Letters

Not drowning...

Thanks for the article detailing your views on the issues and questions currently facing the International Socialist Network (‘Not waving, but dying’, July 24). As fans of Stevie Smith, and in particular the poem, ‘Not waving but drowning’, we appreciated the headline.

We decided to write this letter not only because we want to set out our view of the issues to your readership, but also because the criticisms we have of the article bear on our criticisms of this paper, a project of the left that we broadly support. The Weekly Worker is clearly the least tedious and stupid paper on the left and, whilst this might be the kind of praise that one would proverbially heap on the one-eyed king of a blind country, please take it in the spirit it is intended: an example of the comradely criticism of one thing that exists, so to speak.

Daniel Harvey’s article is ostensibly about the ISN and, to a lesser extent, the other groups involved with this year’s regroupment process. The slightly hurried way in which comrade Harvey moves over the depressing soap opera that some of us in the ISN have started calling ‘#sexyracistchairgate’, is itself redolent with proof of Daniel’s method of research: basically reproducing perfectly accessible public quotes from Facebook and obscuring them to give some purported narrative. Single points of disagreement are pulled out of context and engraved in narratives of struggles between factions (Seymourites on the one hand, Nelsonites on the other, etc, etc).

We are afraid, comrades, that this stops you seeing the actual state of all of us who are active on what was once called the ‘hard left’. This elevation of fallings-out over detail of emphasis between handfuls of individuals into the ‘factional struggles’ between ‘leading intellectuals’ of your dramatic fantasy is the opium that allows you to get through the day-to-day tedium of being a small propaganda group that, as far as we can see, is primarily active in Left Unity. In this way you can take a basically jokey remark by Kris Stewart about “smashing the steering committee” as the pantomimic call to arms of a ludicrous cartoon anarchism.

Your correspondent wonders “what the point of the ISN is”. Indeed, referring to Simon Hardy, he thinks that “if a leader of any other left organisation was making these kinds of statements to their members, we would assume it was pretty close to collapse”. That’s as may be, but we can’t help thinking that our movement might be in a bit healthier shape if some comrades occasionally did ask themselves if there was any point to their activity: especially comrades coming from the post-Trotskyist world of the British far left.

Comrade Hardy comes in for criticism elsewhere in the article, where, for instance, his politics are labelled “indecisive”. Now, we may not share all his politics, but to call his views indecisive seems inaccurate, if taken in the everyday sense of the word, meaning ‘not sure’. Simon has set out his views in books and articles, including ones on the soi-disant CPGB Provisional Central Committee group website. So, obviously ‘indecisive’ means something different. But there is an older meaning of the word, as in the outcome of a battle. And so a fairly live debate within the ISN is elevated into the same register of pantomime heroic terms that were used to describe the question of the fallout from #sexyracistchairgate.

Comrade Harvey also touches on our regroupment efforts, noting that we haven’t fused with Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century, Socialist Resistance or Workers Power, and that no larger organisation has been formed. But he treats with disdain, as a joke, the idea, held by a good number of ISN members consistently throughout the regroupment process, that the main focus of our regroupment should be with groups to the left of the Leninist/post-Leninist/Trotskyist swamp. That this is a serious argument to which the comrade owes a critique is borne out practically by the small but important steps that have been taken towards this. Daniel claims that we have never defined what we mean by the “sects” that make up this swamp, and he is right. There is no ISN ‘line’ on this. Nevertheless different members and groups in the ISN have done this, and we have had an ongoing conversation about it, which was, for the most part, conducted in full view of anyone who cares to look.

There is another glaring omission in this article, an omission that sits at the heart of Daniel’s narrative: namely, the absolute transparency of the ISN, both internally and with regard to the regroupment process. The CPGB PCC has the bulletins from the regroupment process on its website, and has previously posted all of our external bulletins too. The clue here, comrades, is in the name. Like the minutes of all our steering committees and national meetings, they are available on our own website for that ever decreasing minority of the working classes that actually gives a fuck.

Clearly, comrade Harvey doesn’t number wholly in that particular group of social misfits, as his account of our vicissitudes depends entirely on a selective reading of some stuff from our website and various Facebook chats. And it is from this very partial view that he draws his overall narrative. He paints a picture of an organisation that had the promise to become the same as his own, but failed. So when he criticises the ISN, he is criticising an idealised version of his own political practice. The mistakes that we are making are not only analogous, but identical, to factional enemies of The Leninist group: “The ISN’s collapse into horizontalism and anti-partyism is all justified in the same broad terms of listening and learning, and living in ‘new times’, in the same way as the Eurocommunists led ‘official communism’ toward liquidationism in the 1980s. The result is always the same: more dead groups, more demoralisation and more shrinkage of the organised left.”

This is the problem. Clearly we do live in “new times”. Eurocommunism was an epiphenomenon of that set of social phenomena that have consigned projects like the CPGB PCC’s to the past. The 1970s and 80s were a clear and resounding success for the capitalist class, and many of the basic building blocks of post-war working class power and working class strategy in the 20th century are in terminal decline. Indeed, it’s the recognition of this that gives us the most shared ground with the anarchist and libertarian groups that comrade Harvey sneers at. He predictably misconstrues an attempt at creativity as a lack of some sort of “decisive” political vigour.

Whilst the continuity CPGB group have developed interesting analyses and critiques of the rest of the left groups and sects, they remain in the orbit of their own particular history. So Daniel has to squint at us through the eyes of an organisation that emerged from the real CPGB. And when someone tries to describe another person through a squint they often make mistakes - what the person is wearing, or the meaning of a movement they make. And the same applies here: we’re not drowning, comrades; we’re dancing.

Brian Collier, Paris Thompson, Ged Colgan, Norman Doughty, Conrad Russell, Steve Baker, Javaad Alipoor
Leeds/Bradford ISN

Top-down

I am most grateful to Daniel Harvey for his comments on my piece, ‘Lenin yes! Leninism no?’, in the first issue of the RS21 journal. It was written to encourage discussion, so I welcome comments from any standpoint. However, Harvey might have noted that I am not a member of RS21 or of any other political organisation. The responsibility for my position is mine and mine alone.

Harvey calls my piece “generic”, which I take to be a polite way of calling it unoriginal and boring. Fair enough. But, to his credit, he focuses in on what for me is the very essence of Leninism: Lenin’s ability to learn from the working class.

But Harvey has little time for any such notion. He insists that Lenin polemicised against “the backward, trade union-type consciousness of the Russian revolutionary left”. Strange that this “backward” Russian revolutionary movement managed to invent soviets, one of the most crucial developments in the history of the international working class, and of decisive importance in 1917. There seems to be no evidence that Lenin, sitting in western Europe, actually dreamt up the soviet form and told the Russian workers how to do it. Those “backward” Russian workers did it all on their own.

Harvey considers that the SWP’s insistence on learning from the working class is “bureaucratic economism” and that “This is what sent activists rushing from one hare-brained scheme to the next over the years, causing so many to eventually give up on politics altogether.”

Now if I were trying to score cheap, sectarian debating points, I might point out that if the SWP lost large numbers of members, that was because it had large numbers to lose, whereas the CPGB’s record of recruitment is, to put in kindly, lamentable. But I will try and rise above that level.

In fact I am very dubious that so many did “give up on politics altogether”. What is Harvey’s evidence? Is he just drawing on the folk-wisdom of the Weekly Worker editorial offices? I spent 50 years in the SWP, and I have a rather different picture. Anyone who attended this year’s Marxism could see that a great many SWP cadres from 30, 40 and even 50 years ago are still in the party. (If this meant that Marxism looked a bit like a pensioners’ rally, that’s a different problem.) And of necessity I know a great many former members. Yes, there are the spectacular renegades, like Peter Hitchens and Garry Bushell, but they are a tiny minority. It is my impression that a very large number of ex-SWP members, whether they left for political reasons or because of personal pressures, remain on the left and are active in their unions or local campaigns.

Harvey asks: “But who interprets what the class wants? It was always Cliff, and then Harman, Rees, Callinicos, etc, after him.” Now I have known the four comrades he names over many years. Like all human beings, they have their faults and limitations, but I also know the contribution they have made to the struggle for socialism over the last decades. I continue to believe that the SWP role in the Anti-Nazi League, Stop the War, solidarity with 1984-85 miners’ strike and the campaign against the poll tax was overwhelmingly positive. Harvey doubtless knows a few anecdotes about mistakes we made, which he will use to try to discredit our entire contribution. Meanwhile I still await news of the contribution made by Harvey, or the CPGB, to these or any struggles. Harvey tells us, rightly, that Lenin offered “inspiring political leadership”. I know people who have been amused and even, on occasion, informed by the Weekly Worker. But inspired? - it just isn’t what you do.

However, when Harvey enquires, “But who interprets what the class wants?”, he does have a point. Perhaps I overestimated my audience; I should have spelled the point out more clearly. Obviously, learning from the class is not a passive process, but involves a dialectical interaction. What you learn depends on your class position and your theoretical framework. Boris Johnson learned from the 2011 riots that he needs water cannon - we might draw different lessons. Marx did not have a proper understanding of what constituted a workers’ state until 1871, when he learned it from the workers of Paris. But the fact that it was Marx, and not someone else, who learned this lesson derives from Marx’s theoretical work over the previous 30 years.

But, if Harvey dismisses learning from the working class as “bureaucratic economism”, he is left with a theoretical problem. If the job of the Leninist party is to bring theory to the working class, where does that theory come from? Does Harvey believe, like the foul Stalinist, Althusser, that the Marxist world-view was the product of an ‘epistemological break’ inside the confines of Karl Marx’s skull? Or does he, like the rest of us, believe that Marxism was produced by generalising from the struggles of the working class? If he doesn’t, one may wonder what becomes of the most fundamental axiom of Marxism, that the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself.

However, Harvey’s elitist and top-down view of Leninism does evoke a certain echo. I am reminded of the comrade who advocated “strong political leadership [which] campaigns within the organisation to give a clear direction to our party’s work”. I wonder if Daniel Harvey and Alex Callinicos have more in common with each other than either has with Tony Cliff or with Lenin.

Ian Birchall
email

How dare you!

So, “comrade Seymour has been denied membership of RS21, and basically seems to have left organised politics in pursuit of a media and publishing career”.

How very dare you? First of all, I am still a member of Left Unity, which constitutes some form of organised politics. Second, are you being deliberately insulting by neglecting my pursuit of an academic career?

Richard Seymour
<a href="http://www.leninonology.co.uk">www.leninonology.co.uk</a>

Yes and no

Ben Lewis, writing from Wales, goes to the heart of the Scottish debate when he asks, “Can we not uphold radical republicanism today? Is it not possible to win substantial constitutional reforms and concessions which facilitate the struggle for working class republicanism?” (Letters, July 24)

The answer is ‘yes’. This is why some of us in Left Unity are saying ‘Scottish Republic, yes’ against the rightwing majority which is sitting on the fence, either from indifference or saying ‘plague on both houses’. The Scottish referendum is an opportunity for democratic working class forces in Wales to say ‘yes’. All Welsh internationalists should support the radical left in Scotland. In Scotland in September, workers can and should go out and vote ‘yes’.

Unfortunately, Sarah McDonald has capitulated to Scottish nationalism (‘Nothing progressive about nationalism’, May 29). It has overpowered her thinking to such an extent that she cannot see the bigger picture. Fear of Scottish nationalism has turned her from being a critic of Scottish nationalism into a prisoner of it. The main enemy of the working class throughout the UK is the British state and the coalition government. Defeating Cameron and his Tory friends is one of the main tasks in the referendum. But Scottish nationalism has caused Sarah to abandon the class struggle for anti-nationalism.

Sarah says: “A pro-nationalist motion proposed by Steve Freeman (a comrade who has completely collapsed politically) was defeated, albeit narrowly.” There was no “pro-nationalist motion”. But, in Sarah’s world, there is Scottish nationalism under every bed or hiding round every corner. Significantly, the Weekly Worker has never printed that resolution because it deals with the class struggle and answers the Ben Lewis questions. It is easier to smear a resolution which the readers have not been allowed to see.

The claim I have “completely collapsed politically” doesn’t stand any confrontation with the facts. In 1979 the referendum on devolution was a struggle between Callaghan and Thatcher. I was a member of the Socialist Workers Party and supported a ‘critical yes’ vote. At the same time I was involved in the SWP Republican Faction, which linked the national question to a republic, either federal or independent. The Republican Faction answered the Ben Lewis questions.

In the 1997 referendum, the Revolutionary Democratic Group took the same pro-devolution republican position (see, for example, Dave Craig’s ‘Scotland’s referendum - raise the republican flag’, September 4 1997). However, the RDG adopted an abstention ‘vote’ for tactical reasons. There was no neutrality in this. The Scottish parliament would be won. The purpose of abstention was not to prevent or defeat a Scottish parliament. Had public opinion been about 50-50, then abstention would have been wrong.

Calling for abstention was a tactical means of promoting republican slogans in the Scottish left. It raised the case that Blair’s parliament was not democratic enough and the reform did not go far enough. The CPGB and RDG were debating larger organisations, such as Scottish Militant Labour and the Scottish Socialist Alliance, over whether it should be ‘yes’ or ‘abstain’. The CPGB and the RDG had basically the same, although slightly different, line. The RDG emphasised republican demands and the CPGB called for a “Scottish parliament with full powers”.

In the 2014 referendum, I have the same basic position of critically supporting democratic reform, but calling for a Scottish republic. A federal republic is now closer than ever but the next step is a ‘yes’ vote and a struggle for a Scottish republic supported by the working class in England. The balance of forces in the struggle for democracy rules out abstention and makes ‘yes’ the only serious option.

There is no collapse here. The pro-democracy and republican line is basically the same with tactical adjustment. It is the CPGB position that has undergone a collapse. In 1997, the CPGB was in favour of greater democracy and called for “a parliament with full powers”. This was a Scottish republic by any other name and the CPGB was criticised for not being explicitly republican. Now the CPGB has collapsed into the unionist camp, using the federal republic as camouflage.

The CPGB has thus switched sides. The key to this is the theory or dogma of the “historically constituted British working class”. The Communist Party of Great Britain depends on having a Great Britain to be the communist party of. Given its previous position, this is uncomfortable. So the CPGB argues for ‘no’, but says abstain. But this has its own contradictions, shown by the debate in the recent CPGB aggregate (‘Arguments strengthened’, July 3). Should pro-unionists vote ‘no’ or abstain?

‘Argue no, but say abstain’ stands against Sarah’s minority faction that says ‘no means no’. Abstention may be a safe hiding place in England or in Left Unity, largely based in England. But there is no such place in Scotland. The question which every CPGB member must answer is, if abstention was ruled out (as it was in 1979), which way you would jump? Would you move to the right into the unionist ‘no’ camp or to the left into the anti-unionist ‘yes’ camp?

Steve Freeman
LU Scottish Republic Yes tendency

In a huff

Steve Freeman is in a huff: pretending to have been slandered by people who have called him out on his smears and innuendos against socialists in Scotland who oppose Alex Salmond’s project of creating a lesser Scottish imperialism. He claims that no-one is able to quote him smearing anyone. Yet in his June 12 letter, he wrote: “They [ie, the official ‘no’ campaign] have the secret role of the security services, the mouthpiece of the BBC and all the rightwing press. People like Jeremy Paxman and left unionists like George Galloway and Greg Philo may or may not be innocent dupes in this game.” This clearly says that the likes of Galloway, Philo and others are tools of MI5, and even implies that they could be conscious agents.

And yet Steve claims to have been slandered when I point to a political motive for this smear, in terms of a political adaptation to Scottish nationalism. Since Scotland is not an oppressed nation (and throughout this exchange Steve has conspicuously refused to contradict me on this and argue openly that it is), any anti-‘outsider’ sentiment expressed can only be a form of reactionary xenophobia. Steve claims I have accused him of anti-English racism and thus tries to personalise this. But, since Steve is himself English, I really do not see how such anti-English tendencies could be very important or mean anything at all, actually.

I do not see how someone of English origin can be an anti-English racist any more than someone of Jewish origin can be an anti-Semite. If Scotland were indeed an oppressed nation - oppressed by the English - then a degree of anti-English sentiment would in fact be quite justified insofar as it was actually directed against oppression and inequality of nations. The real point of this is that Scottish nationalism is a form of imperialist nationalism. Hence the innuendo against Galloway, with his social base among Muslim immigrants who have been and are oppressed by western imperialism, is particularly egregious and an indication that the nationalism that Steve has adapted to is no better than the imperialist nationalism of the London bourgeoisie.

Speaking of which, Steve shows his complete break with class analysis when he states that there is a “historically constituted British ruling class” and no other, and effectively denies the existence of a Scottish ruling class. He thus denies the bourgeois character of the Scottish National Party and implies that it must be, if not an outright working class party, something of a nebulous class character - but for him, whatever it is, it certainly is not bourgeois. Of course, given the deep decline of the fortunes of British imperialism, it is quite conceivable that the “historically constituted” British ruling class can become un-constituted, and split along national lines between (mainly) English and Scottish. I think most who claim any form of Marxist analysis would conclude from the now-dominant position of a separatist and thoroughly bourgeois nationalist party in Scotland that this process is at least underway.

If Steve wishes to say that Scotland is a victim of British imperialism just as much as Ireland, why does he not come out and openly argue this? Is it because he knows such an argument would not go down well among real republicans - for instance, militant Irish republicans - who are aware of the history of Scots settlement in the north of Ireland going back centuries and the role of Scotland in ‘pacifying’ Ireland in the much more recent past? Again, his point about MI5 involvement in fighting for “fundamental class interests” would make sense only if Scotland were a victim of imperialism like Ireland or, say, Iraq. But, while he uses arguments that try to wrap the SNP project in the aura of the Irish struggle, he cannot come out all guns blazing as a partisan of ‘anti-imperialist’ Scots nationalism, because it is too well known that the SNP is pro-Nato and pro-monarchy.

If there has been for many years a “historically constituted” British ruling class, which is now less than united, it is also true that there is a historically constituted British working class, whose division along national lines would be a further major defeat for our class. If anything, in situations where the bourgeoisie is becoming divided in this way, it is in the strategic interest of the working class to seek a higher and more profound unity, not to divide along with its ‘own’ bourgeoisie(s). Hence the progressive role that can potentially be played by the demand for a federal republic.

Steve, like many on the left on both sides of the border, despairs of the potential for class struggle and socialism of this historically constituted working class, and is looking to the Scottish bourgeoisie to work a miracle for them and, through separation, create an environment conducive to socialist politics. This no doubt seems to these comrades like a short cut to socialism; in fact it is an abdication of socialist politics in favour of nationalism.

Ian Donovan
email

Economist link

May I - humbly, I hope - suggest that one contribution to the debate on a future society in Scotland that Chris Gray (‘Exeunt, stage left?’, July 24) has not read is my Scotland the Brave? Independence and radical social change (Glasgow 2013)?

The reason I say this is that - quite apart from outlining a thesis on why independence must address citizens’ material deprivation if it is to be an independence worth having - my book lays out a strategy (and its attendant challenges) of organically linking the struggle for progress on the front of defending and advancing living standards with how a future can and should be. Matters of democracy, republicanism, anti-imperialism and so on are argued to be very much secondary to this. It argues that a movement for radical independence must exist on this basis because - no surprise here - the SNP can neither be trusted nor relied upon.

Quite correctly, Chris Gray argues in his appraisal of other contributions that the responsibility of making demands and putting forward a political alternative also requires identifying the social forces capable of bringing this about. This I think I do.

If, as looks likely, the referendum will not be won, then the case for my thesis will receive validation in terms of what was necessary and who needed to do it. Of course, had Tommy Sheridan not split the Scottish Socialist Party in 2006, the SSP would be in a far stronger position to advance the case I made in my book.

Scotland the Brave? Independence and radical social change is available, priced £4.99, from www.scottishleftreview.org/shop.

Gregor Gall
Bradford

No expulsions

In reply to Andrew Northall (Letters, July 24), the positions agreed by the two branches expelled from the Socialist Party of Great Britain in 1991 were argued for many years without threat of expulsion. For two years before expulsion, their current publication Socialist Studies was a branch publication of the SPGB.

Current SPGB members are free to argue for these positions without threat of expulsion, which is why the 1988 proscription on use of the full name of the SPGB was removed at conference in 2008.

Jon D White
SPGB