Letters
Toxic warrior
In last week’s Weekly Worker, Mike Macnair responded to accusations of the CPGB’s bad culture and mentioned “comrades’ failure to specify what it is that counts” (‘Speech controls yet again’ February 20).
I’m not convinced that this kind of argument over culture is even helpful, as culture is ultimately moulded by political economy, but we do also inherit past culture produced by past political economy, which we have to address on its own terms to truly rid ourselves of those parts of it we don’t want. In any case, to the extent arguing about this is useful, it only really can be if we’re not talking past each other.
To that end I would like to offer a definition of ‘bad culture’ specifically in regards to debate, which seems to be the main area people chafe against with the CPGB. I’m certain this won’t hold up to serious scrutiny, but I hope it’ll help concretise criticism anyway.
Without a definition, accusations about ‘bad culture’ will struggle to distinguish between the kind of ordinary interpersonal disputes that any relationship between two or more people has to contend with and truly bad culture. One has to roll one’s eyes at accusations of ‘bad culture’ which feel more like tone policing or accusations of ‘bad vibes’. Likewise accusations of ‘bad faith’ which themselves contribute to bad culture as they are in my view far more often than not - without any real justification - maligning someone’s intent to the exclusion of the substance of issues.
By ‘culture’ I mean beliefs and behaviours which are persistently prevalent. This can stem from more overt or codified conventions, but might also be inherited ‘common sense’. Examples include those the CPGB rightly attacks on the regular: keeping debate internal, as comrade Macnair rightly denounces in the same article; ban on official public factions; safe spaces; broad-frontism (leading to diplomatic silences and fudges); and so on. All things with consequences that go way beyond ‘bad culture’, but things which produce it nevertheless.
An organisation has a bad culture with respect to debates if either of the following apply:
1. Arguments put forward in favour of a position or action are often responded to either first or only with an accusation of weak or malevolent character or intention on the part of the person putting forward the argument, rather than responding to the argument.
2. There is often no proportion in relation to different issues. This will in reality take one of two forms:
(a) Issues are routinely discussed in a dry, procedural way, whether they are about fundamental principles or small organisational tasks and issues. That is, major issues are brought down to the importance of minor issues. Issues which can’t easily be brought down in this way are generally excluded.
(b) Issues are routinely elevated to a position where they are seen as fundamental disagreements or as needing to be investigated as if fundamental disagreements lay behind them. That is, minor issues are brought up to the importance of major issues.
If any of this is often done by officials, this amounts to a method of bureaucratic control.
I consider these to be the two main features of bad culture around debate because persistently prevalent well-poisoning and significant disproportionality are so inherently self-perpetuating. I can’t think of anything else as toxic.
In (1) it’s important that an argument is put forward, as it’s more understandable for someone to respond “with an accusation of weak or malevolent character or intention” if the person or group has merely asserted something (especially if done angrily).
The effect of (1) is to make it so that debates about the substance of issues get sidetracked into debates about character or intention. This is well-poisoning. Newer comrades in particular will shy away from contributing when this is the case, as they haven’t been around long enough to establish a history of evidence of their conduct to combat an accusation of bad character or intention, and on a more basic level are more likely to lack confidence if they are new to politics generally. If this becomes sufficiently widespread, it will lead to a generalised breakdown of trust, collapsing the organisation into much smaller, tight networks of trust which might form the basis of future splits.
One minorish but I hope useful example. In Weekly Worker 1429 (February 9 2023) Ryan Frost (CPGB) and Andries Stroper (CP in the Netherlands) were called an “opportunist duo” by a letter title written by comrade Jack Conrad. Serious accusations like this should be the conclusions of arguments, not tossed out like a swear word (and it was meant seriously, not as swearing). Had comrade Conrad’s reply in the following issue explained the ‘opportunist’ designation slapped on one of the CPGB’s own newer comrades - or had he retracted it - this would still be unfortunate, but less bad. Sadly, his reply did nothing of the sort (and was titled the same way - presumably to put up the middle finger over a negative reaction to the first title).
The effect of (2a) is to make it hard for people to passionately disagree about major issues, as this would be straying from the stuffy old norm. Passionate arguments will be pushed back on by reference to accessibility, safe spaces, or - more common in a workplace - professionalism. The longer this goes on, the more entrenched it becomes. No one in their right mind could accuse the CPGB of this.
An example: I sat through a Transform meeting which had this character, where the issue of centralism or federalism (along the lines of the national branches) came up, and where little more was said beyond things along the lines of ‘this is important for some comrades’ and was punted onwards to some future meeting or the steering committee. I suppose explicit arguments about it were avoided to avoid any kind of acrimony.
The effect of (2b) is to make it hard for people to bring up more minor organisational or political issues. A lot of molehills will be turned into or seen as a mountain. That’ll have the effect of obscuring what the real molehills are and the organisation’s ability to quickly and effectively deal with them, and the effect of obscuring real mountains. Smaller organisational/political issues won’t be dealt with when people don’t want to bring them up for fear of triggering the erection of another pseudo-mountain, and that’ll just cause increasing frustration, and on the (then necessarily rarer) occasion that things are brought up the rareness of it will only make every issue appear even more like a mountain.
We can do a bit better than mere example on this one, as it is an explicitly celebrated method of comrades Mike Macnair and Jack Conrad which I think necessarily leads to cultural sins of this form. From Conrad’s side this seems to be taken from his over-reading of Lenin’s general approach in One step forward, two steps back and is summarised by Macnair in issue 1513 (‘Debating our culture’, October 31 2024) via Trotsky as “From a scratch - to the danger of gangrene”. This method is completely toxic. Lenin’s evaluation was reached after careful consideration and studying of the stenographic minutes over months. It was not a knee-jerk response to the raising of an on-its-face minor issue. To be a touch tongue in cheek, treating almost every new initiative or issue raised as if it might hold dire risks is like an organisational equivalent of the oppressive practice of helicopter parenting, generated by a deep fear of ‘the outside world’. In most cases a scratch just needs a cheap plaster slapped on it.
As an aside, I think this toxic method lay behind the pointless and rather tedious escalation which led to the aggregate report in issue 1464 (James Harvey ‘Opportunism in matters of organisation’ October 26 2003).
Of course, minor disagreements very much can be substitutes for major ones which lie in the background. The trigger for the final phase of a romantic relationship regularly takes the form of a disagreement like someone not doing the dishes or not taking out the bins. One reason why is fairly obvious: it is hard to bring up major issues, especially when one only feels there is some major issue present but are struggling to grasp at what and why. Another reason, surely less common, is duplicity. Lenin really does do a good job at getting to the root of an issue of this kind - where minor issues obscure a deeper, more important issue - in One step forward, two steps back.
How can one address this systematically? For individuals, there is couple counselling. For organisations, I don’t know ... Make sure you have yourself a few Lenins? No easy answers, I think.
So, it is right to say that the CPGB displays instances of bad culture. Every organisation will. It just needs to be frankly acknowledged and worked on, or else the rot will set in. It is wrong to say that the CPGB has a bad culture, because none of this is displayed routinely or often enough.
Scott Evans
Glasgow
Stalinist minority
Robin Cox of the Socialist Party of Great Britain argues that there is no case whatsoever for a “transition” period of any description between existing capitalism and socialism, by which he and they mean what communists usually call the higher phase of communism (‘No transition’, Letters, February 13). Extraordinarily, he even claims the world today is in effect “in the transition period now”, (to that socialism).
The SPGB defines socialism (the higher phase of communism) as a stateless, moneyless, borderless, world society, in which people voluntarily labour to produce goods and services to meet the common good, goods and services are produced in abundance so people can freely access anything they want from this common production, and all their material needs will be satisfied. People will, through a high level of socialist consciousness, choose to labour for the common good without the need for any material incentive, money and any form of rationing, in which will all have been abolished or faded out of use.
Crime and social disorder will similarly have faded out of existence, as all people can freely access what they need and they all have such a highly developed level of consciousness and responsibility they wouldn’t dream of committing any form of anti-social or criminal offence, hence removing the need and basis for any form of state apparatus.
I agree this is indeed the higher phase of communism which many socialists and communists are genuinely striving for, but is Robin and the SPGB serious that all this literally higher state of society and consciousness can be instantly brought about, simply as a result of a majority vote in favour of socialism?
Robin and SPGB argue the material basis for socialism/communism has already been created and in existence for at least a hundred years. I agree, hence the classic Marxist-Leninist analysis of capitalism entering into the moribund, decaying, decadent phase of imperialism and all the negative, destructive, consequences of that, including world wars, mass destruction of human life, including through wars, starvation, disease and destruction of the basic eco system and environment etc.
Having the potential material productive capacity to meet needs is very different from actually producing the socially necessary goods and services required and to the necessary quantities to meet basic and then higher human needs.
So much of existing production is completely wasteful, destructive, often poisonous or otherwise harmful. If a worldwide “socialist majority” was able to “peacefully and democratically” capture all the world state apparatuses and use them to expropriate all the means of production and distribution, it would surely take time for the socialist majority to convert all that production and capacity for destruction into genuinely socially useful goods and services.
Until that basic material condition had been achieved, ie, socially useful goods and services being produced sufficient to meet all needs, by the SPGB’s own measure, you couldn’t even begin to think of that society being the higher stage of communism. So, you would still have material incentives, restrictions on what people could consume and state apparatus required to enforce the rules of society.
As well as creating the material basis for socialism, how long would it realistically take for the socialist and human consciousness of the vast majority of people to develop to the level required to genuinely allow for free labour, free access, and no law enforcement agencies?
I do believe in the inherent positive qualities of most people, but I am equally not naive and recognise it may take generations before all the harmful attitudes, behaviours and thinking associated with capitalism to be fully removed from general human consciousness and human society.
There is a blunt question as to whether it is actually possible to create a socialist majority of people under conditions of existing capitalism. The poor state (in terms of membership, influence, votes, etc) of many genuine socialist and communist groups and parties (I don’t include the hundreds of sectarian Trot groups, sects, fragments and individuals within this heading), despite hundreds of years and generations of damaging and destructive capitalism, seem to demonstrate the immense challenges and difficulties of the SPGB’s parliamentary majority road to socialism.
Even if it was possible to develop a socialist majority under existing capitalism, that surely by definition would leave a very large proportion of the population who were decidedly not socialist, and may well be antagonistic or downright hostile to attempts to bring about socialism. Again. the higher phase of communism is simply inconceivable with such a large recalcitrant (or even just non-socialist) minority.
And having democratically and peacefully won a majority in parliament, do we really expect the capitalist class and all its layers and strata in wider society and especially in the state apparatus, just to passively accept their being thrown out of their current positions of immense privileges, wealth and power? Some may accept the proposed new order, a few may actually welcome it, but it would surely be sensible to assume significant numbers will not and will use every means at their disposal to halt and reverse any such social changes, including through violent and other illegal means.
So, from my perspective, while, obviously I would want to see a world communist society brought about in the shortest possible time, it must surely take time to take over, disable and replace all the state apparatuses in the world, time to physically expropriate all the means of production and distribution from all the world’s capitalist classes, time to convert all these into socially useful goods and services, and then produce to the necessary quantities, and time to suppress, hold down, neutralise etc the dispossessed capitalist classes and all those layers, strata and numbers who will fiercely oppose and will resist efforts by a genuine mass socialist movement to establish and embed real socialism.
Over whatever total timeframe all this may require, a working class state apparatus, work for material incentives, wages and benefits in order to access many goods and services, will all surely still be required, indeed essential. And I would suggest will also be required to some degree for the much greater amount of time it will inevitably take for the vast majority of people to acquire full socialist consciousness, values and responsibilities, as would allow state forces, money and other related elements to be fully dispensed with.
I am absolutely not arguing there should or will be completely separate and distinct stages between the initial establishment of working class power, a stage of full socialism and then communism. I am saying though that to completely reject or even just ignore the very real and practical steps that will be required to actually achieve full socialism and ultimately communism, and the different elements, changes and phases each will or may undergo, is simply not to be credible or serious about the aims of socialism and communism themselves.
Andrew Northall
email
SPGB minority
Robin Cox (Letters, February 13) says we need an “appropriate exit strategy” from capitalism, not a transitional period.
But comrade Cox once had a willingness to theorise a transitional period: in 1987, as part of the Guildford branch of the SPGB, which circulated a critique entitled ‘The road to socialism’.
This document issued with the party’s big-bang theory of socialisation. It was published in Nos 27 and 28 of Discussion Bulletin in 1988 and is available to read online (files.libcom.org/files/discussion-bulletin-1988-27-jan.pdf and files.libcom.org/files/discussion-bulletin-1988-28-mar.pdf).
The proposal of the Guildford branch was that “socialistic institutions” might exist in “a transitional stage to socialism” which would continue “until the market sector is reduced to a size that can be socialised by ‘enactment’ without causing widespread social disruption”.
This minority perspective was not adopted by the party but I would be interested to know comrade Cox’s thoughts on the matter today.
Ansell Eade
email
Non-political?
The 80th anniversary celebrations on Holocaust Memorial Day were held on January 27, the date, in 1945, when Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz - though Russia was, of course, not allowed to attend.
Catching some of it, unintentionally, my wife and I saw a parade of candles - Mr and Mrs Macron, Mr and Mrs Starmer, Mr and Mrs Windsor, Mr Zelensky … Queue up, put your candle on the counter, stand back, bow, walk off.
The great states people of the world were not allowed to speak: it was to be non-political. Holocaust survivors were to speak but also we had the World Jewish Congress president, Ronald Lauder, who said (Guardian January 27): “the horrors of Auschwitz and Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel were both inspired by “the age old hatred of Jews”. Antisemitism “had its willing supporters then and it has them now”, he said. When Auschwitz was liberated, the world saw where “the step-by-step progress of antisemitism leads. It leads right here … Things are not OK.”
How non-political can you get?
I saw a piece online a while back from a US lady who wrote of her Zionist upbringing. She spent a good part of Sundays learning Hebrew, which she thought was a waste of time, and Jewish history which she said ended in 72CE until it started up again in 1945.
Jewish Voice for Labour has a series, ‘Jewish journeys from Zionism’, currently on number 16. The participants are mostly, I think, in their 70s or thereabouts and grew up with US civil rights and black power, Vietnam and anti-apartheid and so had quite a political education. A major step in their journey, for many of them, was spending some time in Israel - on a kibbutz or on holiday. They saw then how Palestinians were treated and realised they had a lot to think about.
Apparently there is very little coverage in Israel of what is happening in Gaza, except perhaps for IDF hooligans parading their savagery. But some at least must be aware of international outrage and they have access to social media. However, Zionist propaganda in the mainstream media and at school and university seems to keep the ‘eternal victim’ flag flying high. The youth on their trips to Auschwitz between school and IDF are conspicuous with their flags on their backs.
The reactions to October 7 - shock, horror, thirst for revenge. Reactions to thousands of dead Palestinians, including children - very little, perhaps glee. This is not all Israelis, clearly - just, it seems, the majority.
To repeat an oft repeated question: ‘Never again, or never again to us?’
Jim Nelson
email
War profiteer
And we thought wars were about morality - right and wrong. Not so. It’s about power and resource control. Zelensky says, “I defend Ukraine. I can’t sell our country.” But the US wants $500 billion in rare earth minerals from Ukraine. After all, the US et al have supplied Ukraine with so much weaponry, it’s only fair that Ukraine responds in kind, but with its resources. What a wonderful world we live in.
Did the Russian-Ukraine conflict have anything to do with principles? As Victoria Nuland stated, “We must stand up to Putin’s aggression and support the people of Ukraine in their fight for a free and democratic future”, but in the process extract as much wealth out of the country as we can reasonably get away with without coming across as opportunist vultures taking advantage of a weakened, vulnerable ‘ally’. So in return for arms largely bought with US tax money and given to Ukraine, the US wants $500 billion in mineral resources from Ukraine, which will largely benefit, presumably, large US corporations who at the same time receive heavy subsidies from their government.
It would be an unorthodox contention, admittedly, to claim that maybe the same corporations benefitting from the $500 billion resource-grab from Ukraine could possibly stump up the money for the original arms transfer and maybe even stand on their own without government subsidy, as ordinary people and small businesses have to do. But that would be contrary to the golden rule of capitalism, where costs are socialised while profits are privatised; and it would also make war less profitable and therefore less likely to take place in the first place. These are some of the real reasons for the war. The war wasn’t designed for these consequences, but the players certainly know how to take advantage of ‘natural’ developments, and in so doing they reveal the true nature of the system which always puts profits on a pedestal, with people merely agents towards greater profits.
Louis Shawcroft
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