Weekly Worker 451 Thursday October 10 2002
Letters
Auto-SPD
I would like to reply to Ian Donovan’s letter (Weekly Worker October 3). In politics context is often of vast importance. In a period when the level of struggle is low and the confidence of workers in their abilities negligible, revolutionary policies can seem utopian and absurd. The opposite may apply in a period of high struggle and revolutionaries may find themselves counselling caution. Thus it was amusing to find comrade Donovan taking my comments concerning the recent German elections out of context.
The comrade claims to have discovered in my letter a principle which, in the manner of your group, is named “auto-SPD” - a curious and sectish term unique to the ‘CPGB’ - where no such principle was avowed. Rather than make claim to such a dubious principle, by which I understand you to mean the automatic electoral support of reformist parties, I actually argued for electoral support to be given to such parties despite their politics as a principle. But nowhere and at no time have I advanced the position that revolutionaries always, “automatically”, vote for bourgeois parties such as the SPD or the Labour Party.
Further, your comrade writes that “some like comrade Pearn support the reformist bureaucratic apparatus”, which is nothing but a slander. The position I have advanced at every election since 1979 has been one of critical support with regard to those bourgeois workers’ parties participating. Therefore even in 1997, when campaigning as a member of the Socialist Labour Party, I continued to argue that workers should vote for the Labour Party where the SLP was not standing. This alone proves comrade Donovan’s comments concerning my so called auto-Labourism to be a nonsense.
Rather revolutionaries must critically support bourgeois workers’ parties such as Labour or the SPD where and when these parties command the continued allegiance of masses of organised workers - this is a general rule, but not something automatically to be assumed. There are, as with any rule, exceptions to this practice. For example, it may be the case that revolutionaries may find it advisable to call for abstention from elections totally or they might find themselves in a position of calling upon their supporters to vote for a formation such as the SLP or Socialist Alliance due to their membership of such sects. Electoral support of a mass party such as the SPD remains, however, the general rule and cannot be described as a principle.
However, what is a principled method is that on which revolutionaries critically support such bourgeois workers’ parties as the SPD or Labour. For comrade Donovan the SPD is to be supported due to Schröder’s reluctance to engage in Bush’s Iraqi adventure. This is seen by comrade Donovan as being the crucial issue of the day, and so it is. Revolutionaries in Germany have the duty then of explaining to supporters of the SPD that Schröder’s statements are mere demagogy, given his continuing support for imperialist aggression in the Balkans and elsewhere. Electoral support of Schröder and the SPD is therefore correct despite their actions, including their domestic politics which comrade Donovan fails to discuss, and not because of a few treacherous statements made by such a renowned trickster as Schröder.
Let us look at the question from another perspective. Imagine for a moment Britain is facing a war and the depth of feeling against the war is such that minor and even major openly bourgeois parties verbally oppose it. Do we then critically support such parties? Given that comrade Donovan argues that support for the SPD is dependent on its opposition to the war, if the answer is ‘no’ one must note that the comrade’s criterion is inadequate at best. Clearly revolutionaries can never give any support to openly bourgeois parties, regardless of this or that position they adopt.
Or perhaps we might look at the history of the German workers’ movement,
which holds many lessons. As the comrades will know, a war broke out in
1914 and the SPD, contrary to all its teachings and principles, supported
it. The response of revolutionary socialists at the time is instructive:
they denounced the war and remained within the ranks of the SPD. The reason
being that they sought at all times to maintain contact with the most
class-conscious sections of the working class - and they were to be found
within the SPD despite its leadership and policies. In fact the most experienced
leaders of the revolutionary movement were reluctant to break from both
the SPD and its leftwing breakaway, the Independent SPD, for fear of their
supporters launching themselves on a sectarian binge in the name of building
an independent party.
Given the history of even the early years of the Communist Party of Germany, it is hard not to conclude that there was much in the fears of Rosa Luxemburg. Revolutionaries today must support the reformist workers’ parties, despite the lack of even the vaguest promise of working class reforms, in order that those organised workers who support those parties come to understand that the likes of Blair and Schröder are as much their enemies as Stoiber and whatsisname of the Tory Party. But such support is always despite their policies of the day and is a function of the class contradictions which are still the foundation of those parties. It is in this contradiction that is to be found the basis of differences between the bourgeois leaderships and the working class membership; and it is this contradiction revolutionaries seek to exploit.
That on occasion revolutionaries will vote for, or even join, parties
which
stand to the left of the mass reformist parties is true, but these are
exceptions to the general rule that when there is no mass revolutionary
organisation it is mandatory to vote for the reformist parties. One exception
is the Socialist Alliance, but even here let us not pretend that this
reformist electoral bloc can command anything but the support of those
handfuls influenced by the far left. It is then a sect or collection of
sects, and support for it is exceptional. As mentioned above, there are
other circumstances when it may be needful to abstain, but the general
rule stands.
Always such critical support is delivered despite the policies of the reformists and not because of this or that policy they momentarily advocate for opportunist reasons.
Mike Pearn
email
Pro-unity AWL
I want to reply to a couple of things written in Mary Godwin’s account of the CPGB aggregate. Mary wrote: “While the AWL calls in the abstract for the unity of the revolutionary left, such a notion does not guide its practice - and certainly not its participation in the Socialist Alliance” (Weekly Worker October 3).
Is this true? I don’t think so. The first words on our website are vaunting the SA debate on the euro: “The debate on the euro, for a workers’ Europe. In the Socialist Alliance over the next two months there will be the first major debate - on the euro - within a common organisational framework, that the left has had for over 30 years. Solidarity has produced a special mini-pamphlet, tracking our view of the background to and history of this critical debate on Europe.” That doesn’t sound like indifference to revolutionary unity to me.
But even if you believe it to be true, how can you not see the absurdity of following it, as though this were proof, with: “At the SA national conference on December 1 2001 the AWL took an anarcho-liberal position, standing against steps that would take the alliance in a partyist direction and instead voting for a loose form of organisation in a futile attempt to prevent the Socialist Party in England and Wales walkout”? I will make several points about this:
l Perhaps the attempt to stop the Socialist Party walking out was futile - in the interests of revolutionary unity, we genuinely hoped it was not. That’s why we made the attempt. If the attempt was futile, we are either very stupid, not seeing the writing on the wall (possible), underestimating the boneheaded, sectarian nature of the Socialist Party (impossible!) - but then you cannot accuse us of being indifferent to or hostile to revolutionary unity, just mistaken in how we tried to serve it that day. Or we are Machiavellian: the position we took at the national conference was a pose. We masked our hostility to the (real) project of revolutionary unity (the partyist motion you and the SWP backed) with the appearance (a mirage, you insist) of being the ‘nice guys’, knocking heads together in the interests of ... revolutionary unity! That way, when we lost the vote, hey, at least we looked good (to the idiots present, those people who thought revolutionary unity could best be served by keeping the revolutionaries in the same room. Not to you - or we - who know better).
- The AWL’s position on that day, arguing for the Socialist Party - revolutionaries - and the SWP - revolutionaries - to stay, however uncomfortably, in one organisation, united, for a while longer and continue engaging in some common activities (minimally - and, on an honest assessment, perhaps maximally as well - grunting at each other in front of a wider audience) ... that’s hostility or indifference to “unity of the revolutionary left”? It’s a lot less like indifference, I say, than the CPGB backing a resolution you knew would make the Socialist Party walkout more likely.
- I don’t plead for the Socialist Party - I don’t think they should have walked. I have no illusions about them (what a shame that they are not here now to defend themselves). I’ve seen with my own eyes, in the civil service, their offensive, self-serving, philistine dismissal of other decent leftists. Yet, it would have been better for the SA project, for revolutionary unity, had they stayed. And walking wasn’t all down to them being sectarian.
- Have you illusions about the SWP? Whatever it was that made them take the stand they did at the national conference, it was not backbone against anarcho-liberalism. (Obliquely, partly it was, of course. But precisely there I would rather be described as being anarcho-liberal than being like the SWP.) Perhaps, partly, they were motivated by a wish to have a ‘more party’ Socialist Alliance; if so, what have they done with their more party SA since? And did they want a more party SA in order to hasten revolutionary unity? Almost certainly, partly, they enjoyed the chance to rub the Socialist Party’s nose in the fact of the SWP’s greater size - not very unpartisan. Partly, perhaps, they couldn’t actually care less what constitution the SA adopts. At the end of the day, it’s my guess, they believed that the more party constitution would give the centre of the SA - the SWP - more power over the periphery.
Socialists should not dismiss lightly with adjectives like “futile” our cherished and, between comrades we have to trust, sincerely entertained projects. Perhaps your attempt to turn the SA into the embryo of the Communist Party is futile - you genuinely hope it is not. That’s why you make the attempt. If you are going to build the beginnings of a Communist Party from the bits and bobs of the revolutionaries around the Socialist Alliance, you had better start by looking at what bits and bobs they are and thinking how best to work with them. We did that at the national conference better than you.
Vicki Morris
AWL
Misleading
I would like to correct one comment in your report on the CPGB aggregate. You say: “at a fringe meeting on the SA paper, jointly organised with the AWL and the RDG at the SWP’s Marxism 2002, the AWL refused to provide a speaker”.
This is simply wrong and misleading. The AWL did not refuse to have a speaker on the issue of an SA paper. There were three meetings sponsored by the AWL, CPGB and RDG. There was some misunderstanding by the CPGB as to whether the RDG was sponsoring the meetings and putting up speakers. There was some concern that the CPGB might be resistant to having RDG speakers. This proved not to be the case.
As this error was being sorted out, the AWL suggested, instead of being top-heavy with ‘additional’ speakers, each group would stand down a speaker, perming two from three. Because Chris Jones, chair of the Merseyside SA was in attendance for the meeting on the SA paper, we agreed that AWL would ‘stand down’ in favour of Chris.
The RDG put up two speakers and chaired the third. The AWL did the same. The RDG did not put up a euro speaker and the AWL did not put up a speaker on the SA paper. But it was always clear that the AWL would speak from the floor on the SA paper and be one of the first up to speak. There were a number of AWL speakers on the SA paper (including Martin Thomas, I think). Your report seems to imply that the AWL ducked the issue. This was simply untrue.
One final comment. I support Martyn Hudson’s motion because it was basically correct, not least because it was seeking to go forward. I think the reported comments by Lee Rock summed up the situation correctly - opposed to fusion now “but a bloc with the AWL would be more useful and more likely than a joint paper”. I can’t see anything in the motion that was passed, except to confirm where we are. Stuck in the mud, blaming the AWL.
Perhaps this is why comrade John Pearson, who is fearful of the AWL, was relieved and reassured by the PCC line?
Dave Craig
RDG
Platform
I am surprised Martin Thomas requires further explanation of the September 20 Leeds meeting (Letters Weekly Worker October 3). He has discussed the matter - at some length - with not only myself, but our national organiser, Mark Fischer, too.
So, for the benefit of readers, what happened? Ray Gaston - in his capacity as vicar of All Hallows church in Leeds - organised a three-way exchange on ‘Marxism and religion’. Invited were Sean Matgamna, of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty-Solidarity, Ken Leech, a well known Anglican theologian and supporter of many leftwing causes, and - as a ‘star’ draw - Mike Marqusee, once a Socialist Alliance executive member and now the Stop the War Coalition’s leading media spokesperson.
However, at the last moment comrade Marqusee says he was shocked to discover that Sean Matgamna was due to speak alongside him. He objected. Being automatically branded an anti-semite, he says, is beyond the pale. Certainly anyone who proposes the conventional one-state solution for Israel-Palestine is guilty of anti-semitism, according to AWL polemicists. But that should be a matter of calm debate, not petulant ultimatums.
Comrade Gaston - a recent recruit to the CPGB - decided to get another speaker. Perhaps he should have simply told Mike Marqusee that dictating who spoke - apart from himself, of course - was unacceptable. Bowing before Mike Marqusee’s ultimatum sets a bad precedent. But comrade Gaston was determined that the debate must go on. He rang Mark Fischer, explained the situation, and asked him to suggest a replacement. That is where I came in. Mark Fischer contacted me. I agreed to speak - reluctantly.
For those tempted to conjure up a CPGB plot, let me make one thing perfectly clear. I was under the impression that Sean Matgamna had, at the last moment, simply dropped out - as he did at this year’s Communist University. That is why the Weekly Worker advertised Jack Conrad as “replacing Sean Matgamna”.
Only after having arrived in Leeds, on September 20, did I find out that the problem lay with Mike Marqusee. Comrade Gaston told me he had phoned Sean Matgamna. No Sean - but an answer-machine and Ray recorded a long message of explanation. Comrade Gaston had also promptly contacted the local AWL group in Leeds.
The meeting went ahead. Comrade Matgamna arrived just as proceedings were about to start. He said - so I am told - that he knew nothing of any message nor Mike Marqusee’s objections. Comrade Gaston volunteered to pay his travel expenses in full. Leeds AWL must have decided on a boycott - although one of their comrades, Jane Astrid Devane, who is also a member of the All Hallows congregation, chaired the meeting.
Comrade Matgamna must have decided against intervening from the floor. He departed without approaching either myself or Jane Astrid Devane. Introducing the meeting, comrade Gaston tactfully chided those on the left who were unwilling to debate with each other and who thereby bring our movement into disrepute.
Some are gleefully using the Leeds meeting as an excuse to attack the CPGB and put an unofficial Socialist Alliance paper on hold. There is dark talk of an underhand CPGB plan to silence the AWL. Such irresponsible nonsense is to be regretted. On the other hand those who are genuinely interested in CPGB-AWL rapprochement and building left unity will file this unfortunate incident under ‘cock-up’, not ‘conspiracy’ - and move on to more important things.
Jack Conrad
London
Inspire
I too read the Muslim Association of Britain newspaper Inspire and was struck by the collision of outlooks it presented (Weekly Worker October 3).
Beside the contributions you mention, I also noted a number of other pieces with which it would be much harder for socialists to find favour. The front-page article makes reference to Israel, the “so-called 1948 war of independence” and the thousands of Palestinians made refugees by that event, but does not mention the significant numbers of jews driven out of Arab countries at the time and in the following years.
A second article stresses the significance of a large, peaceful demonstration, but does so entirely from a standpoint innocent of any class perspective. It uses such vague formulations as “the cycle of change” to attempt to explain historical events and justifies the demonstration because it will “pressure our government to adopt a totally ethical policy at home as well as abroad”. The newspaper includes in an ‘Opinion’ column the view that, “The insanity of Sharon and those who elected him to office is a clear indication that Israel is a diabolic entity that cannot be trusted”, contains veiled approval of suicide bombings and devotes a page to arguing for “Boycotting Israel for Palestinian rights”. This article names Sainsbury’s among many other companies as a target for the boycott, and yet several pages later the newspaper carries an advert for, amongst other companies, Sainsbury’s.
Significant space is given within what seems to be the presentation of an islamic world view to the justification of Sharia-based policies and to discrimination in islamic states against non-muslims, specifically over who may hold political office. No socialist could accept the view stated in this article that, “When a person chooses not to embrace islam, then he or she would have - in order to acquire the right to citizenship - to express loyalty to the state and recognise its legitimacy so that he or she does not engage in any activity that may be construed as threatening to its order.”
These and other examples from the newspaper perhaps indicate the opportunist as well as self-contradictory nature of the publication, whose differing perspectives are at root so divergent that they must break apart under more than a moment’s scrutiny or pressure. It does no service to the working class, in my view, to obscure the ultimate incompatibility of a socialist and a religious (any religious) outlook, nor to imply that, whatever its declared aims, the MAB can accommodate to (far less be accommodated by) an independent working class political current of the kind the CPGB and the AWL hope to help shape.
Patrick Yarker
email
Defend Iraq?
In response to the letters last week from Charlie Pottins and Sacha Ismail, I feel I should clarify a few points (Weekly Worker October 3).
I find little to object to in comrade Pottins’s letter. Indeed if working people formed shuras and the regime armed the masses I would welcome any attempt of such bodies to lead the masses and hold on to the weapons. The main issue that I was arguing was that in the event of an imperialist onslaught it would be suicidal for the masses to turn their guns against the Iraqi troops, as this would only lead to a US victory, followed by an occupation of ‘peacekeepers’ and, as the comrade points out, a more pliable dictator.
As for comrade Ismail’s letter, he made an interesting point referring to defeatism. He also agrees that it is a principled position to give military support to indigenous forces fighting against imperialist conquest, regardless of the character of their political leadership. However, where he differs from me is his belief that the war against Iraq is not a war of conquest. It is more than an attempt to patch up the fabric of the capitalist world order, as he asserts. It is true that imperialism no longer rules by direct colonial methods, but it has other means. One only has to look at the UN ‘protectorate’ in Bosnia, for example, to see this, where the ‘supreme high representative’ is none other than Lord Ashdown. The western military presence in the Balkans is still alive and well, and it also is in Afghanistan. Therefore who can say how long the US-UK forces will remain in Iraq after they succeed in their mission of deposing Saddam?
Rather than go to the expense, however, of setting up a direct colonial administration, imperialism today finds it cheaper to use stooges - either puppet dictators or IMF-based pseudo-‘democracies’. This does not make this form of neo-colonialism any less oppressive to the masses or any less a violation of national self-determination than direct and formal colonialism. If one believes it is, one is swallowing the imperialists’ own propaganda.
As for oil, Iraq has huge reserves. Surely Esso, one of Bush’s largest donors, must realise this? Oil reserves are not unlimited, and to imply that US imperialism is not interested in Iraqi oil is naive, to say the least. While it is not the only reason for the upcoming invasion, it is no doubt one of the main ones.
I also fail to believe that Iraq is a “powerful, independent capitalist state”, as the comrade asserts. The country has been wrecked by 10 years of sanctions, so it is far from powerful, besides the fact that its army is in disarray. It is precisely Iraq’s independence, however, that is at threat from imperialism and its drive to make it into a neo-colony. This is why I choose to stand for giving military support to the Iraqi troops as they fight against the imperialist hordes.
Liz Hoskings
London
Lenin and defeatism
Commenting on Sacha Ismail’s letter to the Weekly Worker, I do think Hal Draper is being a bit picky regarding Lenin’s defeatist formulations. True, they can be interpreted as being for the victory of the other side, but Lenin was against the war and was opposed to the German and other working classes taking the side of their national ruling class in any war and not just inter-imperialist wars.
In 1914-15 Lenin was depressed and thought he would never live to see revolution, as the European working class was completely swallowed up in their various national chauvinistic fantasies. In the event of German armies defeating the tsar’s armies, revolutionaries in Russia would not have lifted a finger to save that regime and they would have been right. They had a visceral hated of tsardom, but unfortunately western European communists for the most part felt less alienated from their states. Lenin was not directing his polemics into a void, but toward Russian communists.
As to what they would have done - this depended on the circumstances and the political condition of the working classes in the contending countries at that time. They would not have raised the slogan for national self-determination under the tsar. The right to national self-determination is a right for peoples, not for autocrats, and was not a possibility in Russian conditions until 1917. Under an autocrat you do not have the right to self-determination even in your own country: you determine nothing.
Revolutionaries in the east regarded Russia as being more reactionary than Austria and Germany and in the event of the working class being marginalised and unable to positively affect the outcome of the war they would have hoped for the defeat of Russia as the best prospect for uniting the working class when its fortunes revived.
This is assuming of course that revolutionaries were incapable of doing anything. However, the Bolshevik policy was not to meekly accept chauvinism and reaction, but to challenge it, although it brought unpopularity. The key to working class power was consciousness of what was necessary and the ability to act on it, not what seemed possible in the circumstances or what was the lesser evil.
In the worst-case scenario, where the tsar’s armies prevailed, this did not mean that in the last instance the Austro-German workers should prop up their own bourgeoisie against the Russians as the lesser evil, but that the penalty for class collaboration was disaster and in not challenging their ruling class they would have utterly failed in their tasks. As it happened, this last scenario did not come to be or it would have received considerable polemical attention. There was a lot more to revolutionary defeatism than the bare slogan, which is probably why it did not create any confusion amongst Russian revolutionaries at the time.
By 1917 the position had changed dramatically. Lenin’s contention that the defeat of one’s own side creates the best conditions for revolution was confirmed. The war that the Bolsheviks had opposed from the beginning had destroyed the tsar and the Bolsheviks were able, in turn, to overthrow the bourgeois regime of Kerensky, create an embryonic workers’ state, hopefully opening the door to world revolution.
It is hardly surprising that his slogan of defeatism was not mentioned at this time, but the victory was still the concrete application of that very slogan. The practice was realistic and flexible, when applied to concrete situations in Russia. The problem since then is that the slogan has been used to justify anti-Bolshevik political agendas and the theory has become distorted.
On one point I disagree with both Sacha Ismail and Liz Hoskings: on the subject of colonial occupation being different in kind to locally created despotisms. The working class task is to get rid of both forms of oppression by taking advantage of the antagonisms between the two poles of power. Tactics need to be flexible, but the strategy remains the same. The question would of course be changed if Iraq were a democracy.
The working class must have a clear line: no support for your own ruling class, no support for reactionaries, no support for imperialism; for an independent, democratic working class programme.
Phil Kent
London
Gospel
According to Lenin’s State and revolution, “violent revolution lies at the root of the entire theory of Marx and Engels”. “The suppression of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution” (VI Lenin CW Vol 25, Moscow1977, p405).
Barrie Biddulph
Stoke-on-Trent
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