Letters

CPGB-ML

The CPGB-ML is not the CPGB-PCC.

The mystery du jour is why the CPGB-ML has any followers at all. I happened to run into their Youtube video promoting their soon-to-be available print publication, Trotsky(ism), a tool of imperialism. The title may be all I need to know to form some final conclusions. The disgusting cover of the book follows in the tradition of the Stalinist anti-Semitic campaign begun in the 1940s. A fitting anti-Semitic trope on the cover would be: “Get out all ‘rootless cosmopolitans’!”

They tout ‘Leninism’, which is admirable, but this all gets cancelled out by their attempts to destroy all memory or positive memory of the legacy of Leon Trotsky. This seems to be a major part of their raison d’être - to try to destroy ‘Trotskyism’. This zero-sum game is sectarianism at its finest. It’s not beneath them to falsify, distort and obfuscate in this process. (They’ve been criticized for their support of the terrorist attack in New York on 9/11, among other criticisms.)

If the CP/ML have a great respect for Lenin, as they claim, they would validate his decision to work hand in glove with Leon Trotsky after October 1917. It’s not rocket science to realize that Trotsky proved to be an indispensable revolutionary. His life was cut short by a low-level Stalinist flunky in 1940 under Stalin’s orders. If nothing else, this act of virulent treachery places Stalin in league with all other infamous traitors to socialism, but this murderous act does not get so much as a mention by CPGB‑ML that I can see. They would undoubtedly applaud Trotsky’s murder.

I’m becoming a big fan of socialist historian Doug Greene, who I’m looking to as one who can help defend against the persistent Stalinist ‘anti-scholarship’ that CPGB-ML represents. He writes to me in an email that he is “familiar with the CPGB-ML and their politics. I will tell you that I have written a lengthy essay on neo-Stalinist conspiracism (Grover Furr, Bill Bland, Ludo Martens, and Domenico Losurdo) and am trying to find a publisher for it. It may take a while, but keep an eye out.”

A comment on the CP/ML Youtube channel (@ProlTV) was printed thus: “Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any important question of Marxism - Lenin”. My reply to this was, “This was probably before Trotsky became a Bolshevik. My guess”. To which @ProlTV replied, “He wasn’t a Bolshevik for very long. And even when he was, he played a very negative role for much of the time” (the ‘comrade’ is delusional). Someone else said, “Stalin later banned Reed’s text, probably because it only mentioned him once, yet heaped praise on Trotsky.” @ProlTV said, “I’m not sure that’s true. Was widely available”. Fact: John Reed’s book was banned by Stalin in 1924. There was a glowing foreword to the book - by Lenin. All of this wouldn’t, of course, sit well with the CPGB-ML.

Lawrence Parker wrote in Weekly Worker (‘No word on Uncle Joe’ November 20 2008): “Even among the ideologically tortured ranks of the various ‘Marxist-Leninist’ and Maoist groupings that have existed down the years, [Harpal] Brar’s [head honcho of CPGB-ML - GG] various organisations stand out by ‘virtue’ of their extreme cult wackiness and unwillingness to have any of their Stalinist sycophancy questioned, let alone scientifically tested.”

Parker’s statement is, in my view, still relevant in describing the essence of the CPGB-ML.

GG
USA

Wealth and profits

You know, the thing about emphasising how bad Assad was and downplaying the terrorism of the terrorist regime now ruling Syria, is that it doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. It is also, for those who’ve been around the block already a few times, blatant propaganda - an attempt to legitimise whatever comes after Assad, no matter how horrendous. It’s the “at least we got rid of Assad” lament.

But it’s more than that. To make the coup acceptable to the public, it’ll mean emphasising the “positives” of the new regime and downplaying the negatives, to the point where atrocities will be ignored and covered up. They’ll be attributed to other groups. They’ll be reported on the middle pages of mainstream newspapers, with the words “allegedly” sustained throughout. But for sure they’ll be tweaked in some way to underplay what’s happening. Those even trying to highlight the atrocities will be targeted by the British authorities, or vilified with the use of throw away pejorative terms against them.

Most Middle Eastern states are dictatorships, for one thing. If they’re not dictatorships, the ruling party has overwhelming control over the media and the support of powerful groups behind the scenes. Let’s be clear, any state in the world that can’t, or doesn’t defend itself, will be ousted. This is the established order in the world. So all surviving states must possess repressive state machinery to intimidate usually neighbouring states that have ideas and to punish internal dissent so that the attacks don’t come from within.

It’s ironic that the west can pour scorn on the Assad regime when the west has been attempting to overthrow Syria for decades, but at least in a concerted effort since 2011. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t type of situation. It’s either just let other countries, usually Nato and it’s proxies, walk all over you, or defend yourself and be vilified in the western media for having Abu Ghraib-style, and Guantanamo Bay detention camp-style facilities, for example.

The west has its dissidents: Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange ... The west doesn’t care how bad conditions become in Syria, or the land that was once Syria, as long as international capital and finance are in control, with wealth and profits flowing into western coffers.

Louis Shawcross
email

Caribbean

There seem to be places in the world where very little is reported, unless there is a royal visit, a volcanic eruption or a hurricane. But the Caribbean remains volatile, and at the moment Trinidad and Tobago are involved in a major political eruption which seems to be being ignored. I know TT is a small country, but comrades should know what is happening there and their struggle should be supported.

For several months now the major unions on the islands have been protesting the government trying to bring in neo-liberal strictures, including not recognising unions’ right to negotiate. The government started by stating publicly what workers pay increases would be - bypassing completely the negotiating procedures which have previously been used. The unions see themselves as having been surgically sliced out of the system.

The result was strikes and demonstrations - not just of the lowest paid, but also, for example, airline workers and the middle classes. The demonstrations have become raucous, although not violent. Someone even has a sense of humour - a calypso was written about the strikes and sung in front of the house of the governor. He was not amused.

At the same time, the number of murders, in both T and T, have risen to new heights - more murders in one year than in all previous years put together. Some of them are clearly premeditated and probably political - people have been murdered coming out of jail when only they and the police knew the time.

A ‘contempt of court’ charge has been taken out against the leaders of the strikes, which means they may be arrested at any time.

Recently the government passed a state of emergency. We are told that there is not a curfew - yet - but clearly there are behind the scenes manoeuvres to break the strikes and destroy, or at least neutralise, the union force.

Recently Caribbean Labour Solidarity (a London based group with a committee which meets on Zoom with members from various different islands, including from TT - but nothing to do with our Labour Party) carried out a picket of the TT high commission in London and are supporting the workers as best they can.

I cannot guarantee that any of this will be in the London newspapers, or on the radio or TV. I am not a wide aficionado of social media, but in the little I see, nothing has been discussed there either. It seems a shame to me that left groups do not seem to be interested in a major struggle going on in a country which may be small, but is part of the Commonwealth, and where the struggle may have consequences for other island nations in the Caribbean.

Laura Cord
email

Suicide

Gaby Rubin offers a thoughtful reply (letters, December 12) to my own article opposing the legalisation for assisted suicide (‘Slope really is slippery’, November 28).

I will concede the terminological points. If euthanasia is to include the classic case of administering probably fatal cases of painkillers to those in the last throes of terminal illness, then I have no objection, and indeed I believe that doctors ought to be protected in practice from frivolous lawsuits on this point, as in practice they presently are, so far as I am aware.

Onto other matters: Gaby mentions the case of her step-grandmother, who took her own life in the face of “the pain preceding her impending death”. Yet, as she herself says, this was not a case of assisted suicide. The state of play in Britain, after the Suicide Act 1961, is that suicide is no longer a crime (before then, we had the bizarre and dystopian situation where those who survived a suicide attempt might be prosecuted for attempted murder). It is, however, criminal for physicians and others to assist suicide.

The question at issue with assisted suicide is the contrary case - that is, should it be part of a physician’s job to treat a patient by inducing death on request of the patient? Should my ‘right’ to end my life entail my right to get someone else to end my life? At this point, whatever our thoughts, it is no longer a matter of some purely individual right, like the right to marry someone of my own sex or get a tattoo. Its denial is not purely a restriction on me, but on the field of action of a whole apparatus of the state.

In the article, I drew the comparison with the working day. Communists disfavour the right of workers to work 14-hour days, even if they really need to, even if they need the overtime to pay the rent this month, because it is indissociable from the right of the capitalists to demand workers put in excessive hours, which we oppose. My argument is that assisted suicide intrinsically grants the state the right to kill the ill; and that this will tend towards unpleasant, eugenic outcomes, which is clearly happening in countries where it has been legalised.

On which point: Gaby worries that my reference to how this plays out in other countries confuses the issue. She notes that Britain abolished the death penalty before many other countries, and argues that this should not factor into the reasoning of, say, the USA on the same issue. This strikes me as odd: after all, if the abolition of hanging in this country had led to an enormous spike in violent crime, then it seems to me that it would be perfectly legitimate for the American right to cite it as an argument against. On the contrary, it didn’t - and it is therefore perfectly legitimate for American opponents of the death penalty to cite that fact themselves.

I talked a lot about Canada, a country with a fairly similar political complexion to Britain, and how assisted suicide has played out there. If one thinks that it has played out badly, then that ought to worry us here. Does Gaby think it has? If not: why not?

Paul Demarty
Plymouth

Mason associates

Former member of Workers Power, former BBC Newsnight presenter, former Corbynite and former would be Labour MP - has now got his entry card into the military establishment. Paul Mason has been appointed the new Aneurin Bevan Associate Fellow in Defence and Resilience by the Council on Geostrategy.

This ‘think tank’ was founded in March 2021 and is funded by the UK government, along with a long list of NGOs, foundations and companies which together make up the military industrial complex: AT&T; Babcock; BAE Systems; Boeing Defence; BP Shipping; Carnival UK; Centre for Underwater Acoustic Analysis; Genesis Initiative; Heinrich-Boell Foundation; Highgate Ltd; L3Harris Technologies; Leonardo UK; Lockheed Martin UK; Northrop Grumman; QinetiQ; Raytheon; Rolls-Royce; Royal Navy; etc, etc.

Mason has, of course, consistently promoted the military industrial complex in recent years, most notably by siding with Nato and its proxy war in Ukraine. Mason, along with his fellow social-imperialist chums - Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Anticapitalist Resistance, Labour Representation Committee - marched in London in 2022 chanting “Arm, arm, arm Ukraine”.

Like the lot of them, he still claims to be of the left. According to a Council on Geostrategy press release, Mason commented about his appointment: “As we face rising threats from the Putin-Xi-Kamenei axis of failure, I’m proud to bring a distinct Bevanite focus to independent thinking on UK national defence.”

Aneurin Bevan is widely credited with being the founder of the NHS but resigned from Clement Attlee’s Labour in protest over prescription charges for dental and vision care. He went onto lead the Labour left till his death in 1960. He is still loved and admired in that quarter. That cannot be said of Paul Mason.

His CoG appointment is undoubtably a reward for the author of numerous books, including Live working or die fighting (“Brilliant” - Ken Loach) and How to stop fascism (“Excellent” - Alex Callinicos), for providing the anti-Russia, anti-China war drive with a leftish veneer.

As with Donald Trump, he too is an advocate of an enormous hike in military spending - up from around 2% to a whopping 5% of GDP. Mason’s latest article for the CoG’s Britain’s World is revealingly titled: ‘Lessons from the 1930s: rearm according to the threat, not the fiscal rules’.

I don’t know what the AWL, ACR, LRC and other organisational and individual affiliates of Chris Ford’s ghastly Ukraine Solidarity Campaign make of that. But the likes of John McDonnell really ought to be standing up in parliament backing the two-child cap in the name defending poor little Ukraine.

Why not? Mason was appointed as an advisor by McDonnell when he was shadow chancellor back in 2016. At the time, Mason produced a video in which he argued that “Labour should vote to keep Trident” while strengthening Britain’s conventional forces against the “rapidly evolving threats” of “terrorism” and “a newly aggressive and unpredictable Russia”. He urged the hapless Corbyn to support Nato and adopt a policy of specifically threatening nuclear war against Russia: “Instead of the cold war policy of keeping Russia guessing about how the nuclear deterrent will be used, we need to communicate a clear set of conditions for using it.”

In an accompanying article, he called for a “new Nato strategic concept”, including support for an enhanced “ballistic missile defence” system positioned in the east European and Baltic states bordering Russia, and “new, permanent non-aggressive deployments to Nato forces in Europe”.

You cannot, as they say, have guns and butter. Mason might lie about everything else now, but at least he does have the virtue of being honest about the cost of preparing for war against Russia and China. It means ever more savage rounds of austerity.

Then there is what remains of Workers Power. Haven’t they gone over to social imperialism too? How long it will take them to catch up with their old comrade and spiritual leader is another matter.

Fred Woodworker
Brighton