Letters

Glynn Robbins

In my article ‘Smoke and mirrors’, Glynn Robbins is described as a member of the Socialist Workers Party. He is, of course, an independent member of the Socialist Alliance executive committee. Apologies for any offence or confusion caused.

Glynn Robbins
Glynn Robbins

Daft enough

Can we kill this reported ‘Leicester comment’ (‘Smoke and mirrors’, November 27)? I actually said people could go back to voting for Keith Vaz “if they were daft enough”. I went on to ask the good question: “I mean, what is Keith Vaz for; what is the point of Keith Vaz?”

I think you’ll agree that’s rather different from what you said in last week’s Worker.

Daft enough
Daft enough

Unholy alliance

Salma Yaqoob doesn’t seem to have any understanding of the issue of secularism in France (Weekly Worker November 27).

Actually Britain is not a secular country. France is. France does not permit prayer, the teaching of christianity or religious symbols in state schools and does not permit religious symbols such as the wearing of crucifixes or hijab in government offices - all unlike Britain. We suffer religious broadcasts on the BBC. In France they don’t.

The separation of religion and state in France was to protect the state from church interference - not, as SY thinks, “to safeguard freedom of conscience and religion”. Socialists should defend secularism. We should also defend the right of French anti-war march organisers to put political and trade union contingents at the head of their marches, rather than letting religious groups push themselves forward.

The new electoral alliance is very interesting, but what happened to its predecessor, the Socialist Alliance? I think the unholy alliance of the Socialist Workers Party and Salma Yaqoob might have had something to do with its demise?

Unholy alliance
Unholy alliance

Israeli nation

While I agree with most of Tony Greenstein’s letter, he gets a bit confused when he rejects the idea that there is now an Israeli nation, because Zionism itself makes no such claim (Weekly Worker November 6).

Presumably Tony does not accept Zionism’s other claims! I would argue that the Israelis are now, like the Afrikaners, a settler nationality. This did not stop us from calling for a unitary, democratic and secular South Africa.

Israeli nation
Israeli nation

Natives resting

Last year, I gave a review of the reaction in Gibraltar to the proposed ‘joint sovereignty’ plan, or, as it is known locally, the ‘shameful sellout’ (Weekly Worker August 1 2002).

In November, much to the disdain of the leaders of New Labour, the government of Gibraltar held a referendum, which was observed by a team of UK MPs headed up by Gerald Kaufman. With an 87% turnout, 99% of the Gibraltarians expressed the opinion that Jack Straw’s joint sovereignty plan was a non-starter.

On hearing the result, the chief minister, Peter Caruana QC, warned that democratic politicians ignored it at their peril. Spain, of course, chose to ignore the result. However, the British foreign office now admit that their plan has been shelved for the foreseeable future.

We have now had an election where the Gibraltar Social Democrats narrowly saw off the Socialist Labour Party for another four-year period in government. Gibraltarians will soon be voting in EU elections, having been amalgamated with the South West (of England) despite Spanish attempts to interfere with what was a UK internal decision.

Ramon de Miguel, the Spanish European minister, is now on the defensive about the Spanish enclaves in North Africa, pointing out that they predated the Moroccan constitution, although Gibraltar - next year celebrating 300 years of being British - could say the same thing about the Spanish one of 1978, but for the moment we are resting.

Ministers come and go and it looks like Tony Blair has other issues to worry about whilst he remains in office. In the meantime, Gibraltar, unlike them, is here to stay.

Natives resting
Natives resting

Anarcho record

It is ironic that Joe Wills accuses me of “revisionism”, given the utter lack of historical truth in his own claims (Letters, November 20).

He asserts that the Makhnovists “occupied a single town, Ekaterinoslav, for one day”. In reality, they liberated numerous towns. Even his own example is false. Ekaterinoslav was held “for six weeks” at the end of 1919, without the negative effects he claims (Michael Palij The anarchism of Nestor Makhno p200). In Oleksandrivsk, they called “a meeting of workers ... and ... asked them to organise the management of industry by their own means and under their own control”. A fifth soviet regional congress was also called (pp196-7).

Wills claims that the Makhnovists were a “marginal force” which “numbered no more than 6,700”. In reality, in May 1919, they numbered over 22,000, peaking at about 40,000 in late October. Wills’s figure derives from Darch’s The Makhnovshchina 1917-1921 and are Soviet estimates for early 1919. I can see why he uses this source, given Darch’s uncritical use of Soviet histories on the subject.

Nice to know that Wills considers Stalinist accounts do not suffer from “revisionism”! As for “marginal”, well, the whites would dispute that: “The Denikin troops came to regard Makhno’s army as their most formidable enemy” (Palij, p202). Indeed, their role in the defeat of Denikin and Wrangel were key.

Wills asserts that the Makhnovists failed “to understand the needs of urban workers”. While predominantly a peasant movement, they did urge workers to organise themselves and run their own workplaces (with some success). The Bolsheviks, in contrast, imposed one-man management and militarisation onto the workers. Presumably, for Wills, the latter expresses “the needs” of workers better than the former!

He claims I think “principles are not important - just the degree of violation”. Can he not see that a movement which applies most of its proclaimed ideas most of the time is fundamentally different to one which violated them all, from the start? He claims that if “grassroots democracy” can be ignored then “both hierarchy and bureaucracy must have existed”. Delegates can ignore their mandates (that is why anarchists argue for instant recall) but that does not imply hierarchy. It implies hierarchy is beginning, unless the grassroots act. Which, in the Makhnovist movement, it did. So, yes, the Makhnovists were not perfect, but they stood for and implemented workplace, army, village and soviet self-management.

Unlike the Bolsheviks. The facts are that, whenever faced with a functioning soviet democracy before, during and after the civil war, they preferred party power. Wills absolves the Bolsheviks’ disbanding of soviets in the spring of 1918 because this “was well after the outbreak” of the civil war. Yet Lenin stated in March 1918, that “the soviet government has triumphed in the civil war.” In April, he said: “One can say with certainty that the civil war in its main phases has been brought to an end.”

Even assuming Wills is factually correct, the logic of his argument is clear: working class democracy and revolution are incompatible. This can be seen from his defence of the Bolsheviks banning the Makhnovists’ Fourth Regional Congress. His account of the Third is derived from Darch, and so from Soviet accounts. He claims that “Makhno denied the legitimacy of the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets,” as if Wills did not know that it was a creature of the Bolshevik dictatorship. Indeed, the conflict between party dictatorship and soviet democracy had been a theme of the Second Congress (Palij, p153-4). As for “agitation against state socialism”, is Wills arguing against free speech?

Wills justifies Bolshevik authoritarianism by saying, “All this as the revolution fought for its survival”! Which, ironically, was exactly the reason why the Fourth Congress was called, to discuss the problems facing the revolution. Obviously Wills disagrees with Makhno that it is “an inviolable right of the workers and peasants, a right won by the revolution, to call congresses on their own account, to discuss their affairs”. Is Wills really arguing that the masses should have no say in their revolution?

Wills argues that accounts of the Makhnovists cannot be trusted, quoting a historian who bases his case on Soviet accounts. It is hardly our fault that “empirical data” is hard to find. Anyone who was lucky enough not to be shot or imprisoned by the Cheka was subject to Bolshevik dictatorship. This, naturally, means most first-hand accounts were by “committed anarchists” in exile. Significantly respected historians like Palij have managed to produce histories of the movement based on numerous sources which tally with the anarchist ones.

Finally, Wills denies that I express “consistent anti-statism”. He notes that Bakunin “describes his organisation as a ‘new revolutionary state’”. He did so, in 1868, but not in later, similar, descriptions. Why? To quote Daniel Guerin, initially Bakunin used such terms “as synonyms for ‘social collective’. The anarchists soon saw, however, that it was rather dangerous for them to use the same word as the authoritarians, while giving it a quite different meaning. They felt that a new concept called for a new word and that the use of the old term could be dangerously ambiguous; so they ceased to give the name ‘state’ to the social collective of the future.”

Anarchists argue that the state is structured to ensure minority rule and, consequently, a ‘workers’ state’ would be a new form of minority rule over the workers. For this reason we argue that working class self-management from the bottom up cannot be confused with a ‘state’. The Russian Revolution showed the validity of this, with the Bolsheviks calling their dictatorship a “workers’ state”, in spite of the workers having no power in it.

It is simple really: either the class organisations of the working class are in charge or the party leadership is. Wills’s arguments just reaffirm that, for Leninists, it is most definitely the latter. Little wonder, then, he resorts to distortions about the Makhnovists and anarchism.

Anarcho record
Anarcho record

Non-ideology

Permit me to respond to your leaflet in French, which I read at the European Social Forum in Paris.

You speak of peace and wanting to destroy capitalism, yet we know that state communism in Russia and elsewhere was not much better. It is up to man to create communism, and not some political system or other to bring change.

Man is less stupid than we think - unless he is made stupid by ideologies.

Non-ideology
Non-ideology

Nationalist myths

I think there is enough of a basis for serious political disagreement between myself and Nick Rogers without the need for distortion (Letters, November 27). I am disappointed then that Nick introduces a ridiculous allegation that I threatened Hugh Kerr with legal action. I hope that Nick will accept that he has misread what I wrote. I look forward to his reply.

As for John McAllion and George Galloway, here are four incontrovertible facts. Galloway has been expelled from the Labour Party. He is not going to join the Scottish Socialist Party. McAllion is inclined not to renew his Labour Party membership. He does not intend to join the SSP. None of it would matter so much if it were not for the SSP’s insistence on leaping on every casualty of New Labour dominance as a way of bolstering their wrong-headed decision to build outside the Labour Party.

Let’s try to deal with the more important issues Nick raises. To what extent is being in the Labour Party a trap for socialists, for example? This holds if you ignore the occasions when the Labour left has been successful in moving the party, and sometimes society, forward.

In 1946 the National Health Act brought about free, comprehensive medical care. In the same year the National Insurance Act introduced compulsory insurance for most adults and benefits for unemployment, sickness maternity widows and a death grant. When Labour was in office again in 1964, the Protection from Eviction Act stopped evictions of tenants without a court order. The industrial training boards were set up by obliging companies to contribute to a training levy. In 1965 NHS prescriptions charges were abolished (though reintroduced in 1968). In 1965 the death penalty was suspended. In 1969 the Open University was given its charter to provide degrees. In 1970 local authorities were given the power to end the 11-plus and expand comprehensive education.

I won’t add what many consider to be advances under the current Labour government like devolution, although the SSP must see that as an enormous advance, since its system of PR has given them a platform. So tell me, Nick, when can we expect to see the SSP, under its own steam, deliver some concrete gains for the working class? The limited affiliation of some RMT branches does not a movement make and I think you would acknowledge that a very powerful alliance indeed is necessary if you want to take on the global reach of capitalism.

Instead of building for that, the SSP wants to further splinter British working class unity by arguing for an independent Scotland - not on the basis of an intimate link between social revolution and national revolution, but on the simplistic assumption that an independent Scotland is more likely to be more radical - indeed more socialist - than England. Of such myths is nationalism made.

Three final points. The Campaign for Socialism has advanced alternative strategies for the Labour Party in our publications, although we would like to make these in much more detail. I am yet waiting to see a clear economic strategy from the SSP. Secondly (and again the element of distortion is worrying), I did not bemoan the cult of activism in the SSP, though many SSPers bemoan the cult of personality in their own party. I argued that activism which was not theoretically led could be pointless - hardly a contentious point for socialists of a Marxist persuasion. Thirdly, I don’t know if you talk to your comrades in Scotland, but they will tell you that CFS members are active in anti-war work and in support of asylum-seekers, in trade union activity and so on.

You don’t need to be in the SSP to be active and I would put it to you that the SSP has within its ranks many who were once among the inactive members of the Labour Party who are now inactive members of the SSP.

Nationalist myths
Nationalist myths