Letters

SA betrayal

I fail to see the point of running in the bourgeois elections. If the Socialist Alliance win, they offer no real alternative to the evil that is capitalism. Wage labour will still be in operation, as will exploitation. There will be no equality, private ownership will still be around and, most importantly, the bourgeoisie will still exist.

This attitude can be summed up as the failure to tackle society's ills, but attacking the consequences of such ills, so putting off the final revolution by pacifying the workers. I therefore call all those who support the Socialist Alliance reformists and not revolutionaries. In my view to run with the SA is to betray the working class itself!

Marx states: "The first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class, to win the fight for democracy." This is not achieved by running in bourgeois elections, but by violent actions of the proletariat towards definite needs - this being socialism and ultimately communism.

The dictatorship of the proletariat can only be achieved by the revolution of the proletariat. Notice 'revolution of', not 'reform by'.

SA betrayal
SA betrayal

Irrelevant monarchy?

The left in Britain is fond of dismissing the importance of republicanism. "It's only tinsel in the constitution," comes the refrain. Of course, if the workers took up republican ideas spontaneously, our allies on the left would suddenly become born-again republicans themselves. Such is the 'transitional method', as mangled by Trotskyism, Labourism and 'official communism'.

With this in mind, I was very interested to read The Daily Telegraph recently (March 21). "The queen can warn Blair not to call an election," ran the headline. The comment piece, by monarchist constitutional academic Vernon Bogdanor, points out that one of the few royal prerogatives remaining is the monarch's right to reject a prime minister's request for dissolution of parliament. The PM can merely request and not advise the monarch on dissolution.

Of course, the article points out that were Liz Windsor to invoke this right in present circumstances, it would cause an almighty crisis in the constitution. However, as Bogdanor says, she still has her private weekly tête-à-tête where she could 'warn' Blair of the dangers involved in calling a May 3 election. Bogdanor quotes no less a constitutional authority than Bagehot on the matter. In The English constitution (1867) Bagehot says that the monarch enjoys three rights: "the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn". These exist in the constitution in addition to reserve powers.

That the Telegraph is implicitly calling on the queen to "warn" the government about the calling of an election shows that our class enemy does not treat the monarchy as "constitutional tinsel". It remains at the heart of the way we are ruled. Socialists ignore this at their peril.

Irrelevant monarchy?
Irrelevant monarchy?

Anarchy speaks

Instructive letters page (March 8): it's a feat - a miracle almost - that a message, a politics, a purview that for 200 years has offered people a positive answer to the impossibility of living with work has been rendered negative and impossible itself.

Nineteenth-century social theory is dead. Of course it is of only academic interest. The conflictual model of prole and bourgeois, capitalist and worker, is gone with the mills that manufactured it. Imperialism too is gone. New technologies of oppression have replaced empire. You wonder that no-one will listen to your politics? It is no wonder! Your language is as dead as your society. Empire is gone, the masses have moved - or been moved - on.

What contrast here ... the problems and the party have remained trenchant, resolute in their self-imposed inertia. Lawrie Coombs's letter is answered by PJ Proudhon in The political capacity of the working class, written nearly a century and a half ago ... the spirit of 1968! Student-worker solidarity? In an age when students work and workers study! ... Adam Buick's electoral graffiti - denying the state alone ...

Your communism represents an economic solution to social problems; the solutions of an institution to the problems of a man. The main flaw is the objectification of society. Society is not an object, clay to be remoulded: it is not even a plural object, a noun representing a whole at variance with itself. Society is not constituted, but enacted. Society is an action, not a thing. Once abstracted by intellectual conception or by sentimental fancy - imagined as the "great machine" of the Abbeye de Sieyes or as the cruel engine of Marx and Engels - society becomes a dead thing: its problems insoluble without revolutionary dissolution. Society is our method, communism an objective. Neither is an abstraction.

Bend your minds to that objective with original thought, consider it anew and remake your idea. It is the most moral and meaningful notion our race has devised in our history: remember it!

Workers, to your work!

Anarchy speaks

Godspell

I was interested to read Gary Collinge's letter referring to his questionable multi-cultism, which you correctly question ('Can't be both?' Weekly Worker March 22).

Collinge should relax, jump off the merry-go-round of self-survival and social acceptance, escape purgatory and his own dream world, and be human. Is that difficult - or his scenario for a musical?

Godspell
Godspell

Macedonia

I must congratulate Ian Donovan for an excellent article on the right to self-determination for the Albanians outside Albania (Weekly Worker March 22). I recently drew much the same conclusions in a much shorter article I wrote for Socialistisk Information (the Danish USFI section's monthly magazine).

I'd just like to make the following comments about Ian's article.

Firstly, Albania did not really "attain" statehood in 1912 - it had it thrust upon it by Austria, which was eager to politically and geographically deny Serbia the fruits of its victory over Turkey, especially to deny it access to the Adriatic, which the Austrian empire believed was 'their' sea.

This is not a joke - the Austrians did have a fleet in Trieste then. The creation of rump Albania on the Albanian lands west of the Shar mountains was an act of Austrian realpolitik, not self-liberation for the Albanians, almost half of whom live east of the Shar mountains. The Austrians even found an unemployed German prince to be the first king of Albania! The weakness of the Albanian national movement was due to the quite justifiable fears of the Albanians about their fate if the Serbs beat the Turks.

Secondly, Ian quotes figures of 400,000 Albanians in western Macedonia. These figures are probably a bit low, since the Slav regime uses all kind of demographic tricks to minimise the size of the Albanian minority. Official figures are 23%, but I've heard Albanians estimate up to 40%. My guess is something between 30% and 35% - 600,000-700,000. This minority, an overwhelming majority in western Macedonia, face a less violent version of the 'apartheid' previously practised in Kosova and are constitutionally second class citizens.

Thirdly, I think the question of the Macedonian Slavs cannot be seen purely as a linguistic question: there is also a political question involved. The 'left' tend to be pro-Serb, while the right tend to be pro-Bulgarian. I think though there is a distinct Macedonian identity which cannot be measured by objective factors. Stalin attempted to lay down criteria for nationhood, including that of language, which would have made Switzerland a non-starter. I think we have to look at subjective factors too - what Michel Löwy defines as a "common historical fate".

Many Albanians deny the existence of a Macedonian Slav nation and say that they are just a mixture of Serbs and Bulgarians. This, I think, tends to confuse nationhood and statehood; it is also highly politically charged. Many Albanian nationalists also imply that since the Albanians/Illyrians have been in the Balkans for at least 3,000 years, they have a better right to be there than the Slavs who've 'only' been there for 12 or 13 centuries!

What is clear is that the current boundaries of Macedonia have no historical legitimacy. Macedonian statehood (as a federal republic) was created at the partisans' Jajce conference in 1943, largely to limit the size and influence of Serbia in the future Yugoslavia. Macedonia had been incorporated into Serbia in 1912.

Finally, since the Helsinki agreement of 1975, the defence of existing national boundaries has been the credo of European diplomacy. This was also the approach of internationalists during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia - not from principle, but from practicality. I agree with Ian that borders should not be sacrosanct, but how do we defend the rights of the new minorities? - the experience of Kosova is not exactly encouraging.

Macedonia
Macedonia

No dictionary

Comrade Fischer's article on the way forward for the Weekly Worker (March 22) was excellent, especially after the two letters by Reece and James.

As a relatively new recruit myself, I think the last thing we need to see in the paper is an A-Z, or anything approaching it. The Weekly Worker has not forged its own identity over the last decade for it to be dragged down by a Marxist dictionary. However, I think where the Weekly Worker does suffer is that it is too much of a newspaper. Certainly, it has lengthy theoretical articles, of the sort that I know comrades James and Reece find difficult, as do I. But I feel what the paper lacks are pieces that take things that are happening now, and explains their origins.

For example, I'm sure not many of the newer comrades are totally sure about the origins of the Socialist Alliance. Or am I the only slightly thick one here? I'd also like to know more about the liquidation of the CPGB and how the small band of comrades wrested the name away and started building a working class Communist Party again.

These are just two examples of course. But is the Weekly Worker the place for articles like this? I think it is. It would certainly attract newer readers without patronising older or more experienced comrades. However, I feel there is room for a monthly magazine where these more 'historical' articles would find a very welcome home.

I would be interested to hear what other, newer (and not necessarily younger), comrades think about this.

No dictionary
No dictionary

No ABC

I think that comrade Bowman has misunderstood the emphasis of my letter, 'Rebel rebel', and I believe his accusation of 'snobbery' is unfounded (Weekly Worker March 15). Indeed I apologise to Reece and everyone else profusely if I appeared to come across that way, against my intentions.

I, like him, simply feel that as it stands the Weekly Worker fails to address an audience uneducated in the politics, theory and rhetoric of Marxism. Likewise, I too believe that the paper should make an effort to ignite a guiding light for the sort of prospective comrades Reece talks of, to educate themselves intellectually, in the form of - if not necessarily 'dumbed down' - more down-to-earth articles.

When I discounted the 'ABC to Marxism' approach, I did so on the same grounds on which it was discounted in comrade Bowman's letter: in other words that such an approach "borders on the patronising". Education in politics rests on progression through theory and debate, not the alphabet. I do, however, advocate a different approach to the overall plan of the paper, wherein high-level theoretical articles are balanced with, if not less complicated, more accessible articles and polemics.

My A-level politics textbook is not a 'dumbed down' publication. It is not patronising, simple or even 'entry-level'. It is, however, written in such a way that anyone familiar with the English language and of a fair level of intellect could read it, understand it, and, most importantly, learn from it. The Weekly Worker, for all its achievements and strong points, is not in many ways.

I realise of course that we are not trying to appeal to the masses. Such an approach at this stage would be ludicrous. We only have to look at The Socialist, or Socialist Worker, as Mark Fischer points out, to see that this results in a "truly boring" publication, which presents little politics, and leaves the readership in the sewer to rot. The mass of the working class isn't there - quite right (if they were, and Socialist Worker was all that was on offer, they wouldn't hang around for long), but I think that a significant minority of intelligent, free-thinking individuals who are seeking an alternative are.

I only have to use the example of my college to portray this. Many top grade students, unequivocally interested in Marxism, cannot make head nor tail of the Weekly Worker. This is not because they are thick. They would not appreciate a 'dumbing down'. Indeed it was the intellectual high-ground of the paper which attracted them and me so strongly to its pages when we first started reading it. On the other hand they would appreciate, I'm sure, more of a balance between the sort of Jack Conrad in-depth profundities (a vital part of the paper, of course), and articles which they can grasp as newcomers.

More articles on current affairs items which don't draw so heavily on the more advanced phrases of Marxist terminology. More articles on the arts, books, more photographs, interviews and lower-level polemics - maybe even a cartoon here and there. Comrade Fischer mentions the '&' column. I think it would be an excellent idea to reinstate such a feature. Why can't we?

As I begin to speak to comrades about the paper, I start to see the holes gape open in my argument, and my opinions slowly change to an extent. I refuse to believe, however, that the Weekly Worker cannot be made into a paper which can be understood and enjoyed at least in part by an intelligent but non-initiated audience who don't know the ins and outs of Marxism, but are hungry to learn more.

No ABC
No ABC

Come on, SWP

The story was relayed to me by a CPGB comrade of an encounter with a leading SWPer, who had last greeted the comrade's paper-selling efforts with a refusal and the retort, "I take my politics seriously". Next time round the comrade changed tack and berated the CPGB with another old favourite: "All you do is talk. We in the SWP get out and do things." Anyone who attempts to build up discussion about the way forward for the alliances is criticised as a time-waster. The irony that this encounter took place at a meeting to build support for striking bus workers was obviously lost on him.

This tale reminds me of my early days in the Militant and another story recounted by a still leading member of the tendency telling me how he had been ticked off by an SWP seller on an adjacent sales pitch - quite rightly, he thought, after a few moments' pondering - for his "Militant, only 30 pence" slogan. "Sell the politics, not the price" were the sage words of our learned SWP comrade.

I was over the moon when the SWP announced they were to embark on the project of offering an alternative to Labour from the left, despite reservations about them as an organisation. When SWP comrades began to attend meetings of the Socialist Alliance, likewise I welcomed it. The SWP needs to start to debate openly at all levels of their organisation, amongst themselves and with the rest of the class about the big questions. How do we get from here to revolution? How do we change the world? What kind of organisation do we need and how should it be organised? The SWP have always had interesting titles for their discussion meetings - why aren't they appropriate for meetings elsewhere?

I for one am glad we are in the same arena - I welcome the advent of the alliance. But come on, SWP, we need to argue out the politics, as well as do the practical stuff.

Come on, SWP
Come on, SWP