Weekly Worker 578 Thursday May 28 2005

Letters

Sinn Féin
Mike Martin raises a number of points which require further discussion (Letters, May 12). He is right to note the way in which the shift right in Sinn Féin was linked to SF’s growing friendliness with the Labour left in Britain. In my view the British Labour left played an essentially debilitating and corrupting role and SF would have been better off without them.

However, SF was by no means the only organisation with illusions in the left wing of the British Labour Party. Most of the British far left could do with a crash course in the book Leon Trotsky on Britain. The links between SF and the Brit Labour left were facilitated by sections of the far left, which is yet another reason why British far left criticisms of SF don’t impress me much.

Mike also argues: “The collapse of Stalinism in the USSR as a model does not explain the behaviour of the various national movements and post-colonial regimes. Its existence had provided a counterweight to imperialism and left some room for manoeuvre, but its demise was itself a reflection of changes in the world economy, bearing down on all countries. Globalisation has now proceeded so far that we really have to say that the goal of national independence is itself a chimera, when a regime so massive as the USSR succumbs. What does an all-Ireland state mean in this context?”
This is only partly the case. The problem was that a modern, industrial economy only has two sources of dynamism: the market (capitalism) and workers’ control (socialism). The USSR had neither, so it collapsed internally. Once Reagan upped the arms race, the USSR found it simply could not compete any longer. The seeds of the Soviet collapse were primarily internal - the lack of a dynamic in the Soviet economy - and not a product of globalisation.

The nation-state is still very much on the agenda. In fact, the demise of the Soviet bloc has seen the creation of a whole bunch of new nation-states; meanwhile, imperialism still operates through a system of competing nation-states. Moreover, the combination of a relatively fragile world economy, a partial weakening of the US and the end of the cold war have brought about intensified inter-imperialist rivalry, based on nation-states. So history is far from finished with the nation-state. This form of state is a product of capitalism and is not likely to disappear until capitalism has been banished from the world.

Mike’s acceptance of globalisation theory leads him, logically, to argue, “To challenge capitalism and the barbarism it represents, requires more than calling for ‘Connolly-type politics for Ireland’ (ie, the 32-county workers’ republic). No solution conceived within national boundaries can offer a way forward. The political independence of the working class needs to be articulated on a global scale.”

Obviously no Marxist would disagree with this in general. However, the struggle proceeds at different paces and in different specific contexts in different countries and regions. The world revolution is a staggered process, not an event. So what do the oppressed of Ireland do? Wait for the British left to make a revolution and then have a go in Ireland? Wait for the rest of the world to have a revolution and then have a go?

In fact, in a world of capitalist nation-states, programmes still have to be formulated and organisations built within the context of individual countries. Indeed, I would argue that for Marxists it is impossible to formulate a serious programme outside the context of party-building in concrete contexts. Despite the amusing pretence of much of the far left in this or that imperialist centre to develop programmes, shopping lists of slogans, lines of march, etc for other countries, and all that goes with it, can only be worked out by the people doing the marching.

In Ireland, the revolutionary tradition, like it or not, is republicanism - Marxists ignore that fact at their peril. Republicanism is a product of the concrete political and economic subjection of that country. This means that building a Marxist movement in Ireland requires a positive engagement with that tradition. A genuine Marxist movement in Ireland is inherently republican, but not merely republican.

I don’t think it’s an accident that the Irish would-be Marxists who have not understood this have all ended up as “gas and water socialists”, to use a Connollyism. The Cliffites and the Taaffeites run election campaigns without even mentioning the armed imperialist occupation, let alone the broader effects of imperialist domination of Ireland. Nor is it an accident that those people trying to build a revolutionary movement in Ireland today emerged from within republicanism (namely, the Irish Republican Socialist Party).

Connolly is far from being the last word on the way forward in Ireland. He is a starting point, but the necessary one. That’s what I mean by a “Connolly-type politics for today”. The phrase essentially means that the struggle for the socialist republic in Ireland takes place along the axis of a national liberation struggle. That is also the chief contribution that Ireland makes to the world revolution.
By the way, I’d also recommend Connolly’s writings on the unions to class-struggle activists everywhere.
Philip Ferguson
New Zealand

McCartneys
In an otherwise interesting and well-informed article on Irish politics Ann Mc Shane writes that Sinn Féin’s MEPs opposed a motion passed in the European parliament on behalf of the McCartney sisters (Weekly Worker May 12).

To correct the comrade, our MEPs abstained on the motion, along with the United Left bloc in the parliament. The party is committed to supporting the McCartney sisters in their campaign for justice, but could not support a motion that legitimised the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Justin Moran
Dublin Sinn Féin

Disgusting
Comrade Jules Barca (Letters, May 12) clearly didn’t read my letter in the Weekly Worker of May 5. If the comrade had read it, it would be clear that when I referred to the CPGB’s “nonsensically anti-Marxist perspective” I was not talking about its line on Iraq but its position on the general election.

Let me reiterate, comrade Barca. The CPGB’s criteria for supporting candidates in this election was neither candidates’ positions on independent labour representation nor their positions on the Iraqi workers’ movement and support for it. It was simply based on how prominently candidates used the word ‘now’ when talking about the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. There was of course the vague proviso that the candidates had to be “working class”, but when this category is broad enough to accommodate George ‘three workers’ wages wouldn’t be enough for me’ Galloway, one has to ask questions.

How can a perspective essentially based around nothing more than the use of one three-letter word be described as Marxist? The CPGB’s position was a journalistic game, not serious class politics. For what it’s worth, both myself and Pete Radcliff would actually agree with many of comrade Barca’s comments about the situation in Iraq, which frankly just goes to show how superficially the comrade read my initial comments.

The difference between us is that our perspective starts from international working class solidarity, whereas yours starts from negative ‘anti-imperialist’ rhetoric. For British Marxists to “call for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of troops” does not mean very much in practical terms; for us to prioritise solidarity with the only movement genuinely capable of forcing the troops to leave (and replacing them with something better) most definitely does.

So how about it, comrade Barca? How about a response to the actual questions I raised?
Finally, I read in the Weekly Worker of May 12 that the CPGB finds our assessment that Galloway’s victory would be “a shame, not a victory, for the left” to be “disgusting”. Well, comrades, if it is “disgusting” to say openly that having an ex-Stalinist careerist with rightwing positions on key social questions and more than a slight fondness for brutally anti-working class regimes who represents an undemocratic popular-frontist communalist lash-up that is the product of the strangulation of the Socialist Alliance as the left’s parliamentary face for the next period, then I can only proclaim that I am proud to be “disgusting”.
Daniel Randall
email

Obsessed
If Steve Cooke is so upset about missing out on what time we were meeting in the Hard to Find Cafe, then maybe he should get out a bit more (Letters, May 19). So we got the wording wrong on the website.

Actually, I’ll let the readers of the Weekly Worker into a little secret: we talked about nothing else on the email list but Steve Cooke. We’re obsessed, you see. All sorts of names, we called him. He really missed out.
Sam Metcalf
Nottingham

Left reformists
It was with more than a little amazement that I read last week’s issue of the Weekly Worker (May 19). In the previous issue you had given back-page prominence to an article, ‘An infantile disorder’, in which Graham Bash presented his arguments for voting Labour.

I expected some kind of response would be forthcoming, but not a single word do the CPGB scribblers have to say in reply. Even though I think the CPGB’s programme is deficient in many areas, I assumed you would have thought it important to refute Bash’s left-reformist claptrap.

I did a search through your online archive and found many an article from Mr Bash and it appears you’ve even had him speak at your ‘Communist University’ events in the past. What is going on?, I wondered, and then I reread your ‘What we fight for’ column, which describes your “central aim” as “the organisation of communists, revolutionary socialists, anti-capitalists and all politically advanced workers into a Communist Party”.

So then the penny dropped - you actually want to be in a so-called ‘Communist Party’ along with anti-communists - for that is what left reformists like Graham Bash actually are. Could there be a greater misuse of the term ‘Communist Party’?

The project of communists should be the building of a Communist Party worthy of the name - an organisation of working class militants organised around the programme of communism in political struggle against opponent trends in the workers’ movement such as the left reformism of Graham Bash.

Of course, we want to win left reformists and other working class militants to the banner of communism, but to propose unity with them on the basis of their existing programmes is to drag that mighty banner through the mud of the centrist and reformist swamp.
I suppose the only logical conclusion is that your real political home is in that very same centrist and reformist swamp.
John Watson
email

IBT hack job
Alan Davis of the International Bolshevik Tendency accuses me of having “renounced Trotskyism” several years ago, as part of his attempt to refute my 1998 critique of the falsification of history and Trotsky’s own views on popular fronts, by the International Bolshevik Tendency’s Spartacist progenitors (Letters, May 19).

Yes indeed, I renounced ‘Trotskyism’ à la Spartacist/IBT several years ago, and declared myself to be a Leninist! However, since Trotsky - entirely admirably in terms of revolutionary intentions - also considered himself to be a Leninist, the dishonesty of comrade Davis’s argument becomes apparent. In reality, what I renounced was not ‘Leninism’ or ‘Trotskyism’, insofar as those names are synonymous with communism, but the sectarian pastiche of revolutionary politics put about by the IBT. For the IBT to put it about that they and their political parents represent the positive political heritage of Trotsky is a gross slur against a great revolutionary.

The IBT never collectively answered my critique of Spartacism at all - at least not in a political manner. Their public response was to publish two brief internal responses to my views. One from an individual member of the British IBT - who anomalously, did actually want to discuss. He failed to fully explore the issues - mainly because as a ‘loyal’ IBTer he was forbidden to continue the debate shortly after writing his initial contribution. But he did concede in that piece that the Spartacists’ usage of the same quotation from Trotsky (on popular fronts) that comrade Davis uses now was inaccurate and unjustified - though not in his view deliberately dishonest.

The other was from a leading IBTer - whose real purpose was to press that this question not be discussed - such discussions were not one of the IBT’s ‘priorities’. He argued that there was “no need for contextualisation” of the quotations the Spartacists used to justify their position on the popular front. So placing quotations in their context, evaluating honestly what they were meant to mean at the time - all basic precepts of historical accuracy - are junked. Little wonder with this approach that comrade Davis sees no need to acknowledge - much less bother to correct - the blatant error of citation I pointed out when he regurgitated this quote in his recent Weekly Worker piece. Such lumpen illiteracy and contempt for the sources one is citing in support for an article is breathtaking - though hardly unusual.
As is the bizarre allegation that in calling for votes five years ago to (some of) the candidates of the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe, I was calling for support to a “white settlers” party. This is equally the product of ignorance and malice.

The MDC was originally formed in 1999 by the black trade union movement in Zimbabwe - the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions - which was then trying to resist Mugabe’s implementation of the IMF’s ‘structural adjustment’ programmes that were leading to a rapid impoverishment of Zimbabwean workers. It was that - very low level, but real - basis of resistance to neoliberal austerity that signified that the formation of the MDC represented the infancy of a new working class party.

Mugabe’s cynical ‘anti-imperialist’ turn shortly afterwards - which involved a full-frontal attack on the working class and democratic rights at the same time as a demagogic attack on white farmers - successfully aborted this development and drove the extremely weak leaders of the MDC into the arms of the imperialists. The nascent working class element collapsed - and a neoliberal, pro-imperialist party was born instead. For seeking to analyse this complex situation accurately and link up with mainly black socialists like the International Socialist Organisation of Zimbabwe, who were trying to grapple with this situation on the ground, I am to be branded as a supporter of white supremacy! But this is straight out of the Stalin/Robertson school.

The bizarre allegation that I am opposed to attacks on capitalist property in Zimbabwe is simply plucked out of mid-air, as an (again lumpen) piece of sub-Spartacist extrapolation from a letter I wrote in 2000 exploring the nuances, possibilities and constraints that result from the internationalisation of the productive forces under modern capitalism - and therefore the objective need, when attacking capitalist property rights, to avoid autarchy and the breaking up along national lines of productive forces that already span national borders.

So to sum up this pathetic hack job by comrade Davis, what he is saying is that Donovan’s critique does not need replying to because, apart from being “chewed up” (read mentally disturbed), he is also a racist supporter of white minority rule in southern Africa, as well as being a die-hard supporter of capitalist property relations and an enemy of the shining light of pure ‘Trotskyism’, as represented by his own hallowed sect.

Pathetic, apolitical and ad hominem. But that is what you become when you defend the indefensible in politics.
Ian Donovan
email

Anti-Bolshevik
Unfortunately the letter from Alan Davis of the International Bolshevik Tendency is a litany of confusion from beginning to end. I am sure there is hope for comrade Davis. He is an intelligent, likeable and dedicated communist. However, can I put it like this? - he would help himself, and our common cause, if he learnt to think in the round.

That means serious theoretical study, not dishonestly throwing mud and relying on sadly irrelevant quotations. Meanwhile, in the interests of honesty, if not sanity, he should urge his sect to retitle itself - International anti-Bolshevik Tendency would be a more accurate description.

For its own strange, brittle and totally obscure reasons, the IBT has issued a decree outlawing, no matter what the historic circumstances, voting for working class candidates if they are members of a party engaged in a popular front.

Inevitably this dogmatic stance leads the IBT to part company in retrospect with Bolsheviks such as Lenin and Trotsky … and up the garden path to sectarian irrelevance, crankiness and beyond.
During the mid-1930s Trotsky encouraged his small band of followers to enter the socialist parties - which in Spain and France especially were mass and were being violently yanked to the left by the momentum of the class struggle. Trotsky savaged those who wanted to maintain their sectarian ‘purity’ by sitting on the sidelines of history.

Comrade Davis is prepared to grant that Trotsky’s entryism may have been correct. But - and it is a big ‘but’ - only in order to grab some recruits before a quick exit. Trotsky, however, did not advocate such an essentially narrow, mean-minded and short-termist approach. He wanted his comrades to find and become the masses through the socialist parties.

This implied not only voting for working class candidates whose parties were locked in popular fronts. It implied the perspective of Trotskyites themselves standing as officially selected candidates of the Socialist Party.

When in the 1930s workers in France and Spain voted in huge numbers for the parties of the workers’ movement, it definitely showed, on their behalf, a primeval striving for class independence and a desire for far-reaching social change. Yet, though he loftily claims the “considerable advantage of experience”, all comrade Davis can see is the treacherous reformism of the SPs and CPs and their suggestion that in the “interim” the interest of the workers and bosses “coincide”. For Marxists both phenomena - the striving for class independence and the leadership treachery - were aspects of an unfolding reality. Logically they are not mutually exclusive. And, given this living contradiction, the main question faced by communists was how to intervene - that is why we need tactics.

Looking back, as a matter of the highest sectarian honour, comrade Davis will not, cannot, countenance voting for any working class candidate in such circumstances. Not even for a paid-up follower of Leon Trotsky’s. Why? Because the treacherous SP and CP leaders had concocted a highly unstable popular front with one or another of the smaller parties of the bourgeoisie.

Communists, including Trotsky, seek to split popular fronts along class lines. Comrade Davis, by contrast, seems afraid for his own virtue. What he advocates amounts to neither strategy nor tactics: rather a chastity belt.

Hence his dishonest attack on the CPGB and Ian Donovan. We stand accused of backing the “white settler capitalist” Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe.

As a simple statement of fact the MDC emerged in the late 1990s from the bowels of the Zimbabwean trade union movement. Yes, it became a popular front. In the subsequent elections, therefore, we supported only working class candidates in the MDC - including, it happens, the successful International Socialist Organisation candidate, comrade Munyaradzi Gwisai. Basically the same tactics as those we deployed in the May 2005 general election when confronted with Respect.

Lastly, we have comrade Davis telling us that Lenin was wrong in his 1920 ‘Leftwing’ communism - an infantile disorder to try and educate the parties of the Communist International in the necessity for complete tactical flexibility. Lenin pointed out how the Bolsheviks in the 1907-12 period voted for Cadet candidates in the second round of elections to the tsarist duma.

Comrade Davis recoils with shame, incomprehension and disgust. He clings to the tactics of 1917 when Lenin was calling for the removal of the 10 capitalist ministers - supposedly so the Bolsheviks could offer the provisional government “critical support” (this, shall we say, ‘inventive’ offer of “critical support” surely comes from his own subconscious Menshevism, and has nothing to do with the historic Lenin - under his leadership the Bolsheviks called for a soviet republic).

Certainly, comrade Davis has no idea of what constitutes authentic Bolshevik tactics. He pits one tactic against another as if they represent immutable principles. They do not. They are different means, determined by different circumstances, which in real life both served to advance the communist programme.
Enso White
email

Scummy
What a disgusting and slanderous article on Scargill, for which there was absolutely no need (‘Rising from the grave’, May 5). The more I read your negative rag, the more sick it makes me feel. You call for principles and unity, then you shit-stir and put the boot in every opportunity you get. What business do you have of questioning the way Scargill got his funds for election deposits? You should be ashamed of yourself.

Your nonsense about advising your readers to vote this way or that obviously didn’t work, did it? Then you tell us that none of the candidates was “rounded” enough or “principled enough” and “all of them were opportunists”. Give us a fuckin’ break?

I bet you won’t print this, but if you do, will you answer me this: how many are there of your scummy little sect?
Kenny McGuigan
email

Not working
Your article on drugs was excellent (‘End the drugs war’, May 19). I agree totally that all recreational drugs should be legalised. This pathetic ‘war on drugs’ just is not working.

There is a misconception about those who choose to smoke cannabis or take ecstasy. We are not all bad people and it is not as dangerous as some make out; although I do acknowledge that there are some dangers involved.

On the point of heroin and crack-cocaine, would it not be better to legalise them and give drug addicts the drug they are addicted to rather than being subjected into buying black market rubbish, which is why many addicts are in so much ill-health? Harsh prison sentences are not the answer to eradicating drugs from society. Blair, Howard and Kennedy need to wake up and get a grip on the world we live in. All their policies on crime and drugs (which go hand in hand) do not work.
Edward Jones
email

Gay Palestinians
Outrage activists took their message of ‘Freedom for all Palestinians - straight and gay, men and women’ to the ‘Free Palestine’ rally in Trafalgar Square on Saturday May 21.

Outrage supports the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice. The Israeli occupation must end. But so must the violent sexism and homophobia of the Palestinian Authority and of the Palestinian political movements like Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Under the slogan of ‘Freedom for all Palestinians’, the Outrage placards urged: ‘No more killing of lesbians and gays by PLO and PA’; ‘Hamas and PLO torture and murder gays. Shame!’; ‘Stop “honour” killing of gays and women in Palestine’; ‘Israel: stop persecuting Palestine! Palestine: stop persecuting queers!”

Last year, we were shoved, abused, shouted down and threatened by other protesters, and by stewards and rally organisers from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. They also blocked out our placards with their banners. This year we received a much more sympathetic reception. Most people took our leaflets. We seem to be winning over the pro-Palestinian movement, despite the efforts of the rally organisers - the PSC - to encourage their supporters to reject our concerns.

As we mingled in the crowd distributing leaflets, PSC stewards urged people not to take our hand-outs and told them, falsely, that we were lying and trying to split the Palestine solidarity movement. These dirty, underhand tactics dishonour the Palestinian cause. PSC stewards refused to take our leaflets or to discuss the issues we were raising. A small number of protestors half-heartedly tried to block our placards with their own. But, apart from a couple of jeers of ‘faggots’, most other protestors eagerly took our leaflets and several expressed overt support for the rights of Palestinian women and gay people. In contrast to last year, the sympathies of those attending the rally seem to have shifted in our favour.

Some protesters said raising gay and women’s rights at a Free Palestine protest was ‘inappropriate’. For these people there is never an appropriate time to press for the rights of women and gays. Our rights are never a priority. We are always expendable for the sake of the bigger, wider cause.

Outrage is disappointed by Amnesty International’s inaction on this issue. Amnesty has declined our requests to report on the torture and murder of gay Palestinians, stating that it lacks the resources. The Outrage website, however, documents evidence that Amnesty could easily corroborate and publish. Examples of violent homophobic persecution by the Palestinian factions and the Palestinian Authority can be found at www.outrage.org.uk (go to ‘Briefings’ and then to ‘Palestinian gays’).

Since last year, when we protested at the Free Palestine rally, we have tried to have a dialogue with the PSC but they have refused to meet us. They have also ignored our dossier on the abuse of gay Palestinians and our requests for them to raise the torture and murder of queers with the Palestinian authorities. In effect, the PSC colludes with the torturers and killers of queers. That is why we had to protest.

Our presence made many supporters of the Palestinian struggle aware of the violent homophobic persecution inflicted on Palestinian lesbians and gays. We hope they will now support the just struggle of gay Palestinians and pressure the Palestinian movements and government to halt their homophobic victimisation.

Outrage is urging everyone who wants justice and freedom for the women and gay people of Palestine to protest to the Palestinian representative in the UK, Afif Safieh. Email him at Palestinianuk-@aol.com.
Brett Lock
Outrage

Iraq students
The first student congress since the US-led invasion will be held in Iraq on June 15. Committees set up in December last year have been working hard under extremely dangerous conditions to organise students and create a progressive organisation to defend the rights and freedoms of young people in Iraq.

The March student uprising against repression by Muqtada al-Sadr’s Basra militia has made the need for a national student organisation clear. Currently islamist political groups are enforcing the islamisation of Iraqi society, with a direct effect on every campus and school. In many parts of Iraq, female students are being forced to wear the veil, while in others male and female students are being segregated. Armed islamist militias have attacked students and interfere in the university campuses.

Students across Iraq have united to actively resist these human rights violations. As a result, students from Baghdad, Kirkuk, Basra, Sulemaniya, Mosul and Arbil will attend the first student congress. The agenda will include students’ role in Iraq’s ongoing political crisis, human rights, education and the struggle against privatisation, as well as an exhibition of documents and photos from the Basra uprising against al-Sadr’s thugs. There will also be a session for resolutions and the election of national representatives.

Above all, the congress needs financial support. We face a bill of something like £12,000 for hall rental, accommodation, transport of students from outside Baghdad, food, literature and of course security provision. Your financial support is crucial to making this student congress happen.
Please send donations to: Dar es Salaam Investment Bank, Al-Saadoon Tunis Street, 101/3/39, Baghdad. The transfer can be made through Western Union, in the name of Adil Salih.
Houzan Mahmoud
houzan73@yahoo.co.uk

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