Letters
Hands off Hopi
Bob Harding makes a bizarre assertion as to the inopportune nature of Hands Off the People of Iran, as compared to a similar organisation focusing on Afghanistan (Letters, July 23).
Hopi was founded well after the imperialist interventions in both Afghanistan and Iraq as a campaign against British involvement in further US wars of aggression. Iran is still the most likely target - witness the White House rhetoric, sanctions and the latest noises from Hillary Clinton on her trip to China.
Hopi obviously has objectives beyond that mentioned above. Crucially it seeks to build active solidarity with those forces in Iran consistently fighting for democracy. A key element in facilitating such work are Hopi’s Iranian exiles in Britain. This is a vital element of internationalist solidarity, the significance of which should not be downplayed.
Another not unimportant role of Hopi is its exposure of the ‘anti-imperialist’ approach of much of the left, which up to recently has acted as an apologist for Ahmadinejad and the Iranian theocracy, regardless of its suppression of internal dissidents and its cooperation with and support for imperialist moves against Afghanistan and Iraq. While the Socialist Workers Party et al took a more principled position following Iran’s election debacle, we should not forget their previous ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend’ opportunism.
It must also not be forgotten that, whilst Hopi’s main focus is, self-evidently, on Iran, the organisation takes opposition to imperialist strategy across the board as a given. In fact its first bullet point is against “imperialist war” and for the “immediate and unconditional withdrawal of US/UK troops from Iraq and all the Gulf region”.
Hopi can certainly not be accused of ignoring Afghanistan - nor for that matter can the Weekly Worker. In the very same issue as comrade Harding’s letter appears a one-and-a-half page article dealing with the ongoing conflict in that country.
John Sidwell
London
Space Luddite
I found Jack Conrad’s article on the history of space flight as it relates to capitalist development both fascinating and terribly pessimistic (‘Forty years since first moon walk’, July 16).
His method seems to be reduced down to ‘If the military can use it, we should oppose it’. It is the only conclusion I can draw. In his description of the almost ubiquitous global positioning system’s origins as part of the military space flight programme, I’m not sure whether Jack is perturbed that the military boys got to it first or that any civilian technology that has a military origin is somehow devil’s spawn. When that Predator drone fired its GPS Hellfire missiles at a truck of Pakistanis, those trucks are also used by US-led Nato forces in Afghanistan. Should we pass some sort of aspersion on the manufacture, use and deployment of trucks to civilians because they may also have a military use and/or origin? What is Jack’s point on this?
We have no control, really, over what the military does in terms of research and development for weapons of mass destruction and other malevolent goals. I’m glad there is a civilian application for what had hitherto been an exclusively military application. Good. We should demand, even under capitalism - especially under capitalism - that the world’s military R&D be put to civilian use. It is all part of the same forces of production now in decay in these, the final decades of capitalism.
The same is true for space flight. The huge advances in transistor technology, metallurgy and solar energy under the government-initiated space flight programme have returned much more than was invested. Of course, these came from public funds and private companies picked up the patents, but the positive aspects of the development of these productive forces cannot be ignored.
Development under the capitalist mode of production never stops. Nor should it. I want it to develop, hopefully for more and more civilian use, because we are going to take it all for our class. But we should not imply a form of modern-day Luddism simply because we don’t control the means of production.
David Walters
San Francisco
Be sensible
Ben Lewis scores some good enough points against the philistinism of SWP-style anti-fascism, and indeed there cannot be many on the far left (apart from the SWP themselves) who do not regard the Unite Against Fascism ‘strategy’ as, at best, a dead end (‘How not to stop the BNP’, July 23).
But a feeling of resigned frustration wells up in me when I read that he (and, presumably, others in the organisation) still attempt to base this critique on a frankly bizarre fixation on extra-parliamentary fighting formations. It is not the content of this so much as the form that vexes so - yes, it is precisely the ability of fascist formations to take their battles to the streets that makes them so attractive to the bourgeoisie in times of acute social crisis (and so repulsive otherwise).
Yet the Lewis line (behind which, as far as I know, stands the whole PCC) appears to be that the fact that a given organisation does not now at this very moment have armed squads in colour-coded shirts marching through the streets itself excludes that organisation from having a fascist character. Well, I suppose we are not a communist organisation because we do not, right now, have a workers’ militia, or even agitate for one (propaganda is another thing).
It simply doesn’t bear up to scrutiny - an electoral turn in the BNP’s work has necessarily meant downplaying street violence against minorities, yes, but this happened to Hitler at times as well (Mussolini was quicker off the bat). The fact is, comrade, we are not in a time of acute social crisis even now, and certainly were not when the BNP first turned towards ‘Euro-nationalism’. Why should fascist organisations be so utterly stupid as to behave identically in all social periods? They aren’t, and they don’t.
There is no examination of how the BNP actually functions today, the very real contradiction between a fascist cadre base and a ‘softer’ British chauvinist voting periphery, the still very real reliance on low-level thuggery to keep local organisations together (Catholics have mass, the SWP has screechy protests, the BNP has Paki-bashings). There is no serious consideration of where it’s going and under what circumstances. What comrade Lewis has done is simply made a bonfire out of everything he knows about dialectics - on this issue only. The result is that he oh-so-gullibly falls for all Nick Griffin’s bullshit - equivalent, for example, to somebody in the 1980s really believing in Sinn Féin’s official separation from the Provos.
I agree in most respects with the operative political conclusions here - that the crucial enemy is the state, and the fact that Nick Griffin has worse opinions than Gordon Brown doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. But the scholastic pedantry wheeled out by PCC comrades to support this line remains frankly an embarrassment, and actually simply an inversion of the ‘Nazi! Nazi! Nazi!’ line. They should be sensible and drop it.
James Turley
Plymouth
Airbrushed
Ben Lewis makes useful reference to some of the many ‘joint’ meetings held by Communist and Nazi parties in pre-Hitler Germany. Of course, there was a ‘darker’ side to this alleged ‘unity’ - of party bureaucrats rather than workers - which culminated in the massive Berlin transport strike of 1932, where swastika and hammer and sickle banners jointly decorated numerous working class localities.
I visited the German Democratic Republic on many occasions during the 1950s and 1960s. Following his residence in the USSR during wartime, Walter Ulbricht had emerged as general secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany - a so-called coalition under communist control - which made him, in effect, ‘head of state’. His face appeared on virtually all East German postage stamps. His picture decorated every public building and hung on the wall of every party member whose home I visited.
There was really only one picture of Ulbricht dating from pre-war years and it could be found in virtually every souvenir book prepared for visitors and every history book issued to school children (I still have several of them). The text beneath just referred to him as a “leading speaker of the struggling working people” during the 1930s.
Never reported, however, was that this picture was taken when he was a ‘guest’ speaker at a National Socialist meeting held in the Friedrichshain district of Berlin on January 22 1931. The ‘main’ speaker, awaiting his turn to address the same meeting, his hand to his face, was none other than Dr Joseph Göbbels! Göbbels was sometimes, but only sometimes, brushed out of the reproduced photograph.
Bob Potter
email
IBT botch
I would certainly dispute Earl Gilman’s assertion that the CPGB is swapping quotes with the International Bolshevik Tendency to establish proprietary rights over some ‘Bolshevik bible’ (Letters, July 23).
The CPGB argues that it could make sense for communists to vote tactically for bourgeois workers’ parties or even bourgeois parties if the outcome advanced the working class cause. A reasonable enough argument, which we backed up with quotes from other communist thinkers, including Lenin, to demonstrate that we are not putting forward a position that we alone hold. More importantly, we wanted to demonstrate that the Bolshevik tactic of voting for the bourgeois Cadets in the second round of duma elections did advance the working class cause.
It was necessary to do so because organisations like the IBT think it is entirely unprincipled to vote for any party that contains a bourgeoisie element in the modern era. The IBT position is based on a confusion between tactics and strategy, further complicated by the fact that they don’t understand strategy either. Put the two together and you have a viewpoint bordering on gibberish.
In this case the main bone of contention was not the Labour Party, but a red-brown electoral lash-up called ‘No to the EU, Yes to Democracy’, which stood in the recent European elections, claiming to represent British working class interests. The IBT refused to vote for No2EU, not because it peddled stupid chauvinistic illusions in British capitalism, but laughably because in the North West region it stood a single candidate from the Liberal Party (a 1989 micro-split from the ‘real’ Liberal Party). Steve Radford had no influence on the policy of N2EU whatsoever and, being fifth on its list, he had no chance of being elected.
The IBT attitude to Lenin is not exactly biblical either. They consider Lenin to be wrong to have called for a vote for the Cadets in 1907, but excuse it because they say it was forced on him. Lenin was in fact proud of his manoeuvre and quotes it in Leftwing communism: an infantile disorder, which he wrote in 1920.
I mention this because the debate disclosed that the IBT believes Lenin only became their kind of leftwinger when he supposedly converted to Trotskyism in 1917. The IBT are mainly concerned with not contaminating themselves and in the process make a complete botch of history and a complete nonsense of their claim to be Bolsheviks.
Phil Kent
Haringey
Petty
Jim Moody’s graceless and rather petty rejoinder to my correction of his report of the last CPGB aggregate puzzles me (Letters, July 23).
He asserts that in my contribution to the aggregate debate I used the term “most class-conscious” rather than “most militant” workers. This is entirely possible, but the point I was disputing was whether this section of the working class is more attracted to the current Labour Party or a project to the left of Labour. I take it that Jim will acknowledge this to be a rather important distinction, although his definition that the most “class-conscious workers” are in fact the rather thin ranks of the CPGB is not mine.
Most bizarre of all is Jim’s suggestion that I “should write something explicit to make plain” my views. No doubt I will contribute further to this debate, but I have already written a 4,000-word-plus article, in which I was very “explicit” about my views (‘Against sectarianism’, June 18). And I contributed vigorously to the debate on the CPGB’s online email list.
If Jim had been paying attention over the last couple of months and at the aggregate, he would realise that my disagreement with the Provisional Central Committee’s election tactics (and the disagreement of others in the CPGB minority) is precisely that the tactics did not contribute to making the case that the kind of party the working class needs is a Communist Party.
In this regard I note that Jim does not respond to my correction of his report of my position on the condition set by the PCC around the right to bear arms. I can only assume that he does not have an answer to my contention that this tactic was confused and ill-chosen.
Nick Rogers
London
UK obstacle
I was disappointed to read Sarah McDonald’s criticism of the demand for Scottish independence (‘Left nats lose out to SNP nats’, July 23).
The United Kingdom is an outdated, imperialist concept; as a result, the continued existence of ‘Great Britain’ is an obstacle to working class political development. The Labour Party only supports the union because Scotland and Wales provide so many of their MPs.
Are parties such as the Republic Left of Catalonia wrong to demand freedom from Madrid? If not, why shouldn’t the Scottish Socialist Party et al demand independence for Scotland? The establishment of an independent republic north of the border would be a defeat for the British ruling elite and would provide a model of democratic republicanism for what remained of the UK.
Independence may go against the grain of orthodox Marxism, but is a progressive ideal and should be embraced by the left.
Jeff Steel
email
Growing force
Officers of the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party met in London on Monday July 20 to assess the campaign’s support for the trade union-based, Eurosceptic No2EU electoral coalition and to plan the next moves for the CNWP itself.
Speaking after the meeting, CNWP Chair Dave Nellist said: “The campaign welcomed the close working arrange-ments developed by the RMT with the Socialist Party, the Communist Party of Britain and others during the Euro elections and looks forward to that coalition work developing and deepening between now and the general election.
“We always knew the process for establishing a new working class party, if done seriously, would take time. Whilst we have a sense of urgency and hope there will be a substantial number of independent working class candidates at the next election, which will be at most nine or 10 months away (or perhaps even sooner), such is the importance of the political rebuilding work we are engaged in, then it’s better it’s done well than just quickly.
“The CNWP is planning to produce tens of thousands of new leaflets in coming weeks, arguing that trade unionists should stand independently of the three main parties in the coming election. Our demand that trade unions should reassess their financial support for New Labour and break that link is proving ever more popular, for example amongst CWU members at a recent postal rally in London. We are planning a major initiative around the TUC conference in September.”
The CNWP has written to trade union bodies in towns and cities throughout the country in recent days, asking local trades union councils to host discussions on the need for a new independent voice for working people, particularly after the election of two far-right MEPs from the British National Party at the Euro elections. So far meetings look likely in a number of cities, including Liverpool, Bolton, Wigan, Preston, Luton and Chorley.
The CNWP believes that whichever party wins the general election will seek to make severe, even savage, cuts in public spending, axing hundreds of thousands of jobs, cutting wages and threatening pensions, reducing essential local services and raising charges on many others. The campaign supports independent challenges, such as those by community groups in Barrow-in-Furness over education, and hopes to encourage new community and trade union candidates at local elections next year standing in defence of public services.
“The CNWP is a growing force, especially within the trade union movement, sinking new points of support for socialist ideas through its work. I would urge more and more people to join us in the CNWP and contribute to its campaigns so we can re-establish an independent working class voice in politics,” said Dave Nellist.
Pete McLaren
CNWP press officer
