Weekly Worker 581 Thursday June 16 2005

Letters

SSP jury out
A quick comment, having just read your article, ‘Smears and innuendoes’ (Weekly Worker June 9).

First, you only believe in ‘openness’ with regard to organisations you wish to attack - among which is the Scottish Socialist Party for not subscribing to your unionist agenda. And this may be connected to your failure to make any headway in the SSP. From what I can gather, you now have no members or even supporters at all north of the border. You are quick to ascribe difficulties and failure to the SSP, but what about yours?

As a former member of the CPGB, I do in fact know your methods well. I remember being called by you “the living dead” at one point. I perhaps learned from you not to be too sensitive to personal abuse because you certainly engage in it, while being terribly sensitive when your own integrity or freedom from the bourgeois state are questioned. You can dish it out but apparently can’t take it.

As far as I am concerned, the jury is out on whether the CPGB/Weekly Worker is a state-operated provocation (and some of your methods certainly smack of it) or just an unpleasant and rather small band of sectarians, committed to undermining those you cannot persuade (like the SSP).

You ridicule the notion that your articles and agitation among the bourgeois press could lead to Terrorism Act 2000 arrests. But it happened in 2001 - Eddie Truman described it in some detail, reproducing your attacks on the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement at the time. You were fingering them to the state and everyone else in a manner plain to see, weren’t you?

Friends of mine, most of them from Turkey, were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 in the lead-up to the Iraq war. In this case there was no Weekly Worker provocation, I will concede, but when a supposedly leftwing newspaper that is known to be read by the bourgeois media and security services tosses around terrorism allegations, I do wonder who it is you are working for. Especially in the present climate.

In another email of mine you didn’t cite, I noted that denunciations of the SSP are not uncommon from smaller groups. But these don’t make it into the bourgeois press or feature in their anti-left agenda. The Sunday Herald doesn’t stop press and reserve space when Workers Hammer (for example) has a go. So what makes the Weekly Worker so useful to it?

And in another email, I described the Weekly Worker as the Searchlight magazine of the left. But the original Searchlight overtly despises the fascists it researches and exposes (incidentally it is also known to share its info on them with the state), while you purport to be a publication of the left. But your relationship with the left is much like Searchlight’s relationship with the fascists. I think, if you were honest, you would admit that you have nothing to do with socialism or communism, other than hostility to these concepts.
Steve Kaczynski
email

Smear?

It amuses me that a story that reports the outspoken support for the Irish National Liberation Army, the Provisional IRA and other republican terror groups by members of the SSP is seen as a “smear”. Surely they’d be quite proud to have their support for such brave men made known?

Or then again maybe they realise that if their true views were known they’d end up with just the votes of the lowest kind of lout from Parkhead.
Donald McCarthy
email

Slogans

Daniel Randall flatly rejects as un-Marxist the slogan ‘British troops out now’ in relationship to Iraq (Letters, June 9). Instead he proposes ‘Solidarity with Iraqi workers’. These two slogans actually complement each other - they should not be counterpoised. Sadly, comrade Randall seems to imagine that Marxists must limit themselves to just one slogan. We must choose one or the other. Why?

He admits in passing that “the troops aren’t playing a progressive role”. But, he declares, to demand the immediate withdrawal of British troops is to fall into “inverted nationalism”. Presumably comrade Randall wants British troops to provide solidarity, material-military-legal support or at the very least benign protection for the Iraqi working class movement. Unfair? No, he and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty have firmly placed themselves in the social-imperialist camp.

Not surprisingly then, they prefer Oona King to George Galloway, call themselves Zionists and promote Kautsky’s rotten idea of ‘ultra-imperialism’.
Billy Bond
email

SP and Labour

The idea of writing a letter to the Weekly Worker had never really crossed my mind before - while I am a regular reader, it is only for the journalism, which at times can be very professional. Particular hats off should be raised to your reporting of the WASG conference in Germany (‘Socialist or welfare state party?’, November 25 2004).

However, one of the letters in last week’s paper was such a surprise that I thought maybe it might be worth responding. Comrade David Simpson writes: “Communists are clear: they can have no truck whatever with the reformist Labour Party. But that was in the days when it was reformist. Now it is an out and out bourgeois party. It is no longer a bourgeois workers’ party in any shape or form at all and as such it is the job of communists and Marxists to articulate the perspective of the out and out destruction of that party” (Letters, June 9).

Absolutely, I thought, smiling broadly - but was then thrown completely off balance by the following sentence: “This is why Mike Calvert, and the Socialist Party even, are utterly wrong.” Excuse me? I thought, my mind a daze, comrade Simpson has just stated the Socialist Party’s official position - that the Labour Party is now an out and out bourgeois party and communists have no business within it - and then says we are wrong?

The position the Socialist Party takes on Labour is well known among the left and has been well documented in this paper, so either it has somehow escaped comrade Simpson’s knowledge or perhaps he was referring specifically to the role we played in the past as Militant. If this is the case, then surely he is contradicting himself by now advocating that communists should join Respect?

Allow me to explain: one of the main reasons for communists entering a reformist organisation is that, while we obviously have no confidence in the leadership, we recognise that the party acts as a pole of attraction for the most advanced layers of workers and so it becomes a vessel for us to reach them and communicate serious revolutionary ideas.

Respect, in spite of its electoral success, does not meet this criterion. The most advanced layers of the working class do not see it as any kind of alternative, at least not yet. Certainly there is a possibility, not the most likely, that Respect could develop into a more significant force and then it would be a grave error if the Socialist Party remained outside.
Dominic Smith
Southampton SP

SWP in Respect

I found the article reporting your aggregate’s discussion of the Socialist Workers Party and its relationship with Respect interesting (‘Debating the dynamics of Respect’, June 9). It seems to me as an ex-SWPer that the SWP will eventually either split or leading elements will be expelled.

The influence of left reformism is still great in a capitalist society and will influence and transform revolutionaries if they try to be part of reformist organisations. This is the reason why revolutionaries must actively participate in workers’ struggles while at the same time building an open Marxist party.
David Tate
email

IBT popular front

Alan Davis’s defence of the International Bolshevik Tendency’s championing of a single liberal demand approach to protests is full of errors and contradictions (Letters, June 9).

Firstly, Alan is at pains (and in some difficulty) to show that the IBT approach in Non! is any different from the US Socialist Workers Party approach in the National Peace Action Coalition and the IBT approach in Multicultural Aotearoa any different from the British SWP approach in the Anti-Nazi League.

Any revolutionary could go along to an NPAC march and sell their papers or carry placards with revolutionary slogans on, so Alan is simply mistaken to claim this as a difference between Non! and the NPAC. The only difference between the US SWP’s approach to creating and building the NPAC and the IBT’s approach to creating and building Non! was that the American SWP chose a slogan for the anti-Vietnam war movement (US out now!) which the US ruling class opposed, while the IBT chose a slogan (Stop French testing!) which the NZ ruling class supported.

Alan then makes the bizarre statement: “Rather than seeking common formulations with reformists, we seek to unite the largest number of people in action to struggle for issues of vital concern to the workers’ movement ...” Yet Non!, as the earlier letter from the IBT’s own Marcus Hayes also shows, was precisely a common formulation between the IBT and reformists (and liberals), as was the single liberal middle class slogan the IBT supported in Multicultural Aotearoa. The IBT went for a lowest-common-denominator slogan with reformists and liberals and - surprise, surprise! - in both cases ended up with a single slogan which the whole NZ ruling class supported. This really is popular frontism.

If members of the NZ ruling class had walked in the door of a Non! Or Multicultural Aotearoa meeting, the IBT would scarcely have been able to object to their presence, because the single slogans of both these campaigns - advocated for them by the IBT! - were those the ruling class agreed with. That’s the reality of the IBT’s “principles” in practice in this part of the world. Moreover, the fact that the IBT wanted to keep the immigration question out of Multicultural Aotearoa speaks volumes about their opportunism and their desire to have a cosy working relationship with reformists and liberals who share their hostility to raising the immigration issue in a supposedly ‘anti-racist’ coalition.

Lastly, I think for the IBT to be taken seriously at all it would have to have some achievements under its belt. It is mainly known these days for recruiting a fictitious Ukrainian section, while its real (albeit tiny) sections have largely disintegrated. It’s incapable of even producing a single regular journal. I would therefore suggest that Alan’s talents would best be served not in strained excuses for the IBT’s own pop-front opportunism but in developing a critique of the IBT’s virtual collapse and its total inability to build a serious political current within the working class. Why is this, Alan? What political and organisational weaknesses of the IBT have led it to near extinction and virtual inactivity? When Alan has done this, his letters might begin to appear more than merely surreal.
Phil Duncan
New Zealand

Anti-Bolshevik

Alan Davis continues to doggedly peddle his anti-Bolshevik sectarianism. Tiresome though it is, his brittle nonsense must once again be answered.

For the sake of brevity I shall single out three main, though closely related, questions - other disagreements are for the moment put aside.

Let us begin with Zimbabwe. Comrade Davies thinks he caused the CPGB acute embarrassment when he “reminded” Weekly Worker readers that we supported candidates of the Movement for Democratic Change in the elections of 2000. This “outfit” is the “party of Zimbabwe’s white settler capitalists”, he spits, and therefore he indignantly rejects my charge that he was being dishonest. He told it as it was.

Of course, politically MDC had a pro-capitalist leadership, even before 2000. However, as I pointed out, the MDC was born from the “bowels of the Zimbabwean trade union movement” and is supported by the mass of urban workers. Taking this salient fact into account, we urged support - not for capitalist candidates, but only for working class candidates. This vital distinction, designed to cleave the MDC along class lines, was ignored by comrade Davis. He still ignores it. That is why I charged him with being dishonest. A charge that obviously needs repeating.

What of being “understandably chagrined” when he reminded us of our stance? My feelings were quite the opposite, comrade. I for one am proud of our small role in helping Munyaradzi Gwisai. He successfully stood as an MDC candidate in 2000. Is he a “white settler capitalist”? No, he is a leading member of the International Socialist Organisation. Indeed we initiated a drive to raise funds for the ISO. Last week we were delighted to carry a two-page report from the comrade which graphically described the explosive situation in Zimbabwe.

Now let us turn to joining or supporting parties which are popular fronts, or participate in popular front blocs. We have no objection to this - for us it is purely a question of tactics. Not comrade Davis and his IBT. I have cited the example of Leon Trotsky in the mid-1930s. He called upon his co-thinkers to enter the Spanish and French socialist parities, even when they were pivotal components of popular front governments.

Comrade Davis is willing to concede that perhaps it might have been appropriate to enter the socialist parties … “if there appeared to be significant recruitment opportunities”. On the basis of this clear case of putting the interests of a small revolutionary group above those of the class as a whole, I suggested he was being “narrow, mean-minded and short-termist”.

In his latest effort comrade Davis tries to rescue the IBT position by recruiting Trotsky. It does not work. In fact it only reinforces my argument. Like Trotsky, the IBT supposedly wishes to destroy popular front formations as “rapidly as possible by splitting their class components”. Exactly the point. It is impossible to split parties into “their class components” if your aim is merely short-term recruitment. Something far more serious is required.

Finally, let us expand upon tactics and strategy. Comrade Davis says he cannot disagree with me when I say there must be “complete tactical flexibility”. Obviously that is not the case, however. Comrade Davis and the IBT fondly believe that it is a matter of inflexible principle not to vote for any party that is a popular front, or is participating in a popular front.

Hence their complete lack of tactical flexibility when it comes to formations such as the MDC and Respect. Hence their failure to understand Trotsky’s French turn. Hence their opposition to Bolshevism. In the name of their Toytown Bolshevism the IBT must reject the real Bolshevik Party.

Eg, the Bolsheviks stood a full slate of candidates for the tsarist duma elections. However, in the second round of these elections, their delegates would negotiate deals and vote for candidates from other parties on a lesser-evil basis.

That famously resulted in the six Bolshevik deputies who between them represented the entire workers’ curia. But there was a price to pay: supporting Mensheviks against Socialist Revolutionaries, supporting Socialist Revolutionaries against Cadets, supporting Cadets against Octobrists and Black Hundreds. So, yes, the Bolsheviks not only voted for opportunist socialist parties, but an out and out bourgeois liberal party. Were the Bolsheviks correct? I say yes. No, they were wrong, says the IBT.

To square anti-Bolshevism with their claim to uphold Bolshevism the IBT rewrites the history of Bolshevism. Prior to April 1917, the Bolsheviks, were, it is said, hobbled by a “flawed strategic perspective”, which presumed that after the overthrow of tsarism Russia would have to “undergo a period of capitalist economic development”. Apparently this perspective was “jettisoned” with Lenin’s April theses in 1917. He suddenly realised the “feasibility” of a workers’ government. After this the Bolsheviks rejected “any political/electoral support” for capitalist politicians, specifically the Kerensky government.

A completely garbled account. In chapter nine of his pamphlet Towards a Socialist Alliance party (2001), Jack Conrad provides an extensive discussion of Bolshevik strategy. He blows apart the myths that have been built around this question - mainly by comrades coming from a Trotskyite tradition (the print version of the pamphlet sold out, but the second edition is available on the CPGB website).

As Conrad agues, the fact of the matter is that the Bolsheviks had a remarkably far-sighted strategic perspective for Russia. There was much in common between Lenin’s position outlined in his Two tactics and Trotsky’s Results and prospects. The Bolsheviks fought for working class leadership of the anti-tsarist revolution. They wanted democracy and the rule of the workers and peasants. The Bolsheviks summed up their position with the algebraic formulation: the ‘revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’.

Yes, capitalism would de allowed to develop, especially in the country-side. Socialism in one country is impossible. But this capitalist development - as was the case with the New Economic Policy - would be under the supervision of an armed working class and subject to a government that was committed to spreading the flame of revolution to Europe. The fate of Russia’s revolution being dependent on Europe.

In his April theses Lenin sought to whip into line Menshevik-veering Bolsheviks and put flesh on the programmatic bones provided by his Two tactics. The Bolshevik programme was not “jettisoned”. It was developed and concretised. October 1917 officially produced a “republic of workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ soviets”. It was a popular revolution led by the working class - the mass of which was organised in the Bolshevik Party.

What of the Bolsheviks rejecting “any political/electoral support” for capitalist politicians, specifically the Kerensky government? In the footsteps of Kamenev and Stalin, comrade Davis has said he would have given the Kerensky government “critical support” … if it broke with the “10 capitalist ministers”. As indeed it did. Not Lenin. He wanted to fulfil the standing Bolshevik programme, which was never about putting power into the hands of the bourgeoisie - even indirectly. That is why he called for ‘all power to the soviets’.

So was Lenin’s previous “flawed” perspective “jettisoned”? Clearly not. In his 1920 pamphlet ‘Leftwing’ communism Lenin patiently strove to educate the often immature communist leaders who had flocked to join the Third International. He urged them to carefully study Bolshevik tactics in the tsarist elections. He did not contritely apologise for these tactics, which included voting for Cadet candidates. He recommended them.

Hence, when it came to the Labour Party in Britain, Lenin called upon communists in the CPGB to join as individuals, affiliate as a party (not a cut-and-run operation) and to vote for MacDonald, Snowden, Thomas, etc, even though they were committed to including Liberals in their cabinet - a popular front.

Clearly the IBT has far more in common with the childish ‘leftwing’ communists of the early 1920s than authentic Bolshevism. As I have said before, as a matter of political honesty the IBT should change its name - International Anti-Bolshevik Tendency would be more accurate.
Enso White
email

Disgusting

Jim Denham bemoans the French ‘non’ on the proposed EU constitution, remembering how the French left “... used to know better, but it seems [they’ve] now joined the idiot chorus of protectionists, utopian socialists, Le Pen, anti-Turkish islamophobes and various Stalinists in their thoroughly reactionary attempt to roll back the film of history” (Letters, June 9).

Well, Jim, real communists, as opposed to social democrats, are opposed to the formation of a capitalist European Union, correctly recognising that an imperialist United States of Europe would be a recipe for future inter-imperialist war. Communists are not about advocating that workers give their approving nod to the forming of a capitalist state, and an imperialist one at that, which would be inextricably destined to lock horns with its imperialist rivals in a global oil-grab. Communists are about smashing capitalists states and replacing them with workers’ states, not in helping to form them.

As for Le Pen and company, our reasons for opposing the formation of an EU are quite different from his, and we don’t automatically draw a plus sign where Le Pen and his ilk draw a minus sign. And your comment, Jim, that “various Stalinists” engaging in a “thoroughly reactionary attempt to roll back the film of history”, betrays the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s disgusting position that imperialism has a progressive role to play.
Michael Little
Seattle

Save paper

This planet is running out of trees and it takes a lot of hard work to pulp them down into paper. Why is a socialist journal using the hard won products of labour to reproduce the anti-worker racism of Norman Sutcliffe (Letters, June 9)?

Don’t those capitalist ideas get enough currency in a thousand other rags? Does the CPGB have a liberal policy of printing anything submitted to it?
Don Franks
email

Climate ignored

I strongly feel that your draft programme ignores a key factor that will lead us nearer to the conditions required for revolution in the future; at the minimum it will generate severe social unrest.

You appear to have ignored the destructive nature of capitalism and its negative effect on our environment. In the period of 200 years we are already able to quantify a change from our own experiences and understanding of climate trends. These changes are not merely obvious to science but to the human eye - a clear indicator of these rapid climatic developments.

This is an issue which will undoubtedly have huge reper-cussions internationally - many contradictions will be and already are present, and to such an extent that violent social upheaval seems probable and in many regions necessary. You must reassure the masses of your commitment to the environment, and to tackling the problems which have risen from this capitalist-driven, uncontrolled an-nihilation of our planet.
Alastair Poole
email

No sympathy

Michael Jackson is 46 years old and the amount of therapy it’d take to get him halfway sane will probably take till he’s in his 90s. But I wish I’d been exploited by the music business when I was a child - it pays well compared to being exploited by my current employers and the pittance I’m paid. So no sympathy for Michael.

The experience of jail - of having his nose (if it is his) in the shite along with all the other inmates and his having to be an equal with those men, may have actually done a lot more good: once he was released he may even have had some meaningful experiences to express in his music, rather than the trite of the last 20-plus years.

On a separate question, I see that under ‘Immediate demands’ in the Communist Party Draft programme you write: “No redundancies. Nationalise threatened workplaces or industries under workers’ control.”

Perhaps this sentence needs revising, as it could be taken to mean that industries under workers’ control would be nationalised, which doesn’t seem necessary, as if it’s under workers’ control has it not become socialised? My suggested revision is: “Nationalisation for threatened industries, unless the workers have taken control or are in a position to take control, of said industry.”
Len Trotter
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