Letters

Welcome here

Regarding Mark Fischer's 'Party notes' last week, I have to say that I do not share some of his reasoning about the British National Party's large share of the vote in Bexley (Weekly Worker July 20).

It is not that surprising that the BNP have gained a foothold in this area. Some parts of the outer fringe of south-east London have been a prime stamping ground for a very long time - the whole saga of the BNP's headquarters in nearby Welling, for instance, and the epidemic of racist murders in the early 1990s that led to the Lawrence case speak clearly about the fact that fascist politics have had quite frightening potential in this area. Quite significant struggles against this, led by the left from outside in the absence of a national class-struggle focus, have failed to dent it. This is a product of the weakness of the left, one could argue, but hardly its 'betrayal'.

The 26.2% of BNP voters are certainly "lost" elements of our class, and we should not resign ourselves to that. But it is not 'demonising' anybody to recognise that in this area there has been a long-standing poisoning of the working class by racism. It may be true that they have been "forced" into this situation by "decades of neglect by Labour and - unfortunately - much of the revolutionary left", but one could say the same thing about the whole of the working class. Yet such large votes for the BNP have been fairly rare nationally.

Mark's critique of the Socialist Workers Party's past practice of flooding such areas "with posters, stickers and leaflets telling people, 'Don't vote Nazi' - with the strong implication that they had best carry on voting Labour" - is obviously correct. Likewise, he is correct in his critique of the insidious effect of Blairite 'anti-racist' policies which, combined with Blairite/Thatcherite attacks on the working class, associate 'anti-racism' with anti-working class policies and thereby fuel the growth of racism. But his critique of the use of slogans by the SWP and the London Socialist Alliance in the current period, I think, does not hold water.

The slogan 'Asylum-seekers welcome here' has nothing to do with this official 'anti-racism'. It is the opposite of it. It is counterposed to the policy of the government, which could be summed up as 'Asylum-seekers fuck off and die'. There is nothing "finger-wagging" or "patronising" about it - it is simply an expression of what should be the policy of the workers' movement towards asylum-seekers in any period. It is the logical corollary of the slogans 'No immigration controls' and 'Open the borders', both of which would be seen by the same elements that are 'alienated' by 'Asylum-seekers welcome here' as even more objectionable. LSA propaganda containing these demands would alienate these elements even more.

I also think Mark's counterposition of the slogan 'Asylum-seekers not to blame' to 'Asylum-seekers welcome here' is somewhat anodyne, given the fact that both slogans have been raised in close proximity by the LSA. I see nothing wrong with either slogan, and I do not think that any subtle alteration would have a significant impact.

It would be electoralism to believe that such phenomena as high BNP votes in run-down, lily-white estates of the fringes of major cities can be turned around by fine-tuning our slogans. It will take renewed struggles, on the level of the miners' strike, by the core elements, based in the multi-ethnic working class of the large cities, to create the kind of rebirth of hope that could do that. The election campaigns of the left should be predominantly aimed at addressing those elements, and laying the basis for these kinds of struggles.

We should not be too concerned that our slogans might 'alienate' the kind of presently backward elements whose demoralisation leads them to vote for fascists.

Welcome here
Welcome here

Solidarnosc

May I be so presumptuous as to intervene in the Downing-Roth polemic on Poland (Weekly Worker Letters)? I would like to argue that libertarian Marxism provides a more relevant analysis of the last two decades than either Stalinism or orthodox Trotskyism.

Solidarnosc was one of the greatest working class struggles of the 20th century, which future socialist historians will surely regard with the same reverence as the far left now holds for the Paris Commune. If self-activity of the working class against repressive dictatorship assumed reactionary forms, then the revolutionary socialist movement has only itself to blame.

Sadly, comrade Roth is an able man fallen amongst Spartacists. 'For labour-minority mobilisation to smash clerical-fascist counterrevolutionary fake unionism in Poland!' And damn right too, if you can double-think yourself into accepting the primacy of state property over such trifles as mass workers' struggles against an ugly military regime, characterised by proletarian blood all over the tank tracks.

Why does comrade Roth insist in using the phrase "Stalinist repression" in inverted commas, as if it were just another typical instance of bourgeois myth-making? Why is membership of Nato so preferable to membership of the Warsaw Pact? Didn't unemployment, crime and prostitution occur under Jaruzelski? Was there really no racism against Roma under Stalinism? And what of the concerted campaign of anti-semitism, purposely sponsored by the very state you so comprehensively worship, in 1968? Meanwhile, comrade Downing's insistence on extending the analysis Trotsky developed of the Soviet Union in the 30s to Stalin's east European satrapies is typical of the chop-logic of post-war orthodox Trotskyism.

Before comrade Roth's Damascene conversion to Stalinism I worked alongside him as a Socialist Outlook full-timer in the early 90s. While I cannot claim any special expertise on Poland, I do recall using a journalistic assignment at about this time as an opportunity to undertake a money/documents drop to the Polish left. During the trip I was able to hold in-depth political discussions with all of the main revolutionary socialist currents.

Unlike comrade Roth, I formed rather a high opinion of the comrades. All of the groups were - obviously, given the period - small in number and clearly in a fledgling state. It is also true that almost all had been established not by indigenous leftists, but by Britons of Polish extraction, won to Trotskyism in the UK before being sent to Poland after the collapse of communism.

In fact, it would probably not be an exaggeration to claim that the reconstitution of the post-Stalinist Polish left was largely organised from London. Nevertheless, Polish Trotskyism had already achieved a degree of implantation qualitatively superior to that of the far left in Britain of the time. The prospectus looked set for healthy growth. I can only assume from the lack of coverage in the left press in recent years that the optimistic scenario has not panned out.

As to the militancy of the Polish working class in general, I was able to witness elements of workers' control of the production process that I have not seen anywhere before or since. Certainly my access to key industrial facilities was completely in the hands of unions rather than management. Presumably much of that has faded with the subsequent expansion of capitalist relations of production.

Roth is utterly wrong to see the rise of Solidarnosc and the subsequent development of Polish politics as a left-right issue, primarily because Stalinism distorted the very meaning of the terms. For those of us who - at the time - adhered to the 'degenerate workers' state' theory, it was a tough call. Fortunately, a gut instinct for socialism from below somehow saw us through. The Polish working class is today better poised to secure its self-emancipation than it ever was under Stalinism.

Incidentally, what did The Leninist - forerunner of the Weekly Worker - have to say at the time? I recollect that it was rather closer to the politics of what the CPGB now disdainfully calls "official communism" than it is today. Care to reprint, guys?

Solidarnosc
Solidarnosc

Penetrating

So the CPGB is whining about the content of Republican Communist (Weekly Worker July 20). But the magazine accurately reflects the views of the forces up in Scotland, the views of the people who formed the Republican Communist Network.

What on earth has the CPGB got to complain about? Well, we must not forget that John Bridge "wants war with Allan Armstrong" (RCN England meeting, June). Therefore his members must meekly give Bridge what he wants. What Bridge proposes is a simple coup d'etat by his London-chauvinist organisation. The intention is to pack the October RCN meeting in Edinburgh with Bridge's own loyal minions in order to vote through a London-chauvinist takeover of the magazine, which is currently not to Bridge's southern metropolitan taste. Will this happen? Probably the CPGB have the numbers to force it through.

I am not against genuine democracy on the editorial board, but I am opposed to the CPGB's version of 'democracy' - a pliant, London-centric publication. As communists located 'in the provinces', the Trotskyist Unity Group has long struggled against the gross London bias of left publications, including the Weekly Worker, noticing that our most penetrating articles and letters were never published. Now John Bridge is planning a London-chauvinist takeover of a valuable and pluralist Edinburgh-based publication!

Keep your bureaucratic, mediocre, dogmatic and mechanical conformist, London-chauvinist paws off Republican Communist!

Penetrating
Penetrating

Red-green

Peter Manson may be surprised to learn that I agree with his contention that Republican Communist needs an extended editorial board and that its content needs to be more reflective of the various RCN tendencies. I suggest that the board's members be elected at the AGM and be subject to recall.

At a time when the RCN in England is moving towards serious discussion of very real political differences, a more analytical and less vitriolic criticism of my article would have been welcome. As it is, I am unsure what exactly are the points Peter is making.

Is he alleging that I am in some way in cahoots with Allan Armstrong and the Communist Tendency? Any similarities between the CT's politics and my own are accident and not design.

Is Peter saying the article should have indicated I am a Green? I wrote the article as an individual. It was the editors who indicated my political affiliations as RCN and South London Republican Forum.

He says I talk a good revolution when it suits me. Does that mean he is accusing me of dishonesty or opportunism?

Peter again attacks me for standing as a Green candidate in the GLA elections on that party's platform. What other platform could I have stood on? It was not my intention to stand against the LSA, but for green socialism. What I would have liked was a joint red-green candidate. Sadly that proved impossible. However, sharing platforms with Ian Page revealed how much in common we have. That, I think, augurs well for the future, as do invitations to speak on SWP platforms and at an AWL event. For me at least, the communist project needs greening as well as a lot of rethinking and reworking.

For the record, I do not support national communism - it has to be global. However, if a Scottish workers' republic and the break-up of the UK state are steps towards that then they are steps I would support. I also think that some forms of nationalism are progressive and should be supported.

Red-green
Red-green

Second thoughts

In his review of Republican Communist, Peter Manson owned up to having second thoughts about supporting as our 'fourth' slogan, 'international socialist revolution': a "compromise too far", he mused.

Compromise is hardly the right word. As Bob Paul pointed out (letters RC No3), it is incomprehensible why this slogan should be any more acceptable to the CT than the sharper 'international socialism'. Uniting around this "compromise" would simply lumber us all with yet another sound bite lacking an agreed meaning. Since Allan Armstrong links his hostility to international socialism with opposition to the politics of Lenin, I would appeal to all Leninists in the RCN to coalesce around our original slogan.

I really do not need comrades Armstrong (or Terry Liddle - also in RC No3) to point out to me that the reality of revolutionary Russia did not match the inspirational picture painted by Lenin in State and revolution. But the blame for what went wrong can't be laid at the door of Russia's international socialists. It was the traitors to international socialism, the Kautskyites, who deserve our condemnation. Not satisfied with standing by as their respective ruling classes sent millions of workers to the trenches, they then stabbed them in the back as they tried to emulate the Bolshevik example in their own country.

By crushing the revolution internationally, they created the conditions for the untimely end of revolutionary Russia. Those RCN members who do not want the traitors to international socialism to be let off the hook need to adopt a slogan that is not intended to do this. And, it would seem, 'international socialist revolution' is intended to do precisely that.

Second thoughts
Second thoughts

Left sects

Most lefties would probably agree about the general features of a cult like the Moonies. A guru who tells everyone what to think and how to act, an abuse of language and concepts to insulate the members from the outside world, a membership which has a blind faith in what the guru tells them, and an overt hostility to those who would make a point of criticising the cult's aims and methods.

The same lefties would almost certainly denounce you if you even suggested that these features are all present within their own organisations. But the bigger organisations on the left have these features. They are most damagingly present in the Militant and the Socialist Workers Party, who between them have done tremendous harm to the cause of working class liberation over the years. There are a long list of left groups which have imploded as a result of undemocratic internal regimes. The SWP is the only group with an undemocratic regime that has so far managed to avoid disintegrating. It is only a matter of time before it does.

It is important to be explicit about this, given the changes taking place on the left. Organisational unity and electoral alliances will not go far if each tendency has its own hidden agenda. Any attempt by the SWP to swamp the socialist alliances or the Scottish Socialist Party at some point in the future will wreck the unity already forged. We are already seeing how the crises in one tendency of the SSP - the CWI (Militant) - has adversely affected the whole party ('impossible' things like an 'independent socialist Scotland' being the main slogan of the party; Cuba held up as a model for socialists). We do not need a repeat of this with the SWP.

The road to real lasting unity can be shortened the more individuals there are on the left who are prepared to abandon their blind faith in the leadership line and to think, act and vote for themselves. Consistent democracy and honest political accounting are in all our interests.

Left sects
Left sects

Phil and Ben

Phil Rudge (Letters, July 20) suggests that it was a little indiscreet of me to call Ben Watson "slightly loopy" in my review of Art, class and cleavage (Weekly Worker July 13). Both Ben and Phil can rest assured that I meant it as a compliment - it is those members of the SWP who try and convince me that they are thoroughly rational and in earnest that I really feel sorry for.

Phil seems to feel that I am in some way against 'content' in art. This is not so. I would argue that neo-Stalinism infuses nearly all the cultural 'criticism' of the left. This is the offspring of the 'instrumentalist' approach that would only deign to consider a cultural artefact if it happens to dovetail with an issue such as, say, the national question in Britain, sweeping aside its constitutive formality.

From here it is a matter of your goal. If you are only interested in rituals, tactics, opportunities, 'stick-bending' and such like, then no doubt you will find plenty of sustenance in 'realist' formulas. But if, like Phil Rudge, you genuinely understand that artistic production should lead to the heightening of sensuous life and the sharpening of specific, human, capabilities, then this should perhaps lead you towards a more considerate view of artistic form and the manner it which it concretises content. 'Art for art's sake' is horse-shit, but I have no problem with designating 'art' as a specific, conscious, ability to abstract from and 'deflect' the world.

I partly agree with Phil on the "need to practise and demand a culture and materialist aesthetics that is overflowing with content". However, I think art's "beauty and knowledge" lie in the extractions and abstractions from such a generous surplus - therein lies the key difference between myself and Phil.

Phil and Ben
Phil and Ben