Weekly Worker 442 Thursday July 25 2002
Letters
Odd merger
I was intrigued to read in Mark Fischer’s report of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s summer school the comment, “Amongst some comrades - both in our group and the AWL - there is a genuine hunger for merger” (Weekly Worker July 18).
Now that the rabbit is out of the hat, I wonder if these comrades will be using the columns of Weekly Worker to explain why such an apparently odd coupling would be in furtherance of the struggle for socialism, rather than, as I would see it, a diversionary side show and a possible hindrance to the unity process which is taking place within the Socialist Alliance. Surely we want to see the SA project leading to a withering away of the distinctions between the affiliated organisations: ie, contending ‘parties’ becoming platforms; platforms becoming tendencies; and eventually tendencies becoming mere shadings of opinion in a united democratic centralist party of the working class. How would that aim be served by the hardening of two of those affiliates - let alone two which have been trying to take the lead in fighting for a Socialist Alliance newspaper, an unofficial one if necessary - into a merged organisation?
In the Weekly Worker’s revised ‘What we fight for’ column, the CPGB has re-stated its “central aim” as being the organisation of all communists, revolutionary socialists and politically advanced workers into a Communist Party. But surely, a merger of the CPGB with an AWL which is not only numerically larger but also now politically ascendant (judging from the movements in political position which have taken place within the CPGB on issues such as Ireland, Palestine and the CPGB tradition itself) would leave us further away from a Communist Party.
The AWL has made only too plain its attachment to the rotten legacy of social democracy. Whilst reviling the CPGB and everything it stood for during the overwhelming part of its 80-year history (see Martin Thomas’s tirade in Weekly Worker March 14), our AWL comrades have called for a new ‘Labour Representation Committee’ and hailed the 1945 Labour Government of Clement Attlee as a workers’ government. Their politics is, self-admittedly, that of the Second International, not that of the Bolsheviks and the Comintern.
George Brooks
Stockport
Fighting talk
The Daily Mirror has recently styled itself as the ‘anti-Big Brother paper’. Readers have been treated to a daily diet of predictably frothy attacks on participants in the dull Channel 4 television show.
The rub is, of course, that the whole idea of devoting such a large amount of column inches (whether that coverage be negative or positive) is a tacit admittance of the important cultural space that Big Brother is currently occupying. Which is rather like Peter Manson asking, in reply to John Pearson’s contribution to the ‘What we fight for’ debate, “What’s all the fuss about?” (‘In defence of backwardness’, July 18).
Unfortunately, Peter does not have the courage to ask this question himself, attributing it to a well defined group of “most readers”, but we can be reasonably sure that this vexed ‘question’ is Peter’s own. Like the Daily Mirror, I fear that Peter is playing a game of pretend pomposity. If John Pearson’s criticisms are that unimportant, why spend valuable space refuting his argument?
Phil Watson
London
Disarming path
In his polemic with John Pearson over the ‘What we fight for’ column Peter Manson asserts that including the phrase “peacefully if we can” - after the statement that the capitalist class will never willingly allow their wealth and power to be taken away and will use every means at their disposal to resist revolution - is clear and principled.
But it is obviously inconsistent and an equivocation. It implies there could be a peaceful transition to socialism despite all the historical evidence against such an illusion. The belief that there could possibly be a peaceful path has always led to the political and literal disarmament of the working class.
Peter seems to think that a peaceful revolution is a possibility, stating that the October revolution was “almost entirely peaceful”. Leaving aside the slippery phrase “almost entirely”, Peter arbitrarily rules out the huge loss of life and violence which followed the October revolution by the utterly pedantic tactic of separating the counterrevolution - the ruling class’s reaction to the Bolshevik actions - from the revolution. But it is not enough to seize power: you have to hold on to it. Revolution and counterrevolution are all part of the process of overthrowing the capitalist state. The capitalist class will resist before, during and after the revolutionary event with various degrees of effectiveness. In the July days, for instance, many workers were shot down on demonstrations in Petersburg.
In any case, it is not true that the October revolution was peaceful or “almost entirely peaceful”, whatever that means. In Moscow the revolution was bloody. Hundreds of Bolsheviks were killed (about 500, I think), not to mention other workers. More lives would have been lost had Bukharin and his comrades not acted resolutely in the knowledge that there was no peaceful option. The same goes for Petrograd and Trotsky’s leadership. There was bloodshed in Petrograd. It would have been far more violent had the tsarist state not been in a condition of decay and disintegration. As Trotsky put it, the tsarist regime was like a rotten fruit waiting to drop.
The modern capitalist state would be a more formidable force. Playing down the violence of the Russian Revolution and using the phrase “peacefully if we can” is surely a concession to left reformism.
Barry Biddulph
Cheshire
Insider polemic
I find it interesting that the editor of a newspaper, which prides itself on open discussion, decides to publish his reply to the Manchester draft of WWFF on the internet on the very same day (Thursday) that my newspaper finally arrives on my doorstep.
How are comrades, without the power of the internet, expected to participate in a balanced discussion if the editor chooses to exercise his right to reply before the rest of the readership has had time to read and digest the Manchester draft of WWFF?
If the newspaper was a financial house, the charge of insider trading would not be out of place.
Nick Redmond
Manchester
Peter Manson replies:
We apologise to readers for the late arrival of the July 11 edition of the Weekly Worker (issue 440), caused by a failure on the part of a delivery company. However, all subscribers still received issue 440 before 441, while the posting of the paper on the internet was not affected in any way. We are sure our readers’ ability to grasp both sides of the debate was not impaired.
Ban drugs
Comrade Godwin’s conclusions regarding the legalisation of all substances required a lot more thought and not just a populist response, I thought (Weekly Worker July 18). One of the current trends in the destruction of working class communities worldwide, and the growth of criminal capitalistic infrastructures, has been through the effects of drugs, and not just legislation, as you seemed to suggest.
That peer pressure in youngsters is a factor there is no doubt - but the escape from the realities of life, fuelled by media and capitalist conglomerates, is also a major factor. It cannot have escaped the attention of comrades that individuals involved in the distribution of drugs are some of the most depraved petty bourgeois elements who seem to view the trade as a juncture into ‘respectable’ capitalism. Also agencies such as the CIA have encouraged use and distribution in their attempts to destabilise countries.
I would say that the potential of humans are not enhanced by these proscribed substances and there is certainly no ‘invisible hand’ to help addicts - with huge resources and social cost going to help these sad individuals (I would include excess alcohol in this). I see dealers as counterrevolutionary and in the event of a revolution would probably be locking them up - but they would probably be on the reactionary side anyway.
By the way, I agree that communists should aim for a bloodless revolution. A socialist society would be based on peace and rationality - I hope.
Debashis Dey
email
Marxism format
Regarding the article ‘Socialist Workers Party plans for year ahead’, I have to say I didn’t find the SWP to be all that overbearing, as the tone might suggest, considering Marxism was ‘their’ conference (Weekly Worker July 18).
What I found far more frustrating was the unvarying format of the various meetings, especially the so-called workshops on the last day. Every meeting you had the wise men and women on the stage pontificating, after which everybody else got a chance, but with little opportunity for real discussion. A little more variety, a little bit more interaction, would’ve been nice ...
On the whole though, I found it to be both impressive and inspiring to be around so many comrades.
Martin Wisse
email
‘No’ campaign
Your response to John Rees is annoying (‘Build the alliance’, July 18).
Rees is right that socialists arguing for a ‘no’ vote is about opposition to the neoliberal agenda of Maastricht and the euro. It is your own “wishful thinking” to see this as sympathy for abstention (or an ‘active boycott’ - but you need to spell out what you mean by this). The argument of comrades inside the Socialist Alliance is entirely about the interests of the working class.
Perhaps you should transcribe Charlie Kimber’s talk on the topic at Marxism 2002 - he was clearly arguing for a distinct working class/socialist campaign that wouldn’t be subsumed into the reactionary Little England politics we all hate. Now whether this is possible, and what the impact of a successful ‘no’ campaign will be, is something we will argue out - hopefully fraternally and at a high level - but this kind of commentary doesn’t help!
Matthew Caygill
Leeds
Gala numbers
James Bull’s otherwise sound article on the Durham ‘big meeting’ is flawed on a couple of points (‘Celebrating class solidarity’, July 18).
We usually say, when working out numbers at demonstrations, take the press figures and double them. In this case the BBC said 50,000, the local press said 30,000 and James Bull says 15,000! Which field where you in, James? I think you missed most of it. I have attended the gala since I was carried on me Da’s shoulders and I think this year’s was the biggest in years. I would have thought 40,000 was a fair estimate.
Durham is now unique. Yes, certainly it is “a day out for bureaucrats”, if by that you mean the invited platform of trade union leaders and guests on the balcony, but this is far more than even a TUC conference. Here we see not delegates, but ordinary union members and their families. The speakers’ field attracted tens of thousands, listening in rapt attention to a left and militant presentation of the problems before us all. At the same time the far left and anti-imperialist groups hawk their wares and advance ideas which working people en masse rarely come across. I can think of no other such gathering in Britain.
Central to the theme is of course the bands and parade of banners - not simply “former miners”, as James suggests, but the current working miners of the remnants of our union and traditions. The number of old and now relaunched banners of former miners’ lodges - carried and supported by communities who refuse to die, who refuse to let die that vision of a socialist future - is expanding year by year, though not a pit remains in Durham itself.
The fact that we now have on board all of the major unions, and that members of those unions are now taking to streets previously the sole prerogative of the miners, makes this one of the few healthy and inspiring events in the labour movement. At least two of those unions marched and carried banners and materials in support of their forthcoming industrial actions.
The gala is a living manifestation of class solidarity, not simply a piece of class history, though that too is vitally important. If we cannot remember our past, we will have difficulty building the future.
Dave Douglass
Doncaster
House socialist
I first became interested in the house price bubble when I worked for the statistics and computing services branch of the department of education and science in 1984. I came across a book entitled The downwave: surviving the second great depression by Robert Beckman, an investment analyst.
Mr Beckman equated the house price bubble of the 1980s with the tulip bubble that took place in 17th century Holland. At one stage a particular tulip bulb was worth the equivalent of 100 acres of land. Mr Beckman went on to write Housequake, where he developed his ideas on the house price bubble of the 1990s. Whilst he has now retired to Monaco, his ideas are still of interest.
Many economists and estate agents say that there will not be a crash in house prices because the economy in 2002 is different to 10 years ago. They point to the fact that unemployment, inflation and interest rates today are a lot lower than in the early 1990s.
What these people do not say is that the growing buy-to-let market hardly existed 10 years ago. Investors who have had their fingers burnt in the stock market have increasingly turned to the buy-to-let market as a home for their savings and pensions. But there is a surplus of rented accommodation in London, which has meant that rents have fallen accordingly. The return on some rented properties is as low as three percent, whilst mortgage rates are around six percent.
History shows that falls in property markets usually occur about 18 months to two years after falls in stock markets.
A fall in house prices would undermine the support of working class and middle class homeowners for Tony Blair’s New Labour government.
John Smithee
Cambridgeshire
