Letters

Cynical

When I wrote my moderately worded criticism of Mark Fischer’s predilection for selective quotation from Lenin Weekly Worker July 9) I little thought that I was giving Mark Fischer the opportunity to unmask me as a purveyor of “the tired old cynicism of an old and disillusioned revolutionary”. Not only that: I am one of the group of wreckers who “alibies [sic] left liquidationism ...” And into the bargain I had failed - perhaps from an excess of cynicism, disillusionment and left liquidationism - to realise that the Weekly Worker is “the publication of a communist collective that has been cohered around decades of work around a Partyist project”. That the CPGB could exist for even one decade while producing sentences like that one is a tribute to their case-hardened sensibilities, if nothing else.

Mark, having spent those decades of Partyist endeavour utilising the Collected Works of Lenin as a grab bag of quotations for all seasons, a universal hammer of each and every dissenter, he moves on from a dead author to one who at the last count was still breathing - to wit, Jim Higgins and his book More years for the locust. With a splendid piece of legerdemain he connects eight words from the introduction to 16 words from the final paragraph of the text. When he puts it that way, I have to confess it looks pretty “vacuous”. But when one considers that there are about 60,000 words between these two items, many of which criticise the sort of political method employed by Mark Fischer, one begins to understand why he gets into such a nasty pet. Anyone who has read my book and still thinks I am cynical about socialism either has a serious comprehension problem or is called Mark Fischer.

Here is a brief quote from the book (p5):

“How the workers in what remains of the 20th century and the untouched 21st will set about their tasks is not yet known, and what is certain is that the current coven of gurus have not got a clue either. What we can be sure of is that it will not be a straight repetition of the past ... Only the congenitally faint-hearted will conclude that, because there have been some bloody awful socialist organisations, we should withdraw from the struggle ... To plead that some groups have not lived up to our expectations or, worse still, have exceeded our worst nightmares is merely to describe capitalism’s ability to impose its authoritarian values on those whose intention, at least, was to destroy capitalism itself. All of those groups, without exception, have something to offer, something to teach, something to fill one or other of the gaps in our understanding of socialism.”

Now does that read like the opinion of a cynic?

So far as the substantive issue of the correspondence is concerned on whether the paper has a responsibility to publish the dissenting views of ex-members of the CPGB, I agree that the Party does not have to give them space. If it does not, however, it should not suggest that publication is withheld in the comrades’ own best interest and then proceed to denigrate them in the pages of the journal as a petty, low-level variety of right liquidationists. That is a cynical piece of behaviour if ever I saw one.

Jim Higgins
Norfolk

The final word

In reply to the eight points of Mark Fischer (‘Frozen in dogma’ Weekly Worker July 16) in which he tries to differentiate between the political position of Trotsky and his movement and that of Leninism, the Marxist Bulletin and International Bolshevik Tendency supporters allege that Trotsky was Lenin’s heir. It is on this assumption, of being the continuator of Lenin, rather than the independent development of Marxist theory, that Trotsky held his place on the historical scene as a revolutionary communist leader. This aura of Leninism assumed by Trotsky gave special significance to his pronouncements on policy and was naturally transmitted to his unquestioning followers as the final word.

Given this historical background, fortified by Trotsky’s brief (compared to his total period in politics which was mainly opportunist) background as a revolutionary leader during the Russian Revolution, Trotsky was able to make authoritative policy and political statements of what Lenin said or did in 1917 that were actually false and anti-Leninist. One such false anti-Leninist suggestion, repeated by the Marxist Bulletin group in the same issue of the Weekly Worker, is that the Bolshevik Party - ie, Lenin - forged a “united front with Kerensky to defeat Kornilov in 1917”. This statement (which was also adopted by Stalinists) of a united front being entered into between Lenin and his revolutionary Bolshevik Party and reactionary, class-collaborationist social reformists as Kerensky and his government was initiated by Trotsky and perpetuated by the Trotskyist movement of all varieties for over 60 years as justification for their opportunist policies.

The historical background to this falsehood (see The Leninist No107 for a broader analysis) was Trotsky’s isolation after the defeat of the German CP by the Nazis in 1933 and the failure of a left wing to develop within the Comintern or national CPs. Trotsky began to turn toward the social democratic parties as a field of activity, which involved the liquidation of the independent revolutionary party (entryism) and the development of its ideological concomitant: critical support for social democracy. Both entryism and critical support were translated in political terms as the ‘united front’ between the revolutionary vanguard and the backward reformist workers, the disastrous results of which, confirmed in history, were foretold by the much maligned Oehlerite tendency in 1935.

Trotsky and his followers of all brands always invoke the words of Lenin to justify their reactionary interpretation of the ‘united front’, not one of whom has ever quoted a statement from Lenin favouring entryism, critical support for social democracy - or a united front with Kerensky against Kornilov.

Tom Cowan
South London

Trotskyist label

I wish to raise a few points following on from Mark Fischer’s ‘Frozen in dogma’ and the excellent debate the CPGB recently held with the International Bolshevik Tendency over the same subject.

I must first disagree with MF when he states that “Trotsky’s contribution to the revolutionary workers’ movement did not constitute a qualitative development of the theoretical categories of Marxism …” This is interesting when the question of Trotsky’s Permanent revolution is taken into account. Marx first used the same concept in his discussions of the revolutions in 1848 when he pointed out that, although other classes might seize power for a time, only the proletariat could make the revolution permanent. I would thus argue that it was Trotsky who really developed and advanced this theory, placing it in the context of the world revolution.

Indeed Permanent revolution was to have an impact in shaping Lenin’s strategy on the Russian Revolution. In an article of September 1905, Lenin wrote this typically ‘Trotskyist’ sentence: “From the democratic revolution we shall at once, and precisely in accordance with the measure of our strength, the strength of the class-conscious and organised proletariat, begin to pass to the socialist revolution. We stand for uninterrupted revolution. We shall not stop halfway” (quoted in M Liebman Leninism Under Lenin pp 82-83). This was a different from the position held by Lenin prior to 1905 when he had been opposed to Trotsky on the issue and was content to separate the bourgeois-democratic and the socialist revolution by a phase of intermediate development. 

The IBT also raised some important issues, inter alia the political categorisation of the CPGB. They and other organisations present for the debate accused us of “not yet completely breaking from Stalinism”.

Others suggested the political positions of the CPGB smacked of Trotskyism. I believe there is a truth in this statement, particularly when we read what Trotsky put forward in The revolution betrayed in 1937:

“… as a result of the isolation and backwardness of the Soviet Union, a new bureaucratic stratum had emerged that first appropriated the Bolshevik Party and then the revolution itself. However, even though this stratum was parasitic upon the working class it was not a ‘new class’ in the Marxist sense … Indeed, because of its position, it was impelled to defend the ‘gains of October’ … This placed the bureaucracy in a highly contradictory position. On the one hand, it had to defend itself from the working class from whom it had usurped power. On the other hand, it was forced to preserve the new, historically progressive property relations … Reactionary and repressive though it undoubtedly was, the new bureaucracy had no option but to defend the economic foundations of the new state; a state that in spite of its Stalinist superstructure still posed a social and economic base theoretically superior to capitalism” (quoted in H Ticktin and M Cox [eds] The ideas of Leon Trotsky p308).

Our analysis of the USSR found in numerous copies of The Leninist and the Weekly Worker, as well as Jack Conrad’s book From October to August,does portray this typical orthodox Trotskyism. While I think our method on party organisation does to some degree categorise us as Leninist and thus counteracts this argument, I must state that I have no problem with certain political formulations of the CPGB being labelled as Trotskyist. What I think is imperative however is that we don’t simply use labels without having first debated the ideas, and the method of formulating those ideas, behind them.

It is the method that counts, not merely the political categorisations.

Bob Paul
East London

Fine by me

Danny Hammill (Weekly Worker July 9) rather charmingly contradicted himself in accusing me of ‘greenophobia’ (a new affliction that I had not encountered before). Danny seems rather miffed that I believe, regarding the greens, that “these forces are non-socialist. Therefore they should be excluded” (from the Socialist Alliances).

Surely that is the whole point of a Socialist Alliance - that it is an alliance of socialists? Just to make my view clear, as far as I am concerned socialists should work with anyone (most definitely including greens) in comradely united front activities where we agree. But the Socialist Alliances are not a united front on a single issue, they are more than that - they are something that has the potential to become an anti-capitalist political alternative for working people, if correct organisational methods and policies are developed.

We must try to win those pro-working class, socialist-minded green activists who try to fight capitalism to a strategy based on class struggle and consistent socialist politics. Insofar, in the words of the Hackney amendment, that is what constitutes “principled” relations with ‘socialist greens’ and the like, that is fine by me. But it is not ‘greenphobia’ to advocate that non-socialists be excluded from a socialist alliance. It is basic class politics.

Ian Dudley
London