Weekly Worker 604 Thursday December 8 2005

Letters

Best omission

Lawrence Parker, in his account of the passing of George Best, omitted details of Best’s domestic violence (‘The Best of times’, December 1).

In many of the saccharine-coated obituaries (with the exception of The Guardian, which skirted around the issue), domestic violence was not mentioned, but his penchant for ‘birds, booze and football’ was.

Other examples are Paul Gascoigne, who showed his ‘sensitive side’ by crying pitifully when England were knocked out of the World Cup in 1990 and yet was violent to his partner. And then there’s Stan Collymore, who beat up his then partner, Ulrika Johnsson. This appalling incident was capitalised on by Baddiel and Skinner (then of Fantasy football fame) who trivialised it by making a vile joke. Unfortunately, the audience found it funny, as you could hear (predominantly) male laughter.

Football is mostly a male sport and footballers, who receive obscene amounts of money for their art, are perceived as role models by boys and men. So what message is being conveyed to supporters about domestic violence? Hitting a woman is okay?

The fact that Gazza is still seen as a bit of a ‘lovable rogue’ means the violence he committed against his partner is either justified or excused. Or, more worryingly, the onus is put on the woman, with unhelpful comments such as ‘why doesn’t she leave him?’ Yet the fact a man is hitting a woman is conveniently lost. Again, the fault is with the woman.

Unfortunately, men such as Best, Gascoigne and Collymore were never subject to a police investigation and held accountable for their actions. And I am not talking about a brief spell in the Priory.

Domestic violence is, in theory, a crime, but in reality it is treated as anything but and still perceived as a private affair. Men such as Best will continue to be glorified and glamorised as heroes, and the violence they dish out will be trivialised and excused. Surely this cannot continue?

Louise Whittle
email

Bonapartism

For years, the Weekly Worker has been silent on Venezuela, the CPGB seemingly content with its paper’s role as a leftwing gossip sheet.

Now, Nick Rogers has produced a rambling essay, notable only for its lack of originality and pitiful political analysis (‘Working class project for Spanish America’, December 1).

Rogers makes a snide little jibe at my recent articles in Solidarity, where I characterise Chávez as a Bonapartist figure and emphasise that the new trade union confederation (the National Union of Workers - UNT) and socialists such as the Party of Revolution and Socialism (PRS) should oppose him.

Rogers denies that Chávez is a Bonaparte, because he says: “Bonapartism describes a type of regime in which an essentially authoritarian figure exercises executive state power outside the norms of bourgeois constitutional rule.” Such gibberish cannot be allowed to pass for Marxist analysis.

Marx called Bonapartism “the rule of the praetorians” - a regime where the bourgeoisie, relinquishes political power to preserve its social power. Engels thought it was the normal form of bourgeois rule, in that “it promotes the great material interests of the bourgeoisie even against the bourgeoisie”. Trotsky said Bonapartism occurred where the bourgeoisie was compelled to tolerate the uncontrolled command of a military and police apparatus in order to preserve its possessions.

The historical example of Bonapartism I cited in Solidarity - Trotsky’s analysis of Mexico under Cardenas - took place within the realms of the Mexican constitution. One might make the same point about other forms, making Rogers’ objection merely juridical cretinism.

Rogers also denies Chávez is a Bonaparte essentially because the Venezuelan state has not yet conducted widespread repression of the working class. He overlooks the use of armed force during the floods in 1999 and against steelworkers last year - a warning of things to come when the class struggle sharpens. But, instead of preparing Venezuelan workers for an assault, Rogers prefers to console them by promoting Chávez’s constitutional propriety.

Rogers appears to believe that it is up to the Venezuelan bourgeoisie whether Chávez is a Bonaparte. At least my analysis has the merit of specifying which class Chávez represents - the interests of Venezuelan national capital. Rogers ignores the substantial links between Chávez and business, preferring to present him merely as a social democrat because he has got some ex-communist supporters. If Chávez is a social democrat, would Rogers favour socialists joining his Movement for a Fifth Republic (MVR) party, or voting for it? He describes the MVR as a “shambles”, although with some advice from the CPGB this could no doubt be sorted out.

But then there is hardly anything Marxist about Rogers’ piece. It has no grip on the potential tendencies of the regime and how it is likely behave towards the working class and its organisations through cooption or repression - this is exemplified by the short, passing references to the UNT and PRS. For all Rogers’ talk of the working class, there is little on the concerns or struggles of socialist workers, or on the form independent working class politics might take in Venezuela.

The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty believes Chávez is an opponent of Venezuelan workers; Socialist Appeal preach (not very) critical support. The CPGB needs to decide which side it is on.

Rogers finishes with a peculiar flourish. Instead of highlighting the issues for working class independence, he raises the unique demand for a constituent assembly and a “sixth republic” in Venezuela. No doubt consoled by some weighty concerns about economism or a mechanical analogy with Russia before 1917, his programme drops from the air with little basis for it in the previous 5,000 words.

In short, the Weekly Worker is better off remaining silent, or just sticking to chatter.

Paul Hampton
AWL

SA Australia

I am writing to comment on Greg Adler’s article on the Australian Socialist Alliance (‘DSP split over future’, December 1).

I joined the Socialist Alliance in January 2004; the New South Wales state conference elected me onto the national executive in April 2005 and the national conference in June 2005 did so too. My main work within the SA has been chairing the Green Left Weekly-Socialist Alliance liaison editorial board, which is charged with overseeing the production and publication of material relating to the SA within Australia’s leading leftwing newspaper, the Democratic Socialist Perspective-owned Green Left Weekly.

The main reason I joined the SA in January 2004 was the fact that it was taking concrete steps to transform itself from a loose ‘elections-only’ alliance of socialist groups into a multi-tendency socialist party, partly resembling the inspirational Scottish Socialist Party.

Following the national conference of the SA in June 2005 I decided to join the DSP. Why? The main reason was that my experience within the SA since January 2004, at branch, state and national level, clearly told me that the main engine driving the move towards the formation of a broad, united socialist party in Australia was the DSP. Indeed, the DSP had voted in December 2003 to begin putting its considerable assets at the disposal of SA, including a relationship with Green Left Weekly.

Week in, week out, I had ample opportunities to compare the approach of the DSP members working within the SA - diligent, practical, politically sophisticated, non-sectarian to a fault, friendly and often even charming - with the approach of the members of many of the smaller groups affiliated to the SA.

Indeed, the lack of actual commitment of other groups to the cause of founding a united socialist party in Australia manifested itself in an attack on the whole idea of a formal relationship between the SA and Green Left Weekly, which I frequently experienced at first hand as a participant in the editorial liaison board.

I hope that at least partially explains why I joined the DSP in June 2005. I had seen the DSP comrades attacked time and time again by sectarian bigots for their efforts in trying to establish a regroupment project in Australia, and, more than anything else, I felt a need to display some solidarity with them in their struggle.

Adler’s contribution failed to surprise me. It exhibits exactly the qualities that turned me off (many of) the smaller affiliates in the SA. For one thing, it is underhand. Adler has put into public circulation a set of quotes from documents that he knows were only intended for private circulation. He has done this without the permission of the writers he quotes and without the permission of the DSP. Moreover, by taking the quotes out of context he has presented a crude snapshot of the views of these writers that is incomplete and open to the grossest distortion.

Of course, Adler’s reply to this is to challenge the DSP to publish the internal discussion in full. By why should the DSP do that? Why should the DSP be forced into making public a private discussion just because some blinkered sectarian has illicitly published a distorted selection of quotes?

More importantly, Adler has attempted to create the impression that the outlook he tries to pin on the writers he mangles is that of the DSP.

It should be noted that Adler has pilfered and mangled these quotes from a pre-congress discussion. The DSP has yet to vote on the nature of its continuing relationship with the SA (this will take place at the DSP congress in early January). What gives Adler the right to attempt to undermine or pre-empt internal democratic processes taking place within the DSP?

In conclusion, it is perhaps worth reflecting on some figures. Adler is a member of the Workers League, which, as far as I am aware, has a membership of around three. Under the leadership of the DSP, and in the teeth of sustained sectarian obstruction from the likes of the Workers League, the SA has grown from an organisation consisting of a few hundred members belonging to the founding affiliates (of which the DSP was the largest) to a fledgling political party of around 1,000 members, the majority of whom are not in any of the founding affiliates and who clearly favour building a new multi-tendency socialist party.

Alex Miller
DSP

Spot on

Greg Adler’s assessment of the situation inside the Australian SA is pretty well spot on.

I have been a non-aligned member of the SA since its inception, but have given up going to meetings, as the DSP has totally dominated them. I also believe the DSP actively obstructs other people’s initiatives.

David Nicks
email

SA England

The letter from Democratic Socialist Alliance secretary Dave Spencer, published in the Weekly Worker last week, is a minor setback for non-sectarian socialist unity (December 1). It says that the DSA has decided it will “not take part” in the new Socialist Alliance. This was later clarified by leading DSA member John Pearson to mean that DSA members who are already members of the SA might not necessarily leave. So far no resignation letters have been received.

I have some sympathy with the DSA. They attended the SA conference and all their proposals were rejected. What else can we expect Trotskyists to do except walk away and declare they are not going to “take part” any more and then organise a split? But they would do better to ponder on why the conference rejected their proposals.

The DSA proposed the old SWP-designed SA constitution. Its limited aims were thought up in 2001 by the economistic mindset of the SWP leadership. The DSA proposal remained firmly in the past, as if stuck in some muddy, SWP constitutional quagmire. Yet the rhetoric in Dave Spencer’s letter claims the opposite. He says the new SA has “gone backwards to methods and politics which created the disaster of the old Socialist Alliance”. Nonsense. The new SA is new because it adopted a different set of aims and a new democratic structure, whilst the DSA dutifully dished up the SWP’s cold gravy and mouldy old custard.

It would be easy to show that the list of DSA grievances, put forward to justify not taking part, constitute some silly sectarianism. For example, the “sectarian behaviour” from “mainly the SWP and the SP within the SA”. Dave doesn’t seem to have noticed that neither these organisations have yet agreed to take part in the new SA. Why would their absence be a reason not to take part?

Silly sectarianism reaches its zenith in Dave’s ignorant comments about republicanism. The DSA are wondering if this could be the issue of principle on which to found their breakaway. The new SA included the demand for a democratic secular republic amongst its aims. The old SWP-designed constitution had many aims, but not that one. So opposition to the SA’s republican aims has become something for the DSA to cling to.

For eight months since the provisional SA adopted democratic republicanism as one of its aims the DSA failed to summon up the courage to openly argue against it. First they said it was not fair to include it because they wanted a long time to think about it. Then they said it was unfair because it was being forced on them by the Revolutionary Democratic Group (who, by the way, are a tiny minority of the SA). Then they decided that comrades had been hoodwinked by the RDG, who, like the infamous ‘reds’, had been hiding under the SA bed. None of this constituted a case against a democratic secular republic. It was simply anti-RDG sectarianism thinly disguised as hostility to republicanism.

Of course as a tactic it was doomed to fail for the simple reason that most comrades are interested in the merits of a case and, unless they are sectarians, don’t give a toss who is putting it forward. The DSA’s argument that republicanism should be opposed because it is promoted by mad, bad and dangerous people cuts no ice.

If the DSA want to make a “fetish” or an “obsession” of opposing militant republicanism that is up to them. Dave hinted that they are going to take a “principled” stand by making it one or even the main reason they will not “take part” in the SA. That would be an obvious and serious departure from democracy and socialism. Of course it is constitutional monarchy, not the democratic republic, that socialists oppose on principle. It would be bizarre if the DSA split because republicanism was included in the SA’s aims.

These comrades have no justifiable reason to refuse to take part in the SA. They should summon up the courage to stay. Running away or trying to manufacture splits will get them nowhere except damage the cause of socialism and hence the working class. They should set aside their sectarianism, reconsider their position and join the rest of us in rebuilding the SA.

Steve Freeman
South London

Robbing the soil

Jack Conrad offers us a succinct and pertinent analysis of those issues surrounding the climate-change debate, issues that are customarily suppressed in the bourgeois press (‘A world to save! A world to win!’, December 1).

While I agree with comrade Conrad’s critique of the manifestly bourgeois and reformist nature of the current crop of environmental pressure groups, I was nevertheless alarmed by his apparent dismissal of the need for population management, as it was formally expressed in Green Party policy (however ‘Malthusian’ its articulation), and his attempt to equate the fulfilment of this with Nazi genocide. One wonders whether in Conrad’s legitimate eagerness to reveal the reactionary complexion of green movements, he might have overlooked an issue of great significance that cannot be ignored by socialists.

The UN population division’s current calculations predict that world population will grow to exceed nine billion by 2050. Although current levels of environmental despoliation have their source in what Conrad describes as capital’s “mode of destructive reproduction”, the implications of uncontrolled population growth and the potential effects of this on planetary resources cannot be ignored. As Marx stated in Capital, “every advance in capitalist agriculture is an advance in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but also of robbing the soil”.

Although communism will rid us of those forms of exploitation exemplified in the former, any scientifically and rationally planned society (which, I assume, any successful communist society will be) must not ignore issues of population expansion that risk causing a failure to achieve the abolition of the latter.

Dr Gordon Downie
Cardiff

Oops

In the print version of my article, ‘A world to save! A world to win!’, there was a silly error introduced during last-minute editing - a bad habit of mine (especially bad as it was about 4 o’clock in the morning and our comrade doing the layout has to do a full-time day job).

The text reads: “Pangea, which existed some 225 million years ago, joined together the bulk of today’s land masses in one supercontinent which permanently occupied tropical latitudes.”

Instead of “permanently” it should say “primarily”. In any discussion on climate change, to describe any particular configuration of the continents - or climate regime - as “permanent” is obviously daft.

Jack Conrad
London

Shifty defence

Peter Manson’s latest defence of the CPGB’s islamophobic critique of Respect owes more to New Labour spin than any kind of Marxist exposition (Letters, December 1). He takes fragments from my letters in recent weeks and attempts to elide over the differences of principle that divide us to make out that I am in some way moving in the direction of the CPGB’s nonsense.

Sorry, Peter, you are either indulging in wishful thinking or simply using a conjurer’s sleight of hand to try to fool your readers into ignoring your obvious break from the communist position of unconditional support for struggles against imperialist oppression. I will leave it to the Weekly Worker readership to judge whether, as Peter claims, I have ‘conceded’ any element of the CPGB’s critique of Respect - my guess is that many of his own comrades will be embarrassed at the dishonesty and spin of his quotation-mangling and tendentious extrapolations. But, in any case, you do not win political arguments this way, Peter - you just make yourself look shifty. I prefer to stick to the differences of principle and leave such flummery to the CPGB’s spin-doctors.

Despite flaws that can be pointed to in the politics and practice of the Socialist Workers Party, this organisation today is qualitatively to the left of all the fragments of Shachtmanism (including both Matgamnaites and Conradites) that are up in arms against its ‘heresy’ in allying with elements of petty bourgeois islamic radicalism who have become open to collaboration with the working class left due to the resurgence of imperialist militarism and colonial conquest that the ‘war on terrorism’ signifies.

Such instances of collaboration of the Marxist left with petty bourgeois (not bourgeois) radical forces is by no means outside the communist tradition - from the Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East in 1920 to the most striking example, the coalition government of the Russian Bolsheviks with the eminently petty bourgeois Left Socialist Revolutionaries in October 1917, attempts to draw in new forces have been a frequently recurring feature of serious mass struggles led by Marxists.

Peter suggests that Respect’s position of supporting Iraqi resistance to occupation is meaningless and then extrapolates from this odd reasoning to argue his equally bizarre thesis that Respect is a popular front. In my view, this alliance with George Galloway, the principled anti-imperialist and left reformist, and the attempt to draw alienated muslims who reject jihadism towards a working class project, marks a significant step to the left by the SWP, compared to some of the emphases that characterised the organisation during the cold war.

Part of a resolution agreed at the Respect conference reads: “Respect calls for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. We recognise that the main enemy in the regions is US and British imperialism and we are on the side of the 82% of Iraqis who in a recent opinion poll called for the troops to go. We do not accept the notion of a third pole between the occupation and those resisting it in Iraq. We do not equate islamism with imperialism. We defend Iran against the threat of imperialist attack.

“We support those campaigning to bring troops out. We support groups like the National Foundation Conference, which unites religious and secular forces, and trade unions, parties and other organisations which are trying to achieve an end to imperialist rule. We do not make our support conditional on those groups being secular, but recognise that there will be a whole range of religious and political forces campaigning to this end.”

The position laid out may not be ‘pure’ revolutionary Marxism, but it is certainly quite close to it. Both in its rejection of third-campism, and its explicit defence of Iran against the threat of imperialist attack and conquest, this is considerably superior to the politics of the Conradites and Matgamnaites - and in my view, given the greater weight of third-campists in the Socialist Alliance, superior to anything likely to be adopted by the old SA.

Peter’s attempt to argue that these kinds of positions have no significance are utterly dishonest - in reality he and the CPGB’s leadership are hostile to these positions from a semi-Matgamnaite, third-campist standpoint. His sophistry around the question of Zarqawi, US imperialism’s ‘al Qa’eda’ propaganda scarecrow in Iraq, is yet another example of this craven political method.

Once again, Peter feebly tries to foist this provocateur on those who support Iraqi resistance to occupation, despite the fact that leading elements of the resistance (such as the AMS and the Sadrists, for instance) themselves denounce his grouping as provocateurs. The fact that this grouping issues ‘claims’ of responsibility for every imperialist setback inflicted by the genuine resistance and the US propaganda machine then jumps into action to say, ‘These men were killed by al Qa’eda’, thus associating the Iraqi resistance with the 9/11 attack on the US, is one significant reason why the genuine resistance, both sunni and shia, regard Zarqawi’s outfit as a tool of US imperialism.

As part of his attempt to obfuscate matters, Peter tries to make out that all criticisms of, or disagreements with, aspects of the SWP’s political practice equate to implicit endorsement of the CPGB’s reactionary critique of Respect. They do not. If all forms of flawed politics are the same, then what are we to say of the CPGB’s promotion of attacks on Respect by the pro-imperialist islamophobe, Peter Tatchell? What are we to say of its defence of him against charges of islamophobia, without even mentioning that he now supports the occupation of Iraq for the foreseeable future at least? Incidentally, Tatchell also demands an armed United Nations intervention in Sudan!

Given the CPGB’s abhorrence of any implication that sections of the ‘gay movement’ may be implicated in bigotry against muslims and other oppressed minorities, why does he not even mention in his November 24 report of the Respect conference the scandal of anti-immigrant, anti-muslim rantings appearing in no less a publication than the Lesbian and Gay Humanist, which even elements of its own angry sponsors were forced to concede were reminiscent of the BNP? Given that this issue was an important component of the debate on the gay question at the conference, this omission amounts to self-censorship for opportunist political reasons.

The CPGB is extremely shrill in its denunciation of any hint of backwardness among muslims on the question of gay rights, yet covers up and apologises for reactionary sentiments among gays.

Ian Donovan
London

Self-appointed

Ian Donovan (Letters, December 1) is being both evasive and dishonest. Take his refusal - or is it an inability? - to answer my perfectly straightforward question.

Ian, you endlessly repeat that the CPGB is ‘islamophobic’. If this is a serious charge - and not irresponsible mud-slinging - would you support a crown prosecution of the CPGB under Blair’s religious hatred legislation? Legislation which, of course, you - the SWP and the Respect popular front - support?

He resorts to the usual method employed by opportunists - attack the messenger. The question is “hysterical”, it is “self-pitying”, it is “self-indulgent”, he says. No, comrade, given your position on the bill, it is a perfectly legitimate enquiry.

Then there is Argentina in 1982 and Iraq in 1991. In both cases the CPGB refused to take sides with either of the combatants. We do the same when it comes to the forces of neo-fundamentalist islam in Iraq today who aim to impose a theocracy along the lines of the Taliban or the Iranian mullahs. As well as opposing US-UK forces - as we do - they are also engaged in a reactionary civil war.

Comrade Donovan says that even a kindergarten child would spot the difference. No part of Argentina was occupied in 1982, no part of Iraq in 1991. Yet, as everyone knows, the ‘Malvinas are Argentina’s’, claimed the military regime of Galtieri … and much of the left in Britain. Ditto when it came to Kuwait, Iraq’s ‘13th province’  … and general Schwartzkopf’s troops did penetrate deep into Iraqi territory.

Such quibbles aside, comrade Donovan knows the point: in every case there was a war. And the CPGB supported the third, working class, camp. In other words the CPGB is being consistent. Fact.

Finally, comrade Donovan claims that he deserted our ranks after an “islamophobic mini-witch-hunt” last year. As far as I know comrade Donovan has not converted to islam. But were muslims or anyone else for that matter really “witch hunted” inside the CPGB? Did anyone suffer gerrymandering? Did anyone suffer exclusion or suffer from a CPGB-orchestrated hate campaign? No, no and no … it’s all in comrade Donovan’s fevered imagination.

Donovan left the CPGB without any kind of principled fight … and despite his modest ego, he was not subjected to a “mini-witch hunt”.

Sadly since then he has drifted further and further to the right. Now, as a self-appointed apologist for the SWP’s criminal opportunism, he views himself honour bound to provide it ‘left’ cover on issues such a gay rights, abortion, republicanism, open borders, immigration controls, working class socialism, workers’ representatives on an average worker’s wage, secularism and other ‘shibboleths’ that the SWP once formally stood for and now finds inconvenient in Respect.

Sad, but true.

Enso White
London

WWII duty

I don’t think I am alone on the left in agreeing with David Douglass’s assumption that “there is a qualitative difference between conditions for workers and their political aspirations under a bourgeois democracy and those under a fascist dictatorship”.

However, the conditions which give rise to fascism are first and foremost the result of the defeat of the organs of proletarian independence by a national proletariat’s ‘own’ bourgeoisie. Does comrade Douglass then claim that the method the working class should employ to gain political power in the UK is to subordinate the battle for extreme democracy to the maintenance of a liberal democracy? I think this conclusion is very weak.

If workers fight fascism they should not do so under the leadership of the bourgeoisie. During World War II the intent of the ‘Allies’ was not to fight fascism, whatever their propaganda states, but to guarantee the free flow of British and US capital into a region that was being dominated by German finance capital. Not to recognise this puts you in the same league as the Fabians and social pacifists.

Sachin Sharma
Preston

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