Weekly Worker 563 Thursday February 10 2005

Letters

Holocaust
Replying to my recent article on Norman Finkelstein’s The holocaust industry, comrade Hillel Ticktin writes that I am “wrong in dating the criticism of anti-semitism in the ‘western’ media to the 1967 war” (‘Expression of decline’, February 3).

But I never said that - obviously. What I argued, rightly or wrongly, was that the Six-Day War of that year represented the beginnings of reactionary ‘uniqueness theory’, which saw a concerted attempt to turn the newly triumphant regional superpower, Israel, into a victim, as opposed to an oppressor. That is, according to the holocaust ideologues, a history that has always had it in for the Jews and always will, thus Israel’s actions were, and always will be, a thoroughly justified attempt to prevent genocide at the hands of inherently anti-Jewish, gentile forces (in this case, the Arabs - possibly tomorrow, the Europeans). So, 1967 onwards marked the time when “the criticism of anti-semitism in the ‘western’ media” started to become appropriated by imperialism as a tool, rather than when criticism of anti-semitism became mainstream or ‘respectable’ (allegedly). There is quite a difference between the two contentions.

Having said that, though, comrade Ticktin appears to contradict himself by immediately going on to state that it was the civil rights movement of the 1960s that made it “unacceptable to discriminate against anyone” - like women, gays and Jews (supposedly). Well, the last time I checked 1967 was in the 1960s and, more to the point, all this proves is the power of Zionist ideology, which managed (partly) to obscure its discriminatory basis, and also how ‘uniqueness’ ideology parasitically hitches on the back of anti-racist/fascist politics. It is hardly a coincidence, after all, that ‘The Holocaust’ and official or politically correct anti-racism have advanced virtually hand in hand.

Furthermore, when discussing pre-World War II Germany, comrade Ticktin claims that “Nazism and fascism were not favoured by the ruling class”. However, he then proceeds to list prominent capitalists who enthusiastically supported the Nazi takeover and concludes: “The capitalist class acquiesced in Hitler’s taking power because they could see no alternative, but that does not mean to say they liked it”. To me, this just sounds like another way of saying that the capitalist ruling class and its apologists “favoured” Hitler’s Nazi dictatorship!
Eddie Ford
Cornwall

No class
Having only skimmed through Finkelstein’s book, and not read any of the critics whom Eddie Ford trawls through, I suppose I should be grateful for his efforts (‘Class struggle and the holocaust’, January 27).

But having seen the heading ‘Class struggle and the holocaust’, I’m a bit disappointed to find nothing about the class struggle and not much about the holocaust. Much as I resent the exploitation of Jewish victims by today’s Israeli racists and their supporters, and the revolting hypocrisy of British political leaders shedding pious tears before competing to stir hatred against refugees and immigrants, I do think Marxists might consider a few other questions of relevance.

One is the relationship between the original holocaust industry - slave labour and industrialised slaughter - and monopoly capitalism, as instanced by IG Farbenindustrie (with its international links). Another is the way US support for the Zionist project served imperialism’s European settlement - by shipping Jewish refugees to Palestine (and not the USA or Australia), and by the German reparations agreement which the US underwrote, helping smooth the way for German rearmament.

A little question which troubled me about Finklestein and co is why supposed lefties should be worried about a possible injustice to Swiss bankers. The collapse of the Soviet Union released a lot of antagonism between cold war allies, and suddenly respectable scholars turned to previously taboo subjects, such as how Nato intelligence services enlisted former SS members, sheltered war criminals and put some back in business. In the cold war years those of us who raised such issues were marked as ‘commies’.

But I guess I’m an unreconstructed Marxist, in seeing a class issue lurking behind everything, rather than sticking to the ‘ideological sphere’; and in suspecting that the idea of the Israeli tail wagging the US imperialist dog, amusing though it may be, can represent a complaint of other imperialists, and their apologists, rather than a real struggle against imperialism. But then a ‘brown-red alliance’ hiding behind ‘anti-Zionism’ and even pretending ‘anti-imperialism’ is not entirely new either.
Charlie Pottins
email

Marginal
Peter Manson’s letter - replying to the orthodox Trotskyist comrade, J Larkin, on the question of ‘military support’ to national liberation movements, such as those which are fighting the imperialists in Iraq - makes a couple of useful points about the foolish and misleading terminology that is common on the left (Letters, February 3).

In particular, Peter manages to effectively mock the ‘military’ posturing that is obviously part of the pretentiousness of this terminology: ie, that ‘military support’ that doesn’t actually engage in military action of any kind is just a meaningless phrase.

However, from Peter this is demagogy. For the question of which side one takes in the war over Iraq is extremely important ideologically for socialists in the west. Without a clear stand for the unconditional right of Iraq to self-determination, which is synonymous with unconditional but critical support for activities of resistance forces actually directed against the occupation forces, communist principles collapse. One cannot consistently oppose the occupation without an unremitting defence of the right of the Iraqi people to oppose that occupation arms in hand.

The imperialists have their own bogeymen, their own propaganda weapons, to justify the occupation and demonise the resistance. One of the most prominent such bogeymen is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian ‘militant’ whose followers have not particularly been fighting the occupation, but rather engaging in activities designed to achieve notoriety in the west: beheadings of hostages and the like.
Peter says of the resistance: “Take Abu Musab al Zarqawi, for instance ...”. He uses Zarqawi’s notoriety as a talisman to justify refusing to support the existing forces resisting imperialism, as opposed to some other more progressive resistance which unfortunately does not seem to be ... resisting.
In fact, Zarqawi’s forces are marginal by all informed and honest accounts: eg, in August 2004, out of around 2,000 armed actions against the occupation forces, Zarqawi’s people were reckoned to be responsible for six of them, according to one well informed source in Iraq.

As Sami Ramandhani, a well informed Iraqi political refugee and leftist, noted about the recent elections: “In the run-up to the poll, much of the western media presented it as a high-noon shootout between the terrorist, Zarqawi, and the Iraqi people, with the occupation forces doing their best to enable the people to defeat the fiendish, one-legged Jordanian murderer. In reality, Zarqawi-style sectarian violence is not only condemned by Iraqis across the political spectrum, including supporters of the resistance, but is widely seen as having had a blind eye turned to it by the occupation authorities. Such attitudes are dismissed by outsiders, but the record of John Negroponte, the US ambassador in Baghdad, of backing terror gangs in central America in the 80s has fuelled these fears, as has Seymour Hirsh’s reports on the Pentagon’s assassination squads and enthusiasm for the ‘Salvador option’” (www.idao.org).

The Iraqi resistance does not consist of brainwashed holy warriors waging war on behalf of a bogeyman like Zarqawi. Overwhelmingly it consists of ordinary people, in a plethora of local groups, many of which have both a religious and nationalist colouration. Al Zarqawi’s name and notoriety were the propaganda tool the US used to justify its massacre and levelling of Fallujah, but virtually no ‘foreign fighters’ were found there despite all the efforts of both the US military and its propaganda prostitutes.
Sorry, Peter, but in key situations where there is a shooting war between the mass-based resistance and the occupation forces - such as Fallujah and earlier Najaf, with the shia uprising there - you do have to choose between them. This is a crucial question of ideological orientation for socialists in the west - neutrality is back-handed support to the status quo.

The CPGB’s ideological subservience to imperialism is shown by Peter’s simple echoing of the Zarqawi myth - the demonisation of the Iraqi people. This in turn has echoes of the CPGB’s reaction to a previous burst of reactionary propaganda aimed at demonising those opposed to the Iraq war/occupation; the vilification of George Galloway in April 2003. Why is it that the CPGB’s response to such reactionary propaganda offensives is to roll over and ask for its tummy to be tickled?
Brian Miller
email

Kosova and Iraq
So I got a reply from the CPGB, in the form of a letter from Phil Kent (Letters, January 20).
In comrade Kent’s letter the lie that the Serbian regime was carrying out genocide against the Kosovars is continued by referring to “the Serbian policy of genocide”. No attempt is made to address the evidence from Pilger that proves there was no such genocide being carried out by the Serbian regime. Unlike some I do not consider the CPGB to be outright Stalinists, but it would seem you are having trouble junking all of the methods of your political past - in this case the rewriting of history!

The bulk of Kent’s letter outlines a defence of the CPGB’s calls for a bloc with the KLA because it was in accordance with the right to self-determination for oppressed minorities. The problem is that communists’ defence of the right to self-determination is not based on abstract absolute ‘rights’, as the CPGB apparently seem to think. Communists support the right to self-determination because it will result in a more democratic outcome for the working masses.

The problem in Kosova was that a democratic outcome was not possible in the context of the imperialist aggression against Serbia and their subsequent occupation of Kosova. I presume that is why the CPGB continue to peddle the “genocide” lie - after all, any outcome is more democratic than genocide.

I would also like to make a few comments on Peter Manson’s reply to J Larkin (Letters, February 3). Firstly the distinction between political and military support is not a Trotskyist invention. As the Bolsheviks’ bloc with Kerensky against Kornilov in 1917 makes clear, it is basic Leninism. The CPGB may not like the terms ‘military’ and ‘political’, but if so then it is incumbent on them to come up with alternatives that will explain the different types of ‘support’ that clearly exist in pre-Stalinist Leninism.
The CPGB’s simplistic ‘any support is political support’ has more in common with Stalinism and justifications for substantive political support to the ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie than it does with Leninism.
Simon Keller
email

Workers’ unity
How dumb of the Kosovans to be taken in by a CIA plot, when they could have lived happily in brotherhood and unity within the socialist utopia of Serbia. Or perhaps how dumb of Richard Roper not to notice that the Kosovans as a whole wanted to be free of Serbia and escape Milosevic’s chauvinist oppression (Letters, February 3). The rights, wrongs and history of it do not change the question as to how the situation can best be resolved by the working class, though I find it significant that the feelings of the Kosovan masses are simply dismissed by comrade Roper.

We did not, do not, support the free market or any other form that capitalism may take in central and eastern Europe or anywhere in the world. We advocated the self-determination of Kosova as the best answer available to the working class in the circumstances. Comrade Roper and his fellow thinkers supported the reactionary anti-socialist Milosevic as the only possible way of opposing imperialism. In service to this idea they trampled reality underfoot.

I think comrade Roper misunderstood my closing remarks - probably because of his Stalinist tendencies he has little understanding of democracy. Imperialism may grant Kosova independence, though it shows no signs of doing so at the present. Imperialism intervened in the region for its own reasons, not because it supports the right to self-determination.

Finally, there is comrade Evangelos. I am glad he has also decided to continue the debate (Letters, February 3). I am as interested as him in reducing the competition between workers, but there is a right way to do it - through workers’ unity (remember, workers have no country) - and a wrong way to do it - workers’ disunity - which won’t work. The belief that Britain can be isolated from the rest of the world is just a fantasy.

In the 19th century, when Irish labour was undermining British working class living standards and being used to break strikes, forward-looking leaders not only turned to organising all workers, irrespective of where they came from: they also sought to organise in Ireland.
Today the European Union has been enlarged and it is no good bemoaning the fact. We need to take advantage of it to extend working class influence and jointly campaign to increase the wages and conditions of all through trade union and political organisation on an EU-wide basis.
Phil Kent
Haringey

German left
As you don’t know too much about the political situation in Germany, you couldn’t know much about the new party, Wahlalternative Arbeit und Soziale Gerechtigkeit (‘Socialist or welfare state party’, November 25).

It is the left wing of the SPD, the party of Schröder, and there are a lot of former SPD members, including trade unionists, that founded this party. They don’t fight against the government - their only concern is how to stop the frustrated masses from making revolution against the terrible situation in our country. They have set up a more leftwing SPD to stabilise the political situation.

Or do you think, under capitalism we can gain “justice for all” - a demand of the new party?
M Klingender
email

Economic demands
Ian Mahoney’s article, ‘Sectarian killers at the funeral’, draws our attention to how the revolutionary left seems to suffer a lack of conviction in their professed Marxist politics when it came to being involved with the Socialist Alliance and Respect (Weekly Worker February 3).

But Ian goes on to state: “Economic struggles against employers and the government’s anti-trade union laws have no inherent logic pointing to state power and ending exploitation. Economic struggles are the guerrilla warfare of the working class.”

However, there are plenty of pay and conditions-type economic demands within the CPGB draft programme. What makes the CPGB’s demands for a minimum wage, trade union rights, childcare, etc revolutionary, while Respect’s similar demands are somehow pointless economic struggles?
Steve Whitehall-Smith
Walthamstow

Continue SA
Ian Mahoney presents those of us who want to continue the Socialist Alliance after the SWP’s sectarian and bureaucratic performance last Saturday with a real dilemma. On the one hand he says it is not serious politics to continue without any of the main left groups being on board. On the other hand he says the closure of the Socialist Alliance by the SWP is “a victory for the miserable sectism that dominates the left” (Weekly Worker February 3). So presumably we independent socialists have to wait around for one of the miserable sects to stop being a miserable sect before we can build socialist unity.

The questions arise as to why the other left groups have allowed the SWP to get away with the closure of the Socialist Alliance and why they are not with us in continuing. The SA could have developed in the same direction as the SSP - as a party allowing factions and platforms. All the left groups seem fairly well ensconced in the SSP, but apparently they believe matters have to be run differently down south for some reason.

One of the main reasons for continuing the Socialist Alliance is so that some accounting can take place and the lessons can be learned. Otherwise we can easily get the impression that these defeats happen by accident without anybody being responsible. The main responsibility lies with the SWP and their sectarian approach: that is, using broad organisations as a means of recruiting to their own group and not developing the movement as a whole. I cannot believe they behave in a loyal way in the SSP.
The lack of democracy is another lesson. Everything stems from above: the opinions and concerns of the membership are ignored. If the SWP sheep who turned up last Saturday had been turkeys they would have voted for Christmas on Rob Hoveman’s and Nick Wrack’s say-so. Such behaviour is beneath contempt. It is equally as undemocratic as Arthur Scargill and his 3,000 votes.

Why should we put up with this outrageous behaviour time and again? It may not be serious to continue without the sects, but miserable sectism is hardly serious politics - it is becoming more and more farcical.
Dave Spencer
Coventry

Effective?
According to George Galloway, “It is possible to love capitalism and not want to invade Iraq” - or any other country, for that matter. He was speaking at a school students Stop the War Coalition meeting held on January 29 at Friends House, London.

George was answering a point raised by one of the 50 or so students present - mostly SWP - who said the anti-war movement had to “get to the root of the problem - capitalism”. Both Galloway and Andrew Murray, the other main speaker, although they undoubtedly agreed that capitalism is the core evil and creator of wars, rejected the notion of trying to build the STWC on the basis of this understanding, since it was necessary to “maintain the breadth of the movement”.

It struck me, if this is so, how come the huge anti-war demonstrations didn’t ever look like stopping the war? What happened to the protests and where did the two million go? The comrades talked about “the need for a movement in the run-up to May” (Murray) and the need to “make an impact in the general election” (Galloway), but do they think a movement capable of making such an impact has been built? Or will the Liberal Democrats continue to reap the benefits?

A number of people, who obviously knew the SWP line, argued that the STWC should stay ‘broad’ - openly socialist politics would end up alienating and reducing numbers, leaving us “ineffective”.
Just how effective are we now, comrades?
Nina Navid
London

My dad’s cap
Tina Becker writes about the SWP attempting to attract “forces to its right” into Respect and includes the Socialist Party amongst the list of organisations it has tried to “bring on board” (‘Don’t mention open borders’, February 3).

I don’t actually own a hat, but if she can show me any meaningful sense in which the Socialist Party is to the right of the SWP I will cheerfully eat my father’s cloth cap.
Sam Buckley
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