Letters

Right of reply

“Given his anarchistic attachment to the unconditional principle of a right of reply, I trust Dave Craig will insist that the Weekly Worker’s editor finds space to print this rejoinder to his 2,000 words of lies and smears.” This is the opening line of Tom Delargy’s article (Weekly Worker April 15). That is about as polite as it gets.

After that it is downhill all the way. Some of it was so personally abusive that the editor cut it from his article to save everybody’s embarrassment. My article in the Weekly Worker (April 8) must have been on target because it caused Delargy to explode in a puff of smoke.

Clearly he has got a big problem in his relations with comrades Mary Ward and Nick Clarke. He hates them so much that he can’t resist sneering at them as a “Couple for a Federal Republic”. Is this real? Perhaps at the Communist University this year, we will have ‘Mark Fischer (sharing a flat) debates a federal republic with Allan Armstrong (workers’ republic and married)’!

Delargy is too busy handing out insults to think straight. It is not sufficient to ask in a comradely fashion why we didn’t answer his question. He has got to provide the answer. Apparently we didn’t answer his question quite deliberately because we are not Marxists and can’t think. He announces that “not one of you has a firm enough grasp of Marxism to be capable of offering a considered response”.

Of course Delargy’s article raises a number of questions, including the right of reply, the style and method of polemic and the meaning of revolutionary democracy. On the latter point he raises nothing new and nothing that hasn’t been answered in the Weekly Worker on many occasions before. Still I will be only too happy to answer it again in due course.

Let me clear the decks for future polemic by dealing with my alleged “anarchistic attachment to the unconditional principle of a right of reply”. Wrong on all counts. I defended a democratic principle of a right of reply. I made it clear that it was not unconditional. In exceptional circumstances, there may be a valid political reason not to give a right of reply.

Where there are exceptional circumstances and a right of reply is refused, the editors should publish the official reasons for non-publication. In my view the Weekly Worker or indeed any revolutionary paper should be open for a right of reply, or open about the reasons why they were not. This means the editors should be accountable for a decision to deny a right of reply in front of their readership and the wider working class movement.

The right of reply is not the right to have any article in the Weekly Worker. It is simply the right to correct mistakes, and challenge lies or slanders. Although Delargy claims my entire article was “2,000 words of lies and smears”, in fact he raises only two matters that might require correction. First is the fact that I deduced from his actions over the last few months that he did not support a federal republic. He says that he does. I will examine that in my reply on revolutionary democracy. Second he claims that I had “damned” Sandy McBurney “as a liberal supporter of the monarchy”.

What I actually said was: “When we hear Sandy, it is the voice of a liberal anti-monarchist, not a revolutionary.” Delargy hasn’t got his facts right. Apparently he can’t tell the difference between a liberal-monarchist, and a liberal-republican.

On the question of the method and style of polemic I do not believe that responsible communists should write or publish sectarian polemics. But the checks against this are openness, the right of reply and the decisions of the editor(ial) The editorial board should seek to set high standards for polemics and encourage all contributors to reach those standards. It should be obvious from my previous comments that Delargy has fallen well below the standards that we as communists should expect and demand.

I certainly don’t agree to an anarchistic, ‘anything goes’ style or method of polemic. Communist polemics must be fundamentally about seeking the truth. When they degenerate into name-calling and personal abuse, they will be of use mainly by sectarians and agents provocateurs within our movement. Calling me a lying, slandering, non-Marxist hypocrite is evidence that Delargy has lost the plot.

Dave Craig
London

National liberation

Comrade Malkin’s reply (Weekly Worker April 22) to my letter is inadequate.

Firstly he does not situate the war in the correct international context: ie, that ethnic cleansing flowed from the shock therapy enforced by the IMF in 1990 on the working class of Yugoslavia, and that the aim of the Nato assault is, among other things, to prepare public opinion in Nato countries for some other American-dominated alliance to engage in future operations as the world’s policeman for finance capital.

Comrade Malkin effectively lets imperialism off the hook in respect of its support and sponsorship for the various nationalist projects of the decomposing Stalinist apparatus. This support had the useful consequence of promoting an ethnic fracturing of the Yugoslavian proletariat and thus weakening the potential for working class opposition to IMF austerity. The failure of sections of the left to raise these issues and instead concentrate on the demand for independence for Kosova essentially means joining in with the media campaign against the significant anti-war feeling at home.

Instead the genuine left should be using the war to alert the working class to the growing danger of its sons and daughters being called on to fight repeated wars to defend finance capital’s domination of the planet. We should use every opportunity to highlight the hypocrisy of the Nato powers’ concern for the refugees when these powers are enforcing policies on the third world resulting in mass starvation. We should point to the anti-working class consequences of nationalism and the need for international solidarity of the working class to defeat the warmongers and criminals who rule our planet.

Comrade Malkin writes as if nothing has changed since 1915 in terms of the relevance of the slogan of national self-determination. Quoting Lenin is no longer sufficient and hasn’t been for some time past. Since Lenin’s time the old European empires have gone and national self-determination for the countries of the third world has been achieved. Direct political control of these states has largely disappeared. Global finance capital now rules supreme through its control of credit, investment and the terms of trade.

The old national liberation movements had a progressive content, even when led by bourgeois or petty bourgeois leaderships. They attempted to develop the forces of production which imperialist domination was holding back. This progressive content to the struggle for national self-determination has disappeared with globalisation.

In this situation the demand for national self-determination often becomes either a tool in the hands of elites in an attempt to mobilise the population behind reactionary wars or a tool in the hands of petty bourgeois ‘would be’ elites who seek to carve out new states in order to achieve power for themselves and a more lucrative direct relationship with finance capital.

These new ‘national liberation movements’ are ethnically defined, anti-democratic and pro-finance capital, and thus pro-imperialist. These movements utilise (and for their own ends often consciously seek to exacerbate) national disadvantage or oppression where it exists. They violently crush any dissent within their ‘own’ communities and suppress any attempt at working class self-activity.

As capitalism continues to decline and the proletarian response to this decline remains disorientated, the potential for the growth of such reactionary ethnic movements remains and even increases. Socialists should expose these movements as being fundamentally anti-working class and as tools in the hands of our enemies, while at the same time denouncing state support for any national oppression or disadvantage. We recognise the right of national self-determination and do not support state measures taken against those advocating that right within oppressed communities.

I made it plain in my letter (Weekly Worker April 15) that communists in Serbia should oppose the repression of the Kosovars.

However, whether we demand self-determination in any given situation depends on the concrete conditions. Given the real nature of many of the new national liberation movements, extreme caution should be exercised. But if the reports of ethnic cleansing by Serbian state forces are true, as seems very likely, Serb communists should call for their withdrawal from Kosova and argue for a multi-ethnic workers’ militia to combat the chauvinists on both sides.

The only way out is through the mobilisation of the working class fighting for its class interests around a socialist programme. The demand for a socialist federation of the Balkans is a key part of such a process. The CPGB and Comrade Malkin do not want to advance such a slogan at the moment. It would seem that it is not part of the their ‘minimum programme’.

Comrade Malkin prefers the slogans of ‘Independence for Kosova’ and ‘Arm the KLA’ to the “pious” call for a socialist federation. (Who exactly are you demanding should arm the KLA? - Nato perchance, as the ‘comrades’ of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty demand?)

As well as fighting the forces of Serb chauvinism the KLA has engaged in some ethnic cleansing of its own. It would seem that it policies could be summed up as a Kosovo for Albanians only. It is armed and trained by Germany and the USA. Reports indicate that it obtains a large part of its funding for drug smuggling and involvement in the white slave trade in cooperation with the Italian mafia. Comrade Malkin believes that we should not underestimate the possible impact of revolutionary socialists elements within its ranks!

The comrades of the CPGB should reconsider their campaign for an independent Kosova. Even more so their call for the arming of the KLA. Imperialism armed the mujahadeen in Afghanistan in their “struggle for national self-determination”. In retrospect should communists have demanded just such a course? Look at the result, comrades, and think again.

Sandy McBurney
Glasgow