Letters
Wrong url
I made a mistake in last week’s ‘Around the web’ (‘Long march skyward’ Weekly Worker October 23). The url for the Red Borg egroup should be http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/redborg
Wrong url
Wrong url
"Zionist' AWL
Life is too short to respond to all the libels against the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty which appear in the Weekly Worker, but I am sufficiently disgusted to mention a couple in Ian Donovan’s last scurrilous tirade (‘“Zionist” AWL in turmoil’, October 23).
Qualifying his claim that the entire world view of the AWL is borrowed from Max Shachtman (even our commitment to organisational democracy comes from there, he says, not the “rediscovery of healthy Bolshevik norms” - the possibility that we might come to conclusions without stumbling over them in textual authority evidently is outside the stretch of his imagination), comrade Donovan comments: “While the AWL have never actually endorsed Shachtman’s support for the 1961 US-inspired Bay of Pigs émigré invasion of Cuba, or his backing for US imperialism in Vietnam ...”
“Never actually” - meaning what? Perhaps in time this implied slur will transmute into some phrase or other a member of the AWL is supposed to have uttered - a favoured technique of libel used in the Weekly Worker. Comrade Donovan reiterates one such: having invented an occasion in which an AWL member described himself as “a little bit Zionist”, the Weekly Worker now reaps the benefits of this little ‘meme’, as some scientists would call it, circulating on the left.
It is rather like the claim, equally fabricated, that another AWL member once described the Afghan mujahedin as “our kind of people”, apparently in a basement in Lambeth. Neither of these claims is true, though I would add that, even if they were, to construct, as the CPGB repeatedly does, polemical stories around verbal utterances (sometimes just allegations about people’s body language) is not - what was it? - a “healthy Bolshevik norm”.
My point here, incidentally, since unfortunately it no doubt needs to be spelled out, is not to run in terror from the charge that we are Zionists, or to deny we opposed the USSR’s colonial war in Afghanistan. It would assist “healthy Bolshevik norms”, though, if your polemicists addressed what is actually at issue: nobody in the AWL has endorsed ‘Zionism’ in the sense of one particular nationalism. That is not, and never has been, the issue.
The rest of the article, about the AWL’s supposed position on the 1948 Israel-Arab war, is more dreary falsification, or ignorance: I can’t be bothered to choose which.
"Zionist' AWL
"Zionist' AWL
Right of return?
A few comments on Ian Donovan’s ridiculous anti-AWL polemic.
(1) The AWL’s culture of open debate derives not from “healthy Bolshevik norms”, but from the poisoned well of Shachtmanism? Never mind that our predecessor organisations insisted on the same democratic norms long before we rejected the last remnants of orthodox Trotskyism in favour of the third camp - or that the third camp tradition itself derived these norms precisely from the custom and practice of Bolshevism. Begin as you mean to go on, and never mind any of the facts.
(2) “The AWL have never actually endorsed Shachtman’s support for the 1961 US-inspired Bay of Pigs émigré invasion of Cuba” - in much the same way that Sacha Ismail has never argued that Chinese people are mentally inferior to whites and south Asians. In fact, we have made both our general opposition to Shachtman’s rightward political evolution and our specific condemnation of his 1961 stance absolutely clear - but, again, why worry about the facts when you can slander by implication?
I’m not sure why the CPGB refuses to recognise that, in abandoning the third camp in favour of critical support for capitalist imperialism, Shachtman broke with the revolutionary perspective he had been instrumental in developing. Describing the AWL as “Shachtmanite” begs the question of which Shachtmanism you mean.
(3) The AWL supports and fights for freedom of movement - including a solution to the Palestinian refugee question which allows refugees to settle in either Israel or an independent Palestinian state. We do not support Israel’s racially exclusive citizenship laws (or other exclusivist institutions) any more than we support Britain’s. At the same time, we reject the ‘right of return’ formula because it has historically meant the mass collective resettlement of Palestinians in Israel as an alternative to a two-state solution. It is all very well for CPGB comrades to argue that this is not why they mean, but Jack Conrad is not the Red Queen and words do not mean just what you want them to.
The political point is that, while we (and more importantly Israeli socialists) should oppose Israel’s immigration laws and fight for their abolition now, we should not - as Ian appears to advocate - make this abolition a precondition for Israel’s right to exist. Rather we should see the demand for an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel as the key slogan in the struggle to unite the Palestinian and Israeli working classes, with the demand for free movement a vital but immediately subsidiary slogan in the same fight.
Right of return?
Right of return?
Activity only
Blackwood, South Wales provided the venue on October 15 for the Stop the War Coalition’s ‘tour of Britain’ public meetings. Around 100 people heard speakers including Lindsey German and George Galloway.
The main points of contention arose from the CPGB. Speaking from the floor, Bob Davies raised the importance of left unity and stressed the need for an organisation which could go beyond the activism characteristic of the STWC (important though that is): “Question the cause of war,” he said, “and people will begin to question the nature of the British political system and the need for a democratic-socialist alternative.”
In her summing up, comrade German distorted the CPGB’s arguments about the centrality of politics and claimed we were “downplaying” the need to act. What was important was the need to “unite around activity”, she said.
Activity only
Activity only
Anti-SWP ranting
In reference to Tina Becker’s comments on the influence of Attac France on the London Social Forum, I suppose it is part and parcel of being either an SWPer or a commie that you have to personalise things and see plots everywhere.
But did it never occur to you that we in Attac UK might have arrived at a hostility to the SWP approach without being manipulated by B Cassen - ie, that we might have the capacity to think for ourselves? I started writing postings to the ESF list over a year and a half ago, ranting on about the various agendas of what Chris Nineham refers to as “the major players”, both in the UK and in Europe, and I promise you that I had not read word one of B Cassen at that stage and barely even knew who he was.
As to hating the SWP or the other arch-manipulators, I don’t. I know Chris Nineham and on a personal basis I like him; but it’s what they do when they’re in groups I can’t hack - as if conspiracy and plotting came as naturally to them as breathing; and since they know what’s best for the world they don’t have to talk to anyone else, or do anything as silly as voting.
Just goes to show, doesn’t it? - you can lead a Trot to history but you can’t make him think.
Anti-SWP ranting
Anti-SWP ranting
Anarchism
Iain McKay lets the cat out of the bag when he talks of how the Makhnoites “liberated” the towns (Letters Weekly Worker October 23). This is interesting: I thought anarchists believed liberation was achieved by the workers themselves and not by bands of self-proclaimed revolutionaries.
McKay accepts that Makhno used dictatorial tactics during the civil war and does not contest the fact that the ‘Regional Congress of Peasants, Workers and Insurgents’ was undermined and belittled. However, we are told that, in contrast to the Bolsheviks, the Makhnoites “encourage[d] soviet democracy and freedom of speech”. It seems then that, despite the obvious power the “Makhnoite leadership” (surely a contradiction?) had to overrule grassroots democracy, it could generally be entrusted not to do so. This is a mirror argument of what McKay criticises Marxists and liberals for: namely relying on the paternalistic and benevolent attitudes of one’s leaders rather than the inherent and spontaneous revolutionary nature of the working masses.
McKay adds: “Nobody said that a revolution was easy and so we would expect the difficult circumstances of civil war to result in some arbitrary decisions.” This is precisely the point I argued in the first place and the point McKay has been rebutting in all his responses. The politics of Marxism are no more to blame for Bolshevik Jacobinism than the politics of Bakuninism are for the bureaucratic degeneration of the Makhnovshchina.
McKay notes, however, that the “Bolsheviks turned the ‘dictatorship of the party’ into a key ideological principle”. This statement requires a slightly longer reply. The Bolsheviks led a popular insurgency against the state after building up huge support in the local soviets. At the time of the October revolution the Bolsheviks had the support of the majority of the organised working class. As the appalling conditions of ‘civil war’ and isolation grew worse, the Bolsheviks naturally underwent a siege mentality and their “libertarian profile” rapidly gave way to “rigid authoritarianism”, to quote Steve Cohen, separating the party from its organic base (which was largely wiped out in the ‘civil war’).
“Feel free to blame the civil war on this, if you like, but logic is against you,” McKay argues. However, the failure of social revolution in Europe (an event that was far from inevitable) seriously aggravated the ferocious and barbarous nature of the white crusade against Soviet Russia. All the leading Bolsheviks had made it clear that an isolated red Russia could not survive for long. Honest Marxists do not therefore blame the civil war as the cause the of the revolution’s degeneration, but rather see it as the worst effect of the real cause: the failures and betrayals of the workers’ movement in Europe and elsewhere.
Concerning the Spanish revolt, McKay says of the local juntas: “As long as the workers’ council is made up of elected, mandated and recallable delegates, then the people do govern themselves.” However, in this respect his perspective does not differ from Marxism or early Bolshevism. It seems rather to be the beginning of a break with anti-statism. Why elect individuals to positions of power if the people themselves can be the governors? McKay’s line of arguing here is not a consistent argument against the state or authority. Rather his logic seems to imply the break-up of the national state into lots of smaller, autonomous states.
Anarchism
Anarchism
SSP untruths
I have to say that of all the newspapers I have to plough through on a week-by-week basis, Sarah McDonald’s writing in the Weekly Worker contains more factual errors, inaccuracies and untruths than almost any other journalist I deal with.
If you are serious in your work, I would have thought you would seek to correct any errors and, to your credit, you did so a while back after you had written that Jock Penman had spoken to the News of the World.
So, from last week’s Weekly Worker report on the Scottish Socialist Party (October 23). I am not a member of the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement platform, never have been and am unlikely ever to be so, despite having the greatest of respect for each of their comrades and the political position they have consistently argued over the years.
You will look in vain for a post from me on the SSP debate list subsequent to the Socialism school in which I complain about “unionists” shouting down anyone. In fact my only posting about the conduct of the debate at Socialism was not until the following Thursday - which would have been after you filed copy for the story - and so I can only conclude that you made this bit up.
SSP untruths
SSP untruths
SSP omission
Hugh Kerr’s welcome into the Scottish Socialist Party is a cold one, if the nature of his letter reflects political life in the SSP (October 23). It comprises a rash of inaccuracies and a glaring omission.
To begin with, the inaccuracies. John McAllion has not left the Labour Party. Perhaps he will at some future date and perhaps he will not. But the fact is he has not resigned from Labour - something acknowledged by the SSP’s other spin doctor, Eddie Truman, on the Labour Left Briefing user group.
Secondly, either Hugh has quoted John McAllion incorrectly or John was not covering the Labour conference closely. The conference voted against foundation hospitals. Thirdly the meeting that Hugh attended last year was not a re-launch of the Campaign for Socialism: it was one of three ‘After New Labour’ conferences run throughout Britain with our sister organisation, the Socialist Campaign Group. Hence the presence of John McDonnell MP and Jeremy Corbyn MP at our event. There were just over 100 people at the one-day event, not 52, but, like many conferences, not all were in the same room at the same time.
Hugh’s jibes about the numbers of members in Kelvin is odd, given that he was once a Labour Party member (MEP indeed) and knows the Labour branch system well. I was referring to my branch - Anderson City, not the constituency membership. There are around 400 members of the Labour Party in Kelvin constituency. And can I point to Hugh, if there are 200 members in the Kelvin branch of the SSP and Tommy Sheridan’s ‘Open letter’ to Labour Party members is accurate that the SSP has 3,000 members, then going on for 15% of the SSP’s membership is in one branch?
There is no need for me to convince George Galloway MP that we should reclaim the Labour Party for the left. When I met him on Saturday, he asked Labour Party members to stay and fight for his reinstatement.
But actually, revealing though these inaccuracies are about how the SSP conducts its media relations, they are not as revealing as the omission from Hugh’s letter. Nowhere does he try to deal with the political issues that were raised in my interview. He says nothing about the growing unease inside and outside the SSP about its nationalist turn. He says nothing about the concerns I raised of activism replacing theory-led activity in the SSP. He says nothing about the dangers I raised of apolitical trade unionism arising from campaigns to disaffiliate. In effect he says nothing about politics at all.
This seems a sad replication of the politics of old and New Labour at its worst. Hugh’s letter is not political dialogue: it’s part of a pissing contest. If that’s what the SSP has to offer, he can keep it.
SSP omission
SSP omission
Labour link
Mark Fischer’s otherwise excellent and very useful article, ‘A “credible” alternative’, contains a small but nonetheless important misquotation in remarks attributed to me during the October 18 Socialist Alliance national council’s discussion of the Monbiot-Yaqoob proposal for an electoral coalition (Weekly Worker October 23).
Mark reports that I concluded my speech, in moving an emergency motion on behalf of Stockport SA, with the words: “In the context of the present vacuum in British politics, with the crisis of Labourism; when the trade unions were increasingly reasserting themselves inside the Labour Party; and with the far-right British National Party attracting growing support at an alarming rate; this was no time to propose that principled, independent, socialist working class politics should defer to petty bourgeois utopian liberalism. This was nothing short of a betrayal of the working class.”
In referring to the crisis of Labourism, I did not say, “when the trade unions were increasingly reasserting themselves inside the Labour Party”, but “when the trade unions were increasingly questioning their links with the Labour Party”. This is something very different.
What I was trying to draw attention to, as well as the recent welcome decisions of the RMT union to open the way to support socialist candidates in elections, of course, was the movement coming from the rank and file of several unions, as manifested in union conference debates this year and last year, to question the monopoly position held by the Labour Party in terms of financial and political support in the rule books of the unions. I feel that the SA’s policy of seeking democratisation of union political funds, as outlined in Matt Wrack’s pamphlet, Whose money is it anyway?, is a correct one that has struck a chord with rank and file union activists and members.
I am extremely dubious as to the extent to which the trade unions are reasserting themselves inside the Labour Party. We still see no concerted attack on the anti-union laws, for instance - an issue that must be seen, surely, as an acid test of any such reassertion.
But, more importantly for me, a focussing upon union reassertion within the Labour Party is, to a large extent, a concentration upon the actions of the union bureaucracy rather than the rank and file. Labour is the party of the bureaucracy and hence the reluctance of so many ‘left’ leaders, such as Tony Woodley, to make the break with Labour. The impulsion must come from the rank and file and hence my belief that the twin approach of political fund democratisation and agitation for a new workers’ party, based upon the SA, is the correct one.
Labour link
Labour link