Letters

Nato line

"Try Milosevic," you scream in a headline, lining yourselves up with Nato, western imperialism and the entire fraudulent, lying game of supposed 'war crime tribunals' and justice at The Hague (Weekly Worker October 12).

Western imperialism of course could not care less about justice - and happily ignores monstrous 'war crimes' in Indonesia, bloody mayhem by the Turks on the Kurds and barbaric 'sanctions' on Iraq after a bloody and repulsive war, not to mention the grotesqueries of the Israeli monsters in occupied Palestine (ie, all of it) and endless other examples.

Of course you lyingly evade, in much smaller type - we want the people to try Milosevic. But the 'people' you support are the western-backed middle class hysterics whipped into a frenzy by the open European Union and US interventions into the anyway lying game of 'parliamentary democracy'.

You view is 180 degrees wrong, about face and straight behind imperialism: just where you always hanker to be when the realities are faced.

Nato line
Nato line

Nato echo

After reading Roger Dark's article on Serbia (Weekly Worker October 12), I was astonished that he omitted to mention the role of imperialism in the recent change of government. I suppose I should not be, as I realise the CPGB is fond of echoing its own bourgeoisie. Simply because this has been a 'mass movement', much of the left are reading positive elements into it that are not there.

While I gave no sympathy whatsoever to the Milosevic Serb nationalist regime, the Kostunica government is not to be welcomed. Despite the popular uprising and strikes, it is not unknown for such sentiments to be exploited and then hijacked by reactionary forces. It was the US state department and the CIA that urged the 'opposition' to boycott elections, march in the streets and attack government offices and the media. The working class in Serbia had good reason to be angry at the Milosevic regime, and obviously this was the reason why they went along with the opposition.

Comrade Dark also asserts that Milosevic's defeat vindicates the CPGB's position on the 1999 Balkans war. I fail to see the logic here. Unless, of course, comrade Dark had sympathy for Nato and swallowed their 'human rights' nonsense. Then the logic would be clear - Milosevic has been toppled due to Nato's victory; the 'revolution' in Belgrade has been a result of Milosevic's weakness due to his military defeat. Yet surely no communist worthy of the name would take such a stance.

According to comrade Dark, "The defeat of a reactionary government in a reactionary war is the mother of revolution." So he openly comes clean: Nato's victory was a positive thing as it defeated the reactionary government of Milosevic. Of course he would not openly say that, but that is what he is implying.

Nato echo
Nato echo

Transient

One of our ex-supporters, Liz Hoskings - she was never a member and as a supporter only lasted a few weeks - writes, complaining that our minimum-maximum programme ignores transitional demands (Weekly Worker October 12).

It is simply untrue. Has she read the thing? Anyway, for her benefit, if no-one else's, we are in favour of intervening in every aspect of human life. Our criticism of the Trotskyite tradition Liz is defending is that its demands are so minimalist in practice that they disconnect the working class from the revolutionary struggle and confine them principally to bread and butter horizons.

Our minimum-maximum programme is an attempt to provide the class with an understanding of the epoch and a plan of action to become the ruling class and create a communist society. It is a draft programme because we recognise that a revolutionary programme only becomes real when it is the expression of the democratic will of the advanced section of our class. As our constitution enshrines the right of minorities to become majorities by simple democracy and open and continuous debate, it is axiomatic that the programme can be changed. It is not written on tablets of stone, but created by the living for the living.

The minimum and maximum are not two separate entities but a single programme. Our goal of communism informs the way we organise in the here and now. Hence our interest in democracy.

Democracy is not just about practising for the future: it is our best defence against capital today - the best organisational weapon for the overthrow of capitalism.

Transient
Transient

Hidden agenda

In the conclusion of his front-page article, 'No more dead ends' (Weekly Worker September 21), Jack Conrad attempts to justify the contentions of the 'CPGB' that: "Socialism is the beginning of human freedom; socialism and democracy are inseparable; socialism is conquered by the working class. It cannot be delivered from on high - neither by a parliamentary majority nor a revolutionary party; socialism is international or it is nothing. There can be no socialism in one country."

Socialism firstly involves working class emancipation and, at that stage, it is inseparable from proletarian democracy. It is the emancipation of the proletariat which offers the prospect of human freedom. That freedom can only begin, in any real sense, with the start of the withering away of the international state of socialism. It is on the basis of socialism supposedly being the beginning of human freedom that the 'CPGB' disarms the socialist state by rejecting the concept of the leading role of the revolutionary party within the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is on that basis that it also rejects all national forms of socialism, whether past or future, resulting from the uneven economic and political development of capitalism.

Conrad says: "What decides the matter is control. Does control over the worker continue to be the unlimited self-expansion of dead labour? Or do the associated producers control the products of work and thereby stop being workers?"

It is not simply control, as Conrad contends, but ownership and control which decides the matter. Conrad's 'dead end' is the 'blind eye' he turns to the question of ownership.

Hidden agenda
Hidden agenda

Multiculturalism

The report from the Commission into the Future of Multicultural Britain is a long and complex document and I do not pretend to be conversant with every dot and comma. However, two points become evident from reports published in the bourgeois papers.

These are, firstly, the notion that Britain is a multicultural society; and, secondly, that we can do something about racism and oppression by changing the words that are used. These are both typical examples of a variety of movements generated by the bourgeoisie that purport to resolve problems of a section of the population in a non-class way.

What is quite clear is that Britain is not a multicultural society. It is an overwhelmingly 'British' society - even if the word once meant 'white' (which today is not the case). The problems in Britain are that recent immigrants who come from more divergent cultures than, say, the 100,000 French people who live in London have greater difficulties in integrating and more frequently are poor, as well as being working class.

What is being proposed by the suggestion that we should deny that there is such a thing as 'British' is like refusing to use the word 'weather' because you should specify rain, snow or slush.

Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism

Bad tactics

I recently wrote the following: "In comrades' anxiety at the Campaign to Defend Democracy in the Scottish Socialist Party's founding meeting not to get caught up in fine details about SWP participation, confusion reigned. One Alliance for Workers Liberty member, Pete Burton, actually voted against our conference motion defending our right to publicly sell independent publications!" (Weekly Worker October 12).

I thought it was clear from these two sentences alone (not to mention the overall context), that Pete did not mean to vote the way he did. Pete does not think I was explicit enough (Weekly Worker October 19).

For months, our executive has been pushing its case amongst the SSP rank and file why factions cannot be allowed to sell their papers publicly. It is the CDD's responsibility to put the alternative case. If we do so, I think we can win; if we refuse to do so, then we lose by default. If the SWP join in such circumstances, they will be banned from selling their paper, and the executive will act against the rest of us so as not to be accused of inconsistency. Even if the SWP refuse to accept these terms and are kept out as a result, we are still likely to find the existing constitution enforced with a touch more rigour.

Let me be clear. I am accusing no CDD member of being opposed to the public distribution of our literature: just of extremely bad tactics.

Bad tactics
Bad tactics

Joy to read

You'll soon receive £40 from me - £30 in order not to get copies of the Weekly Worker for a whole year, and £10 as money which would have otherwise gone to the government for postage stamps. Now you are on the net, I no longer have to pay and wait for chunks of dead tree, but I do want to send a token of thanks. To the best of my knowledge yours is the only scientific Marxist publication still extant, and it is a joy to read.

Joy to read
Joy to read

Leeds vice

Last week I stated that Mike Davies was an officer of the Socialist Alliance. This is incorrect. Tim Watson, a member of the Leeds Left Alliance executive, is in fact the vice-chair of the Socialist Alliance nationally.

Leeds vice
Leeds vice