Letters
Main problem
In recent weeks this paper has brought to light a number of conflicts going on within the Socialist Alliance. Last year we had an argument between the Socialist Workers Party and the Leeds Left Alliance. More recently we have seen a major battle between the SWP and the Socialist Party over the distribution of seats. This led to the recent 'peace treaty' endorsed by the last SA Liaison Committee.
The Weekly Worker has had a tendency to blame this all on the Socialist Party. But in Bootle, for example, the situation looked a bit different. The SP had a long-standing claim on the parliamentary seat. The Revolutionary Democratic Group reported that the SWP, with no candidates in the whole of the rest of Merseyside, contrived to put forward their own sponsored candidate (Weekly Worker January 11). This looked as if it was the SWP that was playing silly politics.
The Weekly Worker (January 25) tells us about some sort of conflict between the SWP and the Bedfordshire SA. It was noted that the SWP's Mark Steele withdrew from the platform of a public meeting in Luton. There is apparently more to this than meets the eye. Weekly Worker claimed this was connected with "ugly rumours circulating about internal tensions within the local SWP branch on top of the uneasy relationship with other local alliance components".
The "ugly rumours" seem related to the expulsion of an SWP member. We need to find out just why somebody has been expelled. One theory is that the expelled comrade was too enthusiastic about the SA! If this was true it might indicate that the SWP had a cynical attitude to the SAs. Another theory was that the comrade wanted to talk about programme. Ever since Marx, Lenin and Trotsky comrades have wanted to do that. The current generation of Marxists are no different - hardly a political crime! Surely the SWP should make a statement so that we get the full and true picture and clear up any "rumours".
In the old days the SWP was irrelevant to the left. The party could do what it liked. Today the SWP is making itself relevant and therefore it is surely more accountable for any dodgy and unprincipled expulsions. Nowadays the SWP can only expel comrades from its own organisation into the Socialist Alliance. If such an expulsion cannot be justified on political grounds, such actions are very unlikely to build confidence in the SWP among the rest of the Socialist Alliance.
The Weekly Worker reported last week on the Nottingham SA. We were told that "after an agreed deadline for submitting candidates and after consistently stating that it had no wish to field one of its comrades [the SWP] did precisely that. Suddenly it announced the intention of comrade Birchenough [an SWP member] to run for the seat" (January 25).
There had been a consensus in favour of Pete Radcliff (Alliance for Workers' Liberty). This late move by the SWP seemed to call everything into question. It caused protests from the Socialist Party. It seemed as if the SP might walk out in protest.
These examples in Leeds, Liverpool, Nottingham, Bedfordshire and the 'treaty' between the SP and SWP indicate that we have a political problem. It is wrong to think that this stems solely or mainly from the SP. The SP is in favour of a 'workers' party' and is serious about programme. The SWP only wants a united front and has no understanding of programme.
Therefore the problem is more likely to be inside the SWP. It would seem that, armed only with the united front and no programme, the party is unsure and possibly divided over what to do. This should be no surprise. The only thing they have is a majority, and a propensity to bully if they don't get their own way.
Despite the facts, the CPGB has persisted with the line that the SP is the main problem. Even when the Weekly Worker clearly shows the misbehaviour of the SWP in Nottingham, the SP still gets the blame. Liam Hughes tells us that the late candidature from the SWP that threatened to split the Notts SA was the result of "growing SWP exasperation at SP wrecking tactics".
The facts show that the politics of the SWP is the main problem. In making the SP the main focal point of criticism, the CPGB is barking up the wrong tree. It is not yet clear to me why the CPGB is concentrating on them. Certainly the CPGB is one of the SWP's favourite groups. Good relations were enhanced when the SWP included the CPGB in the 'six principal' organisations of the SA. I am certainly in favour of good relations as long as it does not distort your political judgement.
These differences between the RDG and CPGB were shown up in the struggle between the SWP and the SP over the distribution of seats. The RDG directed our policy first to the SWP. The CPGB made the SP the main point of attack for its criticism.
The RDG argued that we should demand that the SWP immediately concede all the 18 seats claimed by the SP. We argued in the Weekly Worker before Christmas that this would prove objectively who was acting in a sectarian way (December 21). But CPGB comrades argued that the RDG was being soft on the SP.
Our argument was that the rest of the SAs could unite, pressing the SWP to withdraw all objections to the SP's seats. This would end up putting most pressure on the SP. We said that some in the SP are looking to leave the SA and this silly contest over seats by the SWP would provide them with their excuse to leave. We should not help them to leave. We should make it politically difficult for them.
If the SWP conceded all the seats, then the whole of the rest of the SA could have united in demanding that the SP submit itself to local selection and operate through local alliances. The Liaison Committee would have then been in a position to pass a unanimous motion against the SP's undemocratic attitude to the rest of us.
What we got was the worst of all worlds. The SWP did not concede and carried on contesting the SP's seats until the 11th hour. Then a deal was struck whereby the SP carried on standing in its target seats anyway. In 'exchange' for this, the SWP and SP united to stop the rest of the Liaison Committee criticising the deal. The SWP did not stop the SP standing where they wanted. They merely prevented the rest of us uniting to challenge them. The SWP 'tactic' of fighting over nothing in order to concede everything (of principle) was a disaster.
This might be very hypothetical. But it seems the RDG 'line' was carried out by none other than Rob Hoveman in Nottingham! This was the line our critics claimed was being soft, conciliating and conceding to the SP.
So what happened when RDG 'conciliationism' was applied? Liam explains: "As the meeting started, the SWP made a welcome, and tactically astute, move in the interests of uniting the alliance, withdrawing comrade Birchenough's nomination and confirming its support for Pete Radcliff as the candidate for Nottingham East."
Rob Hoveman was certainly "tactically astute" to use our 'line'. And just how 'soft' on the SP was this? Liam confirms this was not 'soft' at all. Indeed, he says, "Some amusement was derived when it dawned on the increasingly sullen SP that for the moment it no longer had an excuse to withdraw what remains of its local membership from the alliance." Exactly our point. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and macho posturing is not always the best or most effective.
Had the RDG 'soft' line been followed at the Liaison Committee in December, we would have been having the same laugh enjoyed by the comrades in Nottingham. Instead, thanks to the SWP's previous 'hard line', we are left crying in our beer, cursing the SP and looking daft in relation to their two Socialist Alternative candidates.
Main problem
Main problem
State and racism
For inflexible and undialectical thinking, John Carter must be thanked for serving up an almost pristine example (Letters, January 25).
The comrade writes: "... the UK and capitalism is racist to the core and always will be." From this, it appears comrade Carter has failed to grasp the point we are making - the UK state's ideology is officially anti-racist. Please note, this is not the same as saying that we think racists do not exist in the state apparatus.
But it really does seem that Blair's programme of constitutional reform, along with the repackaging of 'Britishness' as all-inclusive, has completely passed the comrade by. For instance, the disgusting immigration policies being pursued by New Labour are not aimed at particular races, but at immigrants as a catch-all category. Chauvinist? Yes. But racist?
Unless we acknowledge the changing character of British nationalism, the left will find itself disarmed in front of our opponents, and our class.
State and racism
State and racism
Dead end
The error of the strange contribution from the Movement for a Socialist Future (Letters, January 11) can be summarised in Althusser's statement: philosophy is a reflection on practice, not a fixed ontology, however 'dialectical'.
Bizarre as it may seem to mere mortals, Healy's acolytes appear to have found in Roy Bhaskar's critical realism some justification for their views. Those of us who have plodded through Bhaskar's works find much of interest, but rarely a justification of Healy-style DM ['dialectical materialism' - ed.]. Or perhaps, in A realist theory of science, Bhaskar's use of "Aristotelian material causes" (1978 edition, p148) and attempts to revive the medieval concept of "natural powers and tendencies" (ibid. pp229-239) have a certain symmetry with the Workers Revolutionary Party's gibberish. And don't even begin to talk about Dialectics, which would have been best left unpublished.
I don't want to do Roy down. He continues to produce stimulating material on the philosophy of science, and other topics. But there has been much unwarranted debate about critical realism and its relation to Marxism. Many of us who are versed in this matter (check out my reviews of Bhaskar's books in old issues of the Socialist Society publications) recognise it is a complete dead end: why do we need to burden ourselves with a causal metaphysics when what is required is the 'concrete analysis of the concrete situation'?
Dead end
Dead end