Letters

No principle

For the purposes of political hygiene and clarity I will endeavour to keep things simple. I assume most people want to get to the heart of the matter. Particularly as Ian Donovan is clearly intent on continuing in the tradition of dissembling, spin, and plain invention. He wastes no time for instance in gratuitously introducing the canard of Red Action dismissing any other point of view as middle class (Weekly Worker August 24).

Donovan's antipathy to what he describes as the "backward section" of the class is crystal clear. Only those deemed immigrants, but not the working class that play host to them, are entitled to political representation. It is not even necessary to reverse the argument to see the naked prejudice within. In contrast to the 'Toytown fascist' - for Donovan the 'Toytown communist' - it is not immigrants, but the 'white' working class that should "fuck off and die". Consistently for someone who lives almost entirely in the abstract, only the 'principle' matters. 'Refugees welcome here' is, according to Donovan, just such a keynote "communist principle".

But there is nothing in that slogan, quite deliberately stripped of all class content, that suggests 'communism'. Nothing in it, moreover, to politically distinguish such a slogan from identical sentiments expressed in Guardian editorials, The Economist and The Financial Times. If Donovan is aware of the correlation, he expresses no anxiety at the contradiction. So far, for him, any suggestion of tactics surrounding the public presentation of the argument is verboten. Indeed if any change is to be considered at all, it is that the slogan should be politically 'upgraded' from 'Refugees' to 'Immigrants welcome here'. Evidently as long as he feels chivalrous, any negative political impact in the resulting confusion is a price worth paying: 'Let the class (and for that matter the London Socialist Alliance) perish, but let my principles remain intact' is the Donovan motto.

So the very real 80,000 voted garnered by the BNP in the mayoral election in May (on a mere 35% turnout) is studiously ignored. All too evidently for Donovan, and the elements that think like him, fascism is represented only by the sections of the working class who currently vote far right. The wider implications of a fourfold growth in London in only 11 months is not even considered.

Tom Delargy, who unlike Donovan has not entirely written off the class, nonetheless falls for the 'fascist vote as finite' trick: "Ian is right to point out that the only way to curry favour with such people is by abandoning our support for open borders" (Letters, August 31). "Curry favour" and "such people" are phrases that betray something of a distinct distance from the class as well, but at least Delargy sees where the responsibility and the threat lies. But this is as far as he is prepared to go. For him as well, the presentation of the principle remains "non-negotiable". "All", as far as Delargy is concerned, we have to do is "present our own electoral alternative to bankrupt Labour politicians", he argues. "All"? The LSA's 1.6% of the vote - slightly better than half the BNP return in May - says otherwise.

This is the crux of the matter. As things stand the left is not winning the argument at present. Does the left care?

No principle
No principle

Fighting fascists

Tom Delargy made many correct points in his letter in the last issue. However, he still appears to be confused about the tactics I was arguing for in terms of electoral interventions in working class areas where the fascists have made inroads, such as Bexley.

Tom seems to be under the impression that I was arguing that some kind of automatic process, predicated upon a future working class upsurge, would be enough to 'solve' the problem of racist and chauvinist bigotry and support for fascists in such sections of the working class. Tom's perception does not appear to be borne out by anything I have written - indeed other people have gained the opposite perception from reading my material on this question.

Witness the letter from Paul Marsh of Class War (August 24), who concluded from the same material that I had "given up" on the white working class. Perhaps it is my own fault for not making myself clear enough, but on the other hand, perhaps both of these comrades are not reading what I actually said, but rather looking at things through their own differing sets of blinkers.

I think the difference I have with Tom is over a nuance, though it could in some circumstances be an important one. Tom writes that, "Revolutionaries have to recognise that we did have it in our power to curtail a rise in the fascist vote in Bexley and elsewhere. All we had to do was present our electoral alternative to bankrupt Labour politicians. It is not too late to stop this trend, to reverse it and, in the process, qualitatively strengthen the revolutionary left - even while the level of class struggle remains pitifully low!"

In my view, this is a slightly rose-tinted view of the possibilities in certain local areas, and fails to take sufficient account precisely of the consequences of many years of tailism of "bankrupt Labour politicians" by the existing left.

The consequences of these betrayals are a material reality, in terms of the regression of the consciousness of these sections of workers. It is not likely that merely marching into such racist enclaves with a candidate for an election contest will suddenly result in those alienated workers flocking to embrace the left. In reality, a stubborn and prolonged struggle will likely be needed to break the hold of reaction, a struggle that has to rely on points of support among the more advanced sections of the working class.

The reactionary politics that have taken root among some of the most impoverished and degraded sections of the working class are a material force, based in the power of the state, the bourgeois media and the predominant bourgeois consciousness that is endemic in society in this period of reaction, and not simply the relatively inconsequential social power of the fascists. While the whole of the working class has class interests counterposed to that of capitalism, and therefore the fascists who are capitalism's ultimate defenders, not every section of the working class is equally capable at every given time of achieving consciousness of that.

We have to recognise that the resistivity of reactionary ideas in the working class varies from place to place, and some of the more degraded sections of the class are less immediately receptive to electoral propaganda than others. This does not mean that they cannot be won, or should be written off, but it does mean that the process of winning them is likely to be a more prolonged and complex process than some impatient revolutionaries would like.

So while Tom is generally correct that the left has to fight for the leadership of these workers, including by confronting the fascists in the electoral arena where they are using this to build a base, nevertheless there are legitimate tactical questions as to how and when, and in what context, such interventions should be made. To merely pose electoral interventions by the left as the solution to the growth of fascism would be to risk falling into an electoralist trap.

Fighting fascists
Fighting fascists

Closed borders

The defeat and division of a nation-state by imperialism is the most profound defeat the working class can suffer. Class politics become eclipsed by national, ethnic and sectarian politics. People who lived happily side by side with each other suddenly become mortal enemies. The CPGB refuses to renege on its a priori support for national self-determination and has ever since abandoned any class analysis of imperialism in favour of a purely maximal conception of socialist revolution.

The methodological flaws, however, go back further and deeper. At root is the demand for open borders. Now it is good to see some critical thinking on this issue, and comrade Mark Fischer's article (July 20) is a step forward, but we need to root out the ideology behind the politics. Open borders is a reformist demand for the administration of capitalist exploitation. It is not only the demand for the freedom of movement of people - it is the demand for the freedom of movement of labour power as a commodity.

Capitalism constantly tries to reduce the cost of labour power, which is why it seeks to import illegal immigrants to undercut wages. It seeks to cram as many workers as possible into ghettos so that it can reduce the cost of housing. It seeks to undermine trade unions which by their nature are nationally based.

It is, of course, necessary for socialists to integrate immigrants and to organise them, otherwise they will be used as scab labour. To that extent we should defend their rights. This does not mean that we say, "yea, yea" to immigration. It is this "yea, yea; nay, nay" method which causes comrade Ian Donovan to say that opposition to immigration is the politics of the BNP because he cannot tell the difference. The phenomenon of immigration is not a static 'some workers happen to be immigrants', but rather an ongoing struggle of capital against labour.

The CPGB, the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, the Socialist Workers Party, Workers Power and all the rest find themselves squarely on the wrong side of the ideological barricades on this issue. It is in this context that the CPGB, AWL and SWP find solace in charity in the false belief that they can level up living standards in different countries when in reality living standards are being levelled down. At root we do not make demands on the British state to look after the rights of foreign citizens. Those who do so end up supporting humanitarian imperialism.

This issue is strongly connected to globalisation. Globalisation is the post-World War II form of imperialism. It is specifically American economic and political hegemony over not only capital's periphery, but also of Europe and of the Far East. Its mechanism is the integration of suppliers and distributors into one firm. This is planned oligopolistic capital which in the economic crises of the 1970s became dramatically more dominant in its drive to overcome national boundaries - including trade unions and the welfare state.

With globalisation, attempts to restrict or control the flow of goods force the capitalist to internalise markets so as to ensure a supply. We should not be trying to globalise by decree or use the capitalist state for protectionist measures: rather we should be willing to take direct militant action against attempts to undermine wages and conditions. The Seattle protests demonstrate that organised labour is willing to directly challenge the organisations of global capital, whether or not our leftist metaphysicians like it.

One of the upshots of the CPGB's metaphysical maximalism is the idea that democracy can replace struggle. The CPGB, instead of basing themselves on a class analysis of, for example, Northern Ireland and Israel, come up instead with a democratic programme, which to all intents and purposes is irrelevant to all parties involved. All this just because reformist trade union struggle will not provide the answers - as if convoluted demands for self-determination will! It is as if communists should replace the UN as negotiators. Rather, the starting point should be that Northern Ireland, Israel and Kosovo are products of imperialism and agents of its domination. The CPGB will not do this because they now believe, like Kautsky before them, that fighting imperialism is reactionary.

How did the CPGB become a pro-globalisation - that is pro-imperialist - organisation? Because they claim that breaking up transnational corporations is "objectively reactionary". However, in this claim is a hidden voluntarism. It revolves around the belief that it is possible to reverse globalisation. The break-up of large companies does not destroy the productive forces. If a company is broken up it will reintegrate new suppliers and distributors and will be in planned, strategic (that is, oligopolistic) competition with its other fragments. Not that any of this is new, as this process of fragmentation of transnationals is carried out anyway by the government in an effort to promote 'free competition'. This is hardly reversing globalisation, nor indeed an attempt to do so.

I suggest that the CPGB's defence of the private property of transnationals stems from not only an overcorrection of Stalinism, but primarily from open borders politics. To square the open borders circle, we need international or cross-border unions so that a mass of unorganised, cheap labour does not arrive to take our jobs and the apparent internationalism of capital seems to herald such a development.

There are three problems with this. Firstly, it is not working: trade union membership is at an all-time low, not sprouting into new "transnational unions". Secondly, it is stageist: it requires the generalisation of reformist trade union politics as a precondition to socialist revolution. Thirdly, it mimics the ideology of the co-op movement and tends to equate workers' control of production with socialism. Those who talk about revolutionary democracy and workers' control in the abstract, without also talking about workers' power, are engaging in the typical method of revisionism to suit their own political agendas.

Trotsky called this attitude petty bourgeois moralism. The CPGB can go to revolutionary heaven because of their combination of a commitment to their liberal agenda and commitment to Marxist-Leninist verbiage. On earth they blame the workers for resisting the free movement of capital and labour.

Closed borders
Closed borders

Affiliation

The report on Communist University 2000 was informative and non-sectarian (Weekly Worker August 24). But it only briefly mentioned an issue of crucial importance: namely, the question of trade union affiliation to the Labour Party.

As comrade Bob Pitt states, the unions will not break from the party they have been with all their lives. The London Socialist Alliance and its component organisations need to take a step back and take a clear look at the trade unions. The only ones who are making noises about disaffiliation are the RMT, FBU and, following its conference, the CWU.

I can only comment on my union, the RMT, where the hordes for disaffiliation were led by the Socialist Labour Party. The moment may have been there two or three years ago, but the organisation which pushed for disaffiliation has imploded. Speaking as a member of the Labour Party like Bob Pitt, I fully acknowledge that calling for unions to remain tied to Labour is about as popular as cheering for Celtic at the Rangers end of the ground, but frankly I do not see the merits of the LSA's proposed alternative.

However, having said all this, I must take Bob Pitt to task over his position on campaigning for the repeal of the anti-union laws. It is surely the democratic right of the unions to campaign for this policy. Not to do so is a bit like a trade union negotiator going in to meet the bosses and saying, 'We don't want a pay rise this year. We're quite happy. Cheers, guv.'

Affiliation
Affiliation

Anti-cultism

Re: Dennis Tourish's letter ('Cultism' Weekly Worker August 24), I thought you might be interested to know that Dr Dennis Tourish is a former leading member of Militant in Northern Ireland. Until recently he was a lecturer in the Department of Communication, University of Ulster, in which capacity he churned out 'human resource management' textbooks. Tim Wohlforth, co-author of his latest book, is, of course, a former leading member of the American SWP and the Healyite organisation in the USA (the Workers' League).

Tourish does undeniably make some telling points and it is perhaps tempting to say 'amen' to the proposition that "the CWI (like all Trotskyist groups) is a cult". However, his argument seems to me to be very flawed. The concept of a "cult", as peddled by the likes of the American Family Foundation, is deeply problematic. It is effectively used to legitimise mainstream ideology, while demonising dissident points of view simply because they are not the accepted norm.

So-called 'cultists' may well say and do things which are pretty bonkers; but their patterns of belief and behaviour are not necessarily any more preposterous or unhealthy than those commonly accepted in mainstream society. Millions of ordinary people delude themselves into believing the most ludicrous rubbish (the divinity and resurrection of Christ, horoscopes, homeopathy, Feng Shui), but there is not a well-funded pseudo-academic industry dedicated to denouncing them and their cherished beliefs (more's the pity). And mainstream religion, mainstream politics, mainstream business (not to mention mainstream psychology, mainstream sociology and the 'cult'-bashing industry itself) are not at all immune from the features which, it is argued, are symptomatic of 'cultism'.

It could be said that people who work for McDonald's are expected to be excessively zealous and unquestioning in their commitment to the identity and leadership of the company. They must replace their own beliefs and values with those of the company. They are manipulated and exploited, and may give up their education, careers and families to work excessively long hours at company-directed tasks. And harm or the threat of harm may come to them due to low pay, long hours, psychological abuse, sleep deprivation and so forth.

It might be argued that the Roman catholic church controls an individual's social and psychological environment, especially the person's time. It places an individual in a position of powerlessness within a high-control authoritarian system. It relies on a closed system of logic, which permits no feedback and refuses to be modified except by executive (papal) order. It relies on the unsophistication of the person being manipulated (that is, the person is unaware of the process). It erodes the confidence of a person's perceptions. It manipulates a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences to promote new learning or inhibit undesired behaviour (sin).

It could plausibly be suggested that psychologists have a rigid belief system which suggests that all social, political, economic, historical and philosophical issues can only be analysed correctly from within their theoretical paradigm - one which therefore claims a privileged and all-embracing insight.

The view that this belief system explains everything eliminates the need for fresh or independent thought, precludes the possibility of critically appraising past practice or acknowledging mistakes, and removes the need to seek intellectual sustenance outside their own ideological fortress.

Tourish accepts that the distinction between cults and "ordinary" organisations can be blurred. Organisations "are not necessarily either cults or not cults", he says; rather than a strict division between the two categories, there is a continuum along which "organisations and individuals can move back and forth".

However, Tourish still believes there is a fundamentally valid distinction to be made between the two ends of the spectrum: ordinary organisations are "voluntary associations of people cooperating to work out their ideas and develop a shared sense of purpose"; cults, by contrast, contain "manipulated individuals, compelled to uncritically accept the theories of unchallenged, infallible and uncorrectable leaders." This does not stand up to close scrutiny.

Much use is made by 'cult'-bashers of the word 'brainwashing'; but it's highly doubtful whether there really could be any such thing - can someone really be made to sincerely believe something against their will? Attempting to force a belief system on someone who is effectively a prisoner may well produce some kind of conformity and/or psychological damage (even if such an attempt is incapable of inducing sincere belief) - but the vast majority of members of so-called 'cults' are not prisoners: they are involved entirely of their own volition.

Tourish's attempt to identify the CWI's internal regime with "thought reform programmes" in Stalinist China is grotesque and preposterous. It is patronising, intolerant and dangerously authoritarian to treat healthy adults who have chosen to think and live in unusual ways as if they are 'victims' who need 'saving from themselves'. Rational people can surely have no sympathy with those who whine that they were 'made' to waste their time, money and energy on something they genuinely and sincerely believed in.

It seems to me that the problem with Marxist groups is not so much that they resemble so-called 'cults' in particular; the true weakness of Marxist groups is that they resemble religious groups in general. This does have a lot to do with the nature of Marxism as an ideology. Right at the heart of Marxism there is a tension between those elements that derive from enlightenment rationalism and those that might justifiably be described as quasi-religious.

The result of this has been that Marxists as a whole (not just this or that particular tendency) have (not always, but often) had a regrettable tendency to think and behave in a pseudo-religious manner. It is, of course, not at all unusual for political ideologies to contain either avowedly religious or quasi-religious elements, but Marxism held out the promise of something better than this - and the rational kernel of Marxism, if it can be salvaged and made workable, may yet redeem that promise.

In the process of determining what is living and what is dead in Marxism swear words like 'cult' are really no use at all; they can only be a distraction from the task of distinguishing what is true and useful from what is false and useless in respect of both theory and organisational forms.

Anti-cultism

On the ropes

Readers of the Weekly Worker (August 31) were invited to witness a knockabout contest spread over a double page under the title, "Factional mindsets ... and new realities". In the left corner we have "Allan Armstrong, co-editor of Republican Communist, quarterly magazine of the Republican Communist Network and a member of the left nationalist Communist Tendency". And in the right corner we have "Peter Manson". Now, Peter should sack his agent for failing to give him his full billing. So let me provide one for him: 'Peter Manson, editor of the Weekly Worker and a member of the left Brit nationalist CPGB'.

I believe Peter is a supporter of the positions put forward by Jack Conrad in the Weekly Worker (November 19 1998), which advocate what amounts to a new Marxist-Leninist theory of the 'iron law of Britness'; and also of what is now the CPGB-PCC majority support for the national rights of that 75% nation, the British-Irish. I have argued in the pages of the Weekly Worker, and elsewhere, the connection between such views and left apologetics for the UK state, and ironically why they led to the CPGB ending up in the same camp as the far right Scottish nationalists in Blair's Scottish assembly plebiscite. I fear even worse political line-ups over the CPGB's support for the British-Irish.

Yet, if I was to gratuitously prefix every reference to the CPGB as 'Brit nationalist left', I would not be giving a rounded picture. The CPGB is being pulled in contradictory directions. The CPGB now advocates not only the right of Scottish self-determination but also offers a federal solution to the national problem and for working class unity. Yet of course, there remains a major contradiction. For the CPGB does not recognise Scotland as a nation. So who exactly are the Scottish and who gets a vote? (Come on Jack, help us out: if the British-Irish are a 75% nation, how many percentage points do Scotland and Wales get?!)

The real problem is that the CPGB has failed to come up with an independent working class politics in relation to the national question in these islands. In Scotland they are one step ahead of the majority British liberal bourgeois supporters of devolution (who had their own left camp followers; in order of capitulation - Militant, SWP and AWL) and give succour to the more far-sighted bourgeois defenders of the British state, who now openly advocate federalism.

I have so far concentrated on some of the wider issues which underline the real debate between the Communist Tendency and the CPGB in relation to the national question. I have, in effect, stepped out of the ill-lit, back-street boxing ring Peter wants to conduct the fight in, squabbling over who is the champion editor.

Anyone re-reading my article will soon see that Peter has studiously avoided many points. And many of his jabs are way off target. His whole central argument depends on the false claim that I wrote the 'Prospects for Socialist Alliances' in Republican Communist No3 as an editorial article, despite it being clearly signed with my name and political organisation - the CT.

Back to the ropes, a cornered Peter feels he needs to make a defence of his own editorial policy for the Weekly Worker. Much of this is uncontentious.

What I would challenge though is the Weekly Worker's preparedness to give space to individuals like Dave Craig to make completely specious political claims and accuse people of being "conspirators", or in the "pay of lawyers or managers", without allowing an equivalent right of reply.

Furthermore, when Peter refused to publish my article on the politics of Dave Craig, I feel he is being less than honest in his reason. If he had said that there was only so much space available, I could accept that. Instead Peter states that he did not publish because of his "total lack of interest" in his "desire to settle dusty old scores about the role of certain individuals within it 15 years ago".

Come off it, Peter. A large section of the Weekly Worker's readership is attracted precisely to your blow-by-blow accounts of "the role of certain individuals" over whatever period. The Weekly Worker is not known as the Private Eye of the left for nothing!

On the ropes
On the ropes

SACP expulsion

Further to our interview last week (Weekly Worker August 31), I will be appealing my expulsion from the South African Communist Party. I will send a letter of appeal to the central committee next week. Of course, I will let you know how things progress.

I look forward to the challenges of our common struggles.

SACP expulsion
SACP expulsion