Weekly Worker 570 Thursday March 31 2005

Letters

Class posers
John Watson is evidently confused. This seems to arise from his fudging of the “real movement of the working class, as it exists in all its complexity and contradictions” (Letters, March 24).
He cannot understand how Mark Fischer, by taking as given the popular front nature of Respect, can then argue that it is vital to emphasise the centrality of class and call for a vote for Respect - or, as he more accurately adds (as if to give emphasis to this horrid contradiction), “working class politicians in the popular front” (‘Drawing the class line’, March 17).

This is formal logic, not dialectics, and it leads comrade Watson to falsely conclude that we actually fudge the issue of class: “How are we to tell who is a ‘working class politician’?” he rhetorically asks. To fill in the gaps in his own understanding, he then claims: “Unfortunately we are told that there is no test they can be put to.” In fact comrade Fischer was at pains to explain a whole number of factors that make this question complex, contradictory (in the dialectical sense) and dynamic - but also how we actually can differentiate.

Comrade Watson concludes that for us “programme doesn’t really matter”. By contrast he believes it impossible to “be a ‘working class politician’ while standing on a programme that advocates class collaboration as the way forward”. He has a very narrow definition that would, at a stroke, completely exclude virtually all opportunists - who are, of course, characterised by their accommodation to bourgeois reality - from the sphere of working class politics. If only life were so simple.

The point is to intervene precisely on the basis of programme, but not as some futile, posturing stunt, but actively in the process of a political struggle. That is, we adopt tactics appropriate to the concrete circumstances at any given stage.

For comrade Watson we should apply a simple test to candidates in the general election: “are they standing on a programme that is based in some clear way on the advocacy of independence of the working class?” This seems to be, in current circumstances, to refuse to intervene in any meaningful way - or to engage with the contradictions inherent in Respect, the Socialist Green Unity Coalition or the Labour Party. It is posturing, or what Mark Fischer characterised as the “discredited and palpably unviable forms of pseudo-working class politics” (Weekly Worker March 17).

Comrade Watson thinks that we are merely trying to poach disenchanted SWP members and that our tactics put “opportunist and sectarian organisational manoeuvring before programmatic principle”. That is his mindset, not ours.
Alan Stevens
London

Objective need
Wallowing in leftwing fallacy, Dave Craig has fundamentally misunderstood the nature of objective circumstances in Britain, and what is demanded of us by them (Weekly Worker March 24). His vision of a “republican socialist party”, were it to be realised, would constitute a rearguard, economistic and disparate arrangement of petty socialists, blinkered by historical misinterpretation and clinging to the coat tails of a legacy which is largely steeped in myth to begin with.

He talks of a “political vacuum” - a gap in workers’ “representation” apparently once filled by the CPGB and Labour - and in doing so, betrays a lack of insight into the configuration of bourgeois society and the composition of what is needed to overcome it. Both the CPGB and Labour misled the working class into economism, and in doing so left it to be drawn further into the clutches of the bourgeoisie. Even if his vacuum of representation was once occupied, therefore, it was composed of narrow parliamentary concern and amounts to nothing in revolutionary terms.

The same goes for his hesitant, incrementalist call for a “republican socialist party” (what? a ‘better’ Respect or something?). To call for the abolition of the monarchy is a basic, minimal socialist demand, but it is not an end in itself; it fits into a wider matrix of revolutionary concern, which in turn provides the momentum for the transition to socialist society.

In every instance, for every purpose and towards every end, we have to agitate for the construction of a genuine workers’ communist party composed of the most advanced elements of the working class, operating and cooperating on the basis of revolutionary trust, and arrayed under the organisational principles of democratic centralism. This may seem basic, but the fact that no such thing exists reflects the failure of comrades like Dave Craig to be explicit - consciously or otherwise - in their demands for what objective circumstances - ie, late capitalism, overripe for socialism - really calls for.
Carey Davies
Sheffield

No longer comrades
Your comrade from the Communist Party of Turkey is right: it is essential to distinguish between islam as a private religion and political islam (‘General election line debated and reaffirmed’, March 24).

Socialists should fight for the rights of individuals to practise their own religion freely, although this does not include the right to impose it on others, including their children. But political islam is a different question. Wherever it exists, its ultimate goal is to create a theocracy in which everyone submits to the ‘will of god’, whether they want to or not. The forces of political islam can use violence, terror and state power to achieve their goal. Where they are weak, as in the secular west, they can only work through propaganda, including campaigning against freedom of expression and women’s rights. For socialists to enter into political alliances with such forces is utterly bizarre.

The long-term aims of political islam are fundamentally hostile to the interests of the working class. The idea that religious organisations should have the right to dictate how people live their lives is rejected by most working class people. When people who originate from the socialist movement form opportunist alliances with such reactionaries the time must surely be approaching when we can no longer regard them as comrades.
Karen Bacon
Chelmsford

Invidious
I was saddened to read about the plight of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman whose feeding tube was removed by court order at the insistence of a husband motivated by the desire to get his hands on her money. It is, however, invidious on the part of the christian right to draw any parallels between this case, motivated by the greed of an individual, and a woman’s right to choose an abortion.
Janet Harvey
email

Autonomy
Louise Whittle’s argument (replying to Mark Fischer) about the difference between ‘separatism’ and ‘autonomy’ is slippery and, as a result, unhelpful (Letters, March 24).

To try to clarify the issues a little bit, there are a range of possible positions.

First, separatism proper: that the way to women’s liberation is through women-only organisations, campaigns and actions. Identical arguments can be made for other forms of oppression - eg, ‘the way to black liberation is through black-only organisations, campaigns and actions’ - or the oppression of lesbians and gay men, or national minorities, or whatever. Almost nobody now believes this outside the context of nationalism. Part of the reason is that the result in the women’s movement in the 1980s - and in the lesbian/gay movement, with which I am more personally familiar - was to splinter the movement into ever-decreasing pieces on the basis of particular combinations of oppressions (gay men and lesbians, white gay men and white lesbians, black gay men and black lesbians, young, ‘regular’ and ‘older’ white gay men ... and so on ad infinitum). In the context of nationalism, where separatism persists, it is pretty obviously pernicious, leading easily to ‘blood and soil’ ethnic cleansing.

Secondly, at the opposite extreme, that there should be no forms of women-only (or black-only, etc) organisation at all, because it tends to lead to separatism and to ghettoisation of the issues. This was consistently the position of the US Socialist Workers Party and its British supporters and (as I understand it), this was the excuse used by the British SWP when it wound up Women’s Voice in the 70s. In my opinion this view has two things wrong with it. (a) It is anti-democratic, because it involves denying freedom to associate and disassociate. (b) The evidence of the history of the movement does support the view that groups specifically of the oppressed are able to raise issues which general organisations are apt to forget or marginalise.

Thirdly, women-only (or analogous) groups should have exclusive control over (‘leadership of’) campaigns on ‘women’s issues’ or a veto over their decisions. This, I take it, is the view Louise is defending. The trouble with it is that it has exactly the same tendency to produce a splintering dynamic as separatism proper. Why shouldn’t, for example, black women be the ones who have exclusive control ...? Equally, which issues are ‘women’s issues’? Abortion looks like a pretty clear case because we’re fighting for women’s right to control their own bodies. But if we’re fighting for a right to a real choice, then we have to fight not only for the absence of state interference with abortions, but also both for the actual provision of abortion (‘as early as possible, as late as necessary’) on the NHS, and for appropriate support (eg, childcare) for women who choose to continue the pregnancy. At once we are arguing about resource issues affecting the society as a whole, and feminism is forced to become a programme for society as a whole (or part of one).

Finally, I think, the best approach: women (or members of other oppressed groups) have the right to organise separate groups. This is both a democratic right, and from time to time necessary simply to get heard. But effective campaigning will involve building coalitions. The condition of building coalitions is willingness to negotiate: ie, that no-one demands a veto. Within such coalitions, therefore, separately organised groups will be entitled to a voice, but not control or a veto.
Mike Macnair
Oxford

Right to choose
The recent debate on the right to choose implies the assumption that everyone on the left is in favour of abortion. They are not. They are in favour of the right of a woman to choose to have an abortion.
Abortion is not a good thing - it is a socially necessary thing for both the individual and society. In fact, we should be in favour of not only the right to abortion, but the right to infanticide along the lines it is available in the Netherlands: that is, if the baby is born with a gross deformity, is in constant, permanent pain, etc, we should allow it to die or to have its end speeded - in the past doctors and midwives would leave such a baby in the sluice room. But this does not mean to say that we should be in favour of infanticide.

The question of pressurising women to have abortions has been raised. People are pressurised not to have children by the economic and social policies of society, but the right to choose should also include the right to have children. Responsible people require a certain living standard in order to have children that can be brought up in a manner that enables them to deal with modern society. Only two sections of the population have a really free choice on how many children they have - the very rich and the lumpen, neither of them in general producing children that pass this test.
Tom May
Guildford

Coincidence?
Saddam Hussein was a creature of the Americans until it suited them to depose him, and even now they are finding a use for him. Can it really be coincidence that successive teams of investigators into corruption around the ‘oil for food’ programme name exactly the people the neo-cons would want to see discredited as the recipients of Saddam Hussein’s bribes? First George Galloway, then politicians and officials in various governments of the recalcitrant ‘old Europe’, and now family members of the UN secretary general.
Zoe Elwin
Hertfordshire

Support Basra students
On March 16, students in Basra, Iraq began a strike in protest at an attack carried out in Basra University’s engineering faculty by Muqtada al-Sadr’s Army of the Mahdi, in which al-Sadr’s thugs, aided by Iranian agents, beat up students and destroyed their belongings. They ripped off the clothes of female students and singled out in particular one young christian woman. The students fought back and, when a male student tried to defend his female friend, he was shot dead. The authorities turned a blind eye. The strike ended on March 22, but the students’ campaign against islamist violence continues and needs international support and solidarity.

Al-Sadr’s gang and the city’s tribal elders had threatened to bombard the university if the students did not issue an apology for their “blasphemous” slogans against political islam. They even threatened to kill bus and taxi drivers who transported students to the demonstrations at the university. However, the students’ determination and the support they have received from freedom-loving people in Basra have now forced the Mahdi Army’s representative, Asad al-Basri, into giving an apology to the students, published in the well-known Basra newspaper Al-Manara al-Basriya.

The Basra Student Working Committee, which was founded in December last year and represents students in the city’s university and high schools, commented: “Recent events in our city show that Iraqi workers and students are determined to resist political islam, and can win if they are united. The Student Working Committee will continue to work for the creation of a progressive student movement in Iraq.”

We must continue to support the Basra students’ campaign:

• to bring al-Sadr’s assassins to justice;
• for compensation for the victims of the attack;
• for the expulsion of islamist militia headquarters from Iraqi universities;
• for separation of religion from the state and the education system;
• for the creation of a united, progressive student movement in Basra and other cities.

Please send messages of solidarity to the Students Working Committee to studentvoice@basrahstudent.4t.com and copies to us.
Houzan Mahmoud
houzan73@yahoo.co.uk

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