Letters

Crystal-clear

Tony Greenstein in a letter to the Weekly Worker quotes what he claims is a tweet from Gilad Atzmon: “I am not a Jew any more. I despise the Jew in me. I absolutely detest the Jew in you” - which he identifies as anti-Semitic (April 14).

Atzmon, recognising the Jewish role in the oppression of the Palestinian people, ‘resigns’ as a Jew and ‘detests’ the remnants of oppression which lie within him and those who are oppressors. If an Afrikaans during apartheid rule had said something similar about the position pertaining in South Africa at the time, would they have been accused of anti-Afrikaans racism? To ask the question is to answer it.

Also, congratulations to Ian Donovan for presenting a crystal-clear exposition of his position, in marked contrast to his opponents.

Ted Hankin
email

Wrong question

I would reiterate Tony Greenstein’s view when he wrote: “I don’t think either Donovan or Downing are anti-Semitic in any sort of personal way” (Letters, April 14). I consider, however, that their assignment of collective ethnic tarring of a given group not only non-Marxist: it designates inappropriately the real ‘enemy,’ which is imperialism. As such, it gives unwanted ammunition to real anti-Semites and anti-Jewish bigots.

Ian and Gerry resurrect, in turn, The Jewish question: a Marxist interpretation by Abram Leon. Like other Trotskyists, I have always disagreed with the claim that Jews in the period prior to World War II were a ‘people-caste’. Of course, Leon only projected this for pre-capitalist Jews, not really to WWII. But others, as is the case here, have taken it this far, and beyond. Unfortunately, no-one has ever challenged in writing the young Abram Leon on this question. We could debate, as well, the ‘historical’ accuracy of Leon’s and Marx’s putative ‘facts’ with respect to the role of Jews, including the presentation of Jews as a homogeneous people engaged in small trade. This latter point is not unimportant, given that Zionists believe strongly in the false concept of an ethnic ‘Jewish’ people. Anti-Zionists have rightly disputed this. Do Gerry and Ian?

The problem here is not just that Leon may or may not have gotten it right about village and ghetto-confined, Yiddish-speaking Jews in eastern Europe, but to resurrect this transient reality without offering an iota of evidence regarding the status and character of Jews at large - an extrapolation that is a central problem of the writings of Abram Leon - mischaracterises Jews today as some sort of ‘caste’: a contention that flies in the face of reality and is beyond silly, let alone being non-materialist. But, to give Leon his due, this ‘caste’ characterisation, according to Leon, ended with feudalism itself. It was not carried on into the 19th and 20th centuries, so how then is it relevant today? It isn’t and that is the point.

I do not believe there is any current basis for postulating a ‘Jewish question’, as there had been in the ghetto-confined past. The basic assimilation of Ashkenazi Jews in general and western European Jews in particular into capitalist society resolved this issue decades ago.

Trotsky, by 1940, had begun to doubt and challenge Marx’s assumption of inexorable assimilation, given the events in Europe under the Nazis, but Marx’s expectation has been borne out in the end. Notwithstanding the holocaust and the retrograde claims of Zionism, Jews are basically assimilated. The ‘Jewish question’, essentially, has been solved in this regard.

The real problem resides in holding on to a fake concept of a ‘Jewish’ bourgeoisie, one that Gerry and Ian each invoke. In fact, there is no such thing. There are ‘Jewish’ members of the ruling class, even as, in the US, there are black and Chicano millionaires and bankers. What is decisive, however, is that there is no distinct role that ‘society - ie, capitalist society - has assigned to Jews, as was the case in the pre-capitalist Poland and Russia, that was the specific locale and basis for Leon’s study of the Jews. It is what defined the existence of a ‘Jewish question’.

Ian conflates the ‘numbers’ of Jews in the ruling class as a percentage of billionaires in the US and then, mixing metaphors, notes the discrimination of blacks and their exclusion from the ruling class (itself not true, since there are millionaires who are black Americans today, though not many). The difference is that, as Jews became white, they achieved white ethnic equality (and thus removed the previous ‘Jewish question’ based on that exclusion). US capitalism, however, never based its development on exclusion of any white ethnic group, Jews included. What was effectively the national or racial exclusion of blacks (and to a large extent, Chicanos as well) was a basis for capitalist development. So the comparisons of blacks in the development of capitalism in America to that of Jews is silly and unmaterialist: in fact it shows a degree of uneducated understanding of the class dynamics of capitalism in the US. Eventually what was the strictly WASP ruling class allowed those other white ethnic groups in. It proves Jewish-Americans, hitherto excluded, were allowed into the ruling class. It does not mean they go there through caste privileges, the only way Ian could claim there is a Jewish question.

There is no question that Jews as a defined ethnic group (as ‘hyphenated Americans’, for example) are not only wealthier than any other group, but influential. Most Jews, however, are neither ruling class nor even ‘rich’ by American standards. At best they have moved out of the working class, blue-collar life of parents, such as my own, and into the professional middle class. This migration they shared with other white ethnic groups in the US. This is not part of the caste-like assignment given Jews since the Middle Ages in Europe. It unfolded through the development of imperialism in the post-war period. Jews were, as I note above, one of the last groups to become ‘white’ in America.

Jewish-Americans, like hyphenated Jews in Europe and Latin America, are pro-Israel in their majority, but they are also critical of Israel. Many simply don’t care and some - a growing minority - question Israel’s right to exist and are demonstrably pro-Palestinian. Jewish capitalists, some of whom are even part of the imperialist ruling class, are very pro-Israel. Their influence via the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is as powerful as the counterrevolutionary Cuban lobby based in Miami.

Imperialism, however, must be examined objectively. It has its own defined interests. Anything that conflicts with those interests is stomped out or pushed aside. We observe this today with the US-Iran nuclear deal. Not only did Obama ignore Israeli governmental views on this. Presented to the Bush administration, US governmental imperialism ignored pressure by Israel to bomb Iran - belying the fiction that the (US) dog is wagged by the Israeli/AIPAC tail. The ‘neocons’ in both the Pentagon and at State were shut down and told to shut up. In their compliance they did exactly that. Among even these bourgeoisified Jewish-Americans, there is no unanimity. If not, how then is there a ‘question’ regarding them as a group?

Beyond this, the majority of Jewish-Americans have opposed major foreign policy initiatives of the Israeli state on multiple occasions, including their supposed lobby, AIPAC, according to every single poll conducted on the subject. This has been exposed in numerous magazine articles on AIPAC in the last few years and has given rise to ‘J-Street’, the anti-Likud lobby group for Jewish-Americans.

The problem here lies in Ian and Gerry’s attempt to provide left cover to Petras, Weir and Mearsheimers, who believe that imperialist foreign policy is shaped by AIPAC and thus Israel. Imperialism is a political economy that has its own rules and that at best can use racism and social issues as tools to continue its rule. The influence of Jewish billionaires and millionaires (the latter of which represent only 6% of America’s 325,000 million-dollars-a-year income holders) is not going to change the laws of politics. The US position on Israel hasn’t changed an iota since the US recognised the Zionist entity and since it recognised that state in 1948. Exactly how many Jewish millionaires or billionaires were there in, say, 1948? Or 1968? The consistency of US policy toward Israel is what is ignored by Ian and Gerry and that is the sad thing about their resurrection of the Jewish question. Imperialism supports Israel because Israel’s existence serves, greatly, imperialist ambitions in the region. It always has, and it always will, regardless of the number of ‘Jewish billionaires’.

I highly recommend Jeff Halpers’ book War against the people: Israel, the Palestinians and global pacification, which shows unmistakably why it is Israel that is subordinate to US imperialism, not the other way around.

David Walters
email

Solved

You could save reams of paper and barrels of printers ink in the endless dispute with Ian Donovan (and now Gerry Downing’s Socialist Fight too) if you were to cut to the chase and state sharply and simply that the entire so-called ‘state’ of ‘Israel’ is a giant historical lie - a deliberately created artificial cuckoo in the Middle Eastern nest that has no right to exist, and needs overturning.

All the specious and outrageous opportunist accusations of “anti-Semitism” thrown at SF, which are simply capitulating to the latest CIA-Zionist campaign (to cow the ‘left’ with absurd ‘racism’ allegations) could be cut through as the nonsense they are. So too could Donovan’s and Downing’s weird and elaborate mechanistic rigmarole about “non-national” Jewish bourgeoisies, etc. But in over 18 months of this discussion, no such point has been made, and the CPGB has even reneged on its alleged ‘free discussion’ principles in order to “discipline” Donovan because he strays near to it.

So. Start with the fact that this is a colonialist monstrosity, installed by the outright theft of another people’s land, ripped away from them by ethnic-cleansing terror. The population is exiled by the millions, held in what are effectively concentration-camp conditions or endlessly harassed and sabotaged where it still holds farmland or property.

All this has been maintained for seven decades by non-stop terrorising, intimidation through continual assassinations, police and military bullying, universal surveillance, arbitrary arrests, imprisonment and torture, outright death-squad killing and summary prisoner execution (as recently caught on video) - all supplemented by regular outright genocidal ‘collective punishment’ blitzkriegs (approximately every three years).

Only the total ending of this vile and fascist monstrosity can possibly produce any sort of solution either for the Palestinian people or the wider Arab nation, and is in fact pivotal in resolving the agony of the entire Middle East and increasingly the world imperialist crisis as a whole. It is also, paradoxically, the only rational solution for the Jewish population too.

This is not ‘just another’ colonial occupation (as one of your correspondents said, trying to wriggle away from the point), which would be bad enough anyway, but was carried through long after the colonising age of early semi-feudal and monopoly capitalist imperialism was over - that is to say, post-World War II, when the entire understanding of the world had moved on to communist or at least universal anti-imperialist struggle and the ‘international community’ United Nations had accepted (notionally anyway) decolonisation and ‘granting independence’.

‘Israel’ was always a grating and grotesque attempt to swim back along the historical stream. It has to be ended - totally dismantled - and all property returned to its proper owners: every farm, home, garden, olive grove and grazing patch stolen, not just since 1967, but since the very beginning of the Zionist project.

The only alternative in practice is what was imposed on other imperialist colonies’ peoples, from the Aztecs and Incas, and dozens of native American nations to the Aborigines, the Maoris and assorted African nations among others: which is to say either complete extermination or their reduction to a defeated rump on tiny ‘reservations’. The Palestinians will never stop fighting for justice, and Israel therefore can never stop suppressing them, by the logic of its position.

The civilised way to do things is obviously a single Palestinian state, as Donovan suggests, in which those Jewish people who wish to remain could stay on under the overwhelmingly majority Palestinian rule, and contribute their huge talents and skills to building a new unified nation. But, to repeat, that is possible only once all stolen property has been restored to all the Palestinian people.

It is clear this will never happen by the voluntary agreement of the Jewish occupation. Neither is imperialism about to impose any such thing (even if it could); the purpose of this intrusion from its point of view has always been as a very useful dagger into the heart of Middle Eastern revolt (though there is not always a complete concord between Washington and the Zionists).

A one-state solution certainly will not happen through Donovan’s laughable ideas about “basic democracy”, which simply reveal how far away he (and the CPGB, which proffers the same opportunists formulas), are from basic Marxism: Lenin clearly laboured in vain in The state and revolution and many other works explaining the fraud of abstract ‘democracy’ and the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat as far as that is concerned.

And obviously no-one is watching Latin America currently, where CIA-promoted judicial coups and economic sabotage throughout the ‘Bolivarian revolution’ are toppling one ‘left’ reformist national regime after another - yet another practical lesson in the dangers of bourgeois ‘democracy’, to add to Allende, Morsi, etc.

Change in Palestine can only come about through rising revolutionary struggle, already long begun in embryo by the Palestinian people and by much of the Middle East around them, fighting in many ways, all totally justifiable against this endless oppression, currently behind the Hamas national liberation leadership and eventually, necessarily, coming to revolutionary Marxism.

With this in mind, the nonsense about “anti-Semitism” can be seen for what it is: a dirty innuendo to try and head off growing world support for the Palestinians, reflecting imperialism and Zionism’s fears. World mass hostility is rightly turned against all those who support this colonialist monstrosity and its fascist, murderous impositions which have killed and are killing tens of thousands, using the most horrific of weaponry on men, women and children. That is not anti-Semitism, but anti-Zionism, of course.

But Zionism now includes virtually all the Jewish diaspora: the religious social freemasonry intertwined through the whole of imperialism. That is a real enough cultural and social network with enormous influence - denying its existence and influence is simply nonsensical (not least in witnessing the current carefully organised “anti-Semitism” media lie campaign itself, which its influence has set going throughout capitalism).

There has been no sensible difference between Zionism and Jewishness since 1948 except for the very tiny minority of Jews who actively oppose the Israeli ‘state’ and have in various ways expressed it (such as burning their Jewish passports and renouncing the Zionist-granted ‘right of return’ (to settle on someone else’s land)). According to the figure quoted by Tony Greenstein from Jonathan Freedland, that would be less than 7% - the rest, Freedland declares, seeing their “identity bound up with Israel”; even then most of that 7% is not actively against Israel, so the actual numbers are negligible.

Freedland argues that to oppose Israel is therefore to oppose the majority of Jews and is therefore anti-Semitic. The opposite is the case: to oppose Zionism is to oppose all those who support Zionism in practice, which means all those supporting Israel as a state. Even if they declare themselves ‘anti-Zionist’ they are still accepting the ‘right’ of Israel to exist; and therefore the ‘rightness’ of Palestinian oppression; their ‘anti-Zionism’ is just liberal hesitancy, fearful of the ultra-rights ‘going too far’ and threatening to lose everything because of the rebellion they trigger. They just want to keep what they have taken already.

The craven acceptance throughout the fake ‘left’ of this anti-Semitism allegation, and the ‘admission’ that ‘some people have a problem with it’ is disgusting. Hostility to Israel and all its supporters follows from its grotesque fascist record, and has nothing to do with the anti-Semitic scapegoating that capitalism whipped up for its World War II Nazi warmongering or past societal backwardness.

This imperialist and Zionist campaign should be exposed for what it is: censorship, and a form of demonising scapegoating in itself; not battling against hatred, but deliberately whipping it up to cow the ‘left’.

Don Hoskins
Economic and Philosophic Science Review

Kangaroo court

Following an exchange of letters with the Labour Representation Committee, I got a reply from Michael Calderbank, the political secretary of the LRC, which contradicted the two tweets from Dave Osland, embellished by Andrew Coates, that I had been unanimously expelled from the LRC for anti-Semitism by the NC at its meeting of April 2.

Michael assured me that only a “formal complaint”, which “includes allegations of ‘anti-Semitic claims’ … made in broadcast or written material”, had been made against me. He goes on to say: “We view it as extremely important that any individual against whom allegations are made is treated fairly, and the LRC rules and standing orders provide a procedure which ensures this”, which apparently did not happen at that meeting.

“The matter is now being referred to the complaints sub-committee (CsC) under the LRC standing orders,” I learned, and they will examine it and “explain what has been alleged and ask you to comment”. “If the CsC consider it appropriate, they will present a report to the NEC, which you will receive a copy.” The national executive committee will then take a decision with a time limit of 42 days from April 2. In the meantime, I am suspended from membership, but not at all expelled.

So what did happen? I am demanding a copy of the minutes of the NEC of April 2 to ascertain what went on at that kangaroo court, who voted for what motions, etc. Is it the case that the meeting voted to publicly branding a revolutionary socialist with a 40-year record of fighting racism and anti-Semitism an anti-Semite and racist? Was this what drew the immediate reference of the proceedings of that meeting for legal opinion by more balanced leaders of the LRC not present? What legal rights had an NC, whose terms of office were illegitimately extended by a year by the cancellation of the 2015 AGM, to take such steps? What gave them the right to override the LRC standing orders and constitution, if this is what happened?

It may have been such considerations that produced the legal advice that informed the communication from the political secretary on my request. Well, at least I will get a better form of justice from the LRC than I apparently got at that farce of a meeting. I will get a hearing with a representative and the right to appeal to the next AGM as per the constitution. It was apparently the intention of the majority of those at that LRC NC that I be denied that. I trust the hearing will turn out to be more than a show trial.

Gerry Downing
Socialist Fight

Bourgeois

Peter Manson is absolutely correct in criticising the Socialist Party in England and Wales for failing to recognise its past and current errors in relation to the Labour Party (‘Carry on regardless’, April 14). Of course, SPEW is not the only sect that got it wrong, and failed to account for that error. Some of those organisations, like the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, have not even admitted that they have changed their position, having previously claimed that the Labour Party was a stinking corpse. Such organisations make so many zigs and zags in their positions that it is much easier for their leaderships to simply pretend that nothing has changed, and so avoid the complicated matter of explaining the reason for the new course.

But, while Peter is right to point to the inadequacies of SPEW and the Socialist Workers Party in this regard, his own analysis is also faulty. For example, he writes: “While SPEW is quite right to dub the Labour right ‘pro-capitalist’, shouldn’t the Corbyn wing be considered, at least in terms of its aspirations, as being ‘pro-working class’ (in however attenuated a form)?”

But this reflects a failure to properly understand the concept of a bourgeois workers’ party, as adopted by Lenin. It confuses and conflates two different things: class and ideology. The whole point about the concept of a bourgeois workers’ party - and indeed of the concept of social democracy, as put forward by Marx - is that it is possible to be avowedly and subjectively pro-working class, and yet for that affiliation to take the form of a promotion of bourgeois ideas, which are, necessarily, therefore, pro-capitalist.

Lenin, writing about some of the ideas of the Narodniks, talks about individuals who were some of the most dedicated revolutionaries, and subjectively dedicated to the interests of the working class, and yet whose ideas and policies were not just bourgeois, but objectively reactionary. Many of those in the 1970s who supported the Alternative Economic Strategy were undoubtedly subjectively pro-working class, and yet the ideas they promoted of nationalist support for import controls and so on were objectively reactionary.

And if we talk about the working class itself, it is unfortunately, but equally undoubtedly, the case that many workers themselves support reactionary ideas on a range of issues, whether it is in relation to immigration and even racism, through homophobia, sexism and so on. It is indeed why the UK Independence Party and others on the right are able to gain the support of such sections of workers. Peter’s equation of working class with ‘anti-capitalist’ or ‘pro-socialist’ is not scientific, and is not justified. It assumes that, because objectively the interests of labour are contrary to those of capital, this mechanically transforms into the owners of capital being automatically bourgeois, and the owners of labour-power being automatically socialist, or anti-capitalist. But that quite manifestly is not the case.

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx comments: “The peculiar character of social democracy is epitomised in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labour, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony.”

That is simply a continuation of the idea that Marx outlined in his economic critique of the ideas of Ricardo, and also set out by Marx in Wage, labour and capital, where he writes: “And so the bourgeoisie and its economists maintain that the interest of the capitalist and of the labourer is the same. And in fact, so they are! The worker perishes if capital does not keep him busy. Capital perishes if it does not exploit labour-power, which, in order to exploit, it must buy. The more quickly the capital destined for production - the productive capital - increases, the more prosperous industry is, the more the bourgeoisie enriches itself, the better business gets, so many more workers does the capitalist need, so much the dearer does the worker sell himself. The fastest possible growth of productive capital is, therefore, the indispensable condition for a tolerable life to the labourer.”

It is precisely that idea that social democracy, be it of the right or of the left, promotes. It is the fundamental idea that lies behind trade unionism: to fight for the highest wages, and best conditions possible, within the confines of capitalism, and its need to grow and accumulate, so as to be able to employ more workers, on higher wages, and so on.

What makes the Labour Party, and other such social democratic parties, bourgeois workers’ parties is not that they are a coalition of interests, whereby a socialist, working class base allies with, and is often dominated by, a pro-capitalist faction, but is that they are parties of the working class, comprised mostly of workers, obtaining their support from workers, including from the trade unions. What makes them bourgeois workers’ parties, therefore, is the simple fact that the working class itself is bourgeois in outlook; it is necessarily dominated by bourgeois ideas. The trade unions themselves are a perfect manifestation of that fact, and the workers’ parties built on those trades unions are simply a reflection of it.

The idea that the working class is somehow innately socialist, even revolutionary, and is simply being held back by a bourgeois leadership in the trade unions and social democratic parties is a total fallacy, and a myth that the left sects have told themselves, over the last century, to justify their own failure to win over the majority of the working class. Just as it is possible to be ‘anti-imperialist’, and yet to be so on the basis of reactionary ideas, so it is quite possible to be ‘anti-capitalist’ on the basis of reactionary ideas, and to be ‘pro-worker’ both on the basis of reactionary ideas (Marx’s analysis of reactionary socialism) and on the basis of bourgeois ideas (trade unionism, social democracy).

Social democratic parties are bourgeois workers’ parties precisely because the working class is itself bourgeois in outlook. It sees no further, in its majority, than the current set of property relations and the social relations that exist upon them. How could it? It would have to have already come to the same kind of theoretical understanding of capitalism and society that Marxists have arrived at - not on the basis of its own experience, but on the basis purely of such a theoretical and intellectual study. Its own direct experience leads it not to that revolutionary socialist consciousness, but purely to a bourgeois, reformist, trade union consciousness of bargaining within the existing system, and consequently of the need to only press its own needs as far as is compatible with the continuation and growth of that system, upon which it relies for its own existence and wellbeing. It could only move beyond that if it saw in practice, and experienced in practice, alternative forms of property - working class forms of property - and the social relations that rest upon them.

As Marx put it, in his Inaugural address to the First International, speaking of the worker-owned cooperatives: “The value of these great social experiments cannot be overrated. By deed instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands; that to bear fruit, the means of labour need not be monopolised as a means of dominion over, and of extortion against, the labouring man himself; and that, like slave labour, like serf labour, hired labour is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labour plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind and a joyous heart ...”

If it were already the case that the working class was innately socialist, then it would not tolerate either its parties being dominated by bourgeois politicians, or indeed its own parties being anything other than reflections of its own revolutionary, socialist consciousness. The task of building socialism would be a simple matter, as these millions of workers imbued with a revolutionary, socialist consciousness simply swept aside the tiny number of bourgeois opponents.

Consequently, Peter’s comment - “In that case, how on earth did Corbyn - a self-avowed socialist and anti-imperialist - manage to win so overwhelmingly?” - is also misplaced. Firstly, we do not judge whether someone is what they proclaim themselves to be, but on the objective basis of what they do, and what their ideas represent. On that basis Jeremy, who is, most definitely, subjectively pro-working class, is by his actions and by his ideas, still only a social democrat, albeit a left social democrat, and thereby objectively still dominated by bourgeois ideas. He was able to win precisely because the majority of the current Labour membership is dominated by those bourgeois ideas, which itself is a reflection that the working class is massively dominated by bourgeois ideas.

It is for that reason that the Labour Party, as a social democratic party, always has been and still is a bourgeois workers’ party.

Arthur Bough
email

Collaboration

I wholeheartedly concur with Peter Manson’s analysis of why the Socialist Party now misunderstands the nature of the Labour Party and the current titanic struggle for working class politics there.

By coincidence I also looked at Peter Taaffe’s further review of the Crick book on Militant, where he correctly analysed the current reprint as a further attempt to attack the left in the Labour Party. Somehow Mr Taaffe missed the irony that this and other attacks did not include the Socialist Party amongst its targets - for the very good reason that the SP is outside and mainly irrelevant to the battle for socialist ideas in the Labour Party. Ted Grant must indeed be turning in his grave.

Peter Manson is also correct in his call for a united front approach by Marxists to seek to transform the current bourgeois workers’ Labour Party into a “united front of the entire working class”. Sadly his and my criticism of the SP could equally apply to others, from the SWP to the remnants of Left Unity. The Marxist left has a lot to answer for in failing to grasp this opportunity historically and particularly now.

In taking a good look at ourselves, we can see two distinct trends on the left in the Labour Party. One group has adopted totally uncritical support for Corbyn and McDonnell, including the sub-Keynesian approach to mending capitalism and the desertion of class politics in the call, for example, on Labour councillors to implement cuts. Here we will find Labour Briefing and its various breakaway copies, together with the majority of the Labour Representation Committee leadership.

By contrast, Red Flag, Socialist Labour, Socialist Appeal, Labour Party Marxists and others are correctly remaining supportive of the Corbyn leadership, whilst arguing that an active struggle against capitalism is necessary and reformist ideas are inadequate for this task.

Perhaps we need to further discuss whether we on this wing of the Labour Party could do more to present our own united front to the movement, perhaps collaborating on a single paper/bulletin in the Labour Party which debates our differences also, whilst respecting the right of supporting groups to continue to publish and organise as they wish.

The Socialist Labour bulletin is open to discussion on this.

Graham Durham
editor, Socialist Labour

Reactionary

I read Eddie Ford’s ‘Both sides are reactionary’- with general agreement. Unfortunately it said nothing about what to do and what attitude to take to remaining in the European Union. I don’t think the Weekly Worker should fudge the issue or hide behind the term ‘active boycott’, not least when no activity is proposed. I condemn the ‘plague on both houses’ type of anarcho-leftism, which the Weekly Worker is flirting with.

We have to be absolutely clear that the working class should be in favour of remaining in the EU for revolutionary, not reformist, reasons. Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party are in favour of the latter. True to form, reformists, so lacking in confidence in the working class, follow the Tory-led reactionary popular front straight into the polling booth.

The idea that workers should remain in the EU because of the working time directive is at best naive. Workers know that a future social Europe is not to be trusted and no more permanent than an NHS junior doctor’s contract. Many feel uncomfortable at being hoodwinked into backing the Tories, who will opt out of EU benefits as soon as they can.

Every politically active worker knows all good things depend on class struggle, not the beneficence of the European Commission - or, for that matter, the British crown. After all, the main slogan of the commission and their corporate friends is ‘Here today and gone tomorrow’. So why would anybody vote for such a future? The Tories are so confident that they have not even bothered to promise the usual jam tomorrow for the “hard-working families” who back Cameron.

The Tories are not getting my vote without paying for it. As far as I can see, they have offered us nothing but more austerity. So who is daft enough to vote for a continuation of that? Of course, I like a free health service, but voting Tory for free is not part of the deal.

Revolutionaries want to remain for revolutionary reasons. The EU is a halfway house which cannot be sustained unless there is a European democratic revolution. The present crisis will blow the house down unless there is a popular revolution which creates a republican United States of Europe. The Greek people know it is democratic revolution or bust. Scotland is nearly ready for another go. It is time we learned the lesson.

The Tory referendum is therefore an irrelevant and reactionary distraction from the real democratic problems besetting the EU. Worse, it has a nasty, racist sting in the tail. So the job is fighting to remain in the EU without backing the Tories in their referendum.

Instead of clinging desperately to the coat tails of the Tories, as the Labour right and Corbyn are doing, a revolutionary approach means using the Tory referendum to prepare the working class movement for independent political action.

First, if there is an anti-working class result, we should no more accept it than the City and their Tory friends will. There must be demonstrations and, even better, political strikes against exit or Cameron’s ‘reformed’ EU. This would mean acting independently of the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress - who will accept exit, as they have accepted the anti-union laws.

Second, we must recognise the unevenness of the democratic revolution across the UK and promote direct action against exit in Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

Finally, in making clear what the working class must do after the referendum, we can ‘return’ to the ballot itself. We must call for the working class to act independently from the British ruling class by opposing both options on the ballot paper - not least because both, as Eddie Ford says, are reactionary.

Steve Freeman
Left Unity and Rise

No analysis

How to vote in the coming EU referendum is a tactical question. The CPGB’s Weekly Worker has made its position on this question clear: it recommends active abstention.

James Marshall reports that an American professor, writing in the Financial Times, predicts that Brexit will never happen, irrespective of the referendum result (‘The in-out kabuki dance’, April 14). But I suspect that most readers of Weekly Worker do not read it for guidance on tactical matters, or for the speculations of some bourgeois American professor. Your paper is widely read and respected for its serious theoretical discussions and analyses.

Yet you have not so far published any analytic article assessing the consequences of Brexit - if it does come to pass, contrary to the professor’s prediction - for the interests of the working class and the struggle for socialism. Surely, this is a most interesting and vital theoretical question, on which you have been strangely silent.

What is stopping you?

Moshé Machover
email

Connolly’s fight

Years before he faced the firing squad in Dublin’s Kilmainham Jail for his role in the 1916 Easter Rising, James Connolly faced the wrath of a conservative mob in a small harbour town in the south of Ireland.

The socialist trade union leader was in Cobh in County Cork in March 1911 to address an open-air meeting regarding the introduction of school meals for children from a poorer economic background. Connolly argued that this could be funded through a special rate at the cost of the church and local business. Of course, this was not warmly welcomed by the church hierarchy or business leaders.

The Education (Provision of Meals) Act was introduced in 1906 across the United Kingdom, but was not extended to Ireland, even though those in power in Westminster considered the island as part of the kingdom. Feminist and republican activist Maude Gonne McBride first launched a campaign to extend the act to Ireland before Connolly joined the cause of feeding the impoverished youth of Ireland.

This was a time in Ireland when poverty was rife and the child mortality rate was the highest in Europe. Many teachers witnessed their pupils on the brink of starvation, which prevented them from fulfilling a days worth of school work. In 1910 Maud Gonne McBride established the Dublin Ladies School Dinner Committee, which ensured over 400 children from the city’s slums had at least one full meal a day.

Connolly saw the failure to extend the school meals act to Ireland as yet another example of John Bull trying to starve the poor of Ireland, who were considered unworthy and often disloyal. He hoped his speech in the garrison town of Cobh might convert the sailors and soldiers from British imperialism to socialist ideals. Connolly was once one of those in an imperial uniform in that town, when as a young man he joined the Kings Liverpool regiment and was shipped to Cobh in 1882 for a stint.

As Connolly took to the platform, a group had gathered and began heckling and throwing stones. A local councillor - who also happened to own the local laundry, where the women workers were paid under three shillings a week - led the mob which attacked Connolly. This councillor represented a rather large swathe of Irish society who in 1911 were nationalistic in their political outlook to a certain point, but had a divine loyalty to the rightwing values of the Catholic church.

What Connolly was advocating that day in Cobh was not popular with bourgeois nationalists or the Catholic church. The church deemed this charitable suggestion ‘demoralising’ for the underclasses and this was peddled by both church and business, who stated it was the responsibility of the family to feed their children and not the state.

As bottles, sticks and stones rained down on Connolly and his fellow socialists, they managed to escape from the mob and fled to the nearby Rob Roy hotel, where they were given refuge. The crowd were left to tear up and dismantle the platform, as Connolly was then escorted by police from the hotel to the station and put on a steam locomotive out of town.

1911 proved to be a turning point in the social politics of Ireland. Nationalist politics was broken into several different factions, but a more radical political set-up was beginning to emerge in the form of Sinn Féin, which within seven years became the dominant political party in the Ireland.

That same year saw women workers in the Jacobs biscuit factory in Dublin go on strike for better pay, while foundry workers in Wexford found themselves locked out by their employers when they joined Connolly’s Irish Transport and General Workers Union. Irish working class militancy would become a united force in the face of capitalism during the 1913 Dublin lockout, but, like conservative constitutional nationalism, the labour movement also fell victim to the rise of Sinn Féin and republicanism in the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising.

Today in Cobh a striking black-granite plaque adorns the wall outside the Rob Roy bar, where Connolly had to seek refuge from a conservative, nationalist mob in 1911. After that incident Connolly did not hide his distaste for the garrison town, which he called “a nest of parasites feeding on parasites”! Harsh words indeed for what is today quite a pleasant harbour town, but over 100 years ago it, like many other towns across Ireland, hung heavy with an air of ideological conflict.

Pauline Murphy
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Savage state

I have just read the Labour Party Marxists contribution to Labour’s defence review. Hopefully it will be published by the Weekly Worker. Though it seems to be unfeasible, it is still a valued contribution, as it introduces the thought of having such a militia into the public arena.

Like a seed dropped by a passing bird, it will germinate come what may and, as you said, it has historical roots. The people of Britain have never been so vulnerable to what is becoming a weird and savage state machine. We must have no limits to our defence endeavours.

Elijah Traven
Hull

£150 a week

We are all a bit out of date. We should be demanding an income for everyone over the age of 16 who has a bank account. I think we should start at around £150 per week We know the state can afford this amount because it’s just numbers on a balance sheet. That’s the beauty of a fiat money and this would free the low-paid from having to accept jobs which pay too little to live on.

There is no better way to free the working classes than a secure income.

Eugene McAteer
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