WeeklyWorker

Letters

Inconvenient?

In his letter of March 17, Lawrence Parker set forth his views on the use of rudeness in political debate. He stated that his experience has taught him that “it is either bureaucrats or people with extremely weak views who hide the most behind an almost constant desire to be ‘nice’ and superficially polite”.

But Lawrence has failed to take account of the effect of socialisation on people’s ability to straightforwardly argue their politics, never mind being rude. For example, women are discouraged from a young age from speaking their minds or standing up to those with the upper hand - mostly men. And men don’t generally expect to be confronted in the same way by a woman as they would a man. This dynamic is reflected in leftwing groups - and leftwing Discord groups. Women are usually in a minority and often exhibit hesitation when making contributions. They fear being shouted down or - even worse - ignored. Of course, not all men find it easy either. And, paradoxically, it is often the most intimidating keyboard warriors who turn out to be the ones most lacking in social skills in real life. That has been my experience.

As one of those CPGBers who argued against the recent banning of the comrade in the unofficial Weekly Worker Discord group, my view was the need for tolerance for differing views. Discord, like other forms of social media, is full of people who do not want to listen to others. In a typical argument, as an opponent is replying, they are furiously tapping out their riposte without waiting for that reply to be completed. Everyone appears to be typing at once, as the temperature rises. It is akin to a meeting where everyone is shouting at each other. This was the case in the argument which culminated in the banning of the comrade. As participants became more and more incensed, there were countless misunderstandings. It was like people were looking for a reason to be upset.

So my argument is not for rudeness, but for a higher level of politics, and some calm. We should be straightforward with each other, for certain - call a spade a spade. But, if we allow ourselves to descend into an unholy war of accusation and counter-accusation, it will all end in the usual shit-show. Maybe the keyboard warriors will go to bed feeling happy that they have reduced their opponents to rubble. But that’s a bit sad. And it means that important and sensitive questions, such as the way that Marxists should approach questions of trans rights, cannot be discussed. And we remain rigidly tied to our original views, and even more intolerant of others. It’s a proven fact that, if we want to defeat views that we find reprehensible, we need to listen to them.

Finally, Lawrence does not seem to have noticed that I and other CPGB comrades argued for the reinstatement of the comrade who had been banned. We also fought for the reinstatement of the server after it was closed down. In other words, it was not just the CPGB Provisional Central Committee who stood up for free speech. But, if Lawrence is determined to paint all CPGB comrades on the WW Discord as advocates of undemocratic ‘safe space’ policies, this is perhaps an inconvenient fact to be ignored.

Anne McShane
Cork

EHRC and racism

As an update on my previous letter regarding the Equality and Human Rights Commission, let me point out that the significance and implications of Martin Forde KC’s latest comments are being underestimated. Forde is now completely at odds with Starmer and the Labour Party, the BBC and the EHRC.

Starmer commissioned the Forde report and black, female, leftwing Labour MPs protested about racism following its release. Starmer apologised for racism in the Labour Party, giving Forde his approval.

Forde has said what Corbyn wasn’t prepared to: in basic terms, not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews. He has said that the Jewish community are diverse and Jewish Voice for Labour should be included. Many of them have been suspended and expelled from the Labour Party. This is the opposite of the mainstream media and main political parties, who have equated Israel and Zionism with Jews.

Forde has discredited the Panorama documentary, which many Labour MPs praised, and the BBC has tried to put pressure on Forde to back down. Yet again we saw the same Labour Friends of Israel MPs on the BBC, while the attacks on Jewish Voice for Labour went unchallenged (eventually the BBC issued a correction following a complaint from JVL).

Despite various submissions from JVL to the EHRC, despite its members being expelled, including Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, who was elected to Labour’s national executive committee, the EHRC has rewarded Starmer for expelling an unprecedented number of Jews and the problem that never was has now been ‘solved’.

Although Forde uses diplomatic language and talks about factionalism, his comments make it clear that JVL are the victims. The culprits are obvious, as they have condemned themselves with their own words and actions.

Forde claims that a “hierarchy of racism” applies to the Labour Party (a polite way of saying Labour is racist). So that must also apply to the mainstream media, the main political parties and the EHRC itself.

Roger Day
Gravesend

Class content

I am grateful and appreciative of Daniel Lazare’s dogged determination to promote a class analysis - especially with regard to the current state of Israel and the Palestinian people’s struggles for national self-determination and statehood. Dan may feel himself under attack from all quarters, but in reality these are from three ultra-left sectarians, who seem to have forgotten some of the basic ABCs of Marxism (assuming they ever understood them in the first place).

It is frankly bizarre that the Weekly Worker - which carries the banner, “A paper of Marxist polemic and Marxist unity” - can provide a platform to someone who so blatantly fails to bring any form of class or Marxist analysis to the current state of Israel. Tony Greenstein’s hatred for the state of Israel and its people appears all-consuming and includes writing off of the whole of the Israeli working class as a potential agency for social change. If the whole state of Israel and the whole of its people are ‘the enemy’, it doesn’t really take much logical thought to work out what sort of fate he has in mind for them.

Moshé Machover, although not as explicitly, also appears to write off the Israeli working class, pushing his pet solution of an Arab-wide socialist revolution as a means for addressing the Palestine-Israel issue. Yes, a region-wide socialist revolution would be wonderful, but it’s not exactly on the cards in the here and now, is it? What does Machover advise we should be doing to help promote such a development? Or do we just wait and sit fast for something which may or may not ever happen? Not a vast difference from Greenstein’s perspective.

Machover argues that the relative privileges enjoyed by the Israeli working class over Palestinians are so strong they could never be won to the case for a united, democratic, socialist state covering the whole of the historic mandate area. He must have a pretty dim view of the advantages of socialism over capitalism then. Surely, under socialism, the Israeli working class would enjoy far greater rights and prosperity than they ever could even within apartheid Israel - as would, of course, the Palestinian working class and people. Surely, that is part of the Marxist basic case for socialism: that it provides far greater economic, social and political rights for all working people than under any system of capitalism or than can be obtained through division of the working people, by gender, race, nationality, privileging certain sections over others, etc.

Of course, socialism and socialist revolution is not on the immediate agenda - although situations can change very rapidly. The immediate tasks facing the working classes in the region (that old Marxist concept that the working class has to play a leading role in any form of progressive and social change) include achieving the national and democratic rights for the Palestinian people (and frankly for Kurdish and other oppressed peoples), defeating the forces, including state forces, of those oppressing them.

But the achievement of those national, democratic and social rights should not be seen as at the expense of the national, democratic and social rights of other peoples in the region. We have to connect the immediate democratic demands for national liberation and self-determination with wider, longer-term demands for socialist change and socialism itself. The national democratic revolutions, led by the working classes, should be seen as the most direct route to socialist revolutions, so all the working classes of the region, plus the wider working masses, have a direct stake in their outcomes.

It is one ultra-left deviation to deny the immediate national self-determination and democratic nature of many current struggles, including in the Middle East. It is quite another to deny the class content of such struggles altogether and insist on a purely nationalistic analysis - one which ‘writes off’ an entire people, including an entire working class.

As Joe Slovo, general secretary of the South African Communist Party, once said: “A failure to understand the class content of the national struggle and the national content of the class struggle in existing conditions will hold back the advance of both the democratic and socialist transformations which we seek.” Exactly right.

Andrew Northall
Kettering

Earth to Lazare

It’s very surprising that, after my two letters (January 26 and March 2), Daniel Lazare suggests that I explain further what my perspective is. What is not to comprehend?

His article, ‘Not equality to compete’ (January 19), although it has many good points, descends into mindless pablum with his extolment of the joys of motherhood: in a sense a default view - by ignoring and negating the miserable role of motherhood in capitalist, class society. This position is not worthy of a socialist.

Straw-man arguments and gaslighting are not useful and evade the issues. I’m very amused that he stereotypes me as a “self-proclaimed feminist”. If a title is needed, it should be ‘revolutionary socialist’. I would welcome the accusation of having admiration for left feminism and frankly I can admire all feminisms in many respects. But I don’t try to create needless divisions between women - divisions that I find in his article, which is a microcosm of the class divisions in society that we are burdened with, 24/7; he doesn’t contribute to, and might hinder, any groundswell of women’s radical activism.

For example, “bourgeois feminism is at best ambivalent on family and motherhood”, he says and expresses the view that bourgeois feminists, radical feminists and socialists see the right of abortion and motherhood differently, etc. These are blanket and facile suppositions without explanation, substantiation or a materialist basis, and without even the attempt at such.

Sectarianism concerning the hostility to bourgeois feminism, as well as to radical feminism - very evident in his article - is a problem on the left. No-one should be dismissed out of hand or quickly written off: it’s possible that any person can be a nascent student of socialist revolution, and that includes bourgeois and radical feminists. His caricatures of Shulamith Firestone and Adrienne Rich are not helpful at all, if we care about historical truth.

In regards to liberal or bourgeois feminism, I prefer not to take a schematic approach to the subject. I’ll put aside liberal feminism’s negative, counterproductive politics for the moment to emphasise its groundbreaking achievements - especially in the 1960s and 70s - precisely in regards to the issues at hand: abortion rights and issues of motherhood. Bourgeois feminism raised the position of working-class women and all women - we can look to the historical record for verification. Unfortunately, Daniel Lazare seems to lack knowledge of and appreciation for the major impulses of the women’s liberation movement.

I believe that as socialists we need to consider - and I see no evidence of this in Lazare’s writing - that important numbers of bourgeois women can potentially be won over to socialism; this is an attitude which entails compassion and a vanguard consciousness, in my view. Bourgeois women face various forms of oppression in this society. I see the ‘second wave’ as an intense period, which was characterised by cross-class and cross-group associations, without the development of a proletarian leadership. Interestingly, Clara Zetkin recognised the potential of middle class women to be recruited into the socialist movement. Lazare doesn’t seem to be aware of this particular nuance in her politics.

Clearly my two letters were not understood, or read carefully (or read at all). I tried to contextualise my viewpoint by elucidating the basic import of Friedrich Engels in regards to women’s oppression in class society. (Is Daniel Lazare conversant with Engels’ work on women? Apparently not.) Lazare’s discussion of what women “want”, don’t want, are able to want, according to “polls”, or whatever, misses the salient point which socialists should be cognisant of: the deeper issues of oppression and exploitation in capitalism, as pertaining to women, gender and motherhood. Politically, he dances around the edges of Marxist clarity, in danger of falling into the abyss: He flirts with reaction, to put it mildly, by not using a class analysis.

He says he never used the phrase, “needs of society”. He should review his own words, in writing - he’s either nitpicking or his memory is not up to speed on the matter. He uses a quote from my letter - “… I don’t see how significant distinctions are made …” - but he doesn’t complete the quote, which takes it out of context. In this way he’s able to question the validity of my political position. Innocent mistake or perfidious intent?

The liberation of women of all social classes is the pressing issue, with priority attention needed to the horrific plight of working class women - who I hope will take the lead, or at least be part of the leadership, in a coming socialist revolution.

GG
USA

War on drugs

I’d like to applaud Daniel Lazare’s article in the last Weekly Worker (‘American death trip’, March 16). I’m sure that Daniel could write a few books on the subject of the ‘war on drugs’ - which is so disgusting - but I’d like to add three snippets of my own.

First, there is the fairly well-known quote from John Erlichman - one of Nixon’s inner circle from 1994: “You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the anti-war left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.

“Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

So they carried on in the fine old tradition of banning opium dens (1870s) to get rid of the Chinese.

Secondly, I recall a TV programme from a few years back, in which a sheriff from some southern US state bemoaned the drug laws. He said that promotions and commendations came from arrests and convictions. These were easy to get from drug busts and so that is what his police did - which did not spare much time for murders, burglaries and the like.

Finally, the late Martin Short in Murder Inc: the story of organised crime (1984) wrote about, among other things, prohibition. He pointed out that before this came along US politicians used to hire gangsters to disrupt the rallies, meetings, etc of their political rivals. By the end of prohibition the mob ‘owned’ politicians, judges and police through the vast amounts of money they had made.

I think we can say that the amount of money available from the ‘war on drugs’ dwarfs many times over that from prohibition. Of course, drug money is not the only source of corruption in governments, but if we are ever to have a civilised relationship to drugs then these governments are going to have to go.

Jim Nelson
email

Wicked or stupid

As we mark the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, it has become fashionable to say that Tony Blair “never lied”, but how can anyone possibly suggest that with a straight face?

Unlike 90% of the population, did Blair truly believe that there were “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, capable of deployment within 45 minutes against the British bases on Cyprus - bases that for some reason Saddam Hussein might have been minded to attack? On what basis could Blair possibly have believed that? As Aneurin Bevan said of Anthony Eden in similar circumstances, Blair was either too wicked or too stupid to be prime minister.

And the wicked and the stupid are now back with a vengeance - not that they ever went away. They are being reverently asked for their reflections two decades on. None of them has ever suffered professionally - quite the reverse, in fact. Ninety percent of the British population saw through the Iraq war from the start, but none of the 60 million of us has ever been deemed capable of assuming the positions of any of those wholly discredited individuals in public life.

David Lindsay
Lanchester

Korean censor

On March 19 the Facebook page of the Korean Friendship Association of the UK (KFA UK) was ‘unpublished’ by Facebook which meant that it was no longer visible to users and we could no longer publish on it. The page had built up a following of 12,000 people and was the product of 11 years of hard work. Subsequently the page has been deleted, as if it never existed.

Many hours of hard work have been destroyed at one click by the censors of Facebook. This an act of terrorism against the KFA UK. It is an act of extreme censorship - a totally arbitrary action.

We started having problems with Facebook back in 2020 and these seemed to escalate over the past year. On numerous occasions Facebook simply deleted posts without giving a reason and also seemed to take exception to pictures from some websites in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, such as Voice of Korea and friend.com.kp. From last year Facebook started to impose restrictions and limits on the KFA UK page.

Facebook used as a pretext for the banning the fact that we had shared videos from the Anti-Imperialist National Democratic Front of South Korea, which went against “Facebook community standards”. However, probably the real reason is that the South Korean fascist puppet authorities were afraid that South Koreans would see them, and so asked Facebook to ban the KFA UK page. Moreover, Facebook is a monopoly-capitalist tech giant with links to the deep state in the US and UK. They took down the page so people cannot see the reality of People’s Korea and to stifle solidarity with it.

We in the KFA UK strongly denounce the unjust and arbitrary censorship of Facebook. We will not be silenced and are continuing our activities on Telegram (t.me/s/kfa_uk) and VK.com (vk.com/public202235061).

Dermot Hudson
KFA UK

Consensus unity

We would like to pick up on Ansell Eade’s letter (‘SWP and Zionism’, March 9).

The recognition of the Socialist Workers Party’s mixed concerns in Stand Up To Racism closely relate to Communist Reconstruction’s assessment of the contribution of the Trotskyist tradition to anti-racism work - and importantly of the application of centralism - in leftist politics in Britain. We invite you to read it in full here: https://communist-reconstruction.co.uk/2023/03/08/splitters-origins-of-left-wing-disunity/

We also take this opportunity to applaud the Weekly Worker’s track record of recognition and focus on other publications and groups in print, and the CPGB-PCC’s principled stance against sectarianism and efforts towards Marxist unity.

Communist Reconstruction understands our project as complementary to this approach. Our journal’s purpose lies in critically reviewing British communism: reassessing strategies, discussing current controversies and proposing new solutions for our times.

Communist Reconstruction’s core platform is based on the need to win consensus in addressing the organisational needs of British communism, the most pressing of which are:

We’ve been pleased with the positive response to our project from various quarters so far, as promoted tentatively on social media - including from some Weekly Worker readers - though it is, of course, very early days.

We would be very pleased to receive any comments, suggestions or contributions to our website that you might make and we hope this will be the start of a productive dialogue.

Communist Reconstruction
email