Letters
Misunderstood
James Turley has written a highly critical appreciation of the life of Chris Harman (‘The working class intellectual and the apparat’, November 12).
Despite the best efforts of comrade Turley, his piece is replete with errors of both fact and interpretation. In this short letter I intend to reply to some of those errors, concentrating my remarks on the comrade’s discussion of the downturn perspective developed by the Socialist Workers Party in the late 1970s.
To begin, though, I must register my disgust at the comparison Turley makes between Harman and RP Dutt. Both men were prodigiously gifted intellectuals and contributed immensely to their respective organisations, but that is all they had in common. Dutt was a first-class hack prostituting his talents in the name of Stalin to the point, and beyond it, whereby he betrayed working class struggles that the misnamed CPGB played a significant role within. Harman, by way of contrast, stood four square throughout his life on the side of the working people and anti-imperialists throughout the world. Unlike Dutt, he never betrayed the principles he began with as a young man.
In one respect, however, there is a similarity between the two men, which Turley misses, in that the influence of both is not confined to this country alone. Even today the work that Dutt did in developing an analysis of India and its mode of production regrettably remains influential to a surprising degree within the Indian left. Hence, the ‘stageist’ schemata within which almost the entire Indian left remains confined. Harman’s influence too, although not as far reaching, has an international scope, especially with regard to his essay ‘The prophet and the proletariat’, which has been instrumental in enabling small groups of revolutionaries in Pakistan and Egypt to orientate to oppositional currents in those countries. There is little doubt in my mind that this influence will grow in the years to come.
It is, of course, in Britain that the influence of Harman’s writings have been of most significance and, with regard to his contributions to the downturn thesis in the late 1970s, Turley displays a total lack of understanding of the SWP’s perspectives during that period. He argues: “The difficulty with the Cliff/SWP version of the ‘downturn’ is that it was too mechanistic. The fact that there is a downturn means that every event must be viewed myopically through its prism. This particular ‘downturn’ was dated to 1978 (similar theses were advanced by the Eurocommunist Eric Hobsbawm at the time), but within the year there was the winter of discontent. Five years later, of course, there was the miners’ strike. It seemed to escape Cliff that the balance of class forces could shift suddenly as well as molecularly - there is no way a strike that lasts almost a year can have been doomed from the outset ...”
This is an almost total simplification and distortion of the analysis that the SWP adopted in 1978. In fact, the SWP and its forerunner organisation, the International Socialists, had been debating the changing nature of the balance of class forces from late 1976 and cannot be reduced to a simple “announcement from guru Tony Cliff”, as Turley suggests. The truth of the matter is that the downturn thesis was far more nuanced than he claims and the SWP was at pains to point out that in the period 1979-81 the industrial downturn was matched by a political upturn that saw a massive upsurge of interest in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the rise of the Bennite left in the Labour Party. This was also the period that saw the SWP deeply involved in the Right to Work campaign and, crucially, the Anti-Nazi League. Both were areas of work that were anything but “inward-looking”, contrary to comrade Turley’s allegation.
It is also far from the truth that the downturn perspective meant “that every event must be viewed myopically through its prism”. But it did mean that each and every struggle was seen within the context of the changed balance of class forces and the always changing nature of the working class and its organisations. This last point is crucial and it is one that Turley totally misses.
It is worth pointing out then that, even during the upturn of industrial struggle that took place between 1965 and 1974, defeats took place and sections of the class adopted reactionary positions. In other words, the SWP did not move from a simplistic analysis of periods similar to those of the communist parties when they decreed a ‘third period’ in 1929, only to abandon it in 1934 for reasons more closely related to the needs of the Stalinist state formation in Russia than the needs of the working people. It follows that, even in a period of retreat like the downturn, sections of the class can achieve victories and the SWP was clear that this meant no struggle could simply be written off in advance, as all too many critics of the downturn thesis falsely claim.
As important for the downturn thesis were the changes in the balance of class forces, which cannot be reduced to that between the contending classes - the balance of forces within the working classes all too often being of greater significance. It is crucial then to recognise that the struggles of the 1970s were often characterised by a considerable degree of rank and file militancy and were frequently led by unofficial bodies in opposition to the trade union bureaucracy.
Such offensive, wage-led struggles were, however, marked by a low political level: that is to say, they were concerned with economic questions until 1969 and the fight against In place of strife, the anti-union bill that the Labour government was then attempting to push through parliament. By contrast, the struggles that took place after the mid-1970s were far more political in content and tended to be defensive of wages and conditions.
The winter of discontent, for example, was viewed by all concerned - and rightly so - as being waged directly against the then Labour government. Another important change was that this struggle was far more directly controlled by the trades union bureaucracy with far less rank and file initiative displayed than had been the case earlier in the decade.
Turley is correct, however, to note in relation to the miners’ strike that “there is no way a strike that lasts almost a year can have been doomed from the outset”. But if by this he means to suggest that this was the viewpoint of the SWP, then he is much mistaken. If anything, the SWP was too hopeful that the dispute might result in a victory, assuming that the correct tactics were adopted and other sections could be encouraged to fight alongside the miners. It was this hope that mistakenly kept the SWP outside the miners’ support groups for too long, as the party saw the axis of its work in arguing for mass pickets and the extension of the strike to additional sections of workers. As we now know, this perspective did not materialise within the ranks of the class, but there is no doubt that it was correct to fight for it and that it has no relationship at all to the views Turley foists on the SWP.
To what degree Chris Harman has responsibility for developing the downturn thesis I do not know but, as a central leader of the SWP, he was responsible for the actions of the group in that period. Far more importantly, his theoretical work gave depth to the thesis and can still be consulted with profit in his essay, ‘Days of hope: the general strike of 1926’, in ‘Gramsci versus reformism’ and in ‘The summer of 1981: a post-riot analysis’ - all demonstrating in their different ways how the downturn was affecting the nature of the working classes and its struggles. ‘Gramsci versus reformism’ in particular explains the differences between a war of manoeuvre and a war of position, as related to the struggle between the classes that so many comrades, including James Turley, sorely fail to understand.
Finally, Turley correctly tells us that Harman “was mostly concerned with direct or indirect interventions in the political life of the SWP”. The same thing might be said of a chap called Lenin who was similarly unconcerned to be seen as “original”.
Mike Pearn
email
Bedroom guardians
The Weekly Worker’s publication of the Partisan Defence Committee’s letter defending Helen Goddard, the young teacher who was jailed for 15 months for having a consensual sexual relationship with a 15-year-old female pupil, drew a flurry of outrage from among your readership (September 3).
These ‘guardians of morality’ are enraged by the PDC’s simple assertion that Helen Goddard committed no crime and that this relationship should be no business of either the school or the state.
An article by Eddie Ford professes to agree with the PDC and Spartacist League’s call for abolishing reactionary age-of-consent laws, rightly saying that these laws “give the state powers to interfere in, and potentially criminalise, what should be purely personal and private matters” (‘Intrusive and authoritarian’, September 10). But Ford’s conclusion belies this, saying: “Communists propose that there be alternative legislation to cover sexual misconduct and abuse, based on both effective consent and the empowerment of youth”. In other words, there are some bedrooms in which the government does belong, if it deems that “sexual misconduct” has taken place.
This exposes the CPGB’s touching faith in the benign nature of the capitalist state, which you entrust to establish the principle of “effective consent” and to regulate the sexual activity of youth and children. Against such liberal illusions in the capitalist state, we oppose ‘age of consent’ and ‘statutory rape’ laws. For us, the guiding principle of effective consent means that, as long as the parties involved agreed to take part at the time, no-one, least of all the state, has the right to tell them they can’t do it.
And what about Roman Polanski? Like the rest of the reformist left, the Weekly Worker has maintained a studious silence about the renewal of the outrageous witch-hunt of this 76-year-old film director who was arrested in Switzerland and is threatened with extradition to the US for having consensual sex with a precocious 13-year-old some 32 years ago. Roman Polanski committed no crime! At the time of Polanski’s original persecution, we were virtually alone on the left in defending him.
As we noted in 1978, “What is genuinely ‘tawdry’ and sordid about the Polanski case is not the actual incident itself, but the vile official persecution and the hideous hypocrisy of it all. The national press has carefully ‘omitted’ the real facts of the case …
“The 13-year-old whom Polanski was accused of raping was described in the Los Angeles Times … as ‘an aspiring actress’, whose mother had known Polanski for over a year and given permission to photograph her daughter for the French edition of Vogue magazine. One of those photography sessions with the celebrated director turned into an evening of sipping champagne, nude bathing in a Jacuzzi whirlpool bath and consumption by the girl of part of a Quaalude (a fashionable sedative). Following this, there was sexual intercourse (translated in the press as ‘drugging and raping’).
“It came out in court, however, that the girl had been ‘experimenting’ with Quaaludes since the age of 10 or 11, and had a 17-year-old boyfriend with whom she had had prior sexual intercourse” (‘Stop vendetta against Roman Polanski! Free him now! No extradition!’ Workers Vanguard October 9 2009).
In today’s reactionary climate, liberals and reformists buy into the hysteria that wilfully conflates consensual sex between adults and young people with violent crimes such as rape and even murder. We Marxists oppose not only reactionary x‘age of consent’ and ‘statutory rape’ laws, but also other laws against ‘crimes without victims’, such as gambling, prostitution, drug abuse and pornography. Government out of the bedroom!
Julia Emery
Spartacist League
Collaborators
The Anarchist Federation condemns the group, Unite Against Fascism, who openly handed one of our members over to the police during a mobilisation against the English Defence League in Leeds city centre on Saturday October 31.
Several UAF stewards, including the head of UAF Leeds, physically prevented our member from rejoining the cordon and then called the police over to arrest him. We will not tolerate collaboration with the state to halt the activity of genuine anti-fascists and ask other progressive organisations to do the same.
UAF’s policy of negotiating with the state for its public protests is well known, as is its alliance with religious leaders, trade union bureaucrats and politicians. Apart from being nothing more than a front group for the Socialist Workers Party, UAF has never been an effective means to combat the rise of fascism in Britain, nor does it offer anything to working class communities.
D Yates
Anarchist Federation
Can’t miss it
Tina Becker says of the animated film shown at the opening rally for Socialism 2009: “Funnily enough though, the SPEW comrades deleted the last scene - and surely not for time reasons. This comes just after the clever mouse suggests that they should vote for a government of mice: ‘Oh, they said, he’s a Bolshevik. Lock him up! So they put him in jail. But I want to remind you that you can lock up a mouse or a man, but you can’t lock up an idea’” (‘Confident and boasting of growth’, November 12).
Erm, no they didn’t. I quite clearly remember this exact scene being played on the video. It was right there and got a great response from the rally. How on earth did you miss it?
Lindsay Wheatcroft
email
Catholic jihad
I was watching A history of Christianity on BBC4 last week. It made some very interesting points about the increasing empire of the Catholic church, with the Spanish inquisition torturing heretics to death.
It also explained the origin of the term ‘holy war’ in the Crusades against until-then peaceful Islam in the Middle East, particularly Palestine. ‘Jihad’ is, of course, the Muslim word for precisely the same thing.
After this violent persecution first brought the two religions into conflict, it is understandable why so many young male and, occasionally, female Muslims lay down their lives for the Islamic version of holy war. Although it is understandable, it should be opposed resolutely.
Those who, like the SWP leadership under Martin Smith, pander to religious fundamentalism/extremism must be viewed as the enemies of all loving humanity (and our wonderful allies in the animal kingdom).
Amy Miranda Bowers
email
Mock shock
How many more insults are going to be directed against the Iraqi people like the insincerity which has been shown in relation to further allegations of prisoner abuse? The government’s claim to be upholding the law today sounds as ludicrous as it did in 2003.
This abuse of prisoners by British troops is only the tip of the iceberg. Britain sent its troops into a sovereign country under the pretext of a lie - that Saddam had ties to al Qa’eda and was part of the 9/11 attack, coupled with claims that he had weapons of mass destruction which, according to the foreign office’s ‘sexed-up’ dossier, could be launched within 45 minutes. Each of these justifications is as pathetic as the government’s claim that British troops were liberating the Iraqi people from the human rights abuses of the Saddam regime.
Few people ask how the Iraqi people are meant to trust any claim that the British government makes in relation to justice and procedure when the only thing that fighting for queen and country has brought to the average Iraqi is a thuggish ‘democracy’. This includes the planned execution of over 1,000 oppositionists by January, the ethnic cleansing of Christians and Iraqi Palestinians, the murder of Iraq’s LGBT community, attacks against media freedom and the use of rape and torture inside Iraq’s prison system.
There have not been any words of apology by the British government for the one million dead or the five million orphans created since ‘freedom’ came to Iraq. Or for the war widows, many of whom are being forced into prostitution as a direct result of the poverty which Britain helped to install.
The first act of Iraq’s new democracy was to sack every worker in the country, but it was hailed as a success and described as ‘deBa’athification’. The numbers of Iraqi children who are being kidnapped and sold into the sex trade and the sale of human organs have been going through the roof.
If British soldiers are found guilty of prisoner abuse inside Iraq, the only thing they will be guilty of is being caught doing something which is apparently commonplace. Look at the other cases of prisoner abuse since 2003. Please do not insult our intelligence with any more ‘mock shock’ from either politicians or the media when these cases get into the public domain.
Hussein Al-alak
Iraq Solidarity Campaign
Who’s confused?
I am delighted to learn that, according to Gerry Downing, I am, somewhat impishly, “sowing confusion” in the ranks of Communist Students on the question of fascism (Letters, November 12).
If indeed I am partly responsible for some change in mood on the question among our comrades in Manchester, so much to the better - certainly differences exist, and hopefully will be clarified in this forum and others.
The rest of his letter is directed against my comrade, Ben Lewis, who has the temerity to keep bringing up the somewhat infamous ‘Schlageter line’, during which the German Communist party shared platforms with leading Nazis. This culminated in the Bolshevik leader (and later oppositionist) Karl Radek making a somewhat nationalism-tinged speech imploring Germans to rally to the KPD against the oppression of the Versailles treaty.
Comrade Downing does his best to divorce this event from orthodoxy, taking special care to distance Leon Trotsky from the affair. Yet there is a small problem - Trotsky isn’t half as bothered about it. His target is not the architects of the Schlageter line, but precisely August Thalheimer and his close collaborator, Heinrich Brandler, who were on the right of the party and pursuing suitors in the social democracy.
For Trotsky, the central error was quite simple: “In 1923, Brandler, in spite of all our warnings, monstrously exaggerated the forces of fascism. From the wrong evaluation of the relationship of forces grew a hesitating, evasive, defensive, cowardly policy” (‘The turn in the Communist International and the situation in Germany’). For Downing, on the contrary, the central priority of communists in a revolutionary crisis was shunning the Nazis with the correct level of horror and disgust. For that, he is welcome to join the ranks of the Brandlerites. Trotsky wouldn’t have had any of it - nor would he tolerate the hysterical outbursts of a British left neurotically obsessed with the BNP.
James Turley
Walthamstow
One country
In reply to Fern Rachels (Letters, November 12) the concept of socialism being impossible in one country was not the invention of Leon Trotsky. Trotsky was following the arguments of Karl Marx. So it was the orthodox Marxist view held by virtually everyone (including Stalin when younger) before the rise of Stalinism in the late 1920s.
Capitalism itself arose on the back of the world market and cannot exist in one country either. The struggle is between two irreconcilable international classes to organise the world politically and economically. The systems are incompatible: the one destroys the other. The positive gloss given to the concept of socialism in one country by Stalinists justifies nationalism and discounts the real nature of socialist revolution. It isn’t really about what isolated revolutionary struggles should do, but about how bureaucrats can establish their own rule.
‘One country’ is a somewhat misleading phrase. The central issue is that of isolation from the world market, which means inevitable defeat for the isolated side through economic and military strangulation. There can be no such thing as pulling yourself up by your own bootlaces when the other side can always cut them. The side which controls the world division of labour is bound to win the economic and military race.
Some Stalinists defend socialism in one country as a holding operation while the working class regroups for a new revolutionary push. That it is not in itself an abandonment of internationalism, they say, but a necessary defence of it, and in so far as it represents a degeneration in socialist practice this is not the fault of the beleaguered ‘socialist bloc’, but of the working classes in capitalist countries. Trotskyists, on the other hand, claim that Stalin represented the coming to power of a non-working class elite, riding on the back of ‘socialist property forms’, but destined to return the Soviet Union to capitalism if ever the opportunity arrived, because capitalism favours the interests of the elite. Soviet foreign policy was the Machiavellian achievement of Russian, Chinese, etc state interests (as perceived by the elite) based on state power, not on the power of the working class nor on any consideration of the interests of the world revolution. This can be judged historically. In my view the Stalinists haven’t a leg to stand on.
For my part socialism means the rule of the working class, not of the party on their behalf, which is a Stalinist defence of socialism in one country. There is no distinct mode of socialist production - socialism is a process from capitalism towards completely socialised production, communism. So I wouldn’t regard the socialist bloc as socialist, which means that socialism has never existed even in one country.
The Russian Revolution was led by the working class, but they never came to national power as a class. The Bolshevik Party despite making lots of mistakes correctly tried to hang on to power in the hope of revolution spreading to Germany and they subordinated Soviet interests to encouraging working class revolutions. Being orthodox Marxists, they expected to be defeated if the revolutionary movement stalled for an extended period, but they didn’t expect to be defeated by senior cadre of the Bolshevik Party.
I don’t expect the working class to come to power over a weekend, so I think Fern Rachels is right to expect a prolonged struggle. The working class may well have to hang on desperately to power in some places and perhaps do things that reflect badly on socialism, exactly as the Bolshevik revolution did. Inevitably they will try and socialise production, but unless they can integrate into the world division of labour, shortages will occur and the state will become a policeman regulating access to necessities, as Trotsky pointed out.
Support has to depend on programme. The programme of the Russian Revolution in 1917 was for world revolution and working class rule. Stalin’s programme was for state-to-state power relations and bureaucratic rule. When did the changeover occur? Opinions differ, but with Stalin’s rise to complete power in 1928 it had irrevocably happened.
The scenario of socialism in one country makes the prospect of isolation seem inevitable. But it wasn’t inevitable even in 1917. In the 1940s a whole range of revolutionary attempts developed and in 1968 working class revolts happened on both sides of the iron curtain, raising the levels of working class struggle in Asia, South America and the US. In other words, the integration of the world means that revolutionary movements start from an international base.
It should be the conscious practice of revolutionaries to develop a programme that ensures revolutionary struggles are coordinated. Europe in particular is central to world events, representing a very high level of production and technical skills. It is also geographically one. The working class is the vast majority of the population and has the longest revolutionary history. Europe offers the best chance for the working class to unite the world around revolution.
Since the rise of Stalinism, revolutions calling themselves communist or socialist have all really been nationalist, bureaucratic and almost always dictatorships. That is the living reality of socialism in one country. In practice they have not only been unable to challenge the rule of imperialism, but have left millions thinking, if that is communism, no thanks!
Phil Kent
Haringey
No letter
The statement from the Irish Republican Socialist Party on the decision of the Irish National Liberation Army to renounce armed struggle was certainly not a letter to the CPGB (November 12).
I have no objection to your reprinting it, but prefer you make it clear it was from an email newsletter circulated to many on the left called The Red Plough and not in the form of a letter.
Gerry Ruddy
IRSP
No to cuts
Students and staff have united in a campaign called Manchester for Jobs and Education against the recently announced 127 redundancies as the “first wave” of job cuts at the Manchester Metropolitan University. It was formed by the three unions at MMU - Unison, GMB and the UCU - while Communist Students and student members of the Socialist Workers Party and Permanent Revolution are also involved in the campaign.
There is no evidence of a financial crisis at MMU - the vice-chancellor has recently awarded himself an 8% pay rise and is wasting money on new building projects. These support staff are vital in ensuring lecturers are not burdened, and it is obvious that the cuts will affect the level of education that students receive.
But the student union, run by Manchester Labour Students in alliance with a couple of Tory toffs, has refused to back the campaign. General secretary Rob Boardman released a statement stating that they will not get involved. Yet already we have hundreds of MMU students have signed up to the anti-cuts campaign and will no doubt have thousands to hand in by the time the board of governors meet on November 27. Labour Students and the careerists at MMU student union should be ashamed of the themselves for refusing to defend the education of thousands of students.
The campaign is to hold stalls every day until the governors meet, and will be building support across campus. We already have great backing, but what is needed now is united action by all the workers and students against these cuts. If we fail to win this fight, the next set of cuts will be much harder to resist.
Chris Strafford
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