Letters
Military angle
Matthew Cobb’s ‘Lions led by donkeys’ (October 1) was an excellent article.
I think it would be useful to take its lessons and generalise them to some of the elements of the CPGB’s programme with which I find myself in agreement - in particular on the question of the workers’ militia.
In a situation such as that in France, Marxists have to ask themselves how they interpret two apparently conflicting principles of proletarian internationalism - the right to self-determination and revolutionary defeatism. Generally speaking, revolutionaries have seen the right to self-determination as a demand to be raised in the context of nations struggling against colonial rule, or small nations trapped and oppressed within the boundaries of a state dominated by a larger, more powerful nation. But it has generally not been seen as applicable to powerful imperialist states.
However, under conditions where one of those states is no longer an imperialist power standing over some smaller state, but is itself now subject to a form of external political rule by another state - as was the case in Nazi-occupied France - then it is difficult to see why workers in such a condition would not have the same right to struggle for this basic democratic right, which is fundamental to workers’ struggles being advanced. Under such conditions, and given a proper understanding of ‘revolutionary defeatism’ as being not the idea of favouring the military defeat of your own state, but of being determined to continue the class struggle against the ruling class and its state, then a struggle for such self-determination must be fundamental to a class struggle that combines a struggle for basic bourgeois democratic demands and a struggle for proletarian revolution. The question then is not whether such a struggle should be conducted, but on what basis.
It seems to me that this was the real political question that communists in France had to deal with, which involved not just questions of military tactics, but fundamental political tactics. That is, just as in any other struggle for national liberation, it is acceptable for workers to form military alliances with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces - for example, the Free French and the non-communist Resistance - such alliances have to be accompanied by the clearest possible organisational and political separation from those forces, and with a heightening of the political criticism of them. For example, pointing out that the same bourgeoisie was continuing to exploit French workers under Nazi rule.
On my blog, I have referred to the role of Tom Wintringham in Britain during World War II and its run-up. Wintringham was a founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. He also became commander of the British battalion of the International Brigade. In the run-up to war, he strongly argued for the kind of guerrilla training he had learned in Spain to be given to British citizens, so that they could form their own militia to fight against any invasion or occupying power.
When the Local Defence Volunteers were set up, he was asked by the government to provide training at Osterley Park. But, again, highlighting the kind of propaganda that Marxists can utilise against the bourgeoisie, although he was in charge of this training, he was not himself allowed to join the home guard because he was a member of the Communist Party!
I think that the CPGB is right to raise the demand for a militia, and all of the above feeds into the development of such a policy. However, I think that the demand as presented stands out like a sore thumb because it is not grounded in the other demands that need to act as scaffolding for it. At the present time, the left in general fails to make the necessary distinction between the military arm of the British state and the (largely) working class soldiers, sailors and airmen who make up that force. Hostility to the former tends to be translated into hostility to the latter.
Although the left has not itself organised demonstrations against troops returning home from Afghanistan, it has not distanced itself from such protests either. Yet could you imagine the Bolsheviks adopting that attitude to soldiers returning to their towns and villages during World War I? We demand that workers in armaments factories be given full protection, health and safety, and so on, yet the left has failed to respond to the widespread disgust within the population at the lack of proper equipment provided for soldiers.
The Bolsheviks certainly did not let their hostility to the imperialist war stand in the way of placing themselves firmly on the side of the workers and peasants sent to fight and die. Nor did Trotsky, Farrell Dobbs and others fail to mercilessly criticise the bourgeois state for failing adequately to train and equip workers sent to fight and die in World War II.
In failing to deal with these issues, the left has illustrated its collapse on questions of war and military policy into a suffocating moralism and pacifism, which in the case of the Stop the War Coalition has to abandon any kind of proletarian military policy or class-struggle orientation, precisely in order to maintain the support of its bourgeois and petty bourgeois allies. In so doing, the left has boycotted its own politics, leaving the door open to the British National Party and other nationalist forces to pick up on working class concerns and exploit them for their own populist ends.
The policy of the militia is entirely correct, but for it to have traction it has to be combined with a rounded policy that deals with the questions of British military policy here and now. Moreover, a militia can only arise on the back of a developed democratic structure, which can only be developed on a localised basis.
In other words, before any such militia can be developed, it is necessary to take existing workers’ structures such as tenants’ and residents’ associations, trades councils and even neighbourhood watch schemes, in order to energise and democratise them as local organs of workers’ control within their communities, which will be capable of taking real action to protect those communities and to self-police them as a first stage. I hope that, during its discussions on the Draft programme, the CPGB will bear these comments in mind.
Arthur Bough
boffyblog.blogspot.com
Bottom up
Peter Manson reports on the tentative and faltering steps being taken to cobble together a possible coalition (‘You couldn’t make it up’, October 1).
I am pleased to report that in Lewisham we are not waiting for any national grand coalition of the left to emerge. Community activists, trade unionists and socialists have been meeting over the past few weeks to thrash out an anti-cuts programme of defending jobs and services.
A tentative working name of ‘Lewisham People Before Private Profit’ is aiming to be registered with the Election Commission with a view to standing candidates in next May’s local elections. Consideration is also being given to standing candidates in the general election and Lewisham’s mayoral poll. The lesson that many of us have learned from previous left unity projects is that building from the bottom up is the way forward.
Nick Long
Catford
Class act
I did not know of the Independent Working Class Association until recently when I saw them quoted on the RevLeft website.
This was the paragraph that caught my attention: “To be brutally honest, there never was a golden age of the political left. But there was a time when there was more of a commitment to universal values and aspirations. The problem for the left was that they never had a convincing or successful programme that could deliver equality for all, along with economic and social justice. The left certainly never had an analysis or programme that convinced the vast majority of working class people to fully place their faith in them. This failure inevitably led the working class to give up on the left and the left to emphatically turn their backs on the working class. The rest is the grisly history of the left’s retreat into the world of identity politics” (www.iwca.info/?p=10146).
This prompted me, a mere worker on the Pacific coast, to check out the IWCA’s site, where I read their ‘Declaration of independence’, ‘Frequently asked questions’, programme and manifesto. I was impressed with their material.
Going back to my Weekly Worker letters on the difference between ‘bourgeois worker parties’ and ‘proletarian-not-necessarily-communist parties’, here indeed is the very essence of a proletarian-not-necessarily-communist party that has eluded the working class for too long.
I hereby encourage British comrades of a working-class background to join the IWCA and further its activity, or at least to discuss jointly the question of joining the organisation.
Jacob Richter
email
Smash ’em
I have been looking at the British National Party’s website (‘Anti-BNP class-collaboration’, October 1).
These people are very dangerous. They are Nazis in the making. They appeal to both left and right, but always with a rightwing agenda. If I see them in my area, I will shout them down on the street and call them Nazis. I used to be in the Socialist Workers Party (now up the Swanee). I don’t really care about politics these days, but I will not allow Nazis to organise.
When I lived in Newcastle, we all went down to Sunderland to demonstrate against the BNP. The BNP were outnumbered by dozens to one and they started singing ‘Rule Britannia’. It was weird seeing people doing Nazi salutes to that music.
Smash ’em so hard they cannot gain a foothold. That is a good policy.
Chris Haywood
email
Sex and power
I think SKS misunderstands the concept of equality (Letters, October 1). All human relationships are affected by power inequalities. Equality is a power relationship too which communists are for not because it creates categories of equals that can be scientifically defined, but because it enables individuals, whether in a scientific category or not, to say yes or no of their own free will and also to get out of relationships easily that they do not like.
Equality is a social relationship that can only fully work in open democratic conditions, where exploitative and manipulative behaviour can be seen by other people and where they can come to the assistance of the weaker person. It is reliant on social solidarity. It cannot, however, perfect humanity or prevent people from making mistakes and it requires adequate knowledge of the given situation and the ability to make a concrete analysis of everything involved to be effective.
In the Goddard case that everyone has been alluding to, I agree that the school had to take action because it is impermissible for schools to ignore the possibility of teachers abusing their position. And in general I am in favour of those closest to the situation investigating it and deciding what to do about it. So long, that is, that the decision is made democratically and includes the views of teachers, parents and children and, in this case, lesbian representatives. The point being that the working class can only learn to exercise power by exercising power.
If perchance they called for the banning of Ms Goddard from teaching for life because she had a consensual lesbian relationship with a younger person I, unlike SKS, would kick up a fuss because it is both arbitrary and draconian. In fact, because, as far as we know, no harm was being done to either partner by the relationship, a Nelsonian eye might have been better for all concerned, but that judgement rather implies that the younger girl in particular was able to talk about her relationship in private and access any help she needed. Goddard too might have been assisted by a bit of good advice. My starting position is to keep personal relationships private wherever possible.
I think Vicky Starr (September 24) was referring to the Draft programme of the CPGB, which I presume SKS has not read. It does not support the right of adults to abuse children, but the right to consensual sex, the emphasis being on consensual. For me, a ‘paedophile’ is someone who desires a sexual relationship, as understood by adults, with a pre-pubescent who cannot possibly share that understanding. Ms Goddard is not, by that definition, a paedophile. The question of consensuality is central and can only be answered by the 15-year-old: anything else is oppression of the young adult’s sexuality.
The CPGB favours sex education to a level that enables young adults to make realistic judgements about their actions. Youth is a time for experimentation in sex, as in everything else. People make mistakes - sometimes serious - but few people end up ruining their entire lives by them. It is no good denying that freedom carries a price tag, but lack of freedom carries an even bigger one.
SKS’s sociological analysis of sexual power relations fails politically because (s)he thinks power relations can be abolished. But (s)he does have some sensible instincts - such as proposing that the solution must come from working class power democratically exercised. However, for power to be exercised fully and effectively the working class needs a consciously developed programme and a permanent political structure to represent it. SKS’s suggestion relies only on spontaneously generated anger and trade union organisation. It does not go far enough.
Arthur Lawrence
email
Rix fix
Did you download a PDF of the Weekly Worker last week or the week before?
Did you put a smile on Robbie Rix’s face and make a donation? Why not? Sure, we haven’t all got tens or hundreds to hand over every week, but let me tell you about a new tradition we could start, fellow readers. It’s a tradition that’ll prove communism can work, keep the Weekly Worker alive and allow comrade Rix to lower his stress levels.
If you come by and read the Weekly Worker at www.cpgb.org.uk, pay the cover price of one pound via the donation button. Stand firm by Lenin’s wise words that “every worker must have a penny [well, pound!] for the paper”.
I’d also encourage readers to come discuss the paper with other comrades at the Weekly Worker readers’ groups on both Facebook and the forums at www.revleft.com.
John Masters
Hertfordshire
Disaster
Barry Curtis thinks ecologists are anti-human in their intent (Letters, October 1). They can be. But capitalism takes no responsibility for the environment. The rich may be able to look after themselves, but their system of exploitation and everlasting growth spells disaster for the great majority of humanity.
Comrade Curtis says soil erosion in the US is six times less than in Africa. So what?
Phil Kent
Haringey
