Weekly Worker 449 Thursday September 26 2002
Letters
Vote SPD
In revolutionary politics it is sometimes better to be wrong for the right reasons than right for the wrong reasons. Two very conflicting pieces in the Weekly Worker illustrate this. Both fail to understand the reasons which dictate that revolutionaries should have voted for the Social Democratic Party in last weekend’s elections in Germany. It may help then to explain why revolutionaries call for a critical vote for parties such as the SPD.
But first it is necessary to correct some errors of fact in Tina Becker’s piece (‘Vote PDS and organise’ Weekly Worker September 19). The comrade describes Linksruck, the fraternal organisation of the Socialist Workers Party in Germany, as having 150 members, which is surely a gross underestimate. While this group lost a section of its membership in a recent split, it still commands the loyalty of greater numbers than Becker estimates.
Similarly the autonomist current is described as “a smattering of anarchists”. This is hardly the case at all and in fact many autonomists regard themselves as Marxists. That they are distrustful of the organised Marxist groups is a consequence of the Stalinism that pervaded politics to the left of the SPD for so long. This is an important current that cannot be dismissed as a mere “smattering”, especially given the role many of these comrades have played in often physical confrontations with neo-Nazi groups. Those whom Becker describes as “official communists” and the various Maoist groups are best left to rot.
Comrade Becker argues too that there has been no attempt to set up a Socialist Alliance in Germany, but also states that the Party of Democratic Socialism had many of the features of such a body! Given that the ‘CPGB’ seeks in Britain to transform the Socialist Alliance into a party, this is a somewhat pedantic differentiation, unless in Germany the aim is to transform the party into an alliance! Given that Becker believes that only Linksruck has more than 10 members, who she wishes to see in a such an alliance is also rather mysterious.
Even if the PDS is not the longed for Socialist Alliance, comrade Becker considers this remnant of Stalinism worthy of electoral support. Her reasons, however, seem to be extremely threadbare, given that she recognises that the leadership of the PDS is every bit as careerist and wedded to capitalism as the SPD. Indeed Becker acknowledges that the PDS has participated in regional governing coalitions which have cut services to working people in as cynical a manner as the Greens and, just as the Greens do, it passes anti-war resolutions at conferences in the knowledge that the party leadership will gaily ignore such pious platitudes. The comrade’s only expressed reason for suggesting that socialists support the PDS is then revealed as being the internal regime of the party, which allows a tiny sect of nostalgic Stalinists to function as defenders of past crimes. This freedom to operate as an open faction would allow revolutionaries “to gain some kind of social base”, is the comrade’s suggestion.
There are three basic problems with this position - two are tactical and the other of principle. Tactically it is doubtful that revolutionaries could operate in the PDS without becoming either assimilated into the party’s apparatus, as has clearly happened with certain followers of Ernest Mandel, or being expelled. It seems somewhat foolish to expect the same rules to be applied to revolutionaries as to a bunch of Stalinists nostalgic for the Berlin Wall. Secondly, should revolutionaries be allowed to work within the PDS, the social base they would be competing for is that layer of the population which is ageing and excluded from work due to their low skills level. For the facts are that the PDS receives the votes of those sectors of the working class who have lost most through German reunification: that is, an ageing layer of the population geographically concentrated in the eastern Länder. While revolutionaries are sympathetic to their plight, it is to the youth and to employed workers that we must look.
More important than such tactical considerations is the failure of the comrade to understand the reasons why revolutionaries vote for certain parties and not others. In short, comrade Becker’s argument for extending critical electoral support to the PDS by virtue of its internal regime is opportunist, in that it puts the needs of a sect before the needs of the working class. That is, Becker argues for support of this sectional and declining party because a handful of revolutionaries may be recruited from its ranks - unlikely, given that many have already tried and largely failed - rather than extending support to that party which she admits commands the support of the majority of the organised working class. Her reasons for supporting the PDS are then both sectarian and opportunist; both her premises and conclusions are wrong.
By contrast comrade Donovan is right, as regards electoral support of the SPD, for the wrong reasons. His argument for extending critical support to the SPD is due to the perceived “leftist profile, in turn based on its anti-war agitation” (Letters, September 19). All well and good, but electoral support is not given to a mass party - and the SPD remains a mass party far more than the Labour Party has been in a generation - due to its stand on this or that issue. Rather revolutionaries call upon their supporters to vote for reformist parties despite their politics. That the reformists take a more or less progressive stand on any particular issue will only determine how critical we should be and not the principle.
It is certainly true, as comrade Donovan writes, that war is a ‘make or break’ question, but, let us be clear: if and when the USA tries to fuck over Iraq, Schröder will happily feast upon the corpses of the Iraqi people. There is no “clear red water between the SPD, as a bourgeois workers’ party, and its purely bourgeois opponents in this election”. The SPD only differs from the CDU-CSU as to how to oppress and exploit the lesser developed countries and if there is a difference today between Germany and the USA it is because the interests of German capitalists are not served by participation in this war. If a demagogic opposition to Dubya’s great game plays well with the electorate, so much the better.
Curiously comrade Donovan is keen to stress that, should the Labour Party adopt an anti-war stand akin to that of the SPD, then he would happily call upon ‘CPGB’ supporters to vote for it. No doubt this generous offer will cause no one sleepless nights of indecision. And Donovan is echoed by comrade Becker when she writes of the need for “an active engagement with the left of the SPD”. Again Donovan is wrong to set conditions upon the delivery of electoral support to the Labour Party, although what difference a few dozen votes would make is a moot point. Again we find both writers calling for work with reformists while seeking to build electoral rivals to the parties which reformist workers remain attached to. This is to combine sectarianism and opportunism in equal measure, and to cloak all with a verbal revolutionism.
Electoral support of reformist workers’ parties is not, or rather should not be, dependent on their stand on this or that issue but on their relationship with the organised sections of the working class. Like it or not, the SPD remains linked to the trade unions as closely as Labour is in Britain. Unless credible alternatives can be developed (the Socialist Alliance is clearly not credible to anyone outside the congeries of the far left), it remains necessary to call for a vote for such parties and in Germany that means the SPD.
Mike Pearn
Cardiff
CWI Germany
Tina Becker writes: “The Socialist Workers Party’s German section, Linksruck, is the only organisation originating from the Trotskyist milieu with more than 10 comrades.”
Is this an honest mistake - or an attempt to rewrite history? The section of the CWI in Germany, Sozialistische Alternative (SAV), numbers several hundred members, produces a regular monthly paper Solidarität - Sozialistische Zeitung and has far more influence in the movement than Linksruck, which has declined steadily over the past few years.
I hope that comrade Becker made a honest mistake, as this statement is extremely misleading for the left in Britain.
Lance Roberts
Coventry
Bullets, not ballots
Comrades Peter Manson and Jack Conrad’s recent polemics against John Pearson, David Moran and to a lesser extent myself seem to give credibility to the suspicions of Martin Thomas of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty that the CPGB leadership has a culture of private political convictions that are not made public or openly discussed among the membership.
There is a possibility that some of the leaders of the CPGB have private political allegiance to an updated version of the old CPGB British road to socialism. There is the possibility they are waiting for the influx of reformist-influenced workers to join their ranks before openly discussing their real political programme.
Although, to be fair to comrades Manson and Conrad, they have now come out of the closet and partly made public their convictions on the possibility of the peaceful and parliamentary road in Britain, even rehashing the old selected quotes from Marx and Lenin (ignoring most of the capitalist barbarism directed at the workers’ movement in the 20th century), used by Stalinists of the old CPGB.
The possibility of a peaceful and parliamentary majority is restated as a universal law of democracy in general. But again maybe this is unfair to Jack. Maybe his fierce polemics against the old party leadership and their programme of peaceful parliamentary revolution was some youthful blood lust to revenge the martyred dead of the workers’ movement. But, to be serious, why does Jack use the crude reformist image of revolutionaries as bloodthirsty individuals as a polemical weapon?
According to comrade Manson, the communist “method is not the anarchist one of abolishing democracy, but that of extending, deepening and giving substance to existing gains and achieving yet more gains”. We are not out to smash bourgeois democracy because this democracy is essentially the direct product of working class struggle and has a working class character. The working class can make this democracy, including presumably the bourgeois House of Commons, its own. “Taken together, these gains [all the gains of bourgeois democracy] represent bourgeois democracy as a whole.” So what happened to the classical Marxist criticism of social democracy of wanting to simply lay their hands on the existing state apparatus?
Bourgeois democracy is not a direct product of workers’ struggle. This gives a proletarian gloss to bourgeois democracy. Take for example the Chartists in the 1840s in Britain. Most of their demands for democracy could not be granted when the character of their struggle was revolutionary opposition to industrial capitalism. Later when the movement had been crushed and defeated and workers had accepted capitalism or a reformed version of it, most of their demands could be safely granted on bourgeois terms. But if the ruling class can grant forms of democracy in safe times, they can withdraw forms of democracy in dangerous times.
If comrade Conrad and his lieutenant Peter Manson had been in Russia in 1917 they would have denounced the October revolution as an ultra-left adventure which could only provoke a violent counterrevolution. Far better to base the party strategy on the fullest development of democracy through the constituent assembly. Let’s build on the democratic gains of the first February revolution. There would always be the possibility of the ruling class accepting the democratic vote of the masses. If not at the initial vote for the constituent assembly, which did not give full expression to support for the revolution, then surely a later vote would mature to give overwhelming support to the Bolsheviks and nothing could prevent the freely and democratically expressed wishes of the overwhelming majority of the workers and peasants. We must always allow for the universal principle of democracy in general to express itself peacefully if possible. After all, as Peter points out, history is on our side and the unity of the workers is assured. This would have been laughable in 1917 and is still amusing today. Talk about utopias.
Peter says that our aim is not to destroy bourgeois democracy. This is anarchism. But Lenin in his State and revolution, rediscovered the lesson of the Paris Commune. Prior to 1917 Lenin was influenced by Kautsky with his flawed concept of democratic revolution. When Bukharin became the first Bolshevik to rediscover the Marxist tradition on the state in 1916 Lenin denounced him as an anarchist. Later, having learned from the workers and peasants in 1917, Lenin changed his mind and agreed with Bukharin. He had been wrong previously, although he never admitted it.
Peter cannot admit Lenin was ever wrong, unless Lenin himself admitted the error, which was not his usual habit. Lenin went through a learning process himself in 1917. He did not appreciate the depth of the class antagonism between the soviets and the constituent assembly or between bourgeois and working class democracy until very late in the day.
Theoretically for much of 1917 the Bolshevik Party still looked to the constituent assembly as the fruition of the democratic revolution. The revolution dynamic would pass through universal suffrage and the constituent assembly. Instead the constituent assembly became an expression of counterrevolution against the workers’ democracy of the soviets. As Lenin and Trotsky pointed out in their polemics with Kautsky, universal suffrage can simply be a gauge of workers’ opinion, but sometimes can be a weapon of the bourgeoisie.
The communists aim to smash the capitalist state, including bourgeois democratic states. This is because bourgeois parliaments cannot truly represent the masses. The old bourgeois institutions must be smashed because bourgeois parliaments and other bourgeois institutions depend on the separation and alienation of the working masses from political power. The crying contradiction is between formal democracy and the social process that turns workers into wage slaves. Even the most democratic bourgeois republic rests on the unwritten agreement that the working class is not in a position to go forward from formal political equality to social equality or emancipation.
Barry Biddulph
Stoke-on-Trent
Kiwi Labour
I do not often see material about New Zealand in the Weekly Worker, and I’d like to thank Phillip Ferguson for his contribution (Letters, September 12). But it is misleading in some parts and wrong in others.
Philip rather proudly points out that in our general election his Anti-Capitalist Alliance’s four candidates got “20-25% of the vote scored by Alliance candidates” in the constituencies in which they stood. But, as the Alliance only got 1.2% of the total national vote, this hardly adds up to much. He also omits to mention the politics of the Workers Party of New Zealand, with which his grouping formed its alliance. The WPNZ is an old-style, unreformed, Maoist sectlet. Its influence in and impact on the local working class is tantamount to zero.
In analysing New Zealand First, Philip states that its constituencies are Maori and superannuitants (as we call pensioners here). He’s right about the old folk, but Maori have reverted to Labour. Labour won all five Maori seats with huge majorities and New Zealand First is a spent force there. Rather than Maori, its other main constituency is now anti-Asian racists. A number of that group are migrant, Asian-hating, former Poms. Soon after the election, a New Zealand First MP, a former British migrant, was recycling Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech in parliament. Its third constituency could best be described as the ‘totally pissed-off at everything’ petty bourgeoisie.
Philip claims that teachers have been fighting a major battle with the government. Only secondary teachers were involved in that battle. The primary teachers union, which is a female-dominant one, was very critical of the (male-dominant) secondary teachers union for seeking, through their action, to break out of a ‘parity’ agreement that gave primary teachers the same pay rates as secondary teachers.
Philip also condemns the Labour Party as “Blairites” who are “backed by NZ capital” and asserts that “there is no longer a material basis or political space for social democracy”.
Yet like its 1999-2002 predecessor, the current Labour government is anti-privatisation, pro-union, pro-treating beneficiaries as human beings. So, okay, this isn’t the revolution, but it isn’t Blairism either. You might call it fairly standard social democracy in practice. The material basis for it comprises budget surpluses; the political space for it is demonstrated by the fact that so many people voted for it and that Labour remains a coalition which has support from unions, feminists, Maori, significant sections of the superannuitants, and poor people. And, yes, some of the more progressive capitalists.
You see, if there really is no space and no basis for social democracy, then the only left politics to which people can turn must be revolutionary ones. Now that might be what Phillip would like to be the case, and I might too. But it is not the reality, and I think it was Marx who said that we should start from the real situation. Here in the very conservative country of New Zealand, social democracy, which is a very flexible beast, is far from dead and is capable of mutating into many new forms.
That said, I enjoy reading the Weekly Worker - not that I agree with much of it - and it is pleasing to see people from outside the UK contributing to your letters column.
Paul Harris
New Zealand
Beyond our Kenna
The CPGB is in favour of the continued existence of the state of Israel on the 78% of Palestine grabbed from its Arab inhabitants. The CPGB says that Arab Palestinians should be denied the right of return to that 78% of Palestine.
At the last count, the whites owned 50% of Zimbabwe, 75% of Namibia and 87% of South Africa. How long before the CPGB is demanding white homelands in these areas with the blacks forbidden to return except perhaps as hired hands?
Ivor Kenna
London
Think about it
So basically you guys support terrorism. I know Israel is occupying Palestinian land, right? Well, Israelis have as much claim to the land, if not more, than the Palestinians.
How could you support such a group? If you believe this than you are basically giving any native American groups in the US the right to kill innocent people. You are giving Mexicans the OK to cross the border and kill people in Texas. Think about it. You guys need to get your heads examined.
Scott Gleichenhaus
New Jersey
Muslim names
Jairaj Chetty believes that the clipped use of ‘Saddam’ instead of ‘Saddam Hussein’ might show an “unconscious” collapse before US and British “war propaganda” (Letters, September 19). I too once shared the same prejudice.
Muslim names are mostly of an Arabic, Persian or Turkish origin. As far as I understand, until recently very few people had ‘family’ names. Traditionally people had a threefold name. The first given name is received at birth; to that is added the father’s name; finally comes a local or honorific name, which usually indicates a person’s city of origin, family occupation or ancestry. In addition a man of standing or authority has one or two more honorific names bestowed upon him.
Which name is used by friends or in a telephone directory will depend on particular circumstances. Eg, which is least common. Take Ahmad Ali Zinjani. Ahmad is a given name and Ali is the father’s name. Zinjani indicates that the man comes from Zinjan. There are countless Alis in Baghdad, many Ahmads, but far fewer Zinjanis. Ahmad Ali Zinjani is therefore more likely to be known as Zinjani than Ahmad or Ali.
Often, however, the same person can be known by one of their other names. It all depends on the circles he is moving in. That goes for Ahmad Ali Zinjani as it does for Saddam Hussein.
In short there is no collapse before US and British war propaganda - “unconscious” or otherwise.
Jack Conrad
London
Support the war
There is no workers’ alternative - genocidal maniacs should not be in power. The workers should support the dominant faction of the ruling class in its attempts to enforce the constitution and culture of the United States on the entire world.
Globalisation is a blessing that will hopefully clear away all the pre-capitalist hangovers. When globalisation is complete then so is the historic task of the bourgeois class. When we are all wage slaves in one identifiable global empire, in which there are no more dissenting factions of the ruling class, then communism will really become a possibility. Perhaps even the logical outcome of capital, as it has always been a neutral entity in human affairs since its beginnings.
Without capital there would have been far more wars, and far less unity in the world. Without the common interest generated by finance and trade, the global interdependence of continents and nations would not exist and there would be no good reason to set aside the old prejudices of colour, language, culture, national chauvinism, localism and pride. Capitalism, despite the wars between the different factions of the ruling class, the poverty and the ecological damage, has worked out quite well for the human race.
Let’s hope the Americans of all nations really sink their teeth in and get this globalisation phase over before 2050. Support the war, but always ask for more democracy, more freedom, more liberty, more justice - and emphasise the ‘for all’. Here’s to the dominant ideals of bourgeois political philosophy. They make fine foundation stones for the classless world to which communists aspire.
Forget the pacifist arguments about how wars create human disasters, and how thousands may die. This is not human tragedy. The tragedy of each and every human life is that it exists - it can’t get more tragic than that. Non-existence is after all much more peaceful.
If the communists were to take power now then they would be able to do nothing different. Would a Union of Socialist Republics as near to true global domination as the USA hesitate to deal with a Saddam Hussein, a Taliban, a Stalin, a Scargill or a Hitler? I think the bombs would have fallen on Saddam far sooner.
Spike Klein
Springfield, USA
Homophobia
In addition to the original homophobic images that ‘Indy’ (or is that BNP?) media have displayed there are now several critical comments as well as, sadly, the kind of homophobic drivel I have come to expect from the ‘alternative’ milieu.
As Indymedia has persisted in this behaviour, I feel we must do something to highlight their bigotry. Ask yourself this: if it were images full of crude BNP-style racism that Indymedia was promoting would the ‘left’ have been so silent about this issue?
Credit where credit is due - to Globalise Resistance, Weekly Worker and Outrage for taking the issue seriously: you put the rest of the ‘left’ (whatever their hue) to utter shame.
Steve Davies
Birmingham
Hoax letter
The letter regarding Dave Douglass published last week was not my mine (‘Dave who?’, Letters, September 19).
At the moment I am not sure if my account has been illegitimately accessed or if the message address was simply faked. Most probably the latter. As I am sure you know, there are plenty of programmes that will fit on a floppy to do this.
I never dreamt that you would print this email as (1) I assumed that DD would have informed you; and (2) it’s got all the characteristics of a hoax anyway - as if it is two people are writing diametrically opposed arguments in the same sentence.
Ted Talbot
Nottingham
That Dave
Whoever wrote the slanderous letter in the name of Ted Talbot needs to be replied to.
I have never ‘raked it in’ from anywhere. I am now a branch official of the NUM and have been since 1979. I have also had spells on the area executive committee, but neither of these allowed me to ‘rake it in’ from any source - it allowed me a day off work paid by the union on a rate a little less than I would have earned if I had been down the pit. The rest of my 35 years in the coal industry have been spent on shifts, on the coal face working, and I have no complaint about that.
I, along with my family, was on strike for just over 12 months and went through some bitter times. This we did gladly for the cause we believe in. It was this and actions by 180,000 other miners and their families which cost the state the losses, not Arthur - this was our strike, which Arthur was at the head of, but the strike belonged to the miners as a whole. In this sense he did no more nor less than the rest of us.
As a communist and a trade unionist I do not believe in walking away from problems - the point is to challenge them and change them. As for using the platform of left papers either in factual articles to inform people, feature articles on social or historic aspects of pit life, or in polemic with sections of the left, I have addressed or tried to address the broad spectrum (I have never embraced Stalinism, however). That doesn’t mean by any means I subscribe to the views and aspirations of the authors of those papers - that is quite plain from the contents of what I write.
Why do you see addressing ‘the left’ in all its forms as some kind of prostitution? I believe in a free flow of ideas and argument, not some repressive, one-way view. Incidentally I have held basically the same revolutionary communist views all my life, for a brief period going over to Trotskyism before returning to the revolutionary Marxist anarcho left.
Whoever wrote the letter clearly does not like me. However, as the Buddha said, he who holds up his face to be kissed will on occasion find it gets smacked.
Dave (who?) Douglass
Hatfield Main
Blinkers off
Dave Douglass is attacked in your letters page as “someone who was so politically keen to appear on TV”. This statement is completely wrong, as Class War was approached by the television producers. The officers of Class War (which did not include comrade Douglass) decided it was a worthwhile opportunity and they asked Dave to do the programme.
Then the writer attacks our comrade for having had a “relationship with every type of left group”. This is because Dave’s/CW’s politics aren’t sectarian and his behaviour in this respect is something to be commended. But anyhow Dave has been consistent in his political views and remained a member of Class War for over 15 years.
That Dave Douglass stays in his workplace union despite differences with the national leader(ship) to try through argument/democracy to improve it and to participate in it as the only working class vehicle in his workplace is almost always the correct thing to do. Telling him to leave if he does not like it is like the thicker reactionaries telling leftwingers to go to Russia - but perhaps the letter-writer may prefer North Korea, where socialist leaders get due respect. Dave certainly does not have his nose in the trough. If you want to accuse any union bureaucrats of raking in the money, we suggest you take your blinkers off.
Dave has defended Scargill from the attacks of The Mirror and the rest of the bourgeois press, while criticising him from the left. While all leaders in the working class, past and present, are open to criticism, he’s not carried his criticism in the mass tabloids, but in the press of revolutionary partisans.
London Class War
email
Get it right
I’m glad the Weekly Worker is giving such prominence to Paul Foot’s campaign in Hackney.
But please try to get your facts right. “Abbott and Foot share platform” is plain wrong (September 19). Diane Abbott spoke from the floor - although, of course, the fact she made common cause with the SA candidate over Iraq is still significant in the way you suggest. And Assad Rahman is not an SWP member either.
Kevin Smith
Hackney
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