Letters

No shibboleths

In his article ‘Practice through theory’ (Weekly Worker November 7), Phil Sharpe has an irritating habit of making up quotations which he then puts into other people’s mouths. It is rather like the straw-man method, where a dummy of the opponent is set up to be knocked down.

One of these quotes he attributes to Cyril Smith and New Interventions: ‘Look at all these problems within Marxism: it is not to do with Marx. Let’s put it onto Leninism and Stalinism.’

He then goes on to accuse us of “resurrecting the pure, infallible Marx”. I don’t know where he gets his quote or his interpretation. The editorial board of New Interventions is made up of comrades from different backgrounds with different allegiances. This may be a good thing or a bad thing but that is the way it is. We are aware that socialism and Marxism is in a crisis - in theory, in practice and in organisation - mainly because of the collapse of ‘communism’ in the Soviet bloc.

The aim of our magazine, as stated in the inside cover, is “to provide a forum for discussion unfettered by any orthodoxy or party line. Socialists of all shades are invited to participate.”

We welcome comrades who ask the awkward questions, not those who think they know all the answers. This means no shibboleths, no blind spots, no gurus, no yes-men, no cookbooks. It also means trying to build some self-reliance from below in using the Marxist method of dialectical materialism.

Clearly we need to understand this method philosophically, as Phil points out, in order to use it - not to deify or reify Marx, Lenin or Trotsky.

We welcome contributions to our next issue - the deadline is the end of November. The latest issue of New Interventions is available for £2 and Weekly Worker readers can obtain a free back issue by writing to New Interventions.

Dave Spencer
New Interventions

Jilted bride

Comrade Bateman (letters November 14) is to be pitied for literal mindedness - or is it selectivity? - if after “studying the letter” of the ‘egotistical’ London International Socialist Group comrades (Letters, September 26) he believes we rejected “rapprochement” with the CPGB (sic) because it did not meet the needs of “homesick communists”.

Briefly, in our letter we contrasted an historical conjuncture which saw the founding of the CPGB in August 1920 - where a native process of class formation spanning three decades of intense class struggle, intersected with the decisive impact of the October Revolution and the Bolsheviks’ initiative in forming the Communist International in 1919 with the present conjuncture marked by the retreat and defeat of the wider labour movement and the marginalisation of the revolutionary left.

Further, we argued that a start to reforging a Communist Party, rooted hand and brain in the working class, was the conscious task of the small minority of communist militants who have broken from what one CPGB (sic) comrade has aptly described as the “confessional” politics of most of the groups constituting the ghetto of marginalised Leninism (ie, those groups organising on the basis of this or that shibboleth or badge of identity which marks the sect mentality).

Nonetheless we also argued that democratic centralism was a premature basis to organise the small groups engaged in this embryonic stage of communist rapprochement and suggested the CPGB (sic) with its “overriding Partyism” had embarked on the “primitive accumulation of cadre” in opposition to genuinely engaging the process of rapprochement.

Note, comrade Bateman, there was nothing in our letter about the CPGB (sic) groaning under the weight of “Stalinist” baggage or being unattractively pint size - that is your particular projection.

So, comrade Bateman, I am not surprised you “find very little in Mark Fischer’s commentary (Weekly Worker September 26) to disagree with”, given both the hysterical moralism and the workerist ressentiment that characterised Fischer’s piece - a case of acting like the bride jilted at the altar when the two groups were not even engaged to be married. Indeed the Fischer/Lore Twilight Zone nonsense that the London ISG comrades had gone beyond the revolutionary pale and run scared of real revolutionary discipline was hardly serious, designed as it was to insulate the CPGB (sic) comrades from the fact that another group had rejected their conception of communist rapprochement.

Finally, comrade Bateman, it is hard to resist the conclusion that your loathsome remark that a “couple of London comrades” (was this a chorus?) told you the risk of losing the Derby ISG comrades in pursuit of rapprochement with the CPGB (sic) was a “price worth paying” is, as Freud would have said, motivated.

This is your vocabulary stuffed in the mouths of other comrades. Indeed at the SWP’s ‘Marxism ’96’ event this is how you summarised my position. Privately annoyed, I explained (ie, repeated myself) that comrades favouring rapprochement in the ISG would have to conduct an intense political argument to win the other comrades. I suggested the Derby ISG comrades who had only recently broken from the SWP were least likely to favour this course and we may not win the argument, but c’est la vie!

However it is interesting to see we convinced you, comrade Bateman, that rapprochement was conjuncturally the correct course.

Julian Alford
ISG

Ruthless vindictiveness

Here we are in 1996, two years after our initial transfer on a temporary basis from prisons in England, still entirely uncertain as to the nature of our stay here.

Every six months we must re-apply for a renewed extension to our transfer. Needless to say, these years of anxiety are taking a heavy toll on our families, particularly ageing parents who live constantly with the fear of our being returned to England.

Four of us are currently mounting the first legal challenge to Michael Howard’s refusal to grant us permanent transfer. The series of sinister obstacles erected to date throughout this legal challenge indicate the lengths to which the home office is prepared to go in order to evade a potential judicial direction to review their decision to refuse us permanent transfer.

The home office’s initial argument against us was based on the view that, if transferred permanently, we would gain from a substantial reduction in sentence. This argument centred around the inaccurate perception that sentences in the Six Counties operate on a consistent scale, where similar charges can be expected to incur similar sentences.

The legal team representing us had no trouble dismantling that argument, given the notorious inconsistency indicated in cases like those of Clegg and Thain, demonstrating the nonsense of presupposing our probable stay in prison.

Our barristers argued effectively that there was no evidence whatever supporting the view that we would gain from a reduction of sentence should we be permanently transferred.

Clearly without a leg to stand on in relation to this the core argument of the Crown case, the home office went to one of their ruthless extremes. On the week prior to our hearing they issued two of the prisoners taking this case, Paul Kavanagh and Tommy Quigley, with ‘whole life’ sentences, meaning that they are to die in jail. This sinister and perverted decision was then adopted to prop up the Crown’s argument in relation to sentence reduction.

The outrageous and relentless measures the Crown has taken in opposition to our successful pursuit of this case indicate both the precariousness of their case and the British government’s tyrannical handling of prisoners arrested in England. Our families feel directly penalised by this vindictive approach, which is having an increasingly adverse effect on their lives.

Issues like repatriation, temporary transfer and the atrocious treatment being meted out to prisoners in England are areas of grave concern, needing urgent and active attention.

We ask anybody reading this to approach any and all relevant groups and individuals with a view to raising the broad issues listed below at every opportunity.

Have all republican prisoners transferred to Ireland on a permanent basis

Allow all prisoners access to parole

Ensure the introduction of a humanitarian regime which recognises the rights of prisoners and their families

Martine Anderson, Ella O’Dwyer
Irish republican prisoners

Misdirected violence

I was disturbed by Nick Clarke’s article, ‘Catalyst of violence’, in the Weekly Worker of November I4. Nick wants us all to back the Campaign Against Domestic Violence, set up and led by Militant Labour, and in particular the protests it has organised outside seven prisons on November 23.

Nick makes a very good point in locating the source of most violence: “the capitalist system and the state that defends it”. He is absolutely right when he writes: “Poverty, alienation and the social conditioning of capitalist society which blight many families, one way or another, have a brutalising and destructive effect on relationships.” Violence, says Nick, “is not some genetic deficiency in men”.

But the problem is that the CADV is informed and influenced by the ideology of feminism - an ideology which points precisely to a “genetic deficiency in men”. Thus men, in contrast to women, are by nature violent. Men, not the state, are the problem. Any violence committed by women, according to this school of thought, must be in self-defence. It is the violence of the oppressed, hitting back at their oppressors. The CADV opportunistically goes along with this.

The Campaign Against Domestic Violence is in fact a misnomer. It is concerned only with individual acts of violence committed by men against women. In fact it is by no means an established fact that women are more likely to be the victims. The ‘Panorama’ programme on this subject (November 11) announced the findings of a Mori poll, which purported to show that 13% of women had suffered violence at the hands of a male partner, whereas 17% of men said they had been attacked by a female partner.

But the CADV implies that violent acts committed by women are always justified. The picket, outside women’s prisons, is to demand the release of at least 70 women jailed for killing male partners. The campaign concerns itself only with regulating the behaviour of atomised individuals and, within that context, always takes the side of women. Far from demanding the release of male killers, most CADV supporters think that men get off far too lightly. They demand that the state intervene in ‘the battle of the sexes’ - on the side of women. That is as far as their demands go in relation to the source of the violence.

Nick falls into this trap too. Implicitly accepting that individual men are the main perpetrators of violence, he calls for “rehabilitation programmes for male abusers”. Rehabilitation to what, Nick? To the standards of the bourgeois society? Perhaps men can be talked out of their alienation.

According to Nick, domestic violence is not only a matter for the state. Apparently it is quite legitimate for individual capitalists to interfere in the domestic behaviour of their employees. Thus the vice-chair of Rangers Football Club is quoted disapprovingly for not wishing to get involved in the private life of Paul Gascoigne.

We should vigorously oppose further controls on workers’ lives, whether by the bosses or their state, even in the domain of domestic violence. Taking the source of violence - capitalism - as our starting point, we need to conduct our own ‘rehabilitation’ - back to the ideology of the working class. Domestic violence - whether committed by men or women - is misdirected. Through organisation we must aim to redirect and channel it · back against the genuine oppressors.

Roger Dickson
North London

Reformist suicide

I wrote to you a short while ago complimenting you on your paper. I feel it is the best paper for the left. I was in the Communist Party of Britain and then moved to its Young Communist League, but after their continued support for the Labour Party I have resigned and am interested in joining the CPGB.

I must admit to a defeatist attitude of late. I just wish before the far left forces in this country vanish into history that there would be one last push for unity with drastic action to get the working and repressed people to act with the left to forcibly persuade a change of establishment.

I know there is a depressive and pervasive middle class opinion but that should be our reason to ignite the fire.

The pathetic reformism of the CPB and the no-hopers of the New Communist Party are full of words, but with no idea of revolution.

The working people in this country have become too used to the capitalist system, and the unions, like Labour, have become liberal. European systems seem fairer as the workers still have influence on their future. In this country the working class is pushed into a corner and many more are thrown into poverty, creating a growing lower class.

If the workers will not stand and unite, then we must try to gain support from these impoverished classes.

Only revolution can change capitalism now. Reformist action on behalf of the left is nothing less than its own suicide.

Ray Hastings
Nottinghamshire