Weekly Worker 455 Wednesday November 5 2002
Letters
Leninists
Martin Thomas is obviously not amongst those leading members of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty who are “boycotting” the Weekly Worker - he is perhaps our most prolific correspondent (Letters, October 31). Nevertheless comrade Thomas loyally demands and demands again that the Weekly Worker publish his master’s 10,000-word article - Sean Matgamna’s ‘Critical notes’. Silly.
If he seriously imagines this nonsense constitutes some kind of penetrating critique of the CPGB, there is a simple and straightforward option: print the thing - yes, in full - in one of your own journals. That is what left groups normally and routinely do. Why not the AWL? Is there a majority against carrying what they apolitically call left “gossip”? Please tell.
Meanwhile, as an integral part of his unfortunate and unwise anti-unity offensive, comrade Thomas attempts to paint us in the colours of classical Stalinism. He has gone quote-hunting in my 1992 book From October to August - which reproduces various articles and speeches over the years 1983-1991. Clever - but not very. Carefully trimmed - to the point of falsification - though his quotes are, they do not add up to a revelation.
A couple of salient points. Our “commonplace” politics were not, as comrade Thomas disingenuously suggests, quietly tolerated within the old CPGB - neither by the Marxism Today faction, nor by the pro-Moscow Straight Leftists, nor by the Morning Star. Together these opportunists banned and tried to gag us. Why? Our “commonplace” politics were revolutionary. Eg, no to popular fronts, parliamentary socialism and illusions in the trade union bureaucracy.
During this period we critically defended the Soviet Union and what I then believed were other gains of the world revolution. Yes, in the 1980s, while AWL leaders were fond of speaking about CIA-sponsored islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan as “my kind of people”, we gave highly critical support to the People’s Democratic Party. That is public knowledge ... and the fact that From October to August is still on sale goes to show that we do not hide our origins.
In 1981 we took as our starting point Leninism and the idea of the Soviet Union as a socialist - workers’ - state which had undergone extreme bureaucratic degeneration. Our general approach on this issue was therefore essentially no different from “commonplace” Trotskyism, Leon Trotsky included. He fulsomely praised the first five-year plan and considered defence of the USSR a matter of the highest principle.
How were we distinguished from Trotskyism? Where they welcomed what I would now call the ‘counterrevolutions within the counterrevolution’ from 1989-1991, we did not. Like them we argued for a political revolution and socialist democracy. But we highlighted the danger of capitalist restoration, which Workers Power, Militant, the Workers Revolutionary Party, Spartacists, Fourth International et al dogmatically ruled out as impossible without a violent civil war. Laughably some International Socialist Group and Workers Power comrades still consider Putin’s Russia as some kind of workers’ state.
Undaunted, comrade Thomas equates our approach with ‘Stalinism’. Presumably he and the AWL have their own special, sectish, definition of Trotskyism and Stalinism. Trotskyism equals all things the AWL thinks are good. Stalinism equals all things bad. By self-designation the AWL is Trotskyite. But, because they thoroughly despise them, their Trotskyite opponents are demonised as Stalinites. That makes rational dialogue rather difficult.
Actually I have never described myself as a Trotskyite - and since 1991 my views have considerably developed. By the same measure I find it difficult to classify the AWL under the heading of Trotskyism. The ruling ideology in the AWL is Shachtmanism, a political trend hounded out of the Fourth International and branded a “petty bourgeois deviation” by Trotsky himself. Does that make Trotsky a Stalinite?
Jack Conrad
London
Kautskyite
So Jack Conrad’s seven-part series of articles on the dictatorship of the proletariat and revolution finally comes to an end. And what conclusion do we have? - a rejection of Leninism in the direction of Kautsky!
But ‘foul’, I hear the Conrad acolytes cry - ‘Comrade Jack criticised Kautsky as well as Lenin and Trotsky.’ I merely ask any followers of the CPGB’s great man to consider the following. Near the end of his final article Conrad writes: “Probably the working class will in the future have to use some measures of violence and create its own - superior - organs of struggle that assume state power. The chances are that the bourgeois parliament will simply be dumped, not transformed.” I draw your attention to the use of “probably” and “chances are”.
On the other hand in the pamphlet State and revolution Lenin argues against Kautsky: “... the author chose as his special theme the question of ‘the proletarian revolution’ and ‘the proletarian regime’. He gave much that was exceedingly valuable, but he avoided the question of the state. Throughout the pamphlet the author speaks of the winning of state power - and no more; that is, he has chosen a formula which makes a concession to the opportunists, inasmuch as it admits the possibility of seizing power without destroying the state machine. The very thing which Marx in 1872 declared to be ‘obsolete’ in the programme of the Communist manifesto is revived by Kautsky in 1902.”
I would suggest that a simple replacement of ‘Kautsky’ by ‘Conrad’ in the quote from this important work by Lenin would leave the reader with no conclusion other than mine - that Conrad is rejecting Leninism for a 2002 version of Kautskyism.
On a secondary point I find it strange that Conrad somehow managed to avoid even a reference to Lenin’s pamphlet State and revolution in a series that had as its premise a discussion on the possibility of peaceful revolution. Perhaps it is because it does not fit into Conrad’s simplistic rehashing of Hal Draper’s anti-Leninism on this question.
I would appeal to all CPGB members and supporters who retain any degree of revolutionary spirit to reject this newest Conrad revisionism.
Brian Walters
email
SSP stunted
Mark Brown’s leaked document about Socialist Worker platform tactics within the Scottish Socialist Party is interesting (Weekly Worker October 17). For years those on the far left outside the Socialist Workers Party and Militant have been able to agree with much of the criticism each of the two groups had about each other. It is a phenomenon that continues under the Socialist Alliance and SSP.
It is the case that, although it is important to establish a pool of socialist MSPs within the Scottish parliament, there has been and still is an imbalance between this activity and work around, say, industrial issues. This is still true in spite of recent improvement: for example, the work around the Glasgow hospitals strike and recent meetings with firefighter reps. There is still no organised, structured orientation towards workplaces. It has been SSP policy to convene a rank and file shop stewards conference and produce regular SSP workplace bulletins since the 2001 AGM. Yet this remains a dead letter. It does not quite fit in with the International Socialist Movement view of the kind of party the SSP should be - attractive to left reformists and left nationalists and unattractive to those to the left of the ISM.
There is, just as tragically, almost a blanket ban on support for labour movement campaigns. Leading ISM comrades tried to block support for affiliation to the United Campaign for the Repeal of Anti-Trade Union Laws (Ucratul) at the 2000 and 2001 AGMs - a campaign whose ideas have led to rail union leaders in Aslef and the RMT calling for solidarity action between the two unions and more recently covert solidarity action with the firefighters. Thankfully conference recognised the sectarianism of this and passed the motion, but it remains a paper policy.
ISM comrades at a local level in Edinburgh have also argued against SSP affiliation to the UK campaign against sweatshop labour - No Sweat. Globalise Resistance, the Anti-Nazi League and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign have been other casualties. This is not a recent post-SWP-entry position. There was no support as a party for the main campaign for solidarity with Kosovan Albanian workers during the Kosova war - Workers Aid for Kosova. In other words it is part of a strategy of not supporting any campaign that does not originate from the SSP leadership and therefore cannot be guaranteed to be controlled by the SSP/ISM leadership. As such it is deeply sectarian and anti-working class.
One of the consequences of such sectarianism and control-freakery is that people have come into the SSP as a result of its public profile and campaigning work on SSP initiatives such as free school meals, only to find that the SSP just does not do very much as a party. There is the odd stall, the odd stunt and the odd demo, but if you want to be involved in anti-racist work, anti-capitalist work, solidarity with the Palestinians and so on, you have to actually go elsewhere. Many new recruits then subsequently leave. Turnover is unnecessarily high.
This approach represents a sectarian attitude towards the left, labour movement campaigns and the labour movement generally and an ignorance of the fact that organisations are means towards the end of representing the working class effectively and not ends in themselves. Yet still the big two groups continually identify the growth of their own platforms with the interests of the working class. If a campaign is non-sectarian, inclusive, issue-centred and clearly in the interests of the working class, it should be supported, no matter where it comes from. Workers Aid was such a campaign, and Ucratul and No Sweat, in the here and now, are such campaigns. It is active support for such campaigns that is part of the vital process of creating a mass workers’ party.
The question of the party press is another area that borders on the tragic-comic. It was noticeable at the large anti-war demo in Glasgow how few socialist papers were on display compared to the past (having filmed most of it, I can prove this). A more united left actually has less of a public profile in terms of its party press than the fragmented left of recent decades.
This is the product of SSP ‘guidelines’ which instil the fear into SSP members that if they sell the paper of their choosing there will be some undefined negative consequence as payback. And if Scottish Socialist Voice is out of date, it means then there is virtually no socialist literature being sold to the non-aligned people who come along. It represents a Stalinist conception of party organisation and is counterproductive in terms of trying to achieve greater left unity.
If the Voice became a substantially better paper than it currently is, many people in platforms would voluntarily want to sell it publicly. Nobody really wants to sell more than one paper. However, to become a better paper it would have to be opened up to debate and polemic and this means the current editorial board must think very differently from the way they do now. Why is there so much fear of dissenting voices and polemical articles? When will the SSP editorial board realise that controversy actually makes a paper more interesting and useful? And in any case within a real workers’ party many papers would be seen as a strength, not a weakness.
However, the question Mark Brown and other SWP members have to ask is this: has the SWP-dominated Socialist Alliance fared any better for its mostly SWP politics and tactics? In contrast to one fairly poor paper - the SSV - the Socialist Alliance has no paper. Why? Because the central committee of the SWP does not want anything to compete with Socialist Worker. A Socialist Alliance paper would have to have non-SWP members on its editorial board and give space to non-SWP positions in the paper. Hence no SA paper and an SA membership which is consequently disarmed and ill informed. Once again control-freakery remains the dominant trend.
The description of the Socialist Alliance as a ‘united front of a special type’ is Orwellian SWP-speak designed to rationalise a huge volte-face to the SWP membership and secure SWP dominance within all the organisations the far left is currently involved in. Seattle ain’t got nothing to do with it.
This indicates that the SWP are still ‘party building’ minus the shouting about it. The role of the SA, PSC, Stop the War Coalition, Globalise Resistance is to serve as transmission belts into the SWP. And as part of this strategy socialists of the wrong colour are kept off leading committees of the front campaigns so that the non-aligned individual coming along is faced with the stark choice of remaining non-aligned or joining the SWP. Hence the confinement of the alliance to electoral issues, the no-canvassing position during the general election and the made-up rules at the Globalise Resistance AGM to keep an Alliance for Workers’ Liberty member off the leading steering committee.
If you want to get involved in non-electoral work, you have to go elsewhere to other organisations - which just happen to be controlled by … guess who? Yes, the SWP. This strategy prevents the evolution of the realigned revolutionary left into what could be the nucleus of a revolutionary party. It also gives credibility to the Militant argument that these campaigns are just fronts not worthy of support - something they, in turn, then extend to all campaigns.
In Scotland there has been no principled collective SWP opposition to the independence line either. There is, at best, equivocation and sometimes outright support. Others privately disagree but do not want to make a fuss. This characterises a group which has been traditionally opportunistic and all over the place on the big issues of the day: for example, the miners’ strike, the poll tax and now the national question in Scotland. It is also wrong for the SWP to comply with Stalinist ‘guidelines’ on what papers socialists sell.
The working class needs a left that is consistently democratic in its methods, honest about its past mistakes, non-sectarian towards single-issue campaigns and has an appropriate balance between the three sides of the class struggle: economic, political and ideological. It also needs educated, critically minded individuals who are prepared to be non-conformist within the group if they think the leadership have got it wrong and are being inconsistent. It would be a healthy, necessary development if members of the ISM and SWP left those organisations while remaining active socialists. The big two have been fetishised by Stalinism beyond repair.
Peter Burton
Edinburgh AWL
German CP
I have the opportunity to read your Weekly Worker via the web which I greatly appreciate as one of the best communist papers I know. You cannot imagine how glad I would be if we had something like this in Germany.
I am a member of the German Communist Party, the DKP: ie, the traditional party of ‘official’ communism, rapidly weakened after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic from which the party was completely dependent before 1990 (although I was not in the party at that time). It is still the biggest Marxist organisation in Germany today.
Although the DKP does not allow factions, in effect we have different currents in the party: a majority of what I call ‘soft’ or ‘moderate’ traditionalists; a minority of ‘hard’ traditionalists and old-school Stalinists (mainly in eastern Germany, but their chief theorist is the philosopher, Hans Heinz Holz, who was a professor in the Netherlands and lives in Switzerland); and finally a very small, undogmatic left wing, to which I belong.
The average age of DKP members is far above 50, but during the last two years, for the first time after 1989 the party was able to get more new and young members than it was losing then (mainly by death). Although some efforts are made to renew the party’s profile, I am rather pessimistic concerning its future.
I am convinced that a recomposition of a non-Stalinist and non-sectarian revolutionary left in Germany will be necessary, in which some chunks of the DKP could and should participate, so I try to build contacts with non-sectarian Trotskyists and other forces of the radical left. In particular, I am interested in the experiences of your Socialist Alliance (as well as the Italian Rifondazione Comunista).
Concerning the PDS, unfortunately there is no reason for optimism: I fear that after the disaster of the Bundestag election, the party will hardly be able to recover. Anyway, I do not believe that it would be possible to rebuild a communist movement on the basis of a centrist party in Germany, although among the PDS members there are some good comrades.
I would be grateful if you could send me some of the lastest issue which I would like to use for demonstration purposes. Our party publishes a miserable weekly paper (Unsere Zeit), which now has serious financial troubles. It would be useful to show my comrades a good party paper.
In June the fourth conference of the European Anti-Capitalist Left met in Madrid, which was attended by the DKP comrade, Hugo Braun, as a guest. Guess how I got this information: I read it in Weekly Worker; later a Trotskyist comrade gave me the press release of the Fourth International. I was really angry that our party paper did not write anything about this important matter. This is a typical example of the half-hearted attitude of the DKP leadership.
In June, the DKP organised an international conference of communist parties in Berlin, in which traditional ‘brother parties’ took part. It was remarkable that Gigi Malabarba from Rifondazione gave the opening speech. But obviously our party leaders try to suppress information about the cooperation of the ‘alternative’ left, because they fear being attacked for ‘revisionism’ and ‘Trotskyism’ by the hardcore Stalinists.
This is the main problem of the DKP: the majority around chairman Heinz Stehr tries at least a moderate opening and renewal of the party, but they are not able to clearly reject the pressure of the Stalinist minority. I hope that this can be changed in future. If not, the party will not be able to overcome its isolation within the left.
Henning Böke
Germany
Unity
I read with great interest your article from January this year about the need for a united Communist Party in Britain and the steps being taken to realise that. I was just wondering why the Communist Party of Britain aren’t mentioned?
I don’t know anything about the current divisions within British communism, but am aware of the multitude of groups claiming to be the genuine ‘heirs’ of the CPGB that disbanded at the end of the 80s. I’d be interested to know about the different groups; namely yourselves and the CPB, and why you are divided. Hope you can enlighten me.
Robert Goulden
email
SWP front
‘Executive wake-up call’ was an excellent article from Marcus Ström - he hits the nail on the head (Weekly Worker October 31).
I ceased going to the local SA some months ago because it was obvious to me that the SWP only wants us as another front and I don’t want to be part of that. If I wanted to be a member of the SWP then I would have joined years ago - no thanks. Call me sectarian, pessimist - anything you like - as long as I don’t have to be part of it.
I will, however, continue to read and support the Weekly Worker, which is the most open paper of its sort.
Mervyn Davies
email
Allegations
Surely the Socialist Alliance rank and file and the broader movement need to know exactly what went on. Allegations, or even perceptions, about organisations within the SA will damage the Socialist Alliance’s support within the working class, to put it mildly.
Don’t hide behind the pretext of not wanting to prejudice the sub-group’s findings. That is what the capitalist politicians say when they have something to cover up. Let’s flush the details out now. Elementary democracy demands it.
Victor
email
Factions
I am a member of the Communist Party USA. Reading some of your material, I was just wondering why you seem to think that allowing members to form a party within a party is beneficial?
Matt Helme
New Brunswick CPUSA
Chechnya solidarity
The taking, and subsequent blood-soaked ‘liberation’, of 700 hostages at the Moscow theatre was just the latest episode of the barbarous colonial war being prosecuted by Russian power in the Caucasus. This war, which the rulers in the Kremlin had hoped to wage only in the distant mountains - and which, moreover, was officially pronounced to be ended - has been brought right to the Russian capital. Now not only Chechens, but also Muscovites, are becoming victims in this war.
We decisively condemn all acts of violence and terror perpetrated against the peaceful civilian population, whether Chechen or Russian. Actions like the terrorist attack in Moscow do nothing to bring nearer an end to the war or the liberation of the Chechen people. On the contrary, such events only discredit those fighting for peace and freedom in Chechnya, and reinforce nationalistic and militaristic tendencies in Russian society. Terrorism gives Russia’s rulers a pretext both for further stepping up repression of the Chechen people, and for a general attack on civil rights and freedoms. In Moscow, arbitrary arrests of Chechens have already begun, and threats are being made against those media that are considered disloyal. The unfolding of a propaganda campaign against all anti-war and internationalist forces can be expected.
Without in any sense justifying the activity of the Barayev group, we consider it necessary to stress that the principal responsibility for what happened in Moscow lies with those who are chiefly to blame for the outbreak, and continuation, of war in Chechnya - those in power in Russia: the military, and the ruling class in general.
It is their policy, effectively constituting genocide against the Chechen people, which led directly to the Moscow tragedy. It is by their efforts that Chechnya has become a zone of devastation, where arbitrary violence and terror are the rule, where every day completely innocent people die or ‘disappear’, where depraved and inhuman humiliation, torture and breaches of the most basic human rights have become part of everyday life. It is their policy that has returned Chechnya to the Middle Ages and pushed some Chechens into responding barbarously to the barbarism perpetrated by those occupying their country.
It should be stated bluntly that a part of the responsibility for the tragedy lies also with Russian society. For three years already, the overwhelming majority has looked on calmly as outrageous crimes against humanity have been practised in occupied Chechnya in its name. In Russia there has not been a single major anti-war demonstration, let alone any protest strikes or other forms of direct action. Furthermore, people have continued to vote obediently for the most frenzied advocates of the violent ‘pacification’ of recalcitrant Chechnya. However shocking the impact of the Moscow terrorist attack, it may help people to face up to reality: that the death and suffering brought by war concern us all, and that there is no way of hiding from them.
There is only one way to prevent a repetition of what happened in Moscow: to put an end to the war and occupation of Chechnya, by granting that republic’s population the right independently to decide its own future. We call on all those who understand this to participate in civil protest against the policy of imperialist aggression pursued by Russia’s rulers.
Boycott the call-up for the armed forces! Boycott any voting for the supporters of the war, both capitalist and ‘communist’! Solidarity with all those suffering as a result of the war and occupation! Demand immediate negotiations with the elected leaders of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria on the withdrawal of Russian forces!
We also call on leftwing parties and organisations, free trade unions, human rights organisations and progressive forces in civil society across the world to make demands on the Russian government immediately to put an end to military and punishment operations in Chechnya. For solidarity against the war!
Solidarity Against the War in Chechnya
Moscow
Mistake
I suppose in an article of the length of ‘Scargillism and the miners’ at least one mistake was inevitable (Weekly Worker October 31). Arthur ran for national president to replace Joe Gormley, not “displace” him. In fact Joe had stayed on a year longer than he intended in order to keep Mick McGahey out, but instead was succeeded by Arthur.
The article gives the impression he was running against Joe, which was not the case.
David Douglass
NUM Hatfield Main
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