Letters

Words, words …

Moshé Machover wants to remind me that “Everything changes, including language” (Letters, March 6). Yes, comrade, I already know that.

Take this nice story about that nice word, ‘nice’. It begins as a negative term, derived from the Latin nescius, meaning “unaware, ignorant”. That is how it was carried over into the English language in the early 1300s. However, starting in the late 1300s, the meaning starts to shift. ‘Nice’ increasingly refers to “conduct, a person, or clothing that was considered excessively luxurious or lascivious”. Not a few years later a much more neutral sense emerged: “a person who is finely dressed, someone who is scrupulous, or something that was precise or fussy”. By the late 1500s, ’nice’ was further softening, describing something as “refined, culture” - especially used of polite society. Over 200 years later, ’nice’ served as a catch-all for someone or something “pleasant” or “agreeable”. Nonetheless, by the 1980s the word starts to once again take on negative connotations: that is, when given an ironic edge.

Of course, what we are arguing about is not ‘nice’, or words in general, but specifically the terms, ‘democracy’ and ‘dictatorship’. This in the context of a proposal from Talking About Socialism about an agreementist approach to programme. The comrades wanted us to agree with communism being ‘democratic’ and not supporting any kind of ‘dictatorship’.

Speaking in the name of orthodox Marxism - and I know comrade Machover prides himself in being an unorthodox Marxist - I simply cannot agree. In my ‘Programmatic starting point’ article (February 27), I made the unarguable point that orthodox Marxists take democracy not just as a nice word, but a form of the state. Therefore we expect democracy - not debate, not voting - to wither away with the transition to full communism. We do not stop at “mere democracy” (Engels). Extreme democracy negating democracy is a dialectical law.

Then there is that thoroughly not nice word, ‘dictatorship’. If we say we oppose all ‘forms of dictatorship’, we are surely obliged to say that we oppose Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc, given their militant statements in favour of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. That I am not going to do.

Words, concepts, ideas are as much the subject of the class struggle as wages, terms and conditions.

I call myself a communist. I refuse to let the Stalinites have that word unchallenged. In fact, they really are not communists. When the ideologues of the bourgeoisie define ‘communism’ - in their mass media, in their schools and in their approved academic studies, even in their dictionaries - as “totalitarianism” and a “self-perpetuating one-party state”, I refuse to go along with that usage.

Nonetheless, because we operate in an ideologically bourgeois-dominated society, when referring to Marx, Engels and Lenin using the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ phrase, I always explain that what they meant by it was the ‘decisive rule of the working class’ (or words to that effect). When talking about democracy withering away, I always explain that this is the paradoxical result of the extreme democracy we advocate.

Either way, thankfully, during the course of our fusion talks the TAS comrades have given ground on this question. So I’m not expected to agree with what I cannot agree to.

Jack Conrad
London

Dictatorship

In reply to Moshé Machover, the term, ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, was always from the beginning an incorrect term to describe working class rule. The term is not to be found in the Communist manifesto. It was first popularised by Louis Blanqui, who wanted to appear more leftwing than Marx. Marx adopted the term to thwart Blanqui’s pretensions, and since that time every communist leader has repeated Blanqui’s and Marx’s mistake.

It is not a question of the term changing its meaning, and now rendered obsolete. It was wrong for Blanqui to use this term to describe working class rule, and it was wrong for Marx to adopt this Blanquist mistake - with the absurd proviso that for him ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ refers to the whole class and not just the leadership, or vanguard.

Lenin recognised that ‘dictatorship’ means ‘rule unrestrained by any law’, and yet he used this to describe working class rule. The collapse of Leninism in the Soviet Union has not led communists to re-examine this term as it applies to working class socialist rule. The essence of dictatorship is that it is unaccountable to any elected body, and is above the law. So how can working class, socialist rule be unaccountable and lawless - in other words, be ‘dictatorship’ - outside an emergency situation?

By adopting Blanqui’s mistake Marx placed himself, albeit unconsciously, in opposition to democratic socialism. It is time for communists to correct this mistake of Marx. The agenda of the elite is ultimately based on a totalitarianism underpinned by artificial intelligence, with every person microchipped and under control, which goes far beyond Orwell’s 1984. They want to lock us down. Communists who repeat Marx’s mistake and say that socialism is a dictatorship are simply aiding the elite’s deep-state totalitarian agenda for a post-democratic society.

So, in reply to comrade Machover’s question. “Is it wise to give hostages to fortune by inviting the accusation that we are advocating a dictatorship and the demise of democracy?” My reply is that ever since Marx adopted Blanqui’s error Marxists have been advocating the demise of democracy in favour of dictatorship - not as a temporary measure in an emergency situation, but as a form of working class rule.

At the political level the left must choose between democratic socialism or totalitarianism.

Tony Clark
For Democratic Socialism

Lucy Letby

It is becoming clearer every day that Lucy Letby, the nurse convicted of the murder of seven babies who died in hospital, was scapegoated for the failings of the crumbling health services. Her trial was not based on any actual evidence that showed she or anyone else deliberately harmed children. Dr Shoo Lee’s February press conference blew apart the entire basis for the frame-up and asserted that no murders had taken place. And now a number of mainstream publications which previously vilified Letby have changed their tune and acknowledged she might be innocent.

Let’s be clear: Letby’s conviction sent a strong message to all workers - and especially those in healthcare - that this can happen to anyone. Letby was hounded and convicted to make an example of her for the failures of an NHS that is chronically understaffed and underfunded. That’s why defending her is part of the fight for better healthcare for all, for better working conditions for nurses and all staff. But to build a campaign to demand justice for Lucy Letby requires defying the existing union leadership, which time and again has bowed to the bullying NHS bosses.

This innocent nurse should not be languishing in prison one more day for something she simply didn’t do. But, as we all know, the British establishment will fight to the bitter end to uphold the honour of its ‘justice’ system rather than admit it locks up innocent people. The freeing of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four - innocent Irish people who were framed by the cops for bombings - took years of tenacious legal battles, as well as public campaigns. That is why, in parallel to the efforts of her legal team, it is urgently necessary that the left and trade union movement take up this fight and build a broad campaign to free Lucy Letby. Defending this dedicated nurse against this frame-up is an elementary act in defence of the interests of all workers against the relentless attacks by the bosses on our livelihoods and working conditions.

The silence of the left on this question is ceding the ground to the right wing, some of whom for their own reasons have taken up this cause. But defending Letby is not a left-right issue: it’s a working class issue - the British state has framed up a worker who was doing her job under horrendous conditions. It is time to take a clear stand against this.

We urge you to endorse and build for the Partisan Defence Committee’s protest on March 17 in Liverpool and to take this campaign into the trade union movement.

Kate Klein
Partisan Defence Committee

Mighty fallen

I read with interest Jack Conrad’s excellent article about the Socialist Workers Party’s travails over the ‘programme’ question (‘Operating on a hunch’, March 6).

One of the many points that stood out was the issue of as to why leading SWP activist Maxine Bowler stood as a “community activist and independent socialist” at the July 2024 general election and not under the name, ‘Socialist Workers Party’. Comrade Conrad makes the perfectly reasonable inference that the SWP isn’t an illegal organisation, so why not stand as SWP?

The reason, in my opinion, is that it would have to register with the Electoral Commission as a party if it did so. This brings with it a host of obligations and responsibilities, including financial disclosures. Some wag once quipped: “Forget politics - the quickest way to get expelled from the SWP is to ask where the money comes from and where it goes!” It is obvious the party would want to avoid that, hence no EC registration.

Carla Roberts in her article, ‘New year, new left party?’ (January 9) reveals that the SWP were told in no uncertain terms to ‘go forth and multiply’ when they inquired to join the latest embryonic Corbynist lash-up, the Collective Party. Fifteen years ago such an application would have been a shoo-in for the SWP. Now Comrade Roberts reveals that the party may be admitted under a “front group” cover name that seems to have been quickly created to facilitate this.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen!

Paul O’Keeffe
email

Home truths

Perhaps I might be so impertinent as to offer our friendly visitor, Alien John (Letters, March 6), some pointers about the nature of our species.

Homo sapiens has not evolved the ability to universally communicate to all other members of the species simultaneously - perhaps that is different on John’s home planet. As such, all communications have a necessarily limited reach. For journals such as this one, the audience is largely self-selecting. The Weekly Worker is read by fellow participants in the struggle for socialism; the occasional confused extra-terrestrial; and - just possibly - a single guy in a basement office in MI5 who has been forgotten by everyone, including his wife.

It is not necessary, on this understanding, for me to argue, from first principles, that Jordan Peterson is a weepy charlatan. It is part of the assumed common knowledge of everyone who might be tempted to read our paper - perhaps even the fellow at MI5. Moreover, we deliberately pursue such a limited audience - though, of course, we wish it were larger than it is. We believe that, in pursuit of our project, we will first have to cohere the left in some kind of fighting order - then our battles with the likes of Dr Peterson over the meaning of slipperily-defined psychological archetypes will have the kind of stakes that will make them worthwhile.

We wish him every success in his ethnological studies.

Paul Demarty
Earth