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Weekly Worker 560 Thursday January 20 2005

Letters

Apologist for opportunism
In response to Mark Fischer’s statement that Ian Donovan’s recent writing has been “politically incoherent and represents nothing more than the sad political degeneration of a disorientated individual” (Letters, January 6), Brian Miller claims that this is just “ad hominem invective” (January 13).
How so? Mark was not commenting on comrade Donovan’s personal hygiene or sexual preference, but on his current political trajectory. Not irrelevant, when considering whether or not to publish a double-page article he submitted to the Weekly Worker. And when comrade Donovan previously accused me of “political degeneration” why was that not “ad hominem invective” (Letters, October 7 2004)?

Leaving that aside, I must say I agree with comrade Fischer’s assessment, since Ian is indeed hurtling to the right at a rate of knots. He has now come to the conclusion that Respect’s left populism constitutes a political advance over the Socialist Alliance at its best, such as the principled positions contained in the centrist People before profit. He puts himself forward as the Socialist Workers Party’s chief ‘left’ apologist for every SWP opportunist retreat from those positions.

Thus, for Ian, according to an internal CPGB document he submitted shortly before his resignation, abortion is not really an issue right now, since current rights are not under threat (even the SWP has stopped claiming that); he has renounced the principle of working class candidates committing themselves to a worker’s wage, voting against it at the Respect conference; most absurdly, he claims that when the SWP votes down socialism and secularism they do not really mean it.

After all, Respect has a clause in its constitution calling for a society based on “common ownership and democratic control”, which means the organisation must be regarded as “broadly socialist”. At least the Labour Party’s clause four mentioned the workers! No, comrade, we judge an organisation by how it behaves in the here and now, not by the abstract platitudes inserted into its constitution. Respect has explicitly rejected both socialism and secularism.

Comrade Miller thinks it is “a basic question for a Leninist” to “unconditionally but critically” support all those resisting a colonial occupation. Yet Lenin himself was clear that such support should not be extended to “reactionary anti-imperialists”. But that is what comrade Miller wants us to do, despite himself admitting that the Iraqi resistance is led by reactionaries. The Ba’athists want to re-establish some kind of Saddam Hussein-type oppression, while the islamists look back to an imagined pre-capitalist order.

It is worth asking what the “support” for reactionaries advocated by comrades Miller and Donovan would consist of concretely. Should we host a speaking tour for the Ba’athists, collect cash for the islamists and arm the kidnappers with better weapons? Of course not - and we know that comrade Donovan was outraged when a CPGB comrade (mistakenly) accused him of wanting to extend “solidarity” to the forces of Muqtada al-Sadr. But that begs the question: just what is this “support” that stops short of “solidarity”?

We communists advocate whatever support and solidarity it is possible to organise for secular, democratic and, above all, working class forces in Iraq. In addition, we are for the working class in Britain and the US doing all that objective circumstances permit to defeat the imperialists’ war effort and occupation: demonstrations, strikes, acts of sabotage, mutiny. Of course, such action at home might be seen as lending inadvertent “support” to the reactionaries in Iraq, but it would in fact strengthen the progressive forces in that country first and foremost.

It is the duty of socialists not only to uphold the right to self-determination and tirelessly work for the defeat of our ‘own’ imperialists, but to positively discriminate in favour of democratic, secular and working class forces amongst the anti-imperialists. It is quite incredible that comrade Miller thinks it is impossible to do both.

All this has been laid out in some detail in the authoritative motion overwhelmingly agreed at the July 2004 aggregate of the CPGB. Instead of resorting to a combination of empty slogans and puerile insults (the CPGB is “too social-chauvinist and yellow”, according to comrade Miller), may I suggest that comrades who wish to engage with our actual position base their critique on this motion (see Weekly Worker July 29 2004).
Peter Manson
South London

Kosova and self-determination
If Simon Keller (Letters, January 6) had paid more attention to what he was reading in the Weekly Worker back in 1998-99, when the Serbian policy of genocide and forced expulsions was stopped in its tracks, he would know that this occurred in the context of a long history of oppression against the Kosovars.

The Kosova Liberation Army, originally pro-Albanian-unity Enverists, had been struggling against oppression since the 1970s and, thanks to the murderously intensified Serb chauvinism under Milosevic, they had won the overwhelming sympathy of the Kosovan masses. Fact. The KLA were not exactly revolutionary socialists, but they had an essentially democratic demand to end Serbian oppression at the centre of their programme.

True, the imperialist intervention took advantage of the Kosovan resistance to advance its own interests, complicating matters. But the question for the working class was one of how to respond to a situation that was not of our own making. Should we, as part of our opposition to the imperialists, support the anti-working class Milosevic and his chauvinistic programme (that was responsible for driving the Kosovan masses into the hands of the imperialists in the first place and providing Nato with the opportunity to portray itself as the defender of the defenceless and the guardians of democracy)? Or were we in need of an independent, working class policy that separated us from both Milosevic and imperialism?

Obviously an independent policy meant opposing Nato and championing the right of the Kosovars to self-determination, up to and including the right to secede - and supporting the main organisation fighting to put that into practice, the KLA. That implied no illusions in the KLA. It was a petty bourgeois nationalist organisation which was quite capable of turning the oppression of Kosovars by Serbs into the oppression of Serbs by Kosovars. That is indeed exactly what happened. Such a reversal could happen in Palestine, Northern Ireland, etc. But that hardly requires us communists to retrospectively line up with Milosevic, as advised by comrade Keller.

Our demand for self-determination has an eye to the future: it aims to create an atmosphere of trust and confidence between workers of different backgrounds so that they can unite on a voluntary and democratic basis.

Incidentally we also called for the Serb minority within Kosova to have equal rights with ethnic Albanians. In Bosnia, where Serb and Croatian minorities were concentrated near the borders, it also made sense to support their right to self-determination. If they wanted to join Serbia or Croatia or remain with the Bosniacs that had to be up to them. That does not mean we adopt an indifferent viewpoint.

Our advice as to how the right to national self-determination is exercised is dictated by one main factor: would the outcome deepen working class unity? For instance in the case of Scotland we uphold the right to self-determination, but argue that it should be exercised in favour of maintaining unity within Britain through a federal republic of England, Scotland and Wales.

As for the imperialists, they do not support the right of Kosova to be independent from Serbia. Whether they will or will not in the future depends not on the interests of the masses in that region, but rather on how best to divide and rule. The exact opposite of a working class solution.
Phil Kent
Haringey

Iraq crucial
Imperialism, as outlined by Lenin as the highest stage of capitalism, is precisely what is in play in its most explicit form in Iraq today - the greatest crime against humanity to date carried out by the Blair regime is its conquest in Iraq. Where it is often difficult for ordinary people to recognise the brutal realities of capitalism and imperialism, here it is laid bare in it a most blatant fashion.

For this very reason the CPGB and the Weekly Worker should make the Iraq war its battleground. Yet coverage on this issue has been minimal and rather insufficient. The last two issues of the paper have failed to even report on Iraq. This has coincided with the virtual censorship on this issue in the bourgeois press - being very much in line with Pinocchio’s plan to shift Iraq from the political agenda in time for the general election.

Therefore, it is the duty of those on the left to continuously expose the brutality and lies of imperialism. Not only is this lack of coverage the case in relation to the Weekly Worker, but this is also reflected in the forums and schools held and organised by the CPGB. This leads one to believe you do not regard Iraq as a significant enough matter, when in my opinion it, not the SWP, is one of the most important topics in British politics today.

Another reason I emphasise the necessity to make Iraq the central issue in the short term is the deteriorating anti-war movement, which as a result has witnessed the failure to mobilise effectively in times when it was most essential: for instance, the revelations of the Abu Ghraib torture photos, The Lancet report and the annihilation of Fallujah.

I stress the need to rebuild the anti-war movement - more crucial now than ever.
Niko David
email

Russia 1905 and anarchists
I understand why Marxists are keen to attack anarchism, given that anarchists have had numerous aspects of our ideas confirmed in practice - at the expense of Marxism.

This is particularly evident in the Weekly Worker article on the 1905 Russian Revolution (‘Marxism, the general strike and the 1905 revolution’, January 13). Yes, the “land of Bakunin’s birth” “provided an unsurpassed example of how to make a revolution”, but only by confirming anarchist ideas on the general strike and workers’ councils! Marxists (who had previously quoted Engels to dismiss such things) found themselves repudiating aspect upon aspect of their dogma to remain relevant. When Rosa Luxemburg tried to learn the lessons of the revolt, her more orthodox opponents simply quoted Engels back (requiring her, like Engels, to distort anarchist ideas).

The Weekly Worker continues in this sad tradition. Rather than the September 1873 Geneva congress being of the (disbanded) Alliance of Social Democracy, it was in fact a meeting of the non-Marxist federations of the First International (ie, the majority). Rather than admitting that the “general strike strategy” required “a perfect organisation of the working class and a full war chest”, anarchists rejected the idea that it had “to break out everywhere at an appointed day and hour” with a resounding “No!” The Belgian libertarians had proposed the idea as “a means of bringing a movement onto the street and leading the workers to the barricades”.

So, contra Engels, anarchists did not see the general strike as requiring all workers to be organised and then passively folding arms “one fine morning”. In this they followed Bakunin, who saw it as a dynamic process for, as “strikes spread from one place to another, they come close to turning into a general strike. And with the ideas of emancipation that now hold sway over the proletariat, a general strike can result only in a great cataclysm which forces society to shed its old skin ... each strike becomes the point of departure for the formation of new groups.” As happened in 1905.

As for the soviets, these confirmed Bakunin’s ideas. For him “the alliance of all labour associations” would “constitute the commune”. The “revolutionary communal council” would be made up of “delegates … invested with binding mandates and accountable and revocable at all times”. These would federate by “delegat[ing] deputies to an agreed place of assembly (all … invested with binding mandates and accountable and subject to recall), in order to found the federation of insurgent associations, communes and provinces”. Sound familiar? It’s a system of workers’ councils modelled on the Paris Commune created by the revolution itself.

And it is ironic to read praise for the Moscow uprising in the same article as an attack on anarchists in 1873 for being “drawn into useless, senseless and uncoordinated uprisings”! Needless to say, Bakunin always stressed the importance of federating “to organise a revolutionary force with the capacity of defeating the reaction” and for “the mutual defences of insurgent areas”, as “no commune can defend itself in isolation”. To “defend the revolution” a “communal militia” was required, as well as “radiat[ing] revolution outward, to raise all of its neighbouring communes in revolt … and to federate with them for common defence”.

Clearly, the “anarchist strategy of overthrowing the bourgeoisie with one big general strike” exists only in Marxist heads, nowhere else. And the claim that “Anarchism found itself completely marginalised, losing almost all the influence it once enjoyed,” is similar nonsense. For example, France, Spain and Italy all had substantial anarchist movements throughout the period of the Second International. This influence was felt in the labour movement with the rise of syndicalism (which was extremely close to Bakunin’s ideas).

Finally, it is significant that your article fails to mention that the Bolsheviks attacked the soviets in 1905. In St Petersburg, they argued that “only a strong party along class lines can guide the proletarian political movement and preserve the integrity of its programme, rather than a political mixture of this kind, an indeterminate and vacillating political organisation such as the workers’ council represents and cannot help but represent.” Thus the soviets could not reflect workers’ interests because they were elected by the workers!

The Bolshevik assault on the soviets occurred across the country. Lenin, to his credit, opposed this once he returned from exile. However, he did so only to gain influence for his party. In 1907 he concluded that while the party could “utilise” the soviets “for the purpose of developing the social democratic movement”, the party “must bear in mind that if social democratic activities among the proletarian masses are properly, effectively and widely organised, such institutions may actually become superfluous”.

And in 1918 the “strong party” did make the soviets “superfluous” - after seizing state power it disbanded any soviet elected with a non-Bolshevik majority.

It’s a shame that the Weekly Worker simply regurgitates Engels’ inaccurate diatribe without bothering to see what anarchism actually argues for. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that the 1905 revolution confirmed anarchist theory just as much as, say, the one in 1917 or the descent of social democracy into reformism. And perhaps it is the fact that the anarchist analysis has been confirmed time and again that leads Marxists so regularly to distort our ideas (see www.anarch-istfaq.org for details).
Iain McKay
email

Pro-immigrant
You write: “Moreover, the aim of state anti-racism is to unite us negatively on the basis of nationality. It encourages workers to turn against the ‘threat’ of asylum-seekers, who are told to stay where they ‘belong’. Blair wants to keep them out not because of their race or ethnicity, but because by and large they are working class and poor” (‘Divide and rule’, January 13).

If the above statement were true, not a fabrication, one would have to ask how come 15-20 million new immigrants have arrived throughout ‘Fortress Europe’ in the last decade. A majority of which are in non-unionised, poverty-pay jobs. One could argue that Blair is fighting against the interests of British capital seeking to maintain unionised work if one lives in an SWP-infested fantasy land.

The fact of the matter on asylum is that you have identical positions to the SWP - circulating the myth of anti-immigration by capital, when whole sectors of the economy have been taken over by gangmasters and illegal immigration. Even your bible, The Guardian, states that. Don’t bother replying, as any statement you make will be for globalism - your raison d’être.
I Evangelos
email

AWL and Galloway
Sacha Ismail and Cathy Nugent (Letters, January 13) offer a response of the usual Alliance for Workers’ Liberty type to my article, ‘Galloway and libel’ (Weekly Worker December 9). The body of their ‘argument’ boils down to: ‘Even if we smeared Galloway, we put in some small-print stuff which dissociated us from The Daily Telegraph’s more or less identical smear.’

Their last point is that “Mike might have been honest enough to admit that Galloway turned down the option of jury trial, evidently fearing even the slightest exposure to working class public opinion”. Before accusing me of dishonesty and Galloway of fearing working class public opinion, Sacha and Cathy should have checked their facts. I gave the web reference of the judgement in the article and give it again here - www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2004/2786.html.

It is quite clear from this that Galloway’s lawyers sought jury trial, that the Telegraph’s lawyers opposed jury trial, and that Galloway’s lawyers conceded trial by judge alone when it became clear in the course of argument that the judge would rule against them.

The gist of my comments on the AWL in the article was that they are habitual slanderers and smear merchants, and that this habit led them to give effective support to the government/press smear campaign against Galloway. That Sacha and Cathy’s letter includes a flatly false statement about a matter of fact which would easily be checked, and which is then used to support inferences of dishonesty and fear of public opinion, goes a long way to confirm this assessment.
Mike Macnair
email

Livingstone and Qaradawi
Ken Livingstone has defended Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the day it was revealed the muslim cleric said the Asian earthquake victims deserved punishment from Allah because, he believes, their countries are centres of immorality, decadence and perversion. On the very morning Qaradawi’s disgraceful views were reported in The Times (January 11), mayor Livingstone called a press conference at City Hall to defend the fundamentalist cleric.

We are appalled the mayor is defending a reactionary fundamentalist who says 150,000 people deserved to die because some of them were immoral and failed to observe his hard-line interpretation of islam. Why is a leftwing mayor associating with a rightwing islamist?

According to reports in The Times and on BBC TV News on January 11, Qaradawi said in a sermon broadcast on Qatar TV: “People must ask themselves why this earthquake occurred in this area and not others. Whoever examines these areas discovers that they are tourism areas, where the forbidden acts are widespread, as well as alcohol consumption, drug use and acts of abomination. Don’t they deserve punishment from Allah?”

Ken has justified his hosting of Qaradawi at City Hall last July, while attacking a London community coalition of muslims, hindus, jews, sikhs, christians, gays, humanists, women, students and refugees from islamist repression. Our community coalition is critical of Dr Qaradawi’s sexist, homophobic and anti-semitic opinions. We do not believe he is a fit and proper person to be hosted by the mayor of our great city.

Ken’s suggestion that criticisms of Qaradawi are part of a Mossad or Jewish conspiracy are laughable and insulting. The cleric’s bigoted opinions are openly expressed in his books and speeches. Qaradawi supports female genital mutilation, wife-beating, the execution of homosexuals, destruction of the Jewish people, suicide bombing of innocent civilians, and the punishment of rape victims who do not dress with sufficient modesty. These attitudes are clerical fascism. No mayor of London should be hosting a religious leader with such anti-democratic opinions.

The mayor praises Qaradawi as a moderate muslim leader. But he has used selective, partial and misleading quotes to portray him as a liberal. For example, while Livingstone boasts that Qaradawi says female genital mutilation is not obligatory, he omits the fact that the muslim cleric personally advocates it. This is typical of the mayor’s distortions.

Apparently afraid of criticism from the lesbian and gay community, the mayor’s advisors cancelled the Greater London Authority Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Forum, which was to have been held on Tuesday January 11. This is the second month in a row that the forum has been cancelled by the mayor and his officials. On both occasions, the forum was due to have discussed motions critical of Ken’s hosting of Dr Qaradawi at City Hall last July.

The mayor appears to be fearful of open debate. He is now using bureaucratic manoeuvres to stifle legitimate criticisms of his handling of the Qaradawi affair.
Peter Tatchell
Outrage

Draft programme
I thought the ‘Immediate demands’ section of the CPGB Draft programme on your website was simply brilliant. With these objectives, we can make a new world.
No more inequality! The power goes to the workers!
Herman Simancas
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