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Clumsy CPGB

I have been following with interest the debate in the Weekly Worker over ‘Yes to Democracy, No to EU’. Like many comrades, I believe the CPGB’s criticism of Bob Crow’s project was fundamentally correct, but its intervention flawed and clumsy.

Several political questions were raised, perhaps the largest being the nature of the Labour Party itself. The Socialist Party in England and Wales was quick to announce the de-Labourisation of Labour following its expulsion. Angst rather than sober analysis seemed to be the overriding driver to this conclusion. Twenty years have now passed since they and other leftists were driven out, and New Labour has been in government for the past 12.

No-one would argue that Labour’s proletarian pole is ascendant. The question is whether it still exists. And if it doesn’t, how would our approach to the party change? These are the questions that need to be debated. Did the driving out of thousands of leftwing activists, among them the then Militant, mark a qualitative change in the nature of Labour? Did it mark the beginning of a process which has yet to be concluded? Or was it the rupture that SPEW claims - and subsequent events merely the rumble of thunder after the flash of lightning?

It has been argued that the Blairite ‘wing’ has little or no roots in the party - it is a thin layer of careerists concentrated in the parliamentary party. That may or may not be true, but what roots does the left have? The collapse of the old CPGB and the decline of the revolutionary - and even the reformist - left has meant the withering of Labour’s left wing. Anecdotally, this is reflected in the party’s membership.

It may be argued that Labour remains the party of the trade union bureaucracy. What of it? I’m sure that trade union bureaucrats - and many vaguely class-conscious workers - view the US Democrats in much the same way and have a very similar relationship to the party machine.

One final word on Labour. We may have witnessed the demise of Britain’s bourgeois-labour party (and not realised it) - I have yet to be convinced one way or the other. What is clear is that the de-Labourisation of Labour has mirrored the political decline of our class. We on the left saw Labour’s crisis as resulting from our own hand - Labourism would be positively succeeded. This is not how things have panned out.

Which brings me to No2EU. Our target in No2EU should have been SPEW itself. Its politics are weak, but, if we seek to positively resolve the current crisis of working class politics, SPEW, with its history, activists and body of ideas, needs to be engaged with and challenged. We let Taaffe and co off the hook. Critical support for No2EU, perhaps support only for those lists topped by SPEW or SPEW-leaning candidates, would have allowed us to intervene more productively.

Contradictions - massive contradictions - existed inside No2EU between SPEW and the ideas to which it claims adherence and fidelity, and those of the Crow-CPB bloc. We could have developed those contradictions. Instead, we shot ourselves in the foot.

Andy Hannah
East Midlands

Kill dogmatism

John Robinson (Letters, June 25) re-appears with more hidebound orthodox-Trotskyist dogma, occasioned as usual by an article of comrade Mike Macnair’s (‘Against rightist populism’, June 4), though various basically false accusations (eg, that Mike does not confront the question of the capitalist media in his article, which he does) betray little familiarity with his actual argument.

In doing so, he reveals the extremely shaky ground - both in terms of theoretical coherence and the historical record - that this corner of the political universe occupies. His entire letter is predicated on a simple premise - ‘the fundamental principles of communism’ are ‘soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat’ (from Lenin’s Leftwing communism).

The difficulty is that the argument for soviet power, even from the post-1917 Bolsheviks, is not conducted on any level of fundamental principle. Rather, it is conducted on the basis that the soviets are the spontaneous form of working class power in a revolutionary situation. The Russian experience is cited as evidence, as is the experience of the Arbeitsräte in Germany and other examples, though all but the Russian soviets were crushed. In other words, it is an operative conclusion drawn from historical evidence, which must be constantly open to re-evaluation. It is not a principle of theory that descends logically from Marx’s Capital or anything else.

This is emphasised by Gregory Zinoviev, in a four-hour speech in favour of soviet power delivered to the USPD conference in 1920: ‘Should the German working class create another form of dictatorship,’ he concedes, ‘then we will greet it with pleasure, for we have always said that everything does not have to be like in Russia, and that the working classes of the other countries will perhaps do a better job of it than we did’ (English translation forthcoming). That’s an awfully blasé way to treat a ‘fundamental principle’ - of course, the soviet form is no such thing.

The ahistorical approach advocated by comrade Robinson (he is not, unfortunately, alone) is revealed in its full absurdity when he declares that ‘The highest organs of struggle built in Britain were the councils of action set up in 1926. These were in fact soviets. In a future revolutionary situation these will undoubtedly rise again.’ Undoubtedly, comrade? Only from a formalistic and fetishised view of the soviet.

The soviet is nothing more than a form for power; it arises as a solution to the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat. How is the working class to rule? By what means? This is the fundamental point - communists seek to transform society in such a way as to replace the rule of the bourgeoisie with the rule of the proletariat. The soviets are only anything more than a footnote to working class history because they were able to fulfil this role in the Russian Revolution - they became the locus for the transfer of class power.

In reality, in spite of comrade Robinson’s airy and rather ignorant dismissals, the ‘fundamental question’ is - here as it is everywhere else - extreme democracy. The fact that the soviets were precisely living organs of power, in which parties were able to compete for leadership, through which militias and the like could be organised, made them organs of proletarian revolution. Where they have arisen elsewhere, they have very often not fulfilled this role, and so they have been crushed.

But ‘there can be no abstract democracy (extreme or otherwise) in class society’, claims comrade Robinson. ‘Abstract’ is here simply a buzzword - the confusion is between concrete/existing organisations of class power (America is a bourgeois democracy), and democracy as such (the rule of the majority). There is no such thing as bourgeois democracy in general, against which we can counterpose proletarian democracy.

Rather, there are basic necessities that state power must fulfil to sustain bourgeois rule, and likewise for proletarian rule (not simply, as comrade Robinson implies, the ability to crush class enemies). The former (defence of private property, etc) are ultimately incompatible with fully-realised democracy. The latter are nothing less than fully realised democracy, the only condition under which the working class can rule. To renege on democracy is simply to hand power to the labour bureaucracy - which is an institution of bourgeois power.

Everywhere, Trotskyists get entirely hung up on the soviets - this fetishism not only sends their views of the party question and tactical method skewiff and distorts their theory of political democracy, but completely misses the point of the soviets in the first place.

James Turley
Plymouth

PR job

John Robinson said that Lenin argued that “the fundamental principles of communism” are “soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat”, with the latter phrase meaning rule just by the working class. Lenin did indeed call for “all power to the soviets” when he returned from exile to Russia in 1917, contradicting the position of his party (the Bolsheviks) in calling for a constituent assembly, and he played a key role in persuading the party to abolish the assembly after they lost the elections to it following the October revolution. Rather than basing our positions on what Lenin said, since when there have been 90 years of world capitalism, surely it is time to reassess.

It is good that the CPGB is doing that and has adopted proportional representation. The CPGB is not alone. Recent editorials in SPEW’s paper and an article by the SWP’s Alex Callinicos have advocated PR too, and I have heard that the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain supports the single transferable vote.

John complains about the prospect of “all members of the capitalist class and their counterrevolutionary hangers-on each [having] a vote equal to that of revolutionary workers”. What’s he worried about? Either there are so few of them that they can easily be outvoted or there are so many of them that a revolution would not be practicable at that time and attempting an insurrection would be doomed to almost certain failure.

He argues that “the capitalist class will, as at present, have total control of newspapers and the mass media”. He is wrong; what about the role of the left press, including the Weekly Worker and the internet? He is also confusing a pre-revolutionary situation (in which those who control the mass media may try to exclude leftwing voices) with the situation after a revolution in which the masses coming to power can control the media irrespective of whether a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ is established. Giving parties access to the media according to their level of support would be preferable to trying to keep dissenting voices completely out of the media.

Although John says that “the task of communists is not to hold polite conversations with fascists”, but “to shoot them”, I suspect he considers that the same fate should await anybody who objects to all power being in the hands of the working class.

Now that capitalism is self-destructing and all the mainstream parties are set to stand for massive public spending cuts and/or tax rises at the next general election, we need to point out the need for a sudden and thorough change of society, whether or not we use the word ‘revolution’.

Michael Rosen’s reply to the SWP’s “open letter to the left” (Socialist Worker June 20) suggests “a federation or umbrella” of cooperating groups/parties that don’t stand against each other as the way forward. This is probably the best that can be achieved in the short term, bearing in mind the hostility and sectarianism between different left groups in Britain. It would be a crying shame if such a federation was constructed and none of its participants put forward such a revolutionary programme, to determine which sort of party is most effective in practice.

Steve Wallis
Democratic Socialist Alliance

Oppressor rights

There is no confusion at all in my position on nationality and the nation-state, contrary to Moshé Machover’s assertion (Letters, June 25).

Up to 20 or 30 years ago, if asked what nation they were members of, most people would have instinctively said ‘British’. Up to the 1950s, the Tories, the party of unionism, had a majority of seats in Scotland. Of course, since then there has been a fragmentation and today most but not all people would probably define themselves as English, Scottish or Welsh. In other words, a nation is something that changes and is in flux. It is not a fixed entity. And when, as in Scotland, the specific nationality is asserted (where, it might be remembered, only a handful, mainly confined to the Western Isles, still speak Gaelic), the nation-state itself is also challenged.

Yes, I confess I do look forward to the unification of Palestine within the boundaries of what was the British mandate. I think this is part of a wider political problem. It is common currency, not least among left Zionists for whom two states is their solution, that the real cause of the conflict in Palestine is a national one, not one of settler-colonialism. Of course, their two-state solution is really one state and a series of semi-autonomous enclaves. But, as Moshé is more than aware, such a solution is advocated by even the most racist Zionists, such as Arnon Sofer, professor of demographics at Haifa University. It is a means of artificially preserving a Jewish majority because, even without the Palestinian refugees, roughly half of Palestine today would be Palestinian. That is why the commonly accepted notion that the root of the conflict in Palestine is national needs to be thought through and, in my opinion, rejected.

For Moshé, the Palestinian nation is really just a subset of the Arab nation, yet this concept of an Arab nation is itself problematic. There is no one single Arab economy or even consciousness. There is an Arabic language, but language does not in itself make a nation or the English nation would encompass much of Africa, as well as India! There is an oppressed Palestinian nation of sorts, but it too is not a fixed entity and to assert that such a nation can encompass both Arabs and Israeli Jews has nothing to do with forcible Arabisation nor severing the Palestinian Arabs from the ‘greater Arab nation’, whose existence I frankly doubt.

If we look at it in a wider context, the Ulster Protestants see themselves as British. Supporters of Irish reunification see them as Irish, regardless of how they see themselves. Likewise, white South Africans didn’t see themselves as African, but as part of a separate white tribe or nation. Self-definition as a nation doesn’t mean that there is a nation.

A Palestinian nation-state would be obliged on democratic grounds to ensure that there was complete equality of the Hebrew and Arabic languages and any other cultural manifestation. Further than that, complete equality between Arab and Israeli Jewish citizens. It is the formation of a separate Israeli-Jewish nation-state that would be problematic because it would result in the recreation of a Zionist entity under the patronage of imperialism.

I therefore agree with the fundamental point of Yossi Schwartz (Letters, June 18) that in all of this one has to take as one’s starting point the socialist standpoint that oppressor nations, if that is what Moshé wishes to call the Hebrews or Israeli Jews, do not have a right to self-determination because at the root of their national identity is the oppression of the indigenous population.

Tony Greenstein
Brighton

Zionist

Moshé Machover reflects in his answer to me a clear pro-Zionist bias. He writes: “First, I never denied that there are fewer Hebrews (so-called Israeli Jews) than Palestinian Arabs worldwide. What I said was that the Palestinian Arabs are a national minority in Israel. This is a fact: they constitute approximately 20% of Israel’s population” (Letters, June 25).

The Zionists deny that there is a Palestinian nation that has the right of self-determination in occupied Palestine from the river to the sea. They claim that the Palestinians are Arabs and it is the responsibility of the Arab states to settle the Palestinian refugees. For the same reason, some of the Zionists claim that the solution for the Palestinians is to settle them in Jordan and turn it into a Palestinian state.

Ignoring the mass expulsion of the Palestinians in order to create a Jewish majority, the pro-Zionists argue that the Palestinians are a national minority in Israel rather than the majority with the right to occupied Palestine.

Echoing this line, Machover argues that the Israelis are fewer than the Arabs worldwide, as if this is the question rather than the Palestinians’ right of self-determination, including the refugees in their stolen land. In his reply, Machover simply avoids the real question, which is: including the Palestinians in the lands stolen in 1948, in the West Bank and Gaza stolen in 1967, and the refugees, are the Palestinians the majority while the settler colonialists are the minority? Is there any question that, once the Palestinian refugees return, the Israelis will be a minority in this land?

The second argument that exposes his political bias proceeds: “What I actually implied was the very opposite: the only thing that prevents the Hebrew nation from recognising itself openly and officially as a separate nation is the dominance of Zionist ideology. How can an ideology be dominant if the majority do not believe in it?”

Once again, this is not the question. The question is whether, for the majority of the Israeli Jews, Zionism is a false ideology, as some, including Machover, claim, or a reflection of their material interest as settler colonialist.

Considering the nature of Zionism, there is no place for the self-determination of both Israelis and Palestinians in Palestine. One’s right comes at the expense of the other, and revolutionary Marxists can only support the right of self-determination of the oppressed nations whose struggle is part of the struggle against the imperialist system.

Whether the Israelis are a nation or not, as Marxists, we cannot support the right of self-determination for imperialist states. Following World War II, the state of Israel was the only former colony to become an imperialist state. It became an imperialist state before the 1967 war, after it accumulated its primitive wealth through the expropriation of the Palestinian people and later on through the reparations from Germany, followed by massive support from American imperialism.

For the Israelis to form an Israeli national consciousness rather than a Zionist consciousness, it is necessary to break with Zionism and its main proposition that the Israeli Jews are part of the world Jewish nation and that Israel is the state of all the Jews - their ancient promised land. For the Israelis to form an Israeli national consciousness, it is necessary to remove the law of return. However, most Israelis will support this law with arms in their hands. The Israeli government, with the full support of most Israeli Jews, demands that the entire world, including the Palestinians, recognise Israel as a Jewish state (not an Israeli state), as the land of their forefathers. In other words, the Palestinians who are citizens of Israel are not part of the nation, while Israel is the state of all the Jews around the world. The Zionists claim that Jews in other countries are still living in exile (the diaspora) and sooner or later will be forced to come to their real ancient homeland.

Zionist consciousness incorporates the following central themes:

This racist view is the same outlook of anti-semites in the second part of the 19th century in Europe, and it is only fair to say that Zionism is the Jewish branch of racism and anti-semitism in general.

This view is based not on false ideology, but on the material needs of the settler-colonialists who need Jews around the world to support Israel financially and politically, and for many of them to immigrate to Israel to increase the Israeli Jewish population and its army against the Arabs, the Iranians and, most importantly, the Palestinians.

Thus, the class and political nature of the settler-colonialist society that dispossesses the native Palestinians prevents the development of an Israeli national consciousness. This Zionist consciousness manifests itself in many forms. Where it says ‘nationality’ in an Israeli ID card, for instance, Jews can either write ‘Jew’ or leave it empty.

In the left-liberal margins of the Zionist movement, there are several people who define themselves as post-Zionists and claim that there is an Israeli nation which has the right of self-determination. But this claim ignores the real history of the Zionist movement and its role in the world class struggle.

The extent of Machover’s capitulation to Zionism is expressed in his third and last argument: “... comrade Schwartz in effect looks forward to a future in which Zionism will have been overthrown, the Palestinian Arabs will have won the right to national self-determination, but the Hebrew nation - no longer the oppressor - will be denied that same right. This reminds me of the old Soviet joke: ‘In the USSR we no longer have exploitation of man by man; here it is the other way around.’”

The Israelis can stop being oppressors only in a Palestinian workers’ republic from the river to the sea. This is precisely what Machover rejects when he embraces the right of self-determination for the colonialist settlers who will argue after a socialist revolution that they have the right to settle their own state in order to sever the revolutionary victory of the exploited and oppressed.

Yossi Schwartz
International Socialist League, occupied Palestine

Ragamuffin

I cannot help agreeing with Dave Walters - sort of. If I remember rightly, the introduction of licensing laws for alcohol came during World War I and the Firearms Act in 1920. It’s these bloody Bolshies, you know.

Previous limitations on gun ownership were largely about game hunting - until 1870, after which you had to licence a gun at the post office if you carried it outside your own property. This was clearly designed to deal with possible poachers and raise some cash for the chancellor of the exchequer. And you could not have a licence if you were under 18 or so obviously drunk that the postmaster noticed.

Otherwise, according to our bill of rights, “the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law.” That cut out all our Hibernian friends, and ragamuffins like Walters would not have been allowed to carry swords (although a musket would have been fine).

So I agree with Walters’ position in a way, but my petty bourgeois nervousness makes me wonder if it would be an entirely good idea if any recently released occupants of the loony bin could easily get hold of a firearm.

Ted Crawford
email

Well regulated

I am in broad agreement with David Walters on the right to bear arms, but I think he should have mentioned that the US second amendment refers specifically to a “well regulated militia”.

It was intended as a defence against any powerful anti-popular force, whether foreign or indigenous. It was an historic gain for the majority against the ruling elite and should be defended, whatever the social period we happen to be living in.

Criminal gun culture reflects a quite separate social problem at the heart of American society. In fact it represents the individualism and social atomisation within modern capitalist society that enables class exploitation to take place. The “well regulated militia” can only come into existence when and where there is a widespread and deep-seated sense of social solidarity amongst the masses.

Communists are for a “well regulated” workers’ militia, not a disorderly rabble or criminal sub-culture. In fact what we have in mind represents the very opposite to atomisation and criminality.

As the overwhelming majority in modern capitalist countries, the working class will inevitably take the lead in democratically operating these militias and shaping their programme. We also need to be involved in everything from cookery to cricket if we are to challenge the bourgeoise for power.

Phil Kent
Haringey

Not for Britain

In reply to David Walters, yes, I do have a historical understanding of democratic demands. The first thing I know is that they are not of divine origin, but are invented by people who live under specific historical conditions.

The right to bear arms came from a specific bourgeois revolution, at a certain stage of development. Naturally it ignores the fact that society is divided into classes, and the very right itself reflected, and still reflects, the relatively low level of class struggle in America. The US bourgeoisie has never felt threatened by the general right to bear arms.

The suggestion that the logic of my argument, in opposing the general right to bear arms because it can be used by the class enemy, can equally be applied to freedom of speech and association, is a good point, but fails to understand that these freedoms are not the same as the general right to bear arms. If you ignore the class nature of society and argue that the counterrevolutionary elements should have an equal right to bear arms with the revolutionary elements, which is the logical position Walters arrives at, you are no longer in the camp of communism, but of bourgeois rights. I certainly support Walters’ right to bear arms, but if his neighbour is a KKK, I don’t feel obliged to support the latter’s rights.

Walters wants to impose American gun culture on the rest of us. No doubt his reason is, what’s good for America is good for the world, but this is not true. For instance, if I lived in the US with its deep-seated tradition of gun culture and high levels of gun crime, I may certainly want to be armed to protect myself. This wouldn’t stop me campaigning against gun culture and its consequences. But to turn the bearing of arms into a universal right, in a class society, and worst, to artificially seek to import this culture into a country where a long tradition of gun culture does not exist, such as Britain, is harmful in the extreme. It would be arrogant for Walters to believe we should seek to promote American gun culture in Britain under the guise of a right.

In Britain, communists should promote the idea of workers’ militias - not as an immediate goal, but as a future prospect, to aid what may well turn out to be a relatively peaceful transition to socialism, a development which cannot be dogmatically ruled out, and is indeed preferable to civil war. Also, the peak oil economic crisis which is unfolding, raises the possibility that, at a certain stage, the bourgeois state may be used as an instrument of reform to introduce socialism. Today it is not a question of reform or revolution, as it was in Lenin’s time. Now either of these strategies may be possible, depending on how the crisis plays out.

Walters asks whether I realise that the bourgeoisie is already armed. Yes, but no revolution or socialist reform process has ever succeeded if the armed forces of the state remain on the side of counterrevolution. Revolution succeeds when most desert the old order and join the revolution. If the trained, disciplined armed forces remain on the side of capitalism, individuals possessing guns would make little difference.

Tony Clark
London

Gross

On March 26, the corporate management team at the University of East London suspended me for “gross professional misconduct”. Among other things, my crime was to proceed with organising the Alternative G20 summit despite my employers’ decision to close down the entire campus at the last minute.

My disciplinary hearing is scheduled for July 10. Friends and comrades wishing to defend me against possible dismissal will find more information on my website (www.chrisknight.co.uk/2009/06/03/my-suspension). If you can spare a minute, please add your name (with an accompanying statement) to this petition: www.PetitionOnline.com/knight09/petition.html.

Chris Knight
Chair, Docklands UCU

Cruel

After watching Upstairs, downstairs on TV I have come to realise that it is the so-called upper class that is cruel to animals. After all, isn’t it the rich who go fox-hunting and shooting down little birds?

Susan Bouttell
Middlesbrough

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