Weekly Worker 560 Thursday November 10 2005

Letters

Dan the ban

I would like to reply to some of the criticisms that appeared in the last issue of the Weekly Worker (November 3) of my letter commenting on the article ‘Legalise all drugs’ (October 20).

First off, the standard argument that I initially dealt with in my original letter (October 27) - that drug abuse is a matter for the individual - is brought forward again, this time in the form that crimes such as rape and murder should be illegal because they cause direct harm to society, whereas the use of certain drugs does not cause harm to anyone except the individual consuming them, or perhaps no harm at all.

My original point stressed that this is not the case, and it is self-evident that drug abuse, from either direct consumption or the economic burdens placed upon users as they attempt to feed their habit, can cause them to commit all sorts of crime, including rape and murder - the former as a direct effect of the drug (for instance, alcohol); the latter possibly from the effects of the substance or the economic burdens involved.

It is also said that I misread the original article and came to a mistaken conclusion that it was calling for the setting up of mainstream clinics for the distribution of drugs. I do not feel that my original conclusion is wrong, since the article talked of “their legal supply, responsibly regulated, and addicts provided with clinics, treatment and support, not truncheons and handcuffs” (original emphasis). In other words, regulated and supplied by the state - a demand the state is highly unlikely to grant, nor should it.

Also, how effective can these treatment programmes be if the addict can then just walk off and obtain drugs right over the counter? How is such control to be enacted if the substance is freely available? What happens when an addict just won’t stop taking the drug and in the process causes damage to those around him/her? Do we make it ‘illegal’ for just that individual or continue to simply reprimand them for crimes committed under the influence of the substance, but not take it to the source - ie, the substance itself?

It is said that my view on the legal status of alcohol and tobacco (that it is legal due to the massive profits gleaned from its sale and the relatively slow pace at which it harms its consumers) is wrong, and the argument is put forward that they are legal simply because it would be impossible to enforce a ban, and therefore nothing to do with the profits involved, as the experimentation in the US in the early part of the last century showed. I beg to differ. I view the repeal of prohibition to have come about simply because even large sections of the bourgeoisie themselves were against it (especially those who had capital invested in the alcohol trade, for obvious reasons) and that, with the wide-scale opposition from the rest of the population, the law was simply pointless and its cost of ineffectual enforcement was too high.

The main issue is that drugs can be harmful, and their legalisation and increased consumption will, obviously, cause more deaths than if their distribution is checked by law. In fact it has been suggested in the past that more people die each year from legal drugs than those who die from illegal ones, simply because the legal ones are readily available and its production is unrestricted! Just imagine how many people would die then if the currently illegal ones were made legal and ready to obtain at any time.

An interesting point raised is that drug-dealers are not of the petty bourgeois strata: they “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”. This sounds like they are actually in the business of buying commodities, in this case drugs, for the purpose of selling them to make a profit, and then buying more via the profit obtained. This sounds to me like the accumulation of capital is the deciding factor, so therefore these people are petty bourgeois - and the suppliers are certainly capitalists!

While it is said that the legalisation of drugs will come with its own problems, I imagine these problems will be far greater than the ones currently experienced. In any event, communists need to be focusing on the class nature of such demands instead of looking at them from the point of view of their supposed ‘safety’. The fact is that those with capital can choose to invest it in any sort of enterprise that they deem profitable, including the drug industry, legal or otherwise. The sale of these commodities is harmful to its buyers who are mainly the working class, and therefore we should be against such a thing for definite class reasons. We should be against the capitalist class, not asking the state to make their commodity somehow safer, when it is fundamentally unsafe!

Do we ask the state to make other harmful and restricted commodities ‘safer’ such as firearms? No, because by definition they are unsafe - the same way as a mind-altering drug that causes the human body massive and potentially fatal damage is unsafe. Do we ask the state to simply disarm itself of its military stockpile? No, because we understand that imperialist war cannot be resolved within capitalism: disarmament is an impossible, utopian dream under the current social system.

Drug abuse is a facet of alienation and economic inequality within capitalism, just as imperialist conflict is another facet of capitalism. Therefore we should attack the causes of the problem: capitalism itself.

Dan Read
Portsmouth

Climate change

Matt Sellwood is quite right to question the rather inadequate way in which I dealt with the resolutions on climate change that will be heard at Respect conference 2005 (Letters, November 3). My own brief comments were made even shorter by our (very capable!) editor and did not leave much substance.

The question of climate change certainly deserves proper examination and the CPGB’s Jack Conrad made a start last year (Weekly Worker March 18 2004). For reasons of space, I can only reiterate a few points.

1. Climate change is a natural phenomenon that has occurred throughout history. The earth’s temperature has in general been far higher in the past than it is today. For example, between 1100 and 1300, Europe experienced temperatures which were on average 0.7-1.6 degrees higher than today.

2. Climate is chaotic and subject to many interacting variables. It seems likely that human impact has played a certain role in the recent rise in temperatures, just as nature has with volcanic eruptions, sun spot cycles, etc. Because of its chaotic nature it is pretty difficult - if not downright impossible - to make accurate assumptions or predictions about the development and scale of the forthcoming change.

3. Climate change cannot be stopped. Even most of those scientists who believe in purely human-made reasons for climbing temperatures admit that if the world stopped production of all CO₂ right now, climate change could still not be halted.

4. By (falsely) presuming that this climate change is 100% man-made, there is a danger of blaming humanity per se for it. We have seen the inevitable requests for draconian measures to hold down working class consumption levels in the advanced countries and to keep the masses in the so-called ‘third world’ as little more than subsistence farmers.

5. But communists know that there is no solution to climate change under capitalism, as nature (just like all other social constructs) is subjected to the blind pursuit of profit. Of course, that does not mean that communists stand aside from political questions like climate change. By putting forward, and fighting for, a minimum programme of demands that could be realised under capitalism, we prepare the ground for the working class to become the hegemon of society.

6. Such a programme should not centre on the illusionary and idiotic ‘stop climate change’ demand, like the December 3 demonstration and the SWP-inspired campaign of the same name. Instead, it should include a whole series of measures that can address environmental problems: for example, the demand that firms responsible for environmental destruction have to bear the costs of cleaning the mess up.

7. But crucially, the programme of communists must focus on the self-emancipation of the working class: we demand workers’ control (not just nationalisation) over production, including energy production and nuclear plants. A clean, safe and genuinely ‘humanised’ environment is one of the most basic of human needs, so working class control of production would incorporate into its planning consideration the environmental effects of particular technologies and branches of industry.

8. Our aim is abolish capital (ie, unplanned production for the sake of profit) and replace it with the priorities of the working class (ie, planned, conscious production for the sake of human need). This process will entail humanity’s growing understanding and utilisation of the laws of nature, including the laws that govern weather. Our aim is to change aspects of our planet’s climate, but in a conscious, unalienated way that benefits humanity and does not vandalise our environment.

Tina Becker
Hackney

Human nature

There are many arguments used against those who advocate the socialist transformation of society. This we can put down to the relentless onslaught of the bourgeoisie and their capitalist system which is terrified of the revolutionary ideas of Marxism and the liberation of the working class.

One such argument that finds many supporters in the ranks of the unconscious working class is that of ‘human nature’. We must expose this argument as the falsification that it is, but as always we must be prepared, as Lenin said, to “patiently explain”.

The truth is, there is no such thing as a naturally ‘good’ or ‘bad’ person. Each person’s character and being is shaped by the many factors around him or her from the day of their birth. As Marx said, “conditions determine consciousness” and an extremely important factor in the conditions around a person would be the economic system around them.

This system that will determine if poverty exists, if they are employed or unemployed, if they are poor or wealthy. These are all vital factors and, combined, they shape and mould the people who live under them. Capitalism is a profit-based, greed-operated system, and therefore those existing within it will always repeat these qualities on various scales. From stealing a television to embezzling millions of pounds, these crimes are a reflection of society itself.

Matthew McLean
www.MarxismOnline.com

Protestants

My first objection to Liam O Ruairc’s article, ‘Some reflections on the protestant question’, is the language the author uses when referring to the protestant/unionist community (October 6). To describe the protestants as having a “weak political culture” is highly inflammatory and can only tend to alienate protestant workers. The lack of a political/social awareness is a problem across the whole of Britain and is more related to objective conditions. It is certainly not just limited to protestants in Northern Ireland.

The question of severing the link with the UK is also approached in the same manner and does not take account of the consequences of a withdrawal from the north. On the basis of a unified capitalist Ireland this would be a disaster. Just as catholic/republican workers do not accept the status quo or an independent Ulster, why should protestant/unionist workers accept a capitalist Ireland where they are a minority? Surely the author must understand their fear of the consequences of this.

The question should be approached purely on a class basis and should reject the old republican rhetoric of ‘convincing’ protestants that a republic is in their own interests. Socialists should provide the alternative to sectarian bigotry - which exists in both communities - and seek to unite the workers from either side with radical campaigns and policies that are totally divorced from sectarian agendas.

The Irish Republican Socialist Party position is a rehash of old (failed) policies, and the belief that they are acting in the interests of protestants is highly dubious, considering the past activities of the IRSP/Irish National Liberation Army. The appeal for socialism is correct, but, considering the polarisation of the communities, the demand for a republic will alienate the IRSP even further from protestant workers and do nothing for workers’ unity.

Mark Rose
North Belfast

Participatory

As a former member of the Workers Party of Ireland, I read Liam O Ruairc’s article on the history of that party with interest (November 3). I agreed with parts of his analysis, but felt that some of his descriptions of that history were oversimplified.

The history of the WP is a complicated topic that would require more than a brief letter to do justice to, so I only wish to correct a minor inaccuracy regarding the Irish Socialist Network, of which I am a member. The ISN is not a 1990s “split” from the WP. It was formed in 2001 by a number of people, all of whom had left the WP at various times in the previous decades. None of them were members of the WP at the time and the ISN now includes in its membership people who were never members of the WP.

The ISN is a participatory socialist and Marxist organisation based in Dublin and Belfast. The organisation’s website can be accessed at www.irishsocialist.net.

Colm Breathnach
Dublin

Gibberish

I have just seen Mike Macnair’s letter about the IRSP/INLA split and the attitude of the International Marxist Group (Weekly Worker October 20).

His reference to me was inaccurate. I did not advise the leadership of the IMG that “the military discipline and effectiveness of INLA volunteers was lower than that of the Provisional IRA” because I had no information that would allow me to make such a judgement and no expertise on such matters.

I was not by that time a member of the IMG leadership but a fairly nominal member of the Oxford branch. The branch committee asked me to speak at a public meeting with an IRSP representative, but I refused. I took the view that the Official IRA had started the feud with the INLA, but the INLA had carried it on and I wanted nothing to do with either of them. I was particularly disgusted by the murder of Billy McMillen, former o/c of the Officials in Belfast, whom I had known and respected.

I was, in any case, at the beginning of the process which led to a complete repudiation of my misguided support for Irish republicanism.

There seems to be an antiquarian interest nowadays in the far left of the 1960s and 70s; but also a willingness to make judgements without looking for evidence. I am still alive and in possession of most of my mental faculties. Why not talk to me before writing historical gibberish?

Bob Purdie
Oxford

Militant split

Ted Crawford as ever does the left a favour with his plain speaking (‘Support working class relief’, November 3). However, I would take issue with one point and correct another.

On the respective allegiances of the Struggle group in Pakistan and the Trade Union Rights Campaign Pakistan, he says: “They come out of the same stable after all. The split back in Britain in the early 1990s between Grant and Taaffe was, of course, faithfully copied by all the sections everywhere else.” This gives the impression that the split in the Militant and its international sections was the result of some minor sectarian quibble.

The split was actually over quite a fundamental issue. Grant/Woods on one side argued for the continued pursuit of the entrist tactic and a perspective of a counterrevolutionary ideological offensive as the Soviet Union look set to collapse, calling for the retrenchment and the consolidation of the Militant group, which was beginning to have a rapid membership turnover.

On the other side, Taaffe called for the open revolutionary party and a perspective of the ‘red 90s’, where it was believed Militant would fill the vacuum left behind by the communist parties, not only in Britain but throughout the world, with another spurt of activism.

The ideological schism that opened up in 1991 is best portrayed in Taaffe’s editorial, ‘A parting of the ways’, announcing the booting out of the Grant/Woods group: “From the lop-sided boom of the 1980s and the collapse of Stalinism, they [Grant/Woods] have falsely drawn the conclusion that the working class has shifted to the right and the prospect of mass movements for change has been postponed into the distant future.

“Militant, on the other hand, considers that we are entering a new period of crisis and explosive movements. Far from being confined to discussion circles, Marxism will be presented with even greater opportunities among wider and wider layers in the next few years” (Militant January 24 1992).

While this is a caricature of what Grant was actually saying, the past decade and a half has demonstrated he had a firmer grip on reality. The Taaffe group meanwhile began their self-destructive trajectory, well documented in this journal over the years.

The point of correction is that the split by the Struggle group from the new Taaffe international in 1991 was nothing to do with NGOs - that came later within the pro-Taaffe Pakistani group.

At the time of the Militant split in 1991, the Struggle group backed Grant, given the success they had, and which continues, with their work in the PPP. Taaffe’s only supporter was Farooq Tariq on the group’s executive, and 12 other rank and file members.

The NGO issue relates to Farooq’s later fall-out with Taaffe’s Committee for a Workers’ International. According to John Throne, former leader of Militant’s Irish section, on the Irish Indymedia site, Farooq’s plan to get funding from Swedish trade unions for his new Labor Party Pakistan was applauded by the CWI. However, when Farooq abstained on Taaffe’s initial moves that would lead to the expulsion of a fledgling minority faction in the US section led by Throne, suddenly accepting this money was considered beyond the pale by the CWI. And thus Farooq’s group was subjected to Taaffe’s by now serial ‘parting of the ways’ (no one is ever expelled from the CWI!).

All that ‘sectariana’ aside, I hope readers will continue to give money to whoever they trust to put it to good use, in the struggle to assist our fellow workers in the stricken regions.

Jim O’Mahony
email

US abortion

In the US, the slow destruction of reproductive rights continues little by little, ‘beneath the radar’. We await the decision of the new Supreme Court on a crucial case, which may reshape matters altogether. There is only one abortion clinic left in Mississippi, a state with third world levels of poverty and infant mortality. Some of the poorest women in the developed world can be faced with large bills and long drives to have any chance of a termination.

Marking something as a class issue gives it no popular traction whatsoever in the US. People do not identify themselves in class terms, unless they are super-rich or union members. In the absence of class-consciousness, appeals to class will move no one. Race and gender are more salient ways of dividing the world, however much one may regret the power of identity politics.

So the only way to protect reproductive rights in the US is to identify it as a ‘women’s issue’ in order to enlist middle class women voters. All too many young women who are not poor or living in the south do not realise that their lives may soon become hostage to changes in the law. One may also identify it as an issue of racial discrimination, which gives it both rhetorical and constitutional purchase, but this is unlikely to achieve the desired ends in the present political climate.

The sheer rhetorical power of the religious right, swaying huge sectors of the electorate to vote against their economic interests in favour of ‘cultural issues’, makes playing around with arguments between socialism and feminism entirely narcissistic. In much of the US, the appeal of family values is such that it can mobilise most of the white working class and increasing sectors of the black and Hispanic working class to vote for militantly anti-feminist candidates.

Mainstream religious groups will have to be enlisted to stand up for women’s rights even more strongly than they have done already, if the fundamentalist extremists are to be marginalised. For atheists to abandon the fight for women’s rights rather than ally with moderate Jews and christians would be a gross betrayal. There are times where a single issue should trump the desire for ideological purity.

Somehow, feminists, the left and the Democratic Party need to find ways to defuse the cultural appeal of ‘family issues’, which are defining politics in the US to an extent inconceivable in Europe. This is not going to be easy. Male politicians and activists everywhere have a long history of abandoning ‘women’s issues’ when it is convenient to do so. On the other hand, treating support for abortion rights as the only defining issue of political acceptability is proving both divisive and suicidal, playing into the hands of the right, which is happy to accept that definition.

In the UK, things are nothing like the way they are in the US, in part because parliamentarian politicians have accepted abortion as a matter of conscience rather than party. Moreover, there is not the sheer weight of organisation and finances arrayed against both abortion and contraception.

However, it may well be that there are lessons to be drawn for UK activists from the rather different US situation. For example, the fight for reproductive rights offers an opportunity to involve middle class women, as long as they are not treated with hostility and subjected to invective every time they appear. Their rights are threatened too, and they deserve inclusion.

If we cannot fight for the rights of people whom we detest, we do not deserve to win any rights for ourselves. Who knows? By fighting alongside other groups we may find that we have interests in common.

Here in the US, this may soon come to a head. Just as during the civil rights struggle, we may soon see a time when all people of good will will have to put their shoulder to the wheel, and not mind who is pushing alongside them.

David Harley
email

No conflict

Gabriela Hunt is correct to point out that women at present do not have control over their fertility nor are they equal.

However, I disagree that access to abortion provides ‘security’. Rather it has left the structures intact, and has enabled men to far more easily avoid their responsibilities. It has acted as a disincentive for social reform. It is cheaper for the state to provide abortions or enable the private sector to perform them rather than to provide childcare and support for poor families. Likewise it works to the convenience of bosses who wish to discriminate against pregnant women and not provide decent maternity leave from work.

Nobody wishes for a return to back-street abortions, nor believes women should be maimed or die. I am well aware that criminalisation will not solve the problems, hence I do not argue for it. What I do like to point out, however, is that the foetus is a living entity as well, although, living in the womb, it does not breathe air. Its rights are not “so-called”: every human, born or unborn, should have a right to exist and I long for the day when the rights of women will not be perceived as conflicting with those of unborn children.

Liz Hoskings
email

Waffle

Phil Kent concedes the bulk of my argument on historical questions like the obligation of communists to support struggles for national independence against colonial rule ‘unconditionally but critically’ (Letters, November 3). Though apparently my correct analysis of these historical antecedents of today colonial war in Iraq is too “literal-minded”. In what way he does not elaborate.

Regarding Iraq, he simply waffles. It would help if the CPGB were to openly proclaim that the expulsion of the imperialists, the independence of Iraq, is a progressive goal in itself, a basic democratic struggle that merits unconditional support. It is not necessary to prove that the particular force leading a struggle for independence is “progressive” in terms of its world outlook in order to merit support on democratic grounds. Only that the goal of national independence for which they are presently struggling has a democratic content.

That is elementary democracy - it was in fact one of the CPGB’s historical gurus, Hal Draper, who made the point that a struggle against national oppression is a democratic struggle even if it results in an undemocratic government. I believe comrade Draper was talking about Vietnam at the time. The same is true for Iraq. The reason the CPGB does not take this elementary democratic position is islamophobia and capitulation to its own ruling class.

Phil points out that I do not support Zarqawi. For him this in some way expresses a contradiction in my position. But it does not. I withhold support from Zarqawi for the same reason that the bulk of the genuine resistance in Iraq does: because Zarqawi is fighting, not to expel the imperialists, but to foment a sunni-shia conflict that can only help imperialism to maintain its control. This is counterposed to the activities of such seekers of Iraq unity across sectarian lines as the Association of Muslim Scholars, the Sadrists, etc. Notwithstanding their islamic-nationalist ideologies, the policy of uniting Iraqi across sectarian lines to struggle against the occupation gives their struggle a democratic content.

It is not good enough in the context of a struggle against the colonial rule of your ‘own’ government to simply proclaim abstractly that the defeat of one’s own country “would be preferable” to its victory. This kind of formulation is appropriate for an inter-imperialist war - but utterly insufficient when your ‘own’ ruling class’s army is oppressing a colonised people. Then the working class of the oppressing country has a duty of solidarity, to stand for the victory of the colonised people over the colonising army and communists should fight for this understanding in the working class. Only an uncompromising struggle along these lines by the socialists and communists of the oppressing countries can create the conditions where socialists can get a hearing among those under the jackboot of imperialism, who currently look to some form of nationalism, often with an islamic coloration, as a means to fight against oppression.

To refuse to take this position is indeed a form of liberalism - it is a capitulation to the demonisation of predominantly muslim peoples that is characteristic of the pro-war liberals, who justify the occupation itself on similar grounds that the CPGB gives for its non-support of the actually-existing struggle against the occupation. The centrist CPGB seeks to occupy a no-man’s land between the pro-war liberals and a genuinely Marxist, anti-imperialist position. It is not a communist party, but a left-liberal, pseudo-Marxist, islamophobic sect.

And that is the context of the nonsensical accusation that Respect is a “popular front”. I have repeatedly pointed out (to a deafening silence from the CPGB), that no popular front in history has ever fought for support for armed resistance to its own imperialist ruling class in a colonial war. Nor can one do so, since by its very nature, a popular front is a bloc with a wing of that ruling class aimed at heading off radical and potentially revolutionary challenges to the rule of its own bourgeoisie.

Since the CPGB also rejects such support for armed anti-colonial struggles in this situation, I can only observe that its own positions dovetail more closely with a potential popular front than anything advocated by Respect.

Ian Donovan
South London

Liberate

Hugh Kerr’s rallying cry for all left Labour Party members to “liberate” themselves lacks conviction. It also lacks a certain sense of reality (Letters, September 29).

I do not seem to remember saying I was a member of the Labour Party. I just wanted to defend the views of Graham Bash and also Alan Woods of marxist.com.

But still. You live in a lonely world - the world of trying to build this ‘new workers’ party’. So what is the progress report? How are all the members of the RMT and the FBU, who are the two main unions that have broken from the Labour Party, integrating themselves into this new workers’ party? Next time you sit at your Respect, Socialist Alliance or Socialist Party meeting, ask yourself: where are the working class?

The point you have to remember is that elections in the UK have repeatedly shown low turnouts. The working class are too busy with workplace issues to be bothered with elections. Our fight should be raising socialist consciousness on the factory floor rather than folding leaflets for the next council by-election. The day the left wake up to this fact will be the day I feel liberated.

Left members of the trade unions, I believe, are trying to address this fact. It is our job as Marxists to try and influence the left in the unions in a socialist direction.

Ian Woodland
email

Trotsky

Though the Kronstadt rebellion was led by socialists, not rightwing people, Trotsky suppressed it with brutality and bloodshed. He argued that under socialism trades unions should be fused with the state and labour should be militarised.

To me Trotsky’s views are more appropriate to national socialism than Marxist socialism.

Andrew Harvey
Carlisle

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