Letters

Twice wrong

Dave Douglass’s account of the British left’s attitude to the European Union is historically inaccurate (‘Defence of the nation-state’, December 8).

He writes: “One of the massive sea changes in my life has been the conversion of ‘the left’ in general from nigh universal opposition to the whole idea of a capitalist EEC to one of support and defence.” This is wrong for two reasons. Firstly, when Britain first began to try to join what was the European Economic Community in the early 1960s, the attitude of the left was not one of opposition. The only organisation on the British ‘left’ which opposed entry was the Stalinist Communist Party.

Its opposition was largely driven by the dictates of Moscow, which, whilst adopting a position of peaceful coexistence with imperialism, wanted to ensure that it faced a fragmented opposition in western Europe. The nationalistic position of the CP went hand in glove with its reformist politics, which entails uniting the interests of British workers with British bosses for demands such as import and immigration controls. Both of these measures are ones that VN Gelis supports. Indeed, he has an entire website devoted to distorting the views of classical Marxism so as to make it look like Marx, Engels and Lenin opposed the free movement of labour and supported immigration controls!

In fact, for most of the 1960s, the Trotskyist left opposed the nationalist positions of the CP. They took the attitude that, although the removal of national borders and the formation of a larger European union would be historically progressive and therefore should not be opposed, we should not advocate it either - it is not our job to provide the capitalists with solutions. Our job is to fight within any progressive developments for the interests of workers and to advocate socialism as the real solution for workers’ problems. On that basis, all of the revolutionary left in Britain at the time adopted an abstentionist position.

But during the 1960s a number of these sects, probably buoyed by a certain degree of success in building their organisations, began to focus on the idea of ‘building the party’, by which they meant themselves. The first to move in this direction was the Socialist Labour League, which later became the Workers Revolutionary Party. This had a significant impact on the politics of the groups concerned. In order to ‘build the party’, the need to swim in a particular milieu becomes paramount. Political principle becomes subordinate to adaptation to that milieu. They may not have had the focus groups that the Blairites had, but they certainly knew where to pitch their politics in order to appeal to the particular niche of the market at which they were aiming. If the WRP, International Socialists and Militant wanted to recruit from that large mass of the ‘left’, which existed at the time in the trade unions, and by the 1970s around the Labour left, then it was necessary to adapt their politics accordingly in order to compete with the CP and its fellow travellers around Tribune, the Bennites, etc.

In other words, the policy of opposition to the EEC that existed in the 1970s was not some kind of long-standing, principled position that anyone reading Dave Douglass’s account would believe it to be. In fact, it was the same kind of opportunism that the leaders of the Second International displayed in 1914. Then a working class still heavily dominated by bourgeois ideas, of which nationalism was a particularly virulent form, lined up behind its own ruling class and the leaders of the Second International, rather than stand against that tide, and collapsed with it. In the early 1970s, the revolutionary left did not collapse into nationalism and opportunism in order not to be separated from the working class. On the contrary, despite Dave’s claim that the pros and antis divided on class lines, the majority of the British left voted in favour of staying in the EEC, but did so in order not to be separated from that limited milieu of ‘left’ public opinion from which each group sought to recruit.

The same is true in Greece. Dave says, of the plans for an EU state: “Gelis identifies the dilemma for the seething Greek masses, who have concluded that at least under present conditions - the autocratic rule and impositions of world bankers and power elites - they want little of it.” But this is not true. It is not just the revolutionary left in Greece that do not agree with Gelis’s reactionary nationalist agenda. Every opinion poll shows that support for the EU and staying in the euro stands at around 70%!

And, of course, there is nothing in Marxism that advises workers to separate into smaller economic units. On the contrary, one of the principled bases of Marxism is the idea that we are in favour of larger units, bringing larger groups of workers together, where they are stronger and less divided. That is particularly true across borders.

The second reason that he is wrong, however, is that the left position today is not one of “support and defence” of a capitalist EU. The left position is to oppose the reactionary notions of people like Gelis, who advocate a return to capitalist nation-states. But opposition to a more reactionary alternative does not in itself mean support for the status quo. I oppose a return to private healthcare as an alternative to the state capitalist NHS, but that does not cause me to support or defend a bureaucratic, inefficient and oppressive NHS, as opposed to advocating a socialist healthcare system under the ownership and control of workers.

The socialist response to the situation in Europe is not to advocate reactionary bourgeois nationalism, as Gelis does, but to advocate workers’ solidarity across Europe, the building of a real European labour movement committed to a single fight against European capital, based around a set of minimum demands, and for consistent democracy across the EU.

As I said recently, I have no reason to doubt that Dave Douglass wants to rip the head off capitalism as much today as he ever has, but the reactionary, nationalist politics of Gelis are the logical conclusion of the kind of nationalistic solutions that Dave has advocated in recent weeks and months at Bombardier.

Twice wrong
Twice wrong

Hopping mad

The Weekly Worker’s headline writer titled the piece by Dave Douglass ‘Defence of the nation-state’. As someone who has disagreed with headlines put on my articles, I will say in this case it is spot on.

At the end of the article, Dave spots a problem in his review of VN Gelis’s How the IMF broke Greece: eyewitness reports and role of the fake left: “Admittedly, there are things in it which make me feel uneasy - the highlighting of ‘mass illegal immigration’ and its effect on the already straining system, for example - but comrade Gelis is not trying to put a gloss on anything, or smooth any sensibilities.”

I would suggest this, and the political trajectory behind it, is the mother and father of all problems. It did not smooth any of my sensibilities and made me feel not just “uneasy”, but hopping mad. Or at least it would have done had I not known the road down which this comrade had gone many years ago.

Comrade VN Gelis, a Greek who claims to be a Trotskyist, has the following position on immigration: “Illegal immigration is not an exclusively Greek phenomenon. Yet Greece has received an enormous number of illegal immigrants, out of any proportion with its size and resources. This fact is not unrelated to the infamous Schengen agreement, which defines Greece as a country responsible for the initial reception of refugees - a door open for the whole of Europe. As a result, we have a dramatic rise of unemployment, and the modification of its nature. It is no longer conjunctural. It has become synonymous with the social marginalisation of the Greek worker. The destruction of his social conquests and rights. Of course, the government and some of its fervent ‘enemies’ are denying all this. But working people know very well what is happening, as they are the ones called upon to pay the bill” (www.evangelos12.btinternet.co.uk).

This is racist to the core because it considers the Greek worker first and begins the struggle for workers’ rights on a national basis. Marxism is a universal doctrine which fights for human equality on a material basis, in the here and now, when we overthrow our global oppressors, world imperialism. Our ‘new Jerusalem’ is here on earth, to be fought for right now, with that perspective. Progressive humanity has understood this right back to the English civil war, with John Lilburne, the Levellers, et al.

And here lies the nub of the matter, because capitalism cannot be defeated on a national basis (although it is true that revolutions must be made on a national basis), but with an internationalist perspective from the very start. What Gelis is proposing in practice will result in ‘indigenous’ workers attacking immigrant workers in alliance with a far-right section of the capitalist class to maintain the privileges of an aristocracy of labour. That was the essence of the reactionary strikes around ‘British jobs for British workers’ that Socialist Fight fought against so well.

It was the Irish immigrant workers (East End dockers) who turned out the vast bulk of the 300,000 that defeated Oswald Mosley in Cable Street in 1936, unifying the whole class behind an oppressed and threatened minority Jewish community to begin the revival of the whole class after the defeats of the 30s. Likewise, it was Irish immigrant dockers and women workers in the 1890s (the dockers’ tanner strike of 1889 and Bryant and May’s match girls’ strike of 1888, labourers and women workers in the New Unionism movement) that saw the unification of the whole class behind them, which resulted in the formation of the Labour Party as a bourgeois workers’ party after the 1903 Taff Vale judgement. Always the poorest and most oppressed are the immigrants; it is reactionary going to war in alliance with the far right against immigrants, blocking with one section of the capitalist class and using the fake argument that we want to defeat those other capitalists who want to exploit those workers as cheap labour.

We must fight for trade union conditions and rates of pay for all workers:

1. No borders, no immigration controls - a working man or woman has the right to seek work anywhere on the planet where they can get the best price for their labour, while capital roams the planet in search of profit without let or hindrance. It is a measure of the strength of the organised working class that there are still some relatively progressive immigration laws left. They are disappearing rapidly. When they all go, then we will have fascism. And quoting Lenin against immigration in defence of the first workers’ state is an unprincipled sleight of hand.

2. Only on a global scale can we defeat all the ills of capitalism. In particular, the slogan of the world revolution sets Trotskyism apart from all other political currents on the planet in understanding the global nature of capitalism and the necessary global approach to programme and practice of a world party of the socialist revolution to solve this crisis.

3. If you reject the programme of world revolution and the working class as one global class - only when that whole class fights for all its members and for all the poor and oppressed on the planet will it be able to raise its sights to the world revolution - then you end up like VN Gelis as a theoretical reactionary, the most fake of the “fake lefts” he rails against in the subtitle of his book.

Will he go and picket Dover and Heathrow to demand that the Nazi sympathisers in the UK Borders Agency do their jobs properly, arrest all (dark-skinned, of course) immigrants (by implication not just the illegal ones) and cease conspiring against the ‘white British working class’? This crisis throws a sharp spotlight on reactionary views posing as ‘leftism’. VN Gelis is advocating a most dangerous and reactionary perspective, one implicitly endorsed by the likes of the Campaign against Euro-federalism (see the letter by its secretary, John Boyd, in the Morning Star of November 7).

Dave Douglass should clearly distance himself from these positions, whilst the arguments about the EU are had out.

Hopping mad
Hopping mad

Main enemy

Roscoe Turi’s equation of Stalinism with militant anti-imperialism is the exact place where ‘modern’ Trotskyism ditches Lenin’s basic writings on imperialism as the highest phase of capitalism (Letters, December 8). It is no mere symptom, as Turi suggests.

Nato is by far the main military enemy of the international working class. Secondly, it is the ideology of imperialism that manifests on the left as tacit support for CIA/MI5 operations in target countries. These countries’ national sovereignty is never mentioned, never mind defended. The leaders of these countries are put at the same level as the imperialist aggressors and this subterfuge serves the interests of the very same imperialism they nominally claim to oppose.

In reality, posing the question merely in terms of capitalism is an attempt to bury the national question. This is a long way from reality, but what is needed is a consistent exposure of imperialist interests and not only in the dumbing down of the left. This dumbing down process has the danger of missing out on the imperialist provocation of World War III.

Main enemy
Main enemy

Enemy's enemy

I understand the frustration of progressive, democratic and socialist forces in Russia over apparent irregularities in the recent duma elections in the Russian Federation. Russia has never had any experience of bourgeois democracy, democratic processes, norms or practices, and it is perhaps fortunate in that respect.

However, despite our affinities with our political sisters and brothers in Russia, we ought to be very careful about supporting what now has every appearance of a western imperialist-stimulated and supported ‘colour revolution’ in the Russian Federation.

The Medvedev-Putin leadership represents interests which are certainly in contradiction to those of the working people of Russia, but are also in contradiction to the old, decaying but exceptionally dangerous capitalist powers of western imperialism. Our enemy’s enemy is ultimately our friend.

The treacherous comprador capitalist regime of Boris Yeltsin sought to completely prostitute the entire capital, natural and labour resources of the former Soviet Union to western imperialism. It was right and good that Yeltsin was despatched by Vladimir Putin, who subsequently sought to re-establish a strong central state and develop a strong and independent Russia, and to restore national pride and dignity.

A Russia which is strong, a Russia which is powerful and a Russia which is independent is in direct contradiction to the interests of western imperialism and is therefore, ultimately, in the interest of the working mass of the worldwide population.

We need to be clear that imperialist machinations to overthrow the Medvedev-Putin leadership are not about establishing democracy in Russia or about the best interests of the Russian people, but are about a second major attempt to subordinate, assimilate and absorb Russia’s great resources and assets within western capitalism. This is not in the fundamental interests of working people anywhere.

Enemy's enemy
Enemy's enemy

Naked Clarkson

Your article about Jeremy Clarkson was certainly very informative and put the question in a wider context (‘Keep quiet and drive’, December 8). Clearly, Clarkson’s comments were a godsend for Miliband, as he was able to distract attention from his failure to support the strikes (although who honestly thought that he would? When have Labour leaders ever supported strikes? There was no golden age of leftwing Labour leaders).

I also completely agree that discussion of legal action is ludicrous and completely unbecoming of the labour movement, who surely have better things to do with their time right now. We should not be dealing with our opponents in such a way.

That said, I see nothing wrong with a campaign for him to be sacked from the BBC, and I think your comparison of the people who complained about it with the Daily Mail-inspired vitriol against the brilliant Brass eye is an unworthy one. The people complaining about Clarkson were doing so not out of a sense of ignorant prudishness. They were upset that a man whose obscene, wholly unjustified salary they pay was taking a dump on the organised working class from a great height.

Or, better still, one could have his six- or seven-digit salary reduced to the average of the public sector workers he was excoriating so witlessly. The BBC is a taxpayer-funded institution. It should be democratically controlled and its employees should be paid fair, but not exorbitant salaries.

The whole Clarkson debacle is a great opportunity to re-examine the relationship with ‘our’ national broadcaster and see if it is acting in the interests of the people who fund it - the working class. In many respects, it represents a commercial broadcaster, just without the actual adverts, and we should be arguing for something quite different, with a wholly different pay structure and artistic/journalistic focus.

If it isn’t acting in our interests - and I wouldn’t particularly disagree with your analysis of it being “a propaganda machine for the British state” - it’s time to do something about it. It depends on subscriptions of a kind, and a mass non-payment campaign around the issue of Clarkson/Top gear in general (these comments are merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to him and his joke-free, weekly knob-measuring contest - sorry, show about fast cars) could have some traction. It is naked political propaganda masking as light entertainment and we should be making that point as often as we can.

Naked Clarkson
Naked Clarkson

Swap gear

There are several points that could be made about Clarkson and his pre-rehearsed ‘outburst’ (let’s face it, the Beeb doesn’t really do spontaneous).

Had some union officers taken their finger out, there could have been a demonstration outside BBC main studios on November 30, which might have given programme presenters something to think about and got some respect out of them for a change. But, as it was, a lot of nurses and hospital workers in west London seemed unaware what was expected of them that morning and activists were stretched getting to places they were supposed to picket. Where they turned up, the response was good from both staff and public.

There was a particularly impressive turnout on the day from people whom we’re not used to seeing on strike - for many it was the first time. I knew the head teachers were out and I was also impressed to see banners such as the probation officers, court officers and the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists.

I would imagine these sort of people were genuinely upset by Clarkson’s remark, and quite rightly so. Some of us in bigger unions have probably got too used to the media, including ‘our’ BBC, treating us like dirt, whereas those respectable folk who are newer to the fray were understandably shocked by it. David Cameron might regret his daft remark about the strike being a “damp squib” when he encounters some of these people in his constituency.

It’s a pity Clarkson did not just say the strikers should be locked up, or someone could have told him how many prison governors had been panicked that morning because prison officers who have lost the legal right to strike were nevertheless holding meetings. Wandsworth prison officers joined the London march with their banner. Should Jeremy Clarkson ever find himself locked up, I am sure he will be treated with the respect appropriate.

There was also a small contingent from the broadcasting union, Bectu, on the London march, and this prompts me to ask a question of them and the electricians in my own union, Unite, though it might also involve the National Union of Journalists. Could not trade unionists pull the plug on Jeremy Clarkson and his career? Hearing not just union leaders but people like the Socialist Workers Party pleading with BBC bosses to act, or mentioning the police - yes, I know, union strength is not what it was, and there are all sorts of laws - but is it beyond our genius for someone to - whoops! - trip over a cable?

Now Clarkson is in China, with his oppo, and Edinburgh zoo has been lent a couple of pandas. That’s just a coincidence, but, as I have suggested in my blog, if Beijing zoo could be persuaded to make this a permanent swap, the pandas could stay and I’m sure they would be cheaper and much more popular.

Swap gear
Swap gear

Full-on M-L

If ever Britain needed a strong party of the left it is now. Capitalism is dead. Its appearance of life is due only to the heart-lung machine of the media. Therefore, it is increasingly important that the people of all classes be made aware that a Marxist-Leninist style government is not any longer a political choice, but a political necessity.

We also have to awaken them to the fact that Britain is not a democracy. They must be alerted to the fact that all three main parties have the same political agenda. All they bicker about in parliament are trivial matters as to who would do something quicker or slower. But they all cling to the same dead doctrine of capitalism. This means, in effect, that Britain today is effectively a one-party, crypto-fascist state with an immovable head in the person of the queen.

The people must be told it is due only to our fascist government that they are being impoverished with taxes and price hikes. A Marxist-Leninist state would immediately nationalise the petro-chemical industry, as well as the banks, the power, transport, steel and communication industries. Further, no-one would be allowed to earn more than £75,000 a year.

That would bring in an additional £200 billion a year, which would enable us to eliminate VAT, halve the price of petrol and offer free hot water and heating. By lowering the cost of living by half - as such a nationalisation would - people would have money to spend, which in turn would cause the shops to order more and the factories to have to take on thousands of additional workers, who would also be a part of the buying public. Within just a few short years, Britain would have full employment, as well as a rise in our standard of living.

With this as a basic beginning, work could then begin on the elimination of the freehold laws, whilst at the same time turning Britain into a republic. Within 25 years, it could be possible to create a full-on Marxist-Leninist state. The kind of communism I believe in is based on government of the people, for the people and by the people. At present, we are very far from that.

But, unfortunately, I have noticed the media has ruled out of its lexicon even the use of the words, ‘communism’ and ‘socialism’.

The people must be told, but how do we tell them? Aye, there’s the rub.

Full-on M-L
Full-on M-L

Cementing unity

Unite, Britain’s biggest union, has agreed to ask workers at the building materials company, Cemex, if they are prepared to be balloted for industrial action over pensions. The dispute concerns workers in the cement business at Rugby, Warwickshire and South Ferriby, North Lincolnshire, as well as drivers and other workers based at a number of sites across the country.

What this shows is that attacks on pensions are happening in the private sector as well as in the public sector, as we said on November 30 when we supported strikes around the slogan, ‘Fair pensions for all’. Rugby Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, and Rugby Against the Cuts, will support Cemex workers, just as we support public sector workers. Attacks on pensions in the public and private sector are driven by an ideological desire by the coalition government to make workers pay for the economic crisis they did not cause.

In this instance, Unite is challenging the company over its decision to close the defined benefit pension scheme to existing members and also over the inadequate benefits in its defined contribution scheme, which was opened to new starters about five years ago.

The union wants an outcome which would provide decent pensions for all Cemex employees. However, to date the company has refused to enter into serious discussions.

Cemex generates over £1 billion in annual sales and has a UK supply network serving more than 500 locations.

Cementing unity
Cementing unity