Letters
Missing the point
I think Julian Jake in ‘Communist Press’ (Weekly Worker April 4) misses the fundamental problem with the Revolutionary Communist Group’s (Fight Racism Fight Imperialism)approach to the Socialist Labour Party. I think this approach reflects more fundamental problems with the organisation as a whole.
Julian rightly points out that, unlike some groups, the RCG has welcomed the fact that a section of the class has broken from the Labour Party. However, he contrasts their attitude with “the euphoria that some organisations have adopted”.
I wonder who he is talking about here. In my reading of the left press as a whole there has been a distinct lack of ‘euphoria’. Actually most papers either dismiss it wholesale or are standing on the sidelines, complaining about the so-called ‘constitution’ or so called ‘policies’ of the SLP without actually getting their hands dirty in undertaking the hard but vital work of being part of shaping those policies and constitution.
Perhaps he is only talking about his own organisation and its paper the Weekly Worker which has called on all its supporters and partisans of the working class to join the SLP in order to be part of the process of forging the Party the working class needs. If this is what is being described as euphoria then Julian Jake, along with the RCG remind me of the sectarians in the Social Democratic Federation. They opted out of the hard work of trying to influence the class in its formation of the Labour Party. Instead they languished in the SDF’s very unsplendid isolation, complaining that the class did not flock to it.
As Julian quotes, the RCG uselessly affirms that if the SLP does this and does the other it “can only applaud and support it”. Presumably, while it analyses the SLP through a microscope at a safe distance, it will do nothing about making sure it does do this, that or the other.
This is borne out by the April/May edition of FRFI in which the SLP gets no mention at all. However the Campaign Against School Closures in Dundee does get a mention by Michael Taylor. Out of its struggles, Michael is convinced, “a fighting working class movement will be born”. The editorial of the February/March FRFI compares the movement behind the SLP with that of the Independent Working Class Association. Though I have no doubt of the importance of these movements, we can hardly compare them to the potential of the SLP. FRFI also states that “we would have no difficulty, for example, in supporting and canvassing for Brenda Nixon”, but in reality it did nothing in the Hemsworth campaign.
In conversation with Julian Jake it is clear that he takes the same dogmatic mechanical approach to politics. The RCG and Julian, I think, see the poorest sections of the class as the only forces for change, those with a regular wage or skill of any kind falling into the category of the labour aristocracy or middle class. This is neither borne out by the history of struggle nor by real movements today. The RCG cannot see a real movement of a section of the class, which therefore has the potential to be a movement of the whole class, when it hits them in the face. Until the SLP accepts its theory of the labour aristocracy it will therefore ignore it and hope it goes away.
Curiously the February/March edition of FRFI criticises “the constitution” and even the “SLP’s programme”. What programme is this? This is worth emphasising since it is common to the passive approach being taken to the SLP by many leftwing organisations and individual revolutionaries. As yet the SLP has no programme and has passed no constitution. Scargill’s document is described by him as a “contribution” to the debate; so it should be. Constitutions and programmes must be decided by the membership, not by individuals. Of course members of the original SLP steering committee are trying to exclude organised revolutionaries from the formation of the party and are indeed trying to impose a constitution.
The struggle for Party is far too important for serious revolutionaries to allow a few individuals to get away with this. Julian correctly points out that FRFI “has nothing at all to say on the Party question”. This is not a mistake other revolutionaries should make.
Lee-Anne Bates
Editor
Fantasy land?
Some organisations have a real problem when it comes to reality - as it inconveniently contradicts their precious theory. The SWP is always a good case study.
The latest issue of Socialist Worker (April 6) tries to put a positive gloss on the decision last week by the NUS to abandon its commitment to free education and support the introduction of a ‘fairer system’ of loans. The vote graphically illustrated that Blairite ‘new realism’ has gained hegemony over the majority of students and that the left is in retreat - even if only temporarily.
However, Socialist Worker has a different interpretation: “New Labour supporters tried to interpret this as a vote in favour of abandoning grants” - how silly of them! Instead, the foolish rightwing should have realised that “most students who voted yes did so because they correctly believed the NUS had failed to fight against the Tories’ attacks.”
Well, there may be a partial truth here, perhaps, but is Socialist Worker trying to imply that those who voted in favour of dumping grants are in reality to the left of the Blairite leadership - a sort of silent, ‘unconscious’ leftwing majority? If so, it really is retreating into fantasy land.
The Guardian’s account of the conference seems nearer the truth. It described how a student named Erik Bean was voted onto the national executive. His ‘manifesto’ consisted of wearing a furry squirrel on his head and his sound-bite was, ‘Think nuts. Think squirrels. Think Bean.’ Comrade Bean also went on to say: “I represent common sense. There’s more to life than politics and I represent the side of life that is not politics. I’d just like us to be less radical and more friendly.”
I would not go so far as to suggest that Erik Bean represents the future of student politics - student politics has always gone in for ‘fun’ candidates and general silliness. But it points towards an unfortunate reality, which is that student politics in this country has always been emphatically non-revolutionary, except for a very few minor blips.
This was demonstrated perfectly in 1969, when the NUS elected a certain Jack Straw to be president - so much for Woodstock, the Summer of Love and student uprisings. For the leftwing minority in the NUS this must be the uncomfortable starting point for any campaign against the Blairites, which means challenging head-on the conservatism of most students, while at the same time understanding the origins of their conservatism - ie, the absence of any serious alternative to the Tories and Blairism.
Eddie Ford
South London
State capitalism
The debate about China sparked by John Craig’s article on the crisis over Taiwan raises some interesting points. Marcus Larsen has called for research, discussion and debate and John Craig has responded by introducing the concept of state capitalism to describe China today.
As many of your readers will know, the Revolutionary Democratic Group (faction of the SWP) comes from the tradition that describes not just China but the Soviet Union from the 1920s as state capitalist.
The SWP as the main exponent of this view in the UK has developed an account of the Chinese revolution that should be included in any debate of the subject. In particular, Nigel Harris wrote “The Mandate of Heaven” (Quartet 1978) which gives a coherent account of the Chinese revolution from the state capitalist tradition.
The RDG takes this view forward and describes the 1949 victory by the Communist Party as a national democratic revolution. This step was consistently refused by the SWP which continues to describe revolutions as bourgeois or workers’ revolutions as if social forces came pure and unsullied onto the world stage. The theory of permanent revolution had been challenged by the state capitalist analysis and was recast as ‘deflected’ permanent revolution in the SWP theory.
The RDG have restated the idea of permanent revolution to incorporate the changing international realities of both national liberation and the current trend toward globalisation. Political action remains national in character, confined to individual states or groups of states. Socialism can only be realised internationally. The national question for communists becomes who controls the national democratic revolution and how to spread the revolution internationally.
In the case of China the working class never came to power. The national democratic revolution remained in the hands of the majority class, the petty bourgeoisie in town and country. Though led by a Communist Party this class composition was never challenged. At the political level the revolution remained solidly national, caught in the trap of ‘socialism in one country’. The twists and turns of Chinese policy are clearly related by Nigel Harris to the demands of development. The turns in policy since Harris wrote his book only seem to confirm his general points.
Let’s have this debate on the nature of the Chinese revolution but let us not ignore the work of those on whose shoulders we can stand. The debate also touches on the developing nature of global capitalism and the place of national revolutions. This more general point has serious implications for all our work and must be a priority.
Chris Jones
RDG
Two views
In the Weekly Worker (February 29) Phil Sharpe of the Trotskyist Unity Group suggests that they would be in favour of the entry of Partisan into the CPGB in order to extend the polemic, “as part of the necessary theoretical process of discerning whether the CPGB is capable of moving towards ‘revolutionary Leninism’ and resolutely against ‘Stalinism’”.
We too are interested in which direction the CPGB is moving: in the direction of Marxism-Leninism, or towards Trotskyism.
The CPGB’s attitude towards Stalin will be the touchstone on this matter. In particular, does the PCC go along with the Trotskyist theory in relation to the erstwhile Soviet bureaucracy?
For Trotskyism, the Stalin purges were the act of a conservative Soviet bureaucracy defending itself from the revolution and the masses.
For us and for other Marxist-Leninists, the Stalin purges were the act of the revolution defending itself, in the person of Stalin and his leadership, from the Thermidorian elements in the party and state organs.
There are two alternative views. We do not know which of these theories the PCC upholds now or will support in the future. What we do know is that for a future communist party to hold two opposed views on this matter would be to dethrone Marxism as the science of the proletarian class struggle.
Tony Clark
Partisan