WeeklyWorker

Letters

Endless debate

I fear there is much to disagree with in Richard Brenner’s piece in the Weekly Worker (April 2). I am extremely sceptical as to why organisations should have positions on theoretical issues that are not within their horizon. I do not know why capitalism was (or is being) restored peacefully in Eastern Europe, but I doubt anyone does. I agree wholeheartedly with Richard’s sentiments that communists should seek to give guidance to advanced workers, but then probably no one at all ever reads his (or your) paper in eastern Europe.

Endless rarefied debate on such issues becomes just a search for differences and has no guarantee of achieving the ‘right’ result. It does not direct any practical work. An individual may have less success in picking shares than a group of fund managers, but both use no more than inspired guesswork and are often wrong.

To make matters worse, Richard’s organisation also has a rule barring public disagreement by members to the near random outcome of their internal discussions. This inevitably leads to splits. Their overly detailed policy pronouncements also distance them from other ‘intellectuals’ who have also convinced themselves of the correctness of their (different) view.

The best we can do is concentrate on where we could get a result. I regret that means concentrating on practical tasks with workers in Britain, with only enough theory as stops this from being just blind activism. We need to walk before we can run.

The influence of the far left in this country is at the lowest point this century. Nit-picking polemics understood by few are just the tailspin of a tradition that could go extinct. The only use for the theoretical article in the Weekly Worker on Althusser and “epistemological breaks” is as tinder for a picket line brazier. Add some politics and the Socialist Worker-type approach is the way to reach workers.

Clive Power
East London

General strike

On April 1 the Bolivian Trade Union Congress (COB) declared a national and indefinite general strike.

Bolivia is ruled by the new government presided by ex-general Hugo Bánzer. He was the man whose coup smashed the People’s Assembly in 1971 and established a seven-year bloody dictatorship, a model which was immediately copied by Pinochet and the Uruguayan and Argentinian juntas.

The Bolivian workers and peasants are fighting for better wages. Currently a Bolivian worker or teacher is only earning £30 ($50) - not per day or per week, but per month! With that amount of money it is impossible for a family to pay for half a week for the most elementary subsistence goods. However, the majority of the Bolivians are unwaged.

There is no social security or welfare state. The government is privatising the few sectors (like education, health or petrol stations) which are in public hands. Bolivia is South America’s poorest and least literate country. Nevertheless, the government is heavily attacking the teachers and cutting the education budget.

Currently there are more than 100 trade union prisoners. There is no information regarding the location of around half of them, just like during the dictatorships. More than 100 peasants and workers have recently been wounded by state bullets or other military weapons. Twelve civilians (including one child) have been killed.

Chapare, located in Cochabamba (the heart of Bolivia’s grain-producing area), is under military rule and curfew. Every hour military planes fly over the rural communities aiming to terrorise them. The government proudly declares that at least 90% of the country’s road are under direct police or army control.

The government refuses to respect parliamentary immunity. They have arrested a United Left MP and are threatening to jail Evo Morales, a peasant MP who is leading the Chapare union and struggle. Bánzer is threatening to suspend constitutional guarantees and to impose a state of emergency. This would be the fifth one declared since the introduction of the neo-liberal model in 1985.

In the past Bánzer persecuted the unions under as “reds”. Today he is making a more fashionable accusation: that they are drug-dealers. That is because the peasants are against the violent eradication of coca production. This crop has been cultivated for many centuries, is used for religious reasons and has very good medical and nutritional qualities. Just as potatoes can be used to produce vodka, several kilos of coca could be mix with modern chemicals to produce a few grams of cocaine. However, it is imperialism and big business that produces and distributes cocaine, not the impoverished and persecuted peasants. In fact, it has been conclusively proved that all the government parties and the military are involved with the drug Mafiosi.

We are calling on all democrats and trade unionists:

Bolivian Union Solidarity Committee
London

Raw deal ahead

I notice that Simon Harvey of the SLP used the slogan, ‘With or without the TUC’, in last week’s Weekly Worker (April 16). A perfectly correct slogan of course, but I fear that militant workers will have to stress more and more the ‘without’ bit of the slogan!

I say this after reading about the TUC’s latest ‘compromise’ - though betrayal is probably a much better term. I am talking about the row over a legal right to union recognition. Both Blair and the bosses’ union, the CBI, have been arguing that there should be some sort of minimum turnout - or threshold - of those eligible to vote in a ballot. In fact, the CBI has demanded that there be at least a 50% turn out to make it kosher. (This is a ‘model’ imported from that workers’ paradise, the United States of America.)

Previously, and correctly, our fearless TUC tops flatly rejected such a grossly anti-democratic restrictions on workers’ rights. They argued for a simple majority of those voting - like in normal general elections. That was the bottom line. Take it or leave it. Some union bureaucrats even mumbled something about ‘doing a Countryside Alliance’ if Blair would not listen.

It could not last. British union bureaucrats and labour aristocrats are almost congenitally incapable of sticking to a principled line. Give them a couple of days to think about it and … watch them collapse like ninepins. So, we had the unedifying spectacle of John Monks at the Scottish TUC conference in Perth on Monday strongly hinting that the TUC would accept the “principle” of a minimum ‘yes’ vote and some form of small firm exemption - despite the well known fact that it is precisely workers in small firms and businesses that normally get the rawest deal. Monks said a 30% threshold would be acceptable.

And what was the latest excuse from Monks? Why, that such a concession to Blair and the CBI was necessary in order to show “flexibility” and to “try and advance the discussion”. What weasel words - and how incredibly short-sighted, even by the miserably short-sighted standards of the British TUC tops. If you give an inch, they will take a mile - or two, or three, or …

Predictably, New Labour will want its yet another pound of flesh hacked off the workers’ movement. You can bet that Blair’s soon to be published Fairness at work white paper will make a mockery of its title and outline a bosses’ agenda - it could be far worse than Monks thinks. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that it will insist on a two-thirds turnout to win legal recognition rights - the Blairites have been floating such a prospect. Super-exploitative small bosses’ may well become Blair’s best friend after reading Fairness at work - the sort of ‘fairness’ they like and would love more of.

However, this sordid little tale has a little twist to it. Some union officials have grumbled that Monks had “exceeded his brief” by adopting such a nakedly Blairista line. Rodney Bickerstaffe of Unison has ‘assured’ the conference delegates that Monks was talking crap and that the TUC has given no agreement to any sort of ballot threshold.

I must admit to not being very reassured by Bickerstaffe’s comments. While hordes of pro-Labour left Trotskyites and ‘official communists’ will probably get all excited by the toughish talk current emitting from the mouths of left bureaucrats like Bickerstaffe, it will all vanish into thin air when it comes to the crunch.

I mean, come on - can anyone really imagine the TUC ‘doing a Countryside Alliance’? If they can, then they must have a better imagination than me.

Billy Waddington
Wolverhampton

Struggle hijacked

During my present visit to South Africa I decided to take advantage of the commercial tours around Robben Island that are now being organised. You may be surprised to learn that these are now a must for all tourists, and the apartheid regime’s notorious jail for political prisoners is amongst the most popular of destinations.

During the 30-minute boat trip from Cape Town passengers are shown a video of South African history in general and that of Robben Island in particular. It is a sanitised version, where, despite the harsh conditions the prisoners endured, much is made of the fact that many were able to study in preparation for “the new, democratic South Africa” that has at last been achieved. According to the video, even the brutal prison guards learned from the common experience and are now able to play their part as reconstructed democrats as a result.

Fortunately, a more accurate picture is painted on the island itself. This is because all the tour guides are themselves ex-political prisoners. For example a former regional secretary of the Pan-Africanist Congress provided the commentary for my party on the island bus, while a member of the ANC, himself a prisoner for 16 years, showed us round the jail itself.

In answering our questions in all too gruesome detail, he brought out the full reality of the regime’s inhumanity: the punishments of solitary confinement and starvation diets for those who committed such ‘offences’ as failing to answer a guard’s question in Afrikaans, attempting to speak to a fellow prisoner while working or not fulfilling the day’s quota of broken rocks.

Despite the commercialisation, these guides ensure that the tours are an emotional experience for all partisans of the anti-apartheid struggle. But how long will it be before the guides are replaced? The bourgeoisie has attempted to hijack the history of that struggle, and will no doubt seek to portray a more comfortable image, with the recent revolutionary fight consigned to museum settings as a safe curiosity attraction.

Peter Manson
Cape Town