Letters

Blind spot

I welcome Mike Macnair’s description of capitalism and the dynamic that produces crises and extremes of inequality, and prevents effective measures to deal with climate change and other challenges that face humanity (‘Socialist will not require industrialisation’, May 14). He mentions also “the worsening tendency towards war” and the features of the money system that “threaten in the future with the requirement of a third world war to overcome the effects of the relative decline of the US and the gross overgrowth of capital values”.

Unfortunately, he does not expand further on the growing war danger, and this has not had much attention in the pages of the Weekly Worker. There is a good deal of coverage of the Middle East, especially Iran and Israel/Palestine, but not on the tensions in Europe arising from the far-right-led and US/EU-sponsored coup in Kiev, linked as it is to the expansion of Nato; this had produced a response from Russia to protect access to its base in Crimea. Then there is Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’, which involves increasing risks of armed clashes with China over the disputed islands. This is being built up into a major crisis, with new or expanded military bases in Australia and around the region drawing in a whole swathe of countries to be lined up against China.

All this has been extensively documented on the World Socialist Web Site, along with reports on growing militarist sentiment among ruling classes in Germany, Japan and Australia. Yet this finds little reflection among what passes for the left, including the CPGB. Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition election material has a reference to opposing imperialist war, but could not manage to be more specific, leaving the door open to ‘humanitarian’ interventions. Left Unity has the same phrase and also calls for an “independent foreign policy” (for imperialist Britain!).

Is the lack of coverage in the Weekly Worker due to complacency among the editors or to some theoretical blind spot that precludes joining up the dots of the several theatres of war? We ought to be told. If there was a spate of name-calling in LU, we would hear of little else for weeks.

I hope that Mike Macnair’s article marks a turning point and that we can begin to discuss the need for an anti-war movement based on the perspective of power to the international working class.

Mike Martin
Sheffield

Magisterial

I have just finished reading the last article in Mike Macnair’s magisterial series on programme, published over four issues of the Weekly Worker commencing on April 9. At the moment hitting the button ‘Programmes’ just under the banner on the Weekly Worker website brings the four up as the first four hits under the heading ‘Latest articles’.

While I do not pretend to entirely understand them, which I tend to suspect is my fault (as opposed to my reaction when reading Chris Cutrone), what above all I value about them is a quality they share with very much of the writing that appears in the Weekly Worker: namely a transparently highly scholarly approach to the development of Marxist politics.

One might characterise it as follows:

Task 1: establish if possible on the available evidence what, for example, Marx or Lenin said/wrote about the character of the bourgeois state or the necessity for republican democracy as the state form with which the proletariat will rule.

Task 2: establish whether these assertions are self-consistent or not - ie, whether some settled position can be precipitated out of them.

Task 3: in either of the cases under task 2, establish whether, on the basis of our now hindsight-contextualised historical knowledge, they were correct in their judgement(s) at the time(s), on the basis of what we can reasonably assume they knew, as well as what if any developments can be traced in their views, and if so why.

Task 4: consider the extent to which the passage of history since, or the accumulation of scholarship about any period of history, affects the applicability of their statements/positions to the condition of the world now.

Task 5: consider also how subsequent Marxist theorists have reacted to their statements/positions, and whether in a similar way this affects their applicability.

Task 6: adjust revolutionary strategy accordingly.

This may appear pedantic and weird; but if it is not our starting point, we risk simply ending up repeating ahistorically and ad nauseam some phrase like a mantra, just because ‘Trotsky said it in the 30s’.

Tim Reid
London

Natural economy

In Asia, Latin America and Africa, peasants are now being driven off their land by agribusiness and mining. Indigenous movements in Peru and Chile are battling neoliberal ‘modernisation’. Many end up in slums around overcrowded cities or attempt to escape in boats across oceans, where many drown.

Marxists have in the past supported the industrialisation of agriculture and urbanisation in the name of ‘progress’, though the result was the destruction of native cultures and turning peasants into a lumpenproletariat. The extensive use of chemical fertilisers and chemical pesticides may temporarily increase farm productivity, while in the long run destroying the land. Small farmers rarely receive loans or credit from banks, so they are, of course, inefficient, but are capable of being more efficient, if given seeds and farm machinery. In Venezuela farm collectives have been formed by indigenous black farmers organised by the Frente Campesina Ezequiel Zamora.

Urbanisation in China and Latin America has led to cities where pollution is normal and workers require hours to go to and from work.

Rosa Luxemburg wrote about a ‘natural economy’, which was pre-capitalist. That does not mean rejecting modern medicine or returning to the non-existent ideal past. But we have to realise that the capitalist market economy has distorted human relations to the point where most people are expendable and we need a new synthesis: a future society will need central planning to decentralise production. Capital will need to be allocated outside of a few urban centres and allow for the modernisation of small towns and villages.

The problem in the world is not a lack of productivity, but overproduction and a lack of jobs, which means work will need to be based on production for use, outside of the market.

Earl Gilman
email

Right on

“No swing to the right,” says Eddie Ford in his post-election analysis (May 14). It was all down to Labour’s wipe-out in Scotland at the hands of the Scottish National Party. I disagree. The fact that England moved to the right, despite austerity, was an equally important factor, which Eddie attempts to gloss over.

Of course, any talk of swings to the left must be seen in the context of reformism. That said, Miliband did shift Labour slightly leftwards in an attempt to win back the party’s core vote - ie, the working class. But this was clearly not far enough for Scottish workers. That’s why the ‘red Tories’ got wiped out in their traditional heartlands - eg, Glasgow. On the other hand, if Labour had adopted the same policies as the SNP (sans the question of independence), maybe things would have been different?

But the opposite happened in England, certainly outside the metropolitan areas. In middle England, Labour under Miliband was too leftwing for many: blue-collar workers, on the one side, and the better-off (aka the middle class), on the other. Many of the former voted for the UK Independence Party because they have had to bear the brunt of the austerity measures. Hence they swallowed Ukip’s propaganda that immigration and membership of the European Union is the problem. So this group of workers has moved to the right, as did the middle classes, albeit, for the opposite reason: they have been largely unaffected by austerity, but for them Labour’s policies were too leftwing - eg, they promised to increase the minimum wage and restrict zero-hours contracts, which would have been bad for small business. The government has to balance the books. The Tories offer a safer pair of hands, and so on.

As a result, in England, Labour lost many of its key marginal seats. In places like Carlisle and Stroud (the former being more working class, whereas the latter is more middle class), Labour’s vote either remained flat or dipped slightly. But the Tory vote went up by about 5%. Ukip’s went up by the same amount (while the Liberal Democrats were wiped out). The worrying thing here is that Ukip could become a serious rival to Labour; especially as the latter scurries back to the right - ie, Blairism. This can only alienate Labour further from its traditional supporters. As the Ukip candidate in Carlisle said, “Labour people who wouldn’t ever dream of voting Conservative … will happily vote Ukip.” The Guardian also pointed out that Ukip’s vote was strongest in seats with a large concentration of working class voters, especially those with no educational qualifications. In England, Ukip came second to Labour in 44 seats, which they could easily win in the 2020 election.

Here at least, the danger is that Labour could be seriously challenged by the rise of a rightwing populist party. Compare the French Socialist Party, which is similarly threatened by the National Front in France (where the latter has every chance of winning the next election). Meanwhile, Cameron’s promise of a referendum on Europe could easily result in a ‘Brixit’. At the same time, he might provoke the SNP into its own version of a UDI. Thus, the working class would be more divided than ever; its consciousness at an even lower ebb than it is now.

Whatever happens, Left Unity is now confronted with an even greater challenge in the coming years. It will become even more difficult to stay united, to work out the correct programme - which, of course, it needs to do if it is to have any chance of breaking out of its current isolation and become a real force in the class struggle. This is not the time for complacency.

Rex Dunn
Bedford

Prescient

Eddie Ford suggests that one word - Scotland - explains Labour’s defeat. He also says that “almost everyone” expected a hung parliament.

In an article submitted to The Guardian’s Comment is Free on Monday May 4, which for some reason they did not print, I wrote that “although there is an universal consensus that no party will gain an overall majority, Cameron’s Conservatives are likely to emerge as the biggest party. It is even possible that the Conservatives could gain an outright majority.”

On my blog, on July 14 2014, I wrote: “There are times when you see someone walking headlong over the cliff and you feel bound to try and prevent the inevitable disaster. Such is the case with Ed Miliband’s catastrophic misleadership of the Labour Party.”

On November 8 2014 I posted another article in response to attempts to replace Miliband. I wrote: “The policy pronouncements of Miliband’s rump New Labour Party have been touted as ‘radical’ and appealing to the many, not the few. In reality they are disjointed pronouncements lacking any binding theme or message.”

Clearly my predictions in July 2014 were not predicated on the SNP. Even if Labour had not lost a single seat to the SNP, then its total of seats would have been 272, compared to the Tories 331. The wipeout in Scotland was symptomatic of the problem Labour faced: it was not the cause of their misery. Miliband did represent one step to the left, but at the same time he took two steps to the right. Not unsurprisingly this dance of the damned did not over-impress the electorate. You can promise reforms, but don’t do it on the back of austerity. There is a perfectly respectable case to be made, from the bourgeois perspective, against resting one’s economic policy on deficit reduction. Deficits are what make the wheels of capitalism go round. In essence Miliband and the execrable Balls were arguing for the politics of recession.

The other major failure was not to call Cameron’s bluff over the SNP and point out the hypocrisy of those who call for a united Britain and then treat the votes of one section of it as illegitimate. Having retreated once, Miliband never stopped running.

It is not at all certain that the SNP will go for independence, come the Holyrood elections, for the simple reason that financially they would be forced to retrench almost as soon as they gained independence. An astute SNP would stick with devo max. And, like it or not, Ukip or a similar creature is here to stay. Four million votes represent more than a passing fancy. What form this takes is more questionable.

Eddie Ford does not help his argument with his flawed statistics. He says that Cameron was the first prime minister since 1900 to be re-elected with a larger share of the popular vote. Really? Harold Wilson was re-elected in 1966 with 47.9%, an increase of 3.8%. Likewise in October 1974 Wilson was re-elected with 39.3%, an increase of 2.1%. Although there was a change of prime minister in 1955 (Eden replaced Churchill), the Tory vote increased by 1.6% to 49.6%; and in the 1951 election, which Attlee lost, Labour’s vote increased by 2.7% to 48.8%. Cameron’s successful vote (36.9%) was the second-lowest vote of any majority party (Labour under Blair in 2005 had the lowest share (35.3%). Labour also lost 26 (not 24) seats! The Lib Dems shafted the Tories over Lords reform, not the AV referendum.

Apart from this I have no major disagreements!

Tony Greenstein
Brighton

Cathartic

Two CPGB comrades attended the third ‘Manchester Spring’ conference held on Saturday May 17, which featured several panel-style debates with speakers from a variety of left backgrounds. Bearing in mind that this annual venture is largely organised by two independent comrades, turnout seemed up on the previous year, with around 130 people attending over the course of a nippy but bright day in Salford. Organisers made the effort to give a collective feel to proceedings, with an excellent lunch prepared by comrades on site.

This year’s event also opened with a discussion on the Middle East. Kurdish activist Jasim Ghafur had to be replaced last-minute by Chris Strafford of Manchester Left Unity and the Independent Socialist Network, who gave a reasonable overview of the ‘Arab spring’ and its aftermath, calling for solidarity with Rojava, the now autonomous Kurdish part of Syria. Azar Majedi of the Worker-communist Party of Iran focused on the atrocities committed by Islamic State, and the responsibility of the ‘Islamic State’ of Iran for the torture and execution of thousands of leftists and activists.

But, given her audience, the surprising thing was the absence of any mention of the effects of western imperialism’s sanctions and threats of war against Iran (which actually strengthen the regime against its internal opponents). Only the hypocrisy of the United States and its Middle Eastern allies in terms of contemporary Islamic fundamentalism - a many-headed hydra largely of their own creation, and which had now slipped from their grasp - seemed worthy of note. When pressed in the discussion, both speakers insisted they were against sanctions and war on Iran.

Conference split in half during the middle part of the day, with sessions running simultaneously. As both of us CPGB members attended the same sessions, we cannot report from the session on music, or that on ‘Scale and ambition: enthusiasm, planning and dreaming under socialism’ (perhaps a reader can enlighten us!). The session on ‘Islamism, secularism and the far right’, however, turned out to be a dud. Pragna Patel, director of Southall Black Sisters, was very agitated about the tiny minority of leftists who bordered on apologising for the Charlie Hebdo killers, insisting it was a quite simple issue of free speech. Indeed Patel seemed determined to pull the blinkers down, decrying any and all attempts to ‘contextualise’ the attacks. The almost second-class citizen status of the French killers and their anger at imperialism’s continuing atrocities against their fellow Muslims had nothing to do with it, apparently. This at least presented a useful example of the far more common mistake made in the aftermath of the killings - that of being swept along by rhetoric about ‘free speech’ into becoming a useful idiot for the war on terror.

Hicham Yezza, editor of Ceasefire magazine, provided a useful counterweight to the entirely abstract moralism of Patel. Both, however, spoke the same language of ‘human rights’ that politicians in the west have used to justify every imperialist intervention since World War II. Similarly, when it comes to ‘free speech’, the fate of the Chilcot report and the emergence of secret trials in this country tell us everything about the attitude of the main parties: only when it’s convenient, thank you very much.

The session on ‘The new European left’ saw short introductions by three speakers. Robin McAlpine, founder of the ‘Common Weal’ left-nat think-tank, made a feeble attempt to justify the left’s total collapse into the politics of Scotch nationalism. When it comes down to brass tacks, the boosterism of the left hangs on the argument that many people became involved in politics as a result of the referendum campaign. Never mind that voting once in a referendum is hardly a sign of deep engagement, or that many were motivated to do so by fear, on the one hand, and, on the other, the understandable desire to believe in the illusory promise of the SNP, that an independent Scotland under their leadership would break from austerity.

With the loss of Scottish seats being the fundamental factor which destroyed Labour’s chances of forming a government, some on the left must now be seeing the egg flying quickly toward their faces, even before the inevitable failure of the SNP to deliver on its left-facing rhetoric. McAlpine’s advice to the left in England amounted to the suggestion that we try harder to cultivate a ‘national identity’. Thanks for that, comrade.

David Broder, currently on the editorial board of the Historical Materialism journal, denied there was much new at all about Syriza or Podemos. Their supposed organisational innovations actually had a long history in our movement, and programmatically they were common-or-garden left populists. The comrade warned against the tendency to jump on the latest hot thing from Europe, where the political context could be very different. But Marina Prentoulis, Syriza’s liaison to the UK, exhorted us to build a similar organisation here. The challenges of doing so are revealed in the fitful progress made by Left Unity, many of whose founders aimed for precisely that. But Syriza did not become a mass organisation overnight just by planting a flag somewhere to the left of social democracy. Their backbone is provided by former communists, who also work in an environment where the radical left is still taken seriously by many people. This is for various reasons - not least being the prior existence of deep-rooted communist parties.

In the final session entitled ‘Forging a communist culture’ - at which everyone was probably a bit knackered - both Beth Redmond from National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts and floor speakers vented frustration about the sectarianism and control-freakery exhibited all too often by the left ‘parties’, and the sort of turbo-charged ‘vanguard’ culture which too often leads to burnout. Academic Matthew Worley gave a wry overview of the attitude to culture of the old ‘official’ CPGB during various stages of its development, and the RMT union’s Billy McKinstry was nothing if not consistent, repeating his advice from last year that the left “keep doing what we’re doing”.

CPGB comrades made the point that the biggest problem in terms of the left’s culture was that comrades have internalised the idea that if we develop a difference, we have to split and form a new party/fighting propaganda group/whatever. This only leads to fragmentation into progressively smaller organisations and decreased social weight of the left as a whole. Neither does it help in the clarification of differences, which are only natural after all. Instead it tends toward the fossilisation of theory into dogma.

At an annual day school apparently dedicated to discussing ideas and where the left had gone wrong, it seemed odd for the chair to intervene near the end of this discussion, requesting that contributors make practical suggestions for setting up left cultural organisations. No doubt there is a need to rebuild working class organisation at every level: co-ops, unions, educational societies, football clubs and so on and on. But to expect serious initiatives in this area from the individuals, or even the tiny groups represented in that meeting hall, is surely to put the cart before the horse. In any case, it quickly became clear that what those present really wanted to talk about was how alienating and destructive the political culture of the left had been - to their own morale or the campaigns they had been involved in. Some of this had an anti-theory tone, and featured carping about use of the term ‘comrade’ and other ‘alienating language’ by the left.

But much was perfectly valid and not only cathartic, but necessary, if we are to learn from past mistakes. One criticism: while the attempt to host divergent left views on such a variety of topics is laudable, the sheer number of sessions and speakers meant that in practice substantial debate was severely constricted. This could be remedied easily at the next event.

Laurie McCauley
Manchester

Socialist unity

The first post-election branch meeting of Sheffield Left Unity saw an increased turnout, and an agreement with other local socialists and Marxists to jointly support an upcoming Sheffield Left Unity public meeting on the obviously pressing matter of ‘Where next for the left after the elections?’ The comrades of the local Marxist reading group had been planning a meeting themselves on exactly the same subject, but, upon hearing that our branch had already begun advertising a meeting along such lines for June 6, came along to discuss how to jointly promote it and to discuss further joint discussion and activity going into the future.

This is another positive note of socialist cooperation in Sheffield after Tusc agreed to provide a speaker for our meeting, and we have been able to secure LU national officer Pete Green to speak on behalf of the party in what promises to be an interesting and important event. Local supporters of the Labour Representation Committee and Red Labour, as well as the Greens, have also been invited to attend.

We must add this also to the comradely and constructive noises made by local Socialist Party in England and Wales and Socialist Workers Party comrades at the final Tusc pre-election rally about the pressing need for greater unity amongst the existing far-left groups and the prospect of continued local cooperation on a more permanent basis after the election. It is with these things in mind that we go into the June 6 meeting.

Our branch was also active in advertising the meeting on the anti-government rally held in Sheffield on Saturday May 16, with between 3,000 and 4,000 in attendance to show their anger and spirit of defiance to the incoming Tory majority. Over 200 leaflets were taken by those who were interested, or otherwise dished out by local branch members, who also proudly marched through the streets with our local party banner held high in spite of the high winds. Luckily, the firm grip of the Communist Platform supporters in Left Unity kept our dignity intact.

All this has been achieved in spite of the rightwing boycott of our branch, which has failed to disrupt its regular functioning or its ability to take the initiative in working for the greater prominence of Left Unity, and in the vital struggle for greater unity on the left.

Going into our June 6 meeting, we must bear in mind not only the local attitude of members of the far left to joint work and possible future unity, but also the national situation, and the views of the leaderships of these organisations - who have never made an honest push for unity in the past, seeking only short-term advantage for their own group, or fearing unity because of the strength of another, and thus feeling their separate sect identity under threat from the unity of socialists.

Nationally of course, Tusc has once again invited Left Unity to become a federal part of its organisation. In the first place, the federal structure of Tusc can only act to put a brake on moves towards unity in practice (especially if it is wound up for the next five years until the next general election!), sacrificing it on the altar of an increasingly uninterested RMT, whose role as a ‘big name’ and supposed spur to creating a (hopeless) Labour Party mark II appears to take precedence over pushing Tusc towards unifying the SWP, SPEW and Left Unity into a single, explicitly socialist party.

This would immediately triple the effectiveness of the far left, destroy the duplicated labour of our respective groups, concentrate the existing membership and raise its morale, and immediately appear as a serious pole of political attraction. It could grow rapidly before testing its infant strength in the 2020 general election. It’s always the unlikely jam of tomorrow we are being told to hold out for, rather than achieving the realistic maximum today, which itself paves the way for the future, so that we may no longer merely keep on waiting and waiting. It is on this key question that we shall seek to make the June 6 meeting turn.

Mike Copestake
Sheffield