Weekly Worker 425 Thursday March 28 2002
Letters
Third US revolution
I greatly appreciate the time and effort comrade Jack Conrad put into his article, ‘Constitutional and class struggles’ (Weekly Worker March 21). As a communist in the United States who has studied this subject over the years, I would like to make some brief comments on the substance of the article.
The European Union constitutional convention does represent an event only akin to the formation of the United States. The formation of a single European state - whether as a federal or unitary republic - should actually be welcomed by the working class. The abolition of formal national borders opens new arenas in which workers can fight.
For example, the formation of a single European trade union, encompassing workers from Poland to Portugal, only strengthens the working class in its struggle against capitalism. As well, and in many respects more importantly, the formation of a single European capitalist state will demand the formation of a single communist workers’ party. ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ is still the communist battle cry, and the elimination of sectional communist organisations in favour of a single Communist Party of the EU will only mean a step forward for the working class.
At the same time, the consolidation of the EU as a single state will also intensify inter-imperialist rivalries - not between the sectional capitalist classes, but between European capital and the rest of the world, specifically the United States. The tendency toward monopoly is being accelerated by the economic crisis and the demands of the pre-eminent capitalist power in the world at this point (the US).
The Spanish, Dutch, German, French, Italian, etc, capitalists have realised that if they are to salvage their economic domination of semi-colonial and colonial countries, they need to unite. Already, the mainland European capitalists have lost much of the economic and political dominance in Africa, and are in the process of losing their grip on Latin America - especially in Argentina, which is a major economic semi-colony of Spanish capital. Unity of European capital will give them a base only matched by the US.
However, I felt that the second part of the article, ‘America first’, greatly suffered from what was actually left out of the piece. First and foremost, the absence of any mention of the American confederation, from 1777 to 1787, which was the political context for Shays’ Rebellion (not the Sharp Rebellion incidentally) in the post-revolutionary United States, is quite glaring. It is almost as if the comrade author was not aware of the Articles of Confederation, or its importance as a revolutionary bourgeois-democratic document. In many respects, the reason that the consolidating American bourgeoisie chose to call a constitutional convention, resulting in the current constitution, was as much because of the revolutionary democratic spirit contained in the articles as it was because of Shays.
There are some other factual errors in the comrade’s article that need to be addressed - mostly for the sake of accuracy, but some for the sake of political clarity. To begin with, the first two political parties formed were the Federalist and the Democratic-Republican parties. (Sometimes they referred to themselves as Republicans, but the name of the party was Democratic-Republican until 1828, when it dropped the ‘Republican’ part and began calling itself the Democratic Party.) Their names reflected the divergent visions the parties had for the fledgling United States as much as they reflected the divergent class bases for their support.
The Republican Party was not formed until 1854, when the remnants of the Whig Party - successor of the Federalists - and opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and allowed plebiscites on whether the two new states would be ‘free’ or ‘slave’ states, came together in Jackson, Michigan. The Republicans’ first presidential candidate was John C Frémont, a well known soldier and explorer, and outspoken opponent of slavery as an institution. (Incidentally, Frémont was removed early on from his command during the civil war because of his policy of freeing all Africans held as slaves encountered during battle. See Marx’s writings on the civil war in the US for more information.)
Another factual error concerns the end of reconstruction, the period of radical democracy and military governance in the south following the capitulation of the secessionist movement. The end of reconstruction was in 1877, even though the basis of its dismantling was assembled the year before. But, in many respects, reconstruction had been continually undermined throughout the entire period leading up to and following Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House.
Even though the Democratic Party did not stand in the way of Lincoln’s Republicans and the government’s handling of the military side of the Civil War (which the comrade correctly calls the Second American Revolution), they did everything possible to sabotage reconstruction - beginning with the impeachment of Andrew Johnson and ending with the ‘great compromise’, which gave the presidency to Hayes and codified the withdrawal of federal troops from the south. This was because, while the Democrats opposed secession and the break-up of the union, they opposed ending slavery in the south and giving formal equality to Africans held as slaves.
Finally, a political point. The current president of the United States, George W Bush, was not elected. Rather, he was selected - appointed - by the five rightwing justices who comprise the majority of the US Supreme Court. For communists in the United States, this was a watershed event: it represented the culmination of an effort by a faction of the ruling class that no longer wishes to be bothered by the ‘trifles’ of bourgeois democracy. They may continue to maintain the paper laws, for the moment, but this is primarily because they have yet to consolidate their complete control over the ‘bodies of armed men’ that make up the state, and complete the latter’s displacement of more traditional and democratic organs. Even Bush’s majority vote in the slave-owners’ electoral college is false: the federal Supreme Court stopped the hand-counting of votes in Florida at a point when Bush had a slim plurality, and handed him the state’s college vote.
The Third American Revolution - the workers’ revolution - will take as its point of departure the words of Thomas Jefferson, written in the Declaration of Independence: “… whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [the now famous ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ - MS], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organising its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” It will, at once, continue, expand and deepen the gains of the first two revolutions.
Communists in the United States must be clear: the fight for revolution and socialism is the most ‘American’ act any worker can undertake. Yes, comrade, we hold that truth to be self-evident.
Martin Schreader
USA
CWU demo
Frank Lore’s article on the important demonstration called by the Communication Workers Union bureaucracy was slightly disappointing (‘Welcome to Planet Taaffe’ Weekly Worker November 21).
Trade union mobilisations in relatively harsh times such as these are to be welcomed, no matter how small, whether there were 800 present (Weekly Worker) or 3,000 - as claimed in this week’s edition of The Socialist (paper of the Socialist Party). There obviously appeared to be some jiggery-pokery from the CWU misleaders.
Calling a demo on a Saturday, at a time when many posties would still have been working, and not linking it to strike action highlights the fact that the even the left trade union bureaucracy are not serious about fighting job losses and are a barrier that have to be overcome in doing so. The demonstration was called at some fortnight’s notice to coincide with the Socialist Alliance’s conference on the question of the political fund. When did our flabby trade union leaders last act with such speed and sparkle?
Saying all that though, the piece came across as a bit disdainful of those participating - which no doubt included the best CWU activists in London. We need to be more sensitive in distinguishing between support for the demo participants and criticism of the demo organisers.
Without making any criticisms of the demo organisers, the Socialist Party called on their former Socialist Alliance partners to cancel this strategically important conference and support the demo instead. This uncritical cheerleading is not doing postal workers any favours. We need to be with postal workers in their fight, but openly critical of their leaders’ dubious motivation and tactics.
We should be saying to activists: ‘Look, your leaders make outwitting the fledgling SA a higher priority than seriously pursuing your grievance.’ CWU militants should join up with other trade unionists fighting to free themselves from the spider’s web of funding candidates who do nothing but shower pain on us. Join with comrades who support your fight. Join with the SA in fighting against job losses, privatisation and for a political alternative across the workers’ movement.
Bill Jeannes
Teesside
Two SA papers
I would like to propose an alternative to the Socialist Alliance paper which the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty have rejected, in light of lack of interest from many of the indies. Rather than giving up the Weekly Worker, CPGB members and supporters could offer to try to sell Solidarity in addition to continuing to sell the paper of the CPGB, and encourage all the independents to follow this example.
I was surprised and a little disappointed to learn that the Provisional Central Committee proposed ending publication of the Weekly Worker. I think this was a mistake. The reason for this relates to what Lenin argued about the role of the paper. It ought to serve as the scaffolding around which democratic centralists build their organisation. Such an organisation could be a workers’ party (as Lenin originally proposed - Iskra vis-à-vis the RSDLP). Alternatively, it could provide the scaffolding of a democratic centralist tendency within a broader workers’ party, as had to happen once the RSDLP split into a revolutionary wing and a reformist/centralist wing.
Unless the PCC wants to purge the SA of all reformist elements, then the creation of a single paper is a non-starter. Given how unrealistic it would be for many of the indies to tolerate a democratic centralist regime within an SA tendency dominated by either the CPGB or the AWL, the type of paper originally proposed could provide a scaffolding to nothing substantial - at this stage. Far better would be for CPGB members to recognise the more rounded out nature of Solidarity, a paper that, while making concessions to economists within the workers’ movement, can quite easily provide a realistic alternative to Socialist Worker and The Socialist.
In my opinion, as in the opinion of Martin Thomas and others in the AWL, the kind of paper that the pro-party elements of the SA should set up with the intention of drawing in the indies - followed as soon as possible by Workers Power, Socialist Outlook and then the Socialist Workers Party themselves - would have to be closer to Solidarity than the Weekly Worker. The latter should continue as a supplementary organ of a tendency within the SA. Such a paper would be easier to sell in the trade unions, the colleges, the estates, etc. This would make concessions in order to establish a dialogue with our class which the Weekly Worker chooses not to make. But these concessions are, in my opinion, essential.
We need to recognise that there was never any prospect of setting up the kind of paper the PCC proposed without agreement on the meaning of economism. I accept that the CPGB is correct in identifying this as a major problem in the British workers’ movement (and far beyond Britain). That said, I think that the specific critique offered by the CPGB has been crude.
The Weekly Worker has established for itself a certain niche (or set of niches) which make it indispensable for all activists in the SA. But in order to make inroads into the broader working class (at this stage in the class struggle), it is essential to relate to struggles that workers are involved in. The Weekly Worker simply does not have the number of journalists and pages to perform its existing function and the one that can be provided by a paper that can compete with SW and The Socialist.
Selling Solidarity would not be tantamount to selling the paper of the AWL. I think there is a possibility that the AWL may be convinced to open up Solidarity to a paper of a pro-party wing of the SA. In one of their previous incarnations, their paper was sponsored by Socialist Outlook in addition to the AWL. What I am proposing is that CPGB supporters/members take on the kind of dual role that Socialist Outlook members once adopted. In return for trying to actively sell their paper, an incorporation of representatives into their editorial board would be very likely. A move towards making Solidarity the unofficial paper of the SA could begin almost immediately.
The AWL would have little to lose, as far as I can see. The CPGB would lose nothing either. No commitment to abandon the Weekly Worker. The only cost would be the time of CPGB members/supporters trying to persuade members of the SA/Scottish Socialist Party to buy not one paper, but two. If the CPGB managed to establish a new readership for the paper in branches where none already exists, then perhaps one or more places could be found on their editorial board. This could prove a stepping stone to the original PCC proposal.
And by the time the Weekly Worker was wound down completely, there might have been established sufficient common ground between the AWL and the CPGB for the new paper to act as the scaffolding of a single democratic centralist tendency within the SA/SSP - something which would simply be unfeasible at this stage.
When the AWL and the CPGB begin to draw similar conclusions about how to operate inside the SA and SSP, sufficient to operate as a single democratic centralist tendency within the SA and SSP, then abandoning the Weekly Worker would make sense. Until that day comes, the paper should continue to act as the scaffolding of a Leninist organisation within the SSP and SA, and no other paper can do that job.
But Solidarity can compete with SW in a way that can help both the CPGB and AWL begin to fight for hegemony within the SA.
Tom Delargy
Paisley
Political fund
Last week I attended the National Union of Journalists workshop held during the Socialist Alliance trade union conference. In order to complete the picture provided by the last edition of the Weekly Worker a short, additional report might be useful.
Around 50 people met on the balcony of the Camden Centre for the media workers’ workshop, which was chaired by the SWP’s Phil Turner. While most were members of the National Union of Journalists, there was also a smattering of GPMU members. If there was anyone there from Bectu, they did not speak out.
Activists spoke of differentiated experiences as union activists in this period - from a very solid union recognition campaign at The Independent and successful chapel organisation at the Daily Express, to more difficult political and somewhat conservative terrain in the financial press and sections of the BBC. Most of the discussion, however, centred on a proposed campaign for a political fund for the NUJ. A non-Labour Party affiliated union, the NUJ has had previous unsuccessful campaigns to arm it in this way.
I called for us to go beyond campaigning on the political fund, stressing the need for industry-wide unity between socialists. The SWPers present, including John Rees, seemed inclined to limit our discussion to the campaign around democratisation of the funds. Attempts to discuss other aspects of our work, such as the anti-trade union laws or industrial unionism, were not on their agenda. The vote to form an SA fraction was therefore an upset for the SWP. For them, the main task seemed to be to sell Nick Wrack’s new pamphlet. Important though that undoubtedly is, it should go hand in hand with the building a vibrant media workers’ SA fraction.
The AWL’s Mark Sandell, a GPMU organiser, said that unity was needed to defeat the Labour Party politically and that fight would be drawn out. He emphasised the need to win the rank and file to our position. It is not enough to win a vote on a committee, only to have the membership come back to bite us later, he said.
Campaigning for a political fund for the NUJ - not just around elections, but around broader politics - is a good step for SA activists. However, it is just the beginning. The next meeting of Socialist Alliance media activists in two weeks should follow the lead of the comrades in the railworkers workshop and establish a formal fraction for coordinating our work.
Marcus Ström
South London
Do what?
The recent Critique conference centred on the theme, ‘What is to be done and who is to blame?’ As the blurb said, “It is 100 years since Lenin’s classic work was written and there are no mass socialist parties and no vanguard party worth the name.”
Of course, there were some worthwhile contributions, especially from István Mészáros and Hillel Ticktin. However, none of the speakers actually addressed what we were supposed to be there for: ie, what is to be done - now? Indeed, Hillel was the only speaker to even refer to Lenin’s seminal work. We had rather rambling discussions on African history and the recent stormy events in Argentina. But regrettably, and rather predictably, none of the speakers mentioned the Socialist Alliance or any of the real issues facing the left and the working class in Britain today. This job was essentially left to myself and two comrades from the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty.
This tendency to scholastic abstraction was starkly revealed during the more lively debate on Palestine and the ‘two-state solution’. Absurdly, Moshe Machover argued that socialists should avoid putting forward any solutions or concrete slogans as they would become “a trap”!
Rather than “solutions”, said comrade Machover, we should stick instead to our “principles” - whatever they were exactly meant to be (peace and justice for all? Socialism?). Naturally, the majority of the 30 comrades present were adamantly opposed to the concept of national rights for Israeli jews. As Savas Matsas excitedly put it, those who agitate for a two-states solution are arguing for “betrayal”. Moshe thought the very idea of it was “indecent”. Another outraged comrade believed ex-Yugoslavia was a good example of what happens when you go round “partitioning” states in the manner allegedly proposed by the AWL and the CPGB. How topsy-turvy can you get? It was the denial - not the granting - of the right to national self-determination in Yugoslavia that led to bloodshed and barbarism.
Ironically enough though, both Moshe and Savas thought that some sort of two-state solution was almost “inevitable” - it was just that we should not be advocating it in the here and now, as presumably this would represent a ‘corruption’ of our true Marxist ideals. If it happens, it happens - c’est la vie. But at least we kept pure and unsullied. This passivity was a sad reflection of the Critique conference as a whole.
Danny Hammill
London
Class caricature
In his 99%-pointless, 10-column cartoon caricature of Jack Conrad and the CPGB, Martin Thomas made the following remark: “Jack writes about Stalin and Mao being opportunist traitors, who thus gave ‘succour to the bourgeoisie’, but sometimes they fought, overthrew and crushed it. The Stalinists were most virulently anti-working class in those times and places where they were most anti-bourgeoisie - when they took power” (Weekly Worker March 14).
While some examples to support this proposition would have been handy, my main question is, how come this bureaucratic ‘ruling class’, which can ‘fight’, ‘overthrow’ and ‘crush’ the bourgeoisie, simply gave up power? It is the first time in history that a ‘ruling class’ gave up its struggle for power and existence as a class. The feudal ruling class had to be ‘fought’, ‘overthrown’ and ‘crushed’ by a formerly revolutionary bourgeois class.
Also, if the Stalinists “were most virulently anti-working class when they were most anti-bourgeoisie”, is the reverse true? Were they least anti-working class when they simple liquidated their own ‘ruling class’ party and handed over power to the western bourgeois-backed Mafia who now rule with bourgeois democracy and a free press, etc?
Dan Lamont
Liverpool
Introduction
I must comment on Peter Manson’s reply to the secretary of Bedfordshire SA (Letters Weekly Worker March 14).
The BSA officers submitted a statement on their position called ‘Statement from the Bedfordshire Socialist Alliance (BSA) officers to the SA national executive’. The Weekly Worker quite rightly decided to publish the statement (March 7). Of course you have every right to make critical comment on it. It is your paper. You could have introduced the statement with ‘Here is a statement from the biggest bunch of localist anarcho-bureaucrats and general enemies of the working class’, if you had wanted. That is down to you.
However, it is not legitimate for the editorial team to add a couple of words here or there in the statement. The addition of the word “former” before the words “Bedfordshire” is misleading and not democratic. Statements are agreed documents and can’t be amended by outsiders. It doesn’t matter one jot whether the words are in inverted commas or not. If we received a statement from the CPGB (PCC) we could agree with it or write a criticism. But you would not expect us to add the words ‘ex’ or ‘those claiming to be’ between the words ‘statement from’ and ‘CPGB’.
So, although you dismiss Ross Marat’s criticism as “ultra-sensitive”, can I suggest that you are being “ultra-defensive”, because you surely realise that what you did simply damages the credibility of the Weekly Worker. If you can’t recognise your error, then every time we read a statement from another socialist organisation or trade union in the Weekly Worker we will be wondering whether it includes a couple of amendments of your own.
Dave Craig
Revolutionary Democratic Group
Editor’s note. The Weekly Worker did not alter anything in the Beds SA statement. We did, however, supply our own headline. Such is our right and practice.
