Weekly Worker 477 Thursday April 24 2003
Letters
Regroup
How can the tiny Trotskyist and semi-Trotskyist groups, and indeed any half-way genuine Leninist-Trotskyist grouping, relate to the huge anti-war movement that is now in evidence?
A massive anti-war movement exists, but the forces of revolutionary socialism are weak and seemingly too feeble (not through lack of trying) to offer a way forward to it. The Socialist Workers Party is probably the only organisation that is big enough to make an impact. If a breakthrough could be made in terms of its internal organisational norms, this might be a possible locus for regroupment of the left. There is certainly no hope for tiny groupuscules.
We simply have to regroup. If the SWP were to change its rules, allowing tendencies to exist, and embracing the concept of international democratic centralism, this would be a big step forward.
To complicate matters, there is this resurgent muddleheaded left-liberal/anarchist/autonome layer that simply echoes and parrots the conventional anti-communist lies of the right wing about the history of Leninism and Bolshevism; and to make matters worse, international democratic-centralism is now a dirty word in many ex-Trotskyist quarters - like the USFI (and of course the British SWP/IST has never really accepted this idea up to now. I wish it would.
The USFI has just rewritten its rules to make it explicitly clear that local sections can basically do as they please without even any consultation with the international organisation. And the USFI Brazilian section has just joined the Lula government, committing the same stupid popular frontist error as the POUM during the Spanish civil war. The recent USFI world congress decided, in its wisdom, to give them a pat on the back rather than try to make them see that they had committed a classic popular frontist betrayal. This was despite the fact that many people criticised them at the congress and despite the fact that some in the Brazilian section are genuinely trying to limit the damage.
No one is arguing that international socialist organisations should order their local sections around like the tin-pot despots of the Comintern (or indeed the old ICFI/OCRFI of Healy-Lambert), but the USFI has now fallen, completely, into the opposite, left-liberal, hole.
The original conception of international democratic centralism in Lenin and Trotsky’s time, was never one of bureaucratic centralism as it later became under Stalin. It was a relationship of political dialogue, political counselling and guidance, based on positions arrived at democratically by international delegate meetings. Only in the case of open betrayals of the class was disciplinary action contemplated. National sections are always vulnerable to local chauvinistic pressures. That is the very reason why it is essential that socialists should establish an international organisation from day one. If there were only five revolutionary socialists in the whole of the world, they should immediately form an international tendency, wrote Trotsky in the early 1930s.
An example of real democratic centralism was the correspondance between Trotsky and his supporters in Britain in the early 30s over the question of entry into the Independent Labour Party. I do not have the exact quote, but the drift of Trotsky’s approach was that we cannot issue “a bare instruction” about what you must do, but we ask you to consider the following arguments. It is all there in Trotsky’s writings on Britain, available at the Trotskyist Internet Archive.
We have to rescue the concept of democratic centralism from the disingenuous caricatures presented, not just by left-liberal bourgeois democrats and anarchist muddleheads, but also by ex-Trotskyists. Democratic centralism is an essential weapon to strengthen the ranks of the left. Those who lie about what it means do a disservice to the workers movement.
The CPGB, and the Trotskyist left in general, should be more active than it is in sticking its oar into discussions about this and other questions, in the alternative, non-corporate newsmedia websites like UK Indymedia - even if it means doing a quick cut and paste job from our own publications. That is the very least we can do. If we want to develop something from the huge anti-war movement, we have to fight the left-liberal/anarchist blockheads tooth and nail in arenas like this where many anti-war activists are looking for answers.
John Petty
email
Fallacious
It would have been helpful if comrade Julian Lewis (letters April 10), had explained a little more clearly what my “fallacious logic” actually was and what it is I need to “come off’”.
Let us consider the Socialist Workers Party’s approach to the very real question of how the anti-war forces should organise themselves tactically.
What is required is to pose the Marxist understanding of necessity. While there is plenty of access to information via the capitalistic bourgeois media outlets - ie, the BBC, ITV, numerous national newspapers and so forth - what approach should socialist take to this?
Simply to call on people to watch another capitalistic bourgeois media station like Al Jazeera, with an Arabic outlook, is disastrous politics. What is required is to call for and actively engage in developing our own capacity to have daily newspapers, television stations and radio outlets.
This is my central charge against the SWP - that they fail to raise these reasonable demands with working people, not only practically as an immediate task for the working class, but also theoretically. Only once the working class not only addresses but masters these questions is there any possibility of a revolutionary situation being forced on to the agenda of mainstream politics.
James Frazer
Manchester
Atrocities
In recent weeks one international peace activist in the occupied territories of Palestine was killed and two others maimed. All were working with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).
Rachel Corrie, 23 - killed while trying to protect a Palestinian doctor’s home from demolition, was run over twice by an Israeli bulldozer. Brian Avery, 23 - shot in the face by a tank-mounted Israeli machine gun while standing still with both hands raised. Tom Hurndall, 22 - in a coma after being shot once in the head from an Israeli watchtower. He was escorting three small children to safety. All three peaceworkers were easily indentifiable and wearing fluorescent vests at the time of their death/wounding.
ISM uses non-violent, direct action to confront and challenge the illegal occupation (www.palsolidarity.org).
Tom Trottier
Ottawa
Manipulation
I write to raise concerns about the Socialist Workers Party’s manipulation of the anti-war movement in Cambridge.
Cambridge has two established anti-war organisations, for the city and for the students. Members of the SWP have also set up their own organisation, which they run under the banner of the Stop the War Coalition.
However, although it benefits from association with a national brand-name, it makes no pretence at coalition, or indeed at any activity that is not directly related to increasing SWP membership. Meetings are not publicly advertised, and those not considered contacts are refused details.
At their one public meeting, an active member of the local anti-war movement, who had been a delegate to the Stop the War Coalition People’s Assembly in London, was literally barred entry. Although they have been prominent on the day of local demonstrations, they have done nothing to help promote them. In fact they have tried to argue against them taking place, attempted to undermine them by misrepresenting the organisers, and even resorted to personal character smears.
Our biggest demonstration here was on March 8, with an attendance of around 1,500. Three days before, a leading SWP activist and local Stop the War Coalition organiser, who had previously disparaged the idea of a demonstration at all, attempted to prevent one of the convenors of the demonstration from speaking to a rally of striking school students.
The SWP is not “building a mass movement” (Bobby Blazer, Letters April 17) - Blair and Bush have done that - but they are attempting to exploit it in a very damaging way. Bobby Blazer may also be interested to learn that it is only recently that the SWP has accepted the arguments of others on the left and woken up to the fact that we are indeed fighting imperialism.
The type of politics we have witnessed is not unique to the SWP in Cambridge. Those who indulge in it rely on the readiness of the majority to dismiss all left politics as typically ‘Life of Brian’ and any criticism, however legitimate, as a danger to ‘unity’, but if these antics are allowed to go unchallenged, the potential of the whole anti-war movement will be badly damaged. As we take stock and prepare ourselves for the next stage of the fight against the new imperialism, we need to look critically at our own anti-war movement.
Sarah Glynn
Cambridge
Aaronovitch
I agree with Eddie Holland (Letters April 17). You should seriously rethink. Yes, David Aaronovitch - once a Communist Party member and spawn of the Marxism Today journal - is recommending the Weekly Worker to his Guardian readers (including no doubt MI5). But as they say - by their friends ye shall know them.
You act as an unpaid (?) spy for the enemies of socialism. No wonder Aaronovitch is so appreciative. If you are capable of thinking - and I doubt it - you should urgently re-think. When some like Aaronovitch sings your praises it is time to ask some serious questions.
You expend most of your energies attacking others on the left such as the Socialist Workers Party and Tommy Sheriden’s Scottish Socialist Party, etc. Instead you should try attacking the real enemy - New Labour, US imperialism and capitalism.
Robert Gould
e-mail
Labour left
With reference to “Debating the next move” (April 17), the discussion list for Labour Left Briefing (www.groups.yahoo.com/group/LLB_readers), makes interesting reading for understanding the war’s impact on the Labour left. It is also good as a general source for developments in Labour, and how the left should relate to them.
Phil Hamilton
Stoke-on-Trent
Absurd
It is absurd to think that, having been beaten inside the Labour Party, the answer for the left is to form yet another splinter party. If it is possible to win general elections in the big world outside the Party it is obviously easier to win within the Labour Party first.
If you cannot turn Labour into a Labour party, how on earth could you turn the country into a socialist republic?
Cornet Joyce
email
Choices
In recent articles and letters we have witnessed many an argument about whether we support UK-US imperialism or Saddam in Gulf War II.
In my opinion it should be the policy of this party, and indeed of the left, to declare no support for the UK-US or ‘rogue states’ and focus upon the fact that it is a weakness to feel obliged to ‘choose sides’. In fact all these nations are capitalist states and therefore the natural enemy of communism and the party. So here I am declaring no support for capitalist nations and their wars.
The question is, do I stand alone?
James Campy
Wakefield
UN to vote
The UN will vote, for the first time in its history, on the issue of homosexual human rights. The landmark vote takes place on Wednesday, April 23, at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights at its 59th session in Geneva. The resolution ‘Human rights and sexual orientation’ has been introduced by Brazil with support from various countries, including members of the European Union, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.
As I said when I first lobbied the UN for a commitment to gay equality over 30 years ago: “All previous attempts to debate gay human rights in the UN have been vetoed by homophobic governments”. So this is the first-ever UN resolution on lesbian and gay human rights. It is a historic milestone in the global struggle for queer freedom.
More than 70 countries have a total ban on homosexuality, with punishments including imprisonment, flogging, hanging and beheading. Same-sex relations are punishable by execution in seven countries: Chechnya, Iran, Iraq, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen. Bangladesh, Egypt, Malaysia and Pakistan penalise gay people with maximum sentences ranging from three to 20 years jail. In Mexico, El Salvador, Columbia and Brazil right-wing death squads target gay people for assassination in what they call ‘social cleansing’ campaigns.
Police harassment and brutality against lesbians and gay men is particularly harsh in Russia, Turkey, India, Uganda and Jamaica. No international human rights convention explicitly recognises gay human rights. Many outlaw discrimination based on race, sex, religion, language and political opinion, but none guarantee equal treatment for lesbian, gay and bisexual people.
Up to now, the UN has ignored the persecution of gay people. According to international human rights laws, we don’t exist and we have no rights.
This vote will, hopefully, begin to challenge the discrimination and violence that blights the lives of hundreds of millions of lesbians, gays and bisexuals world wide.
Peter Tatchell
London
