Weekly Worker 422 Thursday March 7 2002
Letters
Legal Marxists
A letter appeared in the February 14 edition of your paper from the TDKP criticising the death fast in the prisons of Turkey. Most of your readers are probably unaware of who the TDKP are. The TDKP (Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey) in practice no longer exists.
In the mid-90s they became the legal reformist party, EMEP, which means Labour Party (the TDKP had been an illegal underground party in Turkey). Whilst they would claim that they still do exist, this claim cannot be backed up by any physical evidence. They liquidated the TDKP and asked the state for permission to form a legal party. The TDKP has no presence within the working class in Turkey. It cannot even be seen on May Day marches in Turkey, unlike other banned revolutionary organisations. If you ask them where they are or what they are doing they always reply: ‘We are organising the working class’.
Their criticisms of the death fast are identical to others that have appeared in the Weekly Worker, to which we have replied on previous occasions, and is in line with legal left reformism. In their letter they made criticisms of revolutionary groups in Turkey, none of which are unfamiliar to us. They think that the revolutionary groups are dualists locked into a private war with the state, putting themselves above the interests of the working class and having no faith in the working class. They claim that when support for these groups is lagging they manufacture a self-inflicted conflict within the prisons to gain support. That claim is perverse in the extreme and denies the realities of the prisons in Turkey.
Their letter goes from one absurdity to another till it ends up telling barefaced lies. For example, where do they get the idea that any revolutionary group has called those who are against the F-type prisons but who are not in favour of hunger strikes and death fasts “enemies”? If people are against the F-types but have reservations about people dying on death fast that does not mean we cannot work together. Others have chosen to use this difference of opinion as a reason not to work together and even to condemn the prisoners.
What is so wrong about the death fasters being the only ones who can make a decision on how the protest is to be ended? The TDKP claim that the death fasters are unable to make any healthy decision. They are not children. What do they propose instead? Liberal NGOs substituting for the collective decision of revolutionary prisoners? Revolutionary groups are the sole attention for their wrath and this can only be done by telling lies. By accusing these groups of causing “destruction and division” and only being concerned with acts of “individual terrorism” and “helping the government achieve their goal” they are the ones causing the division and helping the government. Imperialism and fascism call us “terrorists” so why do they have to use the same language as them?
Imperialism is attacking revolutionary groups throughout the world. Only recently George Tenet, the director of the CIA, made a submission to the US senate on which groups pose the biggest threat to them in the world. He named five groups: the PFLP, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine, Farc in Columbia and the DHKP-C in Turkey. The F-type prisons are part of imperialism’s fight against revolutionary groups, as well as being part of the IMF’s package for Turkey. Is imperialism going to be allowed to be victorious? According to the TDKP they have already achieved their victory in the F-type prisons, so the prisoners should cease their resistance.
We are constantly hearing the same criticism from the left regarding the death fast. Namely, they are saying that it is not a ‘communist tactic’. It is true that you cannot see any reference to the use of hunger strikes in the complete works of Karl Marx. People who think in such a way may be skilled Marxologists but they are neither Marxists nor revolutionaries. These ‘super-Bolsheviks’ always stay on the right side of the law and those revolutionaries that dare overstep the boundaries of bourgeois society and end up in prison are ‘adventurists’ who are causing deliberate provocations. The state in Turkey is content to leave EMEP to ‘organise the working class’ and imperialism sees no point in targeting them. They must ask themselves why this is.
EMEP is based on the west European model of a legal reformist party. During the death fast we have seen that large sections of the European left are under the ideological influence of imperialism. They show no solidarity with those who are fighting imperialism. They remain silent towards the death fast in Turkey and when they break their silence it is only to criticise it. Imperialism would like all left organisations to follow this example. Those who refuse to comply with the wishes of imperialism are the subject of attacks to which most of the European left remains silent.
No doubt the TDKP’s letter found a resonance with such elements.
DHKC
London
Countdown
Greenwich Socialist Alliance met on Monday March 4 to finalise our plans for contesting the May local elections.
The meeting began, however, with an introduction from comrade Kirsty Paton (Workers Power) on imperialism and the current drive to war. She pointed to the United States’ staggering expenditure on arms, which has reached wartime levels. During the subsequent debate, comrade Marcus Ström (CPGB) stressed the fact that in the event of an imperialist attack on Iraq, we in the SA should have no hesitation in fully supporting those amongst the oppressed who may use the war unleashed by Bush and Blair as a golden opportunity to overthrow the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein.
The main item, though, was the May poll. A majority of those present (from WP and the Socialist Workers Party) were hostile to the idea of standing so-called ‘paper candidates’ - ie, candidates who are there to serve the overall effort rather than ‘first-rankers’ who it is deemed have a chance of being elected. Comrades expressed the conservative fear that by standing ‘too many’ candidates we would somehow “debase” politics and in effect ape the electoral-political practices of the mainstream parties, who treat people as voting fodder. Unfortunately, it was never really explained why it was so terrible to give a good percentage of the people in the constituency a chance to actually vote for the SA, as opposed to a forced abstention (or voting Labour).
In the end, a vote was taken and a clear majority came out for a campaign which ‘targeted’ a few wards where it was thought likely we would get a ‘respectable’ share of the vote. So Greenwich SA will be standing three ‘non-paper’ or ‘serious’ candidates (though there is still the possibility of standing a fourth candidate - agreement pending).
The meeting raised £25 for the International Socialist Organisation in Zimbabwe.
Danny Hammill
South London
Slightly
I have to confess I was slightly amused to see the link off your website to the Campaign Badges page. Stickers, badges, rosettes, balloons galore - all of these very important for running campaigns, of that there is no doubt.
It reminded me of during the 2001 general election in Coventry city centre, where members of the Socialist Workers Party decided that a brilliant way to win over the working class would be to dress one of their student ‘cadre’ up in a Tony Blair mask and get people to throw wet sponges at them. What a pathetic, patronising stunt. Do members of the SWP believe that is the way to win people to socialism? Well, probably - that is the depressing thing.
So while the SWP were playing their petty bourgeois games, the Socialist Party were hard at work, campaigning on serious issues amongst the class, on the estates and in the communities, compiling the highest votes for the SA. It’s a shame the SWP (and others) no longer wanted the SP on board.
Paul Hunt
Coventry
Counting
I counted 8,700 marchers leaving Hyde Park for Trafalgar Square on March 2. This was a creditable achievement, but not quite the 20,000 claimed by the Morning Star.
Ivor Kenna
East London
