Letters

Barbarism

Ukraine’s armed forces and population have put up a valiant fight against overwhelming odds. The next stage militarily seems a foregone conclusion. But the political cost to capitalist rulers everywhere has yet to be added up, mainly because the root cause of such inhuman violence is little discussed and the working class movement is at a low ebb.

Hard though it might be, though, all who want human liberation from all the barbarisms of capitalism have to convince the overwhelming majority of who is the real enemy: our rulers and the social system they serve. We know capitalism means war and degradation, amongst its ‘profit before people’ effects, so we need to campaign all the more strenuously against it and all its works. And in this concrete situation, we must base ourselves on stating that the real enemy is at home: we oppose our own capitalist governments. Not a penny for the war machine. Troops out of Ukraine. Abolish Nato.

Jim Moody
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Global revolution

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is yet another chapter in the history of the strong state that in the 19th century came to the aid of capitalism and the advance of imperialism. 150 years ago in various capitalist nations the state expanded to subdue the challenge of its social critics and the working class, while competing aggressively with rivals. The response to this was national struggles by weaker powers (like Russia and China), which led to revolution, but then to a strong national state themselves.

Now we have reached a stage where there is nothing but a clash of world powers, or would-be powers like Putin’s Russia, with small nationalities choosing between them. In such a situation we must choose the ‘side’ of opposing all world-dominating powers and push for a global revolution against all elites.

Mike Belbin
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Only class war

Having compared four platforms put forward by - so far - Minsk II, two comrades at Cosmonaut magazine and the Democratic Socialists of America, I would like to put forward my own below, from the perspective of geopolitical realpolitik.

My preamble reads:

Considering that it is a multipolar world, not a unipolar world of geopolitical hegemony, that has historically given class movements in multiple countries political momentum in terms of regular class struggle;

Considering that developing countries can play off competing imperialist powers against each other, especially on trade;

Considering that, even if a multipolar world may make the great leveller of inter-imperialist war more likely, it also makes the great leveller of revolution more likely by utterly discrediting at least one imperialist power;

The following ought to be obligated upon immediately, outside a revolutionary period for the working class, including the absence of mass party-movements.

The following ought to be obligated upon all relevant parties immediately, including ‘lesser evil’ imperialist powers.

Then, on Ukraine and the Russian Federation:

Immediate, comprehensive demobilisation of the entire armed forces of Ukraine, including, but not limited to, heavy weapons and other military equipment;

Immediate, comprehensive ceasefire on the part of the armed forces of the Russian Federation;

Withdrawal by the Russian Federation of heavy weapons;

OSCE monitoring;

Immediate constitutional reform in Ukraine, including decentralisation, taking into account the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic;

Withdrawal by the Russian Federation of remaining military equipment, foreign armed formations and mercenaries - subject to the aforementioned constitutional reform;

All other provisions of Minsk II;

Immediate diplomacy for other relevant peace conditions;

Immediate end to all crackdowns on anti-war protestors.

On the US and Europe:

No direct Nato member involvement whatsoever, including no-fly zones;

No support for individuals choosing to fight for the Ukrainian government;

No weapons deliveries to the Ukrainian government;

Abolition of all sanctions against the Russian people, including vital sectors of the Russian economy;

Immediate denunciation of chauvinist practices engaged by, or tolerated by, Ukraine;

Immediate acceptance of war refugees;

Immediate satisfaction of all geography-based red-line security interests of the Russian Federation, on the part of all Atlanticist powers (the US and Europe);

Abolition of Nato, subsequent to the aforementioned security interests satisfaction.

Wage no war but the class war!

Jacob Richter
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Ineffectual

Moshé Machover and Tony Greenstein seem to be flagging in their joint defence of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement that is doing nothing to advance the anti-Zionist cause and much to confuse and impede it.

The best that Machover could come up with in his letter last week was the claim that anyone who points out that Hamas is part of the BDS governing structure is guilty of “arguing like a hasbara operative” - which is to say a Zionist propagandist. Notice that he doesn’t say that Hamas isn’t part of the governing structure: he merely says that socialists should keep quiet about it in order not to sound like Zionists, who are constantly harping on the theme. Presumably, that means that socialists should not criticise Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine in order not to sound like Joe Biden.

In other words, we must pretend that the problem doesn’t exist for the good of the cause. But it’s strange to find such an argument in the Weekly Worker, since not long ago Eddie Ford sailed into the Socialist Workers Party in these pages for blandly referring to Hamas as a “Palestinian resistance group” without mentioning its “thoroughly reactionary agenda”, which is a threat not only to women, gays and labour, but to Jews as well (‘Thin edge of the wedge’, December 2). Why didn’t Machover dash off a letter back then chiding Ford for speaking out? Or does he in fact agree with the SWP’s ‘see no evil’ approach?

Greenstein goes to even more absurd lengths in his article in the same issue (‘Get out of the Zionist ghetto’, February 24), which questions whether Hamas is anti-Semitic at all. As he points out, Hamas adopted a “supplement” to its notorious charter in 2017, clarifying that Jews and Zionism are not identical and that “the persecution of any human being … on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds” is wrong. As commendable as this was, the gesture would have been more convincing if Hamas had simultaneously repealed the original document with its chilling references to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and its claim that Jews were behind the French and Russian revolutions and all other calamities since. But it didn’t. Instead, Hamas kept it in place so as to appease hard-liners, who regard the supplement as merely ‘a tool for the future’ that does not constitute a change of ‘principles’ from the original charter.

So Hamas is the same nasty Muslim Brotherhood affiliate it always was, and its rebranding effort fools no-one. Greenstein goes on to argue, however, that anti-Semitism on Hamas’s part is unimportant, because it’s “a classic example of the reflective racism of the oppressed”. He adds sarcastically: “Perhaps we should concentrate, when it comes to the United States, on the use of ‘honky’ as a pejorative slur on white people, or the use of the slogan, ‘One settler, one bullet’, by the Azanian Peoples Front?”

This is nonsense as well. Greenstein’s description of racism as “the exercise of structural political power in pursuit of systematic discrimination against a particular group” is very much the sort of guff one hears from petty bourgeois nationalists, especially here in the US. But it’s one-sided and incomplete. Racism is indeed a material force that the strong use to oppress the weak. But it’s also an ideology that views race as the motor force of history. As such, it’s an ‘equal opportunity employer’ capable of infecting anyone who’s on the top, the bottom or in between. As any socialist organiser knows, black nationalists crying ‘honky’ can undermine a strike just as effectively as whites crying ‘nigger’. So both manifestations must be combated - vigorously and equally - so the strike can go forward.

And this doesn’t mean subordinating black concerns, as Greenstein contends. To the contrary, it means calling on all workers to raise the banner of anti-racism, so as to achieve true class unity.

This is what makes the Hamas question so important. BDS includes it in its governing structure because it sees itself as an expression of Palestinian civil society, Islamists and secularists alike. It tries to overlook Hamas’s ferociously reactionary programme (with an assist from people like Machover and Greenstein), because its focus is on national unity and it’s also soft on racism, which, after all, is nationalism’s first cousin. As for imperialism, BDS is soft on that as well. Instead of opposing it, it seeks to enlist it in the anti-Zionist cause by calling on the US to do to Israel what it is currently doing to Iran, Syria, Cuba and now Russia - which is to subject it to a brutal economic blockade.

Should socialists have called on France and Britain in the late 1930s to impose an economic blockade on Nazi Germany? Considering that both countries were in the process of strangling Republican Spain, such an appeal would have been as demoralising as it was ineffectual. So how is BDS’s appeal to American imperialism any different?

Daniel Lazare
New York

Great Purge

The Socialist History Society - which I believe is a successor to the former ‘official’ CPGB History Group - held a really interesting talk given by historian Geoffrey Roberts entitled ‘Stalin’s library: a dictator and his books’. This is a compelling intellectual biography of Stalin, told through his personal library, and a video of the talk is available on the SHS website.

It was quite an unusual approach by Roberts to study Stalin, the person, through exhaustive and intensive study of all the books, papers, pamphlets held by him; and all his personal notes, annotations and comments, handwritten on many of them. Roberts said he wanted to avoid writing yet another biography of Stalin and therefore avoid 10-plus years of research and study, as well as adding to considerable biographies already in existence, but ironically his intended narrowed-down scope actually required him to do precisely that. It meant reviewing and considering literally everything Stalin said and wrote, formally, with principal insights coming from the informal notes.

There were three major conclusions made by Roberts from his study of interest and relevance to socialists and communists. One, it was clear that Stalin was an absolutely committed and dedicated communist and revolutionary, who was utterly committed to the socialist revolution and the achievement and building of socialism - necessarily first in the USSR, but ultimately on a global scale. I personally never had any doubt about that, although I know some readers of the Weekly Worker will differ.

Two, Stalin genuinely believed that the USSR was under massive external and internal attack and subversion during the 1930s by a combination of the overthrown classes (monarchists, landlords, capitalists, NEP men, kulaks, white-ists etc), defeated rightists and leftists from within the Soviet Communist Party, and linked with intelligence agencies, including from Germany, Japan and Britain. The controversial so-called Great Purge was genuinely seen by Stalin as a form of really intense and sharp class struggle between the enemies of Soviet state power and the defenders of socialism, the majority of the Communist Party and the majority of the Soviet people. So the notion that this was just a cunning wheeze - a set of fabrications and inventions by Stalin to consolidate his personal power and eliminate his enemies - is shown by Roberts to be nonsense.

To repeat my previously expressed view, I do believe that Stalin did indeed use the Great Purge to eliminate some of his political opponents, but the primary purpose was to fight and eliminate the enemies of Soviet state power. I also believe that many high and middle-ranking members of the party and Soviet state apparatus did also use the purges to protect their own positions and to try and eliminate their own opponents and enemies. Innocent people were caught up and were killed. That complexity in these dramatic and dynamic processes led to the changes in the top leadership of the NKVD and other people’s state security organs.

Roberts’s evidence suggests to me that the great majority of the investigation and trial evidence of the anti-Soviet conspiracies in the 1930s was largely factual and true. If the whole exercise was a fabrication dreamed up by Stalin, why would there be the need for such incredibly lengthy and detailed accounts of the histories, connections and activities of all the various conspirators? Veteran anti-Soviet Trotskyist Gerry Downing has claimed that it was all a put-up job; verdicts and sentences were predetermined; and the troika system was used to rapidly arrest, charge, try and execute the victims. In that case, why the need for the vast volumes of extraordinarily detailed evidence given by the convicted themselves? It simply does not make any sense.

Thirdly, in response to a question from the floor as to whether Stalin genuinely believed Trotsky was linked to German and Japanese intelligence as part of a massive anti-Soviet conspiracy, Roberts simply said yes. Equally, Stalin genuinely believed that Sergei Kirov had been assassinated by anti-Soviet terrorists in 1934. So, again, the idea the purges were a massive fabrication by Stalin and/or that Kirov was murdered by Stalin as some sort of political rival or due to a more fundamental political division is shown to be nonsense.

Finally, what to say about Jack Conrad’s latest opus on Stalin in last week’s Weekly Worker (‘Many were the dead’, February 24)? Well, elsewhere Conrad talks a good game about the need for a mass Communist Party (I agree) and the need for a mass, majority, proletarian revolution to overthrow capitalism and establish the political, economic and state power of the working class: ie, socialism as the first stage towards a worldwide communist society. (I agree, although the process of revolution is curiously absent from the Draft programme: one minute we are raising minimum demands and the very next minute we have working class power and a working class constitution!)

But, when it comes to real class struggle and real revolution in the real existing USSR, Conrad’s Kautskyism comes to the fore. He is, obviously, completely opposed to the very real class struggles fought by genuine communists against the enemies of Soviet state power, which did very much include the Great Purge of 1937-38, as one specific episode. The socialist revolution did not start and finish within 10 days in October-November 1917.

Andrew Northall
Kettering