Letters
Skin-deep
In the last edition of your paper you pictured a woman wearing a headscarf, while contradictorily painting her face with the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equality’.
There is nothing ‘liberal’ or ‘egalitarian’ about the subordination of muslim women, be it ‘voluntary’ or not. How you can claim that such a depiction represented the ‘values of the revolution’ is truly beyond my comprehension. As Emma Goldman once said, if I can’t dance then I won’t join your revolution. Clearly you do not give a damn about the oppression of women, so yours is no revolution I want to be a part of.
I have long suspected that the little mention you make of women’s rights in your propaganda is merely lip service and of a skin-deep nature. I no longer merely suspect: now I know. Thank you for at least letting me know where I stand.
Skin-deep
Skin-deep
LCR and ban
As you said in the article, ‘French left looks away’, “a group of minority LCR militants” did support the February 14 demonstration against Chirac’s bill outlawing religious symbols in schools (Weekly Worker February 26).
In fact we formed a small but visible contingent on the march. The opposition to the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire’s policy of ‘No to the headscarf, no the law’ represented about 30% of the members of the LCR’s leading body. To be fair to the majority, the minority has had its position publicised in Rouge (the party’s weekly), and this text was distributed by LCR members on the march (we also wore LCR stickers to advertise our presence). Meetings to coordinate our action have been held at the LCR’s headquarters, and representatives of the minority have joined the coordination organising activity against the law, along with muslims, anti-racists and even feminists. The LCR has decided to publish an internal discussion bulletin on the question (to which many opposition members contributed), although this has so far failed to appear. So it should be said that the tradition of internal democracy is very much alive within the LCR.
This is not to underestimate the difficulty of persuading French comrades that they should defend the rights of muslim school students and others (such as civil servants or private sector workers) to wear the headscarf. There is a deeply ingrained prejudice within the French left against anything which smacks of ‘communitarianism’, and a serious underestimation of the effects of racism and oppression. The LCR, for example, frequently refers to itself as ‘internationalist’, ‘ecologist’ and ‘feminist’, but rarely, if ever, as ‘anti-racist’. Many members are literally obsessed with the dangers of muslim fundamentalism, while rarely calling into question the fact that their own organisation has consistently failed to attract and to recruit members of minority groups (on the other hand, they have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure equal representation of women comrades).
The majority, while opposing the bill on paper, have failed to organise any public initiatives against it, even refusing to attend meetings as observers - sometimes on the grounds that muslim (not even fundamentalist, but simply muslim) organisations would be present. And it is true that it is difficult, if not impossible, to effectively oppose the bill while saying, ‘We are engaged in a struggle (un combat) against the headscarf as a symbol of women’s oppression’.
For those who read French, the publication Socialisme International, produced by a group of LCR members who were previously associated with the SWP’s sister organisation in France, has a special issue on religion, islam and Marxism which can be read on http://www.anticapitalisme.org. The paper edition can be ordered at colin.falconer@wanadoo.fr.
LCR and ban
LCR and ban
Informed
I found the article ‘French left looks away’ well informed and a good analysis (Weekly Worker February 26). Thanks.
Informed
Informed
Charity fraud
A report launched on the second anniversary of the horrific carnage in the Indian state of the Gujarat in 2002 presents alarming new evidence that, under the cloak of humanitarian charity, massive donations from the British public were sent to fascist-inspired hindu extremist groups in India.
Prepared by Awaaz - South Asia Watch Ltd, a London-based secular network - In bad faith? British charity and hindu extremism says UK organisations have been raising funds in the name of charity for natural disasters like earthquakes, and giving them to extremist organisations that preach hatred against muslims and christians.
The report demonstrates that the UK-based Sewa International sent £2 million for the devastating earthquake in Gujarat in 2001 to its Indian counterpart, Sewa Bharati, a front for the secretive, violent Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Money from the UK was given to RSS front organisations that are involved or implicated in serious violence. Much of the money was spent on schools that promote hatred and fanaticism.
The RSS, its closely allied family of organisations and their followers have been involved in the persecution or killing of thousands of muslims and christians in India over the past 15 years. They are known to have planned and executed anti-muslim pogroms in Gujarat in 2002, in which 2,000 people were killed and 200,000 displaced. The RSS considers religious minorities, especially muslims and christians, to be foreigners, aliens and polluters who have no right be treated as equal citizens of India.
Charity fraud
Charity fraud
Respecting SA
In Marcus Ström’s latest contribution to the debate about the Socialist Alliance, there is a reference to Lowestoft SA’s concerns regarding the debacle over standing down in local elections in favour of Respect (‘Show electors some Respect’ Weekly Worker February 26).
Firstly, the concerns expressed are my own without direct relation to Lowestoft SWP; secondly, I totally and unequivocally support Respect in standing in the Euro and GLA elections. I will work to get the very best vote for Respect in Lowestoft/Waveney. But my dilemma is how. My disagreement with the SA ‘task group’ proposal to subordinate all SA activity to getting the vote out for Respect concerns the ‘conveyor belt’ between my lived reality and the goal. I can see this ‘conveyor belt’ in big cities and conurbations, but in isolated smaller towns like Lowestoft (60,000 population), surrounded by villages, sea and sheep, where are the cogs to drive the conveyor belt?
Lowestoft has suffered and still suffers a rampage of closures and job cuts on the one hand, while our further education college has become a hideous joke. I was Stop the War Coalition convenor here from 2002 to 2003. While we got 150-plus from Lowestoft to the big February 15 2003 demo (with a further 50 from Yarmouth and up to 200 from the sticks), our biggest STWC meeting was just 20.
So in Lowestoft if we orientate around our STWC group, activists and contacts in terms of Respect, we’re looking at 50 people. Trouble is, these same 50 people were around the setting up of the SA in 2001 (where we had a meeting of 30-plus). There are few activists here - let alone contacts and socialists. My problem is ‘squaring the circle’ between local activity - stopping the British National Party, which won 15% in the recent Yoxford by-election), fighting council house sell-offs, problems in a local high school, helping to organise a fightback at Birds Eye (our last big workplace) and incredible cutbacks at our district town hall.
If these could be fed directly into the ‘conveyor belt’ of Respect, yes and yes again. But, well, I do understand that Respect is looking to the ‘big picture,’ sure - but how do we really connect anti-imperialism to these local struggles? Without some means, I humbly suggest the task group motion, in terms of towns like Lowestoft, places Respect in a bit of disRespect - as a conveyor belt without cogs.
Without socialist representation at the local elections I do not understand how the few socialists here can (a) connect the ‘dig where you stand’ struggles directly with Respect; (b) how socialists here can properly promote Respect without the ‘cogs’ for the ‘conveyor belt’; and (c) how, in the light of George Monbiot’s departure from Respect, we can bring Respect into our Green Party.
I have been at the forefront of struggles here since 1989. While no longer a member of the Socialist Workers Party, I am a wholehearted supporter. Now I’m entitled to Saga holidays it really is up to younger socialists than I to take a lead in Lowestoft and Waveney. I came into politics to build socialism from below and that’s where I stand. But in Respect there has to be the cogs of socialism from below which can drive forward the break from Labour.
More than this are the ‘what ifs’. The Green Party will undoubtedly stand in the Euro elections - perhaps even leaving the field at the local elections. I’m not sure about the BNP, given Yoxford: they may stand in some local wards. Given the small number of socialists, active trade unionists and STWC activists here, how does Respect ‘contest’ the BNP locally? Where are our efforts put?
The trouble is, Lowestoft SA has a small history (2000-2004). We got the SA to take on canvassing as opposed to leafleting. Are we now to go backwards for Respect and mass-leaflet? What of continuity?
Respecting SA
Respecting SA
Despair
The pretext for the walkout of CPGB members from the Democracy Platform of the Socialist Alliance is as ludicrous as it is self-serving. If the decision to withdraw from the DPSA is not reversed, then the primary damage that will be done will be to the CPGB’s own reputation amongst its ex-comrades.
The suggestion by Steve Cooke that the decision to allow non-SA members like myself to vote meant that the DPSA had effectively curtailed its position as a platform within the SA is nonsense (‘Moving to split away’, February 26). Since when is it a condition of becoming a platform that all members of an organisation are also members of the SA? Is that true of the SWP or the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty - or indeed the CPGB?
What makes Steve Cooke’s argument even more absurd is the article on the previous page by Marcus Ström, who writes that if the task group motion to prevent SA candidates standing in the local elections is passed, as it almost certainly will be, “the SA will effectively be liquidated in all but name”. Presumably, if comrade Cooke’s logic holds, then the DPSA will also be no more.
Socialists do not attach their primary loyalty to organisations but to the need to campaign and build for socialism. Of course the DPSA needs to prepare now for the fact that the SA is not going to exist other than in name. Of course, if it is really committed to building a workers’ party then it needs to have a membership independent of the SA. Indeed these things are so obvious that they scarcely need spelling out. If our experiences in the SA are not to be rendered nugatory, then it is crucial to try and keep together the best elements among independent socialists in the SA.
Not for one minute does anyone accept the pretexts that the CPGB has offered for its behaviour in walking out. It is clear to all that the CPGB, despite having been marginalised by the SWP, is desperate not to lose contact with this brightest of stars in the firmament. Like the International Socialist Group, they cannot conceive of life outside the SWP’s initiatives and, the more they are kicked in the teeth, the more they rationalise their own servility.
The behaviour of the CPGB in prioritising its needs and its demands over the need to regroup what is left of the SA is a classic example of sectarianism. As someone who is not a member of a small revolutionary sect, I have to say that the behaviour of the CPGB makes me despair that it will ever become possible to work honestly and openly with members of groups which have their own agenda. They will always find an excuse for splitting and resplitting. It is almost a pathological condition, born of years of isolation.
It is also clear that the DPSA, having quite correctly rejected the SWP’s quick fix, undemocratic populist front (Respect), has no alternative but to constitute itself as a separate but loose federal grouping and seek to work with similar minded groups such as the Alliance for Green Socialism.
Despair
Despair
Techno
Steve Cooke seems to be prioritising the technical, legalistic aspects of the constitution of a future workers’ state over the political content of the CPGB programme (Letters, February 26). Admittedly, at present we have only a draft programme. Fast-forwarding ahead to when these problems have been rectified, perhaps it will be possible to come up with a form of words that will fully clarify the rights and interests of majority and minority working class views.
But perhaps it will not. In which case we will have to rely on our interpretation of programme. The programme expresses our understanding of reality: it is the basis of a materialist morality and as such has a scientific purpose - namely the achievement of communism in the shortest possible time.
Maybe Steve has a view that the future Communist Party will be made up of the same rigid, self-obsessed sects that exist today. No, they are incapable of creating a Communist Party for programmatic reasons. For instance the SWP’s democratic abuse of its majority position in the Socialist Alliance was not due to the fact that they won all the votes (that was their right and duty), but because they did not have a programme to create a Communist Party but only a ‘programme’ to recreate themselves.
The aim of the democratic form of the party is to break down rigid factional divisions and replace them with fluid internal relations that can separate, and thereby realise, the long-term, genuine needs of humanity. Democracy is not the answer, but provides the best possible platform for the scientific resolution of human need. Abuse it and we are in serious trouble.
There are a number of non-controversial reasons for replacing an elected representative, such as corruption and non-performance of their duties. A minority viewpoint may wish to replace someone they voted for because that person no longer holds their views. This should be their right, but perhaps the majority will welcome the change of view and come to that representative’s rescue; that too is their right. I’m not sure why in a healthy party the majority would feel the need to persecute minority views even if they are troublesome. They are after all a minority.
This does not mean that there will never be any splits in the party of the future. The programme demands that we protect the long-term interests of humanity against sectional interests, which is a practical question to which there is no simple answer. Moreover, in the present situation - where we are engaged in a struggle to form a Communist Party from the debris of ‘official communism’ and Trotskyism - it is a problem that we are continually faced with. And this, I suspect, is the source of Steve’s real concern.
Techno
Techno
Primitivism
How is the left spitting vitriol at one another going to bring about high Marxist politics to the working class and rid us of small, terminally ill, sectarian parties?
All the left complains of lack of funds for their tightly knit milieu, so why not pool their resources under one paper with majority decisions but also serious minority viewpoints. Then those sectarians destined to retard the movement, and do more to help MI5 and the ruling class than further the workers’ movement, can be left to their own sterile demise.
Respect will fail because it will take years to get off the ground; but the left waking up to sect primitivism is the best way forward.
Primitivism
Primitivism
Middle class
Jon Owen writes: “I am a member of the middle class, but I really believe in the things written under ‘Immediate demands’ in the Communist Party Draft programme, and on the CPGB website. But does my social status prevent me from joining the Communist Party?” (Letters, January 29).
It didn’t seem to prevent Lenin or Trotsky from doing so.
Middle class
Middle class
Raving
What on earth have you got against a strong state? (‘Big people and the small state’, January 8). As communists you should do your utmost to destroy democracy and all the liberal trash that goes with it. It is through the state that communists crush class enemies. Why is it that western socialists think it’s obligatory to disown what happened in Russia, China, Cuba - ie, all the communists that have succeeded in capturing power - and applaud all the miserable failures like Trotsky and the POUM, as if you simply sympathise with losers!
You’re as bad as those christian socialists that so infuriated Lenin when he visited London. What’s the matter with you? You shouldn’t have anything to do with religious believers. The moment communists seize power they must completely destroy religion through arbitrary and terroristic means.
As communists you ought to desire a world despotism, because despotisms have been shown to be far more egalitarian than any democracy!
Raving
Raving