Weekly Worker 460 Thursday December 12 2002
Letters
CPGB problems
Due to recent things I have been thinking over, I have found it increasingly difficult to find a rapprochement where I can support your organisation without betraying my principles. This does not mean I will not continue to read your literature and attend your seminars: in fact quite the opposite. I would in fact like to know where comrades stand on the issues I wish to outline and whether or not they are irreconcilable with being a supporter of your organisation.
On the left I will say that the CPGB appears to have the closest thing to what can be termed as a dialectical, open and non-sectarian attitude, and it has a far healthier culture than do the sects (the SWP being the largest, while the sect I was a member of was far smaller with possibly an even more rigid structure). But the points I find problematic are as follows:
1. My major interests are in the oppression of women and other minority groups, along with the bulk of the working class who remain wage slaves. While I am sure the CPGB too are motivated by these issues (or else they would not be communists), it often seems they are more interested in the internal wrangling of the left itself. This is somehow reminiscent of the Spartacist/International Bolshevik Tendency programme of ‘regroupment’ - although one does not have to agree with everything the CPGB majority say to take part, unlike the Sparts and their offshoots.
2. I have grave concerns with the policy itself of ‘democratic centralism’, as from my own and others’ experience it is far too easily open to abuse and interpretation as one sees fit. Joseph Stalin, for one, claimed that his CPSU practised it. Leninist forms of organisation I find in themselves questionable. It is fair to say that minorities should not disrupt majority actions that have been voted upon. But I for one would find it politically dishonest to attend a rally supporting a cause I did not believe in, holding up banners with slogans I severely disagree with (and go as far as to chant them ‘with enthusiasm’, as Mark Fisher put it) and hand out literature to the working classes supporting these policies. This would be reminiscent of my campaigning in 2001 for the Workers Power candidate in Greenwich at the behest of the IBT central committee, a position I disagreed with at the time.
If Max Shachtman should not have been expelled from Cannon’s US SWP, neither should Zinoviev and Kamenev have been threatened with expulsion from the Russian Bolshevik Party for publicly stating their misgivings about the October insurrection. Neither, for that matter, should the constituent assembly have been disbanded. I would say that generally speaking I agree with Rosa Luxemburg’s critique of Russian Bolshevism and democratic centralism.
3. The Socialist Alliance is not and will never be a serious challenge to New Labour. Its policies are being rejected by the working class, and it is nothing but an SWP electoral front, dominated by the SWP leadership. It cannot and will not change, and attempting to do so is the equivalent of an unrequited lover staying in a hopeless relationship for 10 years in the hope that ‘s/he might change’. The resignation of Liz Davies has been a nail in its coffin, and for the CPGB to wish to make this grouping into a democratic centralist party dominated by the SWP will result in nothing but an enlarged SWP, with the same bureaucratic practices. The Socialist Alliance is not a vehicle for change. It could have been, but by now it is clear which way the wind has blown.
4. I have a further problem with the CPGB’s relationship with the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. They are a rightwing, Zionist, slanderous, Shachtmanite version of the Sparts, who the CPGB seem to find no problem in having as bedfellows.
Liz Hoskings
email
And proud of it
It’s really incredible that there are still people like you who stubbornly hold out against all the evidence, which shows Leninism and Stalinism to be one and the same. Most people who consider this to be the case are either anti-Marxists or Stalinists - I am a Stalinist.
It is true that Lenin quarrelled with Stalin and wanted him demoted, but the same can be said of nearly all his colleagues. There was an angry break between Lenin and Trotsky for many years up until August 1917, when Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks only because he said they had become less Bolshevik!
Lenin threatened (quite rightly) Zinoviev and Kamenev with expulsion from the party when they revealed the date of the armed insurrection to the capitalist press. He also quarrelled with Tomsky, Shliapnikov and Kollontai during the trade unions dispute, so the friction between Lenin and Stalin wasn’t that unique. That’s one reason why there was so much reluctance to publish Lenin’s testament - it criticised everyone to a certain extent!
Another thing always pointed out by you Trotskyites is that Stalin destroyed the old Bolsheviks during the purges. We now know that this is an exaggeration. New evidence from the archives shows that most of the victims of the purges were those who joined the party during the NEP: ie, rightists who had opposed the five-year plans. The reason it was supposed that the old Bolsheviks were the main victims was that they were simply the most famous and were the only ones publicly tried.
Edmund West
email
Abuse of space
John Hughes’s ham-fisted arguments on age-of-consent issues deserves almost as much criticism as the Weekly Worker editorial board in terms of seeing fit to publish such ill thought out arguments in our paper (December 5).
The Weekly Worker is unfortunately rare in developing open debate on the left and consequently attempting to seek the greater articulation of ideas and understanding of all issues human. This surely needs to be the chief emphasis of our project - looking at concrete reality and attempting to chart a course for eliminating oppression and advancing humanity to its fullest potential. Surely then the role of the communist press should be to formulate ideas and constantly update and enrich our programme.
But is the communist press therefore duty-bound to give space to all shades of opinion on every issue? Doubtless, sifting through the diarrhoea of the new technological age, we can find countless circulars from every assorted crackpot, lunatic fringe element, from the Flat Earth Society to christian scientology. On the issue in question - the emphasis on the imagined potential consensual sexual relationship between adults and under-11s hardly show John’s arguments as containing any credibility, let alone coherence.
The Weekly Worker has correctly stated that the paper is not a notice board, but a forum for developing every critical question facing us today. Why therefore publish such ill-thought verbiage as coming from our Hull writer? The subject of sexuality and its development - especially in the context of children - is one that is quite correctly a sensitive one and demanding respect and arguments that are thought out and argued rationally and sensitively. Perhaps our paper wants to start a discussion on this issue? I look forward to the PCC and the rest of the CPGB organisation and the wider workers’ movement discussing this question.
However, I feel that in reality the letter was a filler and will do nothing but encourage the usual hysterical and rabid leftwing opponents of free debate and human freedom. Alas they will have ammunition, as we casually toy with the whimsical and inane ideas that do more to rally oppression than to slay it.
Lawrie Coombs
Stockton-on-Tees
Changing Beds
I have now read two accounts in your paper (No witch-hunts, no expulsions, Beds SA) of the dispute in Bedfordshire Socialist Alliance, both of which came from supporters of a body purporting to be called the Democratic and Republican Platform.
Since neither denies the essential facts of the case, we can assume them to be true - the Bedfordshire Socialist Alliance changed its treasurer and the incumbent refused to allow the handover of bank accounts and so forth to the new post-holder. Perhaps there ought to be changes in Bedfordshire - but they need to start with the name of this so-called democratic platform.
Geoff Collier
Hull
WCPI congress
The second congress of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq will be held publicly in December 2002. Participation is open for all and participants can attend as observers. Media coverage is allowed.
It is unprecedented in Iraqi society that a party holds its congress, the highest organ for decision-making, in public. In this way, it gives the public an opportunity to know the leadership, organs and activists of the party.
For more information on the congress, contact the WCPI on (0044) 9514 33386 or (0044) 796 257020; or email moayad@ahmad.demob.co.uk or saya@pathcom.com.
Worker-Communist Party of Iraq
London
Jo’burg victory
All charges against the 93 members of the Anti-Privatisation Forum affiliate, the Soldiers Forum (SF), have finally been dropped. This is a resounding victory against the South African state’s continuing, and opportunistic, attempts to repress legitimate political dissent and to criminalise the actions of those who are struggling for socio-economic justice.
When the SF members were arrested in mid-August for simply trying to make their way to a protest march on parliament, they were held in prison for nearly one month and faced ludicrous charges of assault, public violence and trespassing. While in prison, these brave comrades were subjected to repeated physical attacks by police authorities, including being sprayed with teargas, baton beatings and being shot at with rubber bullets. Throughout, the SF members maintained their principled stand of the right to freedom of expression and assembly and refused to bow to the state’s attempts at crass intimidation and victimisation.
Even after their release from prison, the SF members continued to face onerous bail conditions and harassment by state forces. After one postponement in November, the state then attempted to save a case that was, from the start, purely driven by political motivations, by offering the SF members a deal - the acceptance of an admission-of-guilt fine. All SF members refused to be bought off by this opportunistic move. When their case resumed this week, they indicated that they were willing to fight the charges to the end. Faced with resilient and principled opponents, the state then capitulated and dropped all charges.
The APF and the SF have, from the beginning of this case, argued that it has been driven by a South African state intent on delegitimising and criminalising the struggles of those who seek to expose and oppose its anti-people, neoliberal policies that are having devastating consequences on workers and the poor.
The victory of the SF provides full confirmation of the state’s vacuous, but dangerous, intentions. The APF and SF celebrate this small victory, but understand that many larger battles lie ahead. We will never be cowed into submission but will redouble our efforts alongside an increasingly popular and broad front of workers and poor who are struggling for fundamental political and socio-economic changes in South African society and globally.
Dale McKinley
Johannesburg
DHKC arrests
At 5.30am on the morning of December 11 police raided the London information bureau of the DHKC (Turkish People’s Liberation Front). Two people were arrested - at least one of them is being held at Paddington Green.
More people were picked up at their home addresses at 7am. One of the detainees was held on suspicion of offences under sections 11, 12 and 15 of the Terrorism Act 2000 - membership of a proscribed organisation, support for a proscribed organisation and raising finances for the purposes of terrorism.
People Against the Terrorism Act demand the immediate release of these detainees, and all others imprisoned under the Terrorism Act 2000 and interned under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. We demand the repeal of these unjust laws, and an end to the racist and divisive legislation, policies and rhetoric from the British state.
People Against the Terrorism Act
London
