Weekly Worker 470 Thursday March 6 2003
Letters
Military support
The Weekly Worker’s report of the CPGB’s February 16 public meeting on ‘The war and the revolutionary party’ distorts the positions of the International Bolshevik Tendency on several issues - particularly on the distinction between military and political support (February 20).
The classic example of a military (as opposed to political) bloc is provided by Bolshevik policy toward Kerensky’s provisional government during general Kornilov’s attempted coup in August 1917. The Bolsheviks gave no political support to the provisional government, yet spearheaded the military resistance to Kornilov.
Also our differing assessments of the February 15 demonstration highlight the political gap between the IBT and CPGB. The CPGB, like most of the rest of the ‘revolutionary’ left, sees the political ‘breadth’ of the Stop the War Coalition as a virtue. In practice this has meant reaching out to ‘progressive’ elements of the bourgeoisie, represented by Ken Livingstone, Jesse Jackson, the Liberal Democrats and the Daily Mirror. The CPGB may complain about the ‘tactical mistakes’ of the STWC in the pages of the Weekly Worker, but it rejects the perspective of building a movement against the pending assault on Iraq on an explicitly anti-imperialist basis because it fears being ‘politically isolated’. Thus the CPGB assumes responsibility for the fact that the massive opposition to the criminal imperialist aggression is contained within a bourgeois political framework and the platforms at the mass rallies are dominated by clerics, pacifists and pro-UN - ie, pro-imperialist - ideologues.
In this conflict the line between flabby bourgeois social-pacifism and Leninism is drawn over the defence of Iraq. The STWC was constructed from the outset as a multi-class formation with an explicitly pacifist programme. Revolutionaries don’t build or endorse pacifist/pro-UN/class-collaborationist movements - we leave that to the reformists and their leftist touts.
Alan Davis
IBT
Cross-class
I would like to applaud comrade Donovan’s fine article, ‘The anti-war movement and imperialism’ (Weekly Worker February 27).
It is good to see some opposition to Jack Conrad’s neo-Stalinist two-stagism on the question of “regime change”. We should not, as Conrad does, put off the call for socialist revolution until some unknown time in the future after a radical reform of bourgeois parliamentary rule has taught (how patronising of the glorious leader) the working class about its necessity. It is a crime that a so-called communist does not even mention the need to overthrow bourgeois economic relations in an article on “regime change” in Britain, but, given Conrad’s political support for the ideas of the renegade Kautsky, perhaps not that surprising.
I do have one question for Ian regarding his article in the previous issue of Weekly Worker (‘Stop the War popular front?’, February 20). You correctly reference the term ‘popular front’ to the Stalinist-inspired governmental alliances of the 1930s and presumably, like Jack Conrad, “stand utterly opposed” to any such formations. But surely these were just a manifestation of an underlying general danger of cross-class collaboration. I thought that communists should fight for working class independence against political alliances with sections of the bourgeoisie at all times - not just when governmental power is at stake.
Your opposition to ‘popular fronts’ and concurrent defence of cross-class collaboration in the Stop the War Coalition seems inconsistent, to say the least. How do you explain this contradiction?
Brian Walters
email
Sad jibber
On the potential of Iraqi resistance to imperialist conquest, the entire fake ‘left’ further demonstrates its remoteness from any real grasp of the monopoly-capitalist system’s revolutionary crisis, an understanding of which has to be the background and basis for any correct orientation to any part of this whole vast, complex and global political turmoil that the ‘free market’ insoluble contradictions have led the world into.
The various Trot and revisionist ‘independent’ or ‘alliance’ posturers either want their fellow-thinkers in Iraq (hopefully there won’t be many) to form a ‘military bloc’ with Saddam and suspend (or oppose) independent workers’ revolutionary actions; or just condemn the imperialist invasion but carry on condemning the Saddam regime exactly as before, promoting only their own ‘pure’ anti-imperialist struggle; or in practice defend the Saddam regime from imperialist attack but not publicise it as a positive political stance to take. This sad jibber is all the same daft ‘armchair socialism’, but from different angles.
None start from imperialist crisis and the enormous possibilities coming soon of the history-making defeat and overthrow of imperialism resuming, via communist revolutionary process. ‘Defeat for western imperialism’ is the only slogan for the whole world in this situation. But for lefts to continue to attack the Saddam regime themselves while making this call would make nonsense of it.
Don Hoskins
South London
Weak link
For the sake of clarity, let me say that I agree with the comments made by comrade Jon Fox (Letters, February 27) in response to my original letter. He is correct to point out the sharpened class antagonisms in Spain and the other components of the ‘coalition of the shilling’.
However, in my own pre-emptive defence, let me say that at the time when I originally wrote that letter I did not have any solid indication of the depth of dissent in Spain and other pro-war states. Hence, I did not include them in my original comments.
That said, I still stand by my original thesis, and believe that Britain represents the weak link among those states whose governments are pro-war. But this could certainly change, if the left fails to take the necessary steps (ie, its transformation into a single proletarian party) and rise to the occasion.
Comrades, the world is watching.
Martin Schreader
Detroit
AWL sect
Clive Bradley of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty has now written two letters in answer to my article (February 6) and my reply to him (February 20). On both occasions he totally ignores the main point I have been making - that left groups are undemocratic and sectarian and they must change.
I have said, and I say again, that I understand, though do not accept, his point of view that life in the proto-AWL in 1984 was intolerable and that necessitated the leadership expelling the former Workers Socialist League members. There is no need for him to keep repeating it. Why can’t he listen to my argument that the expulsion was not carried out in a democratic way, that the expulsion negated the anti-sectarian policy of the old Workers Fight group and that the AWL was therefore set up as a sect? The bureaucratic expulsion of the WSL was a precedent. Once comrades accept that, they will accept the same in the future.
Clive blusters and hectors on stating his opinions as facts, adding that if I do not agree with him I must be “naive” and “a fool”. What is the basis for his authoritative manner and bureaucratic method of arguing? He was not a member of the national committee or in any leadership role at the time. The expulsion came from the top and was pushed through the NC; it did not come from the membership. I was on the NC from the fusion with the WSL right through until they were expelled. I voted against the expulsion on the NC, as did other NC members, including full-timers. Many of those who voted for the expulsion did so reluctantly on the basis of loyalty to the politics of Sean Matgamna. They saw political programme and organisational methods as being separate, which the rest of us did not. Clearly we did not agree with Clive’s assessment of the intolerable situation with the WSL comrades.
There are democratic ways of dealing with a crisis other than expulsion. The membership needs to be involved and to understand the issues. This does mean listening to all points of view - a skill which Clive does not seem to rate very highly! The result must be that the consciousness of comrades is raised, even if a split does take place. Machiavellian manoeuvres, witch-hunts, appeals to loyalty, ballot-rigging, silencing of opposition voices - all these methods have to stop. Otherwise in my opinion the vacuum on the left will not be filled by any of the present left groups.
Clive indulges in a little conspiracy theory concerning myself and the CPGB. It was fairly obvious to me that relations between the CPGB and AWL were a little tetchy, given the series of seven articles by Jack Conrad on the AWL. My article was intended to add to the debate by giving some extra detail on the history of the proto-AWL from 1967 and also to show some logic to the political development of Sean Matgamna, for whom I have a good deal of respect. The only reason I mentioned the 1984 expulsions was it fitted my argument that left groups behave in a bureaucratic manner. It was Clive Bradley who chose to make an issue of the expulsions.
As for the CPGB, I worked with them in the Socialist Labour Party and found them consistently open and democratic. It was Arthur Scargill who was the bureaucrat and the Stalinist, not them.
Dave Spencer
Coventry
AWL website
Apart from the slightly mischievous top and tail, Phil Hamilton’s review of the AWL website is very welcome (Weekly Worker February 27). We are always on the lookout for user feedback. We are engaged in a running overhaul of the site - trying to reorganise the content, while keeping the site viewable.
I think I agree about the appearance. We’ve kind of decided to sacrifice looks for accessibility, but have maybe gone too far in that direction. But I think it is easier to navigate than it was. On the archive material, there is actually much more than the last seven issues up there, but possibly not very easy to find. Indexing it is a job for a slow period and there haven’t been many of them recently (perhaps Phil would like to volunteer - we’ll promise to keep the hysteria under control).
Gerry Byrne
e-mail
Norway
Jack Conrad refers to the Scottish Socialist Party leadership holding Norway up as an example of a small country that can tax the rich, etc, that socialists and communists internationally should aspire to (Weekly Worker February 27).
I have lived in Norway for about three years now and am paying the price! Literally! As a freelance journalist I pay 15 times the amount of income tax I would pay doing the same work in the UK. It is probably true (I have no direct experience of this) that benefits for the unemployed, sick and elderly are better than in the UK, but I just wonder how long this can continue, given the current international economic situation.
Alan Jacobs
Norway
Sexuality
Sorry, Steven Davies, but I don’t need to spend a week on the council estate where you used to live, since I live on one in south London, and such places are much of a muchness (Letters, February 27).
But on the substantive politics, as opposed to the phoney workerism, it is quite obvious that for all his whinging about my noting the similarly between his views and the BNP, he is 100% in tune with BNP policy on issues concerning the sexuality of youth. It is even amusing that he says that the BNP’s social ‘vision’ “would objectively reinforce social attitudes that encourage such abuse”.
Indeed, that is the whole point: the BNP’s politics can be summed up as Kinder, Kirche, Küche (children, kitchen, church) - the strengthening of the family, and thereby the untrammelled power of adults over youth. The family being the site of the overwhelming bulk of child abuse, of both a sexual and a non-sexual nature. The Steven Davies/Rebekah Wade/Garry Bushell/BNP policy on these questions is both anti-human and does absolutely nothing to stop real child abuse.
Davies still can’t get his head round the fact that most paedophiles are members of the working class - his ravings that they are “human trash” and his tortured insinuations that they are in some way part of the privileged “middle class” is just a variant of what August Bebel called the “socialism of fools”. After all, “trash” tends to get sent to the incinerator, doesn’t it? The logic of Davies’s positions leads straight to a new holocaust of those dubbed ‘sex offenders’ or ‘sexual deviants’.
Ian Donovan
South London
Consent
Steve Davies seems obsessed with showing how connected he is to the working class and accusing anyone who has a different analysis of sexuality of being somehow middle class.
This sort of arrogance gets us nowhere, like a women who claims that no male has the right to comment on her oppression or the gay person who claims that no heterosexual has anything to offer on the subject of gay oppression. No doubt, given the opportunity, he will probably label me as middle class for my views even though he has never met me.
As recently as 10 or 20 years ago there were many in the working class (probably a majority) who thought if a person was gay they were a pervert or sexual deviant. Indeed many of the gay bashings were courtesy of working class men. One assumes from the tone of Steve Davies’s last letter that he would have been right alongside the working class defending their right to view gays as “scum”, perhaps even cheering from the sidelines as a beating was handed out to them.
The fact is that no group or class have a monopoly on truth. We must constantly review the facts and look at the real issues behind why groups or individuals are demonised by our society. As Ian Donovan pointed out in his last letter, just because large sections of the working class hold an opinion does not make it right.
The issue that Steve fails to address is that some young people choose to have relationships with people older than themselves. A consensual relationship of this kind is a world away from child abuse - where an adult uses some form of coercion or authority to force a child to do something they do not want to do.
At what point does Steve Davies think someone is capable of consent: 16, 18, 20, 25? Or perhaps he wants a committee of people like himself set up to decide who should sleep with who? If Steve can’t see the difference between consent and abuse then he must be blinded by his own bigoted and intolerant attitudes and shouldn’t try to turn it into some sort of working class heroism.
John McLaren
Auckland
Jumble
Liam O Ruairc’s review of Andrew Collier’s Christianity and Marxism is about the most confused piece of analysis I have read from someone who is supposedly a Marxist - or is he a christian Marxist (Weekly Worker February 27)?
In the second paragraph he helpfully informs us that “The author is certainly not attempting to bring about some eclectic marriage of two theories; he is more concerned with resolving the conflicts between the two.” But this is clearly what he is attempting to do, as outlined by Liam in the rest of his piece. Christianity is not a ‘theory’, but a series of jumbled, self-contradictory beliefs culled from various pre-christian philosophies and pragmatic adoptions to the needs of various absolutist regimes and reactionary ideologies. It cannot ‘agree’ with anything else because it does not agree with itself.
If there is a single theme running through this reactionary gibberish it is contained in the opening line of the gospel according to St John: “In the beginning was the word.” No, say all Marxists, following Goethe’s Faust: ‘In the beginning was the deed.’ Between these two positions there is no compromise. Critical realists are philosophical idealists who separate thinking and doing and it was clear to those of us who watched their evolution that god was waiting to pounce. Marxists are dialectical materialists who put their faith in and dedicate their efforts to the organised strength of the working class and its allies and do not await the final judgement. Roy Bhaskar found god, Andrew Collier found god and Liam has obviously also found him, if he ever lost him.
Collier is good on the “meaning of the fall” (is he really referring to the Garden of Eden and that apple?) but no good on the doctrine of the atonement. Even the unfortunate Jesus was unaware of it when crucified - “My god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me?” does not sound much like a man giving up his life willingly to save the whole of humanity. This Jesus, though he did not know this either at the time, was one of three gods who are really one god but each of whom are individually god at the same time - how many unfortunate wretches were burned at the stake by the inquisition for rejecting this outrageous nonsense?
Liam concludes that Collier might have convinced leftwing christians (liberation theology ones) on the relevance of Marxism (which he could have only done by persuading them to abandon this ideology, which is always reactionary), but the other christians (presumably the rightwing ones) “will be looking for more reasons”. Indeed. Nevertheless we must “congratulate him for underlining the idea that Marxism and christianity are fundamentally irreconcilable” - which clearly neither Collier nor O Ruairc believes.
Gerry Downing
North London
Buy
this book
|
Christianity
and Marxism: a philosophical contribution to their reconciliation |
Price correct at time of uploading
