WeeklyWorker

Letters

Saoirse

Revolutionary greetings on behalf of Irish Republican Socialist Party/Irish National Liberation Army prisoners of war.

We have learned that the Hackney branch of the CPGB hosted a public meeting with representatives of Saoirse on July 4. We welcome this as the latest in a consistent line of struggle and support for Irish POWs by the CPGB.

Through the CPGB work on the struggle in Ireland you would also be aware that this department represents a sizeable number of socialist/republican POWs, four of whom - Liam Heffernan, Martin McMonagle, Eamonn O’Donnell and Sean Cruikshank - are serving lengthy sentences in prisons throughout England.

In keeping with the stand taken by the CPGB in defence of IRSP/Inla POWs, we would appreciate it if comrades would raise the following points with Saoirse.

As representatives of a movement who had and have prisoners involved in every level of prison protest, including three - Patsy O’Hara, Kevin Lynch and Micky Devine - who gave their lives in the 1981 hunger strike, we feel entitled to request that these matters are raised in an open forum by comrades committed to the cause of the Irish working class.

In conclusion we welcome this opportunity to renew our contact with comrades in the CPGB and look forward to a future of healthy debate and co-operation.

Gino Gallagher
IRSP POW department

NHS truth

I felt the ‘Unhealthy consensus’ article (Weekly Worker 101) was rather weak and ineffective in its analysis of the Labour Party’s policy on the NHS. Individual items were sniped and sneered at rather than analysed as an integrated package designed solely to promote the interests of the capitalist class.

The package of proposals may prove superficially attractive to many who work in the health service and seen as a much more sensible and rational way of running a modern health service. We should understand this and understand that if people accept the basic ground rules of capitalism, this is not an unreasonable view to take.

To counter this view I would like to have seen an analysis which briefly:-

1. Explained the role of the NHS as a capitalist institution in a capitalist society which aims to rehabilitate workers to a sufficiently healthy condition at minimum cost to enable them to resume helping to produce surplus value. The NHS is not an ‘island of socialism’ and its original creation should not be defended as such.

2. Explained the role of the Conservative reforms which attempted to open up the NHS to market forces as a means for: providing profitable opportunities for private capital; reducing and eliminating costs in the NHS (in particular by destroying local services through ‘beggar my neighbour’ competition) in order to reduce the collective tax burden on the capitalist class; and, most importantly, introducing the attitudes and culture of the market and commercialism in an arena where traditionally they have had little currency. The parallel with the Gorbachev reforms in the former USSR is unmistakable, particularly if one regarded the latter as state capitalist.

3. Pointed out that the Labour proposals are supported by private capital and the thoughtful capitalist media because the successes of the marketisation of the NHS for the capitalist class have been outweighed by the tremendous waste and cost associated with the bureaucracy needed to run the market. This waste has inevitably been reflected in the tax burden on the capitalist class and represents a deduction from the profits made for that class.

4. Argued that, as capitalism’s second eleven, Labour is perfectly placed to propose an alternative which by streamlining the market and eliminating overt competition and conflict will generate significant savings in costs and thus an opportunity to reduce the tax burden on private capital.

The Labour Party is an enthusiastic supporter of British capitalism and imperialism. All its proposals for managing key institutions such as the NHS should be judged and analysed in that context.

Andrew Northall
Northamptonshire

Secret letter

I have received another circular letter from comrade Conlon in which he criticises Lee-Anne Bates for using the words, “Reforging the Party is important because that Party was part of the class. This has nothing to do with claiming its politics, which must be ruthlessly criticised from day one”.

Perhaps our comrade Conlon has patented this form of words. I must however agree with Lee-Anne’s statement. Some of us who joined the Party in the thirties and before were critical of numerous aspects of the Party’s policies, but with all its faults it was the finest political expression of the British working class and had an influence on all the workers’ struggles until it finally succumbed to the Eurocommunist liquidation.

There is nothing wrong in Jack Conrad’s statement referring to the reforging of the Party: “I do not mean the CPGB circa 1920, 1930, let alone 1990”. The Party was then an organisation of those times and a renewal of that organisation as it was would today be useless.

I see nothing wrong in taking up Conlon’s suggestion of discussing the trade unions, etc - provided it fits in with existing seminars. But Conlon should raise his criticisms in the open, not in private circulars.

On a different note, as a retired member of the AEEU I was rather surprised at the candidates’ election addresses, which I have just received. Contrary to the usual addresses, one of the candidates, Michael F Meacham, doesn’t mention support for the Labour Party. I would suggest that members of the union should therefore support Meacham.

Ted Rowlands
Bishop Auckland

Progressive?

Why I’m leaving the communists to join Labour.

I have since late 1991 been involved in what could be called the communist movement - most notably the Socialist Workers Party, and most recently a small involvement with the CPGB. I have in my political thinking come to believe what I regard as the problem with communism. Communism depends upon a world revolution - most of the sects in this country will tell you this.

The odds of a revolution being sparked off in every country around the world either simultaneously or within a few years (as it would have to be if degeneration into some sort of capitalist-socialist hybrid like the USSR is to be avoided) are almost as high, or perhaps even higher, than winning the national lottery jackpot.

The second barrier to a successful revolution is the hard truth that the bourgeoisie can easily buy our class, if not in one country then another. The result would be the destruction of the contending forces and the destruction of the very wealth upon which the communists would hope to build their world.

The end of the revolutionary road is not a communist paradise but a vile barbarism, whichever side won the struggle.

What can Labourism offer?

Labourism is the only force in this country that can improve the quality of life for the people who live here because it is grounded in the solving of problems in the here and now and not ‘come the revolution!’

Of the two political philosophies that dominate capitalist thinking worldwide, Labourism is the progressive option that can take us to a point where saying, ‘Capitalism is a caring economic system’ won’t lead to instant demonisation and denouncement as a class traitor.

Class struggle is about how much the workers want in their pay packets, not the key to the transformation of the world’s economy.

Gary Salisbury
Hertfordshire

Vietnam

The steady degeneration and embourgeoisification of ‘official communism’ throughout the world is clear for all to see. Vietnam is not immune to this process, recent events show.

True to the deathly spirit of bureaucratic centralism and bureaucratic socialism, the police in Vietnam have arrested Ngoc Nghiem, aged 76 and a former head of the Marxist-Leninist Institute - an influential Communist Party think tank, and Do Trung Hieu, a founding member of the Club of Former Resistance Fighters, which was set up in the south in the 1980s by communists.

Comrades Nghiem and Hieu were charged with spreading “anti-socialist propaganda”, a disgraceful charge when you consider that the comrades were - quite correctly, in my opinion - expressing their dismay at the way the Party leadership is happy to encourage “economic liberalisation” (ie, the introduction of market forces, if not actual capitalism itself), yet does not permit any dissenting voices to be heard, inside or outside the Communist Party.

This is a very unhealthy situation, and can only lead to the increase and growth of genuinely counter-revolutionary ideas. There must, and should be, full democracy within the Vietnamese Communist Party, in order to decide the correct way forward in this reactionary, counterrevolutionary epoch.

The ideas, orientation and policies of the current, ‘rightist’-leaning leadership need to be challenged openly, in a communist and comradely manner.

Eddie Ford