Letters

The pits

I have been a communist for 63 years and spent 64 years working in the trade union movement in various capacities. I am now active in the anti-racist and pensioners’ movements.

I have read your weekly paper. In it I found very little to commend. The attacks on the Communist Party of Britain and Socialist Labour Party and the sectarian comments in both cases speak volumes about your determination to lambaste anyone or any group who express a different point of view other than your own. You have struck the pits of political comment - this attack on personalities shows your own poverty.

It also indicates quite clearly that you do not show the slightest wish to develop any form of united action on the many issues that could be won to express alternative policies to that of the Millbank Labour bureaucracy.

I wish you well, and hope that you will recover from trying to present a case that everyone else is out of step but yourselves.

Henry Suss
Manchester

Don Quixote

Having just become acquainted with your newspaper online, I couldn’t help but notice a contradiction inherent in it.

Your open editorial policy is admirable and an example to other leftwing media. However, I sometimes cringe and laugh at some of the more wild articles and letters. Two of the most recent were Marcus Larsen’s quixotic articles, ‘What kind of republic for Australia?’ (September 2) and ‘East Timor and Australian DSP’ (September 9). They reminded me of all the little Don Quixotes on the left trying to overthrow capitalism.

For example, some years ago, when I was working in the Socialist Party of Australia’s Sydney bookshop, I was appraised of the short history of the Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyist Party of Australia by its general secretary. He was the only member. There were three at one stage, but two of them had been recently expelled. Apparently, the president of the party (his girlfriend) was expelled for sleeping with the chairperson (their lodger).

So to Larsen’s articles. He accuses Australia’s Democratic Socialist Party of “tailism”, “gradualism”, “reformism” and “capitulation to junior imperialism”. To Larsen the DSP is not revolutionary enough. If this small group of leftwing radicals and reformed Trotskyites are “tailist” then I’m Michael Portillo. The members of the DSP (and I am not a member or supporter) are strident revolutionaries, but not all of them are Don Quixotes.

Many members recognise their true position in Australian politics and the absolute futility of making ridiculous demands that they know they cannot immediately achieve. They recognise that the left has to be rebuilt, and that will take some time. They also know that most Australians are imbued with liberal and reformist ideals that will take time to dislodge. And no amount of soap-box ranting will convince anyone, rarely even the converted.

Incidentally, it is very telling that Larsen’s main target is not capitalism or imperialism, but a leftwing party. Larsen’s demands to abolish the states and standing army may be admirable, but no-one else, even on the left, will countenance such impossibly ridiculous demands.

Engage the reformists and liberals, and try and persuade them. We should not tilt at windmills just to show people how revolutionary we are. My argument is certainly not that ‘resistance is futile’, but that resistance is made harder by the ranting of little Don Quixotes.

Simon Stevens
Perth

Opportunist logic

The political impact of the Australian/UN presence in East Timor is negatively affecting solidarity in Australia. As the transition from Indonesian occupation to UN protectorate continues, the Australian Council of Trade Unions has lifted its bans on Indonesian interests. The ACTU said that “all remaining industrial bans on Indonesian interests have been suspended due to the arrival of peacekeepers in East Timor”.

Even so, some unofficial actions continue by a number of unions - particularly in the state of Victoria, where the Labor Party’s domination of unions is weaker. There are also plans in place by a number of unions to ‘facilitate’ the rebuilding of East Timor. Nevertheless, there is silence on the question of Australian troops.

This move by the official leadership of the trade union movement must be vehemently opposed. Industrial action against Indonesian interests and Australian interests in Indonesia must be stepped up until there is a full withdrawal of all Indonesian and UN troops and the smashing of the militias. Action against the Australian government must be escalated until Canberra recognises the full independence of East Timor and cuts its military links with Indonesia. Indonesia must get out. There must be no UN protectorate.

The relaxing of working class pressure on the Indonesian and Australian governments by the ACTU is the direct result of a policy which relied on Australian junior imperialism. Yes, the chief advocate of this social-imperialist position in Australia has been the Democratic Socialist Party. The DSP squandered all its consistent hard work in solidarity with East Timor and Indonesia by opportunistically pursuing the line of least resistance.

Brad Collins
Sydney

Mechanical

The pompous philosophical garble from the portentously self-christened ‘Delphi’ would be as laughable as Mrs Malaprop’s self-important misuse of language, if it were not underpinned by such vicious anti-communism (Weekly Worker September 23).

Delphi declares airily, out of the blue, that “the historical conditions for Bolshevism have long since disappeared”. Bolshevism, which is the urgent, constant, collective struggle to understand the world and the emerging new elements in it - particularly at present in the balance of class forces - has never been more urgently required.

Delphi’s bizarre assertion is a pseudo-revolutionary left equivalent to the incredible denial of reality expressed by ultra-spin Blairism, now stating that the “class struggle is over”. Delphi’s criticism might help the ‘lefts’ if they actually had any intention of struggling for Bolshevism, or were capable of doing so. But the whole panoply - from Trotskyism to museum Stalinism, and old-style bureaucratic syndicalism and Labourism such as the SLP - is incapable of getting (and does not want to get) a single fact about reality right.

Quite without evidence, Delphi asserts that “imperialism is not on the edge of imminent collapse” - which presumably means the three-year continuing economic meltdown in Asia was a giant collective world fantasy. It presumably means too that Marx’s devastating and never refuted analysis of capitalism relentlessly driving down the rate of profit until huge tides of surplus capital eventually swamp the whole system - in a giant crisis of overproduction - was simply wrong.

The great Delphi wants to draw further conclusions about theory and practice too, worried about mechanical application of theory leading to mistakes. But, though finally on the right track with this notion, he fails to get at the essence of the problem, which is that the great swamp on the left is completely wrong in its sniping and diversionary politics. That is why theory becomes mechanical: not through some failure of method, but failure to grasp the class truth. Instead he cuts to his real target - Roy Bull and the Economic and Philosophic Science Review.

The kind of inflated, pseudo-intellectual nonsenses which Delphi postures around in this article have been used for decades to throw dust in the eyes of the working class and keep them away from philosophical and political study by overawing them with big words.

Don Hoskins
EPSR

Dover demo banned

Between 300 and 350 passenger and freight transport workers attended a demonstration in Dover called by the TGWU as part of a worldwide day of action for a maximum 48-hour working week. It would have included a march through the town and demonstration outside the dock gates but for the police refusing permission as a result of the ban on marches because of the National Front.

Anti-racists should consider this very carefully when deciding tactics in future. It is disgraceful that such a legitimate workers’ demonstration should be banned under the same blanket legislation as that used to stop/protect the fascists.

Apart from this the demonstration was very successful, although small compared to the scale of the strikes, demonstrations and blockades which were reported from all over the world.

Rachael Webb
Dover