Letters

Six years too late

Anti-Fascist Action realised the BNP?s withdrawal from confrontation and adoption of Euro-nationalism was genuine by 1995, developed a counter-strategy entitled ?Filling the vacuum?, and tried to alert the wider anti-fascist movement and left to the new steps that were needed to oppose the growth of the far right. For the last six years, with only a handful of exceptions, Afa has been ignored.

Now, after race riots in Oldham and Burnley, everyone?s talking about it. For most the BNP have appeared from nowhere, and the realisation that many communities are divided along racial lines has come as something of a shock. All of a sudden the nazis aren?t ?irrelevant?. Six years too late, anti-fascism is back on the agenda - but it?s a start.

The Weekly Worker devoted a whole page to ?Anti-Fascism after Oldham? (June 21). For an organisation with little direct experience of actually fighting the fascists, some of the analysis shows an insight into the issues which is refreshing. You argue that the calls for banning the BNP only serve to ?increase its appeal and add to its ?radical? credentials?, you question the relevance of the ?no platform? strategy and support Afa?s criticism of the Anti-Nazi League?s ?Don?t vote Nazi? strategy as being inadequate.

Having devoted a whole page of the paper to discussing the BNP?s successful election campaign in Oldham, you then seem to contradict yourselves by saying, ?We in the CPGB do not believe that the left should go chasing after tiny bands of fascists and automatically stand in seats where the BNP or NF have declared they will contest. That would allow such grouplets to set our agenda.? Grouplets? The BNP?s membership is about 2,500, they have a proper infrastructure in place, and their recent election results put the far left to shame. They have a media profile most leftwing groups would kill for, and worst of all, after Oldham, they now have a mandate. We?re not going to beat the fascists if we don?t face facts.

The Weekly Worker also subscribe to the view that ?many [in Oldham] may not have been aware of what policies they were voting for?. They did know what they were voting for. They were voting for a white racist party because it appeared that to get the necessary improvements in the white areas, as resources were seen to be allocated on a racial basis, you had to identify with your own racial group.

The article goes on to say that the BNP vote was ?unexpected?, but we believe that since the Beackon victory on the Isle of Dogs in 1993 it was only a matter of time before they started to poll well in local elections. While the left continue to busy themselves with the issues they consider important, the BNP have been working in local communities, talking to local people about what concerns them, and in the absence of any progressive alternative, have presented racial solutions to real problems. With an attention to detail and by addressing the issues that affected white people they got a positive response; and once they realised they were losing the battle for the streets their future became clear. Not so for the left.

The conclusion for the CPGB is that ?only a party armed with a programme? can beat the BNP. From an anti-fascist perspective this is not encouraging, because from our experience what is driving people into the arms of the far right is the refusal of the left to take more than a passing interest in what are seen as priorities by working class communities. And while there may be a variety of views regarding the role of a ?party?, anti-fascists will tell you that unless the party addresses the concerns of the people it hopes to attract it will remain distant.

With the BNP looking to score well in the May 2002 elections, how much longer can we wait?

Six years too late
Six years too late

SLP competition

Stan Keable?s account of the Stalin Society-CPGB public debate revealed that there are considerable political differences between the two organisations, which are reflected, to some extent, in differences between the Socialist Labour Party and the Socialist Alliance (Weekly Worker June 21). Under these circumstances for either the SLP or the SA to give the other a free run would amount to deceiving the working class. We are in for many years of what comrade Stalin used to refer to as ?socialist competition?.

According to Simon Harvey, there are only 400 members left in the SLP. Simon must be a familiar figure to Arthur by now. Who knows but whether the crafty collier hastily pushes the true membership figures out of sight when he sees Simon coming?

It is a fact, well known to a few people, that the Socialist Alliance has thousands of members and supporters. Yet the total votes for the Socialist Alliance in England were 55,295 - practically indistinguishable from the SLP?s 51,299 for four more candidates. 51,299 was not bad for 400 bods.

As Mae West put it, ?It?s not the men in your life. It?s the life in your men.?

SLP competition
SLP competition

Transitional

Jack Conrad has recently indicated that some ?Trotskyist? adherents to the Socialist Alliance have claimed that the alliance election manifesto represents the transitional approach of Trotsky Weekly Worker June 14. It is quite easy to show that Trotsky?s transitional approach was developed in order to deepen the struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, and so the transitional method is counterposed to the reformism and pro-state capitalism of the alliance.

However, more importantly, Conrad has argued that Trotsky has an economistic approach, and therefore spontaneous working class struggle will automatically create the conditions for a revolutionary challenge to capitalism. Hence Trotsky?s approach is not identical to the left reformism of the alliance leadership, but the transitional approach does not represent a viable programmatic basis for the conscious mobilisation of the working class against capitalism.

In reply to Conrad it is true that Trotsky outlines the perspective that objective conditions are favourable for revolution, but this does not mean that change is an automatic or mechanical process. Instead (writing in 1938) humanity has two open-ended choices - of revolution or catastrophe - and this suggests that revolution requires the highest level of class consciousness for its realisation. Of course it is possible that Trotsky may interpret this perspective in unreflective terms and so suggest that class practice will somehow be successful and inherently overcome counterrevolutionary problems and agencies, but he is actually acutely aware of the crucial significance of the opportunist and bureaucratic role of social democracy and Stalinism (see Leon Trotsky The death agony of capitalism and the tasks of the Fourth International London 1975).

Trotsky does contend that ?the laws of history are stronger than the bureaucratic apparatus?, but this does not mean that historical necessity will inevitably realise the victory of revolution (p14). Instead all that Trotsky is willing to claim is that the opportunist role of counterrevolutionary within the working class will create the possibility for the working class to consciously accept the revolutionary leadership of the Fourth International.

But possibly Trotsky?s Transitional programme is economistic because it equates the spontaneous potential of the working class with an inherent revolutionary logic? This would seem to be the conclusion of the following comment: ?If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. ?Realisability? or ?unrealisability? is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what its immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery? (p17).

However, it is necessary to differentiate between the objective content and the empirical in this analysis. The objective content shows that capitalism is increasingly incapable of meeting the basic requirements of the working class and therefore it is historically necessary that it should be overthrown. But precisely because actual historical events do not inherently conform to historical necessity conscious mobilisation and struggle around transitional demands is no guarantee of their success. The dichotomy between objective historical necessity and actual developments shows the importance of a party.

Nevertheless Conrad could reply and suggest that Trotsky?s utilisation of the call for sliding scale of wages, workers? control, opening the books, etc, is economistic because these demands are not sufficiently connected to political objectives and tasks. Before answering this potentially problematical point let us remember what was the political content of Lenin?s critique of the early expression of economism. The economists wanted to emphasise immediate trade union demands and therefore allow the bourgeoisie to have political hegemony in the struggle against tsarism. In contrast Trotsky?s transitional approach is against both this type of economism and the economists within the Socialist Alliance.

These contemporary economists want to separate economic from political tasks in order to uphold the political hegemony of reformism. Thus the SWP call for nationalisation, etc, and reject the strategic relationship of this call to the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat. In contrast Trotsky is resolutely critical of the technocratic and reformist demand for nationalisation because it is abstracted from the political necessity to develop conscious and mass struggle against capitalism.

Furthermore, Trotsky?s comments show the inherently and primary political role of transitional demands, which is to strategically show and convince the working class that economic struggle is not sufficient and what is required is political struggle against capitalism and for the dictatorship of the proletariat. In other words transitional demands may have an economic form, but their content is to politically enhance the revolutionary consciousness of the working class to strive for class hegemony: ?Only a general revolutionary upsurge of the proletariat can place the complete expropriation of the bourgeoisie on the order of the day. The task of transitional demands is to prepare the proletariat to solve this problem? (p24).

But I can hear Conrad?s exasperated objections. He is saying that he has already used the example of Trotsky?s critique of nationalisation in order to show his revolutionary aspects. This only goes to show that Trotsky is a leftwing economist because he still rejects the importance of democracy in the development of the political consciousness of the working class. My imaginary (real?) Conrad must be referring to the supposed lack of formal references to the significance of democracy because Trotsky actually outlines the crucial role of democracy on numerous occasions in the Transitional programme.

The transitional approach can be applied to the question of a constituent assembly, which can acquire crucial importance for mobilising the workers and peasants in terms of developing their unity on the basis of democratic self-expression. Indeed the democratic programme is a vital aspect of the possibility of both uniting the workers and peasants and facilitating the creation of the balance of forces for proletarian revolution.

So, far from ignoring or underestimating the struggle to realise democracy, Trotsky actually tries to strategically and programmatically locate the significance of democracy for the class struggle. Hence we have to ask: why does Conrad still persist in defining Trotsky as an economist who elevates economic tasks above political and democratic tasks? The answer possibly resides in Conrad?s refusal to accept the following strategic conclusion of Trotsky: ?Democratic slogans, transitional demands and the problems of the socialist revolution are not divided into separate historical epochs in this struggle, but stem directly from one another? (p41).

For what Conrad is essentially arguing against the ?economist? Trotsky is that the task of realising democracy is essentially bourgeois democratic and can be achieved within capitalism. Only after this stage has been completed, the formation of a federal republic, is it possible to move to a new, higher stage of proletarian revolution.

Transitional
Transitional

Future party

The CPGB and SWP occupy much more common ground than the latter is willing to concede. I can do no better than echo Ian Mahoney?s wise words in last week?s Weekly Worker:

?So we will have a national membership, a national leadership, national finances and national conferences with democratic procedures for debating national policy. Members will remain affiliated to the groups that express their particular political point of view, but - as in the election campaigns we have fought so far - we will unite despite our differences to engage in common action. Sorry, comrades, you might still be frightened of the word ?party?, but everyone else can see that a party is already half-formed, whatever its formal title? (June 21).

But what type of party is it that the SWP is proposing? Previously, the only party that was not ruled out as an alternative to the SWP was a non-revolutionary party. For my part, I remain open-minded as to whether the SA could, or should, develop rapidly into a fully-fledged revolutionary party. Surprisingly, the SWP document, ?Future party structures?, would imply that they are, if anything, much less ambivalent than I on this question (see Weekly Worker June 21).

There is an indication that the SWP project runs along rather similar lines to that of Jack Conrad, at least in formal terms, though differing definitions of what constitutes a revolutionary party (in particular what is genuine democratic centralism) would no doubt continue to cause problems. What makes me think the SWP central committee intends to transform the SA into a revolutionary party (as defined by itself) is the third of the five proposals listed in this document.

It reads: ?Our organisation needs to be highly organised in intervention. We need to return to caucuses - where comrades discuss and argue their intervention in a campaign. Partly we cannot afford the scenario where comrades argue against each other in meetings or have no clear cutting edge. Partly if we do not give a lead then the reformists or small sects can. Caucuses are a means of ensuring good interventions; they also educate comrades into how we operate most effectively in a particular milieu.?

While this paragraph contains no specific reference to the SA, it is clear from the overall context that the SWP membership is being instructed to use caucusing to transform the SA into a greater SWP. I doubt very much if such a transformation of the SA into a revolutionary party would meet with the approval of Jack Conrad, or anyone else. Such a strategy would prove wholly counterproductive for the SWP. It would alienate absolutely everyone.

The small numbers of reformists already on board would be the first to despair. They would feel betrayed. They want more than an illusion of participation in the SA project.

Deploying caucusing (presumably bolstered by mobilising force of numbers) to impose an SWP interpretation of a revolutionary party would only reduce it to the SWP by a new name.

In my opinion, the size of the SWP makes it imperative that it sets aside its own right to caucus. If and when the SWP loses its overwhelming numerical superiority inside the SA (hopefully because the latter has substantially grown), then, and only then, should it exercise its legitimate right to caucus as much as any other group.

Future party
Future party

Bulger

Whilst understanding the grief and anger felt by the Bulger family, our starting point is looking for causes for the crime.

Capitalist society pigeon-holes people into categories: we are gay/straight, male/female. Men are supposed to be strong; women are supposed to be nurturing. Deviation from these often leads to society treating people differently. Women are often more harshly treated for committing similar offences and when a child kills we treat it differently from an adult.

Our horror can demand retribution and revenge. However, the trial of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson in an adult court verged on mental cruelty and did little to fulfil the criteria of looking into their future welfare and rehabilitation and gaining in knowledge from the case to look into why it happened.

Why did they kill? Were social issues a factor? Certainly it would appear that the two boys came from socially dysfunctional families. Millions do, however, and do not commit like offences, so this must be looked at as part of a multitude of factors.

The press and Jamie Bulger?s mother have not been slow in criticising state agencies for the cost in rehabilitating Venables and Thompson. State of the art programmes have been utilised for the two, including one-to-one specialist counselling, with the aim of repairing broken human beings and making them able to exist as decent, independent people. In some respects their chances in life are much enhanced from the therapy and resources open to them.

Compare this with what is on offer for other people caught up in the judicial system: tens of thousands of people are flung into prisons, hostels or back into environments where they are likely to re-offend. The state has acknowledged that it is possible to reintegrate even the most horrific cases back into society. On the other hand it retains its jackboot approach to criminality, leading people into anti-social and pro-criminal lifestyles, its ?prison works? policy leaving growing numbers to degenerate and exist on the fringes of society.

Bulger
Bulger