Weekly Worker 594 Thursday September 29 2005

Letters

CPGB betrayal

Phil Kent accuses me of seeking to ‘betray my principles’ in refusing to advocate votes for the CPGB’s socialist-tinselled motions at the upcoming Respect conference, so long as the CPGB do not repudiate their attacks on Respect for supporting the Iraqi resistance and refusing to advocate votes to many Respect candidates (Letters, September 22).

He whines that the CPGB’s motions - eg, those that abstractly call for socialism - ‘should be voted on their merits’ irrespective of the positions the CPGB put forward in the real world. Sorry, but politics, and life, is not like that. One cannot isolate what the CPGB say, formulated in one or two motions, from what they say as a totality about the Respect project. If they were honest, they would put motions calling for Respect to expel the supposedly anti-socialist, reactionary muslims they stood as candidates in the elections, and to denounce the ‘reactionary anti-imperialists’ who are sending British and US invading troops home in boxes and causing Bush and Blair’s whole project a major crisis.

But they are not honest. In reality, a vote for the CPGB’s motions amounts to a surrogate vote for these positions, which they do not have the courage to formulate as motions (not surprisingly). Comrade Kent seems to be under the impression that when sunni sectarians kill shia Iraqis I think they are in some way fighting imperialism. The same for shia who join as loyal servants of the imperialists in their puppet police force. What idiocy! I note that those such as Zarqawi who engage in killing shia are doing the imperialists dirty work for them - ‘divide and rule’ - and may even be CIA assets. But, conversely, some shia (maybe a significant proportion) who have joined the Iraqi police seem indeed to have done so to fight imperialism - judging from recent events.

I note that the CPGB had no problem in the past giving ‘unconditional but critical support’ to the struggle of the Provisional IRA - despite the fact that this organisation sometimes engaged in indefensible sectarian actions against protestant workers. They still deserved support when they actually clashed with the British occupation forces, unconditionally. The same is true with Iraq and its resistance forces, both sunni and shia.

The Weekly Worker, boasting about its record on the Irish question, recently ran a graphic of an old headline, “With a bullet”, evoking Trotsky’s famous prescription for those British pseudo-socialists who refused to give unconditional support to the struggle for freedom from British rule in Ireland: “They should be branded with infamy, if not with a bullet”. So why does not Phil Kent make the ludicrous allegation that I see the struggle against imperialism as a “fight between unequal states” against his own comrades? After all, the IRA no more held state power than does the resistance in Iraq.

I merely apply the same criteria to the CPGB over Iraq as the CPGB used to apply to others regarding the Irish struggle. In reality, it is the CPGB who are betraying the struggle for socialism and against imperialism, and seeking to excuse this with double-talk about how they are in favour of the defeat of imperialism - but not of the victory of the people actually fighting it. Any decent communist in the CPGB should rebel against this betrayal of elementary socialism and anti-imperialism.

Ian Donovan
South London

Socialist

In the March 24 issue of the Weekly Worker Peter Manson wrote of two Respect candidates, Jazz Khan and Nadia Fazal: “As yet I know nothing about them, apart from the fact that they are both muslims, and am not in a position to offer advice on whether or not they deserve working class votes.”

I am Nadia Fazal’s mum and a Socialist Workers Party member. My daughter was brought up a socialist, so when she stood in May you should have supported her.

Ruth Helm
email

Break with it

My old friend Graham Bash excels himself this week. Two articles in the Weekly Worker. In the bad/good old days when the Labour Party expelled people, Graham would be up for the high jump. The fact he won’t be expelled suggests that, having lost half its membership, Labour can’t afford to lose any more and perhaps Labour Left Briefing is not regarded as a serious threat!

Seriously, Graham tries hard to wrestle with the contradictions of what he freely admits is a rightwing, free market, anti-working class party. Unfortunately, as he also honestly admits, he sees little hope in the future, so he is retreating into theory and history. Nothing wrong with that, Graham, but don’t neglect practice if your membership is helping to sustain this anti-working class organisation - for god’s sake follow the lead of the RMT and FBU and break with it.

I sometimes think the last people left in the Labour Party will be the comrades from Labour Briefing along with Socialist Appeal waiting for the working class to flock to a socialist labour party. Meantime the working class will probably be voting for a Ken Clarke-led Tory Party, thinking it must be better than New Labour and might even get us out of Iraq.

Hugh Kerr
email

Australian SA

Your paper’s utterly one-sided ‘coverage’ of the Australian Socialist Alliance continues in your September 22 issue with not only yet another ignorant lecture from Marcus Ström (let us know when your new ‘strategy’ of building a communist fraction in the Labor Party yields any results at all, Marcus), but also some ramblings from one Greg Adler that purports to be a critique of an e-list contribution of mine (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenLeft_discussion/message/21899).

Perhaps Adler learnt the Stalinoid tactic of criticism via systematic distortion from his time in the pathologically dishonest Socialist Labor League. I suppose I should be grateful he’s no longer in a demented sect known to settle arguments with crowbars. Rather than ramble about his past, politically moronic, associations with Healyism and Ba’athism, perhaps Adler could address my reasonable assertion that socialist election campaigns shouldn’t be judged by votes alone, but also if they can help build mass struggles and socialist organisation and influence. I nowhere said anything like “At least our 500 votes were class-conscious”, but pointed out that there’s plenty of evidence that the SA’s campaigns have been able to build socialist ideas and influence well beyond the (generally small) voting results.

The extensive report of the candidate on the by-election in question, ignored by Adler, gives evidence there was modest but real successes along these lines (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenLeft_discussion/message/21991). Incidentally this report makes clear Adler’s invented “stack” of the SA’s Marrickville branch was in fact a joint meeting with the adjoining branch.

Further it’s bizarre that Adler denies that the International Socialist Organisation are the centre of a small minority that have been pushing for SA to be restricted to a narrow electoral front, as the record clearly shows this has been exactly the debate and line-up at every SA conference since 2001.

That said, I don’t deny that the SA should perhaps run in less elections and in general has some problems, though it should be obvious that these are mainly due to the low level of struggle rather than the evil machinations of the Democratic Socialist Perspective.

Nick Fredman
Lismore

ISO and Greens

Marcus Ström writes: “That leading members of the International Socialist Organisation, the second-largest SA affiliate, were seen handing out ‘how to votes’ for the Greens speaks volumes.” It does speak volumes: about the ISO.

Alex Miller
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Linkspartei

In ‘Opportunity for left to rebuild’, you suggest that the Linkspartei’s 8.7% is “by far the best result for a left party since World War II” (September 22).

I must admit I laughed out loud when I read this and can only think that your party’s view is due to one of two things: a complete unawareness of the so-called policies of the Linkspartei; or a thoroughly defeated and reformist world view. Surely you must be aware that the policies of the Linkspartei are, if anything, more rightwing than those of the pre-Bad Godesberg SPD.

Only a fool or a rightist could possibly deem the Linkspartei’s result as being for a left party except by name.

Florian von Weichsel
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Evil bombs

I am disturbed that the USA may launch a military strike against Iran.

Nuclear bombs destroy innocent life on a vast scale, so using them can never be justified. Jesus Christ, an early socialist, as well as denouncing hunger and poverty, stated we should lay down our lives for our fellow human beings, not kill them. As rightful king of the Jews he stood in opposition to caesar, but did not use caesar’s methods of violence and murder to defeat him.

Like my fellow catholic and dear friend, Bruce Kent, I believe it is better morally to be destroyed by nuclear bombs than to commit the evil of destroying our fellow humans with them.

Andrew Harvey
Carlisle

Work and play

Comrade Northall writes that communism would abolish the distinction between pleasure and work (Weekly Worker September 8). I would like to add the following citation and commentary.

In communism “work, life itself, will not be organised but will organised itself in such a way that everyone will do those things which he cannot give up, and will give up what he cannot do. It is, after all, the case that every person has an inner passion for some activity, some deed, different actions - and out of this multiplicity of human tendencies or activities will emerge the free and active, and not dead and passive, organism of human society, of free human activities.”

Who does the reader think this was? It sounds like Marx, but it could even be Feuerbach. It was actually Moses Hess, in an article called ‘Socialism and communism of contemporary France’, written in 1842 - before Marx’s Economic and philosophical manuscripts, before Marx was even a communist. It is things like this which illustrate the dependence of Marxism upon young Hegelian thought (citations are from Avineri’s Moses Hess pp89-91).

Richard Cumming
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