Letters

Blocking the way

There’s no point getting into a slanging match with Tony Greenstein, since he obviously prefers insults (“unreconstructed Jewish chauvinist”, “social-imperialist”, etc) to reasoned argument. But I’d like to point out that Israel crossed a Rubicon right around the time he was composing last week’s letter to the editor. Following weeks of protests over the Binyamin Netanyahu judicial overhaul, the Israeli PM entered into a deal with Itamar Ben-Gvir, his minister of national security, in which Ben-Gvir would agree to a temporary suspension of the ‘reform’ in exchange for the formation of a special 2,000-member national guard under Ben-Gvir’s personal command.

This is an event of global importance. Ben-Gvir is a follower of Meir Kahane, the fascist orthodox rabbi who founded the Jewish Defense League in the US and the Kach party in Israel. For years, he hung a portrait in his living room of the Israeli-American terrorist, Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshippers and wounded 125 others in Hebron in 1994. He has called for the expulsion of all Israeli Arabs deemed insufficiently loyal to the Jewish state, and, while still in his teens, threatened the life of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin on national TV shortly before he was assassinated by a fellow ultra-rightist in 1995. The Israeli Bar Association tried to stop him from taking the bar exam due to his numerous arrests for far-right hooliganism, while the military barred him from its ranks due to his ultra-nationalist activities as well.

Yet the same Ben-Gvir is now being given control of his own personal SS. It is an entirely sterile debate as to whom the new militia threatens most. Israeli Arabs are clearly in the line of fire, as are Palestinians in the occupied territories, along with leftists, gays, women, etc on both sides of the divide. This is why thousands of leftists took to the streets on March 29 in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Beersheba, Rehovot and Holon, according to the Communist Party of Israel. While some waved Israeli flags, as they protested against the new force, others carried Palestinian flags, red flags with the hammer and sickle, and bilingual banners in Hebrew and Arabic. Zionism is supposed to be payback for the holocaust, according to post-war liberal ideology. Yet here it is recapitulating the conditions that caused the Holocaust in the first place by introducing an updated version of Hitler’s stormtroopers.

What is to be done? The answer is the same as in Germany in 1929-33: not a CP-style popular front, catering to bourgeois liberals, but a united front of the working class - Israeli and Palestinian - in all areas under Israeli control. This is the only force capable of overcoming nationalist divisions and nipping fascism in the bud. But a united front is impossible, based on Greenstein’s perspective, because half of the working class is “racist and bigoted” and has therefore “lost its potential for revolutionary change”. Calling for a united front of all workers means “tell[ing] the most exploited and oppressed sections of the working class [ie, Palestinians] to accept their lot in order that they can unite with their oppressors” - which is to say the Israeli proletariat.

So nothing can be done. Like Stalinists who attacked German social democrats as “social-fascists”, Greenstein is writing off a major portion of the working class as irredeemably reactionary and thus beyond the pale, as far as anti-fascism is concerned. He condemns a working class anti-fascist unity before it has even gotten off the ground. Indeed, something tells me that Greenstein likes Ben-Gvir’s militia, because it removes the last shreds of Zionist liberalism. It allows him to continue denouncing the Jewish state as eternally and unalterably fascist from the comfort and security of Brighton, while undermining anti-fascism in Israel-Palestine itself.

Stalin’s undermining of German anti-fascism was a historic betrayal. It paved the way for the Blitzkrieg, Operation Barbarossa and the destruction of the Jews, and it is what convinced Trotsky that the Comintern had finally passed over into the camp of counterrevolution. Today’s Israel is a role model for ethno-nationalists the world over, which is why Ben-Gvir’s new force will likely find imitators in other countries. Ben-Gvir’s poison must be stopped before it can spread. Yet with their middle class nationalism, people like Greenstein are blocking the way.

Daniel Lazare
New York

Anti-Trotskyism

As usual, Jack Conrad provided a very well-argued and passionate article on the subject of free speech (‘We cause offence’, March 23). I don’t agree with all the points made, but I recognise the force and logic of his argumentation. Also included were some extremely valuable, interesting and indeed evocative quotations from Marx on the subject.

I guess my disagreements are around the concept of “unrestricted” rights to free speech, etc, but Jack then says that “no right is absolute … when one right clashes with another, the general interest must prevail”. I agree, but wonder what the big theoretical difference is between “unrestricted” rights and “absolute” rights? Jack seems to be arguing for “unrestricted” free speech, but not “absolute” freedom to actually carry out (say) offensive hate speech into action. I am not sure there is such a sharp distinction.

Personally, I think some forms of hate or other extremist speech are so offensive and/or dangerous they should be banned or restricted - but this should be done through democratic discussion and decision, precisely to balance individual rights with the collective, general interest. Clearly, such a democratic, collective discussion and decision is not possible within the current institutions of bourgeois democracy - given their total domination by the interests and views of the various fractions of the bourgeoisie - including through the mass advertising-funded and state-funded media - but we ought to be able to have them with the structures, formations and organisations of the working class movement, through working class democracy.

However, the inclusion of the story of Trotsky being invited to attend the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities “in order to denounce the Communist Party of the USA … and denounce state bans on them” was a major misfire and did not seem in any way relevant to the main argumentation.

This was not about Trotsky’s right to “free speech” or even utilising the institutions of the capitalist state (as Lenin argued in Leftwing communism), in order to expose that capitalist state or capitalism or advocate socialism. This was Trotsky using part of the apparatus of the US state to attack “an organisation of the workers’ movement”. Jack recounts that the invitation to Trotsky was ultimately withdrawn, but I am certain this had nothing to do with Trotsky’s planned attack on the CPUSA.

So Jack is arguing we should have been defending Trotsky’s “right” to use an organ of the US capitalist state to viciously attack a contingent of the international communist and working class movement? No, we should have been condemning this proposed action as gross and vile class treachery. Although, given Trotsky’s complete estrangement from the international communist movement by that time, perhaps we should just have regarded it as a straight attack by the capitalist class enemy.

In his memoirs, Pavel Sudoplatov, the head of the NKVD’s ‘special tasks’ division, which organised and planned Trotsky’s assassination in 1940, records Stalin’s reasoning as follows: “Without the elimination of Trotsky, as the Spanish experience shows, when the imperialists attack the Soviet Union we cannot rely on our allies in the international communist movement. They will face great difficulties in fulfilling their international duty to destabilise the rear of our enemies by sabotage operations and guerrilla warfare if they have to deal with treacherous infiltrations by Trotskyites in their ranks.”

For me, this shows that, even in the most secret of conversations, Stalin was clearly motivated by the interests of the international communist and working class movement and of the vital need to significantly disrupt and disorganise one of its principal enemies, who were prepared to literally and treacherously machine-gun partisans of the communist and working class movement in the back.

Although Trotskyism was for a very brief period of time part of the communist movement, by the late 1930s it was completely clear it was nothing but an agency and instrument of world imperialism and capitalism, whose principal aims and objectives were to attack and destroy the international working class and one of its principal bastions, the Soviet Union - a country where the rule of the landowners and the capitalists had been overthrown, and a strong socialist economy and vibrant socialist society was rapidly being built.

Trotskyism then and now was anti-communism, anti-socialism and anti-working class.

Andrew Northall
Kettering

Macho-sexist

I wish to express my solidarity with Anne McShane and to denounce Lawrence Parker’s reply to her as macho-sexist abuse (Letters, March 30). I can do this with confidence, as comrade Lawrence has promised never again to respond to me after I dubbed the 1930s Stalinists as “not communists at all”.

Comrade McShane made the well-known Marxist orthodox critique of the patriarchy, as Sheila Rowbotham and others have done: “Women are usually in a minority and often exhibit hesitation when making contributions. They fear being shouted down or - even worse - ignored”. This is just a sassy woman looking for attention, comrade Lawrence implies: “McShane complains about being ignored by others. Well, this is something like an ever-present existential condition for most humans.”

I’ll not go into his advocacy of lewd language as free speech (and to hell with all that ‘comradely disagreement’ nonsense), but confess myself an advocate of ‘free speech, but …’ Jack Conrad seemed to be of that opinion too at one point: “… when one right clashes with another, the general interest must prevail”. But he then goes on to deny the observation that “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic”. Of course, if this was just a matter of causing panic, it would not matter. But such panics frequently led to deaths; is that a ‘right’ we must defend? And how about Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech in April 1968? Edward Heath immediately sacked him for it, and it would be illegal today. That speech directly led to blood on the streets and several racist murders - should we condemn Heath in our quest for a libertarian, above-class right to free speech and should we defend Powell and the modern-day Powells’ right to free speech? Yes, but … no, but …?

Of course, we should not demand that the capitalist state ban the fascists and deny them the right to free speech - as we all know, such powers, once legislated, are used almost exclusively against the left and workers’ organisations. But what about a workers’ state? Should it ban fascist and capitalist publications, as the Bolsheviks did under the dictatorship of the proletariat after October 1917? Full and uninhibited rights for all workers’ organisations, but ‘for or against the revolution’ was the deciding criterion in these matters.

During the Spanish Revolution (1936-39) the judiciary proved very sympathetic to fascists charged with murders and massacres. The republican government, in one of the few revolutionary actions it was forced to take, sacked the old judges and replaced them with young, leftwing lawyers who had no problem sentencing the fascists to death. The right of the revolution - or rather to right of the republic to survive without revolution - prevailed over the right to free speech for the fascists, as it always will in serious political and military confrontations, where the fate of the struggle hangs in the balance.

Gerry Downing
Socialist Fight

Lister Sister

I had the immense pleasure of spending three days at an international conference held in Yorkshire on Anne Lister (‘Gentleman Jack’) and lesbianism. I am related to someone famous for anthropological studies on American lesbian issues, who is invited to speak every year, and I often tag along.

What was fascinating to me was that many of the discussions held amongst the lesbian community were exactly the same kind as those held in other political spheres. Questions like: How do we make sure the category of ‘woman’ is not erased politically? How do we fight for more rights for the underprivileged - in this case lesbians and gays? Are trans women real women? Do we invite them into lesbian groups? Do we fight for their rights too? How do we fight homophobia in our communities? Does the word ‘gay’ include both lesbians and gay men, or is it exclusively for homosexual men?

Sometimes using different vocabulary, I have heard almost the exact same questions being put about during my political lifetime. Questions like: What is the difference between a Stalinist and a Stalinite? What is the history of the enmity between the Communist Party and Trotskyists? How do we encourage more women into the party? How do we ‘reach out’ to younger people? (Personally I loathe the phrase, ‘I reached out’. What’s wrong with ‘I asked …’). How do we make sure the younger generation understands our class history? Etc.

The women themselves were extremely inviting and very kind. My older sister (the aforementioned relation) cannot walk well, and the younger women took care of her with delicacy.

These women, who flew in from all over the world, including from as far as Australia, see themselves as a community. Aged from 16 to 90, the women spent their time talking about their difficulties, encouraging each other to speak out without fear of being ridiculed, reading papers given in academic studies now being conducted about Anne Lister and her life - not just her lesbian life, although that was important, but also her relationship to her land-owning class in Halifax.

Before I went, I was told by a friend, whose grandfather had been a miner, that Anne Lister was well known and respected by miners in Yorkshire for creating jobs and homes for the miners on her land. Someone else told me she had been a stickler for rent being paid on time, and perhaps not such a caring landlord.

Anne Lister’s diaries were all written in code, and one of the original code-breakers - now 94 - was present, discussing her work and the work of the other code-breakers. The diaries were hidden until discovered by one of her descendants, who cracked the code and then hid them again. He was advised to burn them, but could not bring himself to. Why destroy them? Because they are extremely sexually open, describing Anne Lister’s lesbian affairs in physical detail.

Even in our era - supposedly more acclimatised to sexual openness - the physical details of how minorities like gays and lesbians relate to each other sexually make many people (even on the left) uncomfortable. I have to admit, I’m a bit the same (although I wonder if it’s my age). I’m not usually squeamish. Why is it that we can watch heterosexual sex on television and in the movies without blinking an eyelid, but a kiss between two males - or females -who love each other is cause for extreme revulsion and sometimes physical reaction? One young couple, almost in tears, described how they had gotten married the week before, but not one of their family members had attended - homophobia rules!

Anne Lister’s diaries (or ‘journals’, depending on who is writing about them) are one of just 20 items which have so far been added, in this case in 2011, to the Unesco UK Memory of the World register. Her journals amount to over four million words, going into her life as a lesbian, a traveller and a landowner. They are described by Unesco as “a comprehensive and painfully honest account of lesbian life and reflections on her nature”.

Various extracts have been published, and there are negotiations being held with a prestigious American company to publish them in their entirety, with academic searching ability - there are now many university departments (and not only in Britain and the US) with students at every level researching Anne Lister.

I felt included at all times during these few days. I was hugged constantly. Not one person dismissed me because I was not one of their community. Had I said anything (I didn’t, although I could have, but I felt I was there to observe), I know I would have been listened to with respect.

I would have liked to hear more papers and was sorry I had to leave and come back to London. To be perfectly honest, I have often wished I was part of a warm and supportive political community - something I have not found much on the left. Even though everybody in the Anne Lister group knew I was not a lesbian, I am now an honorary Lister Sister, and extremely proud of the title.

Gaby Rubin
London

Tooth and nail

As what most usefully can be described as an ‘engaged outsider’ of the Weekly Worker/CPGB, (ie, someone who’s in wholehearted agreement with its core ambitions and central stances, despite a wariness of some persistent traits in underlying ‘mentality’ that it shares with all others on our hard-left wing), I’d like to contribute these comments around unofficial discussion groups and other such opportunities via online social media - those currently raising not only fraught investigation, but also ping-ponging accusations.

So, yes, surely things are really quite simple, boiling down to how communists (that’s to say, any who have the tiniest shred of justification in making that claim) must refuse to set aside the fundamentals of their comprehension about society in face of mere rules or procedures laid down by others of distinctly more soggy and saggy guidelines for life?

Put another way: surely we should not think, and consequently operate, in compartments and silos? Rather we should fight ‘raw in tooth and nail’ against any such inevitably diluting tendencies; against any such self-neutering? After all, where, over on its side of the class barricades, capitalism’s faux democracy secures its perpetuation as such a salvation through precisely that same type of ring-fencing/’insulation’ of consciousness; as it were, of ‘self-devised imprisonment’ for the population through fabricated divides (of course, in capitalism’s case suiting its manipulative, distractive, oppressive, controlling and even barbaric purposes to perfection). But why on earth would either communism in general or individual communists wish to emulate, as such to validate, that?

All of this said, whilst by sheer chance (or maybe otherwise through the auspices of a more ethereal ‘karma’?), in last week’s edition comrades Yassamine Mather in conversation with Anne McShane, Paul Demarty and Eddie Ford contributed master classes in precisely those attributes of unfettered thinking that were missing elsewhere - surely nothing short of object lessons being provided in those thoroughly Communistic necessities when dealing with the world at large?

All power to complete truthfulness! Unwavering liberation for the soul! Viva the ‘transcendent’!

Bruno Kretzschmar
email

Latest home

Many people have asked me why I have rejoined the Socialist Labour Party after a gap of 25 years. This comes after being a member of the Green Party for several years. However, whilst the Green Party has a leftwing programme, including a £15-an-hour minimum wage and the building of 500,000 new council houses, it is not a workers’ party.

For some time I have been following Chris Williamson, former Labour MP for Derby North, and his Resist - the movement for a People’s Party. Last year members of Resist voted by 87% to join the SLP. This move was taken after wide discussion over whether to do that or register as a new party.

The thinking was that, whilst the leadership of the SLP are now all in their 80s - Arthur Scargill is 84 - the registered name, ‘Socialist Labour Party’, can be used on ballot papers in elections. At the same time the policies of Resist and the SLP are almost identical and last October it was announced that they had merged. Resist brings to the SLP much-needed young blood and will be setting up a new website and database in the next couple of months to incorporate Resist members into the SLP.

I joined the SLP the day after Jeremy Corbyn was banned by Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party from being a Labour candidate for Islington North in the next general election. The SLP aims to recruit some of the 300,000 people who have cancelled their direct debits to the Labour Party since Starmer became leader.

John Smithee
Cambridgeshire

Mostly minor

I’d like to briefly address a few issues I have with my article, ‘A poisoned chalice’ (March 30), as a result of changes introduced during the editorial process.

1. Humza Yousaf was referring to Nicola Sturgeon and Ruth Davidson when he mentioned the two female nominees at the previous election of first minister in the parliament, not Kate Forbes and Ash Regan.

2. On “Understandable, given that the SNP would almost certainly not win a majority of the popular vote”, I don’t think the only reason the de facto referendum is a bad idea is because of the issue of securing a majority of the vote, since without including other pro-independence parties’ votes as part of that de facto vote it can (rightly) be seen as an undemocratic way to hold independence supporters’ vote hostage and bring them all in behind the Scottish National Party.

Or, if it did include the Greens - and other independence-supporting parties, if there were any more that were relevant - then it would require much more compromise and collaboration between the SNP and Greens leading up to such an election. I’m not a mind reader, of course, but I have no reason to assume that Yousaf does not see these and other issues with it too.

3. The third-from-last paragraph - inserted by the editors - contains an implication that a primary or very significant source of support for independence or the SNP is simple anti-Toryism. This, of course, is not an irrelevant or insignificant factor, but I do not believe this. Labour’s failings in Scotland are as relevant, and there is a genuine national question and sense of strong national identity, which is a force in and of itself and must not be dismissed. Yes, Scotland used to be strongly Labour, but don’t expect simply a return to the past, now that the SNP is faltering and class politics is (hopefully, maybe) rising.

4. Again on the third-from-last paragraph: while I accept that every party is going to be looking towards the next UK general election and thinking through what kinds of strategies they might employ, I don’t believe - and, contrary to what is implied in the article, I really doubt Yousaf believes - there is any likely scenario where an SNP-Labour government would be formed on the basis of Labour handing over section 30 powers for a second referendum. One might imagine a future scenario in which both the Tories and Labour secure strong minorities and where the Tory leadership is far-right enough for Labour to feel they need to enter into coalition with the SNP, but that’s not the general election we’re going into in 2025.

These issues are mostly minor, but I don’t think the third issue is - starting from that assumption will undermine our ability to understand the national question in Scotland.

Scott Evans
Scotland