Letters
All at once?
I disagree with the comments in your draft programme about socialism having to triumph more or less simultaneously in most of the advanced countries or risk being destroyed.
To think of the logistics of such a feat is mind-boggling, to say the least. What I would say is that it is necessary to concentrate resources in one country. The number of people that have to be mobilised towards the cause would be less and therefore the logistics of such a task would be cut. The workers in other advanced countries, seeing such a change, would soon follow suit. Just like the demolishing of the Berlin wall did to destroy the former USSR.
Where better than to start in old imperialist, Americanised United Kingdom? However, mobilising such a number of workers would be very difficult, as the working class have been polarised: they do not form a single, cohesive, idealistic movement. What is needed is propaganda in schools, youth clubs, universities, to help to un-brainwash the working classes from a capitalist and apathetic standpoint.
Students disillusioned with the fact that they have to get into tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt should be more than easily won to accept communism as a viable rebellion against the capitalist system. This brings a lot of academic punch. Once the workers have been united and cleansed from believing that they have to be happy with their situation and the poverty that comes with it, then the movement can start to think about bringing down the puppet government that the media and big business have put in charge to look after their interests.
I have read on a capitalist website that the distribution of wealth in a capitalist society is fair, as individuals have to work for their spoils. It also suggests that the capitalist society is the only type of society that is fair because of individual freedoms. However, it also allows companies and ruling class politicians to make a lot of money at the workers’ expense.
All at once?
All at once?
Print weapon
The article about the SWP’s plan to sell off its printshop was most interesting (Weekly Worker July 1).
The printing machine was the best thing that pre-capitalist society ever invented. The same applies to printing equipment in the 21st century. For example, last year I saved up £200 to purchase a mono laser printer. It has been the best £200 I have ever spent. The laser printer has enabled me to print between 20 and 500 double-sided A5 leaflets for 1.2p per leaflet.
When James P Cannon set up the Communist League of America in the early 1930s, his first act was to raise the money to buy a second-hand printing machine. His books explain how important a printshop is to the revolutionary party. When I was a member of Militant, financial appeals were always linked to the purchase of new printing machinery. I can remember how the Militant in the early 1980s raised £100,000 to purchase a web off-set printing machine, which could print a daily paper.
The CPGB/Weekly Worker would be well advised to link the Summer Offensive to the purchase of new printing equipment and its associated computers.
Print weapon
Print weapon
Bullying
I see that one Claude Moreira has been writing to you in defence of the suspended Aslef general secretary, Shaun Brady, and calling for the restoration of “decency and democracy” to the union (Letters, July 1). Presumably Moreira takes issue with eminent QC and former president of the Bar Council, Matthias Kelly, who found that Brady presided over a culture of bullying and intimidation at Aslef.
Would this be the same Claude Moreira who wrote to Tribune in the following bullying and intimidatory manner?
“Regarding Declan McVeigh’s piece about the FBU, I think it is in the interest of Tribune to be very nice to Mr Shaun Brady, Aslef general secretary. The days of Mix Rix freebies are over and I understand that at the next AAD [annual assembly of delegates] Aslef delegates will ask the general secretary to levy a proper commercial rent for the office space used by Tribune at 9 Arkwright Road.”
I think we should be told.
Bullying
Bullying
Korean sources
If I were to make the assertion in a letter that I know that the Bush administration feeds its political opponents to lions, tigers and bears, in secret locations, I would have the political integrity to cite my sources, for otherwise all George and his supporters would do is say, ‘Not true’, to which I would reply, ‘It is true’, and on and on and on.
Cite your sources when you write about North Korea, along with dates of publication, so we can have an intelligent exchange of views (Letters, June 17). In the meantime, may I suggest you read two publications written by Leon Trotsky: Their morals and ours and The revolution betrayed.
Korean sources
Korean sources
Can't count
Marcus Ström quotes Socialist Alliance chair Nick Wrack as claiming that “George Galloway was 26,000 [votes] shy of becoming an MEP” (‘Assessing the new and burying the past’, July 1). This figure is repeatedly cited by Respect supporters, but it is difficult to see how they arrive at it.
In the European parliamentary elections nine seats were contested in London under the regional list system of proportional representation, using the d’Hondt formula. The ninth and last of the seats went to the Labour Party. To have won that seat Respect would have had to poll 155,529 votes. It got 91,175, which is 64,354 short.
This looks to me like another example of Respect’s reluctance to confront political reality and tendency to exaggerate the level of support it enjoys. Or perhaps they just can’t count.
Can't count
Can't count
Smear
Marcus Ström builds a wholesale attack upon me upon a falsehood.
He states that, entirely undemocratically, I have somehow imposed myself upon the Respect membership of Bethnal Green and Bow parliamentary constituency as their candidate. I have not decided where or even if I will seek a candidacy at the next general election. I have said that I will not stand in Scotland - which is the only decision I have made.
Ström’s high authority, on which he bases his latest smear on me, turns out to be the ‘Diary’ column in the Evening Standard. It is surprising how often I have to tell you not to believe everything you read about me in the papers.
Yours fraternally (just).
Smear
Smear
Courteous stoning
I was gratified to learn from Yvonne Ridley that the fundamentalist murderers - more usually known as the Taliban - treated her with “courtesy and respect” (‘Give me four times more’, July 1).
I’m sure those men and women stoned to death by the Taliban for the supposed crime of adultery or for wanting a same-sex relationship would be most interested to learn of this apparent ‘human face’ of the Taliban, as I’m sure would be the millions of Afghani women and girls deprived of any form of education during the Taliban’s brutal reign of terror!
This if anything illustrates the sheer political bankruptcy of the failing Respect project and illustrates why socialists should have nothing to do with it!
Bad enough that its self-styled leader, George Galloway, lined up with religious bigots over the issue of a woman’s right to choose; bad enough that Respect fielded candidates at the last European elections who publicly supported the segregation of people along gender lines; bad enough that Respect was willing to form an alliance with a religious grouping in Birmingham which publicly opposed rights for gay people! But I doubt even these shocking examples compare to Yvonne Ridley’s virtual apology for the reactionary fundamentalist thugs that were the Taliban regime!
There is thankfully, however, a genuine a radical alternative to all the pro-big-business, pro-free-market parties - and one which does not pander to the worst kind of religious bigotry, as Respect has repeatedly done: it is the Green Party, a principled party of the left which former Socialist Alliance members and candidates like myself can feel very at home in. Also unlike Respect, we have a track record of actually getting our candidates elected.
Courteous stoning
Courteous stoning
Saddened
I am saddened by the constant bickering and in-fighting on the left. You spend 23 or 24 paragraphs attacking Respect instead of the real enemy, Tony Blair (‘Assessing the new and burying the past’, July 1).
I am one of the 3,209 members of Respect and the only leftwing party I have ever been a member of before is the Labour Party. What is the point of the endless infighting?
One more question: how many members of the CPGB are there?
Saddened
Saddened
Livingstone
I used to admire Ken Livingstone and have been to meetings just to hear him talk.
But the old adage, ‘Power corrupts’, seems to apply to this scabby traitor. Like so many of the Labour Party, he has turned his back on the people that gave him power. Shame on him.
Livingstone
Livingstone
Warped perspective
In an emotive and disingenuous letter John Pearson rationalises his own departure from our organisation by conjuring up a bogeyman story (Weekly Worker July 1).
It is “clear” to comrade Pearson that the Red Platform “opposition” has been suppressed by John Bridge and the party leadership, as demonstrated by comrade Bridge’s criticisms of the platform in his motion to the last aggregate. Tricky, that majority vote in favour of his motion, though - must be we are all “under the heel of a fundamentally Stalinist clique”.
In fact, the demise of the Red Platform column is due to the weakness of the Red Platform itself. It was narrowly defined by opposition to the majority tactical position on voting for Respect (not opposition to some CPGB leaders, including the seemingly, at least to J Pearson, awesome John Bridge). By election time the comrades ran out of things to say. What Red Platform did say up to then was not very coherent and its criticism (of Respect, Galloway and the SWP) was weaker than that of the ‘pro-Respect’ majority. It did not help either that the individual who was the driving force behind Red Platform just upped and left.
In view of this, a decision was taken to discontinue the arrangement where a space for Red Platform was set aside every week. However, comrade Pearson knows that all of our members are encouraged to write for the paper. Comrade Pearson also neglects to mention that, while the Red Platform column has gone, its website - linked to our own - is still online (although not updated by the comrades for some time).
Comrade Pearson hopes to get round these uncomfortable facts with: “The readers of the Weekly Worker are no longer permitted to read the views of the Red Platform, except where those views meet with editorial approval” (my emphasis). Well, editors have to edit, but look at our unrivalled record for printing articles and letters that are critical of our majority, leadership or individual political positions. So to suggest that debate has been closed down is just mischievous twaddle.
And then we have comrade Pearson’s remark that “the only organised opposition that the leadership of the CPGB is prepared to tolerate is a licensed one.” Fatuous nonsense. Red Platform had their own column right up to the election!
Comrade Pearson has a deeply cynical, almost anarchist, attitude to leadership - understandable perhaps, given the predominantly bureaucratic centralist regimes of most of the left, but in relation to the CPGB it is entirely misplaced. For comrade Pearson it seems that it is leadership itself that is bad and this colours his whole perspective.
But there is another problem. Comrade Pearson, like some in the Red Platform, does not understand the process of “positive engagement”. He thinks this automatically rules out “critical engagement”. It is this mechanical, ‘one or the other’ approach that is faulty - we have done both at the same time. In fact our engagement in any organisation is always critical.
Comrade Pearson is in awe of the Socialist Workers Party. He seems to think the choice is staying at a safe and unsullied distance or cosying up and being tainted. In this warped perspective he casts the Red Platform as a principled minority, whose critique endangers an attempt by the dastardly John Bridge to ingratiate the CPGB with the SWP. Unfortunately, this does not fit with reality - the major thrust of critical engagement came from the majority, not the Red Platform - just read the Weekly Worker. We are not in awe of the SWP, but we do like to fight up close.
Warped perspective
Warped perspective
Violent
With regard to that section of your draft programme dealing with the character of the revolution, I have the following comments.
You are again creating illusions as to the possibility of achieving socialism (step by step) through workers’ control over production without a violent proletarian revolution overthrowing the capitalist state. We have had all these revisionist recipes before, 80, 90 years ago. These concepts have always failed and proved unworkable.
When will you ever learn that without a violent revolution, smashing the capitalist state, you will never, ever reach socialism?
Violent
Violent