Letters
Infantile yarn
Barbara Dorn spins a fascinating yarn about the history of the Bolshevik faction - a narrative only slightly undermined by a distinct lack of support from one Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Letters, June 11).
Keen readers of his famous pamphlet Leftwing communism: an infantile disorder can only wonder at what the International Bolshevik Tendency comrades make of it. This book was, after all, published in 1920 - long after the moment that Dorn and her comrades mark as Lenin’s Damascene conversion to permanent revolution.
It is also not a minor work, but one of Lenin’s most extensive interventions on the question of strategy and tactics, one widely cited (if less widely understood) in the communist tradition. Finally, it is notable for its extensive treatment of precisely those parts of Bolshevik Party history that comrade Dorn, were she a Russian comrade before World War I, would have found somewhat contentious.
Presumably, then, we should expect thoroughgoing self-criticism from Lenin? Not so: “The entire history of Bolshevism,” he writes, “both before and after the October Revolution, is full of instances of changes of tack, conciliatory tactics and compromises with other parties, including bourgeois parties!” And to refuse to engage in such tactics and compromises in the much harder international struggle - “is that not ridiculous in the extreme?”
We cannot take everything Lenin wrote for good coin, of course, and this is precisely the period of war communism and the resultant bureaucratisation of the Bolsheviks, which would be later used to such devastating effect by Stalin. I cite it to indicate to the comrades that, as far as Lenin was concerned, alliances with bourgeois parties are not deduced from the revolutionary potential of the bourgeoisie as a class, but by the demands of the situation on the proletarian party, in relation to the overall strategy pursued, and nothing else. Whether one follows Lenin’s earlier political emphases or the later demands for ‘iron discipline’, on this point he is utterly consistent and crystal-clear: anyone who rules out a tactic in advance is no Bolshevik.
On the question of a deal with the Cadets, what Lenin opposed in 1906 was a strategic alliance, as proposed by the Mensheviks. But Dorn neglects to mention that the Bolsheviks did strike a tactical deal with the Cadets in the duma elections, which resulted in the Bolsheviks winning all six seats in the workers’ curia. And, of course, Lenin referred to this approvingly in Leftwing communism.
One last note for Glyn Matthews (Letters, June 11). No, comrade, I did not say that there were no polarising issues in contemporary British politics - just that the Iraq war was not one any longer. The rest of his letter follows from this misapprehension and is thus wholly redundant. It is time the inhabitants of Planet Matthews learnt basic reading comprehension.
James Turley
Plymouth
Above class
I find it amazing that a communist organisation like the CPGB would support the ‘above class’ American bourgeois slogan of the right to bear arms. In a class society this would mean the arming of both the counterrevolutionary and revolutionary elements, giving them an equal right to bear arms.
This slogan is devoid of political and historical class content, and is completely inappropriate to capitalist society today, ridden as it is with organise criminal gangs and-the rise of gun crime. Thus support for a general right to bear arms is the height of irresponsibility and simultaneously a descent into anarchism by the individuals who are putting this forward.
Marxism cannot be reduced to repeating the slogans of great authorities from the past, be they bourgeois or communist. Marxism must base itself on society as it is today, not on what it was yesterday. As far as the right to bear arms in a capitalist society is concerned, this should be advocated only in relation to the working class in the form of militias under the democratic control of organisations of the same class.
I hope the CPGB, if it is a genuine communist organisation, will reconsider its position and drop this American bourgeois slogan, which belong not only to another place, under different conditions, but more importantly to another time.
Tony Clark
London
Lost the plot
I really do think the CPGB, and Mike Macnair in particular, lost the plot over the recent elections. I remember reading Mike’s suggestion of how to vote for the “idea of a workers’ party” whilst listening to Radio Five Live (‘Against rightist populism’, June 4).
The debate on the radio used words like ‘hatred’, ‘despicable’ and ‘greed’ to describe workers’ attitudes to the major political parties and Labour in particular. Of course, ‘workers’ party’ was not an idea that any of the phone-in callers tended to associate with Labour. A Labourite mentality often uses extreme spin in mentioning the unions’ ties and financial support for Labour, but not the ties and finance from capitalists. In the past, the tactic of voting Labour included the essential element of Labour claiming and pretending to be socialist. The idea was to put them to the test of office to prove their fundamentally bourgeois nature. Now you try and convince people that the Labour Party really is a type of workers’ party in order to get them to vote for it!
While the CPGB put conditions on a nationalist vote for No2EU, why didn’t you put any conditions on your support for nationalist-inclined strikes? You could have supported them on the condition that no foreigners were kicked out of their jobs in order to be replaced by Brits.
No-one I know who voted for the Socialist Labour Party knew anything about their actual party set-up or what they thought about Europe. It was for the idea of an independent, “socialist” and “labour” party that they voted and I’ve not heard anyone suggest the SLP vote reflects the public’s views on party-building and so on. The only reason I can imagine for not even mentioning the idea of the Socialist Labour Party would be if you had an odd desire to deliberately ‘overlook’ left parties in exactly the same way that the SWP deliberately overlook the CPGB.
Bob Harding
Norwich
Rejoinder
As someone who has unsuccessfully applied to rejoin the Labour Party on two occasions over the last five years, I was, at first, reluctant to follow the CPGB Provisional Central Committee’s line and vote Labour in the June 4 elections.
The first time I tried to rejoin Labour, I received a letter from the membership secretary of my local constituency party saying that I would have to be interviewed by a three-man panel. The second time I tried to rejoin, I received a letter from the secretary of the national constitutional committee giving six reasons why my local branch did not want me as a member. The NCC letter detailed my political history since I became politically active in 1978.
So readers can see from the above why I was reluctant to follow the CPGB line on June 4. However, after much thought, I fully agree with the PCC.
This conclusion has been based on the reaction of people I know to a report in a local newspaper that I was advocating socialists in my locality vote Labour in the Euro elections. These include people who are politically aware, local Labour Party members and just people who know me from reading the numerous letters I have written to my two local papers.
Whilst I am unable to rejoin the party, my stance of advocating a Labour vote has opened up new avenues for contact with members, both active and inactive, of my local Labour Party. As such, I have, in the words of Jack Conrad, been able to aim an arrow at the weakest point of my local Labour Party, by advocating that its parliamentary candidate should, if elected, live on a skilled worker’s wage.
In my opinion, the demand for MPs on a skilled worker’s wage is the best way to capitalise on the MPs’ expenses scandal and develop the work of communists within the Labour Party and trade unions.
John Smithee
Cambridgeshire
Still here
I really enjoy a bit of lazy journalism, as exemplified by Sarah McDonald’s article ‘End of SSP dream’ (June 4). Sarah could have saved the Weekly Worker some much needed revenue by writing her piece in the comfort of her own home; she would have spoken to the same number of Scottish Socialist Party members as she did when visiting Scotland - ie, none.
Sarah had plenty of opportunity to speak with our comrades - on the May Day marches in Glasgow and Edinburgh, in the pubs in Glasgow after May Day, or even when she tentatively bought a copy of our paper, Scottish Socialist Voice, at a campaign stall in Glasgow. As somebody who was in Scotland to report on the European elections, she could have attended one of our election rallies, held in Edinburgh, Dundee and Glasgow. She would have heard a French comrade from the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste and parents from Save Our Schools speaking, as well as our Euro candidates. Instead, Sarah chose to spend her time with the tiny Committee for a Workers’ International and attend No2EU events.
Undoubtedly, the former gave her the ‘inside’ story of the looming and imminent demise of the SSP. That is their opinion but, for the sake of the article, perhaps a bit of effort from Sarah was required to ensure balance. Sarah clearly doesn’t understand the political situation and the state of the left in Scotland; understandable, I suppose, as she doesn’t live here.
The lazy journalism displayed by Sarah extends to her description of ‘Make greed history’ as “sickeningly moralistic”. She clearly hasn’t been on the website and read what it contains. The makegreedhistory.org site, combined with our election broadcast, was the most anti-capitalist, socialist message and campaign presented by any organisation in Britain in these elections.
The vote the SSP achieved - over 10,000 people voted for radical socialism - was obviously down on the last European election, but this is perhaps understandable in view of what has happened in Scotland since then, with elements of the left in Scotland splitting from the SSP. However, we remain proud that for over a decade the SSP has given the whole working class of Scotland the opportunity to vote for socialist candidates by managing to stand in every national election.
We, unlike Sarah, have no oracular powers or crystal balls and cannot predict the future, but the SSP is still campaigning and looking to the future with increasing optimism. If the SSP is doomed, as Sarah gleefully points out, then our obituary will make heavy reference to our success in uniting the disunited left in Scotland, making socialist ideas part of the mainstream (at least for a period) - illustrated by the 130,000 votes we achieved in 2003 - and providing an innovative approach to left regroupment that has been used as an example in Europe and further afield.
Sarah is welcome to contact the SSP next time she is in Scotland. We’ll take her on the bevy and we won’t hold her inaccurate and misleading article against her - honest!
Steve Hudson
Glasgow
Liberal lessons
The Socialist Workers Party’s “Open letter to the left” raises many questions (‘Yes, comrades: “Time to fight back together”’, June 4). What is on their mind this time? As an ex-member of the SWP and a full-time cynic when it comes to their methodology, I expect they want another front organisation that will hopefully gain them recruits (all but the most sheep-like of whom they will ultimately fail to retain) and a chance to ignore the rest of the left rather than engage in a serious process of rapprochement and party-building.
But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, take their assertion that they don’t have all the answers as an honest admission that they are clueless (quite likely), and set ourselves to thinking about how to achieve the unity of party elements.
Surely, what we need is for the party to be one that tolerates internal debate, protects the right to form factions and secures the right of minorities to exist, and in which all comrades have a part to play in decisions, and that we would want the party to be able to act effectively.
Well, comrades of the SWP, what kind of party do you want to be in - the opportunist sect or the principled revolutionary party?
John Masters
Hertfordshire
Notts happening
The call from the SWP, No2EU and CPGB to work together woke me from my political slumber this week, so I went along to the latest Notts Stop the BNP meeting in Nottingham.
The meeting, billed as ‘public’, drew a crowd of 38 people - mainly from the Socialist Party in England and Wales and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, but with representatives from the Labour Party, Unite Against Fascism and a similar campaign from Derby. Speaking were SPEW’s Gary Freeman and the AWL’s Pete Radcliff. Also in the audience was Jean Thorpe, the SPEW member who was on the No2EU list that did so abysmally in the Euro elections in the East Midlands.
So we had there some of the key players in the local Socialist Alliance from the beginning of the decade. With the mood on the left now swinging towards forming some kind of leftist party, this seemed the perfect opportunity to debate that.
Alas, this didn’t happen. Although comrade Radcliff alluded to the fact that a new alliance was needed and not only in the run-up to elections, there was scarcely any time to debate these questions, as cleverly picked speakers from the floor dominated. Comrade Tom Unterrainer was somewhat hectoring in his rallying cry. The SPEW speaker gave the usual platitudes and ended by saying that the UAF had “wasted a good dinner” by throwing eggs at Nick Griffin. High politics was hardly the order of the day.
Comrade Jamie from the Anarchist Federation questioned why, at last year’s Red, White and Blue festival, organised by the BNP in nearby Amber Valley, there was little or no coordination between Antifa, Notts Stop the BNP and UAF, who, lest we forget, brought along Weyman Bennett basically to piss on everyone else’s parade. Jamie’s point was almost universally agreed with.
I made a brief mention of the recent SWP letter and referred to the fact that most people in the room had worked together in the Socialist Alliance to achieve promising, if modest, results. I was then referred to as an SWP member by the comrade from SPEW who made the egg comment.
I think you can see where I’m going here. The beauty of the Socialist Alliance in Nottingham was that this sort of stage-managed meeting didn’t happen. There was time for debate. Admittedly, this was a ‘public’ meeting, but why hide debate away from the public? Surely now, more than ever, we need debate and openness and honesty, not stage-managed events that tell us little that we don’t already know and which lead not only the fight against the BNP down a dead end, but also that of left unity.
Pete Radcliff has showed himself time and time again to be an excellent political fighter who can bring the left together in Nottingham. What he, his organisation and those in SPEW need to do now is put aside petty sectarianism and join in the debate for a new workers’ party.
Sam Metcalf
Nottingham
Bygones
Speaking as somebody who campaigned for the communist list, I must nonetheless observe that Toby Abse’s claim - in his basically correct report on the European elections in Italy - that Marco Ferrando’s Partito Comunista dei Lavoratori and Franco Turigliatto’s Sinistra Critica “excluded themselves” from “a unity project” (ie, Rifondazione + PdCI = communist list) strikes one as partly metaphorical and partly false (‘Disaster for radical left’, June 4).
In 2006 and 2007 respectively, Ferrando and Sinistra Critica were expelled with infamy from Rifondazione at the instigation of a Bertinotti eager to ingratiate himself with his elders and betters within the centre-left coalition then in power. The badness of Bertinotti’s record as parliament’s speaker (2006-2008) could not possibly be overstated. He is currently giving interviews all over the place to the effect that communism died back in 1968 when Soviet tanks entered Prague. All this, of course, now that he ’s secured a princely state pension gained as his persona of communism’s veritable incarnation.
Ferrando’s PCL’s and Sinistra Critica’s ‘once bitten, twice shy’ attitude towards Rifondazione and the extremely moderate PdCI are therefore only too understandable. And yet, I hasten to add, as there are good reasons to take seriously Rifondazione’s left turn last summer, let’s unite the anti-capitalist left, let bygones be bygones and put class struggle back on Italy’s political agenda.
Alfonso Geraci
Palermo
Severed
Tony Greenstein is getting really confused about nationality and nationhood (Letters, June 11). He claims that Britain has no national minorities, thus implying that there is a single British nation. This would be startling news in Edinburgh and Cardiff. Britain is, in effect, a multinational state - encompassing the English national majority and at least two Celtic minority nations. The first ever official international football match was the one played in 1872 between Scotland and England.
He seems to look forward to the “unification of the people of Palestine, Hebrew and Palestinian”, by which he apparently means the creation of a new single Palestinian nation. This betrays another confusion. The really existing Palestinian nationality is Palestinian-Arab, a component part of the greater Arab nation. The Hebrews are not Arabs, but have a distinct language and culture. So, by advocating a future single Palestinian ‘nation’, comrade Greenstein is in effect advocating the severing of the Palestinian Arabs from the greater Arab nation, or a forcible Arabisation of the Hebrews. Not a very progressive notion.
Moshé Machover
email
Not a right
The real question is not whether the Jews in Israel constitute a new nation; this, after all, is a secondary question. Even those who think that the Israelis are a nation can agree that the Israelis do not have the right to self-determination.
The real question is, do we as Marxists recognise the right of self-determination of settler colonialists - a right that negates the right of self-determination of the Palestinian nation? Moshé Machover wrote: “... the claim that ‘states and nations usually correspond’ is patently false. There is hardly a state in existence that does not have one or more national minority; and in this respect Israel is no exception” (Letters, June 4).
This is a very peculiar argument. Are the Palestinians a national minority? In reality, they have always been the majority. The Palestinian citizens of Israel, plus those in the West Bank and Gaza, and the refugees, are about twice the number of the Jews who live in Israel.
The argument that national consciousness is not a determining factor in the case of occupied and deposed people may convince those who support the right of self-determination of the Jews in Israel, but it contradicts the revolutionary support for oppressed Palestinians and, in particular, it leads to the denial of the return of the refugees that Zionists have expelled time and again since 1947 in order to constitute themselves as a majority in the land they have stolen. If the refugees return, the Israeli Jews will be a minority in the country.
Dealing with the black national question in the USA at the time when many blacks migrated to the industrial belt, Trotsky wrote in 1933: “We do, of course, not obligate the negroes to become a nation; if they are, then that is a question of their consciousness ... We say: if the negroes want that then we must fight against imperialism to the last drop of blood, so that they gain the right, wherever and how they please, to separate a piece of land for themselves … That in the overwhelming negro territory whites have also existed and will remain henceforth is not the question and we do not need today to break our heads over a possibility that some time the whites will be suppressed by the negroes” (‘The negro question in America’ Prinkipo February 28 1933).
Thus, for Trotsky, the question of the consciousness of the American blacks was the determining factor. In his biography on Stalin, Trotsky criticised very strongly Stalin’s position on the national question, as it neglected to see the consciousness of oppressed nations as the most important factor. Lenin recognised this democratic right of oppressed nations that do not constitute (according to Stalin’s dogma) nations, and he called them ‘small nations’.
Trotsky’s argument is diametrically opposed to Machover, who brings in the question of the US and Australia rather than of nations oppressed by imperialism. Furthermore, Machover ignores the fact that at the time the Americans fought the war of independence they already had national consciousness. Israel has existed for more than 60 years and still the Israeli Jews do not have an Israeli national consciousness, but rather a mystical Zionist dogma claiming that the Israeli Jews are part of a mysterious Jewish world nation.
Machover, it seems, believes that the majority of the Israelis, unlike the ruling class of Israel, do not believe in Zionism. In reality, only a small minority of liberals refer to themselves very quietly as non-Zionists, while the masses of the Jewish colonial settlers see themselves as hard Zionists. In a poll conducted in Israel at the time US president Obama called for an end to the expansion of West Bank settlements, a majority of Israel Jews told him to shut up and demanded that the settlements be expanded.
Machover’s argument, it seems, does not deal with the class nature of a settler colonialist society that was formed at the time of the decay of capitalism. A large part of the Zionist colonialists will fight with weapons in their hands against the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, not to speak of the right of return for the refugees.
The real power that can change the Middle East and solve the national question is the super-exploited working class in the Arab countries, Iran and Turkey - and the Palestinian masses have been playing a very revolutionary role in this struggle. Israeli Jews and, in particular, workers who recognise that Israel is a death trap for the Jews must join this struggle. Of course, what is still missing is a revolutionary working class consciousness that can develop only in the class struggle itself.
There is no way to bridge the right to self-determination of the Israeli Jews and the Palestinians. Lenin was very correct when he stated that we support the right to self-determination only of oppressed nations. Israel is not only an oppressive state, but an imperialist state, and we cannot support the right to self-determination for an imperialist population without lending support to the imperialist bourgeoisie. Just think of the French resistance during the German occupation. Many of the same members of the underground later fought in Vietnam and Algeria for the French empire.
While Israel is not identical to the apartheid regime (in some respects it is worse), it is essentially the same kind of society. In South Africa the only correct demand was a black republic, not two states or a black and white republic.
On this question, Trotsky wrote: “Of course, revolutionaries who oppose the two-stage theory so common among reformists and nationalists struggle for a black workers’ state. The same is true for Palestine, where the only solution is a Palestinian workers’ state as a transition to socialism” (The agrarian and national questions 1935).
Yossi Schwartz
International Socialist League, Israel
Not oppressed
Certainly, all oppressed peoples have a right to self-determination. But I think we should really question whether the Jewish people are still oppressed.
The Nazis certainly oppressed the Jewish people, but the holocaust had long past before the Jewish state was formed. If there is any danger of a future holocaust, the existence of the Israeli state will probably be one of the major reasons for it. The Israeli state may have helped Jewish refugees after World War II who had no place to go to, but the religious fanatics from Brooklyn who go to Israel today scarcely need a refuge.
Jewish culture (and Yiddish culture) should be defended, just as Palestinian culture should be defended. But culture does not necessarily need a state. Martin Buber, an early Zionist, believed in a Jewish culture centre to be built in Palestine, but opposed a Jewish state. The Jewish Bund advocated Jewish culture, but also opposed a Zionist state. Many of them died fighting the Nazis in the Warsaw uprising.
Earl Gilman
email
Orangemen
Last Saturday’s United Against Fascism rally against the BNP in Leeds was attended by hundreds of people. The highest-profile speaker was Weyman Bennett of the SWP central committee.
There was one major interruption during the rally with some identifiable members of the BNP turning up to see what was going on from the periphery and a couple of artists turning up in Ku Klux Klan masks and dress (humorous, but badly timed, as only a few people in the rally knew that these people were just pulling a stunt and they were only identified when the police pulled their masks off and dragged them away from protesters).
The speeches from the platform tended to be of a sentimentalist and moralistic nature. Only comrade Bennett mentioned the working class. This was in reference to the impact upon working class communities and the poison of the BNP infecting those communities. One speaker seemed to suggest that the BNP were somehow imported from outside Yorkshire. No mention was made of the Conservative Party, the state or, of course, capitalism.
The police had stated to the organisers that a march through Leeds city centre would not be allowed. However, UAF did show a level of militancy in refusing to abide by this. We marched through the city to a final rally outside the BBC building. But this was quite cleverly directed by the police. Only half an hour after we had been dispersed by UAF organisers under police pressure, there was a convergence of the Orange Order from all sides of the British Isles outside the art gallery. Bearing banners laced with bible and crown defenders, and led by drums and whistles, they marched all around the centre under police protection.
Where was the opposition? Nowhere. The Orange Order was marching for the first time in 40 years and the only immediate force present that could have challenged them on the streets had been dispersed.
Melvin Dawson
email
Subtle
I am a young communist of 18 years and feel strongly that in light of recent events it is our duty to prove to the people that there is an alternative to the governments that we have endured for far too long. It is also a great concern to me that far right parties are gaining immense popularity across Europe and so I urge all communists and leftwing supporters to resist this threat, through demonstrations, protests and riots - should this be necessary.
I sincerely believe that trust in communism can be restored amongst the general public, if they are educated by propaganda, which should be conveyed at such events, as well as websites and social networking sites. In the current political climate, where the general view of communism is a negative one, I believe the most effective method of educating the people is through subtle connections between demonstrations and the communist ideology. When we feel confident that the majority of citizens support it, then I believe communists should directly publicise our ideology.
I feel that with immediate action we can gain enough support from the general public to cause a significant impact at the next general election.
Kirk Kenney
Leicestershire
