Letters

What next?

It would seem that Frank Worth (Letters, September 10) is incapable of engaging in a serious exchange of views on the CPGB policy of abolishing the age of consent. For him either you support abolition or you are a sad vigilante brandishing a brick and a rope.

It would appear that his vitriolic response to my assertion, that - while there is a case for reducing the age of consent - its abolition would remove a useful protection for children from sexual exploitation by adults, springs in part from his anger at my use of the word ‘perverse’ to describe the obsessive desire among some adults to have sex with pre-pubescent children. Is it not perverse for an adult to have sex with, for example, a six-year old? How can a child meaningfully consent to such a ‘relationship’?

Adults are naturally in a position of authority in their relationship with children. The child trusts the adult. For the adult to utilise this position in order to gratify their own sexual desire is a gross breach of trust which can have serious consequences for the abused individual’s future development. Indeed that is one reason why such a relationship is perverse. For instance is it acceptable for teachers, social workers, nursery nurses, childminders, etc to form sexual relationships with their charges? To abolish the age of consent would remove legal sanction from such behaviour. Surely the organised sexual abuse which took place in children’s homes throughout the UK in the 70s and 80s should counsel against providing adult abusers with the legal defence that the child has consented to the sexual activity. Of course other forms of abuse were rampant in such places, but the sexual abuse added another dimension to the pain suffered by the children ‘cared’ for by such institutions.

It is interesting to note that supporters of the Taleban believe that girls of six years of age are old enough to marry and have sexual intercourse with their adult partners. Does it not seem rather incongruous to Frank that the Taleban, who are not renowned for progressive policies on social questions, promote such a policy which, prima facie, allows six-year old girls to choose to express their ‘sexuality’ with an adult partner. Or is the matter rather to do with power, abuse and female oppression?

As with all child abuse, the sexual abuse of children is anti-communist in that it hinders and distorts the abused individual’s ability to freely and fully develop their potential. We should remember that communists stand for a society where the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. We aim for a society and a working class movement in which individuals are confident, courageous and in control. Not wrecked, haunted, atomised emotional cripples.

There is no doubt that the anti-paedophile movement encouraged by the bourgeois media is reactionary. But it is also a response to real concerns (however exaggerated by the media) in certain communities that individuals with a record of serious child sex abuse are simply being dumped in certain areas with no resources provided to aid their rehabilitation. Is our answer simply that there is no legitimate grounds for concern?

Is there any form of sexual activity which Frank would consider perverse? Possibly the CPGB should campaign against the legal restriction imposed by the bourgeois state on those individuals who express their love for their pet or livestock in a more full-bodied way than popular prejudice and the law permits. These individuals, stigmatised and designated in popular parlance by the derogatory and pejorative term ‘sheep-shaggers’, are evidently oppressed by the present legislation outlawing bestiality which the British left have refused to challenge due to their economistic focus on purely bread and butter issues. Admittedly including such a demand in our action programme for the European elections is unlikely to win many votes in most of the areas of the UK, but it can be argued that such a demand is crucial to the process of the self-formation of the working class. However, count me out for the canvassing.

The CPGB should reconsider its position of calling for the age of consent to be scrapped. With the death of Stalinism and the demise of social democracy the potential exists for genuine communists to reach out to the new generation, coming of age in a period where capitalism has nothing to offer humanity but social and cultural decline, and build a mass Communist Party. To include in our programme the demand to abolish the age of consent opens us up to justifiable ridicule. What next? Abolish the prohibition on incest?

Sandy Johnstone
Glasgow

Baggage

New Labour’s rightward stampede and the ongoing marginalisation of the left inside and outside of it has opened up a political vacuum. No one organisation has the ability to fill this. Also, there are many people outside the normal scope of left politics taking direct action often of a very militant type - ie, the Animal Liberation Front. This makes alliances both desirable and necessary. The transition to socialism cannot be the work of a minority, an elite of professional revolutionaries. It has to be the effort of the vast majority. At present, it is by means of alliances that we can secure and begin to mobilise that majority.

Long years of Labour hegemony over the workers’ movement plus the dead weight of ideological baggage has led to fragmentation and marginalisation of the left. The reduction of everything to a crisis of leadership has resulted in leader centralism and absurd personality cults. Science has been replaced by pseudo-theology and democracy by the bureaucratic tyranny of the party apparat. The gap between leaders and led, thinkers and doers, within the parties has widened, as has the gap between the parties and the class.

At the same time, there have arisen groups outside and often in opposition to the left’s traditional structures and methods which challenge various aspects of capitalist oppression - if not its totality. Today young people tend to be involved in such groups rather than left groups. Yet if the left is to advance it has to influence and win them over.

We cannot go on as we have done before. We urgently need a new politics and a new movement.

Terry Liddle
South London

Mish-mash

In the letter that you published in the Weekly Worker (September 17) the main idea which I originally wrote was not very clearly expressed. I wanted to stress the fact that any group which secretly conducts a five-year internal struggle, completely avoiding all public debate (like Workers Power and the League for a Revolutionary Communist International did in relation to a key programmatic issue: the state question), is not only bad for the class but also bad for that organisation. The fact that a minority could finally win is not, as WP claims, evidence of internal democracy; it could show exactly the opposite.

The LRCI’s new theory on the state is one of the worst mish-mashes ever produced by the international left. According to WP’s new conception, the Stalinist states were bourgeois states without a bourgeois economy, which they call ‘workers’ states’; these workers’ states were created without smashing the capitalist state and even worse, by reforming and reinforcing it.

WP makes no major distinction between a bourgeois and a workers’ state. Apparently until August 1997 all the states east of Germany were workers’ states and one month later they decided that eight of them ceased to be that. No explanation was given. However, even Yugoslavia, which WP continuously described as the only “degenerated workers’ state” in Europe, could not be defended against internal reaction or imperialist intervention. WP called for US/UK/Nato forces to assist their Balkan puppets against the Serbs.

The debate in WP was extremely long and confused. Finally the minority won through using a variety of administrative and repressive measures. The leader of the minority never created a tendency in order to fight for his position. He just happened to be the person in charge of making, editing and changing the minutes and every adopted resolution, the international treasurer, the editor of the international journal, the leader of many commissions, the head of every commission of investigation against his internal opponents, etc.

These manoeuvres, combined with a debate behind closed doors involving only a few dozen individuals, prevented any genuine democratic discussion. The opponents of Harvey’s new revision quite often had to defend themselves against moral charges and disciplinary measures.

Dave Jones
London

Late post

In your last edition a comrade from Coventry complained because you decided to put only part of your paper on the Internet. You replied that the best guarantee to receive your paper was through a £5 subscription. This could be a good solution for people inside the UK, but is not the best outcome for people like us who are in different continents and who constantly suffer police interference with their normal mail.

As a way of illustrating our point, until last year we used to have branches of Poder Obrero (LCMRCI) in only three cities in Bolivia and Peru. We used to receive from time to time some of your papers. However, now we are doubling our branches. In Bolivia we are leading a national union with branches all over the country and in Peru we have a recognised presence or participation in the three main cities. If your paper managed to arrive, it would come late and would be difficult to distribute to many cities. Despite the differences that we have with some of your positions, we have to recognise that yours is one of the few British papers that promotes a healthy debate between different currents.

I would like to suggest that you improve your website, creating a browse where it could be possible to find articles concerning a particular subject and where you could organise articles not only by dates, but also by sections.

Fernando Rodriguez (Poder Obrero)
Lima, Peru