
Beds SA faction?
Danny Thompson’s disagreements with me are too many and, in some cases, too odd to reply to in full (Weekly Worker February 21). Instead I just want to touch upon the broad principles at stake.
On December 1 2001, the Socialist Alliance formed itself as a unitary organisation with one central constitution and one membership. Local alliances are now not separate organisations, but effectively branches, or parts, of the whole. They are subordinate to that whole. This is a step forward. It is an advance.
There are programmatic problems with our manifesto People before profit. It is not consistently democratic nor is it a communist programme. It does not call for a federal republic or envisage a stateless society of general freedom. But despite that it is the political document which members of the Socialist Alliance must accept as the basis for common action. This is the case in Brighton, Birmingham, Billericay and Bedfordshire.
Local alliances are free to pass what ever programmatic positions they care to. However, agreement with or even acceptance of these cannot form a condition of membership of local alliances. That much is clear. But not to comrade Thompson, it seems. The draft constitution he advocates for Bedfordshire Socialist Alliance says: “3.1. The BSA programme is currently the Socialist Alliance manifesto People before profit as amended by the BSA Policy statement and any other BSA policy decisions.”
This is a recipe for a separate organisation, not a component part of the unitary Socialist Alliance. It puts the part above the whole. This is backward, it is localism. Forming a faction within the Socialist Alliance is perfectly acceptable. The CPGB is one such faction. The SWP is another. So is the Revolutionary Democratic Group. But what comrade Thompson appears to be advocating is a faction formed on the basis of a geographical area. This is something incompatible with a unitary organisation such as the Socialist Alliance.
Membership of a faction is based on acceptance of a platform of views on Socialist Alliance matters. It is not based on where you live. Thus, membership of the CPGB requires that you accept and fight for a federal republic position in the Socialist Alliance when this is part of an agreed action.
However, factions are only platforms of views. They are not united by geography or other objective conditions. To make membership of the Bedfordshire Socialist Alliance dependent on acceptance of the programmatic amendments of the BSA majority as the basis for common action is tantamount to declaring the BSA a separate organisation.
I hope that RDG comrades see sense over this issue and stop using Bedfordshire as a mini turf war with the SWP. Likewise, I hope the SWP overcomes its legacy of heavy-handed bureaucratism.
Marcus Ström
London
Euro referendum
Jack Conrad in his article ‘Socialist Alliance and the euro’ argues for an active boycott of the euro referendum. But his position on the euro itself is far from clear (Weekly Worker February 21).
To put it simply, if Jack Conrad had to decide on the entry of Britain into eurozone what would he do? I think a similar question must be asked of the Socialist Alliance, so that any decision on our stance in the referendum is solidly based on an evaluation of the euro and the consequences of its adoption for the working class. Instead, Jack Conrad’s article, and indeed his argument, starts with the examination of the position of the Tories and the BNP.
With an analysis like Jack Conrad’s, it will be very difficult to persuade people to stay at home on polling day. Some will be afraid that if the ‘no’ campaign prevails the next day their company will shift production in the continent and they will lose their jobs. Others will be afraid that if there is a ‘yes’ vote the remnants of the welfare state will disappear, together with any form of accountability over our rulers. Are we going to tell them that there are more important things at stake, like a strong, distinct socialist voice? If so, we will suffer the fate of so many others who have tried to advocate and promote socialism with disregard, if not contempt, for the concerns of the workers.
Of course I agree with Jack Conrad that in the referendum we have to put forward our socialist views rather than trying to play the game of the ruling class, based on their divisions. But we have to address honestly all the concerns of the workers if we want to succeed. If we start with an examination of the other end of the political spectrum, we will arrive, unsurprisingly, at the most self-oriented, sectarian position.
Ioannis Ivrissimtzis
email
Keep ’em out
I think the Socialist Alliance’s policy on immigration is utopian and useless.
The reality of economic problems for the poor in the developing world means that most regard emigration to the west as a means of escaping their poverty. That means that a few billion or more would seek a new life in the developed world, which at present could not cope with such mass immigration. Imperialism needs the cheap labour of the non-western world because western capitalists want to pay as little as possible for labour costs.
Globalisation is the world’s biggest economic menace, but for the ‘poor’ countries, it is their corrupt ruling elites that are the biggest problem. They support emigration to offload their ‘surplus’ labour or simply as a means of gaining hard currencies to help their economies. Which means that these elites can go on mismanaging and misruling their countries and they can go on deluding their people that they are poor because they are economically disadvantaged. Thereby preventing and offsetting social revolutions in their own countries.
The best protection against globalisation for the ‘third world’ is to modernise their states and get rid of their governing elites or, failing that, implement serious reforms to control them. Most of the oppressed in the third world don’t want to do this because of a misplaced patriotism.
Taking refuge in the west or emigration is no answer in the long or short term for workers in those countries. I doubt that there would have been a Chinese revolution if the leadership and a host of other revolutionaries had sought asylum elsewhere. Nor independence for India and Pakistan.
One of the obvious ways that the capitalists are trying to impose wage cuts and stop pay rises is by employing immigrant workers. Eg, computer programmers from India who are paid less than British workers. Nurses from Philippines who put up with conditions worse than ours. The shortage of workers in the public sector is caused by poor work conditions and pay. They are trying to get around this by immigration. Our job is to defend the conditions of our workers ... and ensure that immigrant labour are paid the same as British workers.
In this phase of globalisation capitalists will use foreign workers as a tool in keeping our workers under control. Immigration serves at present the reactionary aims of imperialism. There isn’t a labour shortage in Britain, but lack of planning, training and inadequate returns for the workers. We must put pressure on to improve the wages of workers and peasants in the developing world.
As for asylum-seekers, 40 or 50 years after Windrush, we still haven’t sorted out adequately the problems of racism and diversity. Too many black African and Caribbeans, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, etc suffer from poverty and deprivation. We ought to tackle these problems without taking on more problems. Twenty million people are poor in this country, the majority of whom must be natives. I don’t think we can serve or help our neighbours from abroad, until we get our own house in order first.
You must acknowledge the sad truth that the majority of ‘asylum-seekers’ and economic migrants have no loyalty or fraternal feelings towards the British working class, who are viewed in the same category as the imperialists. Likewise they have no class consciousness (with the exception of the Kurds and Turkish workers). And as such want to contribute nothing towards our revolution or the class struggle in this country.
Lila Patel
email
US party
Let me start by being blunt: the working class of the United States needs an organisation like the CPGB - in structure, in style of work and in approach to party-building.
I have been looking to see what kind of organisations now inhabit the left in the US. And what I have found is even more disturbing than I thought it would be. What we have now are a bunch of small groups competing with each other like petty capitalists to become the ‘monopoly’. It is a disgrace, but completely understandable, given the character and class composition of the organisations.
There are some organisations that could contribute positively to the rebuilding of the revolutionary proletarian party in the US - the Socialist Workers Organisation (ex-USFI) and Socialist Organizer (Lambertist) come immediately to mind. The Freedom Socialist Party could be something important as well - but these groups would require an outside spark to accomplish this. The rest of the groups in the US are, in the kindest terms, sects. Many of them, like the Barnesite SWP, and the Spartacists and their cousins, are hopeless for providing nuclei for the revolutionary party.
On the other hand, a CPGB-style party, with a firm commitment to partyism, a non-bureaucratic, non-monolithic conception of democratic centralism, and a strong programme that emphasises the political struggle and rejects crass economism (whilst at the same time drawing a firm class line), could reverse the trend - spurred on by postmodernist, petty-bourgeois ideology held over from the ‘new left’ of the 1960s - toward atrophy in the workers’ and socialist movement.
I sincerely believe that if the CPGB were to direct some of its energies toward building a sister organisation in the US, the dividends would be worth the possible drain on resources and the risk. If such an organisation existed in the US, I would encourage anyone I know to drop their sectarian pretensions and join. I can think of many people who count themselves among the ‘ex’ organisations - ex-SWP, ex-Spartacist, ex-CP, ex-cetera - who would be drawn to such a party.
The more I read, the more I am drawn to the original politics of the CPGB. In particular, From October to August, In the enemy camp and Which road? by Jack Conrad are powerful and healthy expressions of Marxism. I think Conrad was straight on in many of his writings on the ‘Russian question’.- certainly better than the post-World War II Trotskyists, ‘official communists’, Maoists, etc.
MS
Detroit
