Weekly Worker 599 Thursday November 3 2005

Letters

Socialising drugs

Comrade Dan Read has got the wrong end of the stick with regard to the issue of drugs and the effect of their illicit status (Letters, October 27). Referring to my article the previous week, which called for the legalisation of all drugs, comrade Read states that to advocate “the complete, free and unhindered use of all drugs” is an error, because “drugs are harmful”; thereby making their complete legalisation logically akin to “shooting somebody and then driving them to the hospital for treatment”.

This is only a partial examination of the argument put forward in the offending article. To say that we are in favour of “the complete, free and unhindered use of all drugs” is true, but this is insufficient on its own to explain why and how: we are not merely in favour of legalisation, but also socialisation.

Prohibitive drug laws are not a protective measure. Drugs, bought as contraband and produced as such, come wrapped in legislation which is oppressive and harmful. Let me quote myself:

“The incentive for [cartels and gangs] to produce a dangerous substance derives from the drug’s very illegality. It is a historically verifiable fact that prohibition itself is profoundly unhealthy: when drinking alcohol was criminalised in the 1920s and 30s USA, the gangsters who controlled the underground flow would often mix it with all kinds of filth, or make it ludicrously strong. That way the amount of illegal alcohol that was handled could be kept to a minimum; the flipside was that people went blind from drinking it” (Weekly Worker October 20).

The effect of prohibition was to poison the alcohol supply. Buyers, or ‘users’ in this case, were put at risk by the law, not the drug itself. Made legal, alcohol (a drug like any other) is still unhealthy - but drinking it legally is considerably safer than if the stuff were banned. To do so would place the control over its distribution - and hence its quality and safety - in the hands of these cartels and smugglers, thus making the whole business of drinking a considerably more precarious one.

When banned, drugs become lethal. There is no quality control. What ends up on the black market is subject to whim, fortune and crime; and if drug ‘producers’ can take a short cut and maximise profits by adulterating the drug itself, so be it. Those shadowy “lumpen elements” who comrade Read refers to are the ones who fall foul of this process; typically poor and working class.

Comrade Read writes that “anyone whose life has been touched by drug abuse, illegal or otherwise, will have little sympathy for the supposed communist demand, ‘Legalise all drugs’”. No, comrade: to advocate the (relatively) safe, legal, socialised supply of recreational drugs is not to advocate alcoholism or addiction. We are, of course, not in favour of a policy that would cause more harm. The legalisation of all drugs would come with its own problems, for sure, but the overriding aim is to lessen the damage caused by drugs by socialising them - just as alcohol consumption is socialised.

Finally, comrade Read argues that drug use is a “direct result of alienation imposed from the social relations inherent in capitalism”. Sometimes it is; but do we always go to the pub because of colossal existential angst? Likewise, the case for saying that the first line of cocaine is snorted because the offender is alienated is dubious, to say the least. Certainly, the dehumanising rigour of capitalism will push people into drug abuse (‘opium is the opium of the people’). And few could deny, for example, a correlation between under-30s binge culture and workaday pressure.

But, more often than not, drugs are a form of recreation like any other and would not disappear under socialism because they are purely and simply a negative consequence of capitalism. There would, however, be a far more social - and hence more humanising and safe - aspect to their consumption, rather than the secluded, unhealthy pattern of use that comes about directly as a result of their illegal status.

Carey Davies
Sheffield

Criminalised

I must take issue with Dan Read’s letter. Dan implies that his “life has been touched by drug abuse” when he claims that anyone whose life has been so touched “will have little sympathy” for the demand to legalise all drugs, made by the CPGB. I can only say that the content of his letter would suggest that he has little experience of the problem of drug use in our society, or the solutions to the problem open to the authorities - both under capitalism and in a future socialist society.

Dan writes of the argument put forward by the Weekly Worker - “To criminalise drugs is to criminalise people” - as “an abstract moral statement”, equating it with “to criminalise rape and murder is to criminalise people”. Dan has missed the point. Making acts of rape and murder criminal acts is to make the people who commit the acts responsible under the law, because what they do is extremely harmful, both to their victims and to other members of society. To make people who choose to use drugs criminals is wrong because what they do causes (or can cause) harm to themselves, not directly - or even necessarily at all - to others.

Carey Davies’s article does not state that CPGB policy would be to set up “mainstream distribution networks”, as Dan says; although it would probably be necessary for some drugs to be subject to government control - as with alcohol and tobacco. As for the government having to come up with the money to pay for this control, and for rehabilitation facilities, which causes Dan concern, this would be a paltry amount compared to what taxpayers currently pay for attempting to control currently illegal drugs, locking drug addicts up and giving (only a tiny proportion of) addicts rehabilitation.

I also disagree with the reason Dan gives for the fact that alcohol and tobacco are not illegal. The main reasons for this are actually that, as anyone who has given the matter a moment’s thought knows, that such bans would not work! (This can also be said incidentally of the current bans on so-called hard drugs and so-called soft drugs: the latter is a national joke; and the former is not working.) It was tried with alcohol in the USA in the last century - the article reiterates the disaster that this was. To attempt to make tobacco use illegal would be an even greater farce. It must also be noted that these drugs - alcohol especially - are natural products that have become a part of our culture. The fact that governments take advantage of their use by using this as a means of collecting revenue is also surely significant.

Dan’s biggest mistake is to accept government propaganda, and to fall into the trap of grouping all drugs (except, of course, caffeine, drugs bought over the counter at chemists and supermarkets, tobacco and alcohol) together, and to claim that they “change human behaviour to that of disruption, offence and often violence”. This is simply not the case. A lot of illegal drugs have a soporific effect. A drug that can have Dan’s described effect on its users is alcohol.

As Dan says, the article does indeed claim that, if drugs were legalised, there would be fewer risks involved regarding the unscrupulous mixing of other harmful substances with them. This would be because the distribution of drugs would be legal, but subject to control - again in much the same way as is the case with legal drugs, and other consumer goods.

I am afraid I must again question Dan’s competence and experience in this matter when he says that “drug dealers are petty bourgeois”. Most (so-called hard) drug dealers are addicts; they are people who support their habit by buying quantities of their drugs in excess of their own needs from a few big-time-gangster dealers, in order to sell this excess to other addicts in an often desperate attempt to survive. They lead miserable, dejected and alienated lives, often hounded by the police, competing dealers and people who are often so desperate that they are prepared to maim and kill small-time distributors.

My opinions - unlike, I suspect, those expressed by Dan - have indeed been formed as a result of the fact that my “life has been touched by drug abuse”. Two weeks ago my 34-year-old son - a heroin addict - committed suicide. The demand to legalise all drugs attracts me to the CPGB. Had my late son been familiar with political organisations that make such calls, I believe he too would have been attracted to them. I may be many things, but I am not a “lumpen element”. Nor was my late son.

Finally, on a very personal note, I would say to Dan and others on the left that, had the people who take heroin not been criminalised, my son would probably be alive today.

Jim Dymond
Aldershot

Natural justice

A ‘nit-pick’ from a regular and enthusiastic reader: Tina Becker is always worthy of careful study - but her criticism of motion 8 for the Respect conference misses the mark (‘Little controversy, less principle’, October 27).

The motion against Guantanamo Bay as “a travesty of natural and international norms of justice” leads her to query, “What the hell is ‘natural’ justice? The law of the jungle perhaps?” In the constitutional law of the UK, “natural justice” is based on two essential legal principles: all parties receive a full and fair hearing and the adjudication must be by an impartial judge.

Tina’s point may have been better made by arguing the motion be put in more basic (expanded) English? The expression is widely used in both legal and non-legal writings.

Bob Potter
Hove

Climate change

I was astounded to read the following paragraph in Tina Becker’s otherwise quite interesting review of the resolutions to the upcoming Respect conference: “Not only are there a lot of unrecognised scientists and experts amongst the Respect membership who are absolutely sure that the dramatic fluctuations of temperatures encountered in the past are totally different from what is happening today. They are also utterly convinced that climate change never occurs through natural processes and that its effects must always be unpalatable.”

Is it now the CPGB’s position that climate change isn’t happening, or that it isn’t a problem? This paragraph certainly makes it seem as if Tina Becker’s desire to (sometimes justifiably) mock the earnest platitudes put forward by Respect have caused her to adopt an appallingly anti-ecological stance.

I trust this is not what she meant?

Councillor Matt Sellwood
Green Party

Respect Wales

I am somewhat curious as to why, apparently, no Respect pre-conference meetings have taken place here in Wales.

Nothing has been listed on Respect’s national website and CPGB comrades have received no personal invite to any such meetings. Indeed, only as recently as last week, after I personally contacted a prominent local Respect activist, was I informed that neither the Neath branch nor (as far as he knew) the Swansea branch had arranged a pre-conference meeting. Other CPGB members in Wales have also sought information without success.

Yet some branch activity in south Wales still occurs. Two weeks ago Respect in my local area held a public meeting on climate change and I note from the national website that the Bridgend branch held one on Palestine on November 1.

I would like to ask why no pre-conference meetings have taken place in south Wales. What is going on?

Bob Davies
Swansea

CPGB tentacle

The whole point of the struggle has been one for self-determination of the Irish people. I, as a socialist, would argue the case for a socialist state, but I reject the notion of any external influences, such as the CPGB, and view them as imperial as any tentacle of the British state.

John Skipton
email

One nation

Liam O Ruairc has pointed to a number of problems with the CPGB majority’s analysis that there is a ‘British-Irish’ nationality in the north-east of Ireland and that it has, or should have, the right to self-determination (Letters, October 27).

One of the problems with the CPGB majority analysis is seen very starkly only a few pages later in Anne Mc Shane’s article (‘Tug of war for mantle of respectable republicanism’). In an otherwise sound article, Anne makes an extraordinary reference to the “catholic-Irish and British-Irish” as the two nationalities in Ireland.

Yikes, where does that leave the founders of republicanism and every major figure in Irish republicanism in its first hundred years - people like Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, Fintan Lalor, Thomas Davis, Michael Davitt, etc, etc, and even Parnell (all of whom were protestants) - not to mention all of us more recent republicans who are atheists, agnostics or protestants?

Since the CPGB majority believe there is a nationality called the ‘British-Irish’ you are left with the problem of defining who all the other people in Ireland (ie, the other 80% of the population) are. You can hardly call them the ‘Irish-Irish’, so you end up falling back on a religious definition of nationality - the bizarre, fictional entity, “catholic-Irish”.

Of course, if you define the “catholic-Irish” as a nationality, the logical corollary would be to define the unionists as the ‘protestant-Irish’. You can’t really do that, because you are smart enough to know that a religious definition of nationality doesn’t make sense from a Marxist standpoint and simply mystifies the social, economic and political construction of a nationality in history. It does, however, mean that you advocate the very odd notion of “self-determination” in a “one-county, four-half-county” state.

Isn’t this a bit like “self-determination” in one’s own bedroom? Excuse me for being overly literal, but that would be one wacky border. (Yes, I know you will argue that this is a political rather than geographical position, but a political position still has to be practically applicable, and this one just ain’t).

The solution would be to adopt the perfectly sound republican position that everyone in Ireland is Irish, regardless of where their ancestors came from and when they arrived. As Marxists we could add that the modern Irish nation was formed through the economic, social and political process of capitalist development out of diverse groups of people who arrived in Ireland at different times as conquerors and settlers.

The process of formation of an Irish nation - which is what the United Irish movement led by Tone reflected - was artificially held back by the requirements of British capitalism to secure control over the island, just as the full formation of a South African nation was artificially constrained by apartheid. And just as Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaner and Anglo are all merely component parts of the South African nation, so the Irish nation has different component parts, parts which differ politically primarily as a result of conscious divide-and-rule tactics from above.

A programme which has, as one of its central planks, support for “self-determination” for the mythical “British-Irish” is just a concession to the imperialists. Politically, you need to put rather more distance between yourselves and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty.

Philip Ferguson
Auckland

Iran and Israel

Iranian president Ahmadinejad’s alleged statements on Israel were an understandable reflection of the fact that this entity was established, through the active support of western imperialism and terrorist violence, as an imperialist military bridgehead, to exert control and influence within the Middle East region. Its economic and military power is derived from its position as an outpost of western imperialism, rather than in its own right.

This power and the massive expulsion of the domestic Palestinian population, which accompanied its establishment, has been used deliberately to undermine, disrupt and intimidate the states and peoples of the region. The state of Israel is based on the exclusion of millions of the Palestinian peoples - those violently thrown into exile and those remaining in segregated and contained ghettos: in effect internal exile.

Any lasting solution must involve the elimination of the Israeli state, as it is presently constituted - ie, as an apparatus of oppression, violence and exclusion of the local population and as a conduit of western imperialism into the region. How one can call for an inevitably small, weak, under-resourced Palestinian statelet to exist and co-exist alongside this leviathan is beyond me. This is just a recipe for yet more violence, hatred and poverty.

We should be looking to eliminate states and unify peoples, not creating more division, wasteful state bureaucracies and means for peoples to kill each other. An interim step must surely be a single, united, democratic state covering the whole of the area currently occupied by Israel. All people currently living in the geographical area and those wanting to return should have full and equal democratic, political and social rights, irrespective of religion, ethnicity, nationality or whatever.

It seems to me that the only sensible basis for even beginning to consider how to meet the needs of the current and diaspora populations is by looking at the land and resources in the area as whole and establishing a common, integrated and efficient decision-making process. Only such a framework can create a basis to start to overcome the enmity and hatred which has been engendered between the peoples. The establishment of one strong, democratic state would also provide an opportunity to remove the instruments of violence from individual ethnic or religious groupings and the means for attacking each other.

Andrew Northall
Northampton

Defeatist

Ian Donovan attacks me in his usual rumbustious way, so it wasn’t until I got to almost to the end of his letter that I discovered that he is supporting one of our motions on its merits and not according to his personal prejudice regarding our alleged “islamophobia” (Letters, October 27). I’m glad to see we have reached a measure of agreement.

It is difficult to know quite what Ian means by “islamophobia”. Our description of Respect is of an organisation in which the socialists deliberately hide their views in order to encourage non-socialists to enter it and to create a non-class, or cross-class, alliance. In Respect’s case this right wing is largely phantom, leaving it to the socialists to act against their own beliefs. So our tactics are aimed at ‘socialist’ stupidity and hypocrisy, not at muslims.

We see no reason why muslims cannot be socialists. As atheists we are in favour of anti-religious propaganda, but this does not mean we hate people who believe in god or would want to exclude them from a working class party - but we do want it to be a working class party. The working class needs a Communist Party, not a popular frontist fantasy. Our rebellion at the last election, where we advised people to only vote for working class anti-war candidates, was part of that programme. We voted for muslims if they came from some kind of working class tradition, not that of the mosque.

On Iraq we have a revolutionary defeatist position. The primary job of British workers is to defeat their own state - how does this undermine Iraq’s struggle for independence? But it is not our job to act as cheerleaders for dyed-in-the-wool reactionaries. If the main anti-American forces - the Ba’athists, the sunni militias and the shia theocrats - are progressive, please explain.

And Ian too differentiates between elements of the resistance. He writes off al Zarqawi as a terrorist, for example. In that way he puts his own conditions as to how the struggle should be conducted, but when we refuse to support al Zarqawi’s forces, or others that are just as reactionary, he accuses us of undermining the struggle. Our criticisms are socialist, but Ian’s are liberal utopian.

Firstly he is concerned only with Iraqi independence: questions of class rule and democracy are presumably to be left till the British and American colonialists are defeated and peace returns. He closes his eyes to the fact that any one of these reactionary liberation groups is capable of doing a deal with the colonialists. They are not consistent anti-imperialists.

Secondly, Ian separates the politics of peace from the politics of war. Before the invasion, he too condemned the Ba’athists and the ayatollahs. But during the occupation he covers up their true nature. In fact the politics of war and of peace have connected, if not identical, aims - only war is by definition more violent. Struggles for independence are also civil wars. It is not just a question of driving out the invaders: it is also important who wins the civil war and, the sooner we address this question, the better the outcome may be.

Finally, Ian’s response to the Lenin quote was very literal-minded. History never repeats itself exactly, but we can still learn from history. Perhaps in 1920 the mullahs could dream of preserving a pre-capitalist society and it is true that this is not possible in today’s Iraq. But they can still assert the power of pre-capitalist strata over the state - with disastrous results, as in Iran and Afghanistan.

Phil Kent
Haringey

For secularism

A Danish newspaper Jyllends Posten recently published 12 different visual portraits of the prophet Mohammed.

The political islamists in Denmark have not been alone in this: ambassadors of countries including Iran, Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Pakistan have objected. They have fired off letters of complaint to the Danish prime minister and demanded he condemn this newspaper and clamp down on it.

This provoked a backlash from political islam. The common denominator - whatever the relative size or political weight of these protests - is that they all preach that people cannot use that most intrinsic of human facilities - our imagination - to depict the prophet. Islamists assert that Mohammed never sat for a portrait, so by definition his pictorial representation is an act against islam, a blasphemy.

This is not surprising. For those of us who have bitter first-hand experience of islamist groups and islamic states in the Middle East, it is a depressingly familiar story. This is a template for how they maintain their ferocious, anti-egalitarian rule over the people of that part of the world.

By making islam the ‘exceptional religion’ - with the clear implication that no-one has the right to even mildly criticise it, let alone paint a portrait of its prophet - effectively a gag is placed on any radical, dissenting voice. The people who want to raise their voices against the suffocating blanket of religiosity in their societies are silenced.

The brutal truth is that for the last two decades islam in the Middle East has justified killing, stoning, imprisoning, veiling and forcing women into burqas. Women are imprisoned in the name of political islam - a crime against all of humanity.

Not only women have suffered. Progressives and secularists of all kinds have been persecuted simply because they have challenged political islam’s intrusion into the private realm of human beings, their right to decide their faiths and how these might impinge on their lives.

Islamists in power rule according to the precepts of sharia law. This institutionalises the oppression of women and the suppression of any kinds of democratic rights. Yet, in Europe, where this reactionary political trend has no opportunity to come to power, so-called ‘freedom of choice’ is cited to impose the veil on young girls and ‘freedom of expression’ to open mosques, religious schools to bring up a brainwashed generation of young people, and to silence those of us who want to tell the truth about them to society.

Many of us secular women live with death threats issued by islamists for the simple fact that we are liberated, secular and use our brain to think, decide and live the way we want. We do not accept their rule, but actually question and challenge their power over us. They attempt to impose their thinking on us even in a European context: if someone dares to say something critical about islam they are labelled an ‘islamophobe’ or even a ‘racist’. This is a tactic to silence criticism, not engage in dialogue.

But now women like us in Iraq have formed a women’s organisation that is outspoken against political islam, despite the daily threats from their terror gangs. Our Organisation of Women’s Freedom of Iraq (OWFI) has been exposing the islamists and their crimes against women in our society. This shows the potential for secularism and free thinking among our people.

The fact that women in our society are standing up to oppression, in the face of political forces that force us to wear the veil at gunpoint, is an inspiration to friends of freedom, equality and secularism the world over.

In Europe, the islamists use every possible opportunity to advance their agenda and to desensitise people to its reactionary, inhumane content. They refuse to accept the fact that in Europe people have won the right to criticise all religions and political ideologies. So far islam has escaped this. They have used the western states’ espousal of ‘multiculturalism’ to inflict violence against women and girls and practise the most barbaric ‘traditions’ within these so-called ‘muslim communities’. This, we are told, is part of the ‘traditions’ of people from that part of the world. This must stop! Islam, like any other religion, must be a private matter and separate from politics.

I see no reason why ambassadors of all these countries and islamic exiles make such a fuss about these portraits in Jyllends Posten. Of course, I don’t have to agree with or approve of how artists have portrayed Mohammed - that is not the point. I believe strongly that artists should be free to create art without threats hanging over them.

Houzan Mahmoud
Organisation of Women’s Freedom of Iraq

Abortion

I would like to point out to Liz Hoskings that I have met no-one in Britain who thinks abortions are a good thing. What they think is that restrictions on abortion are a worse thing. And if we had proper contraception and proper attitudes towards sex then we wouldn’t have so many abortions.

On numerous occasions I have thought of throwing my children out on the streets, and I have also thought of throwing them out of the top-floor window. But neither I nor all the other granddads I know have thought of throwing their daughters out for being pregnant. And none of them would insist on their daughters having an abortion if they didn’t want one.

Not only are abortions sometimes necessary, but infanticide - or allowing children to die - is sometimes necessary too. And I speak from personal experience. I had a grandson that had a massive stroke when he was six weeks old, and my son eventually decided that it was better to let the baby die than keep it alive on machines. And if you have children born terribly damaged or going to live with great problems, the doctors and midwives knew how to deal with the situation, and still do. And this is only right and proper.

Moreover, I have said to my children that when I get completely old and senile they should come around with the whisky and barbiturates. Of course, they normally reply, “If a thing is worthwhile doing, dad, why wait?”

There have to be some legal controls on these things, but every time we impose bans, the situation get worse and not better.

Tom May
Guildford

Women’s control

Until women have total control over their own fertility, they will not be free or equal. At present, women do not have this control. Neither contraceptives nor relationships are free of defects. Although the first might be dealt with in time, the second never will be, at least under our present form of society.

Women, therefore, have to have the kind of security that the ability to have an abortion provides. And not only young women - women of all ages up to and including menopausal women. I am old enough to remember the 1950s and the kinds of horror that illegal abortions put women through. Sorry - never again.

Women are living, breathing entities, and should not have to be maimed or die because of the so-called rights of some other being.

Gabriela Hunt
North London

Pissing around

Phil Sharpe writes of Trotsky’s dream of a united revolutionary party. Surely such a thing can never exist and is but a dream. Marxist politics are shattered, and all Trotsky’s men and all Trotsky’s horses aren’t going to put it together again.

Stop pissing around trying to build parties and do something!

Len Trotter
email

Kenya killings

The order by the government of president Mwai Kibaki to trigger-happy police to “shoot to kill” suspected criminals on sight came to yet another climax on Saturday October 29 in Kisumu city, where four civilians were shot dead during an aborted rally at Moi stadium.

The political gangsters currently in power in Kenya are in a state of panic in the face of looming defeat at the November 21 referendum and it is for this reason that they are now resorting to the use of major arms of the state to terrorise civilians opposed to the constitution. We are convinced that the president and his loyalists are living on borrowed time.

Martin Ngatia
Kenya Scandinavia Democratic Movement

Pakistan appeal

I am a Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign supporter and I have seen your Pakistan appeal and have noticed that you do not mention the PTUDC (www.ptudc.org), which is also a working class and democratic campaign.

My union, the NUJ, supports the campaign and has had several speakers from Pakistan. I believe that they also deserve support from socialists in the Britain. If you could include them in your list, many people will be very happy.

Brian Conlon
email

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