Letters

Dialectics of insult

I must reply to Linda Addison (Letters Weekly Worker September 11) on the question of the boycott campaign and my alleged philosophical method.

She begins with the standard CPGB line, trotted out every time they don’t like what I say. The line is: “Dave Craig has an abstract approach to politics” and is too interested in “categorising phenomena” and therefore fails to see “phenomena in movement”. According to Linda, “The peculiar approach he takes this time [‘Raise the republican flag’ Weekly Worker September 4] takes him into even more absurd depths.” Linda’s abstract philosophising about my philosophical method is hardly concrete criticism. It is not even serious. As a scientific method, it is more like the dialectics of insult - the same method that has got you into hot water with Richie Venton. I say this because I have heard this all before.

In 1982 when I was first arguing in the SWP for a federal republic, the SWP central committee said that it was “abstract”, “peculiar” and “absurd” to say such a thing. They had never heard anything like it before! But soon they got round to saying it was not dialectical, but based on the fixed and non-dialectical Stalinist theory of stageism. These attempts to ‘categorise’ my argument were not done to stimulate debate, but to close it down - ‘Don’t listen to him: he’s a nutter’.

What caused Linda to reach for the philosophical categories was the question of abstention votes in Scotland. The Campaign for Genuine Self-Determination (CGSD) called upon the Scottish people to “boycott Blair’s rigged referendum”. This was the most agitational of the campaign’s three central slogans. Thousands of leaflets were issued to Scottish voters calling for a boycott. But I am not aware of the campaign putting any leaflets to factories or workplaces calling for a general strike or political strikes or even mass demonstrations to defeat the referendum.

Apparently because I don’t understand the subtleties of dialectics, I had mistakenly thought that if the campaign persuaded at least some people to boycott the referendum, then the number of abstention votes would rise. If 10 more people boycott the referendum, whether actively or passively, then there are 10 more abstentions. Silly me. Linda says: “In no way has the CGSD gone out to win support for abstention.” In fact, “Abstention is only evidence of failure, or at least the limited success, of the campaign.” Make out of this what you will. But at least it is a confused attempt to explain the political meaning of abstention votes whilst washing your hands of any responsibility for them.

Of course in ‘Raise the republican flag’ I did speculate about the political meaning of the abstention votes. This was speculation because voting had not taken place. It was not a concrete analysis of voting patterns. It is part of thinking ahead, like planning for the future. It was similar to Jack Conrad speculating about political strikes against the referendum. I was encouraging comrades to think about the future result, not in a passive sense as a mere observer. When 40% abstain, the meaning will be contested. We will have to dispute the interpretation put on them by the enemies of the working class. This does not mean we should be politically dishonest and make exaggerated claims.

Neither does it mean we should wash our hands of any responsibility for abstention ‘votes’. This is what Linda wants to do. In reading the campaign leaflets calling on people to boycott Blair’s rigged referendum, poor old Dave Craig had failed to realise that the word ‘boycott’ had dialectically transmuted itself into the words, ‘political strike, general strike and armed uprising now’. Linda may think I have an abstract approach to politics, but least I’m not living in cloud cuckoo land.

I didn’t speculate about a general political strike in Scotland, but merely spoke metaphorically in terms of whether these votes would be painted red or blue. In posing these ‘opposites’, I didn’t discuss the many transitional stages in between. I didn’t discuss the meaning of pale pink, purple or light blue, but obviously I recognise these colours exist. So I didn’t expect Linda to make the ludicrous and literalist interpretation that abstention was either bright red (40% raving revolutionaries) or deep blue (40% demoralised Tories).

I would welcome a serious concrete criticism from Linda about where I am going wrong philosophically and politically speaking, so that I could improve myself. The readers of the Weekly Worker could benefit from a fuller understanding of my mistakes. But until that time arrives, I have to treat Linda’s abstract philosophical sound bites with the same contempt I had for the methods of the SWP central committee - it is just slagging off an opponent and dressing it up in Marxese.

Dave Craig
Revolutionary Democratic Group

Dismissing anger

Jack Conrad’s interesting article on the death of Lady Di (Weekly Worker September 11) is marred by his insistence that at present the working class only exists as “wage slaves and voting fodder”. With this attitude it is perhaps not surprising that he resorts to the very phrase used by the privileged and exploiters to dismiss working class anger - “the politics of envy”.

Jack’s article focused on the “massive manifestation of popular politics ... poignant, often sentimental, unorganised ... [of] the ‘little people’ of Britain”. This disguises the deeper class tensions which existed in the aftermath of Lady Di’s death. Jack’s “manifestation” was more a middle class phenomenon and, if largely “unorganised”, was far from unorchestrated. First, the sombre mood adopted by all the media on August 30 set the tone. However, it is revealing that it was sporting events attended mainly by the working class which were targeted for cancellation. In Scotland the first to be scrapped was the Celtic-Rangers football match. There can be little doubt that concern about a public display of working class irreverence was uppermost in the organisers’ minds. This would have shattered the contrived mood Tony Blair and the media were trying to establish. Later that week came the direct political intervention of Tony Blair and Scottish secretary Donald Dewar, after the media-orchestrated hounding of the hapless Scottish Football Association chief executive, Jim Farry. He had originally decided to proceed with the Scotland-Belarus world cup match on the day of Lady Di’s funeral. However, Tony Blair’s astute move to suspend his Scottish referendum campaign for a week, the better to co-opt the late ‘people’s princess’ for his cause, was not to be upset by any ‘unseemly’ displays on the day of the funeral!

The discussion in many workplaces on the Monday following Lady Di’s death mainly focused on whether we would get an extra day’s holiday. When it was later revealed that the funeral would be at the weekend, there was considerable cynicism. By the second day I heard the first of several irreverent jokes which were to become widespread through the week - “What’s the difference between a Mercedes and a Lada?” Answer - “Lady Di wouldn’t be seen dead in a Lada”. By mid-week even the Scottish quality press had articles and letters saying that the political and media-led response was ‘over the top’. One letter, from a self-declared monarchist to The Scotsman, felt that the pressure to get everybody to grieve, regardless of whether it was genuinely felt, had a totalitarian tinge to it.

During an earlier period of constitutional crisis, at the beginning of the 19th century, there was considerable support amongst the ‘little people’ for the plight of Queen Caroline, the estranged wife of the unpopular George IV. However, this was at a time when the infant working class was just beginning to be separated from the wider plebeian forces of the day. Today it is the small band of constitutional republicans who would have us rally behind the legacy of the ‘people’s princess’.

Genuine republicans however will relate to the working class anger rather than the “manifestations” of the “little people”. This class anger cannot be dismissed as the “politics of envy”. It represents the ‘politics of dispossession’. Without this there is no firm basis for the politics of communism.

Allan Armstrong
Edinburgh

Culture of wind

Jack Conrad (Weekly Worker September 11) notes that communists are rightly concerned with every issue. Where therefore is your analysis of what Elton John’s ‘Candle in the wind’ means for culture? The New Musical Express has carried a ferocious attack on the record, claiming that it could be the death of new music. Are they right?

Tom Wheeler
London