14.11.1996

Muddying the waters

Around the left

Marxists believe that everything is suffused with movement - matter, society, political and theoretical categories, etc. The moment you refuse to recognise this, and start to ‘freeze’ things in time and space, you end up with dogmatism. Reality is drowned under a welter of obfuscating labels and terms.

This cardinal ‘sin’ can be observed in many left publications, some of which specialise in hysterical denunciations of all and everything. A disquieting sense of unreality surrounds them. A classic example is Workers Hammer, bi-monthly publication of the tiny Spartacist League. This group seems to exist in a universe entirely of its own making, where it possesses the absolute truth about everything. In addition, SL members give the appearance of living in a sealed underground box inside a time-capsule, occasionally being forced to come up for air and (regrettably) encountering Earthlings.

In the world according to the latest issue of Workers Hammer, in an article on the SLP its readers are informed that, like Workers Power,“the CPGB (then The Leninist) ... denounced the ‘lack of a ballot’ in the miners strike”. Not true as such - but when did Workers Hammer allow little things like facts get in the way of a good ‘polemic’? However, it gets worse: “The CPGB’s credentials as a ‘left’ opponent of Scargill are bogus” (November/December 1996).

How come? Perhaps the SL thinks we have not been vigorous enough in our criticisms of Scargillism or Fisc? Well, not exactly. We are “bogus” because we “refuse to oppose the anti-working class Maastricht Treaty, and are part of the Militant-led Socialist Alliance, which is committed to electing a Blair government”.

All untruths. We can only presume that Workers Hammer is relying upon the ignorance of its non-UK readers, who are unfamiliar with the realities of British revolutionary politics. Just for the record, the CPGB has stated its opposition to the Maastricht Treaty on numerous occasions. No, the “Militant-led Socialist Alliance” is not committed to the election of a Blair government. Furthermore, the CPGB members inside the SAs, particularly the Scottish Socialist Alliance, do not want to see a Labour government - Tony Blair or not. As it so happens, the CPGB has criticised ML from the left on countless occasions, inside and outside the SAs - and long before the SAs ever existed.

The same goes, naturally, when it comes to Afghanistan. We are stupidly accused of having a “left-nationalist outlook, fundamentally derived from the Stalinist dogma of ‘socialism in one country’”. Therefore, in our coverage we “view the question strictly within the confines of Afghanistan”, just because we believe there was a revolution in 1978 and pointed to the treacherous nature of the Soviet bureaucracy.

Such ‘polemics’ serve no function except to prop up the grandiose self-delusions of SL and muddy the waters.

Not very clever, comrades.

Don Preston