Letters
Denmark vote
For those comrades who propose that socialists should vote ?no? to any referendum on the euro in the UK, the results of last week?s Danish elections should give them pause for thought.
At the time of Denmark?s referendum, the size of the ?no? vote was trumpeted as a great success by comrades in the Socialist Workers Party and the International Socialist Group, as well as by the British roaders of the Morning Star?s Communist Party of Britain.
However, it was fundamentally a chauvinist and isolationist vote - despite support from various left and green quarters. Far from heralding a period where the working class is set to make gains, it helped create an inward-looking climate that led to victory for the right in the recent elections. The main campaign issue in Denmark was immigration. The xenophobic and chauvinist climate that led to a growth in anti-immigrant sentiment could only have been fuelled by the victory of the ?no? forces in the recent referendum.
Comrades should think again. We need to defend the current policy of the Socialist Alliance. No support for the euro, but no defence of the pound. We must organise an active boycott whenever Blair and Brown decide to let the British people have a say on the national currency.
Denmark vote
Denmark vote
Language barriers
I was interested to read Alberto Fern?ndez?s lecture on ?Socialism and Esperanto? (Weekly Worker November 22).
I am afraid that comrade Fernandez is simply repeating some received knowledge about the sins of Stalin. He should read Stalin?s 1951 pamphlet, On Marxism in linguistics, which stands up for national languages. Leonid Brezhnev, who appears to be enjoying a comeback these days, did, however, invent a new nation, the Soviet people - all speaking Russian. This, naturally, antagonised non-Russians.
Different languages represent different ?windows on the world?. They have different idioms. They are not just means of communication, but means of thought. Therefore, the more languages, the greater the cultural diversity which is to the advantage of humankind in general.
A common, neutral, simple, constructed international language such as Esperanto would be the ideal complement to the various different languages, many of which have perished or are endangered. Esperanto is much easier to learn than English, French, Spanish, Russian or Chinese. The question is, where is the push for Esperanto to come from?
Having said that, I do not think that communists need to be afraid of minority interests. The world is made up of minorities of one sort or another. A communist who is only a communist is not a communist.
Language barriers
Language barriers
Two questions
I have two major questions to the CPGB.
Firstly, do you really think that communists should formulate their positions according to their ability to put them into practice now instead of formulating them according to what they would do if they had the means? Would not the first way imply that they keep their mouth shut about all major issues, since it is obvious that they are not in a position today to meaningfully influence anything?
Secondly, while it is undoubtedly true that we should welcome the demise of the Taliban - but not at the hands of imperialism - what would be your concrete position if you could give material (military) support? Would you shoot at both the imperialist forces attacking Afghanistan and those who resist or would you chose a tactical approach? If so, who would you chose as the main enemy?
Your position seems to be one of total neutrality, which as a theoretical position looks pretty comfortable, but I feel that this would not work unless you were strong enough to successfully wage a war on two fronts at the same time.
Two questions
Bourgeois workers
In Weekly Worker (November 15) you attack Fightback on two issues: the question of September 11 and the ?superprofits? thesis.
You appear to be obsessed with getting everyone on the left to ?condemn? the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11 of this year. You claim to find it ?nauseating? that the communist newsletter Fightback argues that: ?We do not mourn, but welcome the death of any workers at the Pentagon or any bankers at the World Trade Center; they have killed many times over in their careers.? The essential difference between Fightback and yourselves is that the former has a Marxist, class-based, rather than a humanitarian, analysis.
Who, exactly, were these ?ordinary people? who were killed on September 11? The personnel in the Pentagon there can surely be no argument about from a Marxist viewpoint. These people were working for the direct repressive apparatus of the state. As Fightback points out, the job of those personnel in the WTC - the bankers, stockbrokers and commodity traders - was to rob some of the poorest people in the world. The people you are getting so worked up about worked at some of the most ?prestigious?, parasitic and vicious institutions on the face of this planet. In these firms would have been working some of the most highly paid employees and partners in the world.
Of course, there would also have been caretakers and cleaners and these are the people we should empathise with, as indeed Fightback does: ?Those cleaners, cooks and technicians who died were a tragic loss in a war which sees many millions of ordinary, innocent people die every year.? It is only the polemical excess of the Weekly Worker which could translate this into saying that Fightback regards such workers as ?collateral damage?. What next: will we be hearing that policemen and the army are ?workers in uniform??
Whilst [we] may have absolutely nothing in common politically with the skyjackers, any genuine communist will support the right of representatives of the oppressed masses to carry out military attacks against imperialist targets.
The message received from the Weekly Worker and the left in general - with the honourable exception of Lalkar - is that an African/Iraqi/Somalian, etc life is worth much less than an American one. The ?left? has taken its cue from the bourgeois media with its constant and prurient portrayal of the grief-stricken relatives of those killed in the USA. Most of the time we never see this when the US/UN kill people. It is just a ?body count? of ?Charlie? or the ?Gooks?. Not ?real? people.
Your piece accuses Fightback of a ?disgusting piece of anti-worker rubbish? when it ends by noting: ?With so many British ?socialists? benefiting from imperialism?s superprofits and sharing the lifestyles of the bankers and regular airline travellers, their capitulation is sadly predictable and their irrelevance a stark reality.? ?Evidently air travel ought to be beyond the reach of the working class? is the profound retort. It is perfectly obvious from the context of the passage that ?regular airline travellers? means those who can business commute on Concorde rather than regular Ryan Air passengers.
In a recent Stalin Society debate with Harpal Brar, the CPGB?s John Bridge made light of the ?superprofits? thesis when he remarked that workers were not privileged if they had a fridge. Interestingly enough, however, a few weeks later I heard a woman living on the Sighthill estate in Glasgow making precisely the point that the council giving new fridges to asylum-seekers had spurred residents to anger. There was a ?fridge gap?. Some, perhaps the majority, of the British left - almost exclusively petty bourgeois in terms of social composition - have no real idea of how sections of the working class are living (existing) in this country.
If material circumstances and lived social experience does determine one?s view of reality, the notion of a ?bourgeois? working class, as Engels termed it, must have significance in an imperialist country.
Bourgeois workers
Bourgeois workers
Ipswich lesson
Alas, regardless of all the dedication and hard work put in by Socialist Alliance supporters prior to the Ipswich by-election, the 152 votes secured was worse than disappointing: it was pathetic. There was no Scargillite candidate this time to use as an excuse for splitting the hard-core socialist vote, although it is possible, some will say, the Green Party had the same effect.
Rob Hoveman, in an email to the troops, admitted the result was disappointing but went on to state: ?This was a peculiar election. All the minor parties got relatively low votes.? Surely you should start looking at why you were almost last - the only candidate below Pete Leech was Nicholas Winskill of the English Independence Party, who managed just 84 votes. Could one of the reasons be that many local SAs have been allowed to wither since the general election?
Comrade Hoveman?s email went on to say: ?I?m no psephologist, but clearly the anti-war feeling is not converting into votes at the moment.? This may surprise our SWP comrade, but it should not surprise anyone in the real world. Joe Public is not going to rush out and vote for the Socialist Alliance, having seen their placards alongside other groups that not only refuse to condemn the atrocities committed on September 11, but actually support the reactionary Taliban.
So what did these other minor parties offer? What were their respective messages that were more appealing than yours?
l,236 citizens voted for the Legalise Cannabis Alliance, a single-issue group whose aim is self-explanatory. The Green Party managed to poll 255 votes, on a platform of supporting local small businesses and stopping big developers. Don?t laugh - their candidates message brought him over 100 votes more than the SA. Jonathan Wright MBE stood as the UK Independence Party candidate and polled 276 votes. Besides his obvious anti-EU and ?Keep the pound forever? platform, he also promised to give pensioners a better deal. The biggest vote winner of the minor parties was the Christian Peoples Alliance with 581 votes, seeking to demonstrate the love of god through stopping abortion and seeing that the constitution recognises christ?s sovereignty, amongst other things.
Like Comrade Hoveman I am no psephologist. However, I do feel that the sooner the SA create a real party with national offices, realistic subscriptions and a paper of its own, it will make genuine progress. Whilst you are a ragbag affair with no SA specific journal for discussion and debate, and no sound organisation or finances, you will not attract a mass membership.
Ipswich lesson
SA debate
In his latest contribution to the great SA debate, Dave Craig proposes a ?democratic federalist? regime for the SA (Weekly Worker November 22). But what is this proposal if not a recipe for a democratic and ineffective organisation - a useless talking shop unable to exert any influence in the real world?
Dave knows that his pet project, the Republican Communist Network, has just collapsed, precisely as a consequence of the institutionalised paralysis that is ?democratic federalism?. The nationalist majority of the RCN in Scotland had no problem being involved in an all-Britain RCN - provided they were never defeated in a vote in the all-Britain organisation. When the prospect of that happening began to sink in, they prepared to do their UDI act.
While nationalism was one of the root causes of the collapse of the RCN, it was not the most important one. RDG members north and south of the border are hampered by their stubborn refusal to embrace genuine democratic centralism. The CPGB really needs to come to terms with this fact.
On one point I disagree strongly with Sarah McDonald?s analysis of the RCN split (Weekly Worker November 22). Although Sarah willingly concedes that the RCN did not operate as the RCN in England, she refuses to recognise the significance of this fact. Sarah apparently cannot understand why Allan Armstrong, Mary Ward et al did not rejoice at the fact that leading RCN members in England punch so much above their weight - mostly thanks to the role of the Weekly Worker.
I have a problem with this argument, one I have come across from other CPGB members. I find this justification for a lack of an organised presence of the RCN in the SA utterly unpersuasive. How on earth can the CPGB denounce both the SWP and SPEW for bypassing their SA comrades whenever it suits them, while demanding its rights as RCN members but refusing to recognise any of the responsibilities that ought to come with these rights?
Does my agreeing with the RCN majority in Scotland on this point mean I am justifying the nationalist split? No. I reject the split for two reasons. Firstly, membership criteria were established on the basis of a financial contribution and alleged agreement with a list of ill-defined set of slogans whose meaning was never adequately explained. If Allan Armstrong, Nick Clarke, etc, had no problem with this set of membership criteria, then they had no right to split the organisation along nationalist lines.
Secondly, I for one am very pleased that the CPGB majority of the RCN in England has never intervened in the SA under the banner of the RCN. If Dave Craig and his RDG comrades were prepared to accept majority votes in the RCN, then there could be no problem. But they reject this centralist approach. Furthermore, given their stated intention of reducing the SA in England to a federalist nightmare (an RCN writ large), the CPGB had no choice but to go its own way. Unless the RDG is prepared to leave behind its infantile attachment to ultra-federalism, the CPGB in England as well as Scotland should seek out new allies.
In the SA, few are so stupid as to demand political representation for every self-appointed political group of three members or less. But Dave has gone out petitioning some of them. He does not just want political representation on the SA executive for the International Socialist Group, but also for its near namesake, the International Socialist League. The fact that the former has a history, an important international organisation with some influence in a few key trade unions and a regular press, while the other has a much lower profile is irrelevant from his point of view.
Unfortunately, things get worse. While Dave has just witnessed his pet project collapse along its single geographical fault line, he advocates federal rights for Leeds, Walsall, Leicester and Merseyside. Presumably, every SA branch in England should be free to do its own thing in defiance of central decision-making processes But it is clear from the names of the local organisations cited by Dave that he wants an executive that is effectively paralysed by full voting representatives not just from every town in England, but from as many minority political factions as can be vomited into existence by each local SA branch.
No one denies that there has to be a considerable degree of autonomy for local branches to exercise initiative. No one wants the SA centre to impose a heavy hand in the formation of local policies, which ought to be drawn up by those most familiar with the problems on the ground. But the democratic federalist remedy is no better than the disease it is meant to cure.
Although Peter Taaffe?s proposals are not a solution, the ball and chain that are his federalist paralysis is simply the price the SA has to pay for the SWP?s rampant control freakery. We have to recognise that there is no way we can solve either one of these problems without tackling the other. Only the CPGB proposals do that. If the SWP can be persuaded to embrace these proposals then the Taaffe wing of the SP might still stage a walkout and threaten to stand candidates against us. But the best elements of their organisation will not walk with them.
The SSP will not trade in the professional outfit that has been built up these last few years for an all-Britain party based on a ?democratic federalist? nightmare constitution. Transforming the SA into a professional, democratic and effective organisation is a prerequisite for making SSP members even begin to consider the possibility of voluntarily uniting socialists from both sides of the border into an all-Britain working class party.
SA debate
SA debate