Letters

Basic logic

I was pleased to read Roy Bull’s letter (Weekly Worker June 25). A prominent figure in the SLP, who at its last congress made a bid for vice-president, he is a regular and distinctive contributor to Socialist News, the SLP’s paper. For instance, the latest issue contains two articles by comrade Bull. This is not unusual. And no doubt the comrade will continue to shape and influence Socialist News. In all honesty, comrade Bull’s contributions tend to liven up a generally dull publication.

It is also worth pointing out that comrade Bull has had a long career in the revolutionary movement. He was a paid activist for the Workers Revolutionary Party and prior to joining the SLP he was leader of the grandly overnamed International Leninist Workers Party, a tiny Stockport-based organisation he founded. He is now editor of the inimitable Economic and Philosophical Science Review, a publication tolerated by the Scargill leadership despite the SLP constitution banning organisations with “distinctive and separate propaganda” - a rather understated way of describing the EPSR’s contents.

There is certain irony in comrade Bull’s somewhat mild response to the Don Preston column on drugs (‘No politics please, we’re Bullites’ Weekly Worker June 11). The EPSR is, it has to be said, a ‘frothy’ publication which specialises in venomous attacks against the CPGB. The comrade continually bashes “the CPGB Trots” for our supposed leftism - which we are led to believe is merely the flip-side of our ‘objective’ anti-communism, psychotic hatred of Leninism and the workers’ states (sic). Sometimes these sentiments, albeit diluted and reformulated, find their way into Socialist News.

Yet if you look at comrade Bull’s letter to the Weekly Worker, and his original article in Socialist News (‘Legalisation won’t solve the problem’ May-June), what do you find? In a word, anarcho-economism. Not the healthy anarchism of younger or inexperienced revolutionary elements, quite rightly disgusted by opportunism, reformism, parliamentarianism, etc. Such leftism can be corrected if we are patient and diligent -a point emphasised by Lenin in Leftwing communism. No. Comrade Bull’s world view derives from a combination of economism and mechanical materialism which excuses bureaucratic socialism and eschews political struggle.

Future students of history will look at comrade Bull’s letter as a textbook example of anarcho-economism. They will read the following:

“Campaigning about any ‘legal’ reform which does not challenge capitalism is a reformist diversion. More pressing tasks face communists than exposing ‘illogical’ cannabis laws. All capitalist law is crap ... Capitalist society is not going to get anything right - ever, no matter how many bourgeois write to the UN. All social problems will continue to degenerate ... Alienation cannot be reformed away. It can only grow relentlessly.”

All very r-r-revolutionary. But comrade Bull’s demands for ‘instant socialism’ - which is actually what he is arguing for - can only serve to tail the existing (bourgeois) consciousness, and prejudices, of the workers. In comrade Bull’s mechanical schema, there is no need for struggle and there is no need to fight for and organise around political demands. No need to make the workers into a political class which can rule society. No need for a programme, in fact.  Politics is “crap”, in other words.  Alienation will “grow relentlessly”, apparently. “All social problems will continue to degenerate” - or so comrade Bull thinks. Hurrah! The combined forces of social decay, despair and alienation - plus the inevitable crisis of capitalism, of course - will do our job for us. Socialism will inevitable emerge from the grim and semi-apocalyptic scenario sketched out by comrade Bull. (In this respect, this almost eager anticipation of the ‘lumpenisation’ of our class is reminiscent of middle class leftists like the Revolutionary Communist Group.)

If comrade Bull really believes all this, then he is no Leninist. Leninist politics consists of a struggle to organise the workers into a Party and thus a class which takes up all democratic questions and tasks facing society.  Does comrade Bull recognise this? I am not so sure. In his letter comrade Bull mocks us for getting “excited” about the long list of eminent bourgeois figures who recently wrote an open letter to the UN general assembly about the futility of the ‘war against drugs’. For comrade Bull, even to make reference to this is an example of sowing yet “more reformist illusions”. This just demonstrates comrade Bull’s resounding non-Leninism.

Lenin rightly stressed over and over again that communists strive to master the politics of all classes and groups in society, not to become fixated by the (spontaneous) activities of the workers, or some final economic crisis. Why? In order to exploit any splits and divisions within the ruling class or ruling bloc. That is why comrade Don Preston, quite correctly, highlighted the open letter to the UN. The bourgeoisie is dividing and quarrelling amongst itself over the ‘war against drugs’ - it could be our opportunity, not theirs. Comrade Bull does not or cannot grasp these basics.

The funny thing about comrade Bull’s method is that it is very selective. The pages of Socialist News are filled with trade union and strike news. Articles expressing solidarity with workers in struggle. Demands for higher wages and better working conditions. Quite right. But comrade Bull does not apply his ‘instant socialism’ method here - no ringing denunciation of the SLP, or Arthur Scargill, for sowing “more reformist illusions”. No demands for the instant abolition of the wages’ system. ‘Everything or nothing!’ should be the response of comrade Bull to everyday demands by workers - if he was consistent.

Workers in struggle at the workplace are OK, says comrade Bull. But as soon as they leave the hallowed workplace and smoke cannabis, have gay relationships or attend CPGB meetings - try to live a rounded life - then they suddenly become non-people, if not the problem.

Finally, a note of basic logic. Comrade Bull claims that “nowhere” in his drugs article did he call “for their banning”. Seeing how recreational drugs - except tobacco, alcohol etc - are illegal, to oppose their legalisation is to … endorse the current anti-drugs laws. Therefore to support the current criminalisation of drugs-users. If we had adopted comrade Bull’s method in the 1960s, abortion and homosexuality would still be illegal. In our ‘what if?’ alternative world, comrade Bull would have counterposed his ‘instant socialism’ to their suffering - told the workers’ movement that all this gay/women stuff was a “reformist diversion”.

I wonder what other SLP members make of all this? Their views can be freely expressed in the Weekly Worker, if not Socialist News.

Eddie Ford
South London

Solidarity

Recently we have seen how popular demonstrations overthrew the Suharto pro-IMF autocracy in Indonesia. In South America the oldest dictator is Roberto Kenyo Fujimori. In July 1990 he won the elections, but less than two years later he trampled on the constitution, and launched a coup. He imposed draconian legislation. He militarised the universities and half of the country. Thousands of people have been killed.

Fujimori does not have his own party. He rules through the support his own all-powerful Gestapo: the SIN (National Intelligence Service) and the army.

Now Fujimori is trying to use state funds and the army to have himself re-elected for another five-year period. A series of demonstrations have been held. Last month 20,000 students marched through Lima, protesting the new law that gives Fujimori a third term. The students resisted brutal attacks by state forces for several hours.

Student protests sparked Suharto’s downfall and Fujimori is now afraid. Tanks and machine guns are threatening the students on the campuses. Hundreds of students had been kidnapped, tortured or murdered.

Fujimori has also eliminated job security. Workers are forced to work more than eight hours a day for miserable wages that hardly cover the cost of food. Union leaders have been victimised and sacked, and long jail sentences have been imposed.

The army is occupying the largest shanty towns in Lima and Callao. Under the ‘anti-terrorist’ legislation anyone suspected of aiding anti-imperialist guerrillas faces a life sentence. Short trials are often presided over by masked military ‘judges’. There are more than 5,000 political prisoners held in conditions that, as Fujimori proudly admits, are like “living tombs”.

There have been assassination attempts on several MPs. Others have been beaten by the police or the army. Hundreds of crimes have been committed by paramilitary gangs. Peru is becoming one of the most socially polarised of societies. Millions are becoming poorer by the day.

We call on our brothers and sisters in the English-speaking countries to denounce Fujimori and to act in solidarity with the massive street demonstrations in Peru.

Poder Obrero
Lima, Peru

Parxism

Tina Werkmann says that the greens want capitalism - only with parks (Letters Weekly Worker June 18). Indeed. But she could have added that it is possible, although by no means automatic, that capitalism and public parks can coexist. The labour movement in the 19th century fought long and hard not only for parks, but also for public entertainment in them on a Sunday.

One wonders whether Tony Abse, who you report as proposing a red-green political amalgam (Weekly Worker June 11) for the London Socialist Alliance, is about to unveil his plans for a modern-day theory of class struggle around parks or, as some might unkindly call it, Parxism.

Charles Murray
North London