Letters

Student march

On November 15 the latest March for Free Education took place in London, an excellent opportunity for students to expose the unacceptable Blairite moderation of the NUS.

For the Salford contingent this attitude was demonstrated on the coaches, when the student union executive ordered the removal of 'F**k fees' posters placed on the windows on the grounds that they were "offensive". Fortunately, under pressure from students, a compromise was reached which allowed them to be replaced with 'Direct action works', and we reached London in good spirit.

This atmosphere got even better as we were joined by about 10,000 students at Malet Street, and the noise was terrific, aided by vociferous chanting and the presence of a band, as we waited like caged tigers for the off. While the NUS planned to march quickly and tamely to Kennington Park, south of the river, the intention of the more radical section of the march was to reach parliament. Only about six to seven thousand demonstrators actually reached Westminster, but the determination of the rest of us was shown in stand-offs with the police cordon, notably at High Holborn and on Waterloo Bridge.

Our attempted surge towards parliament and block on traffic led to us witnessing some good old-fashioned police malevolence, with a force that, no doubt, was not used against haulage companies or the Countryside Alliance.

Most of us managed eventually to filter through to Kennington Park, where we were treated to a series of speeches, some well-intentioned, but mostly uninspired, from representatives including the deputy leader of Natfhe, the NUS president, and a Liberal Democrat MP. The most well received speaker was Ken Livingstone, in his socialist guise, who congratulated us on participating in the "biggest march in London for a decade" and lectured the NUS on the error of their previous abandonment of the right to a grant.

Perhaps the main aim for students will be to keep attacking the present disgraceful system of student finance, and to prevent the NUS neglecting the current campaign in order to concentrate on opposing the rumoured introduction of 'top-up' fees.

Encouragingly, the general attitude of the march often seemed to be anti-capitalist rather than merely anti-fees, and this atmosphere was assisted by the actions of the police, exposing the violence inherent in the system. A disappointing factor was the lack of media attention given to the demo, but as an MA student I have gained a great deal of hope for the future, particularly when I recall the apathy that marred student politics during my undergraduate years.

Student march
Student march

Principled unity

The debate by the SWP at their recent all-Britain conference is revealing of the continued attempts at a bureaucratic stitch-up at the top by both the SSP and SWP leaderships. Julie Waterson is reported by SSP observers to have stated at the recent London SWP conference with reference to the nationalist slogan "independent socialist Scotland" that she had "no problems with the break-up of the British state".

This is disingenuous and Julie knows it. The break-up of the British state by workers smashing the old capitalist state machine and replacing it with a workers' state is hardly the same thing as the break-up of Britain into three capitalist nation-states along nationalist lines. And it is the latter that is inherent in the slogan.

It demonstrates one again that the root of the problems on the left continues to be the willingness of key people in the two big groups to rationalise dishonesty with their own members (and the members' willingness to go along with it). The 'independent socialist Scotland' slogan was not adopted for principled beliefs by the SSP leadership and Alan McCombes in particular. It was adopted because they understood opposition to Blairism in Scotland would be likely to take a nationalist form. Any party adopting the independence slogan could reasonably expect to pick up more votes at the polls and eventually more MSPs in the Scottish parliament.

In other words it was adopted for dishonest, opportunistic reasons. The break-up of the UK state being the key rationalising argument to bring the SSP membership on board. At some point in the future if the policy cannot be overturned by the membership of the SSP this opportunism will come back to haunt the party as nationalism becomes discredited in workers' eyes.

Julie Waterson and others on the central committee of the SWP know all this. It begs the question - why flirt with a nationalist concept? Clearly the goal is to get in the SSP at all costs.

SSP negotiators have made unreasonable conditions for SWP entry into the SSP. (There is a sizeable number of SSP members who have never accepted the independence slogan and some have sold papers other than the Voice in public without any comeback from the SSP leadership.) The SWP negotiators want to remove any excuse for their exclusion. We need principled unity on the left, not unprincipled stitch-ups.

There is, of course, a real irony here too. For 30 years the SWP declared itself to be the "revolutionary party" with everybody else just being sects or, in Cliff's infamous words, "minnows". The leaders now ditch long held policies and even their paper to get into a party only two years old. It is the volte face of all volte faces. Are rank and file SWPers going to go along with their leaderships flirtation with nationalism? Are they really going to go along with giving up Socialist Worker public sales in circumstances where articles to the Voice by current SSP members are censored by the editor, Alan McCombes? We do not need another monolithic, Stalinoid party with its very own post-1923 Pravda, comrades.

SWP members can join as individuals at any time. There are honest, democratic, international socialists within the SSP who are organised and fighting to establish the kind of left workers need. Why wait to be ordered in on bad terms?

Principled unity
Principled unity

RCN desperation

I wish to comment on Allan Armstrong's letter (Weekly Worker November 16) concerning our synopsis of the Republican Communist Network AGM.

Firstly, the idea that the CPGB is somehow plotting to "take over" the RCN. Comrade Allan himself will recall that my organisation showed its political flexibility regarding the motion on nationalism. Within this motion, comrade Sarah McDonald from the CPGB moved that the RCN should take a stance against "separatism", but this was later dropped in order to counter Allan's threat of leaving the network should this become an agreed principle. As I pointed out at the AGM, I did not believe that such a development would have been positive for the network. To prevent its occurrence and after discussion with the Communist Tendency, comrade Sarah removed the offending word. Such accommodation hardly strikes me as "a blatant and ham-fisted attempt at a takeover ..."!

The second point concerns the elections to the Republican Communist editorial board. I do not believe there are any hard and set principles concerning political representation on such a board. The CPGB voted for different tendencies to be represented on the London Socialist Alliance steering committee - but we also voted for borough alliances and other working class organisations to have the right to an automatic seat on the steering committee - effectively we voted for the SWP to have a clear majority.

Comrade Allan voted for a spurious 'equality' and Phil Walden in order "to maximise the different tendencies on the editorial board". The comrade thus voted for an individual whose track record since joining the RCN has been dubious, to say the least.

It strikes me that Allan's argument for the Trotskyist Unity Group to be voted onto the editorial board was made out of desperation to shore up his own position rather than out of real principle.

RCN desperation
RCN desperation

RCN anarchist

In reply to Allan Armstrong, it should be noted that the decisions over the editorial board took place at the end of the meeting when we had run out of time. There was no proper debate. Comrades took positions that they might not have done had there been more debate and clarification of the issues.

The Revolutionary Democratic Group was in favour of strengthening the editorial board. I came to that view as a result of agitation by the CPGB. This does not mean I had the same view as these comrades. I was in favour of expanding the editorial board. My amendment to Allan Armstrong's constitution published before the conference called for four to seven members. RDG comrades first voted for five seats, probably on the grounds that this number would yield a majority. However, we then supported four. On reflection I think that four was the correct position for the RDG to take in the actual circumstances. Therefore the real positions of the CT, RDG and CPGB were three, four and five respectively.

Neither the RDG nor the CPGB had any member on the existing editorial board. Both organisations have a long record of fighting for republicanism and communism. In particular, the RDG has the longest tradition on the British left of fighting for a federal republic. Two of the candidates were among the most experienced comrades these two groups have. However we did not consider this from a purely selfish angle. It was made clear that if there was a three-person editorial board, the RDG would not contest the third seat against John Bridge (CPGB). This was the best way to strengthen a three-person board.

Allan does not consider the question of strengthening the editorial board. He looks at it from the angle of "takeover". The fact that he accuses us of 'taking over' tells us more about his own views than ours. He must consider the editorial board to be under his control. Having previously 'taken over', he sees our candidature as a threat of counter-takeover. If he had wanted to strengthen the EB he would have voted for the leading proponents of 'republican communism' in Britain. But if he wanted to keep control of the editorial board he would have backed Phil Walden.

The RDG's aim of strengthening the editorial board meant that we did not seek to remove Allan Armstrong or Nick Clarke. But those who wanted to keep control of the editorial board did try to remove or block the RDG candidate.

The RDG was one of the founding organisations of the RCN. We are the only organisation never to have had one of our members on the editorial board or indeed among the national officers. The CT on the other hand has two members amongst this group (editor and treasurer). No wonder Allan was going round warning that the RDG was trying to 'take over'!

Allan makes the spurious analogy with the Socialist Alliances. They are based on affiliations. Affiliated organisations send their own representative. The RCN is not based on affiliations. If it had been, then the CPGB, RDG, TUG, SLRF and the CFR would have representatives there as a right. We would already have had a six-person editorial board. So here is Allan trying to think up some rationalisation after the event. All of a sudden at 5pm on October 26 2000 he decides we should operate like the Socialist Alliances and therefore he voted to include the TUG! He then implies that this makes us hypocrites for not adopting the Socialist Alliance method and voting for Phil Walden, who in any case is opposed to the slogans of republicanism and revolutionary democracy.

I have no problem if Allan criticises the RDG for providing insufficient leadership to our supporters. But he does this by revealing his own predilection for anarchism. I have previously argued that Allan deviates from communism into ultra-leftism with his slogan of a Scottish workers' republic. Infantile leftism, as Lenin called it, is a form of anarchistic communism. So it is with some interest that Allan should accuse us of being organised on the "leader principle".

I would like to hear more about this "principle" which Allan is so against. It sounds suspiciously like the anti-leader politics spouted by every anarchist under the sun. This never stopped the anarchists having leaders, any more than it stops the CT having theirs!

RCN anarchist
RCN anarchist

RCN takeover

Peter Manson complains about my election to the editorial board of Republican Communist (Weekly Worker November 2). The reason I was elected was because the CPGB attempted to take over the RC editorial board, and this was not liked.

Peter's complaint that the EB is now controlled by Scottish nationalists is a deliberate falsehood. What the CPGB have failed to argue is why John Maclean's politics of a 'Scottish workers' republic' in order to break up the reactionary British state and facilitate international proletarian revolution is somehow nationalist. Would John Bridge now care to say why he thinks that is nationalism?

Mary Godwin's report of the CPGB school on 'The lessons of Bolshevism' shows that the CPGB is still making many errors in its understanding of internationalist Bolshevism and Trotskyism (Weekly Worker November 16). I will confine myself to two of these.

Firstly, Lenin's expulsion of Bogdanov from the Bolshevik faction is misinterpreted by the CPGB. Bogdanov had a cultural approach to building communist consciousness within the working class based on cooperative social activity creating communist mental associations, which was different and complementary to Lenin's more didactic approach of publishing the empirical facts of working class history.

Lenin did not understand Bogdanov and felt threatened by his intellect, so tragically took the opportunity to expel a fellow leader of the Bolsheviks by focusing narrowly on Bogdanov's Machism and on the question of philosophical materialism in an undialectical manner. Also the CPGB fail to understand that as a faction within the Bolsheviks the Bogdanovists had a perfect right not to promote or defend Bolsheviks standing for the duma, since this did not stop the Lenin faction from doing it.

Secondly, the CPGB apparently now thinks that the formation of the Fourth International by Trotsky should never have happened. Serge, an anarchist sympathiser, is quoted on this, saying that an international cannot be built while there are no parties. Could one conceive of a more dogmatic and formalistic attitude? Isn't it obvious that Trotsky was defending the idea of internationalism in order to bring an internationalist party into existence in as many countries as possible?

Mark Fischer is right to say that Trotsky made many mistakes in this project. But that doesn't prevent me saying that many of the Trotskyist parties that have existed since 1938 are/were far more internationalist than the CPGB. What does the CPGB think left politics was about for the last 60 years?

RCN takeover
RCN takeover

Anarcho facts

Again I feel I must reply to comrade Ron Allen of the Anarchist Federation. Firstly, your letter (November 2) was not a rebuttal of my "justifications of repression" (the revolutionary liquidation, by the working class, of a semi-bandit state within a state, needs no justification in any case); it was, rather, a denial of the historical facts that provoked the April liquidation.

Since I have been able to back up my original assertions with hard evidence (November 9), your original position has become untenable. You have therefore, unsuccessfully, tried to shift your stance. You quote a telegram from Lenin (November 16), in an attempt to prove your 'argument'. Again, you tear Lenin's words out of context (is this a hobby?). Let us re-establish the facts. Wrangel, in November 1920, had been finally defeated.

The political vacuum was filled, not with the rule of the soviets, but with the anarcho-bandits of Nestor Makhno. To protect his kulak demi-vendee, Makhno had established a political police, with a reputation more fitting of the Blackshirts than the Black Guard, that was (under the libertarian flag, mind you) executing Bolsheviks as fast as they could be found. Rakovsky did not have to look far for his "documents".

You state the anarchists had "distanced themselves from expropriations" (since a fortnight ago you denied the fact of these abuses, this is, I suppose, a step forward). But, comrade Allen, as you know and show, words are cheap. The Russian Anarchist Federation, in practice, did nothing to purge their organisation of either its White or criminal elements. Heaven forbid some measure of regulation should encroach upon the sacred 'anarchist method'!

Here we have the truth: Soviet anarchism sacrificed itself on the altar of idealism. Comrade Allen, you seem, also, to have misunderstood parts of my (November 9) letter. I stated several facts about the degeneration of the Black Guard within the October Revolution (forgive me if this seems old ground - it is - but our Bakuninist friends appear slow on the uptake): that it was infiltrated by counter-revolutionaries and bandits and that this was linked to the unregulatory 'anarchist method' (October 19).

In reply, and in a fit of pique, you stated that I had lied and was making a "misrepresentation of anarchism" (November 2). I cited several works (Anarkhiya and Four defeats by Karlis Goppers) to prove my assertions. I then merely stated that if you, as a representative of the Anarchist Federation, were already aware of these facts, and still labelled my words "lies and misrepresentation" you were guilty of historical fabrication much like that of Gusev, Martinov and Raskolnikov (November 9).

This, apparently, meant I was attempting to brand you "some sort of White" (November 16). But here is where your argument took its most incoherent turn to date - Gusev, Martinov and Raskolnikov were not White Guards ... they were all, quite famous, Stalinist rewriters of history.

You go on further: "Can Moran produce any other evidence at all beyond Goppers (who would try to show his importance and sow dissension at the same time) for monarchist infiltration of the anarchist movement?" Although I am still unsure as to why Goppers would invent his recollections (he would gain infinitely more prestige saying he had worked from within the Bolshevik Party, the Cheka, or the soviets themselves), I am more than willing to point you towards another similarly instructive publication. Adventurers of the civil war (A Vetliugin, Paris 1921), should provide enough evidence for you.

Whilst I cannot quote it directly (I do not have a copy to hand), I can tell you that our Mr Vetliugin, a White émigré, recalls in some detail the infiltration of the Third Revolution club by agents of the Entente. In the attempt to indict the Cheka, you, glossing over the abuses of Makhno (not to mention the ministerial anarchists complicit in the criminal Stalinist suppression of the Poum and the Bolshevik-Leninists during the Spanish Civil War), cite the death of Khudounov. I am aware of this incident. A great tragedy - but an entirely avoidable one.

Had the Anarchist Federation cleansed itself of the filth already clinging to it, the April liquidation (itself only partial: Anarkhiya reappeared and, as you freely admit, Burevestnik went unmolested entirely) would not have occurred in any form. Isn't it also true that you cite Khudounov, not as one of many, but because he was, in fact, the only anarchist known as such to die in the April events?

Quite who the other 39 were remains a mystery. In yet another attempt to inflate the standing of the anarchists, you state "mass popular revulsion" forced the release of the imprisoned anarchists. This is ludicrous - if the Soviet Republic was willing to release general Krasnov, simply on his "word of honour" (after leading his Cossacks against revolutionary Petrograd!), the mere handful of honest anarchists arrested in April were unlikely to be held for any longer than was necessary.

And what of your quotation, from the Soviet judge? Perhaps you though we would be shocked, disgusted and dismayed? Perhaps you thought we would shriek in horror: "A betrayal! The Bolsheviks were incarcerating anarchists for a grubby deal with imperialism!" But you have mistaken us for some of your own.

We do not trade in the valueless currency of the revolutionary phrase. Moralistic whining, when at every step reality eludes you - just like a snivelling Kautskyist - is not the habit of a revolutionary Marxist. Consider this: if the arrest of a few anarchists meant any chance that the Entente would begin talks (i.e., that it would bring a cessation of hostilities - however brief - giving the Soviet workers some respite and the Red Army time to regroup and rearm) this was a price worth paying.

Anarcho facts
Anarcho facts

Mass workers' party

"The Socialist Alliance represents an exciting opportunity for the revolutionary left," states Harry Paterson (Weekly Worker November 9).

What then does he consider the SA represents for the working class? The answer is contained in the last paragraph: "Our task, surely, is the unification of all conscious revolutionaries in a single, genuinely democratic centralist party. Through an ongoing process of ideological and theoretical struggle we can fight for a revolutionary programme and proceed to arm our class for the battles that lie ahead."

This conception is counterposed to "the new mass workers' party" which, he explains, is the aim of the Socialist Party. As a comrade "who is in the process of being expelled from the SP", his article is intended to reveal that, "For the SP ... the gulf between, on the one hand. its declared perspectives, the 'new mass workers' party', and, on the other, the reality of the organisation's day-to-day relationship to the SA is widening."

Nowhere in his article does he attempt to understand the actual dilemma of the working class. For the last 100 years, workers - including the majority of vanguard workers - have accepted Labour as their party. They organised in trade unions for industrial struggle and left the Labour politicians to legislate protection of trade union rights and certain social reforms. The best vanguard workers joined the Communist Party, staunchly defending the October Revolution, only to find that this principled stand was thwarted by Stalinism.

That period is over. The working class is now again faced with building "the new mass workers' party", not because the SP (or any other group) carried a resolution at its 1999 conference.

Harry Paterson quotes from an article by Peter Taaffe in Socialism Today and also from SP internal discussion to 'prove' his case that, "If the SP cannot control the alliances then it will rubbish them and/or try to wreck them." But these quotes must be taken for what they are: part of the discussion on the relationship between Marxists and the working class faced with the necessity of building its own independent mass workers' party. The SA came into existence because of the changing relationship of forces in the class struggle - the break-up of the Labour Party, a myriad of community campaigns, street demonstrations, pickets, direct actions, etc.

Those, like Paterson, who try to limit this movement to "the unification of all conscious revolutionaries in a single, genuinely democratic centralist party" with a "revolutionary programme" to "arm our class for the battles ahead", fell into the trap at the Coventry conference of telling the new independent forces that their general election candidates will only be supported by the SA if they take its name.

Opposition to this formal and rigid approach does not mean that the SP rubbishes and tries to wreck the SA. Nor does its proposal to stand 18 candidates in the constituencies where it has already built a base mean that. Presumably other groups will also want to stand where they are strongest. The SA, whatever Paterson wants or believes, is an alliance and not a party.

Mass workers' party
Mass workers' party

Wales SA

It was good to read of the Gwent Welsh Socialist Alliance branch being formed (Weekly Worker November 9). But the report raised two issues that concerned me.

Firstly, the sectarianism within the WSA is played up by the report, crowing that neither my organisation, Cymru Goch, nor the Socialist Party have members in Gwent - for the record Cymru Goch has the same number of members in Gwent (admittedly our weakest area) as the CPGB has in Wales: i.e. not a lot.

Secondly, the top-down approach of the SP and SWP to the WSA. In the May 1999 assembly elections, Cymru Goch and the Socialist Workers Party stood three candidates each and the SP stood two candidates under the United Socialists banner - a total of 20% of Welsh first-past-the-post seats. We also stood in four of the five regional lists. This departure from the WSA was because the SWP refused to join the WSA at the time. The United Socialists campaign, despite gaining about two percent of the vote, succeeded in alienating many of the WSA's non-aligned members and we lost ground as an alliance.

The SWP's decision to join the WSA a year later in the wake of the London SA experience is welcome, if overdue. The WSA agreed that any future election campaign had to be decided at the grassroots level by local WSA branches, yet the October national committee meeting heard that both the SWP and SP are intending to stand their own candidates where they see fit. When challenged, the SP said it was their money and they would use it to finance their own candidates. I assume the SWP's attitude is just as exclusive.

What this will do is alienate our remaining non-aligned members in the WSA, as well as people like myself who are committed to a bottom-up alliance that goes deeper than a tactical electoral pact. If that is all the SWP and SP want, then they might as well revert to the failed experiment of the United Socialists.

Cymru Goch has worked in the WSA to build a deeper campaigning alliance that seeks to emulate the success of the Scottish Socialist Alliance/Scottish Socialist Party and overcome the worst of the sectarianism that bedevils the left. Cymru Goch will not stand candidates in the forthcoming Westminster elections. It will be for local WSA branches to decide on that. If the SP and SWP want to continue their sectarian shadow boxing, so be it. Cymru Goch and, I suspect, the majority of non-aligned comrades will just get on with building a genuine grassroots alliance of socialists in Wales.

Wales SA
Wales SA