Letters

UFO commies

I read with interest Paul Demarty’s piece in last week’s Weekly Worker, which included an inter alia mention of Posadas. For all but 11 of my 63 years of conscious political life I’ve been an anarchist, but I did wander off into the mountains of Trotskyism for some 10 years. For five of those years, I was a follower of comrade Posadas - indeed a member of the central committee of the British Posadist section. I do intend to write a reflective on that experience with an analysis of all their theoretical publications, when the current tempo of class struggle is less demanding.

Suffice it to say the UFO thing was never ever some central theme of Posadist perspectives. We had considered that Marxism must be capable of analysing any subject, from flower arranging to space technology. There were lots of reported sightings of UFOs around the world and particularly over Argentina in the 60s and 70s. Posadas simply made a hypothesis that if these beings had developed a technology capable of taking them beyond the speed of light and across vast tracts of the galaxies, it was probable they had dispensed with the technological fetter of wage slavery and capitalism. That all reports over long periods of history would conclude such beings meant us no harm and were pacifistic.

He concluded that they had probably developed some kind of communist system. Pure speculation, of course, but rooted in Marxist logic - until, that is, some buffoon in Belgium with a duplicator started turning out leaflets “appealing to the inter-galactic masses to come to the assistance” of a local iron foundry on strike. We never actually contemplated an outside intervention. Quite the contrary: the Posadists believed in the inevitability of nuclear war, and as such contended that the ‘workers’ states’ should launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against imperialism.

I always thought this aspect of their outlook was more memorable and terrifying than the damn flying saucers!

Dave Douglass
South Shields

UFO truther

I’m not sure if it was one of the goals of comrade Paul Demarty’s latest piece, but it did reaffirm the left’s non-interest in the topic of UFOs (‘People want to believe’ May 28).

I’m a Marxist. I do not “want to believe” in the idea of an extra-terrestrial presence, nor do I find it entertaining to imagine. I have slowly (involuntarily) become convinced though that it is true, and also that it soon could be acknowledged officially. When that happens, the reputation of many on the left who dismissed it will be hurt. If the Weekly Worker publishes this letter, it will serve as proof that at least one Marxist had it right!

Noa Rodman
email

UFO relevance

I was surprised at how similar Paul Demarty’s views are on the UFO issue to the original Soviet position. Both America and the Soviet Union had their own secret UFO files - in the latter case from the time of Stalin onwards

Stalin personally ordered a group of top-tier Soviet scientists to analyse the western UFO reports. The Stalin Panel included: Igor Kurchatov (the scientific director of the Soviet atomic bomb project), Sergei Korolev (the master engineer of the Soviet rocket and space programme) and Mstislav Keldysh (a leading mathematician and space theorist.)

The original Soviet conclusion, at least officially, was remarkably similar to the views put forward by Demarty: ie, the UFO issue was bourgeois propaganda for distracting the masses. This position changed later, but it shows how suspicious communists were at first over the issue. It wasn’t until glasnost that the Soviet state censorship over the issue was removed and UFOs were no longer simply dismissed as bourgeois propaganda.

Although slightly more relaxed, China had a similar view to the Soviet Union. Now you have to have a university degree to be a member of China’s official UFO organisation and many communists are such members, including military people, engineers and scientists. With the exception of Posadists, most communists in the west haven’t given any serious consideration to the UFO issue. Even the Vatican, which has its own UFO research body, is more informed on the issue than most western communists. The question is, as the Posadists argued, does the issue have any relevance to communism at all?

Astronomers estimate that there are between 100 billion to one trillion planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone. Next to this, the number of galaxies in the observable universe is estimated to be between 100 billion and two trillion (don’t ask me how they arrive at these figures).

Combine this with the fact that all the ancient cultures of the world on every continent speak of beings who came from the heavens and interacted with humans and were even involved in genetically engineering (ie, upgrading) the latter, resulting in the birth of many of the religions on earth, in particular the Abrahamic religions. It is obvious that the subject cannot be dismissed as bourgeois propaganda.

The theme of Christianity, a religion based on prophecy, when carefully decoded from a secular point of view, is essentially about a coming extraterrestrial intervention in human affairs, which the biblical seers presented as a religious narrative, as do the churches today.

In other words, using a religious narrative, the biblical seers have been telling us of a coming alien intervention, which in truth should be called an ‘open’ intervention, because many researchers believe that there has been covert intervention for thousands of years.

Whether people choose to believe this or not is not the decisive issue. The decisive issue is whether the prophecies come true or not. This latter point relates to whether precognition - ie, knowing the future before it happens - is real. One thing is certain and it’s that all Christians confuse prophecy with religion, when they are in fact two different things. Religion is theology; prophecy (or precognition) refers to knowledge of an event before it happens. If precognition is real, we can’t rule out some major surprises in the relatively near future.

Christians, with their religious interpretation of prophecy, would be the most surprised of all.

Tony Clark
For Democratic Socialism

YP Scotland

My Weekly Worker letter (plus the AI image I circulated) last week has provoked further machinations amongst the wreckage of the Your Party project in Scotland.

Jim Monaghan, freshly appointed CEC member, gave me a first sliver of information on a YPS WhatsApp group thus: “The sortitioned working group member for Glasgow is Nick Parker. Very much a real person and not a figment of Karie Murphy’s imagination.” So I found Nick Parker, who stood as a YP-backed Tusc candidate in the local elections and he knew nothing about the working group.

In subsequent exchanges Jim insisted he had chatted with Nick and plans to meet him in person soon. He also stated: “There are eight members in eight regions. They will be in place for about six weeks, helping setting up structures in Scotland. As a member you will hear about plans for Glasgow by email. There will be an initial branch covering the Glasgow parliamentary region. That branch will set up branches and develop things in their region in whatever way that members decide.”

He said the first branch launch for South of Scotland is taking place on June 6. This was also announced on the YP website with no further details. It turns out this is a Zoom meeting covering the whole of the parliamentary regions below the central belt, stretching from the east to west coasts, covering 10 constituencies, and have already somehow “been through the process of nominating and selecting branch officers”. I’ve come across the lead figure in this supposed branch - Ross McCann - he is clearly a paid-up member of the Murphia and recently barged through the still existing YP WhatsApp groups with Jim like he was his minder. As I said to Jim in response, it’s clear that these are not branches, but means of control under the guise of “hubs set up in communities rather than talking shops”, offering no party life whatsoever, except to give hyperbolic orders from on high.

I also told Jim that, until we see actual concrete proof of the working group, Nick Parker must remain as that old Scottish concept with the same initials - Not Proven!

I’ve made repeated attempts this week to find out what guidelines I’ve broken to be removed from the YPS “unofficial” Facebook group, but moderator Hayley Green has not replied at all and so left me in a Catch-22 limbo by only stating, “If you want to rejoin, then apply at a later date when you are willing to follow the group guidelines.”

Another group I’ve just been removed and barred from is the Marxist Caucus Community WhatsApp group, which I raised in last week’s letter. There was a lot of petulance and swearing at my daring to highlight the political differences over AI use and my description of most of them as “deep-fried left nationalists”. Then with no explanation at all I was removed from the group. Most shamefully this was done in the middle of a discussion I was having there with an Iranian comrade about the Lego animations I featured in the letter. He was as surprised as me at my removal and said: “I left too. When they treat an experienced leftist like you this way, staying in such a group is pointless.”

Another “experienced leftist” in the group, Bob Goupillot, said he publicly argued that I shouldn’t be barred and the door was now open to me again. Except it wasn’t and I remain excluded. The intolerance and emotional reactions to political differences seems particularly heightened amongst those younger comrades.

They really don’t like my description of ‘deep-fried nationalism’, but it’s apt and fits what’s rife in Scotland now. The deep-fried Mars Bar invented by a Scottish chip shop made news around the world and I’m suggesting a parallel with the supposedly unique nature of the national question here. They’re both recent phenomena, taking hold since the rising Scottish National Party vote from the late 1970s, but are only skin-deep and flaky - a battered reaction to Thatcher and the rightward shift of Labour.

This is all given much deeper analysis and evisceration in Jack Conrad’s three Scotland Weekly Worker supplements in December 2020. I will add those with the next post on my new Substack, where it’s possible to combine the AI-generated images with letters and links. Just like with AI and how the CPGB uses tech possibilities for the live weekly Online Communist Forum, seeking new ways to offer a communist alternative to the fragmentation of the left is vital right now.

Such disintegration and rightward drift is further exposed in reactions to the YPS wreckage, with the new party due to develop from the interim Scottish executive committee split from YP now “going back to the drawing board”, as “The soft launch has been postponed again due to a number of factors.” They’ve not even been able to come up with a name that isn’t already taken - ‘People Before Profit’, ‘Scottish Left Alliance’ and ‘Scottish Socialist Alliance’ (the latter was discounted, when it was pointed out it was the earlier name of the Scottish Socialist Party).

All this is encouraging ‘broad-front localism’ to be looked on as the solution. Most prominent in that is the former Leith and North Edinburgh YP branch, which has now come out as ‘Leith Organises’, launching a community listening exercise to go knocking on doors to find out what folk want. This has been lauded by many, including Duncan Chapel in the Ecosocialist Scotland group and his Red Mole Substack as “building a new kind of left politics through community roots, worker solidarity and ecosocialist campaigning”. He’s been advocating that the “Leith model” be rolled out across Britain as the real way for the new Socialist Federation to develop a left programme from the ground up.

So localism, broad-frontism and nationalism on one side, bureaucratic control-freakery and Labourism on the other. With an ear worm of Gerry Rafferty’s clowns and jokers ringing away, I’ll now get back to ChatGPT and that deep-fried image for the next Substack issued in my name …

Tam Dean Burn
Glasgow

YP feds

Things are moving quickly in Your Party. Not because of anything its central executive committee has done, but in response to what they have only grudgingly done at a snail’s pace because of the prevarication of Jeremy Corbyn and his acolytes. Branches are only just being formed and only then in places where the CEC feels that its writ runs - mainly outside the urban conurbations, where the bulk of the politically active membership is. Of course, lots have simply left YP altogether - many to join the Greens or just save their money.

In the meantime, hundreds of activists in ‘proto-branches’, who, despite the inaction of the CEC, have worked the hardest to give YP a campaigning profile, are determined that their efforts should not be in vain. One of the first initiatives to keep the proto-branches together was the Member’s Charter. Initially, this was an attempt to bring pressure to bear on the CEC to do something, after the victory of Corbyn’s slate in the CEC election. This was quickly overtaken by events, as the CEC ignored conference decisions, particularly on holding dual membership, and began a witch-hunt of the left.

At a conference of the Members Charter last Sunday, May 31, those who had signed up voted overwhelmingly to rename themselves Socialist Federation. This has been widely portrayed as a ‘split’, but many taking part were at pains to point out that they were still active members of Your Party and wanted to coordinate and organise the left. The decision to form a ‘federation’ was made, as distinct to a looser ‘network’. Motions to form a party directly were withdrawn.

Claimed participation ranged from 220 to 250, with about 110 in the meeting at any one time. Some of those present were explicitly representing other organised groups, such as the Spartacists and the International Bolshevik Tendency. Most, however, were left activists in YP, determined to see through what they joined YP for: to develop a mass socialist party that could stand in elections but not be wholly defined by electoral politics.

What was most encouraging was that here were people determined to work together in a comradely way, debate and form an organisation that would have a lasting legacy. The organisers did a phenomenal job of making it happen. Many different groups submitted - sometimes long - motions or statements, and these were grouped in such a way as to give attendees the best possible chance to have their say before they were voted on. Those with the greatest number of votes will be composited and debated at the next conference, provisionally booked for the June 28, where attendees will be able to submit amendments.

Aside from the name change, attendees also overwhelmingly supported the establishment of the Socialist Education and Debate Association (SEDA) as “a distinct organisation”: “The idea is to bridge across all factions of the socialist left, and that includes to bridge the divide between the SF and the DS [Democratic Socialists] and the Connections group, and to involve groups who are nothing to do with YP or have left it.”

The upcoming, in-person YP Connections conference in Sheffield on June 6 will provide a further opportunity for YP activists to debate the future of the left and preserve some of the energy that was a feature of the Grassroots Left slate in the CEC election. Similarly, what had been the Democratic Socialists in Your Party has now reconstituted itself as Democratic Socialists and by the time this is published will have held a meeting on June 3 on ‘Why we need a socialist democratic party’, prior to its formal relaunch in Sheffield, where representatives of SEDA will also be attending.

Of course, not everyone who participated on Sunday has greeted the launch of SF with enthusiasm. Max Shanly, who for a while held a leading position in Grassroots Left, posted on X: “I’m not a member. I don’t believe in federations - they’re rarely coherent and never last”, before going on to say of Sunday’s conference: “I attended for a bit to present a proposal; it didn’t pass. I stuck around for a while, because I felt that there was an overall lack of seriousness and the contributions from the floor were poor, so I left early. I remain unaligned.” Previously, having been defeated in a vote to liquidate DSYP, he left to try his luck with Members Charter.

I was pleased to be an early signatory to the Members Charter. I am glad I stayed for the whole of the conference on Sunday because, notwithstanding Max’s assessment, there are good, committed comrades in SF. I’m looking forward to the Connections conference in Sheffield and the formal relaunch of DS as a membership organisation with a developing communist programme.

On the left and in the wider world, things are moving quickly. Communists/socialists need to work together to resist intensifying state repression. Freed from the leaden-footed Corbyn, tied as he is to Labourism, SF have an opportunity to forge unity. It could be objected that the politics of SF has yet to cohere, but, as far as I’m concerned, that is as good a reason as any to actively participate in it.

Ian Spencer
email

YP’s St Jeremy

I recently wrote an article for The Left Lane titled ‘Why Jeremy Corbyn should step down as Your Party leader’. Your diligent correspondent, Carla Roberts, and I have written more about this alleged (I guess that’s the best word) “mass socialist working class party” over the past 18 months than any other journos on the left and I thought it was time for at least one sum-up piece.

After I submitted it and reread it, I thought I had not focused enough on two aspects of Your Party’s tortuous history: (1) its actual political ideology or line; (2) the fundamental flaws in its democracy. Addressing point 1 in more depth would have taken another 1,000 words at least (another article is needed for that), while the actions of some fellow YP members have taken care of answering point 2.

Shortly after a mate of mine successfully posted the piece on the unofficial Facebook group called ‘Your Party’, one of the group’s moderators ripped it down. Although it says “this page was created by like-minded people to discuss the policies and politics of Your Party”, their silencing action showed these words are as truthful as the idea that YP is “member-led”. Criticising Saint Jeremy is not allowed.

So I offer it up to Weekly Worker readers (go to theleftlane.media/why-jeremy-corbyn-should-step-down-as-your-party-leader) for open debate and criticism - the only way a successor party will be built.

Alan Story
Norwich

Cuba disgrace

Eddie Ford follows the well-worn and disgraceful path of the British left in dealing with its Cuba problem, relying on anecdotes and opinion presented as fact (‘Under siege and still resisting’, May 28).

It is a pity that he did not leave his article to the few paragraphs that show some basic appreciation of the pressures on the Cuban revolution in the face of 65 years of US aggression. He does not pay tribute to its massive achievements, and what humanity stands to lose if imperialism triumphs. Where is the praise for an underdeveloped, formerly oppressed, neo-colonial state, which built a system of universal healthcare free at the point of use? Free universal education, even up to university level? An educated professional and technical population, over half of whom are women?

Cuba created a biotechnology industry which has created pioneering treatments for cancer, against mother-baby transfer of Aids, five Covid vaccines; sent hundreds of thousands of healthcare professionals across the world to deal with crises such as Ebola and Covid. It is a state where working class democracy exists to the full, where there is the most advanced stand on LGTBQ+ rights in the new Family Code. Why decline to mention the fight and defeat of apartheid forces in Angola and then support for the liberation of Namibia? Or its solidarity with the Palestinian people?

Instead we get a miserably shallow dive, at which the petty bourgeois left excels, when forced to deal with Cuba. Ford says: “It is perfectly legitimate to critique early revolutionary Cuba, seeing that there are those who held it up as a model - and still do.” Why? What is the purpose of such a critique? For a left in Britain which has spent decades defending a racist, imperialist, war-mongering Labour Party we can only expect a prelude to some counterrevolutionary sentiment. Does he mean as a model to be followed in Britain? Britain is a major imperialist power which has, like all imperialist powers, ensured the political domination of a privileged layer of the working class over the mass of the working class.

The problems we face in Britain are quite different from those faced by revolutionaries in Cuba. Here, the obstacles are created by the left, describing themselves as ‘revolutionary socialists’, while obsessing over electoral politics. In this context, communists have to point to the examples cited above as a demonstration of what socialism can achieve even in an underdeveloped country, showing that it is both possible and necessary, and that it will never be achieved by wretched electoral vehicles, such as Your Party et al.

The petty bourgeois or social-democratic left constantly works to expunge the revolutionary essence of the Cuban revolution from the records. Ford’s superficial account of Guevara’s approach to revolutionary foci is supposed to do the trick, especially if you ignore the parts where Che spoke of the need to build alliances with the urban movement, where there were already revolutionary processes taking place.

But this is not the end of Guevara’s achievements. His extensive theoretical contribution on the subjective element of building socialism, the need for a constant development of political consciousness as part of the development of the productive forces is unequalled since Lenin. (see H Yaffe Che Guevara: the economics of revolution, 2009). It is one of the many great legacies of the Cuban revolution as much as it is of an outstanding theoretician. Ford does not address this - why? Is he completely ignorant of it?

So when Ford repeats the mantra, “it no longer represents a model to follow”, there is simply arrogance: ‘We socialists here in Britain may have achieved nothing - indeed we may be in full and ignominious retreat - but, by jingo, we can tell others across the world how a socialist revolution has to be done or not done.’

We in the RCG are often told that we are uncritical of the Cuban revolution. What the left misses is that the fiercest critics of their revolution are the Cuban people themselves - fierce because they are contantly having to fight intellectually and politically for the best path forward to defend their achievements, when they know that these best paths are never going to be the ideal ones, while imperialism exists. Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! regularly covers the changes, the retreats, the recoveries, the advances, as Cuba grapples with the operation of the law of value. We unashamedly engage with what the Cuban leadership thinks and says, and certainly do not condescendingly dismiss them as ‘Stalinists’ or ‘bureaucrats’. We are clear: the true communists in Cuba are within the Communist Party of Cuba, and we unreservedly stand with them and the Cuban people.

Trashy dismissals of our standpoint - with labels like ‘Castroists’, ‘Maoists’, ‘sub-Maoists’, ‘Stalinists’, ‘third worldists’, ‘Guevarists’, ‘ultra-leftists’, ‘dogmatists’ (we have had all of these) - betray the unwillingness of the social-democratic left to get out of its self-serving framework and engage with questions of imperialism and the working class struggle in the imperialist countries (with those divisions repeatedly described by Lenin), or, in alliance with the oppressed, in the underdeveloped countries.

In Britain, for the RCG that means ending the the ludicrous ambition of creating a new social-democratic party or imagining that it can be perfected under a different name; it means ending the obsession with the overtly reactionary trade unions as the primary or even exclusive site of working class struggle.

The struggle to defend the Cuban revolution is the vital question of the day.

Robert Clough
Revolutionary Communist Group

One of the Neets

I would like to comment on the report by former Blairite health minister Alan Milburn into the one million young people aged 16-24 who are ‘Neets’ - ‘not in education, employment or training’ (Polly Toynbee has written a useful article about the report in the May 28 edition of The Guardian, which I recommend people read).

The report points out that 84% of ‘Neets’ want to work or get into training or education. Milburn points to the 1.6 million first-rung jobs that have vanished in the past 20 years. He also notes the 35% fall in apprenticeship starts in the past decade and the loss of retail and hospitality jobs.

The report reminds me of my own experience on leaving school in 1978. After being unemployed for three years, I reluctantly enrolled on a mathematical sciences sandwich course degree. When I finished my degree I worked in the economic services section of the Welsh Office before returning to my hometown due to home sickness.

I then got a job as a part-time bookkeeper with the community programme, before working as an accounts clerk until I got ill with psychotic depression in 1992. My community psychiatric nurse told me to ask my employer if I could work part-time. My employer said no, so I left. I have been unemployed and in receipt of disability benefits ever since then. In 2004 I was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome - most people with that don’t work. At the same time, if someone leaves their job for mental health reasons, their chances of working again are zero.

Alan Milburn’s report says that 53% of Neets are economically inactive - many are in receipt of health and disability benefits due to mental illness. I can understand why we should be worried about them. Without state support their chances of ever working are very slim.

John Smithee
Cambridgeshire

Lost generation

I think it’s a case of déjà vu after hearing that youth unemployment has topped the one million mark again. I sense there was little genuine sympathy for youth overall - just a case of patronising them: a ‘lost generation if we don’t push them into doing something’ (lost to benefits, of course, without saying what the real cause is!). It brought back to me memories of the 1980s, when unemployment topped over three million, and only benefit and fear kept the workers in line.

At least now there is a realistic notion that it would be insanity to cut benefits or publish the figures of working disabled, let alone the non-working disabled (if there is such a thing - most disabled individuals do voluntary work when possible). Unrecognised and undervalued by the government and media, few get to hear about Unite Community (the voluntary sector of Unite the Union) and play their part in the community across the country.

Pat McFadden, the secretary of state for work and pensions, treats these individuals with contempt, as exposed in the Epstein files. His statements about cutting personal independent payments would fit in nicely with Tory policy on the ‘undeserving’!

Yet another embarrassment, which leaves us yet again wondering how many ‘secret Conservatives’ in the Labour Party actually want them back in office (not to mention the boost for the dangerous Reform, whose spectre haunts society). Many ex-Labour supporters will find it hard to vote for them again - it’s scary to think how out of touch Labour really is now.

Ian Reynolds
Aylestone

Radical centre?

The former prime minister with seven living successors does not speak for the centre, radical or otherwise. It is we who seek to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. In the struggle for economic equality, the leading role belongs to those who suffer most from its absence - namely the working class - while in the struggle for international peace the leading role belongs to those who suffer most from its absence: namely the working class and the youth.

Social solidarity is an expression of personal responsibility, which is protected by social solidarity. International solidarity is an expression of national sovereignty, and national sovereignty is protected by international solidarity. Equality and diversity must include economic equality and class diversity, regional equality and regional diversity, the equal sovereignty of diverse states, and equal respect for diverse opinions within a framework of free speech and other civil liberties, including due process of law with the presumption of innocence, requiring that conviction be beyond reasonable doubt.

All of this is opposed by the EU, Nato, the World Trade Organisation, International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Then there is the anti-industrial Malthusianism and misanthropy of the Green agenda, the treatment of identity politics as equal or superior to class politics, the treatment of gender identity as equal or superior to sex (‘biological sex’), and the cancel culture, of which our people have always been the principal victims. We also have the erosion of civil liberties, the stupefaction of the workers or the youth, the indulgence of separatist tendencies in any of the three parts of Great Britain, plus the failure to recognise that a sovereign state with its own free-floating, fiat currency had as much of that currency as it chose to issue to itself, with readily available fiscal and monetary means of controlling any inflationary effect, under democratic political control.

David Lindsay
Lanchester