Letters

Not one and the same

The RDG sets out a revolutionary democratic road to socialism and communism. This is based on the idea of permanent or uninterrupted revolution. The democratic revolution goes on without interruption to the socialist revolution and communism. We could call this a “democratic-socialist revolution”, a perspective applicable to any country.

When I asked Peter Manson (Weekly Worker letters, June 20) to indicate how his theory of revolution applied for example to the UK, Iran or Saudi Arabia, he avoided answering directly on the grounds that it was a “trick question”. But in general he indicated that, like the RDG, he holds a universal theory, applicable to all countries. He says, “I stand for democratic socialist revolution in every country.”

On the face of it, Peter has moved away from the Stalinist theory of bourgeois democratic revolution in the “backward” countries and socialist revolution for the “advanced”. We now seem to have agreement on a concept of permanent revolution, the democratic socialist revolution.

Before we congratulate ourselves on some new found agreement we need to explore what this term “democratic socialist revolution” means. For the RDG it means the democratic revolution leads directly into the socialist revolution. Once we clarify the international aspect, this means a “national democratic-international socialist revolution”.

How can a national democratic revolution lead directly to an international socialist revolution? How can the democratic revolution become a socialist revolution without stopping? Only and in so far as the national revolution achieves the national dictatorship of the proletariat. This seems clear enough, although Peter thinks it is “sophistry”.

This is not how Peter sees it. He wants a democratic socialist revolution “in every country”. This implies a national democratic socialist revolution. Instead of ‘socialism in one country’ we now have democratic socialism in one country. Instead of Stalinism, we have ‘democratic’ Stalinism.

In the new theory of ‘democratic Stalinism’, the democratic revolution does not lead into the socialist revolution. Rather they are the same. The democratic revolution is the socialist revolution. They are “one and the same”.

This is not a new idea. In 1905 Lenin attacked the anarchists, who mixed up the democratic with the socialist revolution. They substituted the latter for the former. Hence the historical antecedents of ‘democratic’ Stalinism were the anarchists.

If the anarchists and the democratic Stalinists are correct then the Great French Revolution was a socialist revolution and so were the more recent revolutions in Iran and South Africa. If they are not “one and the same”, Peter has to spell out the difference between democratic and socialist revolutions. Otherwise every democratic revolution is a socialist revolution.

The South African revolution was a national democratic revolution that did not grow over into an international socialist revolution. The national democratic revolution was halted by counterrevolution. The working class never came to power. The international socialist revolution could not begin. A national democratic revolution is clearly not the same as an international socialist revolution.

Peter says that the “RDG states that there must be distinct stages separating the democratic and anti-capitalist elements”. This is untrue. If Peter believes the RDG “states” this, let him prove it. Give us a quotation. He won’t find one, because we don’t say this at all.

On the contrary we state the opposite. The dictatorship of the proletariat arising in the national democratic revolution will have to take “anti-capitalist measures”. Indeed there can be no real anti-capitalist measures without the dictatorship.

However we do not confuse “anti-capitalist measures”, such as nationalisation without compensation, with the abolition of capitalism. No national democratic revolution, even with a thousand “anti-capitalist measures” dressed up with a ton of national socialist rhetoric, can abolish capitalism. Only an international socialist revolution carried out by the international working class can do that.

Dave Craig (RDG faction of the SWP)

Equal right

A study of the Weekly Worker (June 13) suggests that it is time for the CPGB, and the Weekly Worker, to clarify positions in regard to self-determination for Scotland and Wales.

In the same issue your correspondent Peter Manson can (correctly) state that communists must be “in the forefront of the fight” for self-determination for Scotland and Wales (page 6), while your statement of aims (page 7) only refers to “the struggle for Irish freedom” as the priority in Britain today, and makes no reference to Scotland and Wales.

Shouldn’t there be a clearly stated recognition that there is national oppression in Scotland and Wales, as well as in Ireland, and the peoples of all three countries have an equal right to “freedom” or self-determination?

In order to combat the chauvinism promoted by the UK state, it is also necessary to examine and discard the use of terms such as ‘Britain’ and ‘British’ where the UK state is concerned. And it would be harder to find a more chauvinistic term than ‘Great Britain’!

Adam Busby
Portlaoise prison

Attack on Emek Partisi

On the morning of June 24, in the capital city of Turkey, Ankara, police in panzer tanks attacked over 2,000 supporters of the Labour Party of Turkey. These people were waiting outside the party HQ to hear the latest news about the Supreme Court decision to close the party down. Hundreds of police encircled the crowd and all entrances and exits from the area were blocked.

The police demanded that the Labour Party supporters disperse. The crowd refused and a vicious attack was launched by the police. According to news reports, 200 people were injured, 30 seriously, and 100 people arrested.

All the injured were taken to the Human Rights Association building, which was also then surrounded by police. The protest continued in four surrounding streets and involved over 5,000 people.

Up to 1,000 others staged a protest sit-in in front of the party HQ and were again encircled by police.

The Labour Party was founded on March 25 of this year by thousands of workers, trade unionists, students, women, government employees, pensioners, farmers, intellectuals and others. It is the party of working people in Turkey. Its main principle is to promote the unity of the workers and the working people, irrespective of their origin, language, religion or gender. The Labour Party is inspired by the idea of a free world where all forms of oppression and exploitation have been eradicated.

The programme of the Labour Party calls for

“a democratic popular solution to the Kurdish question; an end to the oppressive actions of imperialism, capital and Turkish and Kurdish reactionary forces against the Kurds; an end to their efforts to make enmity between the Turkish and Kurdish workers and labourers; a lifting of the ban on the Kurds, withdrawal of the army and other military forces from the region; full freedom and equal rights for all minority cultures, nationalities and languages; a form of state which has been democratised from top to bottom and which guarantees freedom and equal rights and free unity of the Turks and Kurds based on equality ...”

The Supreme Court indictment cites the following as reason for the closure of the Labour Party:

“Aiming to change the regulations concerning the language and inseparable territorial and national unity of the Turkish state; claiming that there are minorities in the territories of the Republic of Turkey based on the differences of nature, culture or race or language; aiming to disturb the unity of the nation by creating minorities in the territories of the Republic of Turkey by protecting; promoting or spreading languages and cultures other than the Turkish language and culture ...”

The authorities are attempting to ban the Labour Party, an organisation formed by thousands of workers and working people in the face of enormous difficulties.

Simultaneously there have been a series of attacks on the HADEP (Peoples Democracy Party). According to the latest news, three party delegates were murdered by the government authorities in Kayseri on their way back from their party congress. Previously delegates at the congress in Ankara were attacked and beaten up by the police. When they went to take refuge in the party HQ, they were arrested, including the HADEP party leader, Murat Bozlak, who was seriously injured. Another of those beaten up was Tony Lukas, a delegate to the congress from the British Christian Democratic Movement. In Izmir, the HADEP party office was bombed and an unknown number of people seriously injured.

Emek (Labour) Party
London

More on the hunger strikes in Turkey

The letter by me in last week’s Weekly Worker (June 27) on the Turkish hunger strikes may have given the impression that the hunger strikes had ceased. In actual fact this applied only to the supporters in Europe of the Turkish DHKC (Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front) and perhaps other leftwing organisations. They had been on hunger strike in solidarity with comrades imprisoned in Turkey. The decision was taken to end the solidarity hunger strikes by supporters in this country and other European countries, but strikes by prisoners in Turkey are still going on.

According to the DHKC information office on July 1, some of the hunger strikers have gone into a coma. It is clear that they will die this month if the strikes persist. Some have eaten no food since May 19.

Details of the reasons for the hunger strike were given in the Weekly Worker of June 13. Briefly put, the Turkish and Kurdish prisoners are protesting against the ‘May 6 circular’ introduced by the authorities in Turkey. The circular has had the effect of making prison conditions even more draconian than they were before. The prisoners are also indignant about assaults on their family members by prison guards during visits, as well as the introduction of what have been termed ‘coffin cells’.

Turkey is currently a bourgeois democracy of a kind. That has not stopped this Nato member from denying rights to its ethnic minorities, especially the Kurds, and outright war is being pursued against them by the notoriously brutal Turkish police and army. Turkish leftists are also in the firing line - for example, several imprisoned members of the DHKC were killed at the start of this year.

Kurdish broadcasts are beamed from London to Turkey by MED TV, but the Turkish authorities object to these, and according to The Guardian on July 3, the television station is under threat because it is said to be biased in favour of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), whose guerrillas have been fighting Turkey. Needless to say, the bourgeois media in Britain have no bias, and neither does the Turkish government ...

State repression in Turkey is intensifying more generally. According to the DHKC, the members of the leftwing musical band, Group Yorum, were arrested on June 21. They have been subjected to torture, though at least one member of the group has since been released.

John Craig
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