Letters

Rescue operation needed

In her article, ‘WRP’s second wish’ (Weekly Worker October 24), comrade Lee-Anne reveals an idealist view of party building. She writes: “Now is the time to develop the theoretical and practical revolutionary organisation, the party that can turn the tide of working class defeat ... the Socialist Labour Party is one important site for this process of Partyism.”

Whilst I have no quarrel with the latter proposition, as a tactic appropriate for the present situation, I take issue with the first point. Clearly for her, she puts the cart before the horse. She believes that it is possible to build a Marxist party - of the Leninist vanguard type - in advance of the emergence of a new workers’ vanguard (the most politically advanced workers, as a result of their own struggles), and the coming mass struggles (such as those in France and Germany over the past year).

The implication behind her concept of ‘Partyism’ is that a Marxist theoretical understanding of the present, and the development of a programme of action for the working class, can be worked out in advance, ready to be imposed on the workers - not just from the outside but also from above. It flows from the same method which Lukács used in order to legitimise the Stalinist bureaucratic party. As István Mészáros says in Beyond capital,this is an “idealised solution”: it means that whilst reification dominates the consciousness of “each individual worker - only a fully conscious agency (the Party) which by the very definition of its nature escapes these determinations, can offer a glimmer of hope” (p326).

That is why it is impossible to build such a party as the necessary lever or material mediation at the moment. To have such a conception of party building, as Meszaros says, is to turn this into an “abstract postulate”. That is the real significance of the CPGB’s ‘Partyism’.

I would suggest that in the immediate future, only the necessary regroupment of revolutionary nuclei is possible. This requires a rescue operation for Marxism, the retrieval of its existing achievements at the level of theory and programme from its Stalinist and revisionist detractors. Without this, it will not be possible to develop Marxism further, in the light of the present. But for such a regroupment, a more open form of organisation is needed.

As a first step we must try to resolve the fundamental questions of our Marxist heritage - such as the national question, the nature of the Marxist method itself, etc - by means of open and honest debate before we can even consider the task of building a vanguard party, based on democratic centralism and a disciplined, educated cadre. At the same time this can only be achieved by means of new vanguard workers. For it is the latter who will provide the link between Marxism and the coming mass struggles.

Otherwise, you will continue to alienate those comrades who have fundamental differences with the CPGB (ie, over the Bosnian issue - see my article, ‘The WRP and Bosnia’, in Weekly Worker December 5). Thus, despite your declared aim - not to build yet another organisation which is “the property of another sectarian clique” - this is all that you will end up with.

John Reed
London

Revolutionary regroupment

On December 15 around 50 comrades attended the forum on revolutionary regroupment organised by the Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International (LCMRCI), the Committee for a Revolutionary Regroupment (CRR) and the Workers International League (WIL).

The meeting started with the reading of a message from Workers Voice (USA) and solidarity messages from the LCMRCI groups in Bolivia, Denmark and Peru amongst others.

Dave Bedggof, Richard Price and Jonathan Joseph were agreed the idea that the working class is suffering a reactionary and democratic counterrevolutionary offensive and that the destruction of the Stalinist regimes at the hands of capitalism, not through a proletarian revolution, was a retreat. The new period urges the necessity for a revolutionary regroupment of all consistent Bolsheviks forces.

The Spartacist, Lutte Ouvrière (France), the Revolutionary International League, Workers Power, the PTS (Argentina) and other groups and comrades contributed to the debate. One comrade from Socialist Outlook announced his desire to discuss his integration in the rapprochement process. The WIL announced that its international tendency, the Leninist Trotskyist Tendency, has a new section in Sweden. The LTT already has comrades in eight countries while the LCMRCI has comrades in five countries.

The debate was quite democratic and indicated that a very progressive step is being taken.

John Stone
LCMRCI

Simplistic

In my letter (Weekly Worker November 21) criticising Nick Clarke’s uncritical support for the Campaign Against Domestic Violence, I did not “deny the existence of domestic violence as a social problem”, as Anne Murphy (December 5) alleges.

Nor did I claim that men suffer more at the hands of women than the other way round, as she and Jennifer Erbé in the same issue imply. I noted the finding of a Mori poll, which I said “purported” to show that more men claimed to have been assaulted than women.

I too think that the findings are unlikely to be an accurate reflection of the true situation. But to describe them as “spurious” just because they do not fit in with your preconceived idea of how things ‘ought’ to be is simply dogmatic.

This dogmatism also shows itself in assertions that bourgeois courts are biased against women because they do not take into account the provocation of abusive male partners when trying women accused of assaulting male partners. Earlier this week a woman was put on probation after pleading guilty to the manslaughter of her husband. The judge said she had shown “truly remarkable patience” in the face of constant provocation. Yet Anne writes: “There have not been any breakthroughs in convincing the judiciary of the plight of victims of domestic violence, nor are there likely to be.”

This reminds me of the claims of much of the left that racism is institutionalised, despite the clear evidence of everyday reality that the British bourgeoisie has an ‘official’ anti-racist ideology. Similarly a feministic form of ‘equality’ is rapidly gaining ground over the notion that women ought to be subordinate to men.

Many individuals at all levels of society still have deep racist or male chauvinist prejudices. This tendency is more likely to affect the ultra-reactionary judiciary: the same judge also praised the defendant’s “loyalty” to her husband. But to imagine that the state somehow condones or even encourages violence against women is a big mistake.

Anne ignores the fact that even for the bourgeoisie it is becoming more and more unacceptable that “women are made to appear as ‘things’, to fulfil the needs of men, domestically or sexually”.

Thus the straightforward translation of the bourgeois oppression of women (in all the manifestations she describes) into “the threat or actuality of violence within the home” is far too simplistic. To imply that all or most male abuse of women arises as a result of this reification is in my view unsubstantiated.

Whatever the complex causes of individual acts of domestic violence, it is certainly true, as Julie Mills writes (November 28), that “women suffer far more than men when they are involved in a violent relationship”. Julie outlines the reasons why it is more difficult for women to escape such circumstances.

So, although I agree with Anne that bourgeois ‘rehabilitation’ for male offenders should most certainly not be one of our demands, I disagree when she implies that Nick’s other points of “more refuges, quality alternative housing, decent levels of benefit” are not worth campaigning for.

The overwhelming underlying cause of domestic violence, no matter whether men or women are the victims, is the build-up of frustration arising from the alienated nature of bourgeois society. The bourgeoisie must be made to pay, and Nick’s demands, just as much as Anne’s, can be made part of the “link with the fight for revolution”.

Roger Dickson
North London

Interested

A year or so ago, I had a short discussion with two North-West London comrades of the CPGB, selling the Weekly Worker. I mentioned then that I had been on the periphery of the old Communist Party for 30 years and then a member of the Labour Party and of the Socialist Campaign Group Network for the past 13-14 years.

In May - following the liquidation of clause four and related events in the old Labour Party - I resigned from New Labour.

So I would be very pleased to receive back copies of the CPGB theoretical journal for 1996, recent pamphlets, etc and copies of the Weekly Worker for the coming period. I am particularly interested in recent developments in the Soviet Union and activities and discussions in the new Socialist Labour Party.

Alan Baker
Middlesex

Point scoring

Yet again the role of Don Preston’s column, ‘Around the left’, has left me puzzled. Take Weekly Worker December 5, for example.

I am a regular reader of both the Weekly Worker and Workers Power, but Don’s report of WP’s change of heart on the national question left me cold. To my mind, it came across as a churlish, schoolyard ‘I told you so’, rather than a mature, political appraisal of an organisation’s move on the national question.

I sympathise with Don only so far as he has little to go on. Understanding WP’s change from a position which bordered on the chauvinist to one which is almost parallel to the CPGB’s federal republic position requires not a little reading between the lines. However, rather that merely pointing it out in passing, this is the major point of his column.

I am personally heartened that Workers Power are being moved on such an important issue. It is surely an occasion to stress the positive rather than engage in petty, sectarian point scoring.

Martin Blum
South London

Great blunder

Readers of my column occasionally notice apparent surrealistic lines and unassociated text, along with unfinished sentences or unknown or unheard of sayings. Sharp-eyed polemicist have loudly proclaimed, ‘That just doesn’t make sense’. Others have put it down to premature (perhaps) senility, while others have concluded that I am on something.

To all these I would wish to explain that the column is dictated over the phone, to an answering machine and then transcribed. Sadly the ‘north/south’ language divide often leads to southern transcribers getting the translations wrong, and making a guess at the text.

I would not normally spend time explaining except for the last great blunder, in my review of Brassed off (see Weekly Worker December 12). The well-known anthem, ‘Scots wahae’, become ‘Scots were here’, and since I do not wish to be known as a complete poltroon, or to be suspended from the Tyne Bridge, I hope this will set the record straight.

Dave Douglass
South Yorkshire