Letters
Internationalism
Jack Conrad argues that the Scottish Socialist Party leadership might resort to using the Socialist Workers Party's refusal to advocate Scottish independence as a pretext to stop them joining (Weekly Worker June 22).
I think this highly likely. I also agree with Jack that one consequence of such a preemptive witch hunt could be the purging of most Republican Communist Network members: we, after all, have never made any secret of the fact that we commit the same 'crime'. Because of this, I will support Jack's motion to conference on separatism.
However, Jack should not underestimate the importance of offering reassurances to founding members who are likely to vote against the motion that we do not want our organisation to split over this issue. Secondly, while I support the motion as far as it goes, it goes nowhere near far enough. The RCN must commit itself to the fight against splitting along nationalist lines the socialist challenge to Blairism at the general election. But we need to do more than this. We must fight for certain key international socialist polices within the all-UK challenge. For this purpose, I want to propose the following motion:
This conference affirms that the RCN:
- vehemently opposes the Stalinist fantasy that socialism can be built in an independent Scotland, Cuba or any other single country;
- appreciates that our responsibilities as international socialists cannot be postponed until after workers take power into their own hands. Our internationalism is for today as much as for tomorrow. The RCN will, therefore, make immediate preparations to challenge nationalism at the coming general election by doing the following:
- fight to unite the genuine left against New Labour and the nationalists on a single slate across the United Kingdom;
- fight against the xenophobic 'little Britisher' nationalism that will inevitably hegemonise the 'No to the single European currency' campaign;
- fight against all immigration controls. Capital (dead labour) is free to roam the planet in search of the highest rate of profit. How much more free must people (living labour) be to follow it, to seek out a decent, active and productive life? To commit ourselves to the free movement of people is to struggle against immigration controls right across the planet, and not just those enforced by the United Kingdom state. Because we are international socialists, we recognise the necessity of making this commitment, and do so unreservedly.
Internationalism
Internationalism
Cuba faith
What is depressing about the debate around Cuba is the amount of squaring of circles that is going on by comrades who perceive themselves to be arch-democrats.
Socialism and democracy should be seen as indivisible. Any society in which the population does not consciously control their own lives is not socialist. Any society where the surplus produced is not controlled by the population through democratic organisational forms of representation is automatically not socialist.
In Cuba what has existed is a paternalistic regime which has expected loyalty in return. When the loyalty was not there the regime has been prepared to incarcerate, sack and deport dissenters, often Marxist dissenters (and the evidence is there for those who wish to see). How can those who jealously guard the right of tendencies to exist in a socialist party in a capitalist country square this with support for a regime that imprisons those who argue for such basic rights as political pluralism and trade union democracy?
It seems to me it comes back to the left's old psychological curse of faith - faith in Stalinism. At its strongest this has led to individuals believing everything bad said about 'the communist states' is/was CIA propaganda. The tragedy is that the left will not win large numbers of workers to its side until it has clearly re-established its democratic, rational, honest credentials.
Cuba faith
Cuba faith
Zimbabwe
Ian Donovan's letter (Weekly Worker June 22) regarding my article on Zimbabwe not only makes some bizarre leaps of logic, but also attacks some of the basic ideas which characterise the CPGB.
I wrote that Ian conflates the Mugabe leadership with the war veteran movement. This confusion seems to extend to most of Ian's thinking. If I don't support the MDC then I must support Zanu-PF. In another era this 'logic' was applied against Trotskyists in Germany: 'If you don't support Stalin then you support Hitler.'
Ian, as our 'Marxist' traditionalist, attempts to argue that workers should "control" transnational firms so as to build international socialism. To "expropriate" these firms rather than merely "controlling" them will lead to them "disappearing". I hate to point out the completely obvious, Ian, but attempting to "control" management in one country will simply convince the management to move the capital elsewhere.
Everything that the CPGB ever said about auto-Labourism and economism is contradicted in its illusions in the Movement for Democratic Change. In its rush to defend and even outdo cosmopolitan imperialism, the CPGB abandons one by one all of its revolutionary principles.
Given that RCN membership is conditional on agreeing to the slogan 'revolutionary democracy', I think RCN members should question the validity of the CPGB being involved when they reject a basic revolutionary democratic demand such as the resolution of the land question in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
Bankrupt
Gerry Downing informs us that the CPGB is "collapsing before the current ideological offensive following the fall of the Berlin Wall", and has become "seriously politically disorientated and opportunist" (Letters Weekly Worker June 29).
What a hilarious reversal of reality. In fact, Gerry, the post-Berlin Wall "ideological offensive" has precisely served to expose the political and moral bankruptcy of the currently existing left. Unlike the well-prepared CPGB, the Menshevikised 'anti-Stalinist' left has acted as if it is unaware of the elementary fact that there can be no real or advanced socialism without full and consistent democracy. As a consequence, the left has repeatedly fallen victim to a phoney 'anti-imperialism' which is quite prepared see the democratic rights of millions trampled into the ground merely in order to pursue its goal of a purely abstract and usually economistic derived 'socialism'.
It seems that Gerry too divorces democracy from socialism. We see this by his contemptuous reference to the CPGB's supposed "kow-towing to imperialist-sponsored movements like the KLA, the loyalists, the MDC - and now the Zionists, it seems", and Gerry urges us to support Mugabe, Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, general Galtieri, colonel Gadaffy et al "as long as" they take "measures against imperialism". So support for dictators is fine, but ethnic Kosovar Albanians, the British-Irish, the Jewish people in Israel, even the urban and exploited poor in Zimbabwe, it seems, all have to be sacrificed on the altar of Gerry's fetishistic and always 'incorruptible' socialism.
Bankrupt
Bankrupt
Israel
Gerry Downing's remark about the CPGB "kow-towing" to "the Zionists" can only be a reference to this recent Jack Conrad passage: "However, because [the] Jews dwell throughout the world, speak countless languages - English, Russian, Arabic, etc - and have no common economy linking them, they cannot function with a singularity, resolve and sense of purpose of a nation. Put another way, the Jews cannot meaningfully exercise national self-determination.
"Another aside. Due to the European holocaust and mass migration into Palestine that is no longer the case in the state of Israel. Here within this definite territory Jews constitute a national majority - most speak a reinvented Hebrew, they have a common economy binding them together and a common psychology which manifests itself in a common culture which is best described as Israeli" ('Debunking the myth, part two' Weekly Worker June 8).
Notice how Downing subsumes the entire Jewish population in Israel under the demonistic label, "the Zionists". On the basis of this device he then blithely tells the historically constituted Jewish people within the existing territory of Israel (Zionist, non-Zionist and anti-Zionist alike) that they are not entitled to democratic-national rights.
Israel
Israel
RCN truths
The slogans of the Republican Communist Network are indeed open to a variety of interpretations and you would think that no self-respecting revolutionary socialist would have any problem whatsoever in signing up to support them (Letters, June 22).
That is one of the main reasons why the CPGB has proposed an additional slogan: "For the highest unity of the working class in Great Britain against the UK state. Against all forms of nationalism and separatism." This would obviously create difficulties for supporters of an 'independent socialist Scotland' or a 'Scottish workers' republic'.
Nevertheless, concern that Phil Walden is being "lined up for expulsion" from the RCN because of his inability to support 'republicanism' and 'revolutionary democracy' is misplaced. True, comrade Walden admitted at the June 17 RCN England meeting, at least tacitly, that two aspects of the letter to which he had signed his name had been undesirable: crucially the claim of its authors that they had "arranged a full RCN meeting" - a blatant attempt to split the organisation.
But it seems likely that comrade Walden will now abide by the democracy of RCN members. It has to be said, however, that, judging from his letter in the same issue of the Weekly Worker, comrade Biddulph has no such intention. He pretends to see nothing wrong in his actions and continues to rubbish the democratic decisions of two RCN meetings, referring to them as a "can of worms".
The votes at both meetings were overwhelming. None more so than the vote to elect me treasurer on February 5: it was unanimous - even comrade Biddulph voted for me. Yet he writes: "... the CPGB [packed] the February meeting with non-members of the RCN to elect Peter Manson treasurer ..." As this was the founding meeting of the RCN in England, it was hardly surprising that most of those present were not yet members, including myself. The meeting agreed that everyone present could vote nevertheless. CPGB comrades were in a minority, as they were on June 17, when RCN members voted either unanimously or with one vote against to confirm all the February decisions. Of the four elected officers I am the only CPGB member.
Comrade Biddulph accuses me of "telling lies" in my 'Unity against nationalism' article (Weekly Worker June 22). First, I called him a nationalist, he says. I did not do so (although his accusation that the CPGB is attempting to shape the RCN Scotland "from England" could certainly be open to nationalist interpretation). Second, according to the comrade, I reported that he had "not replied to the correspondence of the secretary of the RCN in England". Wrong again. I wrote that he had not responded to a specific question: does comrade Biddulph support the RCN's slogans? We are still awaiting a straight answer on that one. Third, I tried to "deny the existence" of comrade Biddulph's faction. Throughout the article I made it clear that this self-appointed clique of guardians was indeed a faction. Comrade Biddulph really ought to read what is being said.
RCN truths
RCN truths
Technical breach
While I agree that Phil Walden's declaration concerning lack of support for two of the four current slogans of the RCN is "technically a breach of membership rules", it is somewhat an extreme reaction of Tom to suggest that the comrade is being lined up for expulsion. Certainly, given Phil's position against 'republicanism' and 'revolutionary democracy', I would question the reasons of the comrade to join in the first place. This, combined with his refusal to remove his name from the 'Biddulph letter', would suggest a more cynical motivation for membership of the network.
However, for the RCN to invoke an expulsion would raise important questions about the nature of the organisation, not least its internal democracy and its ability to deal with political differences.
Technical breach
Technical breach
Fascinating
I am intrigued by the apparent attitude of Barry Biddulph and Phil Walden to the RCN.
If you are not a republican why on earth would you want to join an organisation called the Republican Communist Network? Why not just set up your own separate and distinct organisation - say, the Non-Republican Communist Network? Even more fascinating, how is it possible to be a communist in any real sense if you are not a republican?
Fascinating
Fascinating
Racism
Jim Gilbert thinks there is a 'third way' to be found in the debate over official anti-racism (Weekly Worker June 15). Yes, the UK bourgeois state is at present anti-racist. But it is also racist at the same time. As comrade Gilbert semi-philosophically puts it, "The dialectic of the situation is that racism is opposed and used by the state, depending on circumstances; these two positions are not necessarily expressed at different times either, but in different contexts."
So how is it possible for the UK state to be simultaneously anti-racist and racist? For Jim "the Blairites" are promoting a new "British 'race' incorporating the 'black British' and the 'Asian British'" (Letters, May 11). Ergo, the UK state must be racist because it pitches the "British race" against other 'races' (such as the 'French race', 'German race', 'Kosovar/Albanian race', etc).
This 'broad' understanding of racism is politically dangerous. The Gilbert definition of racism effectively deracialises it, equating it with national chauvinism, which in turn becomes just another form of racism. A similar device allows the SWP to avoid confronting the central question: "Make no mistake. The attacks on asylum-seekers are racist. The press are not talking about white Zimbabwean farmers when they attack those who want to come into Britain, or the thousands of rich French tax dodgers who now live here. They are talking about Romanians, Iranians, Kosovars, Iraqis and Chinese. Capitalism constantly regenerates racism" (Socialist Worker June 24).
In other words, the SWP dare not utter the name of the real enemy which confronts us all - the chauvinism of the UK nation-state and all its servants, including the anti-racist ones. Bad theory sooner or later produces bad political practice.
Racism
Racism
Red letter
The letters page is often my favourite thing about the Weekly Worker, because most of the contributions are from real people - rather than contrived as in Socialist Worker and other left papers. June 22's brought up several issues I would like to address.
Firstly the scared surfer, David Murray, member of the Scottish Socialist Party. He accuses this paper of being pro-war. Perhaps he has not seen the many articles and the practical work of CPGB members throughout the country in opposing imperialist war in the Gulf, and elsewhere. Are you saying, Dave, that you would like socialism, so long as you do not have to fight for it? Violence is likely to occur when attempting to change the global system. I do not like it, but it is a fact.
Stalinist policies? Let's see ... like offering to tell the authorities the names of people who rioted against the poll tax, as the SSP's progenitors did? Advocating the arbitrary nationalisation of the 150 top industries? Pursuing a nationalist road to socialism? Look at your own organisation, comrade.
Then we have comrade Carter, who accuses the CPGB of being "a pathetic, anti-communist, anti-Marxist group, ... sowing ... confusion and counter-information amongst Marxists". The CPGB's polemics may well confuse comrade Carter, for which I can only express my sympathy. But the comrade states that the CPGB "exists in the gutter with little or no support". I would challenge the comrade to name a Marxist organisation at the moment who have anything more than a little support.
We are all in the gutter, but some are looking and working at ways of making it up onto the kerb and beyond, instead of slinging silly accusations about MI5 from our cribs in Northants. Try arguing why you believe the communists are pro-capitalist, comrade. I will pull up a chair and get comfortable for that spectacle.
Red letter
Red letter