Letters

CPGB and Sparts

This year’s Communist University was marked by a great diversity of views and we learned a lot on the burning issues of the day in the very valuable debates on their historical precedents. The great issues are the US-Nato proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, their looming World War III against China, Russia, Iran, etc, the cost of living crisis and the perspectives for the world economy and world revolution.

The first lesson is that we must evaluate all conflicts from their effect on the class-consciousness of the global proletariat. Writing in April 1940, Leon Trotsky made a ‘Balance sheet of the Finnish events’. He explained that ‘national independence’, ‘neutrality’, etc were imperialist mythology in these circumstances and justified the forced Sovietisation of Georgia in 1921 from the standpoint of defence of the USSR, despite overriding the principles of self-determination and extending the area of the revolution by military and not political means.

So it is with Ukraine today. Putin is no revolutionary - he has made it clear he infinitely prefers Stalin to Lenin - but the anti-imperialist principles are the same; a defeat for US-Nato and their puppet, Zelensky, is eminently preferable to a defeat of Russia. Morally or politically Xi Jinping and China are no better than US or European imperialism. But the latter have the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to suck the lifeblood out of Africa, south-east Asia and Latin America. China or Russia cannot do that - they do not have the financial clout internationally, however much they would like to. Chinese companies union-bust in Africa, in collaboration with the local police. But their intervention is far more progressive for those countries, because it is to gain access. So it is not imperialist in the Marxist sense like the US global, hegemonic, imperialist power. Call it proto- or neo-imperialist if you want - they cannot do that kind of super-exploitation. Almost all leftists I know in Africa and many African and Middle Eastern fellow workers I knew make that distinction. To withdraw Russian troops is to hand victory to the US-Nato. And that is the significance of adopting dual defeatism in these circumstances.

But surely we should be for defeat on both sides, turning the guns around and the war into civil wars against capitalism itself in both Ukraine and Russia? After a break of over two years the Spartacist magazine has reappeared with just this line. Only they have a problem with some hangovers from Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyist orthodoxy, so their dual defeatism is declared to be in a war between “two capitalist classes”. They must use this sleight of hand because, correctly, they do not designate Russia as imperialist, and Marxist orthodoxy forbids taking a neutral stance in a war between imperialism and a colonial or semi-colonial nation; the defeat of imperialism is always the priority. However the CPGB’s Jack Conrad and Mike Macnair also take a neutralist stance, whilst openly acknowledging Russia is not imperialist. But they are apparently unburdened by that Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyist orthodoxy.

The second objection to the slogan, ‘Turns the guns against your rulers’, is the level of class-consciousness on both sides; it is a ‘one solution - revolution’ demand, which does not start from where we are, but from a totally idealist scenario, ignoring the reality on the ground. The Ukraine army is ideologically dominated by the fascist Azov battalion and statues of the Nazi collaborator, Stephan Bandera, are everywhere. All leftwing parties are banned, 14 mayors have been assassinated by the Azov and the infamous neo-Nazi C14 unit with secret police assistance. But counterposing revolution now to defeating the imperialist onslaught, which will raise the level of class-consciousness in Ukraine, Russia, as well as the US, UK and all imperialist countries, is completely wrong.

An anti-imperialist united front does not mean you offer yourself to Islamic State, the Taliban or Syria’s Assad to be executed; obviously you must maintain your political and organisational independence. This was the lesson that the opposition of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, etc advocated in 1926, warning against the disastrous organisational and political collapse of the Communist Party of China into the Guomindang, the liberal bourgeoisie, on Comintern instructions, which resulted in the massacre of the Shanghai Soviet in April 1927. “Revolutions are never advanced by defeats,” Trotsky observed.

That the CPGB has the same line as the Sparts on the Ukraine war might seem remarkable - they certainly do not agree with the rest of the jumping-mad stuff in that magazine. But it’s not so strange, as they both had the same line on the Malvinas war of 1982. Both advocated dual defeatism here also, not the defeat of the imperialist power, with US assistance, that was attacking a semi-colony. Others like the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty developed a theory of ‘sub-imperialism’ to implicitly justify support for their fleet. For the Sparts also the war was fought in the wrong place and so did not endanger Argentinian sovereignty. But that is their traditional softness on imperialism, which is demonstrated by their inability to unequivocally take the side of Irish republicanism against the British empire, or indeed the Palestinians against Israel by the ridiculous ‘interpenetrated peoples’ theory.

“For the IRA, against the British army” was what the CPGB’s forerunner, The Leninist, proudly proclaimed before we got all that CPGB concern for the right to self-determination of the loyalist British-Irish. Again and again, against both the Spart family and the CPGB, ‘from the standpoint of the strategy of the world proletariat’ is the only way to judge any war or conflict, nationally and internationally.

Gerry Downing
Socialist Fight

Marxist party

For the sake of political clarity and given Tribune’s leading role in the ‘Enough is Enough’ campaign, it is worth comrades considering some key quotes from the Tribune interview with the (obviously) otherwise excellent RMT leader, Mick Lynch:

“Whether we like it or not, in a lot of working class areas, Jeremy Corbyn didn’t resonate. Now we’ve got a situation where some trade unions are overtly saying, ‘We’re not that bothered about what the Labour Party is saying …’ Sharon Graham, Gary Smith, and myself … are saying that. You can’t escape the fact that in some of these towns, people are patriotic. They like Britain. They like the flag.”

There’s a bit to unpick here. It appears that comrade Lynch believes that Corbyn’s Labour lost the 2019 general election due to Brexit - which is certainly true - but also because they were too “metropolitan” and not patriotic enough. Meanwhile, the answer to Starmerism is simply to ignore the Labour Party - tempting, but not really a solution (especially if you’re prepared to lump together Sharon Graham, who does seem to be of the left, with Gary Smith, who certainly isn’t). There is no purely industrial way to win victories against a determined Tory government. Uniting the TUC behind a militant left position won’t be much easier than uniting the Labour Party.

There are lots of positives in the interview, but it is politically very limited - for example, responding to the increased ballot thresholds by simply saying we have to do the work to beat them. Of course, that’s one solution (although somewhat easier to organise in a union of tens of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands) but it begs the question, what if Truss’s Tories respond with yet harsher measures? At a certain stage we need a political response.

Lynch is an admirable character, leading a well-organised, militant union. Ultimately though, a strategy of ignoring Labour, ignoring ‘metropolitan’ politics (including internationalism, which was not mentioned at all in the interview and, of course, is one of the main reasons Corbyn was monstered by the press) and focusing on a syndicalist idea that the TUC on its own can offer an effective opposition to the Tory assault on workers, is inadequate. We can’t get around the need for a party of Marxists doing the work of organising the class politically as well as industrially.

Sean Carter
South London

Holocaust

In writing that “11 million [were] killed in the holocaust” and with his given examples, Pete Gregson misunderstands the specificity of the crime (Letters, August 11).

The holocaust is the Nazi genocide of Jews in Germany and German-occupied countries. There were other crimes - mass killings of civilians and prisoners of war from the Soviet Union and occupied eastern countries, but these were ad-hoc murders in relation to circumstances: in other words, pragmatic considerations, such as control of territory and resources, were central to the policy. After the initial success of Operation Barbarossa, Germany found itself with millions of Red Army prisoners, whom it chose to starve in a programme named the ‘Hunger Plan’.

Later in the war, especially after Stalingrad, the German high command requested that Red Army soldiers who volunteered to serve the Wehrmacht as auxiliaries, be allowed to do so. And, with growing shortages of labour in Germany, the Nazis used Soviet POWs as forced labour. In the war on Russian soil, a million Soviets served as German auxiliaries, while the Russian Liberation Army under the turncoat general, Andrei Vlasov, formed a corps of 130,000 troops, armed and uniformed by the Germans. The point is that, despite Nazi racial policies, contradictions and exceptions occurred.

No exception was provided for Jews, who were condemned in toto - men, women, children, babies. Extermination - the ‘final solution’ - was the aim. Eventually, the Roma and Sinti were to be included in the programme and they suffered their ‘porajmos’. It does the Roma a disservice to label their persecution and murder a ‘holocaust’, just as it would be incorrect to label the Jewish holocaust a ‘porajmos’.

Jews were the one set of people whom Hitler had delineated as the single most dangerous element to his regime and to the world. We can bracket this obsession with reference to a line in Mein Kampf, written in 1925 before Hitler came to power. In this ideological blueprint, Hitler sets out his loathing of Judaism when he writes that Germany will only be free when Jewish “international poisoners are exterminated”.

The Wannsee conference of 1942, in which Reinhard Heydrich pointed senior Nazis, including Eichmann, in the direction of a ‘final solution’, gave flesh to this singular obsession. Then, in April 1945, on the day before he committed suicide, Hitler reprised the theme in a political testament, which he dictated to his secretary. In this briefest of documents, Hitler still finds space to mention Jews - twice. The very last sentence contains the phrase, “the poisoners of all the peoples of the world, international Jewry”. This symmetrical comment closes the chapter he opened against Jews 20 years earlier in Mein Kampf.

That is the specificity of the holocaust.

René Gimpel
email

Abhorrent

I was surprised to read in the article by Yassamine Mather in respect of Israel’s recent attack on the Gaza Strip that, following Israel’s assassination of Bassam al-Saadi, a leading figure in Islamic Jihad, “the group’s reaction was predictable: it fired rockets from Gaza and Israel responded by bombing PIJ areas” (‘More talk than action’, August 11).

This is totally untrue and that is what makes Israel’s attacks on Gaza and the resulting civilian casualties, including at least 17 children, all the more abhorrent. Palestinian Islamic Jihad did not respond by firing missiles. This is what Israel wanted, but, when PIJ showed no sign of reacting, Israel first began closing down civilian areas in the Gaza ‘envelope’ and diverting traffic to heighten tensions in Israel.

The fact is that Israel’s attack on Gaza was not in response to rocket fire, but was a unilateral attack by an Israeli government seeking to create a conflict for political reasons. I am surprised that Yassamine, who is normally very careful in what she writes, did not appreciate this, as this was pointed out repeatedly by Palestinian supporters.

Tony Greenstein
Brighton

CPB and monarchy

I was disappointed that James Harvey misrepresented the position of the Communist Party of Britain on the question of the monarchy. He claimed in his article on the questions of Scottish independence and a further referendum that, for the CPB, “The monarchy seems to go unquestioned. So not a progressive federalism, but a royalist federalism with lots of extra politicians” (‘Indy2, strikes and boycotts’, July 28)

James must know that that is a complete falsehood - a completely ridiculous one to boot. As an aside, I do find James Harvey is one of the noticeably weaker writers for the Weekly Worker. He is good in his specialised and personally knowledgeable subjects, such as Ireland, the European Union and the Labour Party, but on more fundamental questions he comes across as if he’s just rote-repeating standard phrases and formulae of the Weekly Worker group, without being convincing that he fully understands them.

Anyway, please let me assure James and readers of the Weekly Worker that the Communist Party is a proudly republican party standing for working class state power and absolutely advocates the abolition of the monarchy. Every single edition of the party’s programme, Britain’s road to socialism (obviously) includes abolition of the monarchy as a basic democratic demand.

The monarchy is mentioned twice in the current edition: “This requires the abolition of all powers and institutions relating to the monarchy, including such posts as head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, together with the royal prerogative, the Privy Council and similarly unaccountable offices of state” (p66); and “the hereditary monarchy should be replaced by a democratically elected and accountable head of state” (p69). The first is included in the immediate programme of a “left government”; the second as part of the move to full socialism. I agree that the first is a bit wordy, but “abolition of all powers and institutions … including the monarchy” is surely clear enough?

I would agree - if the criticism were to be made - that earlier versions of the CPB’s programme did not place sufficient importance on the earliest possible abolition of the monarchy, saying that after it had been stripped of all its powers, it would “eventually” be abolished. More recent versions of the CPB’s BRS and the original CPGB’s various editions of the same programme were and are much more straightforward on this subject. My recollection is that internal party debate on the “eventually” wording (remember, we were just talking of the shell of the institution - the powers would have already been abolished), led to it being tightened up in subsequent editions.

I hope at the very least James will reflect privately on his wording in his article describing the CPB’s position relating to the monarchy.

We may, of course, debate whether there should in fact be a “head of state” role at all after abolition of the monarchy. BRS suggests it would be “a democratically elected and accountable head of state”. This would have mainly ceremonial functions and extremely limited actual constitutional powers: eg, they could only ever be exercised if there were some form of logjam in the functioning and operation of either a nationally elected assembly or in that of a government of administration, formed from and accountable to such an assembly.

Key issues such as how governments/administrations are formed, how they obtain the confidence of an elected national assembly, the circumstances in which they could lose that confidence, resign and new ones formed, when or if early elections are required, could all be carefully prescribed in detail in a formal, working class, democratic constitution. Thus the role of any elected head of state would be highly limited and prescribed. In any case, surely far better an elected head of state than an hereditary monarchy, a dictatorial prime minister elected on a minority of the electorate, and a speaker such as John Bercow having any such powers!

It is possible that some idiot (not James or any regular Weekly Worker writer) may try to claim that Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin in “approving” the 1951 British road to socialism even implied that socialism could take place under a British king! Well, there are a number of responses. Read JV on any monarchy in history or current in his time to know his genuine position. Stalin had a rascally sense of humour which was probably in play here. You can’t argue that western communist parties were completely under the thumb of Stalin, yet they went ahead and produced ‘national roads to socialism’, which may be argued were very much at variance with Stalin’s and the Soviet Communist Party’s own understanding and application of Marxism-Leninism. I suspect JV had a wry grin on his face if he ever said British socialism was possible under a British king, implying just how likely or successful that original BRS might ever be.

More seriously, I expect Stalin and the CPSU were affronted by the phrases in early BRS editions, which severely contrasted the British road to the Soviet road, but nonetheless chose to allow the British and other western communist parties to find their own way, in the name of different circumstances and conditions, and the need to work through in practice, scientifically, which were correct and applicable. Whether that was right or wrong is a separate debate.

Andrew Northall
Kettering

Paedophiles

In a recent edition of the Weekly Worker (No1404) Tony Greenstein makes the amazing statement: “Of course there were anti-Semites in a party of 600,000, just as there were paedophiles. But did anyone suggest there was a ‘problem’ of paedophilia? Of course not. Likewise there was no ‘problem’ of anti-Semitism” (‘An open letter to ACR’, July 21).

Like Greenstein I have no idea what the percentage of paedophiles who inhabit the Labour Party is. However, it should be crystal-clear to even an Islamic apologist such as Greenstein that Labour councils have a massive and disgusting problem with paedophilia. Forty-plus years of young, vulnerable white girls being raped, trafficked, abused and occasionally murdered by organised Muslim gangs, which even the government have finally been forced to acknowledge, with reports that, diluted as they are, reveal something of the decades of terror faced by white girls who are ‘easy meat’, due to “men of Pakistani heritage”. Occasionally the ruling elite are forced to admit that this abuse is still carrying on.

Generally these scum have been required to serve only a tiny part of the pitifully few prison sentences given out and in Rochdale we have three paedophiles released whose British citizenship has been removed, but who have not been forced to return to Pakistan and who are free to intimidate the same girls they abused in shopping malls, etc. Far from the picture of Muslims being subject to oppressive policing that Greenstein loves to promote, there is indeed a necessity for ‘One law for all’ in respect of this section of society.

Out of this tragic shambles no police officer, council official or social worker has ever been prosecuted. Whilst some of the people in these agencies actively participated in the abuse, most of them appear to have been terrified of being called ‘racist’ by people whose opinion is worthless.

We live in a society where it is worse to be called a ‘racist’ than actually be a racist! During Gordon Brown’s premiership, this great ‘moralist’ had a missive sent around that “these girls had chosen a certain lifestyle and it was no concern of the police”. Not, of course, that the police were ‘concerned’ anyway. Whilst the police, council workers and social workers were at the very least facilitators of rape, Oldham council have had the brass neck to ‘refuse to accept’ a watered-down report of child sexual exploitation in the area. To his credit, Rishi Sunak in a July 5 hustings speech acknowledged that a fear of being identified as ‘racist’ prevented people speaking out against the rape gangs and he pointed out that they were still not only extant, but widespread. As far as I know, no Labour Party branch has ever criticised these Labour councils or Labour Party policy regarding paedophilia.

I have no idea why paedophilia is, more or less, condoned by the ruling elite and state apparatus - apart from maybe because many of them are sexual perverts. Why much of the ‘left’ excuses paedophilia - it’s their culture, etc - is another story.

The tragedy of this is that these girls have been let down and vilified by the police, social work systems, the media and now the so-called left. Shame on you, Greenstein.

Ted Talbot
email

Legalisation

It seems my letter (August 4) upset both James Tansey and Gaby Rubin (Letters, August 11) when I concluded my review of the ground-breaking film, Good luck to you, Leo Grande, with the call for all men to have their first sexual experience with a sex worker.

Most of my reasoning for this call comes from watching an edition of Whicker’s world, where Alan Whicker interviewed the owner of three brothels in Australia, together with some of the women who work in them. Whilst this was aired 25 years ago, the information still applies today.

The CPGB’s Draft programme (2011) calls for the decriminalisation of prostitution, so as to take it out of criminal control. It also calls for more social opportunities for prostitutes. The idea that prostitution is under criminal control is only true for women trafficked to the UK to work in illegal brothels. The police try very hard to shut down establishments which involve trafficked women, whilst leaving other brothels alone.

It is my view that the CPGB’s call for the decriminalisation of prostitution, which is the policy of the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), should be replaced with the call for the legalisation of prostitution and the legalisation of licensed brothels, as happens in Australia. The ECP prefers the decriminalisation of prostitution because they see licensed brothels as a form of competition.

Both James and Gaby imply that sex workers are exploited. Sex workers, who earn the same as female solicitors, are no more exploited than women working at the checkout at Tesco’s on the minimum wage. However, sex workers are more like car mechanics. You are not exploiting them when they work for you: you just want your car fixed. Just as car mechanics may enjoy working on cars, sex workers enjoy meeting their clients, some even becoming friends - just as happens to car mechanics.

The idea of James and Gaby that sex workers are “commodities”, as in the first chapter of Marx’s Capital, is wrong. Sex work, as is well known, is the oldest profession and to say sex workers are commodities is a term of abuse. So is the term ‘prostitutes’, which is why they like to be called ‘sex workers’ or ‘escorts’.

Feminism is not the same as Marxism. Feminism is a form of identity politics, which is the policy of the liberals, and, as Trotsky famously said, “Scratch a liberal and you’ll find a reactionary underneath”. The same applies to reactionary feminism - a position taken by James and Gaby in their letters. James and Gaby should watch the film, Good luck to you, Leo Grande, which discusses the pros and cons of legalising prostitution. Leo says that only soliciting money for sex is illegal and that he provides companionship and interesting conversation, which may include sex.

Sex work will continue under communism, a society where money no longer exists. However, the need for companionship will continue, whilst there continue to be lonely men and women who don’t have a partner. In the Anglo-Saxon countries there is a very high prevalence of Asperger’s syndrome, which causes men and women to be awkward with the opposite sex. Similarly, it will still be difficult for disabled men and women to find a partner under communism, where sex work will continue, but without the need for payment.

Finally, I am reminded of a interview in The Guardian a few years ago with someone who was asked why she decided to become an escort. She replied that her clients “treated her much better than other men”. James and Gaby, please take note.

John Smithee
Cambridgeshire

Labour fringe

Rebel activists plan to launch a state-of-the-art radical alternative to the Labour Party conference in Liverpool this autumn. It will form a major offensive in a new leftwing fightback against both the Tories and Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.

‘Beyond the Fringe - the Future of the Left’ will be a three-day series of events running alongside the Labour’s Party conference in late September. Speakers will include former Labour MP Chris Williamson, anti-racism campaigner Jackie Walker, Stella Assange (wife of Julian), and Liverpool pensioners’ campaigner Audrey White, who recently took on Keir Starmer in a filmed confrontation that went viral.

The future for the left, ‘Is the Labour Party dead?’, the Forde Report, the cost of living crisis, the upsurge in trade union activism, the war in the Ukraine, racism, sexual politics and the secret state are only a few of the key themes which will be debated in this alternative conference.

The idea for Beyond The Fringe came from a group of Merseyside socialists, many of whom were expelled during Labour’s witch-hunt against the left. Beyond the Fringe producer Paula Drummond said: “We wanted a real alternative fringe rather than the sanitised and controlled meetings you usually get at Labour Party conference. So we developed the idea of a live online TV format, with interactive debate open to everyone, with a strong Scouse flavour. It’s vital that now more than ever the left, both inside and outside Labour, discusses the way forward and develops a real strategy that empowers the working class movement.”

Kevin Bean, Beyond the Fringe chair, added: “The trade unions are fighting back against the attacks on living standards and conditions, but we need to go beyond defending wages and develop a real alternative to both the Tories and Starmer’s pro-capitalist leadership of the Labour Party. We believe Beyond the Fringe will be an important part of that battle. Whatever Starmer and the pro-capitalist right might hope, ‘Beyond the Fringe’ shows we haven’t gone away and we’re fighting back!”

Beyond the Fringe will be broadcast and streamed live from studios in the heart of Liverpool and meetings will be interlinked with music, poetry, satire, film and interviews, featuring both nationally-known and Merseyside-based artists and writers. A more detailed programme for the event is available on www.futureoftheleft.org.uk.

Norman Thomas
email