Weekly Worker 565 Thursday February 24 2005

Letters

Military support
So now the editor of the Weekly Worker steps up to the plate and quotes Lenin in an attempt to defend the CPGB’s claim that there is no difference between political and military support. Perhaps comrade Manson thinks Weekly Worker readers are just sheep who will blindly accept whatever he says - or perhaps unquestioning acceptance of the leadership is what he is used to inside the CPGB? Unfortunately for him some of us take our politics more seriously than that.

I actually read the documents he referred to and a full reading gives a somewhat different result than you would think from the selective and out-of-context snippets he uses. Both documents are available on the internet for those readers without easy access to Lenin’s Collected works - www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/aug/19.htm; and www.mar-xists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/aug/30.htm.

‘Rumours of a conspiracy’ actually does not even refer to the Kornilov affair, but it does make clear what the Bolsheviks’ attitude to such an attack on the provisional government would be. Let us first look at who Lenin says should be expelled and for what: “The congress resolution being what it is, any Bolshevik who came to terms with the defencists for the purpose of ‘giving access’, or indirectly expressing confidence in the provisional government (which is allegedly being defended against the Cossacks), would, of course, be immediately and deservedly expelled from the party.”

Later on Lenin makes it explicit that it is political support to the government that he opposes: “… a Bolshevik would tell the Mensheviks: “We shall fight, of course, but we refuse to enter into any political alliance whatever with you, refuse to express the least confidence in you.”

It is also instructive to look at a complete quote of the relevant section of the letter to the central committee of the RSDLP. Once again it clearly distinguishes between taking a military side and giving political support:

“Even now we must not support Kerensky’s government. This is unprincipled. We may be asked: aren’t we going to fight against Kornilov? Of course we must! But this is not the same thing; there is a dividing line here, which is being stepped over by some Bolsheviks who fall into compromise and allow themselves to be carried away by the course of events.

“We shall fight, we are fighting, against Kornilov, just as Kerensky’s troops do, but we do not support Kerensky. On the contrary, we expose his weakness. There is the difference. It is rather a subtle difference, but it is highly essential and must not be forgotten.

“We are changing the form of our struggle against Kerensky. Without in the least relaxing our hostility towards him, without taking back a single word said against him, without renouncing the task of overthrowing him, we say that we must take into account the present situation. We shall not overthrow Kerensky right now.

“We shall approach the task of fighting against him in a different way: namely we shall point out to the people (who are fighting against Kornilov) Kerensky’s weakness and vacillation. That has been done in the past as well. Now, however, it has become the all-important thing and this constitutes the change.”
It would seem that the CPGB are incapable of understanding this subtle but highly essential difference. I repeat - if the CPGB don’t want to use the words ‘political’ and ‘military’, then fair enough, but then you are going to have to describe these quite different actions of revolutionary Marxists with some alternative terms. Certainly the CPGB’s own position on Iraq makes no sense without recognising this difference - unless you really are for giving some kind of political support to the Iraqi resistance whose military side you take in their conflict with imperialism.

And let us not forget the outstanding question of the supposed “genocide” in Kosova. Does the CPGB still stand by their claim that genocide was being carried out by the Serbs? Do you therefore say that Pilger is a liar when he clearly says this was not the case?
Simon Keller
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Betrayal
Peter Manson shows clearly the continuing legacy of Stalinism in the CPGB, even though they have renounced it and claim to be fighting for genuine communism. Like a conditioned reflex, Peter reaches for irrelevant quotes from Lenin to justify betrayal, refusing to support the anti-colonial resistance in Iraq against our ‘own’ ruling class and its US allies.

In the spirit of pseudo-‘Leninism’, Peter quotes this in a context utterly alien to the one it came from. It is difficult to imagine circumstances more different from today’s Iraq than the period prior to the October Revolution in Russia. There the bourgeoisie of a major imperialist power, having numerous enslaved peoples, was on the cusp of being overthrown by its own working class. In Iraq, on the other hand, there is an oppressed nation, a (shared) colony of our own ruling class, with an accelerating nationalist insurgency that is causing the armies of the imperialist coalition real difficulties.

Peter uses a polemic aimed at guarding against softness on the imperialist government of Lenin’s ‘own’ oppressor country, to justify refusing to support armed rebellion by an oppressed people, a colonised people, against our own imperialism! He tries to use warnings against political capitulation to (Russian) imperialism in the service of capitulation to (British) imperialism. This can only be described as an exercise in literary prostitution.

He is also unable to understand the passages he is quoting. It is an historical fact that there was an episodic bloc - a real ‘military bloc’- prior to the October revolution between the Bolshevik-led ‘Red Guards’ and forces loyal to the Kerensky government, to fend off the Kornilov coup.

The dominant role in that bloc was played by the ‘Red’ forces - the Kerensky forces were panicked and deeply demoralised. For good reason: Kerensky himself, and the bourgeois and petty bourgeois cliques around him, were complicit in Kornilov’s actions. They were involved in helping to Kornilov to prepare the crushing of the soviets.

When Kornilov decided to make a clean sweep, to crush the provisional government as well as the hated soviets, the Bolshevik leadership did not fold its arms and say ‘a plague on both your houses’ - refusing to ‘bloc’ with either side. They actively, and arms in hand, defended the provisional government against Kornilov, as a tactic in order to allow them to get the most threatening enemy out of the way first, while subsequently using the authority gained from being the dominant partner in the defence of that product of the early, immature period of the revolution, to push the revolution further, dispose of the ‘halfway house’ government and institute a government of the soviets. Peter can pretend till he is blue in the face that there was no bloc: in the real world, there was an episodic bloc.

So what was Lenin doing with his arguments that Peter quotes against any kind of a ‘bloc’? He was combating a tendency in the ranks of his own party to conciliation with the provisional government, a tendency personified by Stalin and Kamenev which had earlier regarded the provisional government as in some way the realisation of the Bolshevik slogan of the ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’.

Lenin underlined repeatedly that this was still an imperialist government; that any tendency towards ‘defencism’ of that government in general had to be combated. It is that imperialist character of the Kerenskiad that provided the context for the remarks of Lenin which appear to imply that no bloc of any kind was permissible with Kerensky - that was the danger Lenin was guarding against.

The fact that various socialist groups since have misused this to justify a complete separation of military questions from politics, and thereby giving (in the name of ‘anti-imperialism’) ‘military, but not political’ support even at times to mini-tsarist type oppression of small peoples like that practised by Slobodan Milosevic in Kosova, does not mean that Lenin did not bloc militarily with the Kerenskyists against Kornilov, just as in February 1917 there was a similar military bloc with the Cadets against the tsar.

Peter’s crappy, hack-like excuse for a polemic is the logical result of the betrayal of communist principles that is inherent in the CPGB’s refusal to support the actually existing armed resistance of the Iraqi people.
Ian Donovan
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Sub-imperialist?
Paul Hampton babbles: “It is also wrong to assert Saddam’s Iraq was ‘a non-imperialist country’ - the war with Iran and the invasion of Kuwait suggest a bid by a sub-imperialist power for regional domination” (Letters, February 17).

The key phrase here is ‘sub-imperialist’, which brings to mind the term ‘state capitalist’ that the Shachtmanites used to justify neutrality when the USSR was under attack by Germany. The term ‘sub-imperialist’ is meaningless tripe because imperialism, by definition, is the export of capital to foreign countries in order to exploit their markets and labour forces, and occurs when the productive forces of a country have outgrown the boundaries of that country (the national market is saturated), and the export of capital becomes imperative. Such is not the case in Iraq, which is underdeveloped, its virtually sole source of income being the export of petroleum.

So, Paul, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty is fooling no one but the politically unsophisticated. To repeat: your organisation will side with imperialism against what they term the “sub-imperialists”. Never was there such a striking parallel in methodology as that of the AWL and Max Shachtman.
Michael Little
Seattle

STWC vote
Paul Ingram’s claim to have moved “that the coalition urge people to vote for candidates who didn’t support the war, who didn’t back the occupation” is a blatant lie (‘Under wraps’, February 17). That was the policy actually adopted by the Stop the War Coalition conference once his amendment had been defeated.

His amendment called for support for candidates and parties, etc. It was about not supporting any Labour Party candidates like Jeremy Corbyn. Since the so-called CPGB agrees with the actual position of the coalition on this question, it is perhaps a little peculiar that you collaborate with such sectarianism. I wonder why?
Geoff Collier
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Left unity
The Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform met last Saturday (February 19) to finalise the details of the March 12 conference in Birmingham, ‘Build a Democratic Socialist Alliance: towards a mass workers’ party’. Comrades will be aware that the Socialist Alliance was closed down on February 5 by the sectarian and undemocratic actions of the Socialist Workers Party. The question arises as to what lessons have been learned from the Socialist Alliance experience and what those who wish to continue with the project of socialist unity do next. That discussion is what the conference is about.

The proposed agenda is in four parts. First is a discussion on the general economic and political situation, led by professor Hillel Ticktin. Second is a discussion on what we have learned from the Socialist Alliance experience, with a panel of speakers from the various sponsors of the conference. Third is a discussion and decisions on various proposals for an organisational way forward. Fourth is a discussion and decisions on plans for the future.

There is clearly a need for a mass alternative to New Labour, which looks to be heading for a third term in office despite its unpopularity. Various groups have made an attempt to build an alternative. Arthur Scargill started the Socialist Labour Party and initially brought a lot of socialists together. However, his undemocratic methods resulted in the collapse of his party. Likewise the SWP have set up Respect - but in such a sectarian and undemocratic manner that it is unlikely it will prosper. The only organisation which seems to have come out of the last eight years with any credit is the Scottish Socialist Party, where Scottish Militant Labour opened up their organisation and welcomed in independents and other groups as tendencies.

A key issue for the March 12 conference will be democracy - how to create a democratic culture out of a tradition of bureaucratic and sectarian methods on the British left. A related issue is how to bring independent socialists and the sects into one organisation. The SSP experience does seem a model to base ourselves on. Some comrades think that this is such an uphill task that it is impossible. My answer would be if we do not make a start now, who else will do it?
Dave Spencer
Coventry

SWP and censorship
Eddie Ford’s article ‘Silent on Springer’ challenges the SWP for their position on the protests by religious groups in response to the Birmingham rep play, Behtzi, and Jerry Springer the opera, screened on BBC2 (Weekly Worker January 13). Would they defend the right to free expression and the right to offend?

The response arrived in Patrick Connellan’s article, ‘Thought for the play’ (Socialist Review February). Patrick argues that “Censorship of the arts is something that must be resisted” - though there is no evidence of this in his article. Instead, as is the habit with the SWP when dealing with touchy issues, he begins by pointing out who the real enemy is. Of course it’s the Labour Party with their £30 million cut in arts funding. With this firmly in mind we can then skim over and forget about any criticism of the violent protests and death threats by members of the Sikh community that forced Behtzi to be withdrawn. No need to even mention the role the Muslim Association of Britain protesting alongside the christian right in their attempts to prevent the screening of Jerry Springer the opera.

If the SWP wanted to “vigorously defend the long and worthy tradition of theatre being a battleground for the debate of ideas in society”, as they put it, then they should not have any problem in supporting the right of free expression. But with the general election just around the corner now is not the time for such disputes with their allies in Respect. Instead we are told that the theatre should provoke and challenge, but not offend (especially oppressed groups). Hardly a “battleground for the debate of ideas in society” - but neither is the SWP or Respect, for that matter.
Steve Whitehall-Smith
London

Horror and disgust
I read through your article ‘Science and social choices’ with horror and disgust (Weekly Worker February 10). So Anne Mc Shane believes abortions should be allowed to take place after 24 weeks?
Evidently women have a “right to choose” to risk infertility, bleeding and infection (not to mention the emotional trauma) - risks that are not even mentioned in the article. And what about the foetus, that the article itself does not deny can feel pain by that stage? The question of the ‘non sentience’ of the life form involved is a red herring - just as vivisectionists use the same reasoning to justify the torture and killing of animals. And to argue that foetuses that are handicapped should be aborted after 24 weeks is to argue with the same logic that Hitler used in sending the ‘unfit’ to the concentration camps and gassing them to death.

Late abortions are a horrific business that many doctors hate to carry out, and, the more people are aware of it, the better. If abortion was illegal it would simply be driven underground - it is a symptom of a social ill - but it should at least be time-limited to preserve the health of women and to save the life of what is by a certain stage a human being - whether or not you like to admit it. Women have been emotionally traumatised and their physical health has been affected aversely by abortions - so your so-called ‘choice’ is no choice at all.

Rather than argue for the whole of the left to adopt your inhuman position (if it did I would sooner rejoin the church), how about talking about giving women real choices, like financial help during and after pregnancy, maternity leave, and for a damn change ask men to take some responsibility and stop abandoning their children, unborn or otherwise, and face up to the responsibilities of fatherhood? But I know the track record of your organisation is poor when it comes to women (Mark Fisher believes that feminism - ie, the struggle for gender equality - is incompatible with socialism), so that would be too much to ask.

Also talk about giving young people information about contraception so that they will never have to even contemplate making such a horrible choice in the first place. Most of the women I know who have had abortions have done so because their partners did not want the children, and the experience has never been pleasant for them: it’s been a nasty surgical procedure they wish to forget as soon as they can get over it. Had their partners and families been supportive they would not have made such a choice.

Wake up. The sexual politics of your paper are a disgrace: they ask nothing of men, but put all the responsibility of parenting (and life itself) down to women.
Liz Hoskings
South London

Carry on, Ken
Thanks for a well thought out article on the ‘Apologise or else, Ken’ hullabaloo (‘Scumbags and reactionary bigots’, February 17). I am appalled and horrified at the amount of attention being given by the bourgeois press and their allies over some emotional outburst by Ken Livingstone to an Evening Scumbag reporter, who is using his Jewish origins to feign offence and deep emotional pain at the remarks.

The Weekly Worker is correct that the press is witch-hunting Ken. They aim to topple him not by fair means, such as the ballot box, but by using the Public Standards Agency - yet another body which, whilst appearing to be neutral, will bend to the will of the bourgeoisie, so that Ken, who for all his independence, is a product of the working class struggles in this country, can be discredited, and with it the cause of the proletariat.

A verbal exchange between a politician and a worker for a hated newspaper, a journalist, is not a matter of huge public interest. It most certainly is not a matter for investigation by formal authorities. That it has become one says more about the priorities of the bourgeoisie and their allies than about the behaviour of an elected official. The whole affair is not about Ken and a Jewish journalist, but about irreconcilable class interests, of which one manifestation is Ken v reactionary newspapers.

Ken is entitled to an outburst against scumbag journalists who peddle political filth. We have a right to be rude to the bourgeoisie - look what they do to us. But they rarely appear on the front line themselves - they send their paid representatives. And some people will do anything to justify earning a living. It is not in the job description of the mayor to be polite to journalists. There is no way that his behaviour can be construed as anti-semitic or belittling holocaust victims. Mr Finegold must not be allowed to use his cultural background as a weapon against Ken Livingstone.

I am delighted he did not apologise. We - the socialists, anti-fascists, communists and real supporters of personal liberty - would have been very upset indeed at the victory of the scumbag press and their accolades and apologists over us and those who fight with us. So, Ken, carry on campaigning and have your outbursts, as long as they don’t cause a flood! It’s a reminder that proletarian consciousness amongst the British is very spirited and very bright.
Lila Patel
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Restore Stalingrad
In his otherwise laudable article on anti-semitism, Hillel Ticktin regards it as appropriate to castigate “Stalinism” (‘Expressions of decline’ Weekly Worker February 3). Like some anti-communist bourgeois historians he compares the holocaust to the Stalinist purges, which, without any modicum of evidence, he claims “numbered many millions more than those who died in the Nazi camps”.

It is hard to see how this was the case. In the main, those purges were directed against those Soviet institutions and organisations deemed to be nests of counterrevolution, and usually at the top echelons, and also those who had joined the communist movement for opportunist reasons.

Ticktin’s contribution gets worst when he copies the usual bourgeois conclusions, suggesting that Stalin “may have intended to emulate Hitler at the time of his death by deporting all Soviet Jews to Siberia, but died before he could do so”. The reply to this is that, many bourgeois historians have always striven to paint Stalin in anti-semitic colours, almost comparable to Hitler, but mostly forgetting to inform their readers that some of Stalin’s closest collaborators - people whom he had worked with for years - were Jews: like Kaganovich, for instance.

It is true that in the build-up to the biggest and most dangerous confrontation the Soviet Union would face with fascism, many rightists and pseudo-leftists were purged. However, this was hardly the expression of a failed transition, as Ticktin suggests, but rather an attempt to undermine counterrevolution.

On the question of the relationship between monopoly capitalism and fascism, using his holocaust article to attack Stalin, Ticktin informs us that “The Stalinists defined fascism as the rule of monopoly capital by force, implying therefore that it is a natural stage of capitalism”.

In reply to this, decay and decline is a natural stage of capitalism, as Lenin pointed out in his 1916 work, Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, so that Marxist-Leninists (Ticktin’s “Stalinists”) were perfectly right to view fascism as an inevitable stage in capitalism’s decline. In its decline, the capitalists attempt to suppress the proletarian revolution by fascism, which, by the way, need not necessarily take the overtly racist form of Nazism.

All this does not mean that the bourgeoisie love the fascists, as Ticktin goes out of his way to point out. The truth is, when it comes to saving capitalism, the bourgeoisie are placed in a situation where it may have no other option than utilising the services of a reactionary mass political movement - in other words, fascism. History shows that in times of genuine revolutions the army and police cannot be relied on, and usually melt away.

The most outrageous of Ticktin’s claims is one which we are all familiar with and amounts to blaming “Stalinism” “for preventing the working class revolution”. But why does Ticktin fail to mention the role of social democracy? To blame the communists for preventing the working class revolution rather than the social democracy is to carry absurdity and anti-Leninism to its extreme. Any analysis of the betrayal of the working class must start with the pivotal role of the pro-imperialist social democracy.

Rather than wasting too much precious time remembering in a one-sided way those negative features in the Soviet Union, it would perhaps be more productive, in view of the attempts of fascism to stage a comeback, to raise a memorial to anti-fascism. There is no more fitting symbol than Stalingrad - this great symbol of anti-fascism was criminally renamed by Khrushchevite revisionists. The communist, anti-fascist, labour and progressive movement everywhere should campaign for the restoration of Stalingrad as a lasting symbol of anti-fascism.

If Ticktin wishes to join the committee for the restoration of Stalingrad as a symbol of anti-fascism he can write to: Stalingrad Restoration Committee, c/o BM LEO, London WC1 3XX. This committee is open to all progressive, anti-fascist people who support its aims.
Tony Clark
London

Parody
I should be interested if any other of your readers have seen this rather odd but still amusing and enjoyable parody website: http://www.cpgb-ml.org.

Within, there are many comic gems to be found. For instance a writer notes that “Zimbabwe has redistributed land to the poor masses of landless peasants”; and further that “Trotskyites, revisionists and social democrats hang on the coat-tails of imperialism and repeat the chauvinist lies about, and vilification of, Zanu-PF in general and comrade Mugabe in particular.”

I am sure your readership will be amused!
Florian von Weichsel
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