Letters

Dialectical parting shot

I'll admit that I have little time any more for your organisation. My political trajectory and yours are in opposite directions. It is a measure of the extent of our differences that I cannot think of any central issue with which I agree with you. I send you this as a parting shot.

Jack Conrad seems to have built his brand of politics on the muddling of certain theoretical categories. 'State' is conflated with 'regime', 'proletarian rule' is conflated with 'socialism', the "struggle for democracy" is conflated with politics and, most importantly, programme becomes a substitute for theory and method.

The method of Weekly Worker writers, at least since Kosovo, is to uncritically repeat the bourgeois media while making some sort of 'moral' case for the CPGB programme. The result is empiricism crossed with moralism.

There are two immediate problems with favouring democracy in general. It should be obvious to a dialectician that there is no reason one democratic demand might not contradict another. Rousseau pointed this out in the Social contract: the general will of a people - that is, the totality of the will - contradicts the will in general - that is, the summation of the individual wills of that people.

Imagine a religious cult whose central practice includes human sacrifice. Would an 'extreme democrat' say that the state should not interfere with the cult's practices?

The other immediate problem is that democratism is a sibling of economism. By my understanding of democracy, if an individual or a group has a democratic right then he, she or it can express this right independently of its political content. Therefore to reduce politics to the general struggle for democracy is to remove the politics from that very struggle.

The reason Jack Conrad wishes to remove the political theory from his politics is that he needs to claim that the call to arm the KLA and calling the levelling of Yugoslavia "revolutionary" was something other than political support to Nato.

Dialectical parting shot
Dialectical parting shot

Marx and the Jewish question

Comrade Michael Malkin's presentation of the Bruno Bauer-Karl Marx dispute of the early 1840s obscures more than illuminates.

The comrade states that Bauer "supported Jewish demands for religious emancipation", and then makes the additional comment: "Bauer's problem (and that of liberals in general) was that they mistook political emancipation, embodied in declarations of human rights, constitutions and so forth, for human emancipation".

On the other hand, it seems, Marx realised that the "the principal defect of political emancipation is that it is purely formal". Though he did not reject demands for Jewish religious-political emancipation "as such", Marx was of the view that "political emancipation cannot succeed in achieving the realisation of freedom".

You could easily get the impression from such remarks that it was Bauer who was the most gung-ho about Jewish emancipation, while Marx was dragging his feet a bit because of an almost otherworldly concern for 'universal human freedom'. But nothing could be further from the truth.

The concrete political questions being posed in the 1840s were - should Jews have the same civic, legal rights as christians? For and against political emancipation of the Jews? For and against equal rights for Jews?

In reality, Bauer's 1843 brochure, 'The Jewish question', and its follow-up essay, 'The capacity of present-day Jews and christians to become free', were concentrated polemics against Jewish emancipation. Marx's reply of 1844, 'On the Jewish question', was a passionate argument for Jewish emancipation.

However, the significant aspect of Bauer's anti-Jewish emancipationism was that it came from what could legitimately call an 'ultra-leftist' angle - therefore comrade Malkin is incorrect to associate Bauer with liberalism.

The only 'solution', thought Bauer, was to liberate all Germans from religion in general. What is more, argued Bauer, the Jews have to liberate themselves from Judaism before freedom-loving German radicals and revolutionaries could possibly consent to helping Jews in their struggle for civil-political rights. In the follow-up essay, Bauer was even more explicit. Judaism was so bad a religion that the Jews did not have the capacity to be free men and women, merely by virtue of being Jews.

Incidentally, after his ultra-revolutionist spasm, Bruno Bauer quickly became a rabid admirer of Bismarck, Russian tsarism and an early exponent of racist - as opposed to economic - anti-semitism/anti-Jewry.

Marx and the Jewish question
Marx and the Jewish question

Emails and SWP sabotage

I need to comment on articles and letters in the last two issues of the Weekly Worker, which suggest there is a dispute between the Bedfordshire Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Workers Party. Perhaps the following will shed light on what has been occurring in Luton.

I received an email from Rob Hoveman on February 1 explaining that, "The SWP does give its full cooperation and support to the Socialist Alliance nationally and to every locally affiliated Socialist Alliance with the sole exception of the Bedfordshire Socialist Alliance."

This statement brings out into the open the policy of the SWP in Luton since December 13 2000. The SWP failed to cooperate with Beds SA. When SA members began complaining, we were subjected to a series of attacks and sabotage. This has united every single non-SWP member against them.

The immediate cause of this dispute was the failure of the SWP to cooperate with Beds SA in the context of the Vauxhall dispute. The general approach of Beds SA was put forward in a motion passed on January 7, intended to be sent to the shop stewards. The final paragraph refers to concerns that there was a failure of cooperation with the SWP.

This motion was met with hostility from the SWP, who stepped up their policy of non-cooperation. They expelled one of their own leading members, Eric Karas, because, as chair of Beds SA, he was considered too sympathetic to our alliance.

They withdrew SWP speaker Mark Steele from the Beds SA public meeting. They have banned a number of Beds SA members from their public meetings, including myself - even though these bans are against the wishes of the majority of the local SWP branch.

Prior to the Vauxhall dispute there were no problems at all with the relationship between the Luton SWP branch and the Beds SA. They were happy to be an integral part. They took up various positions, such as officers, and on the programme commission, etc.

However, since the involvement of the SWP full-timers, who described the local branch membership as "shit", they have not been able to have any debate, dialogue and common activities with the Bedfordshire SA.

In order that we could work effectively together we requested, through an intermediary, that Beds SA officers meet with whoever was the senior SWP official so that we could coordinate our work.

Rob Hoveman considers this was an unreasonable request. He says that, "No SA in the country has sought or has needed to seek 'regular contact' between what you call 'senior' SWP members and local SA officers."

So here is the immediate cause of the dispute. The SWP turned around and said that the reason they are not cooperating with us is because we complained about non-cooperation! Instead of trying to work with us to improve the situation, the SWP have put down ultimatums and begun expelling and banning comrades. Scratch the new SWP and the old SWP soon appears on the scene.

Behind all this we now find that there are some deeper issues concerning programme and constitution. The SWP full-timers do not like the programme or constitution of Beds SA. Open and democratic discussion of a set of policies is not favoured by the SWP. Their favoured method is not to discuss policy, so that their view is imposed via the back door.

Hoveman says: "It concerns me that the question of programme has loomed so large at such an early stage in the development of the Beds SA."

We now find that SWP members have performed several U-turns, and have, after taking direction from SWP CC members and their recently imposed full-timer, objected to the inclusion of the abolition of the monarchy in our platform on the grounds that it would "put off" old-age pensioners and royalist voters. They objected to a 'woman's right to choose' in case it put off 'pro-lifers'.

At our last meeting we had one woman who was pro-life and against women having a democratic right to choose. She told us that she could not join. The SWP members were very happy. It proved their point.

Yet we had the last laugh. After it was made clear that a 'woman's right to choose' was our campaigning policy, which she had only to accept, not agree with, she changed her mind and decided to join anyway on the grounds that she agreed with the rest of our policies. The SWP were crestfallen.

The SWP think that activity is everything and policy nothing. If policy is nothing there is no point in rank and file members discussing it or voting on it.

Policy becomes the preserve of the elite. We think that a socialist and democratic policy must be the foundation of activity and it is for members to decide and vote on.

Emails and SWP sabotage
Emails and SWP sabotage