Weekly Worker 577 Thursday May 19 2005

Letters

SWP differences?
Tina Becker’s article last week on the elections, Respect and the Socialist Workers Party contains some very interesting points (Weekly Worker May 12). In particular her analysis of the effects of the Respect project on the SWP itself.

There are quite clearly important differences of opinion within the SWP as to how they should operate within Respect. Yet these differences are, of course, not finding expression in open and honest debate. The bureaucratic sect will not allow that. They see the light of day only in subtle and coded form - in emphasis, nuances and abstractions. Even in these forms differences can only be expressed by those with access to the party’s publications: ie, the leadership. If rank and file members themselves wish to express their opinions they will have to find other ways of doing so (I’m sure this letters page would not turn them away). Many more will chose to use the internet.

As well as finding new ways to communicate, those that want to know what is going on in the SWP are going to have to learn to read between the lines. John Rees’s pre-election article in Socialist Worker was an interesting one. In the week before May 5 instead of calling straightforwardly for readers to vote for Respect he clearly felt compelled to justify his organisation’s involvement in it and conveniently made no mention of islam or muslims. This justification was clearly aimed at SWP members, not the wider movement.

Comrade Becker is also right to point out Chris Harman’s argument in the latest issue of Socialist Review, where he states that what is needed is “a Bolshevik party … an organisation that fights on every front if there is ever going to be a serious challenge to ruling class power … That can’t be done with a party like the Labour Party of a social democratic sort, or, for that matter, simply by an electoral coalition like Respect” (May).

It is not mere speculation on Tina Becker’s part that this is meant as a coded criticism of the direction John Rees is taking the SWP. This is not the only article where comrade Harman’s arguments can be seen in this light. Comrades who are interested could do worse than read his articles in the SWP’s quarterly theoretical journal, which Harman now edits, International Socialism. For example, in the article ‘Spontaneity, strategy and politics’ in International Socialism No104, Harman writes, referring to the Alliance Party in New Zealand (an alliance between a split from the Labour Party, some socialists, the Green Party and other petty bourgeois elements) that: “The disaster in New Zealand was not the creation of the new party under the aegis of a figure who still accepted a basically reformist perspective. It was the lack of an organised revolutionary tendency within the party working with him in a united front so long as he offered a focus to the left to disillusioned Labour supporters, but also trying all the time to win people to a perspective that would enable them to resist any backsliding.”

Consider this with reference to Respect and one could be forgiven for thinking that comrade Harman was trying to make a point.
Dave Isaacson
Nailsworth

Neath Respect
Given the amount of triumphalism being emitted by the SWP since George Galloway’s victory in the East End of London, last week’s Respect public meeting in Neath on the way forward in this part of the country was always going to be an interesting one. Indeed, despite the energetic and hard fought campaign by many in the area over the weeks leading up to May 5, myself included, the overall result of 257 votes (0.7%) could not be described as anything else than extremely poor, particularly when contrasted to some results from constituencies in England.

Given that the result was actually worse than that achieved by the Welsh Socialist Alliance when it stood in the same constituency in the general election of 2001 (then polling 483 votes - 1.38%), Jeff Hurford, leading SWPer and Respect activist in south Wales, wasn’t really in any other position than to describe the result as “disappointing” and the Neath branch of Respect as an “also-ran”. Indeed.

Neath Respect and its candidate, Heather Faulkner, stood on a platform which prioritised numerous economic issues such as the repealing of the “Tory” anti-union laws and the fight against privatisation of public services. A platform, then, not too dissimilar to that of the WSA in 2001. Not surprisingly, no mention was made of this, except by yours truly, nor to the reasons as to why Respect had done so well in many areas which contained a large muslim community.

While there is no intrinsic reason not to target the muslim community throughout Britain, how you target such communities remains an important question. Little attempt was made, for example, to attract muslim workers to a principled socialist platform. Indeed, generally speaking, the public meeting turned out to be a roll call for ‘activism’ over the coming months in order to “maintain the enthusiasm” generated from the election campaign and to build on Respect’s “future potential”, as one SWPer announced from the floor.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with activism, but where the local SWP takes Respect in this area is uncertain and what campaigns are to be initiated during the coming months remain to be seen.
There was some talk of how to build for a potential Galloway public meeting in Swansea in the not too distant future, as well as how to combat threats to ward closures in local hospitals and cutbacks to firefighting services. Also mentioned was the potential of Respect standing in the Welsh assembly elections in a couple of years time.

If that is hopefully agreed, then Respect would be in prime position to emphasis the issues which are associated with self-determination. Not least the undemocratic nature of the political system and how we are ruled generally.
Bob Davies
Swansea

Infiltration
I agree in many ways with the CPGB’s stance on Respect. Let us not forget that when Respect was formed by the Socialist Workers Party there were many members of the Socialist Alliance that pushed for a republican policy that was eventually rejected. Those members who could not accept Respect’s old Labour stance are now relaunching the SA on a more republican socialist basis.

Although I am frustrated with Respect’s lack of a truly socialist agenda, it is a significant move for a real alternative to the Labour Party. The problem is what sort of alternative it will become. Surely all socialists could benefit from infiltrating Respect in its infancy. If the CPGB, SPGB, WRP and other more radical socialist groups joined Respect, there would be a massive leftwing power base. I accept that this is not going to happen, as it would mean having to temporarily put aside some of the principles we so pride ourselves on.

But, whatever criticisms we may have about Respect, at least they are mobilising effectively.
Johnny Mercer
email

Examples
Anne Mc Shane writes: “Respect’s record on questions of women’s rights and other pressing social questions has been abysmal” (‘Targeting the mosque’, April 14).

An example would have been useful. Anyone can make sweeping accusations. In what way has Respect’s record on “women’s rights and other pressing social questions” been abysmal and how have the other political parties done better?
Roger Peck
email

Not too speedy
Pete Radcliff of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty invited readers to “judge for themselves” what his views on Iraq are by visiting the Nottingham Socialist Unity website (Letters, May 12). I decided to take him up on his offer.

In response to the question (from the Stop the War Coalition), “Do you support an end to the Anglo-US occupation of Iraq and the speedy withdrawal of British troops?”, comrade Radcliff states: “The war and invasion was not to build ‘democracy’ in Iraq. It was a war for US control and influence over the oil-rich Middle East. A real democracy in Iraq would be a threat to American economic and political interests.
“The growing non-sectarian, secular, democratic movement organised increasingly in the trade union and working class movement has to be supported. Specifically the unions of the FCWUI, UUI and IFTU, but also a number of other independent unions. They are aware of the threat of islamist sectarians of both shi’ite and sunni militias to the unity and safety of their people.

“Those working class organisations need to be supported, using the limited democratic liberties they have, to defend themselves, build their democratic organisations and force an end to the US-UK occupation through mass protests and with international support” (http://www.nottmsocialistunity.org.uk/2005/04/16/radcliff-answers-questions-on-iraq).

This is a long and roundabout way of refusing to answer the question - presumably because even a “speedy” (as opposed to ‘immediate’) withdrawal might be too soon for the AWL. It is clear enough from this response that what I wrote in last week’s Weekly Worker is correct: comrade Radcliff “favours the continuation of the imperialist occupation of Iraq for the time being” (‘Dismal results of non-Respect left’, May 12).
Peter Manson
South London

Notts bar
Pete Radcliff (May 12) responds to my report (May 5) that I was barred from the mailing list advertised on his election campaign website by saying: “If he read the purposes of our list he attempted to subscribe to, it clearly says: ‘For announcements and information of interest to Nottingham Socialist Green Unity Coalition supporters’.”

Unfortunately, the comrade is being disingenuous. There is no link to such a description on his website (www.nottm-socialistunity.org.uk), every page but one of which simply features an unqualified invitation to “Join our mailing list”.

The one exception to this is the ‘Events’ page, which states: “Check back regularly for new events or enter your email address in the box to the right, then reply to the email you get, to be added to the mailing list!” Once again, though, no suggestion at all that access to information updates about the SGUC campaign in Nottingham East was restricted to those personally approved by its election candidate.
Steve Cooke
Stockton-on-Tees

Half truths
In response to Carey Davies’s letter, I, for one, agree that criticism is needed on the left, especially in the age of the sect - of which, lest we forget, the CPGB is one (Weekly Worker May 12).

The AWL made up the biggest proportion of the Nottingham Socialist Green Unity Coalition campaign, but I cannot honestly say that I agree on any one of their positions 100% - from Iraq to their fetishisation of union work. I think AWL comrades in Nottingham know this. Similarly, I actually welcomed George Galloway’s success in the election, when I know many did not.

Our decision to stand in Nottingham was not based on any kind of mud-slinging. Least that’s not the impression I got. Maybe I’m naive. Had Respect stood in Nottingham, I think it’s a fair bet that we wouldn’t have. I can’t speak for the rest of the comrades in the Nottingham SUGC, of course, but then, you see, we can have open debates and criticism after all.

There seems to have been a lot of half truths and lies written about our campaign in Nottingham. Saddening, but hardly surprising.
Sam Metcalf
Nottingham

IWCA rubbish
Jack Higgins is not very happy with my article on the Independent Working Class Association’s general election campaign in Oxford East (Letters, May 5).

I have no problem with working class politicians “getting things done” at a local level, as comrade Higgins advocates; indeed I wholeheartedly endorse such an approach. In the IWCA’s case, however, it appears that this really is “the be-all-and-end-all of their strategy”. Their otherwise extensive website does not address any political issues beyond the immediate vicinity of the neighbourhoods in which IWCA activists practise their good Samaritanism.

Yes, it’s a good thing if the left can prove itself effective in ensuring that the bins get emptied, but what use is that if its cadre have nothing at all to say about how the wastefulness of global capitalism leads to much of the unnecessary rubbish that fills them? The IWCA’s parochialism may win some popularity with the neighbours, but they, not the CPGB, are out of touch with reality if they believe that it is possible to “build a self-aware, working class movement capable of challenging the status quo” without making these links.

Oh, and don’t mention the war.
Steve Moorhouse
email

Local support
I followed with interest the Weekly Worker’s coverage of the general election and was sympathetic to the CPGB’s position that only anti-occupation working class candidates were worthy of communists’ support at the polls.

I was, however, disappointed that your paper failed to give any attention to the local government elections also held on May 5. Whilst it would unreasonable to expect a national publication like the Weekly Worker to provide a ward-by-ward analysis of the candidates contesting over 2,300 seats on 37 councils, I do think it would have been useful to consider what criteria communists should apply when considering the supportability, or otherwise, of those seeking our votes at the municipal level.
Mike Chandler
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Lenin wrong
In ‘Vote for class independence’ (a response to my article ‘Stalinism versus Trotskyism’ in Weekly Worker April 21), comrade Mike Macnair asserts his “basic historical objection” to the International Bolshevik Tendency’s line of never voting for any popular front candidates: “Trotsky argued, at precisely the time that the French and Spanish people’s fronts were campaigning for office, that the Trotskyists should enter the Socialist Parties in order to link up with left opponents of the people’s front project” (Weekly Worker April 28).

A revolutionary organisation might decide to send members into a mass reformist workers’ party participating in a popular front if there appeared to be significant recruitment opportunities. This is unrelated to the issue of advocating votes or any other sort of political support to candidates running as part of a popular front.

The crux of Macnair’s argument is a denial of any significant difference between a reformist workers’ party that stands independently and one that runs in a bloc with bourgeois forces. He writes: “Both a vote for a social democratic party and a vote for a social democratic or Stalinist party engaged in a ‘people’s front’ are in slightly different ways votes for class collaboration. Both are equally capable of also contradictorily expressing an aspiration to class independence.”

Comrade Macnair believes that there is no meaningful distinction between reformists who claim to represent the independent class interests of the proletariat and those who insist that, at least for the interim, the essential interests of the workers and bosses coincide. We would remind CPGB comrades that the demand ‘Down with the 10 capitalist ministers!’ (a call for the reformists to break their bloc with the bourgeoisie and take power in their own name) played a critical role in winning the majority of the Russian workers to the Bolsheviks in the run-up to the October Revolution. Lenin recognised that demanding that Kerensky et al break with their ‘progressive’ capitalist allies as a precondition for any sort of critical support was the easiest way to unmask the pseudo-socialists as representatives of the bourgeoisie within the workers’ movement.

Comrade Macnair’s reply leans heavily on a claim by Ian Donovan, a former member of ours who had earlier been “chewed up by the Spartacist League’s internal life” (in the words of Mark Fischer, Weekly Worker February 18 1999). In his subjectivity, comrade Donovan imagined he had found the roots of the Spartacist tendency’s degeneration in a couple of articles on the popular front published in the 1970s. We are not sure how Macnair got the impression that “the IBT never answered comrade Donovan” on this issue. We direct his attention to our response in Marxist Bulletin No8 (February 1999), which has been available on our web page for some years.

As we demonstrate, comrade Donovan’s ‘discovery’ was only a rationalisation for a rightward political trajectory that soon led him to renounce Trotskyism altogether. In 2000, in defence of the CPGB’s scandalous policy of voting for the Movement for Democratic Change - the party of Zimbabwe’s white settler capitalists - Donovan actually went so far as to argue against demanding the expropriation of bourgeois property in that country (see Weekly Worker June 22 2000 and our comment in ‘No greater crime’ 1917 No23).

The most interesting political point raised in comrade Macnair’s contribution is his reference to Lenin’s 1920 assertion in ‘Leftwing’ communism: an infantile disorder that the Bolsheviks had been correct to vote for the bourgeois Cadets in the second round of elections to the tsarist duma. Macnair appears agnostic on the issue, commenting only that “Lenin may have been wrong” on this point. We think Lenin was indeed mistaken to pose this as a model for the fledgling Comintern, and note that voting for the Cadets stands in contradiction to the policy outlined in his famous April theses, the document that laid the political basis for the victory of the October Revolution.

We have, of course, the considerable advantage of the experience of the past 85 years of class struggle. In 1920 even Trotsky, whose brilliant theory of permanent revolution anticipated Lenin’s April theses by more than a decade, was not prepared to rule out the possibility of a strategic bloc with the ‘anti-imperialist’ bourgeoisie in the colonial world. Only on the basis of the disastrous experience with the Chinese Guomindang did Trotsky conclude that the permanent revolution was universally applicable (ie, that there is no country on earth in which the bourgeoisie is capable of playing a historically progressive role).

We advise Weekly Worker readers interested in reading more about the issue of voting for workers’ parties in popular fronts, and the related question of the ‘anti-imperialist united front’, to study our 1988 exchange with Workers Power, reprinted in Trotskyist Bulletin No3.
Alan Davis
IBT

Kiwi IBT
The letter from the International Bolshevik Tendency contains a number of factual and political errors. On the factual side Marcus Hayes is wrong when he states that my letter of May 5 was from the Anti-Capitalist Alliance; it was actually a personal letter from me, and was clearly signed on behalf of myself (Weekly Worker May 12).

More important, however, is the letter’s political content. Firstly, it totally sidesteps my criticism of the IBT’s liberal approach in the Non! group in opposition to French testing at Mururoa in 1995. Marcus concentrates on what the IBT said in their own publications, which is not what I criticised. My criticism was that they argued for a single-slogan campaign, with the slogan being one that the entire NZ ruling class supported.

A revolutionary approach in Non! would have been to argue that the group adopt a minimum anti-imperialist position which combined opposition to French tests with support for the independence of New Caledonia and French Polynesia and opposition to NZ capitalism’s own interests in the Pacific. Even the liberal peaceniks had a better position than the IBT in terms of wanting to take up the wider issue of imperialism in the Pacific.

Instead, the approach of the IBT was the same one pioneered by the US Socialist Workers Party in relation to the Vietnam war - unite as broad a section of society as possible on the basis of a single slogan. At least the US SWP, however, had the merit that their slogan for the anti-Vietnam war movement - ‘US troops out now!’ - was one opposed by the bulk of the US ruling class. The IBT slogan for Non!, by contrast, was one supported by the entire NZ ruling class, the Tory government and every member of the NZ parliament! Can’t get much ‘broader’ than that, I guess, but hardly a Marxist approach.

Having argued for a liberal, single-slogan approach in Non! back in 1995, the IBT virtually disintegrated in NZ over the following years and only rarely carries out any public activity. However, it turned up in Multicultural Aotearoa (MCA) and, again, argued for a liberal approach - a single focus on the National Front. This at a time when the Labour government has been busy tightening immigration controls, deporting migrant workers, and holding others in detention, including in long periods of solitary confinement, without even due bourgeois legal process.

A minimum principled position in MCA was to argue for this group, if it was serious about fighting racism, to take up the issue of immigration controls. However, the IBT opposed this and went along with the liberal MCA position of a single focus on defending multiculturalism and opposing the nasty fascists (again, a position supported by the entire NZ ruling class).

In the IBT letter, Marcus Hayes defends this and argues that even mentioning immigration in the MCA leaflet “blurr[ed] the focus of the MCA”! (In fact the mention of immigration in the MCA leaflet was pretty wishy-washy, but even this was too much for the IBT.)

So the IBT wishes to limit an ‘anti-fascist’ campaign to merely defending multiculturalism and opposing the NF, but not actually taking up the key racist issue around which the NF organises and on which the NZ ruling class and government are actually carrying out repressive measures. This is the same liberal approach pursued by the British SWP in relation to the Anti-Nazi League - unite everyone on a non-class basis of general antipathy towards the fascists.

The perspective of the ACA was to argue that if the MCA was to be a serious, principled anti-racist campaign it had to take up the question of immigration controls. Not a “10-point anti-capitalist programme”, as Marcus tries to caricature, but a simple position in support of the right of foreign-born workers to live and work in NZ on the same basis as NZ-born citizens.

Unlike the wee remnant of the NZ wing of the IBT, the ACA believes in drawing class lines in campaigns. We aren’t interested in uniting everyone across the classes in campaigns based on single, liberal, middle class slogans, but in fighting for a principled class stance and for campaigns to adopt principled minimum platforms which point to opposition to the NZ ruling class and their liberal ideology.

Not only was the IBT approach in both these campaigns essentially liberal, but in the case of MCA they also helped protect the political arse of the Labour Party/government. Labourites and other liberal middle class people support immigration controls but salve their consciences by being against the lumpenproletarian fascists, often as a form of snobbery. If we are to build a revolutionary working class movement in NZ, we need to block off the ability of Labourites to pose as left by protesting against fascists while spending the rest of their year propping up a government which imprisons and deports migrant workers and maintains a set of tighter and tighter immigration controls.

The IBT in NZ completely fails to understand such a class approach. This is partly explainable by their political weaknesses and partly by their social composition - they are the only left group in NZ which in its entire existence has failed to recruit a single industrial worker, a single Maori, a single Pacific Islander. If they stepped outside their white, middle class comfort zone they might start to understand the importance of building an anti-racist movement which takes up the issue of immigration.
Phil Duncan
New Zealand

Irrational
The draft programme of the CPGB states that “... religion - whether it be an established cult or a residual belief in the supernatural - is not a private matter. Our party cannot be indifferent to the ignorance, gullibility and irrationality religion engenders in the minds of the masses ... religious belief is no obstacle to membership of the CPGB.”

I take it then that you have within your party irrational, gullible and ignorant members and that you will welcome even more ignorant, gullible, irrational members.
Alan Johnstone
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