Weekly Worker 448 Thursday September 19 2002
Letters
Vote SPD
Regarding the current elections in Germany, it seems to me that we have a situation here that we have not been accustomed to seeing for about 30 years. That is, a mainstream social democratic party posturing to the left in order to win an election. Not only that, but it seems to be working. From seeming a sure loser, the SPD now looks like it is going to be re-elected on an anti-war platform that, on a European scale, puts it right at odds with Blair, Bush and the whole anti-Iraq war drive.
Given Schröder’s upfront anti-war campaign, which appears to be drawing some kind of class line in German politics, we should advocate critical support for the SPD. This is not support for the SPD because of what it has in common with neoliberal social democracy (Blair, Jospin, etc), but a critical vote based on its new-found leftist profile, in turn based on its anti-war agitation. Of course, if Schröder is elected, he could easily betray what he is saying now in reflecting the mass anti-war sentiment in Germany. Similar sentiment exists in Britain, but Blair is setting himself against it.
West Germany was an ultra-loyal part of the western alliance in the first phase of the Cold War - the 1950s McCarthy era, under Adenauer, Kissinger and the like. In fact, in the late 1950s, as things began to thaw, the rearmament of Germany under the auspices of Nato was a major issue in left reformist protest - CND, etc. West Germany had a pacifist constitution that forbade it from participating in wars in its own right, but it is also true that the West German government was firmly in support of US imperialism in every real war it has ever waged between 1945 and reunification in 1989-90, from Korea to Vietnam. Indeed, opposition to West German support to the US in Vietnam created a generation of West German far-left radicals.
The West German bourgeoisie had a fairly deep-going dispute with Carter and then more seriously the Reagan administration in the early 1980s over its anti-USSR nuclear sabre-rattling. But this was because of a difference about how to bring about the end of the USSR - the German bourgeoisie was understandably fearful that Reagan’s tactics in particular could lead to a ‘limited’ nuclear exchange that would likely take place on German soil, given the division of Germany at that time. They preferred to treat the USSR more or less the way the Bush (senior) and Clinton administrations have dealt with China since - they called it Ostpolitik - in other words, ‘reform’ through economic engagement. With the advent of Gorbachev, the American bourgeoisie basically came to agree with them.
But for the SPD to come out in outright opposition and refuse to even passively support a major planned war by the US is unprecedented. My understanding is that Schröder is pretty bluntly saying that this projected war is wrong, and if he is re-elected Germany will have nothing to do with it. That is a promise he should be held to by his working class base - and critical support is the appropriate tactic to bring that about.
The SPD has not broken to the left on any other question but the war. But in a period of war, the war rapidly becomes the question of questions. Schröder has been denounced by his Christian Democrat (conservative bourgeois) opponent, Stoiber, for breaking with the European consensus and potentially destabilising Europe itself by his anti-war election campaign. This has (in my view) opened up clear red water (as they say in British political punditry) between the SPD, as a bourgeois workers’ party, and its purely bourgeois opponents in this election. One key question, provided it really is a key question, can be enough to make a real class difference between such parties in an election, and open up the latent contradictions in a bourgeois workers’ party to our intervention. Schröder’s anti-war election campaign gives us a contradiction to exploit if we give critical support to the SPD. And the Christian Democrats’ switch to a virulent anti-immigrant campaign as the ‘new’ Schröder bandwagon gathers momentum only seems to be deepening the polarisation.
Schröder (for reasons of his own political calculations vis-à-vis his base, no doubt) has placed himself at the head of anti-war sentiment in a major war crisis. If the Labour Party did a similar thing here (fat chance - under Blair at least!) then in my view it is inconceivable that we would not give critical support to Labour.
The ex-Stalinist PDS is essentially still an eastern party - ultimately a remnant of the GDR. But the SPD is still the main party of the working class in the most economically powerful parts of Germany - and in my view if an opportunity presents itself to exploit contradictions in that party we should jump at the chance.
This may seem an abstract discussion from a purely British perspective. But since we have a perspective of fighting for a Communist Party of the European Union, we are obliged to address such questions.
Ian Donovan
London
Respect Saddam
Referring to Saddam Hussein as “Saddam” whilst referring to Tony Blair as “Blair” strikes me as an unconscious (I hope) internalisation of the US and Britain’s war propaganda (Weekly Worker September 12).
References such as these are used by Bush’s spin-doctors to ridicule, demonise and belittle Saddam Hussein. It is part of their preparation for war. Just do a web search on the name Saddam and you will find propaganda articles such as ‘Saddam and the bomb’, etc. Communists should be more conscious about the use such terms. ‘Saddam Hussein’, ‘Hussein’ or ‘president Hussein’ are more appropriate for revolutionaries.
Jairaj Chetty
email
Naked power
The United States has always had something of a moral advantage in world affairs. The US leaned towards democracy and human rights and against aggressors. But that advantage is now being wasted. The CIA taught torture in Latin America and other places. When Iraq was busy gassing the Iranians, the US was silent. When the US rescued Kuwait, they restored a dictatorship rather than create a democracy.
In the fight against al Qa’eda, the US does not treat their prisoners as prisoners of war, nor as criminals. Rather, they keep them blinded in open-air mesh kennels in Cuba. They prevent access by their consular officials or lawyers. This is all contrary to the Geneva Convention and other international law.
The only white American al Qa’eda caught in Afghanistan was convicted in a criminal court in the US. But non-white Americans and citizens of Sweden, Canada, Britain, Pakistan, Afghanistan and others are just housed like dogs. Now the US is demanding Iraq adhere to UN resolutions on threat of invasion. But they don’t insist on the same compliance for Israel, which is violating more UN resolutions than Iraq is, and already has nuclear weapons.
Power has never been so naked. Isn’t it time for the US to follow its own constitution? Isn’t it time for the US to regain the moral high ground as well as the military high ground? Isn’t it time for the only superpower to become a law-abiding member of the world community? Or will the US continue to make enemies until the whole world is against them?
Tom Trottier
email
Introversion
I must confess to having contributed to the high number of hits on your website, but please don’t take this as necessarily endorsement of the Weekly Worker or its overall line. For me, it does contain material of interest: I like reading a range of opinions.
But I substantially agree with Phil Hearse’s argument (Weekly Worker August 29). The problem with the Weekly Worker is not necessarily “gossip”, but “introversion”. This is probably a fair charge. Although fighting for a “united Socialist Alliance party” is a fair aim, the Weekly Worker has tended (in my experience) to focus on the process of unity.
This is a bit like the old Trotskyist method of achieving unity by near-total programmatic agreement (with the abstract maximum programme as the basis of agreement). The element of programme you seem to be concentrating on is the process of unity. Although this shibboleth is perhaps more constructive than most, it still seems to me short of what is needed. A more constructive method would be to seek unity in the struggles of the day.
Programmatic questions are a part of this obviously, but not the be-all-and-all. I think it’s odd that a weekly paper, into which a lot of effort is obviously put, doesn’t really reflect much of what is going on in the UK beyond what the left is up to. It doesn’t reflect the real struggles that the working class is facing. The basis of socialist unity should be the overall needs of the working class, and no amount of programmatic elaboration can match involvement and learning in struggle. The CPGB may well be heavily involved in a lot of struggles around the UK but that’s not the impression I get from the Weekly Worker.
A lot of the Weekly Worker seems to criticise other groups on the left. This has some place, but it’s far easier to diagnose a disease than it is to find a cure. The new Resistance newspaper sounds like it will be pointed in this direction.
Ben Courtice
Australia
Futile letter
Why was the letter by Doug Green printed (Weekly Worker September 12)? All left factions and papers have their raison d’être and publish articles, letters, etc to advance their position. I take it that you do not have an open policy on your letters page: that is, you don’t print everything you receive. So, I assume, the above short letter was regarded, in some way, as contributing to serious debate.
The letter, in its own crude way, reflects the schizophrenic view of the Weekly Worker - the project of the International Socialist Group and Socialist Solidarity Network is worthless, but they are also to be criticised for not letting the CPGB on board. Printing a derogatory letter makes that decision to exclude rather less surprising.
As for the ‘point’ about support cheques being made to Resistance - be serious, Doug Green. Something like ‘To be determined as soon as feasible by an agreed and democratically elected body drawn from those building the new publication’ is plainly a crap bank account name.
A Socialist Alliance paper is something to be welcomed. Letters like Doug Green’s aren’t.
Nick Hackett
Milton Keynes
Name taken
We would like to point out that the Anarchist Federation has so far produced 41 issues (plus an unnumbered pilot issue) of its monthly news sheet Resistance, which are distributed in the thousands.
Perhaps the title of the putative ISG-SSN paper should be reconsidered. Do we really want a repeat of the situation where Militant rechristened itself the ‘Socialist Party’, when there was an already existing Socialist Party of Great Britain?
Charles Mowbray
Anarchist Federation
97th victim
Hamide Ozturk started the death fast on June 3 2001 and is the 97th martyr of the resistance struggle. She became immortal on September 10 as a monument to the invincibility of revolutionary willpower.
Neither the willpower of tyranny, nor the willpower of Europe, nor the efforts of those who seek to bring our willpower to heel can divert it from its path. The revolutionary will is superior to all other forms. It is this will which has rendered ineffective the hundreds of methods used by the oligarchy and imperialism, and which is continuing to resist today. This is the willpower of the Party-Front.
Leftwingers and democratic forces, stop waiting for the resistance to end of its own accord. Give up such dreams and speculation. Revolutionary willpower has shown that such reckonings will not come to pass. All those who feel responsibility to this land and people or for democracy and independence and rights and freedoms, and who do not want the number of martyrs to rise further can only do one thing: recognise the reality of the resistance, with its willpower and its resolve. All attitudes, policies and reckonings which do not recognise this willpower are doomed to failure.
Our comrade Hamide Ozturk was born in 1970 in Antakya. She was an Arab Alevi. Her mother tongue was Arabic. She came into contact with revolutionaries, and when she was in the vocational college, she took part in the academic-democratic struggle of youth. With her very first action, a protest against the system’s domination of schools and universities, she was detained, tortured and saw the true face of barbarism.
Later she took part in the struggle for rights and freedoms in Adana. She was spokeswoman for the Platform for Rights and Freedoms. She took part in protest actions against the attacks on prisons or on various sections of the people. With time, she became more intensely involved in the struggle and was detained 11 times. On November 26 1994 her brother, Ahmet Ozturk, was murdered by the police. That did not frighten her off. Quite the contrary - she took part in the struggle with even greater eagerness, her revolutionary ideals and goals strengthened.
On April 11 1996 she was detained in Istanbul. The state security court sentenced her to 12 and a half years’ imprisonment without any proof or evidence.
In the year 2000, she said: “I made a promise to Berdan when I was at the side of his coffin during the 1996 death fast. I said that now I would carry the flag and never let it fall.” Our selfless, tough, diligent, modest, constantly enthusiastic comrade, Hamide Ozturk, who had the greatest love and devotion to her party, her people and her comrades, became immortal, passing on to her comrades the flag that she received from Berdan.
DHKC
email
Dave who?
I saw Arthur Scargill at a commemoration of the 1917 revolution some years ago at one of Harpal Brar’s meetings in Southall. It was quite obvious, if you will pardon the expression, that he had a dose of ‘god disease’.
However, what is the point of denigrating him now by inviting Dave Douglass to talk on Scargill? The bourgeoisie can do that. Anyway, who is Dave Douglass? Someone who was so pathetically keen to appear on TV that he was prepared to live with an aristocrat to boost his own media reputation. The fact is that Douglass has had a ‘relationship’ with every type of ‘left’ group from Spartacist via Stalinist to left Labour. It is very much the pot calling the kettle black.
Douglass has a minor dose of ‘god disease’ himself, resting on his ‘authority’ as a hanger-on at Hatfield Main, which all you ‘leftists’ imagine is a big thing - isolated as you are from any real working class activity. ‘Workerism’ or what? The miners I had staying with me from Durham during the 1984-85 strike were somewhat unimpressed by the likes of Douglass, who has lots of rhetoric and little else.
If he was so pissed off with Arthur Scargill and the National Union of Mineworkers why did he not leave in 1985? The fact is that he was an NUM minor bureaucrat with his nose in the trough and raking in the money. Scargill, it is true, is a man of the past, but he did cost the British state £4 to £5 billion pounds, which is more than someone like Douglass will ever do.
Ted Talbot
Nottingham
