Letters

Republicanism

Understandably, there may have been some confusion as a result of Tom Delargy's article on the meeting of Scottish Socialist Party factions convened by the Republican Communist Network (Weekly Worker January 13).

I have no wish, nor do I have the time, to deconstruct Tom's particularly imaginative spin on events at what was an extremely positive and successful meeting. However, for comrades' information I enclose the complete text of the motion on republicanism which was agreed after a comradely and constructive discussion (not the intense questioning suggested by Tom). The motion was aimed to strengthen the SSP's position on republicanism. There was no question of the Campaign for a Federal Republic backing down on its commitment to fight for a federal republic, an argument we have had and will continue to have within both the RCN and the SSP:

"This conference congratulates Tommy Sheridan for making a defiant, proletarian and republican gesture when forced to repeat an oath of allegiance to the queen prior to taking his seat in the Scottish parliament. Given that the 1999 SSP conference had taken a decision not to refuse to take the oath and organise a republican campaign on that basis, Tommy Sheridan's gesture was extremely important and helped to define the kind of party the SSP is; not only in Scotland but across the world. Given the positive response to the SSP's overt declaration of republicanism, it is important for us now to develop our position further.

"Within the SSP there are various shades of republicanism represented, from those who simply want to get rid of the monarchy, to those who fight for and advocate a federal republic of England, Scotland and Wales and those committed to a Scottish workers' republic. As true fighters for democracy, we believe that as a party we stand in the tradition of revolutionary republicanism which arose with the Chartists and was developed by Marx, Engels, Connolly and Maclean.

"Most parties on the left have avoided this question and have adopted passive or abstentionist approaches. The years of Thatcherism and the attacks on the working class resulted in a new republicanism being born through communities of resistance: for example in the great miners' strike or during the poll tax revolt. Many people wrongly believe the SNP to be a republican party when in reality they have tied themselves to retaining the monarchy. Although republican tendencies were present in the Labour Party and the SNP, working class republicanism had no party to voice its aspirations.

"The first months of the new Scottish parliament has seen David Steel proclaim Elizabeth 'Queen of Scots' and seen parliamentary time taken up with discussion on whether the heir to the throne should be allowed to marry a catholic. These are distractions from the main democratic question of the abolition of the monarchy, the House of Lords and all hereditary title and privilege. We recognise the ability of the monarchy to 'reinvent' itself and its attempts to 'modernise'. These devices are designed to guarantee the continuation of the British monarchical system well into the 21st century.

"In the SSP, we are committed to the abolition of the constitutional monarchy and believe that this is a central question if we are to have real political and social progress both in Scotland and in other parts of Britain. The SSP is therefore committed to opening up the potential for republican politics further. We can be the party that gives voice to the aspirations of working class republicans. At the same time, we must continue to take our republican agitation south of the border and to other parts of Britain and beyond. We should seek to seize every opportunity to raise republican slogans and demands. These political and democratic demands should be at the heart of our work when communities are in struggle and should form an important part in our intervention in the trade union movement. We should link with other republican organisations in the UK and participate in joint work and campaigns where possible or feasible. We are determined that Tommy Sheri-dan's act of rebellion should become more than just an image on a T-shirt: it should be a living struggle.

The SSP is committed to the abolition of the monarchy and all crown powers without recourse to any referenda, to campaign for a genuinely democratic workers' republic free from all vestiges of feudalism."

Comrades will be aware that this will be moved at branches within the context of an organisation that has a policy of an "independent socialist Scotland" and is currently committed to a referendum on the monarchy.

Republicanism
Republicanism

Federal republic

Tom Delargy cites me in opposition to the CPGB's position on a federal republic. Unfortunately for comrade Delargy, I remain a supporter of not only the slogan for a federal republic, but, importantly, the method behind its formulation.

Comrade Delargy's attempt to recruit me as an ally for his eclectic economism shows once again his failure to appreciate the explanatory power and necessity of a Marxist minimum-maximum programme.

He claims that I am for a proletarian republic. True, but not in the sense that he believes. This is for propaganda: it is not a minimum or immediate demand, and nowhere - neither on the AWL website nor in the Weekly Worker - have I junked the political struggle under capitalism for his abstract and deracinated workers' republic.

Our slogans must be about training the working class to gain mastery over politics under capitalism in order for it to take democracy to the point where, in a revolutionary situation, it moves as a mass to constitute itself a ruling class of freely associated producers. This is socialism: the self-liberation of the working class.

The slogan for a federal republic in Britain is thus a call for the working class to become the most consistent advocate on all democratic questions, including the national question. Communists say that a federal republic is not a matter of completing the bourgeois revolution or removing "vestiges of feudalism" - Menshevik nonsense. We can best fight for democracy through workers' councils and an armed working class. Under such favourable circumstances, the life span of a bourgeois federal republic is reduced to zero.

But that is not the only way that a federal republic can be achieved. The bourgeoisie could under pressure introduce a federal republic in its interests through parliament, through bourgeois democracy and the armed bourgeois state.

Thus posing the call for the working class to lead the fight for the federal republic is to concretely pose that the working class become the leading political class in society. It necessitates taking the class struggle under capitalism from the economic to the political sphere.

Comrade Delargy's call for a workers' republic is all very admirable, but is a maximum demand. I do not know where the comrade thinks I have called for a workers' republic - as opposed to a federal republic in Britain, or a centralised republic in Australia - as an immediate demand. There is, comrade, no revolutionary situation. The art of politics is to go from where we are now to the point of power. That is why we need a minimum-maximum programme.

Federal republic
Federal republic

Tailist

Once again the Weekly Worker spins a large-scale pro-Livingstone spiel out of the most trivial dross about Red Ken allegedly forcing Blair and co to drop Railtrack from the company candidates to take part in Labour's public-private partnership plans for renewing the London underground.

"All this makes one thing abundantly clear: Blair is facing a huge crisis, which threatens not only to undermine his control over the whole New Labour project," chirrups the CPGB (Weekly Worker December 9).

'Forget about imperialist system crisis,' declare these middle-class 'revolutionaries' in effect. 'Just watch Red Ken's nimble-footedness bring New Labourism crashing down.' In reality, few in the working class will be fooled - Livingstone populism is very middle class to start with. And alternatives to Blairism within New Labour have all the appeal of a new century of anaesthetic-less teeth extractions.

The suggestion that a new 'left' of Labour will re-form around Living-stone, regardless of his reactionary opportunism, and that such forces can be "helped made into an independent anti-capitalist movement" (Weekly Worker December 9) is just feeble tailist impressionism. How many such 'left' Labourites are there and what sort of people are they?

Early pro-SLP enthusiasm started with a serious hope for a real anti-capitalist development. Bloated anti-Blairism inside New Labour, on the other hand, is just more wretched middle class opportunism.

Tailist
Tailist

CATP

The Campaign Against Tube Privatisation was set up by the regional committee (London Underground workers) of the RMT some 18 months ago to broaden the campaign against the Labour government's privatisation plans.

From the outset CATP meetings were open to all who opposed privatisation of the tube. Its activities are carried out by a whole range of people: trade unionists, old age pensioners, environmentalists, Labour Party and some other political activists.

After some months CATP became independent of the RMT regional committee. It continued in the form of a kind of support group for the tubeworkers who were leading the battle for their industry and the safety of passengers, for their jobs and for trade union rights.

Meanwhile national newspapers constantly ran stories of tube-users' overwhelming opposition to privatisation and more and more examples of the danger to the public, the corruption and the gigantic profits within the privatised national rail network. Even before the Paddington rail crash it was clear that opposition to the privatisation of London's tube was the central question in the London mayoral and assembly elections. This was and is the main plank of Ken Livingstone's campaign.

It was therefore a welcome and perfectly natural development that leading RMT members would ask the CATP to enter the GLA election to take forward the tubeworkers' fight.

It was with enthusiasm that the various activists from many political and trade union backgrounds seized the possibility of a united campaign under the leadership of an important section of workers. It was especially encouraging to receive a report that there was no shortage of RMT branch officers and committee members who had led strike actions against privatisation and who were now ready to come forward and stand as candidates against Labour.

It is a development that should be welcomed with open arms by every socialist organisation worthy of the name. What better way to achieve a real unity of the working class and the 'left' in these elections? What better way to challenge every reactionary policy of the Labour government? For the breaking up and handing over of London's tube system to private contractors - profit before people - is the essence of this pro-capital Labour government.

A stand by leading trade unionists in a major union to lead the break with the Labour government is of historic significance. This year the Labour Party will celebrate its centenary. But it was established by the trade unions to represent their political interests, and now leading trade unionists in a major trade union are coming forward to stand against it.

Taken together with the stand of the six sacked Tameside careworkers against Labour in local elections, the Kidderminster campaign against hospital closure which defeated Labour locally, and other such examples, this marks the beginning of the end of the special relationship between Labour and the working class. It opens a new period when the need for the working class to have its own new independent party for socialism is firmly on the agenda.

However, because this development does not take place along the lines prescribed by his group, Mark Fischer (Weekly Worker January 13) stamps his foot and points his finger in anger.

A number of left political groups have been meeting over the past six months as the London Socialist Alliance, with the aim of standing a united slate of candidates in the GLA elections. I have regularly attended these meetings and consider it to be an important step forward. However, it is one which should complement and not replace the actual developments in the working class.

Fischer thinks otherwise. He describes these underground workers and the people from the many different trade unions, campaigns and political groups in the CATP as a "threat to left electoral unity" and as having a "blinkered determination . to press ahead with standing its own independent list". Disgracefully he apes the right wing with his "exposure" of the "mixture of motives behind the CATP's narrow-minded intransigence".

In the manner of the gutter press he tells his readers that the elected secretary of the RMT regional council, Patrick Sikorski, and some other named individuals are in the Fourth International Supporters Caucus (Fisc) which is "well ensconced in the CATP". Presumably the Greater London association of Trade Union Councils and other trade union and campaign organisations are similarly ensconced? But it does not suit Fischer's determination to rubbish the RMT regional leadership.

It is doubtful whether Fisc exists. Never mind, Fischer goes even further into vitriolic hatred: "Fisc, much like the viral pest, the flu bug, has mutated historically. Its current guise as a component part of the CATP is to be regretted to the extent that it undermines principled attempts to bring the left together for electoral work in the capital." I can imagine that an article will appear in the gutter press likening the "historical mutation" of Mark Fischer and leading members of other groups which comprise the London Socialist Alliance to "the viral pest, the flu bug".

On the other hand Fischer describes as "brave" the attempts of his current friends - the Alliance for Workers' Liberty - to broaden the CATP's political platform. Unfortunately the AWL did not so much evince bravery as effrontery. Disgracefully, AWL members turned up in force to the December CATP meeting (most of them for the first and only time) not to listen to what tubeworkers had to say, but to vote to turn over their decisions. They complained bitterly when chairman Oliver New prevented them from doing so, insisting that the purpose of the meeting was to progress already decided actions.

The CATP should have been able to rely on the LSA forces and their resources, but Fischer adds a get-out clause to the well-known guidelines in the Communist manifesto - that the communists "have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole" - so long as the workers keep their place! According to Fischer, "building the working class alternative to Blair's New Labour" is the job of the left political groups, not the working class itself.

Basing himself on a report from LSA members of their "impression gained from discussions with leading CATPers", Fischer says that "the focus of their (the CATP's) fight for votes seems almost to be tubeworkers themselves - some 7,000 of them - rather than the six million population of London as a whole" (my emphasis). Whatever Fischer's impressions, the standing of CATP candidates in the London election represents a development of the strike actions, the lobbying, the pickets and the resolutions through the labour movement which have been mainly limited to tubeworkers and their supporters. The election gives the chance to take the campaign more concretely to the millions of London voters.

CATP
CATP

Praxis

Delphi's erudite letter (Weekly Worker December 2) is still unable to tackle the essential problems of a praxis perspective.

Delphi praises the law of value in order to bury it. His philosophical standpoint cannot accept the possibility of law-governed processes. Formally Delphi does acknowledge the objective laws of social and historical development, but the logic of his philosophical stance effectively denies the validity of these unspecified laws. Essentially Delphi is arguing that human activity transcends historical laws, and reality is nothing more than the lawless conflict of contending class forces. Thus Delphi abstracts out alienated labour from the operation of the law of value.

Delphi wants to realise an ethical classless society, but viable ethics cannot be constructed on the basis of idealist aspirations: instead ethics have to be located in existing material social relations. So Delphi's idealist praxis approach is in conflict with the elaboration of a revolutionary ethic that can guide the struggle for world communism. Dialectical philosophy represents the self-criticism of the transformation of Marxism into authoritarian religious ideology, and so is critical of the utopian instrumental logic of the praxis approach.

Praxis
Praxis