Letters

How to unite?

As a member of the Marxist Unity Group in the United States, I have been following with interest the ongoing controversy in Weekly Worker over the handling, by the Netherlands Communist Platform comrades, of the presence of the Mandelite social-imperialists in the De Socialisten unity project. The controversy interests me because it is tied up with many difficult questions related to how to achieve Marxist unity in a principled mass Communist Party united around a revolutionary programme, but with room for individual comrades and organized factions to hold various shades of opinion on the many political questions that face the working class movement.

In this ongoing debate, I have found Mike Macnair’s article and Ollie Hughes’s letter, both in the November 24 issue of the Weekly Worker, most clarifying. Mike Macnair’s article provides useful background on the political methods, goals and behaviour of the Mandelites internationally, but doesn’t say much about how the Netherlands Communist Platform comrades ought to relate to them specifically. Comrade Hughes’s letter, which I had initially missed and the comrade drew my attention to in a recent online discussion, does address this question, and I think raises some general points which must be the subject of any productive continuation of this debate.

The two general points which stood out to me in comrade Hughes’s letter are the distinctions the comrade makes between “purging the right as an offensive strategy” and “the defensive tactic of expelling unprincipled elements” as well as that made between social-imperialists like the Mandelites and “any old rightwingers”. I accept that these distinctions are the important ones at stake in this controversy, but even as a regular reader of the Weekly Worker and sympathizer with the politics of the CPGB, I don’t have a well-developed grasp of the distinctions between these concepts and cannot think of a place where their implications for a Communist Party project are laid out at length.

Could comrade Hughes or another comrade who shares this perspective and thinks these are the important issues in question write a more developed exposition of them? Specifically, I would like to read when comrades think a defensive expulsion of unprincipled elements is necessary and how this differs from the “splitting as strategy” that has led to the proliferation of dozens of far-left sects. I am also interested in what makes organizational separation from social-imperialists a higher priority than from “any old rightwinger.”

The defense of the split in the Second International provided in Mike Macnair’s Revolutionary Strategy is that the internationalists needed to secure themselves the ability to act against their own countries’ ruling classes in the wake of the war while the pro-war right wings dominated the old socialist parties. Is this how the concept of the defensive split is being used in this case? Or is it more a question of who to seek unity with in a party project in the first place? Perhaps the case of the Mandelites is easy, since it is the established position of their international faction that they are adhering to, but what if pro-Ukrainian elements and arguments crop up independently? Is it necessary to expel those who make these arguments or is it only necessary to debate them (openly and with full force, not through secondary formulations) and defeat them in meetings, congresses, and conferences? How do we ensure that we “win the politics” and not just the vote, as Comrade Hughes says?

As someone who desires a principled, internationalist mass Communist Party and not a pro-imperialist or centrist halfway house or a constellation of sects all opposed to each other, these questions still linger in my mind and I hope this letter elicits a response that can shed light on them.

Matthew Strupp
Email

Badgeland

My latest book, Badgeland: memoir of a Labour Party young socialist in 1980s Britain, might be of interest to you.

It is the story of a politics-obsessed teenager who believed that working-people had everything to gain from socialism. The only problem was they didn’t agree with him.

What do you do as a young socialist when your dad’s mates in the working men’s club buy their council houses, drive Austin Metros (a British car to beat the world), read The Sun and vote Tory? I joined the Swindon Labour Party, pinned protest badges to my chest and marched against unemployment, privatisation, apartheid and nuclear weapons. I believed my generation was going to change the world but, bewildered by consecutive Conservative election victories, I had to reassess what I had been taught by my Badgeland comrades. I came to realise that politics isn’t all it seems at 17.

The book is a warm and amusing story about coming of age, class, politics and social mobility in the 70s and 80s. A blend of memoir and social history, it is a tale of loss and renewal that I hope will resonate with everyone, regardless of their politics.

The book will be published on February 7 2023. I attach an advance PDF copy of the book. I would also be happy to send you an epub version for a Kindle.

Steve Rayson
https://steverayson.com/

Looting?

Comrade Conrad states in ‘Notes on the War’ (Weekly Worker December 8) that, “... the stories are of Russian soldiers looting whatever they could find ...”. This is a very serious allegation, looting being a war crime. As such, it would be helpful if comrade Conrad could let us know the source of the information.

Jo Russell
email

Marx retrograde

Jim Nelson sallies forth to defend dictatorship against democratic socialism (Letters, December 8). This was in response to my statement that Karl Marx did not do communism any favours by describing working class rule as a dictatorship (December 1)

But describing working class rule as a dictatorship is a misnomer. From about the middle of the 19th century, to appease people like Blanqui, Marx began to misrepresent the meaning of this term, which originated in the time of the Roman Republic when the senate gave a dictator temporary emergency power to overcome a specific danger.

In State and Revolution Lenin defines dictatorship as rule untrammelled by any law. In other words, a dictatorship is above the law. The problem for Marxism is that there is no such thing as dictatorship without a dictator, with the implication that such a person is above the law. Jim’s view that we live in a dictatorship in Britain means that the government can ignore the law at will, according to Lenin’s definition of a dictatorship, without having to answer to parliament. This is total rubbish, of course. A dictatorship doesn’t have to answer to any parliament, even if elected on a limited franchise. Dictatorship means unaccountable, arbitrary government and is from the age of feudalism, or before. By defending dictatorship as a means of transition to socialism, Marx made a retrograde step under the influence of Blanqui. He confused state coercion with the idea of dictatorship.

Jim says I don’t explain what I mean by democratic socialism. How remiss of me, so let me explain. It means socialism based on the consent of the masses, with the right to criticise and hold to account our leaders, the government, without fear of intimidation, arrest or assassination. These things are not guaranteed under dictatorships, where the right to criticise the government is eliminated. This was one of the reasons for the downfall of socialism in the former Soviet Union. The Communist Party was out of touch with the people, something that Gorbachev was trying to remedy but didn’t know how to do it.

Another thing about dictatorship is that while repressing criticism by the masses, it guarantees the formation or protection of a social elite. The formation of an elite can happen even under democratic socialism, but the big difference is that the masses will be able to criticise this openly and challenge its pretensions while placing obstacles to the formation of a new ruling class society on the basis of common ownership. In the case of the Soviet Union, Trotsky warned about bureaucratic rule leading to counter-revolution, but his ultra-left strategy of political revolution wasn’t the way to solve the problem of bureaucracy under socialism. Stalin’s purge against the bureaucracy contributed to the survival of the Soviet Union for a long time, but still it was not enough in the long-term. What was needed was democratic socialism.

Jim presents the parliamentary struggle in a completely abstract way, unrelated to actual concrete developments. If a general election was to return a leftwing majority to parliament this would most likely be under conditions of a severe decline of capitalism resulting from a deepening energy crisis, the tremors of which have already started. If the bourgeoisie did not organise a coup against the post-war Labour government, why would they organise one against a Labour government in an energy crisis, when a coup would not solve the crisis. Not to mention that an energy crisis, bringing about wartime-like conditions, may lead to a national government based on increasing nationalisation of the economy as companies begin to collapse. What the left needs to realise and address is that we have now entered the age of the energy crisis, which changes the political game completely in the absence of a breakthrough in fusion technology. The capitalist class is faced with an energy crisis, and we need to know how they will react to it as the crisis gets deeper and inflation begins to undermine the living standards of the people.

Jim Nelson doesn’t understand what this debate is about. So, I will try to explain it as clearly as possible. It is about the misrepresentation of the term, ‘dictatorship’ by Marx which has been repeated by Marxists for over 100 years and then wrongly applied to bourgeois democratic rule and socialism by Marxists who conveniently forget that a dictatorship doesn’t have to answer to any elected body. For instance, did Hitler and the Nazis have to answer to the Reichstag? Democratic socialism is absolutely essential to prevent a new privileged caste taking over after the changeover to socialism. So, ultimately, the left will have to choose between democratic socialism or Marx’s dictatorship theory.

Tony Clark
For Democratic Socialism

Discipline

Andrew Northall’s letter (‘Discipline’, December 8) in response to my November 24 article misses most of the point. Comrade Northall would have a point in blaming Trotsky for the fissile quality of Trotskyist groups if Trotskyist groups were uniquely fissile, but they are not. Maoists are just as prone to splits - and, in fact, non-Maoist ‘official’ communist groups which have lost the support of some state can suffer the same fate. These splits can hardly be blamed on ‘Trotsky-ism’.

Moreover, complaining of Trotsky having “factionalised inside and outside the party, and used unlawful and conspiratorial methods” presupposes that banning factions, and allowing the police to be the arbiters of legitimate debate within the party, was justified. But the upshot is notorious: when the advocates of the restoration of capitalism obtained control of the CPSU, there was no lawful means by which opponents of this course could resist.

“Refraining from picking fights over issues which … are less important than overall unity” has the same effect. Who decides which issues are “less important”? The reality, moreover, is that it is perfectly clear that this method produces inability of the ranks to learn or to take real decisions. It is true that there is a need for responsibility. But this is responsibility in accepting the need for common action in spite of the existence of open debate of disputed issues - not in shutting up for the sake of a false unity.

Mike Macnair
Oxford

Coal for steel

I am extremely glad that, after a seven-year steeplechase of legal objections and a whole ocean of red herrings, culminating in a month-long independent national enquiry in June, the secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities, Michael Gove, on December 7 finally approved Cumberland county council’s planning permission for the new steel coal mine, Woodhouse Colliery, on the outskirts of the port town of Whitehaven, Copeland district borough, just west of the Lake District.

Let me be clear about my own views on coal: although I favour the development of a new fleet of clean coal power stations and the redevelopment of the deep-mine coal industry, this mine isn’t part of that vision. This mine will provide the coal which is bought by steel makers to make coke to be used in making steel in blast furnaces. The green anti-coal lobbyists, with their images of wind turbines, don’t know it, but wind turbines require huge amounts of steel - and thousands upon thousands of tonnes of coal to make the steel and cement necessary for the turbines - and, incidentally, for every other form of ‘renewable’.

Three regional enquiries had preceded this point, with evidence taken from every eco ‘expert’ and spokesperson purporting to represent ‘the earth’ or ‘the planet’, along with scientists and technicians, mining engineers and mechanics, metallurgists, etc. At the end of each one of these enquiries, the council - mainly Labour the first time, when the decision was unanimous, and then evenly balanced Labour and Tory the second and third times - voted by overwhelming majorities to allow the development. At every turn, and with every anti-mine assertion, the proposition not to allow the mine was shown to be false and fraudulent.

The then secretary of state, Robert Jenrick, reviewing the council’s decisions three times and seeing nothing objectionable, had not chosen to ‘call in’ the decisions or halt the development of the mine - until what I consider to be an unlawful ultra vires intervention by the chair of the parliamentary climate committee - an advisory panel with no power to intervene in the planning process and no facility to do so. He approached directly the chair of the council’s planning committee and told him that the government was considering stopping primary steel manufacture in the UK, that the Whitehaven coal would not be needed and the mine would close almost as soon as it opened. But this information was false. The government had made no such decision - but stopping British steel manufacture is a proposal of the climate committee.

On that basis the county council chair suspended the decision of the full council, despite the three earlier full-council properly convened decisions. This then caused the company, West Cumberland Mining, to start legal proceedings, having followed every letter of the reviews and planning procedures which had found in their favour, now finding themselves halted by an unofficial and ad hoc decision outwith the planning rules. This then prompted Jenrick to call in the decision and submit the whole subject to an independent national technical and environmental review.

The review body heard exhaustive evidence and theories, facts and assertions, emotions, science and mining engineering experts and coal miners and folk from the community - as well as green people venturing forth from the middle-class Lakes into the alien industrial north. It concluded its review of all the evidence in June 2022 and was supposed to be the basis for the secretary of state’s own decision back then, six months ago. The government sat on it till this week. The enquiry, as we had suspected for months, was wholeheartedly in favour of the mine. None of the objections put forward by Friends of the Earth, or the LibDems or Greenpeace were upheld. The report of the enquiry demonstrates that the main claim - that the mine is unnecessary - is totally bogus. (I can email the full report to anyone who asks at douglassdavid705@gmail.com)

Amazingly (to me anyway), these organisations had not even tried to make a case for why we don’t need steel, or even blast furnaces; they only argued that we should not mine the coal here to burn in them: we should continue to import it from the USA and, they propose, Australia - voiding any real argument about reducing emissions. Emissions, of course, remain the same wherever the coal comes from; except that from here there will be less of them since the coal will not be carried across oceans and continents in diesel-powered trains and tankers.

The other piece of nonsense was the shock at discovering - as if it had been a secret - that much of the coal from this mine will be exported to steel makers in Europe - who will welcome a supplier on their doorstep, consistency of supply and lower emissions from transport. The EU steel industry exports their steel here and British manufacturers use it. Why would it bother a green campaigner that the coal consumed for the steel we use here is mined here rather than anywhere else?

Whitehaven has mined coal for a thousand years. The community is built, generation on generation, of coal miners with strong family and community traditions. Overwhelmingly they have expressed their support for the new mine. The closure of the Haig coal mine in 1986 brought with it an even harsher decline in living conditions than most. Poverty, welfare dependency, ill health, high unemployment, high infant mortality, low life expectancy, drug addiction, low educational attainment, lack of hope, etc - it has been a spiral of deprivation, and the area is now the 14th most socially and economically deprived in the UK.

The new mine offers 500 direct underground jobs and 1500 ancillary and associated jobs, including an upgrade to the main rail line from Carlisle; £185 million of private investment; apprenticeships in all fields; skill training in mining. The deal with the council is that 90% of the workforce must come from the local area. There obviously are not enough former miners to meet that quota, which means the bulk of the workforce will be a new generation of miners, men and women. They wanted 500. Thousands applied, not just from Whitehaven but from every part of Britain.

We are confident of winning union recognition for the NUM and getting the NUM back into actual operating coal mining. There is an air of excited anticipation, not dulled by the screams of the Greens and the eco-warriors now preparing for a legal challenge in the courts - though it is hard to see any grounds, given the comprehensive vindication of the decision.

What is frustrating is that all the assertions they made at the national enquiry, which were subsequently carefully scrutinised and found to be untrue, are now being wheeled back out and repeated yet again. It is being claimed that the mine will increase emissions by the equivalent of 200,000 new car emissions. But the enquiry found that emissions would not significantly alter; indeed we demonstrated that by not shipping the coal across the world they would be less. What our green mathematicians have done is to simply add the amount of emissions by the volume of coal produced to make coke supplied from this mine. But the enquiry already demonstrated that taking coal from this mine rather than, as currently, from Appalachia does not increase the consumption of coal: it remains more or less the same. Any O level economics student would show you that because a new brand of cereal arrives on the supermarket shelves doesn’t mean I double my intake of cornflakes or frosties; the existing cereal brand will be instead displaced.

The other chestnut is that Britain is moving away from ‘traditional methods of making steel’ and does not require coal to make coke. Truth is, under increasing green pressure, tax penalties and a hostile government, two big steel makers have come out of blast furnace steel manufacture and now produce only recycled steel products, which require less new coke. But that is less than half the story: recycled steel cannot be, and is not, used for primary steel manufacture, construction, weight-bearing bridges, planes, high rises, wind turbines, solar panels, electric cars, etc. What I call ‘primary’ steel is still produced with blast furnaces and does require coal - and this will be supplied by this mine. The remainder of the demand for new primary steel will be supplied either as raw steel from Europe or imported as products from places like China, in the form of giant wind turbines or whatever. They will all be using blast furnace steel and all be using coke from coal and all be producing emissions, whether ‘we’ make them here or they are made elsewhere. So Britain is not moving away from the production of emissions or the production of ‘traditional blast furnace steel’, it is simply off-shoring that manufacture and its emissions elsewhere. The fact that heavy steel we import from Europe will be made using Whitehaven coal doesn’t increase the emissions at all, it simply displaces the coal and the emissions made from Russian or American coal.

Ed Miliband, second only to Margaret Thatcher in his fanatical hatred of mines and miners, despite making a good living supposedly representing what was the second last mining constituency in the country, has vowed that a new Labour government will simply close the Whitehead mine, if elected. You do not have to be an election genius to realise that this will not be a vote-winner in a socially deprived coalfield area which supports the mine.

Me? Yes I have applied - and while at my age I don’t really relish the anti-social shift work and hard graft, I have banged on long enough about regenerating the coal industry. I am obliged to go back and give it another burst on me banjo, at least until the mine is up and running and the NUM is back in the land of the living, as part of a living working class movement rather than a heritage society.

David Douglass
South Shields