Letters

CPGB deficient

I have read Jack Conrad’s reply to my resignation letter. To the extent that the reply is accurate, it merely underlined the fact that I had no place in the CPGB. I fear his reply generally tended towards the ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’ attitude which, apparently, is the only explanation why people don’t stay in the CPGB. I am sure it is only character weakness that explains why people don’t stay in the organisation. And of course, pigs and DC-10s can fly. One advantage of resigning from an organisation is that you find out what they really thought about you, even as they sought to extract work and money from you. A rather bitter advantage, though.

I stick by what I wrote in my letter. I think the CPGB is deficient in internationalism. Jack Conrad proved it when he assumed my only reason for wanting to work with the DHKPC was my alleged desire to be a Turk. No. I want to be an internationalist. I will never be a Turk. Jack Conrad will never be anything other than a southern English intellectual who is not above writing some stupid things.

As to the “living dead”, the Russian-born communist Eugene Levine was put on trial, sentenced to death and executed in Bavaria in 1919 for his prominent involvement in the Munich Soviet. At his trial, he said: “We communists are the dead on leave of absence.” Perhaps I am “petty bourgeois” or “liberal”, but if I have to I will die for this cause, though I would rather live for it.

Andrew MacKay
Reading

May Day

We would like to invite you to attend May 1 1997 in Istanbul. We have a very large international delegation team. About 250,000 people will march through the streets of Istanbul and we would like you to be a part of this protest, one of the world’s largest. The programme is for five days: you will meet with students, lawyers and trade unionists and enter a prison to talk with prisoners and visit two shanty towns. Also, you will go to Galatasaray, where a protest takes place every Sunday for missing people in Turkey.

Dylan Kahraman
Devrimici Sol

Try harder

I was slightly bemused by the contribution of Revolutionary Democratic Group member Darren Wade to the debate on the Soviet Union (‘USSR: state capital?’ Weekly Worker January 23). I was particularly taken back by the comrade’s response to the Jack Conrad supplement (‘Genesis of bureaucratic socialism’ Weekly Worker December 19 1996), which he believes is “remarkably close to a Trotskyist position”.

It was unfortunate that comrade Wade fired off his polemic before reading the second part of Jack Conrad’s thesis (Weekly Worker January 9), which contains a stringent critique of Leon Trotsky and Trotskyism. However, even after taking this into account, it has to be said that a relatively careful reading of Conrad’s first supplement can only lead to conclusions which run contrary to Trotskyism. Also, to anyone one familiar with the literature and views of the CPGB/Weekly Worker over a fairly long period, the ideas and theories expounded in ‘Genesis of bureaucratic socialism’ would hardly have come as a thunderbolt from nowhere.

Comrade Conrad was merely articulating, deepening and developing a thesis which has been ‘floating around’ the CPGB for some time. Even though there are those who believe, mysteriously, that the CPGB/Weekly Worker has been ‘converted’ to a Trotskyist world view - it is never specified exactly when this apostasy occurred, I note - the antecedents of ‘bureaucratic socialism’ can clearly be detected in The Leninist, albeit in a far more primitive and half-understood form.

Yet it appears that comrade Wade is blissfully unaware of all this is, which is quite remarkable, given the close ties, and interaction, between the CPGB and the RDG. I am sure that if comrade Wade went to a member of a Trotskyist organisation, Workers Power say, and informed them that the views of Jack Conrad/Weekly Worker were “Trotskyist”, he would be met by gales of sardonic laughter.

In his polemic, comrade Wade makes the assertion that the views of Jack Conrad “could be described as close to Trotsky in its acceptance of state property as the defining characteristic of socialism”. Yes, they “could be”, but that would be foolish - right, comrade Wade? The CPGB has always mocked the notion that ‘nationalisation equals socialism’, a foreign idea to orthodox Marxism/communism. Unfortunately, that hasn’t prevented it from becoming a credo amongst organisations like Militant Labour/the Socialist Party or Workers Power - or even, in its own curious way, the Socialist Workers Party, which does not allow its formal opposition to ‘state capitalism’ to prevent it from issuing the emotive call for ‘public ownership’ (ie, nationalisation) week after week in Socialist Worker.

In his first supplement, comrade Conrad went out of his way to disassociate himself from the likes of ML/SP, WP and the SWP, with their statist conception of ‘socialism’. Thus, the comrade writes in a footnote:

“Marxists, at least those who deserve the name, have never equated socialism with nationalisation. Socialism does not mean placing control of the economy in the hands of the state or a political organ, but of society as a whole - thus rendering the state superfluous. The conscious planning of labour time, production and distribution is what really constitutes socialism.”

You did not have to grub around in the footnotes though to stumble across this ‘revelation’. The whole tenor of the supplement points to this inescapable conclusion. For instance:

“Primarily what characterises the success of socialism is not the growth of the productive forces - which despite its fetters and irrationalities is the historic task of capitalism. No, the success of socialism is judged by the ability of the producers themselves to collectively and directly plan and control production” (p3).

But for whatever reason, comrade Wade wants to maintain that such statements “equate the transformation of capital with nationalisation or statised control of one fragment of world capitalism”. Very odd ...

Still, we can take it that by now comrade Wade has read the second instalment of Jack Conrad’s thesis and is now reassessing his position. In this ‘Trotskyist’ work, Conrad remarks of Trotsky:

“In power, in opposition, in exile he remained a man of the Soviet state. It is not surprising then that Trotsky’s initial forays against the rising bureaucracy were based around the demand for higher rates of growth in the state sector and central planning ... For Trotsky salvation lay with Gosplan, nor workers’ self-activity” (p1).

There is plenty of clear red water between this position and that of the Trotskyists, some of whom still insist on branding the former ‘socialist’ states as some form of ‘workers’ states’, on the grounds that most of the economy is still ... yes, nationalised. Next time, I think that comrade Wade has to try a little harder if he seriously wants to win the argument or even engage in a meaningful and useful exchange.

Danny Hammill
South London

Revolution and the state

Dawn Lewis (Letters, January 30) raises the question as to what extent the working class can, using ideas reflecting the contradictions of capitalism, develop a socialist consciousness inside capitalism.

I think it is worth looking at the elections, which are a good measure of the level of the consciousness of the people. The indisputable democratic character of elections, together with the fact that social changes will benefit the majority of people mislead prominent socialists to reformist illusions. They underestimate their conservative character. For at elections the settled consciousness of the people is expressed, which tends to reflect social reality.

Elections have been used as self-confirmation of the existing system. The most typical example is France in 1968, where despite the rise of the left, reflecting the events of May, finally as a result capitalism was rescued.

Not only in politics but generally we can see the stability of a system not simply as a property of being, but as the result of the reciprocal confirmation of the parts of a process. We can explain why changes happen in a way that can be described as revolutionary.

During a social revolution, both settled consciousness and social reality melt down and, granted the success of the attempt, reshape at a higher level. So, revolution does not mean that an advanced minority dictates its will to the rest of the society, if only because the concepts, ‘majority’ and ‘minority’, do not have a lot of meaning at that time. The settled consciousness related to the overthrown social reality is overthrown too, and a new single consciousness, as well as a new reality, is created.

Nevertheless, I agree with Dawn that revolution, although unpredictable, never falls from the sky and, though an explosion, it is not an accident.

I agree with Andrew Northall (Letters, January 30) that Marx’s and Lenin’s theories on the socialist state contain a tacit admission of the vast progressive role capitalism had in their time. Anyway, even in the Russian Revolution the real task of a socialist state was not the oppression of the remnants of the bourgeoisie. That problem was resolved successfully in the period of polemical communism, before the formation of the Soviet state proper.

The prematurity of the revolution, as regards reaction, cost extra violence rather than time. For the working class does not have the delicate task capitalists have - to oppress, exploit and at the same time preserve and develop the working class. It is only capitalist oppression that has to be institutional.

Giving a very broad definition of the state as the institutional materialisation of the organisation of the society, the question is whether a socialist or communist organisation of the society needs such a thing. And I believe the answer is still yes.

Socialism will be a self-organised society in the sense that there will be no institutions beyond the control, and hostile to, the majority of the people, but not in the sense that there will be no institutions at all. A society that does not need an institutional materialisation of its organisation - such a paradise would require, and in tum offer, a complete harmony in relations between the individual and the whole - does not seem to be just one step beyond capitalism.

I feel the critique of the sentence, “In socialism, the working class is the ruling class”, misses the point. Not only in a short or prolonged transitional period, but even in a classless communist society, workers still form a collectivity distinct from the whole of society, although with no special interests against it. And of course they have a key role in the running of the society.

The important thing is that we can’t characterise a society, except by first examining the position of the workers.

Yiannis lvrissimtzis
North London

Too kind

Your information (Weekly Worker January 9) that 250 people attended the SLP’s public meeting in Bristol is incorrect. I estimate the number at 120. The hall would not have held anything like 250 people. More importantly, the choice of a fairly small venue was seen as a significant indication of the poverty of Bristol SLP’s ambitions.

On the other hand your assessment of those you refer to as “the Labourites” seems, if anything, too kind. In conversation with several former Labour councillors after the meeting, it was quite clear that they do not want the SLP to be an activist organisation.

As SLP members, you will be better informed than I am on the Bristol branch. However, I suggest that the main danger it faces is becoming the instrument of small cliques within the Railway, Maritime and Transport union and the Communications Workers Union. Scargill made a better impression on the audience than the local members did. They made no proposals for political activity, electoral or otherwise. Scargill’s suggestion that three, specified, constituencies should be contested came as an answer to a question from me. Incidentally, he did not recommend standing in Bristol South, in opposition to Militant Labour. He should be given credit for that non-sectarian gesture.

J Sullivan
Bristol