Letters

Ark of the covenant

Your ‘Party notes’ column on August 1, ‘A proletarian party’, raised some profound issues about the nature of democratic centralism in the revolutionary movement. The distortions in this column are so profound that one could write an entire thesis in reply, but the thrust of the column is that the Trotskyist conception of the party is inimical to that of Lenin. The author, CPGB national organiser Mark Fischer, draws attention to Trotsky’s In Defence of Marxism. Mark describes the work as “seminal” yet with “important flaws”, although “even in error” Trotsky produces “many flashes of brilliant insight and analysis”.

Unfortunately readers may be left to beg the question. If this work is so seminal, what are its important flaws and errors? Alas, we only have Mark’s word for it that this seminal analysis of the political dynamic of the faction fight in the American SWP in 1939-40 is flawed. The date of Trotsky’s contribution is important because it allows one to examine the context in which the book was written. Mark, however, having damned Trotsky en passant with faint praise, then gets to the focus of the article. Trotskyism’s failure to correctly grasp the Leninist concept of the party.

Having rubbished Trotsky obliquely, Mark then extends his assessment to Cannon’s The Struggle for a Proletarian Party. Cannon’s work is an organisational analysis of the special character of the unprincipled SWP coalition of Shachtman, Burnham and Abern, whose attempt to provide a theoretical cover for their abandonment of defence of the Soviet workers’ state was so brilliantly demolished by Trotsky. However, according to Mark, Cannon’s work was “motivated from the first to the last by a sect-like understanding of the Party question, by a firm opposition to the Leninist principles of democratic centralism.”

Why is this the case? Because Lenin said so.

The obligatory quote is plucked from the Collected Works which appears to contradict the Trotskyist position on democratic centralism. Interestingly, the quote, where Lenin calls for free and open polemic in the Party press, is from 1900! Three years before the founding of the Bolshevik wing of the RSDLP following the split at the 1903 Party Congress.

Ahistorical decontextualisation is a useful tool in the hands of petty-bourgeois detractors of both Lenin and Trotsky, but it has no place in the scientific methodology of Marxism. Mark, in using the word of Lenin like holy scripture, does a double disservice to both leaders of the Russian revolution. He erroneously drives a non-existent wedge between the two leading Marxists of the century and in the process makes Lenin sound like a fool. Poor Lenin.

Was Lenin always in favour of open polemic and debate in the Party? Was this an immutable tenet of the Leninist principles of Party organisation? Apparently not, for in 1921 in the context of an acute crisis for the workers’ state - peasants’ uprisings, Menshevik-inspired strikes and the Kronstadt rising - Lenin, with Trotsky’s full support, successfully won majority Party agreement to ban factions within the Communist Party as an emergency measure. In fact, prior to the 1921 10th Party Congress, when there had been an acrimonious debate about the role of the trade unions in the workers’ state - a debate in which Trotsky clashed with Lenin - this was, in Lenin’s view, a debate which was an “impermissible luxury”, which was “pushing to the forefront a question which for objective reasons cannot be there” (my italics).

It was precisely the conditions of crisis which made the trade union debate so acrimonious. In Lenin’s view the sharpness of this debate resulted from the pressures of alien class forces in a country with an overwhelming peasant population. In reference to a faction within the Party, ‘The Workers’ Opposition’, a semi-syndicalist group led by Shlyapnikov and Kollontai, Lenin explained its existence thus:

“Mainly however, this deviation is due to the influence exercised upon the proletariat and the Russian Communist Party by the petty-bourgeois element, which is exceptionally strong in our country and which inevitably engenders vacillation towards anarchism, particularly at times when the conditions of the masses has greatly deteriorated as a consequence of the crop failure and the devastating effects of war ...” (Collected Works Vol 32, p245).

The ‘Workers Opposition’ was formally dissolved at the Congress. Note the class analysis of Lenin’s as to the formation of factions and the evolution of polemic within the party. Compare this method of analysis to the struggle within the American SWP, and one can pinpoint an analogous process in an entirely different context - ie, a small and isolated revolutionary party in which a petty-bourgeois faction evolved, vacillating under the pressure of anti-Soviet hysteria in a country dominated by the most powerful bourgeoisie on the planet.

Lenin’s 1900 concept of Party democracy becomes completely meaningless, even ludicrous, in the above contexts. It is symptomatic of petty-bourgeois insecurity to seek refuge in obscure polemics from the embryonic stages of Russian Marxism from which to criticise the role of revolutionaries forty years later, let alone apply the same concepts to the contemporary movement. This misunderstanding of the spirit of Lenin also acts as a cover for the CPGB’s endemic sect-like utterings about Trotskyism. Unlike our present-day CPGB ‘Leninist’ theologians, who have raised the issue of open polemic as the Ark of the covenant, by which Trotskyism is historically condemned to ‘Partyism’, Lenin finds himself condemned too - but in 1921, not 1900.

“The Workers’ Opposition said: ‘Lenin and Trotsky will unite’. Trotsky came out and said: ‘Those who fail to understand that it is necessary to unite are against the Party; of course we will unite, because we are men of the Party.’ I supported him. Of course, comrade Trotsky and I differed: and when more or less equal groups appear within the Central Committee, the Party will pass judgement, and in such a way that will make us unite in accordance with the Party’s will and instructions” (Collected Works Vol 32, p204).

I would suggest that Mark does not hasten to denounce Trotskyism so readily until he returns to the school of Leninist Partyism.

Bruce Wallace
Dundee Scottish Militant Labour

Bad bombs

Eddie Ford (Weekly Worker July 14) accuses me and Roy Bull (from different angles) of substituting “illusions and wish fulfilment” for Marxist analysis. Eddie’s ‘analysis’ in the end comes down to not having an analysis of republican military strategy at all. Whereas Marxism is capable of interpreting the world, in all its diverse aspects, is capable of citing all matter and material into the social process of class society, and of assembling the whole into a coherent symbiosis, Eddie comes up with the anti-scientific, anti-Marxist revelation, “There are no good or bad bombs”.

What can this mean? Does it mean that bombs are inanimate and therefore, in abstract and isolated from their social context and physical existence, they have no inherent morality? Well, yes - on the level of pure abstraction, but no - in any context a Marxist would put the object. Material things, from weapons of mass destruction to sex aids, live in a social context, and it is the social context and the purpose for which they were made and the use to which they are intended, the application of social and class consciousness, which gives an otherwise abstract object purpose and, by proxy, morality.

The Nazi death camps on the level of pure abstraction, robbed of their social and historical context, are not evil or goodness either: they are simply bricks and mortar - but how would a Marxist, setting them into their social context and their designed purpose of genocide and political extermination, exclude the human motivation and reactionary intention of their construction?

Perhaps Eddie is less philosophical and simply means, if any bomb is anti-imperialist by design, regardless of its target and victim - a school, a crèche, a hospital, an old folks’ centre - it is as sound as a bomb in an army barracks or police station. All bombs are good bombs, and Marxists just sit tight and allow our destinies to be determined by forces, it seems, not only outside our control but also our criticism, no matter how comradely and supportive.

A Marxist makes a precise distinction between the violence of the oppressed and the violence of the oppressor - they must actually know which one is which.

Your letter comes not so much to praise the IRA as to denigrate them as nationalist headbangers incapable of discussion, debate and listening to what their comrades this side of the water have to say. As I said in the column, it is not only our right to criticise counter-productive actions: it is our duty. If all you are going to do is uncritically cheer-lead from the sidelines, your contribution to the development of the socialist ideology within the republican movement is less than useless.

War is the continuation of politics by other means. What Eddie does is to analysis all the words, the manifestos, the conferences, the speeches, but when we move onto other means, the analysis stops, and becomes just one thing - one bomb is the same as any other damn bomb. Bombs reflect political trajectories, political sentiments, social moralities, class consciousness or lack of it. As a matter of fact the armed struggle and the way it is conducted reflects very much more sharply developing political consciousness. Of course our analysis, criticism and support continue when other means are deployed.

To equate my unconditional support for the IRA’s struggle over the last 20 years and the work I have done alongside the republican movement with either the bourgeois press or the social imperialism of Militant Labour or the Socialist Workers Party is indicative of the sharpness of Eddie’s analysis. I think it is hopelessly flawed and just plain inaccurate.

Dave Douglass
South Yorkshire

On howlers

Steve Hall in his article (Weekly Worker August 1) on the debate at the recent Manchester SA conference expressed dismay that I had committed such “howlers” as to suggest that the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (Usec) - the international to which Socialist Outlook is affiliated - is encouraging its British organisation in unity discussions with Militant Labour. However, having read his article and his report of the conference I find little to disprove my assertion that such a process is taking place.

Steve says that “exploratory and tentative discussions are taking place” between Socialist Outlook and ML. Well maybe I misjudged the pace of regroupment, but there is no doubt it is taking place. Indeed Steve makes it clear that he wants his criticisms of ML taken up with them by Socialist Outlook in the “joint discussions”.

Here is the rub. Steve is clearly unhappy about the direction which Usec is encouraging them to take. He exhibits a hostile and antagonistic attitude towards the prospect of regroupment with ML. Understandably so, as there are very great political differences between them, especially on the Labour Party. It is remarkable that he quite rightly accuses ML of not taking the question of revolution seriously and then goes on to say that the voting down of “a commitment to the return of a Labour government” was “the worst of the day and shows how besotted ML has become with ‘planting the flag’ electoralism”. Actually, Steve, it seems that, unlike ML, your organisation is the one which is obsessed, still bound hand and foot to voting Labour no matter how hard it is to justify doing so.

On the factual corrections: firstly my memory is that our comrade, Tam Burn, was the first to speak at the 1992 National Miners Support Network Conference. Indeed the fact that we applauded your important role in the event shows that it was not simply “wishful thinking” on our behalf in an attempt to take all credit for ourselves. Secondly, the question of whether the Fourth International Supporters Caucus was a ‘faction’ or ‘tendency’ within Socialist Outlook is a semantic one. They organised against the majority with their own discipline and political programme. Their size does not alter this.

Finally, I am glad Steve has gone into print publicly with his criticisms and ideas. Any unity, no matter how “tentative” is no use if only discussed among the members of the respective organisations. As I said in my original report, the class has a right to know how those who purport to lead it make their decisions. To keep the debate internal is to say that what the movement thinks is of no concern.

Anne Murphy
London