Letters

Livingstone

Comrade Jack Conrad concludes his draft theses, ‘The Labour Party and Livingstone’, with the observation,

“Those who back Livingstone’s right to stand but cannot bring themselves to vote for him as mayor if he is chosen by the Labour Party electoral college in London are either hopeless doctrinaires or put the interests of their sect above the interests of the working class as a whole” (Weekly Worker November 18).

This must have made shocking, or at least embarrassing, reading for a number of prominent Weekly Worker journalists who had forthrightly expressed exactly that view which is now denounced as hopeless doctrine and/or sectarianism by comrade Conrad. Notable amongst these contributions were those over the signatures of Maurice Bernal (June 24), Alan Fox (April 22) and Marcus Larsen (February 18). With one exception - comrade Larsen (Weekly Worker December 2) - none of these comrades have publicly resiled from their previously stated positions.

Indeed, prior to an apparent fulcrum date of October 21, the coverage of this issue contained exclusively the view that, whatever the outcome of the Labour Party mayoral candidacy saga, it was essential for the left to fight for a socialist candidacy for mayor of London. With the exception of a handful of letters and comrade Barry Biddulph’s article (December 2), the tide has now fully turned. In addition to the draft theses, we have had four front-page leads, all hammering the ‘back Livingstone’ theme. Surely the Weekly Worker owes a duty to its readership and to the working class to bring forward a thorough explanation when 180 degree changes occur in the prevailing line which is appearing in its columns. No intelligent reader is going to be satisfied with being told that earlier writers were all doctrinaires or sectarians.

Comrade Fox, in the article I have cited above, made an observation that is absolutely critical to the proper prosecution of this ‘back Livingstone’ debate and no honest working class newspaper can afford to let such challenges slide under the carpet: “Previously the CPGB did not rule out completely the possibility of giving Livingstone critical support in the unlikely event of his name being on the ballot form for mayor next year. But we said: ‘The left should consider backing him only if he breaks with Blair and stands as a socialist’ (February 18). Having now placed himself well and truly in the camp of social-imperialism however, Livingstone has ruled himself out as a candidate that any socialist, democrat or anti-imperialist could even think of supporting.” I doubt very much that this comrade is cringing so much under the lash of comrade Conrad’s theses that he has become unable to write. Comrade editor, such a principled objection is a bullet that must be bitten. I urge you to press this comrade to re-enter this debate. 

I have previously written to the Weekly Worker expressing my support for the position espoused by comrade Maurice Bernal in the contribution I have cited above. The comrade’s starting point was that of course the Communist Party should support Livingstone’s democratic right to seek nomination and stand for Labour against the Tories, if this is what the Labour membership in London wants. The struggle for democracy in a workers’ party - albeit in this case, a bourgeois workers’ party, as comrade Conrad correctly characterises the Labour Party in the theses - is an essential arena for communist intervention. But I see no paradox, let alone a “lunatic paradox”, as comrade Michael Malkin does (Weekly Worker November 4), in backing Livingstone’s efforts to win the candidacy ballot, but refusing to call upon the working class to vote for him as mayor of London if he stands for election next year on the official New Labour programme of anti-working class attacks.

The appearance of Livingstone’s name on the ballot paper, as Labour Party candidate, will indeed have represented a major defeat for Tony Blair. But it is precisely in the context of such a defeat that the Communist Party should be seeking to prepare further working class victories, to stretch the class’s political horizons as far as we possibly can. Surely, in such an event, our immediate perspectives would include the posing of the prospect of getting rid of the bourgeois workers’ party in favour of a workers’ party. This is hardly consistent with urging the working class to vote for itself to continue being attacked, just because the Labour Party name on the ballot paper is a man Tony Blair hates.

John Pearson
Stockport

SSP left

On the subject of Tom Delargy’s article, ‘Action stations’ (Weekly Worker December 2), I could write a little or I could write a lot. I will opt for the former.

The Scottish Socialist Party is a non-revolutionary organisation. That means that revolutionaries are not guaranteed long life and prosperity in its ranks. It is also subject to pressures from the right, which might be another reason for carving out the left.

On the other hand, there were no ‘gatekeepers’ barring the entrance to SSP membership, unlike the Socialist Labour Party. At least in Falkirk and Lothian, CWI members seem happy enough to debate with members of other tendencies. Finally, members of dissident leftwing currents in the SSP are not very numerous and there are few signs that the CWI majority is worried by them, though a tendency to accommodate the right is noticeable.

The SSP conference (end of February 2000) may give indications of where things are going. I would say that if dissidents are well entrenched in the SSP (and there has been a fair amount of time to build a base in it) they will not easily be silenced or expelled.

James Robertson
Linlithgow

Trotsky

In his article, ‘Permanent and national revolution’ (Weekly Worker December 2), Gerry Downing is reluctant to criticise a serious political mistake by Trotsky when he failed to carry out Lenin’s request to attack Stalin at the 12th Congress in 1923 for his policy on the national question in the Soviet Union, his role in Rabkin and his rude and disloyal behaviour as general secretary. Without even a cursory glance at the literature dealing with the issues he prefers to find excuses for Trotsky’s political error.

Gerry suggests that Stalin’s power over the apparatus was clear to Trotsky. This seems to imply the left opposition was over before it began. Stalin and Stalinism were inevitable. But Stalin’s power was far from complete or dominant at this point. Hence the troika of Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin. This was why Trotsky himself, some years later, described the 12th Congress as the last real congress of the Bolshevik Party. Indeed, the bureaucracy was on the defensive and offered token concessions to avert the danger of information about Lenin’s Testament from being distributed at the 12th Congress or made public knowledge.

Trotsky made a rotten deal with Stalin. In return for paper concessions on inner-party democracy, which could and would be snatched away later, when the danger was averted, Trotsky agreed to stay silent and not raise the issue at the congress. Nor did he attempt to oppose Stalin’s reappointment as general secretary, despite Lenin’s clear wishes to have him removed. The Testament was political dynamite. All Trotsky had to do was light the fuse and stand back. Instead, Trotsky left Preobrazhensky and Krupskaya to raise the issue in the party.

The reason Trotsky shared Lenin’s view but not his will to remove Stalin was Trotsky’s old political weakness: conciliationism. For years prior to 1917 Trotsky’s conciliationism isolated him from the Bolsheviks and prevented him from forging a party to implement the strategy of permanent revolution. Now it returned. The reason Trotsky did not place a bomb under Stalin at the 12th Congress was not the belief that Stalin was in total control of the party, but an underestimation of the power of Stalin in particular and the party bureaucracy in general. He imagined Stalin would be compelled to honour the agreement or make real concessions. Instead of looking closely at the historically unprecedented situation of the degeneration of a socialist revolution outside advanced capitalism, Trotsky was haunted by the past and the French revolution - unlike Lenin, who had begun to recognise the bureaucratic danger. But as he was to concede at the end of the decade, Trotsky’s use of metaphors from the French revolution served to confuse rather than clarify the issues of bureaucratic degeneration. It was a full decade before Trotsky finally recognised that the year 1924 was the beginning of the Soviet Thermador.

Nor was it a case of one political error from Trotsky. There was pattern of conciliationism in the 1920s. He compromised on the concept of permanent revolution in the Left Opposition. Instead he adopted a version of the failed strategy of democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. He even publicly repudiated the theory of permanent revolution. And he did not openly apply the theory of permanent revolution in China until after the massacre of workers in Shanghai in 1927. Even in the higher reaches of the party, knowledge of his personal opposition to CCP entry into the Koumintang was not well known.

In addition, Trotsky fudged the issue of factions and generally kept his head down or failed to openly challenge Stalin and the bureaucracy, in the crucial period after Lenin’s death. Trotsky did not raise the issue of socialism in one country until 1926. Surprisingly the political courage to raise the question was first demonstrated by Zinoviev in 1924. Gerry seems to agree with Trotsky’s conciliationism or the seeking of unity with the party apparatus and Stalin. But Trotsky’s political friend, Adolf Joffe, offered a better judgement of Trotsky’s politics during this period, when he wrote, in his suicide note at the end of this terrible decade, that Trotsky lacked Lenin’s unbending political will, his unwillingness to yield when he was convinced he was on the correct political path.

Barry Biddulph
London

Assimilation

Maybe we have another clue as to the origins of comrade Downing’s anti-British-Irish, pro-Irish nationalist politics. In his latest contribution he seems to be pushing the novel doctrine - for Marxists anyway - that we should be indifferent, or at least very casual, as to whether the different nationalities and peoples of our world merge or not (Weekly Worker December 2).

In defence of this, comrade Downing enthusiastically recommends the “correct” and “remarkably concise understanding of the national question” by the Bundist Vladimir Medem in 1904, reminding us at the same time that the “Jewish Bund had developed the most progressive and dialectical understanding of the national question, but the Bolsheviks were too little engaged with them to learn it”.

According to the admiring comrade Downing, Medem espoused the theory of “national neutralism”. This theory “allowed history to decide the eventual outcome” of the national question. What is more, Medem’s “view of a nation was not territorial”, but was “culturally and linguistic solely”. Comrade Downing approvingly quotes Medem as saying: “We are neutral. We are not against assimilation; we are not against anti-assimilation.”

This strikes me as antagonistic to Marxism. Communism by scientific definition is an organically global society which is stateless, classless, countryless and nationless. Therefore communists cannot be “neutral”. We are positively and militantly for the assimilation of all peoples. But assimilation has to be on a democratic and voluntary basis. If not, any such ‘union’ will sooner or later turn into its opposite. The revolutionary struggle for consistent democracy is the optimum for genuine and full assimilation.

As comrade Downing is not “against anti-assimilation”, then forcibly herding the one million British-Irish population into his ideal “all-Irish secular, democratic workers’ republic” (Weekly Worker November 18) is not necessarily a detrimental step after all. If that is how “history” - and Gerry Downing of course - has decided to resolve the national question in Ireland, then just who the hell are the British-Irish to say otherwise?

John Dart
Bristol

Oh dear

Steve Riley demands that I pinpoint when the poles of oppression were reversed in Northern Ireland; when it was that the protestant people ceased to be the oppressor and became the oppressed (Letters, December 2). He goes on to ask how these “endangered unionists” are raising the demand for the right to secede.

Secede from what, exactly? The comrade might have noticed that there is no united Ireland for them to secede from. Indeed, by their continued and fervent support for unionists parties the British-Irish have made clear their desire to remain separate from the rest of Ireland. As for the reversal of the poles of oppression, clearly this has not taken place. And nowhere have I claimed otherwise. If the comrade wishes to take up cudgels against me I suggest he avoids making an idiot of himself tilting at imaginary windmills.

The point I made in my letter of November 25 was simple. There are clear similarities between events in Kosova and the situation in Ireland. Within the territory of Kosova there existed a Serb minority: some 200,000 people, I believe. The KLA was fighting a war of national liberation against Serb oppression. The struggle was just and revolutionaries were duty-bound to support its democratic content (with or without the intervention of imperialism).

Within the island of Ireland there exists a British-Irish minority: some 900,000 people. The IRA/Sinn Féin waged a national liberation struggle against the undemocratic partition of Ireland and the national oppression of the catholic-Irish minority within the Six Counties statelet. The struggle was just and revolutionaries were duty-bound to support its democratic content.

Clear so far, comrade?

Returning to the concrete. If we are to believe the reports, the victorious KLA is now directing sporadic pogromist terror against the Serb and Roma minority. Tens of thousands have fled. Relations between the Serb and Albanian Kosovar working classes have been forced even lower. Self-liberation, comrade, demands the greatest unity of all workers.

The KLA seeks to defend the territorial integrity of its new state, not the democratic rights of the Serb and Roma minorities. It does not seek to include these workers in a revolutionary struggle against the rump Yugoslav state. Hardly surprising: the KLA was not and is not conducting the class war.

Perhaps comrade Riley can explain how the forced unity of Ireland, the purely formal unity of the Irish working class, will hasten the socialist dawn. And perhaps he can also declare his position on the actions of the KLA since the expulsion of the Serb army from Kosova. Why was the nationalist programme of the KLA inadequate in Kosova while that of the IRA/Sinn Féin is perfectly adequate in Ireland? And while you’re at it, comrade, can you please explain the shortcomings - if indeed you see any - in struggles for national liberation when these are led by bourgeois and petty bourgeois forces?

Put the Action Man away, comrade Riley. And the balaclava. And the shibboleths. Time to start thinking.

Andy Hannah
South London

Bigots

It is becoming increasingly obvious to me that the Jewish/Israel question is the Achilles’ heel of the British left. This is a great shame.

In reply to comrade Ian Donovan’s trenchant criticism of the ‘Statement on the British-Irish’ by John Stone, Gerry Downing et al (Weekly Worker November 18), comrade Steve Riley says that “it is more than cogent” to “compare the situation of white slave-owners to protestant supremacists” - ie, the British-Irish. The comrade adds: “In fact we could also include the Zionists and the supremacist Afrikaners in the same round-up of bigots.”

What an interesting conclusion. The entire historically-constituted Northern Ireland protestant population are defined, and dismissed, as “protestant supremacists”. So therefore the same must go for the Jewish population within the existing territory of Israel, who must be nothing but “bigots” and “supremacists” - an irredeemably reactionary people.

Brian Dee
Birmingham

Socialist war

It is hard not to agree with comrade Andy Hannah when he says that the positions codified in the ‘Statement on the British-Irish’ (Weekly Worker November 18) amount to nothing more than pseudo-Marxist “nationalist crap” (Letters Weekly Worker November 25).

One of the authors, comrade John Stone, has recently treated us to an example of this nationalist-Trotskyism (‘Defending revolutionary democracy’ Weekly Worker November 4). Here comrade Stone states that communists were “obliged to support” the fascist Argentinean regime’s “attempt to recover its former islands” - ie, the Falklands, with its Argentinean population of zero. Why should we care if 2,000 Falkland Islanders are enslaved under fascist rule? After all, they are only “Kelpers”.

What is more, comrade Stone euphorically tells us that “millions of Latin Americans were being mobilised in the streets” during the Falkland Island war - in support of the reactionary war aims of the Argentinean junta. The comrade also argues, with a hint of regret, that the junta “could have won the war”, if only it had been interested in “transforming” the anti-British war “into a massive anti-imperialist struggle”. Comrade Stone then ponders on how a victory for the anti-communist, CIA-backed Galtieri dictatorship “would not only have been a devastating blow against Thatcher, but would also have produced progressive radical change inside Argentina”. How absolutely terrible of the CPGB to “to sacrifice the anti-imperialist struggle of tens of million of Argentineans and Latin Americans in order to defend a colonial outpost’s loyalist population”.

These sentiments are essentially a strain of Latin American/Argentinean nationalism. They are also demonstrably false. After the military defeat of the Galtieri regime, Argentinean society was wracked by political and social crisis, which quickly led to the downfall of the military junta and its replacement by a civilian/bourgeois democratic regime. (The same went for Iraq and Serbia, where military defeat instigated acute political turbulence and unrest.)

The wonderful irony of course is that the ‘third worldist’ views of comrade Stone are the exact obverse of those of groups like the Militant Tendency (now the Socialist Party). It argued during the Falklands Islands/Malvinas dispute that the labour movement should force a general election in order to return a Labour government which “could not just abandon the Falklanders” and “would continue the war on socialist lines”. Sounds remarkably like an argument for “transforming” the anti-Argentinean war “into a massive anti-imperialist struggle” to me. 

Paul Greenaway
London

IRA victory

The defeat of British imperialist positions in Ireland by the revolutionary national liberation war masterminded by Sinn Féin and the IRA has culminated in the humiliating climbdown by ‘no surrender’ colonialism and the launch at last of the completely new cross-border economic and political settlement for Ireland, effectively ending partition.

The Weekly Worker’s conclusion, however, is: “Does this mean that the deal is a step forward in the interests of democracy and the working class? Clearly not” (December 2). Yet the same Weekly Worker article correctly first establishes some of the facts about the humbling of the colonialist-minded spheres of interest. Clearly the ruthless aim of the 30-year British imperialist police-military dictatorship in the occupied zone was to defeat the revolutionary national-liberation war fought by Sinn Féin and the IRA. Clearly it failed. Clearly the fall-back propaganda position was still to nevertheless try to make it look as if the IRA was surrendering. Clearly that failed too.

How can such colossal defeats for imperialist reaction not be seen as “a step forward in the interests of democracy and the working class”?

It is farcical for the Weekly Worker to parrot Trimble’s embarrassed, dishonest excuses to The Daily Telegraph that “Sinn Féin is helping to run the Northern Ireland statelet”. It temporarily survives in name only. Far from “the revolutionary situation for 30 years” having been “successfully negated … by a deal which institutionalises sectarian divisions”, as the Weekly Worker’s Trotskyist defeatism continues, the IRA and Sinn Féin’s self-determination nationalist revolution has spectacularly triumphed.

Of course, the only possible immediate outcome is a bourgeois-nationalist ‘solution’ which in the long run is obviously no solution at all to the problems of the ordinary masses in a period of global imperialist-market crisis; but it was a national liberation struggle which the forces of imperialism did their utmost to defeat and frustrate for 30 years with the most vicious military, political and propaganda war that British imperialism could mount.

Communists should have been working wholeheartedly for that defeat and should welcome it now, explaining its tremendous importance to British workers in freeing them from the age-old racist superiority towards the Irish that dominated them for so long. Only the defeat of unionist domination could achieve that. Only a nationalist-Irish-revolutionary movement could have provided it.

As Marx, Engels and Lenin cheered on every anti-imperialist blow struck by Irish national revolt in the past, so will real communists cheer on this latest and greatest triumph by these national liberation revolutionaries.

Royston Bull
Stockport

Praxis

Phil Sharpe makes some acute observations on Delphi’s philosophical musings (Weekly Worker December 2). Unfortunately (and the blame may lie with Delphi’s lack of clarity), Phil seems to miss the main points. He concludes that Delphi “refuses to recognise that we are still only at the beginning of our necessary philosophical tasks: the development of revolutionary, dialectical philosophy”. Far from refusing to recognise these tasks, herein lies the exact point that Delphi is trying to make. We do indeed need a “philosophical revolution” and “a return to the pre-1845 stance on Marx”.

But then Phil proceeds to do what he accuses Delphi of and claims “an inherent truth of his philosophical stance” by stating that it must be premised “on the understanding that philosophy expresses the revolutionary character of the proletariat”. Delphi must inquire, what is this “revolutionary character” separate from concrete, historical, practical revolutionary action - ie, praxis? How does it manifest itself? If, as Phil seems to be saying, it is predicated on a role assigned to the proletariat by the laws of capitalist development, then what is the scientific basis or historical evidence of this law?

The example Phil selects, in referring to “the importance and significance of the law of value”, underlines this problem. There is in fact no scientific proof of the ‘law of value’. The labour theory of value cannot be quantified and there is no mathematical way of demonstrating its application. And, more importantly, even if there was, how does being conversant with the labour theory of value enable socialists to intervene more effectively in the class struggle and bring the emancipation of the working class any closer? This does not mean that the theory of value does not reflect a fundamental objective truth about the real world - that all wealth is appropriated from nature, or created as commodities, by social human labour and that exploitation is based on the expropriation of the products of such labour. It is this reality, the alienation of the worker from creative work and the alienation of the product of labour from the producer, which is of vital significance in the struggle against capitalism.

It is not sufficient that socialist revolutionaries base opposition to capitalism merely on assumptions that it does not work - due to the tendency of the rate of profit to decline, the immiserisation of the proletariat or any other inherent trend - but also on the ethical principle, that it is wrong, unjust, dehumanising, etc and that the growing alienation of the worker from the commodity, the reification of labour power, the crippling of human relationships and creativity, are potent arguments for a socialist transformation of the world.

Now Phil is quite right, as was Simon Harvey the previous week, that utopian projects can become a recipe for autocratic and authoritarian systems. Praxis, however, necessarily entails the self-liberation of oppressed peoples through actual struggle against immediate and concrete forms of oppression. Such struggles can only have a utopian expression which engenders and is engendered by the spirit of praxis. Historically, utopian figureheads - Owen, Saint-Simon, Cabet, Fourier, etc - have tended to be dogmatists and system-builders, rather than exponents of praxis, of direct engagement in the living struggle against capitalism.

In fact the high point of Owenism in terms of its influence in the British working class was in the period 1832-1834, when Owen was involved in organising the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union and the National Regeneration Society for an eight-hour day, both bodies which advocated direct working class strike action. Where they did fail was to have a clear goal of an alternative society to capitalism. Conversely the Owenism of the late 1830s/early 40s, which Engels was familiar with and helped shape his and Marx’s criticisms of utopian socialism, had a clear vision of an alternative society, but not of the practical means of achieving it via the class struggle. For example Owen (but by no means all his followers) did not even regard the Chartists’ struggle for political democracy as relevant to achieving social change - in fact it was seen as a diversion.

Therefore, to cut a long historical epic short, adding a utopian, ethical, humanist dimension to our vision of socialism is not synonymous with having an autocratic, reactionary attitude to the class struggle. Instead, they are vital ingredients, which do not deny the existence of objective laws of social development but, instead, complement them, enabling people to better grasp the nature of oppression and exploitation and see that there is a viable alternative.

We must also not confuse praxis with pragmatism. Central to praxis is struggle, change, empowerment of the oppressed. Pragmatism entails capitulation to Realpolitik, accommodation with the status quo, the establishment of new power structures. Praxis involves grappling with the changing nature of reality, while attempting to enact desired changes - it is a struggle for freedom. Pragmatism means accepting a reality which is perceived as inevitable and unchangeable, a reality governed by determined scientific laws - a bowing to necessity.

Hopefully this has clarified a little what Delphi means by the socialism of praxis and has earned an acquittal on Phil Sharpe’s primary and most stinging charge - that of dogmatism.

Delphi

Stalin’s error

According to Simon Harvey of the SLP (Weekly Worker November 25), Bolshevism in the USSR can only be said to have failed in that

“it allowed itself to be perverted and turned into its opposite from within. The Bolsheviks knew that without international revolution failure was inevitable. The fact that it did not happen … does not disprove the Bolshevik method.”

In this odd formulation, he bestows Bolshevism with a monolithic mind and he forgets that socialist revolution is a world process which can always fail at particular points and moments in its history.

According to Harvey, it was not the failure of revolutions outside Russia which left the Bolsheviks with no alternative but to introduce socialism in a single, backward country. Apparently, it was Stalin, who “persuaded himself” of that possibility and, in introducing it “from above”, created “Stalinite bureaucratic socialism”.

It seems that there are other examples of Harvey’s ‘bureaucratic socialism’ and I would suggest that this could well include ‘Leninite bureaucratic socialism’. After all, after correctly ensuring the demise of the libertarian party through the permanent banning of factions, Lenin still retained his faction within the leadership of the party, replete with its voluntarism, and it was, in fact, this political and organisational practice which Stalin inherited from Lenin.

‘Socialism in a single country’, firstly with Lenin and then with Stalin, was the only choice open to the Bolsheviks, until it was superseded by ‘socialism in several countries’. The crucial political and theoretical error on the part of Stalin was not this. It was his claim, in the early 1930s, that the final victory of socialism had been achieved in the USSR and, consequent to that, his notion that it was possible to build ‘communism in one country’.

The voluntarist practice of factions in the leadership has been a characteristic not only of communist parties, but of reformist parties throughout this century. With Scargill having a foot in both camps, it is hardly surprising that Harvey’s SLP should be in such a dismal state of disarray.

Dave Norman
London

Non-violence

The riots against the WTO are a welcome development - the American left mobilising, according to The Guardian.

Although the anarchists got the headlines, the demo did attract support from the labour unions. Sadly this is support that could be lost due to the anarchist minority who feel it is their duty to ‘fight the power’ - it all just amounts to sensationalist headlines and the obscuring of the reasons behind the protest, and cracked skulls and big bruises for the anarchists - “Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you,” as George Bernard Shaw put it.

The British political culture is such that violence does not win comrades and influence people, and I would suggest that demonstrations that remain non-violent are taken more seriously: all that ‘by any means necessary’ rhetoric alienates more people from the cause than it attracts.

I am not a pacifist, but the propaganda value of peaceful anti-capitalist demonstrators being attacked by the police is considerably greater than that of a violent response at the moment.

Steve Green
Hertfordshire