Letters

An RS moment?

British cabinet meetings vary in their significance, but, with the Cameron and May administrations having said next to nothing about their aims for Brexit, there was much expectation surrounding the get-together on August 31.

Three important decisions were made public: the aim of controlling immigration is prioritised over membership of the European Economic Area (EEA); parliament won’t have a say on whether, and when, notification is sent to the president of the European Council that the UK has “decide[d] to withdraw from the union”; and there’ll be no early general election. Positions can obviously change, but this is what the world has been told. There haven’t been leaks or briefings to the media, so presumably these decisions lack die-hard opponents within the cabinet.

The government isn’t treating Brexit as a charade. As Theresa May said from day one, Brexit means Brexit. For the second half of next year the government’s given up the chairing of the council of the EU (the governmental legislative counterpart to the European parliament), and at home two new departments have been created. The Conservative Party is staking its reputation on following through on Brexit.

The first decision contradicts the expectation of many Marxists - surprisingly not noted within this newspaper. The British government, Tory or Labour, is said to be in the grip of big capital, be it companies registered in the UK (British capital) or other companies working in Britain (capital in Britain), with finance capital wielding disproportionate influence. What big capital wants is delivered by government, and the state more generally. There’s said, or assumed to be, a necessary relationship here, perhaps achieved through a common understanding or by the ‘structural’ dependence of state income on taxing company profits. For some Marxists the state is the instrument of the ruling class; for others it’s relatively autonomous of the ruling class and so relatively dependent upon it.

Yet in almost 12 weeks the spokespeople and representatives of big capital have been largely silent. The Parliamentary Labour Party majority has shown what it is to make a song and dance when things don’t go their way. But no big statement from the Confederation of British Industry, nor the Institute of Directors. Nor from a trade association or the City. Just a murmuring straight after the result, and a few announcements of shifting planned projects to ‘the continent’.

Why is this? What does this tell us about the nature of the state in today’s Britain? How can a Tory government defy the united ‘remain’ voice of big capital? And why has it rendered the latter mute? Elsewhere I have evaluated how the government’s behaviour affects the plausibility of different Marxist conceptions and accounts.

The referendum campaign was a low-info affair. By and large it was all about Brussels, the EU. Perhaps it is indeed true that the sovereignty angle won out - rather than keeping the foreigners out. So hardly a mention of the EEA. Or of Switzerland being outside the EEA, securing access to the constituent states through multiple bilateral treaties. The Brexiteers spoke of all sorts of options - Norwegian (joining the EEA via the European Free Trade Association), Swiss, Canadian, Canadian plus - within a context of the UK’s trade deficit strengthening its negotiating position. Now the talk is Savile Row: a bespoke agreement, unique for a unique people.

The second decision, bypassing parliament, is also an innovation of the May government. Is this the first attempt in Britain to exercise plebiscitary rule? What can the motivation be? It seems May (the May faction?) is trying to ensure Brexit can’t be derailed. Perhaps so, but will a contrarian MP table a motion in support of Brexit, or a motion stating that parliament - both houses - has to give permission for notification being sent? The cabinet’s view is unambiguous: May’s legal advice is that it can be lawfully given independently by the government - indeed, on July 8, Robert Craig offered an argument that the power was already part of primary legislation, avoiding reliance on crown prerogative in foreign affairs (ukconstitutionallaw.org). Remainers already have court proceedings underway, with a route to the supreme court - or higher. On September 5 the Commons had a discussion on the 4.1 million second-referendum petition. It wasn’t held in the chamber itself, but in an annex to Westminster Hall. It got a corresponding level of publicity, which shows where we’re at.

Another way to avoid derailing is not to call an early general election. That would have needed either a two-thirds Commons vote or repealing the fixed-term act by passing through both houses on a simple majority - the Lords can delay, but only by a year. Why bother? The focus is on Brexit, Brexit, Brexit. Cementing the Conservative Party as the voice and mother of the nation. But isn’t the Labour Party in chaos, can’t it be smashed electorally? What’s the rush? The Boundary Commission revisions favour the Tories anyway. No. Leave Labour to twist and turn, stewing in the juices released by the antics of the PLP fanatics and their pals in the party apparatus. May 2020 is when the other knife can go in.

So all this leaves the Weekly Worker group having an RS moment. Doing the Egyptian à la Revolutionary Socialists. The CPGB aggregate on September 4 properly focused on the struggle within Labour, so leaving unrevised the view from outside that the group believes Brexit won’t happen (‘An army for socialism’, September 8). It’s puzzling why so much emphasis has been placed on a prediction. That as may be, in the face of the evidence since June 23, it reminds one of how the RS were convinced in their statement of July 9 2013 that the overthrow of president Mursi was all part of a continuing revolution, and not the consolidation of a capitalist regime under military rule.

Jara Handala
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Pollitt advice

Given all the furore over the utterly pointless Labour leadership election, in which levels of adulation for Corbyn are reaching levels rarely seen out of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, I thought I’d remind you of the words of Harry Pollitt, in the 1951 British road to socialism.

Now, before you read his words, I hope we are all in agreement that, even if the Labour Party was elected in 2020, even with Corbyn at the helm, it would not be more radical than the Labour Party of 1945-51. Good, now we all agree with that, let’s see what Harry Pollitt had to say about the Labour government of 45 to 51:

“So at the general election in 1945 they [the voters] returned a Labour government with a large parliamentary majority. They rejected the Tories, the party of big business, which had ruled Britain for most of the black years between the wars. They supported the Labour Party, which declared that its aim was peace and friendship with the Soviet Union, and socialism in Britain.

“But instead of the promised friendship with the socialist lands, we have been dragooned into an alliance with the worst enemies of labour - the bankers and businessmen of America - for war against the countries where the workers are in power.

“As a result of this policy, Britain has been dragged into an armaments race; prices are rising, while wages are held back; and the workers are now being robbed of the social gains won since the war.

“Why has the Labour government thus failed the hopes of the people? Because, far from challenging the rights and privileges of big business at home and abroad, it has allied itself with big business against the people

“The capitalists have done exceptionally well under the Labour government; indeed, they have never been better off. The workers have paid for all this in low wages, higher prices and heavier taxation, while the Labour government has conducted an offensive against the workers’ efforts to secure increased wages. Troops have been used in strikes, hard-won democratic rights have been ruthlessly attacked, strikers have been arrested and prosecuted, and collective bargaining has been turned into a farce by means of Order 1305 and compulsory arbitration.”

Now, here Pollitt, for once, is telling the truth! Not a pretty picture, and 70 years onwards we are expected to forget this and elect a watered-down version of this. Why?

Steven Johnston
Stockport

Out of his depth

This letter is a response to Paul Demarty’s letter (September 8) responding to my letter (August 25), responding to his article, ‘Voting for the right lizard’ (August 4).

Demarty writes: “I made an argument, as a provocation to the likes of Mr Ellison”, which is OK, and then when I respond to his provocation he writes: “Given that he is a Blairite troll ...” Can you appreciate the absolute absurdity and stupidity of these two comments taken together? Obviously Demarty is a small man with a small IQ (brain) and a huge inferiority complex that clouds his limited intelligence.

I am not a member of the CPGB, but I do enjoy reading the Weekly Worker, as it gives me an opportunity to engage with brainwashed, frustrated revolutionaries like Demarty, who are completely unable to sustain an argument outside their comfort zone and resort to abuse in order to disguise their lack of an intelligent response.

Of course, you can respond to me by accusing me of resorting to abuse, but experience proves that cretins/morons/imbeciles/idiots existing in their twilight world only understand such language (and then only dimly) and so, working on the assumption that Demarty is one of those four, he leaves me with no alternative that I would not employ when engaging with intelligent life.

Arguably Demarty represents the least intelligent form of human life on the planet, one step up the evolutionary ladder from pond life. My response to Demarty is in future do not engage with me until you get some treatment, because you are way out of your depth, sonny Jim.

To the Weekly Worker, I suggest that you take the trouble to try to explain the meaning of the previous sentence to him (try to ignore his vacuous expression - the lights will be on, but possibly there’s no-one at home) and then you post him to the Outer Hebrides, where he can engage with an audience of seabirds and the odd whale, any of which possess similar IQs to him.

Breaking news: Paul Demarty, arch demagogue of the CPGG, debates with a whale. Shock news: Whale wins the debate.

I rest my case.

Michael Ellison
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Contempt

Given last week’s events surrounding the ‘honourable’ Keith Vaz MP, I think we are going to have to recalibrate our already highly limited expectations of that Jeremy Corbyn chappy. How is it that the ‘leader’ of the Labour Party did not straight away chastise, condemn and indeed promptly expel that so-called co-socialist MP of his?

Vaz has now been exposed as someone who deliberately, consciously and systematically exploits migrants from east European countries - those who have been reduced to health-endangering and dignity-destroying prostitution. All of that is nothing short of physical assault blended with ‘quasi-colonialism’!

What true socialist or Marxist will feel anything but sheer disdain alongside utter contempt for Corbyn, now that he’s decided to condone, or at least placidly downplay and feebly dismiss as a ‘personal matter’, such class-treacherous behaviour, those fundamentally anti-humanitarian actions on the part of his frontline Labour Party co-member?

To be clear, I am not suggesting that a single one of us is entitled to stand in moral judgement over any other citizen’s sexual preferences, proclivities and choices or erotic indulgences/inclinations. (After all, given enough time, either love or sex will make a complete fool of any of us.)

However, the specific matters and particular occurrences surrounding Mr Vaz are of an entirely different substance and calibre and a distinctly separate nature. Whether high or low, friend or foe, all citizens should consider and thereby assess and evaluate them accordingly - most significantly the ‘leader’ of his own political party, Mr Jeremy Corbyn, please let me amplify and emphasise and reiterate.

Boris Kaspersky
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Word is

The debate about Chomsky’s ‘universal grammar’ is not about skills or capability - like a dog’s predisposition to distinguish smells - but about human nature (‘Two Noam Chomskys’, September 1). As language is an invention of human culture, how much of culture is ‘generative’: that is, genetic, inborn?

To start with our animal inheritance: animals may not have language, but they can communicate. They distinguish things; they call and respond, they read signals which indicate danger or pleasure. Language does all these things - ‘I think he likes me’ - but it also provides abstract concepts - ‘he’s the only one I can imagine marrying and having kids with’.

Does this mean that reproductive monogamy is a universal concept? Then anything else must be unnatural. Oh dear - politics.

Humans have developed animal communication and created concepts, often in the form of ideals, which, as Jacques Lacan saw, plague us with their demands. But not all societies have the same concepts, or grammar. Some lack the concept of ‘book’, as Chris Knight pointed out, or, for that matter, ‘car’.

The Pirahã people of the Amazon rainforest were found by anthropologist Daniel Everett to have a language that lacked certain features of ‘universal grammar’. For example, they do not say ‘her brother’s house’, but must say, ‘She has a brother; this brother has a house’. In other words, they don’t have grammatical embedding. Even though they are superb hunter-gatherers, or perhaps because if it, they don’t count up to 10 either; numbering being related to embedding. They can recognise ‘one’, ‘many’ and ‘less than many’ but don’t use more detailed numbers. This means that they have often lost out in trade with those who do. Furthermore, they lack complex clauses like ‘her friend’s mother’s house’.

For Chomsky, such recursive possessive constructions are innate in humans and part of ‘universal grammar’, which means that, during their whole existence as a people, the Pirahã still haven’t fully participated in ‘universal grammar’. Everett did try to teach numeracy to some Pirahã, but they found it very difficult. To the riposte that, being human, they still have the possibility of learning ‘universal grammar’, let us agree - while adding that they, or their offspring, still have the possibility of learning to drive as well.

Mike Belbin
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Role models

It’s unfortunate that Peter Manson’s article on the African National Congress doesn’t mention the Economic Freedom Fighters much (‘ANC in disarray’, September 8).

In contrast to political education and broader political organisation, the EFF is highly effective in its political agitation and public relations, precisely because of the language and structures employed. That effectiveness and what underpins it is something the alternative left should look at seriously.

Jacob Richter
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