30.07.1998

CPGB shitespeak

Mark Osborn of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty replies to Don Preston’s criticisms (Weekly Worker July 16)

The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty advocated a ‘yes’ vote in the recent Northern Ireland referendum for the following reasons: peace may allow the emergence of working class politics; the available alternative was resumption of the long war and continued direct British rule; ‘yes’ voters voted for peace, not for the specific details in the agreement; it is positive that large numbers of protestants voted for power-sharing and an all-Ireland link-up.

Now, down to business. If the ABC of socialist newspaper production is: A - get an editor; B - encourage people to sell your paper; C - try not to write shite in it, then I think it is worth you pondering a little on point C.

Examine these comments in your ‘Principled minority’ article, which claims that the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty believes “poor old British imperialist forces are stuck in the middle of warring tribes”, and “workers in the Six Counties must drop their irrational attachment to nationality and religion”, and “‘bread and butter’ trade union politics, allied to the civilising influence of British imperialism, provides the only hope”. Here we have a particular brand of high-octane shite: blatant lying about what the AWL believes, without even the slightest attempt to justify yourselves using quotations, facts, etc.

Honestly, read these things again - how likely is it that we actually believe the “civilising influence of British imperialism provides the only hope” in Ireland? How likely is it, do you think, that we are, as your article says, “pro-imperialist”? The AWL is opposed to imperialism (although we might discuss its precise role in Ireland). Do you think we are lying? Why would we want to do that? If we were for imperialism, we’d say so! Sure, we disagree with you about Ireland, but does that make us “pro-imperialist”?

And take the following little points you make about our tradition:

When “the witch hunt [in the Labour Party] extended itself to [Socialist Organiser, our predecessor], it responded by attacking ‘Leninist sects’”. Now I’d always thought we had responded by organising a (rather impressive) defence campaign.

It is true that one aspect of our self-defence was to deal with the right wing’s “argument” that ‘Socialist Organiser is the same as Militant, just another Leninist sect’. Militant (and beyond them the other sects) was widely - and quite reasonably - despised by ordinary Labour Party members for being parasitic, wooden, intolerant, conspiratorial and religious. The witch hunters used this hatred to “justify” their banning of our organisation. A small part of a big campaign was to respond to this charge (SO 454, July 19 1990) by telling the truth: even on your own account of us, we are not a typical pseudo-Leninist sect. Should we have let the Labour right tell the Party’s members we were? Did we hide what we stood for? Of course not. The paper, week in, week out, went to great lengths to say exactly what we stood for. And we published 10,000 copies of a 38-page pamphlet, We stand for workers’ liberty (August 1 1990, at the height of the attack on us).

And the stupidity of putting back into circulation this daft little slander is that if you read SO No454 you’ll find in the anti-witch hunt pull-out, which we circulated in great numbers round local Labour Parties, a defence of the real Leninist tradition: “With sincere revulsion and contempt I [Sean Matgamna, our editor] repudiate the antics of the pseudo-Leninist sects ... I do not thereby repudiate the tradition of Lenin and those who made the working class revolution in Russia in 1917. On the contrary, I believe that I thereby defend that tradition as it really was. “That the outcome in history of the 1917 revolution was - by way of Stalinist counterrevolution - a negative and horrible outcome, was not the fault of Lenin or his ‘tradition’, but of those socialists in the west (in whose tradition the majority of Labour’s NEC are proud to stand) who left the Russian workers in the lurch and made peace with their own ruling classes.” Is that plain enough for you? Is this “grovelling”? No! How would you argue it is? The relevant word to focus on here is ‘argue’.

You claim an aspect of our politics as “objective pro-Zionism”. Now I think that use of the word “objective” in this way occupies a separate and special category of shite. “Objective” is shitespeak for ‘the author does not intend to use evidence’. Myself? I’m not a Zionist. I would not call myself an ‘anti-Zionist’ because that would link me to a political current I’m very hostile to. Do we think “the left’s anti-Zionism is no more than thinly disguised anti-semitism”? Well, I wouldn’t put matters quite like that. But I’ll ask you a question, by way of a response: the SWP - for example - believe that Israel is such a special place that the jewish working class is not a working class, that the jewish people are the only people on earth not to have the right to a state, that Israel must be “smashed”, that the revolution in the region will be an Arab revolution which will have as one of its aims the destruction of Israel. Think about what this means - doesn’t it make your hackles rise?

You say our “‘anti-Stalinism’ is virtually indistinguishable from mainstream bourgeois anti-communism”. The evidence for this particularly stupid remark would be what, exactly? Try our Capitalism or workers’ liberty? pamphlet published after the Berlin Wall was pulled down. You think we were arguing for the capitalism option? Er, then, er, why’s our group called “Workers’ Liberty” then?

You claim we “enthusiastically supported the ‘anti-imperialist’ muja-hedeen in Afghanistan [against the Russian invaders]”. No, you are not right here, either. We - of course - opposed the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, opposed their occupation and war in which a million people were killed and around five million others driven out of the country. Clearly the Afghan peoples did not want the Russians there. Clearly they had the right to fight for their right to self-determination. Were the Russians “imperialist”? - if this is not imperialism it is difficult to see what is.

Did we politically support the mujahedeen? Er, no, we didn’t. You didn’t quote us saying we supported them, did you? You won’t be able to, will you? (And, in the parallel case, the USA’s war in Vietnam, we supported the right of the Vietnamese to self-determination without giving the Vietnamese Stalinists political backing.)

All too difficult for you? Give me a ring and I’ll suggest some reading. In fact start with the big book we’ve just published, The fate of the Russian Revolution.

You claim that this position (that never existed) means we believe in “MI5 socialism.” Five quick points about this remark:

Doesn’t this sort of ‘polemic’ make you feel dirty?
Do you - honestly - find our writings, propaganda, etc, over decades, indistinguishable from MI5?
You claim to dislike the stupidity, irrationality and unwillingness to discuss on the left - and is this the sort of ‘discussion’ you really want to promote?
So people who backed Vietnamese self-determination against US imperialism were “KGB socialists”?
The point surely is to develop what Trotsky called the “third camp”: independent working class politics - in this case independent of Russian imperialism and what you refer to as the MI5 camp. If you read our (copious) writings about Stalinism, this is what you’ll find.

And we are “developing a culture of openness”? But open debate in our publications is not new. To take a few of the many examples, more or less at random: there were big-scale discussions on Ireland, the Middle East, the Iran-Iraq war and the class nature of the Soviet Union in the pages of Socialist Organiser during the 1980s.

To end. We’re quite happy to debate you on Ireland (I just didn’t quite get to that point). But if we’re going to discuss you should stop debating in shitespeak.