Letters

Long view

My postal worker delivered this morning two interesting pieces of information and I had to chuckle.

One was a report of an attack on me by Nina Temple on behalf of the executive of the Democratic Left, accusing me of being behind a Trotskyist conspiracy to capture DL and its assets! Another was my copy of Weekly Worker, accusing me of deliberately arranging the relaunch of the LSA in August last year to coincide with the CPGB's Communist University to deliberately exclude them! Both claims are fantasy! It is interesting to note that both accusers, one representative of the extreme right of the labour movement, the other the ultra-left, were for many years happy to coexist in the same party - the original CPGB!

At no time did I receive representations from the CPGB/Weekly Worker indicating they would have been unable to attend the August 1 relaunch conference or any suggested alternative venue or date. I understood that the CPGB's University went on for over a week - are the CPGB expecting the rest of the left in London to put left unity developments and the practical and urgent tasks of building the LSA on hold whilst comrades debate the Scottish question!

The CPGB sent along two senior comrades who made important contributions to the day's discussion and debate. Both of these comrades I have supported in their interventions in local council by-elections - one standing on a hopelessly ultra-left programme (who gained less than one percent!), when a member of the SLP, and was supported by me in the face of opposition from other branch members. I was also one of the few LSA activists who helped Anne Murphy when standing on a much more sensible broad anti-cuts platform in Hackney who gained a much more respectable vote.

I fully support the CPGB's about-turn on Ken Livingstone and your coverage of Labour's tribulations has been good. The success of August 1 has been demonstrated by the success of the subsequent LSA in now being in a position to consider standing in the GLA elections and able to negotiate with other players.

My view is that the LSA should continue to seek to reach agreement with others who are intending to stand for the GLA list, not just the CATP. I am aware that officers of the LSA have met with officers from the London Alliance - a broad coalition of community leftists and radicals, many of them ex-Labour Party people who are also intending to stand. They appear to have gained some local publicity regarding their broadly progressive policies, many of which the majority of the LSA would support. They appear to have been having discussions with Ken Livingstone and a number of London Labour MPs and former GLC councillors. The CATP has also been meeting with the London Alliance. The officers of the Independent Labour Network and Green Socialist Network have also met with the London Alliance.

One of the tasks the LSA set itself was the goal of building a broad coalition of community activists and linking up local campaigns to mount a broad challenge across London to Blair and New Labour. We must, however, be frank that the LSA has failed to do this. In fact the forces around the LSA are falling away. The Green Socialist Network has withdrawn. We have only attracted a lone minority voice from Labour Briefing, although very welcome. The report that the SP are not willing to mount a challenge in opposition to the CATP suggests that the LSA is in danger of becoming little more than an SWP front with ultra-lefts seeking to buy their way onto the list. Equally the CATP amounts to little more than the left inside the RMT - perhaps fewer than 30 activists. I am not aware of any Aslef or TSSA activists in the campaign. A recent West London CATP organising meeting had only six attending, one attending from Slough and only one tubeworker - Oliver New himself!

All three left forces seeking to mount a challenge in the GLA list are weak and will be hit badly by the lack of a free election address and all will have difficulty in raising both the election deposit and costs. All three are likely to lose their deposits and can ill afford to lose the thousands it will take to mount an affective campaign. The process of splitting the Labour Party, and weakening its support will be set back further. The Green Socialist Network has taken a valuable initiative in seeking to hold a debate around aiming to unite all these left forces.

My point is that the 14 first-past-the-post borough GLA seats could offer a useful space for the forces of the LSA to organise around if agreement on a combined list cannot be reached. I am pleased to learn of further local meetings in Lambeth and Hackney (initiated by the CPGB) seeking to explore the possibility of standing local candidates.

I do plead guilty of being to the right of the CPGB - but then I am in the company of 99.3% of Londoners who failed to back the CPGB in last May's Euro elections!

Long view
Long view

Red republic

There at least appears to be one point of agreement between Tom Delargy and those comrades replying to his report of the Republican Communist Network-initiated wider meeting, held on January 8. The meeting was comradely and fruitful. However, in the version according to Tom, he alone appears to have understood the true spirit of the agreed republican motion. Everybody else was involved in making unprincipled compromises or had finally seen the light! (Weekly Worker January 13).

However, if Tom wants to practice the non-sectarian politics he advocates, he should be a little more careful in his reporting of others' clearly stated political positions. Comrades from the Campaign for a Federal Republic, the Revolutionary Democratic Group and the CPGB-PCC have all had to correct Tom in the pages of the Weekly Worker. I, as a former Red Republican member (the organisation no longer exists separate from the RCN), would like to question two of Tom's assertions.

First, Tom claims that, "In a welcome break from the past, the Red Republicans raised no objections to the CFR motion's implicit call for the overthrow of the monarchy throughout the United Kingdom." The Red Republicans have never opposed any CFR motion calling for the overthrow of the monarchy throughout the United Kingdom. The platform of the Red Republicans is quite clear: "We are socialists who oppose the continued existence of the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' ... [We seek] a united movement to set up workers' republics. This is our aim in Scotland and we seek the support of others with similar aims in Ireland, Wales and England." If there are genuine republican movements anywhere in the United Kingdom, they will get our support.

Where there has been disagreement between Red Republicans and those who argue for a unitary or federal British republic, it is over how best to overthrow the British monarchy. The Red Republicans have always maintained that the principal motor of republicanism in the UK has been the national democratic movements - primarily in Ireland, but also in Scotland and Wales. The Red Republicans have therefore placed themselves in a genuine historical tradition represented by Connolly and Maclean, two of the greatest internationalists ever to have emerged from these islands. We oppose British bureaucratic 'internationalism' and support internationalism from below.

The second point is pure fabrication by Tom. He claims that, "The CFR seemed surprised to find themselves suddenly targeted by the Red Republicans" over the issue of a workers' republic. Both the Red Republicans and the CFR know full well that our respective differences, over workers' republics and break-up of the UK on the one hand and a federal republic on the other, remain strong enough that they are acknowledged in separate platforms in the Republican Communist. Therefore the former Red Republicans would not try to impose their position on the CFR and certainly did not target them. It was Tom himself, supported by other non-RCN members, who argued this position. The fact that the notion of a workers' republic seemed to enjoy the support of all the other non-RCN forces there on the day did seem to tip the balance. Whilst Red Republicans will not disguise their delight at the decision to replace the truly SSP rightist, 'soft republican' formulation of a "modern democratic republic" by a "workers' republic", if this was to be achieved by a political ambush it would represent a very shallow political victory.

As it was, Sandy McBurney of the Glasgow Marxist Forum, and a centralised Britain supporter, pointed out that republicanism in the here and now was represented by the earlier section of the proposed motion, "The SSP is committed to the abolition of the monarchy and all crown powers". It was in this spirit that Mary Ward accepted the 'workers' republic' slogan. My own contribution at this point was to question the validity of the last phrase, "free from all vestiges of feudalism", stating that a workers' republic should strive to be free of "all vestiges of capitalism"! However, Mary denied she held any Tom Nairn-type interpretation of the British state and pointed to the archaic Scottish land laws, which still needed to be combated. The last phrase remained.

Red republic
Red republic

Utopian republic

When Dave Craig writes that his category of bourgeois republic will not be like an historical bourgeois republic such as France or America he is not joking (Weekly Worker January 20). This is because his category is utopian: it has never existed and never will. Dave knows it will not be an historical bourgeois republic because it will resemble what he curiously describes as the dual power republic of the Russian Revolution in 1917.

Unfortunately for Dave, dual power in Russia in 1917 was not a bourgeois regime: it was a struggle of hostile classes for domination. The working class did not aim for dual power. Dual power was a miscarriage, as Lenin explained to the moderate Bolsheviks who clung like Dave to the category of 'democratic revolution'. The reason power was not seized in February 1917 was because of "insufficient class consciousness and organisation of the proletariat" (VI Lenin Between the two Russian Revolutions 1976, p78).

Dual power describes the revolutionary situation in which the equilibrium of bourgeois society is destroyed by the replacement of a single state, government and political sovereignty by a double sovereignty or two centres of power: one state outlived; another semi-state in formation. The amount of power which falls to each class depends on the relationship of forces.

As Trotsky, who had considerable experience of dual power, put it, "To overcome the anarchy of this twofold sovereignty becomes at every step the task of revolution or counterrevolution - the double sovereignty is not a constitutional, but a revolutionary fact" (L Trotsky History of the Russian Revolution 1977, p224). It is utopian to imagine dual power or a potential or actual civil war is a constitutional part of a state regime or bourgeois republic.

Nevertheless, this is precisely what the comrade does. Dave has dogmatically repeated many times that a "dual power republic is a bourgeois republic and not anarchy without class rule" (Weekly Worker July 29 1999). But how can dual power, which by definition and historical fact is two fundamentally conflicting forces and states, be the expression of a single power of a constitutional regime? In a dual power situation no single class and its political parties dominate entirely until the triumph of revolution or counterrevolution. There is no such thing as a dual power republic outside Dave's constitutional fantasy.

Utopian republic
Utopian republic

Russian questions

I am a revolutionary militant. I was a Trotskyist, but I came to understand its mistakes about the class nature of the USSR and other pseudo-socialist countries. I think that the USSR was a bourgeois state with the historic function of primitive capitalist accumulation, and that Trotskyism failed to be a communist alternative to Stalinism.

I want to receive editions of your paper and get to know your positions, especially in such questions as the class nature of the USSR, tactics of communists in bourgeois democratic countries, questions of trade unions, parliamentarism, the causes of the defeats and degeneration of the revolutionary workers' movement and perspectives for its resurrection.

Do you have some relation to the moribund, opportunist official CPGB?

I am awaiting your answers.

Russian questions
Russian questions

TGVism

For disillusioned leftists everywhere there is a brand new philosophy, or tendency, now available on the market - namely, Troisième Gauche Verte (TGV) or "third, green left".

The brainchild of former '68er revolutionary firebrand Danny 'the red' Cohn-Bendit, the TGV tendency was launched this week with an interview and article in the French press. Explaining the new philosophy, which of course has no particular structure and seeks to 'influence' the political debate rather than gain power, Cohn-Bendit explained: "Tony Blair's third way is stuck somewhere between right and left. We are something new. We would accept some aspects of socialism; the idea that people can liberate themselves by common effort. But we would also be, in many respects, pro-market. At the same time we acknowledge that neither socialism nor capitalism, in their classic form, can solve the problem of our common home, the planet. Finally, we believe that people, young people especially, are increasingly attached to individual liberty, but this is not at all the same thing as selfishness.

Cohn-Bendit adds that TGV "is a mixture of leftism and greenism, of libertarianism and liberalism; something that will appeal to disaffected voters on the right as well as many on the left; something that will appeal to young people who are not interested in politics; something that will associate politics with pleasure, rather than the dull, grinding work of the political activist."

So something for everyone in TGVism. Any takers?

TGVism
TGVism