Letters
Grow your own
I attended most of Communist University online this year and as usual there was a discussion about the usefulness of engaging with other political movements on the left.
The argument in favour of this is commonly that it is ‘a field of struggle’ and an opportunity to recruit new members. We heard stories of the various attempts to form parties on the left over the past few decades and I have briefly - in my relatively short life on the left - been involved with a few of them myself. They all end in disappointment. Extraordinary quantities of time and effort are expended by good comrades on creations that from an early stage look like three-legged horses. Your Party is the most recent example.
I came to the CPGB because I was persuaded by the arguments and presentations provided by its members - most notably the late Kevin Bean and Carla Roberts. A book group exploring Mike Macnair’s Revolutionary strategy and subsequent discussions with Yassamine Mather and Mike himself led me to join as a candidate member, then subsequently I became a full member.
In my view the cause of building a Communist Party is best served by clear presentation of the arguments for communism now, evidence-based discussion of attempts to implement communism in the past, and personal engagement by committed communists with those who can be persuaded to commit themselves.
I invite those who continue to put forward the argument that it is worthwhile engaging in the ‘field of struggle’ represented by organisations like Your Party to present their evidence of what substantive result such engagements have ever produced historically. How many people have joined the CPGB after becoming disillusioned with Your Party or any of its other inglorious predecessors?
I hope this letter provokes a flurry of responses filled with evidence of substantive benefits to convince me that I’m wrong!
Ken Syme
email
Lock ’em up
One thing I’ve found strange, as a long-time observer and recent member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is the leftist group doesn’t seem to do a lot of messaging about the need to lock up the fascist criminals in president Donald Trump’s administration.
I generally associate these kinds of demands with mainstream liberals who watch the MS Now TV station or alienated conservatives who read The Bulwark. And, yet, punishing such authoritarian lawbreakers for their domestic and international crimes is essential in my view. Without severe consequences, Republicans have demonstrated they will simply continue to radicalise.
When I wrote this on DSA’s internal forums, I was met by a good deal of trolling. I’d recently caused a bit of a stir, by arguing the socialist group should vote against self-avowed Marxist-Leninists seeking positions of DSA leadership, as Stalinism and its descendant ideologies were unapologetically anti-democratic. One person asked, who was the Marxist-Leninist now? Needless to say, prosecuting Trump and his cronies who have genuinely tried to overthrow the limited self-government we have is very different from Stalinist show trials. I don’t think these objections were made in good faith, so they’re not worth dwelling on.
One argument that appeared to be made in earnest was that the DSA has committed itself to police and prison abolition, so calling for fascist gangsters to be locked up would be hypocritical. For what it’s worth, I don’t consider myself an abolitionist in this sense. Even if police and prisons are dramatically transformed and called something else, I believe there will always be a need for people to enforce the law and a place to confine those who violently break it. While I’m all for forgiveness, if abolitionism is preventing you from supporting legal consequences for an aspiring dictator and his conspirators, who are unleashing terror at home and abroad, you should reconsider your politics.
That said, most of those writing on the forums seemed to agree that prosecuting leaders of the Maga movement was necessary and that, for whatever reason, the DSA didn’t seem to be making this demand a priority. A number of people added messaging on the subject would be immensely popular with the Democratic Party base, which is hungry for justice, when it comes to Republican malfeasance. Political layups don’t get much easier. The DSA should take the opportunity to give mainstream liberals what they want, while distinguishing the organisation from the do-nothing Democratic establishment.
All political progress in the USA is contingent on beating back the current fascist menace. The experience of president Joe Biden’s administration shows that attempts to turn the page on fascist criminality without imposing stiff legal consequences will only result in the far right coming back stronger and more radicalised. Most Democratic politicians are conflict-averse. Unless there is an overwhelming drumbeat within the party’s base demanding accountability for Trump and his coterie of fascist gangsters, liberal politicians will repeat the mistakes of Biden’s administration. The DSA should be beating this drum as hard as it can.
Jon Hochschartner
Connecticut
DSA ‘communists’
There was an interesting discussion about the upcoming US mid-term elections at the Online Communist Forum on Sunday August 30. There was also discussion on Trump’s reaction to the DSA - they’re all communists!
It is worth a mention, I think, regarding the reaction of the Democratic Party leadership to all these ‘leftists’ winning primaries. The said leadership has been in the habit of saying to ‘leftists’: ‘Well, you lost the primary - now you must campaign for the winning Democrat candidate.’
Apparently, they are not so keen on the converse case. A DSA candidate, on, say, $700,000, beats the ‘centrist’, on, say $7 million and the leaders are not quite sure what to do next. Leaders in Congress, the Senate and the individual states fear some small erosion of their absolute control - so who must they support? Their quiet support of Trump policies may get some unwelcome attention from the public.
Jim Nelson
email
Rojava closure
And so Rojava comes to an end: the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are about to become part of the new Syrian army under Ahmed al-Sharaa. With this, all Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria is being abandoned. The Women’s Defence Units, meanwhile, will take on the role of an “anti-terrorism police force”. This is what Mazlum Abdi, commander of the SDF, said on Syrian television.
The new Syrian state under Ahmed al-Sharaa is pro-western and particularly keen to maintain close relations with the United States, while under Bashar al-Assad it was geopolitically aligned with Russia and Iran. This, in all likelihood, is what this particular episode was always really about. Not human rights, not authoritarianism - and least of all the pursuit of egalitarianism, grassroots democracy or feminism - but great-power geopolitics.
Naturally, in the minds of many western leftists - some of whom showed great physical courage by volunteering for this misadventure - the matter went far beyond that. And it went far beyond that in the minds of the Kurds themselves, who have historically been repeatedly screwed over - and have now been screwed over once again.
But from the perspective of the state that supplied the SDF with weapons, special forces, logistical and medical personnel, vehicles, individual equipment, training, air support, intelligence and assistance on the ground - not for a brief period, but for roughly a decade, from the very formation of the SDF in 2015 until the point at which they ceased to be geopolitically useful - it was never anything other than this.
As with the SDF’s pragmatic dealings with Assad’s Syria, I’m not sure its alliance with the United States was ever a matter of ideological convergence. Rojava simply cooperated with whoever was willing to assist it at any given point. These were not moral choices, but practical ones. Unfortunately, choices have consequences.
I don’t necessarily think that one should be condemned simply for accepting arms from this or that power, if it is a matter of tactical necessity in a particular situation. But if you cooperate with a much stronger power over the course of a decade, receiving training, arms, intelligence, etc, then this is no longer simply a momentary tactical arrangement: you become integrated into the stronger partner’s strategy, while your own aims become subordinated to it. You become a proxy - and ultimately become liable to be abandoned or fucked up the arse by your patron at any time.
Maciej Zurowski
Italy
Totalitarian threat
Jon Hochschartner’s letter (August 27) reflects the contradiction on the left between democratic socialism and Leninist totalitarianism. This contradiction exists in every leftwing party, the most recent example being Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party. Many people on the left are in the camp of totalitarianism, even without realising it. (When I use this term I confine it to politics and culture, rather than applying it to the economic level of society. At the economic level, the more control humanity has over the economy, the better.)
It is of great importance for people on the left to understand the nature of this contradiction. At the present time most probably don’t realise that the ruling class can turn against private capitalism and nationalise the economy. All it will take is the complete collapse of the capitalist system, which I expect to happen any time before 2035. This can then be presented as a necessary measure in line with socialism. But a managerial revolution from above leads directly to totalitarianism. And a revolution from below can lead to the same place in the absence of democratic socialism.
In my view, although it can be traced earlier, the transition of the communist party from democratic socialism to totalitarianism began in 1921, with Lenin’s resolution formally banning factions in the party. This ban was supported by Trotsky, Stalin, Zinoviev and others, although previously the Bolsheviks had made a revolution and won a civil war without having to ban factions - a feat later repeated by the Communist Party of China.
The banning of factions in a socialist or communist party is politically telling us that a bureaucratic caste - ie, a totalitarian managerial stratum - has taken over the party. In other words, those who support a formal banning of factions in leftwing parties are the unconscious agents of the bourgeois tendencies. The class struggle exists in the party before and after the communist or socialist party comes to power.
It is the capitalist tendencies which seek to formally ban factions in the communist party. Lenin became an unconscious tool of the capitalist tendency within socialism, supported by others. He certainly wasn’t consciously seeking to support the managerial or bureaucratic stratum within socialism, whose modus operandi is totalitarianism at the political level.
As the unconscious tool of the totalitarian tendency on the left in conflict with democratic socialism, Leninism was bound to collapse sooner or later. But it’s important to realise that the totalitarian tendency within socialism doesn’t have to take a Leninist guise.
It’s also important to realise that the contradiction between the totalitarian and the democratic tendency is of a non-antagonistic nature. Hochschartner clearly recognises this without a conscious recourse to dialectics. Hence he correctly opposes the expulsion of ‘Marxist-Leninists’ from the Democratic Socialist of America.
It is time for all communist and socialist parties to declare themselves supporters of democratic socialism against the totalitarian tendency, which is behind the constant fragmentation of the left when not in power.
Tony Clark
For Democratic Socialism
Kill, kill, kill
Those of us with long memories (or a good connection to Dr Google) will remember Joe Hill, the activist and song writer, who was executed in 1915 by firing squad. As it is now over 100 years later, and with capital punishment absent from most European thoughts, one would have thought the question of firing squads was farthest from most people’s minds. Unfortunately, not in Trump’s USA.
The states which have carried out the most executions between 1976 and now are (no surprise here): Texas (600), Oklahoma (132), Florida (138), Missouri (102) and Alabama (84). Twenty-seven states have capital punishment, of which two (Oregon and Wyoming) have no inmates sentenced to death. The other 23 and Washington DC have abolished or established a moratorium over capital punishment. (Some federal crimes also carry the death penalty.)
Most people in Europe probably remember that between 1967 and 1977 there were no executions and many of us felt (hoped) that that was the end of capital punishment in the US. In 1972 the US Supreme Court changed all pending death sentences to life in prison. But then in 1976, with many of the states having introduced new death penalty laws, the Supreme Court reversed its decision.
The usual manner of killing by the state until now has been the lethal injection. However, various states have had problems with this method of death. In one state, the medical team had problems with an IV line and the convict had to be returned to his cell. The publicity was lethal itself. Other states have had problems because of an international boycott of sellers of the medical supplies used in an execution like this. One state took up nitrogen gas asphyxiation, which was then declared unconstitutional by Trump’s Supreme Court. (I guess even they couldn’t stomach the possibility of people dying by a slow form of strangulation.) Four firing squad executions have been planned since 2010, and of those two went terribly wrong, with the executed dying slowly and in great pain.
The state closest to actually executing someone by firing squad is Idaho. Originally they wanted to use it from July 1 but so far it hasn’t happened and there’s no information as to why. Idaho’s capital punishment law projects three volunteer shooters, known only to the state director of prisons and his deputy. Maybe the state can’t find the three (there is no problem with almost anyone getting guns and ammunition in the US). Maybe the state is weighing up the publicity if an execution goes wrong in an election year?
The very first execution by gun was in Jamestown in 1608, but its use after that in the US has been sparce (147 of civilian prisoners since Jamestown), possibly because of stories like the one in 1879, where the prisoner took 27 minutes to die. The French in World War I were more charitable - the highest ranking soldier, after the firing squad had finished their grisly job, then shot the executed in the head, thus making sure he was well and truly dead.
As Langston Hughes once wrote, “To think is much against the will. Better - and easier - to kill.”
Gaby Rubin
London
Fridaisation
The exhibition at the Tate Modern - ‘Frida: the making of an icon’ - presented a liberal sanitisation of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s work.
There were limited examples of her original work - made up for by lots of comparison work from other artists, dressing up pantomime-style in her image. Fridaisation was alluded to at the end point and without irony led directly to an overpriced gift shop for middle class tourists. There was only a passing inquiry into her personal, physical, blood-and-guts existence and zero mention of her communism and association with revolutionary social struggles.
There were lots of references to Frida as an “activist”, her support for “progressive causes” and her darling status as a ‘LGBTQIA’ icon completed a sickening hatchet job that she doubtlessly would have been the first to contest. There was no exploration of her technique (not the purpose of this ‘Frida for dummies’ effort), while ignoring the communist politics underpinning her work and associations veers into the appropriation of ‘our’ culture.
Whether this was deliberate or reflects ignorance on the part of the curators (seems unlikely), we are reminded that art is a terrain as much as the workplace, community or the field of ideas. As a long-term admirer of her work and an regular visitor to both Tate Modern/Tate Britain, this exhibition left me cold and resenting the £25 entrance cost for a disappointing afternoon.
Paul Cooper
Email