Letters

Entryism

Thanks to Bob Pitt for correcting my error on the political home of John Palmer (letters, October 28).

However, he and other objectors misunderstand, or seek to avoid, the main point I made. That is that Marxists employ both long-term strategy and short-term tactics in seeking to build a revolutionary party to lead a socialist revolution. Comrade Bob does not agree that a revolutionary party of the Bolshevik type is necessary to make a socialist revolution, if indeed he still believes in the necessity for a socialist revolution in the first place, a matter he needs to clarify. Hence his method is fundamentally at odds with the Marxist method.

An open debating paper like the Weekly Worker or Scottish Socialist Voice is of course very useful in debating with backward opponents like John Palmer and is far better than most sectarian far left party publications. However, the content of this preference in Bob’s case is his aversion to Leninism.

It is always necessary to orientate to the ranks of the Labour Party and thus to the reformist consciousness of workers who vote for it, as Bob advocates. But, forgetting the Marxist purpose of this, he lapses into deep entryism, where propaganda for revolutionary socialism to educated new layers of workers’ leaders to build a Marxist party is entirely abandoned. I do insist that when a large layer of the vanguard of the working class has understandably taken a sectarian option, like the SLP or SSP, then it is entirely necessary and productive for Marxists to relate, work with and join these groups, in order to teach them to relate back to the mass of workers.

However, I do not believe that these groups are or will become revolutionary Marxist parties. The political confusion is too great, not least Scargill’s obscene bureaucratic Stalinism, while the Militant tradition’s line on the state and Ireland continued their classical fudge on a parliamentary enabling bill to introduce socialism, as opposed to revolution. These are left reformist parties and therefore no substitute for revolutionary socialist, Bolshevik-type parties.

So no apologies to James Robertson. The SSP might be “the best thing going” in Scotland, but it does not meet the objective requirements of the Scottish working class. None to Eddie Ford and the CPGB PCC over their pro-loyalist turn and none to John Dart over the equally confused ‘democratic revolution’ stageist position which prepared the latest right turn.

Gerry Downing
London

British-Irish

In his letter (Weekly Worker November 4), Steve Green shares the bemusement of Ivor Kenna as to “why this British-Irish thing has been brought up”. I am more than bemused.

Formulating a self-determination programme for the Irish by the ‘CPGB’ of the oppressor nation at this time has little to do with ‘critical’ internationalism. Put forward under the cover of a debate on ‘The national question in the British Isles’, it is at best a display of intellectual arrogance. At worst, it is nothing less than disruptive, couch chauvinism.

Dave Norman
London

Lenin’s lie

Clarity is a precondition for our being in a position to persuade. Phil Kent’s letter, by contrast, went for Allan Armstrong’s jugular, and did so in the most ham-fisted manner possible (November 4).

According to Phil, “The most disturbing aspect of comrade Armstrong’s article (Weekly Worker October 28) is that he has no understanding of democracy, as demonstrated by his treatment of the Cossack question.” These words are put in Allan’s mouth: “Lenin was a liar, Lenin was right to be a liar, Lenin won because he was a liar; communists should learn from this.” Poor Phil. Had he used his noggin, he could have worked out that Allan could not possibly have supported Lenin’s ‘lie’ to the Cossacks. Because if he did, then he obviously would be supporting, not opposing, Jack Conrad’s theses on the British-Irish as an entirely justified but cynical subterfuge.

Allan holds the exact opposite opinion of Lenin to the one Phil supposes. He openly solidarises with those left communists (Pannekoek, Gorter, Pankhurst, Maclean, etc) who were expelled from the Comintern.

I disagree with Allan on how to assess Lenin’s mistakes. For me, Leninists today need to be open about the fact that the Bolsheviks were wrong to repeatedly make a virtue out of necessity. The creation of a one-party state, one-man management, the ending of factions inside the single legal party, the crushing of the Kronstadt rebellion ... on these questions, and many more, my criticism of the Bolsheviks (easy with the benefit of hindsight) is that these tragic departures from the socialist norm were often not so much justified by objective circumstances so much as they were lauded as exemplars. While Lenin was far less guilty than others of doing this, even he is not above reproach.

Allan’s criticisms are far more fundamental. He locates the root cause of the tragic history of the Russian Revolution in mistakes of (or even betrayals by) Lenin and the Bolsheviks. This is an entirely idealist perspective. Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin and the rest went into the October Revolution every bit as committed as is Allan to democratic planning by the working class, to transcending the law of value.

The soviets were indeed degraded into empty shells. But this did not happen as a result of inadequate study on the part of Lenin. Far less by any pernicious plan. The working class were given no choice but to leave the factories and to take up arms to defend the revolution. The defeat of this revolution was, in other words, not caused by errors of the revolutionaries in Russia, but by the betrayals of so-called revolutionaries in the heart of the capitalist system - Germany, Britain, the US.

Allan needs to be forced to face up to his refusal to explain the defeat of the Russian Revolution from the perspective of international socialism. This is crucial because, as a consequence of the pointless search for an explanation on exclusively Russian soil, he lets off the hook the real villains: the Kautskys.

Accusing Allan of holding the opposite views to his real ones does not help one iota. It gives him an excuse to withdraw from debate, something which is not in his interest any more than it is ours.

Tom Delargy
Paisley

Kosova

I am afraid there is something seriously awry with comrade John Stone’s politics, to judge by his distinctly economistic and sometimes disembodied polemic against the CPGB over the recent Balkans war (‘Independence - against the KLA’ Weekly Worker October 21).

Comrade Stone refutes the CPGB’s position, best summed up by the slogan, ‘Nato out of the Balkans - Serbia out of Kosova’. The comrade thinks the CPGB should have taken up a pro-Serbian defencist stance. To justify his defencism, comrade Stone informs us that “sometimes you have to side with an oppressive regime against the nationalists of an oppressed nation once they become imperialist puppets”.

What is this but just a convoluted way of embracing the decidedly non-Marxist notion of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’?

Don Preston
Brighton

Policy flip

The front page of the Weekly Worker (November 4) makes interesting reading. It would seem that the policy regarding the Labour Party and Livingstone has been subjected to a severe spin causing it to ‘flip’.

It seems that a decision has been made that if Livingstone manages to get the official Labour nomination for London mayor the CPGB will lend critical support. The CPGB will have a position of ‘Vote Livingstone, but ...’ Now this is a turn-up for the books, having previously argued vigorously against those on the left who cannot let go of the Labourite coat tails and have supported the Labour Party during elections no matter how ‘critically’.

What has brought on this change? Is it that Livingstone has managed to breathe some life into the corpse of the Labour left? If so, does this now mean that the CPGB will support ‘critically’ any other Labour left mouthing some socialist-sounding platitudes who manages to gain some support? Does it now mean that the CPGB will oppose those who stand against Labour left candidates in future elections, or is this just opportunism?

Michael Farmer
Rochdale

Dead Ken

Michael Malkins’ sentence, “Indeed a victorious Livingstone would now constitute a living manifesto against everything that Blair represents and would become the focus for exactly the sort of grassroots opposition that we as communists seek to make the audience of our own politics” (November 4), is the most stupid that we as communists have ever read. In the last week.

What about Ken Livingstone writing a living manifesto? Or am I still living in a place where things and people have material boundaries and not in this new world without principle where a written declaration can morph into a man’s head?

Phil Rudge
Hackney