Letters
Willy-wagging
There have been a number of letters in the Weekly Worker demanding “how many members” the CPGB has - comrade Shaun Tinsley’s being a recent example (August 5). This is something of low political worth which often raises its ugly head within left politics, indicative of a morbid and decaying sectarianism prevalent in our current political period.
What a shame it is that left culture has degenerated into what can only be compared to the practice of pubescent male youths in the PE changing rooms - enthusiastically comparing their manhood. The trap which comrade Tinsley falls into (and possibly the young boys too) is to confuse the prime importance of quality with that of quantity.
It is taken as axiomatic by the majority of the left that ‘bigger is better’ and therefore what is required for the liberation of mankind is to draw as many people as humanly possible into this or that left sect, analogous to an Automobile Association stall signing up people for motor insurance. Little wonder then, that some British National Party thugs so easily infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party (see Weekly Worker September 2).
This also has dire political and programmatic consequences - namely to tone down terms like ‘socialism’, ‘communism’ and the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in an attempt to pander the existing (low) consciousness of the masses in a display of dire opportunism. Genuine Marxists start from the interests of the class itself - not the size of this or that left sect in competition with each other, or the extent that bourgeois ideology is warping mass consciousness.
We recognise that without revolutionary unity - around a democratically agreed programme, in which minority opinions are not only tolerated, but given room to flourish - the working class cannot liberate itself for the ultimate good of humanity. This is why we intervene in Respect, the anti-war movement and (thankfully now) in the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform, agitating politically against what we see as political failings made not only by the SWP, but by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, the Socialist Party, Workers Power and so forth.
Willy-wagging
Willy-wagging
CPGB "line'
Comrade Ian Donovan writes about "allegations raised by the CPGB" in relation to Respect (Letters, September 9). The first of these is that the unity coalition is a "non-socialist alliance" and the second that Respect would have a "worse internal regime than the Socialist Labour Party".
The first "allegation" was publicly made by members of the Socialist Workers Party themselves - they said that was why principles like republicanism, a worker's wage and open borders were out of place. Paul Holborrow specifically said: "Respect is not a socialist organisation" (Weekly Worker January 29). As to the second, that was, I believe, made by a Weekly Worker writer, comrade Manny Neira, who like comrade Donovan recently deserted the ranks of CPGB partisans.
The point is that the words of Weekly Worker writers should not be attributed to "the CPGB". Otherwise everything written in these pages by comrade Donovan himself, who took a rather different position to that of comrade Neira, would also have to be regarded as the official CPGB "line'.
CPGB "line'
CPGB "line'
Wake Up
Methinks that Ian Donovan should wake up and smell the coffee. He has written that Respect is “clearly a socialist coalition”. This is utter codswallop. Because Respect is actually a rainbow coalition. Furthermore, the Respect party is little more than a front for the SWP-ISG bloc.
Perhaps Ian Donovan might like to explain why the Socialist Alliance was destroyed by the SWP-ISG bloc?
Wake Up
Wake Up
Respect
I would like to send only the briefest of messages conveying my support for the CPGB’s position on Respect. It is a position that, with the aid of the Weekly Worker, allows us to be part of a growing movement without being blind to its faults.
Respect
Respect
Correction
Pictures accompanying the article, ‘Livingstone tightens his grip’ featured in last week’s paper Weekly Worker should have been credited to Lars Bohn, bohn@attac.dk. We apologise for the omission
Class collaboration
We note that the article on your recent Communist University contains the following report of the intervention of one of our comrades: “Alan Davis of the International Bolshevik Tendency said the workers’ party must be internationalist and committed to working class independence, so it must give no support to Ken Livingstone, the anti-war movement, or the Respect coalition” (Weekly Worker September 2).
This does not accurately represent our well-known attitude toward the “anti-war movement”. As you well know, we are not opposed to anti-war activity, merely to the openly class-collaborationist reformism pushed by the Stop the War Coalition misleadership. In fact we have actively participated in anti-war mobilisations in Britain and have proposed the building of an openly anti-imperialist bloc in such events. This would pose the possibility of an open political struggle against the Stop the War Coalition’s pacifism and class collaboration - something the CPGB has been unwilling to do.
We note a pattern of capitulation to class collaborationism by the CPGB leadership. A recent example was the article ‘ESF chooses Ken’s police apologist’, which recognised that Livingstone “eagerly promotes the City and big business and disgracefully called for London underground workers to cross RMT picket lines”, yet still characterised him as someone “broadly ‘of the left’” and defended the CPGB’s vote for him in the 2000 London mayoral elections (September 2). Even in this retrospective article there is no criticism of the openly class-collaborationist programme Livingstone is carrying out today. It was this programme that precluded any possibility of Marxists advocating a vote for him.
It is clear that the CPGB leadership does not include respect for the principles of elementary working class solidarity in its definition of who is “of the left” - this is liberalism, not Marxism.
Class collaboration
Class collaboration
ESF website
Reporting on the European Social Forum website, you write: “Instead, the contract had been given to the company GreenNet, which at the moment does not seem able even to correct problems with the site that have been pointed out on countless occasions” (Livingstone tightens his grip’, September 9).
This is not true. Firstly GreenNet is one of the most progressive ISPs in the UK and supports tons of grassroots organisations and campaigns. Second, the delays to changes to the website, etc are not the fault of GreenNet, but both the stupid slow process in the ESF and the fact that one GLA employee is in effect the only person in charge of the website!
here@there.com
ESF website
ESF website
Swansea murder
Around 300 people gathered on September 14 in Swansea for a vigil for Kalan Kawa Karim, a 29-year-old Iraqi Kurd who was murdered in an alleyway outside a pub in the centre of the city two weeks ago. Witnesses and evidence suggests that the murder was racist in motive.
Kalan had fled Iraq in 2002, having been tortured whilst in prison there. He had been given full refugee status when he came to live in Wales some 20 months ago. The 150 or so members from the Kurdish community have repeatedly reported living in fear of a racist attack. Kalan’s death bore testament to that fear.
Amongst those at the vigil, which included Kalan’s family and friends, was the Kurdish Federation in the UK. Its speaker commented on the police declaration that Kalan’s death had been declared an “isolated incident”, yet highlighted the common scenario where individuals fleeing terror under Saddam’s regime were persecuted further and, in this case, murdered in this country. The Swansea Bay Asylum-Seekers Support Group added in a leaflet that “… government politics which make many immigrants ‘illegal’ encourage the resentment and fear of foreigners - Kalan Karim is the latest victim of a UK climate of hatred.”
Activists from local asylum-seekers support groups and Respect, who called the vigil, are now planning a march through the centre of Swansea towards the end of this month. Swansea Bay Asylum-Seekers Support Group can be contacted on 07837 275279.
Swansea murder
Swansea murder
Imperialist AWL
No doubt Richard Roper is more than capable of repelling the synthetic outrage of Martin Thomas (Letters, September 9). However, I am surprised at not only Mr Thomas’s failure to understand the most elementary rules of logic, but his resort to conspiracy theory.
Apparently Mr Roper’s accusation that the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty directly aids imperialism (true) and thus confuses the left (also true) is such an amazing coincidence that it can only mean that the AWL is in the pay of imperialism! Why? A far more likely explanation for AWL’s pro-imperialist position than bribery is that it has convinced itself that imperialism has a progressive role. And, if that is true, is it surprising that people on the left are confused? I was certainly confused that a group calling itself a revolutionary socialist and Trotskyite should also support Zionism and partition in Ireland!
Does the AWL “directly”, as opposed to ‘indirectly or ‘inadvertently’, aid imperialism? Well I’m not sure how you can ‘inadvertently’ support imperialism - as if it was a question of stepping into the road without looking! Both myself and many others have shouted ‘Watch out!’ on so many occasions that, unless the explanation is terminal deafness, then one can only assume the AWL’s positions are indeed deliberate.
Is AWL’s pro-Zionist position merely an ‘indirect’ aid to imperialism? Well the Zionists don’t think so. I have copies of articles from the Jewish Chronicle, the main newspaper of the Jewish bourgeoisie in this country, openly reporting how Zionists admire the position AWL takes! The Israeli state-funded Union of Jewish Students repeatedly expressed its gratitude when I was in the NUS for Socialist Organiser’s support for Zionism (no, they weren’t fooled by their two-statism). Of course, compared to the support of US imperialism for the Zionist state, the AWL’s support is but a drop in the ocean, but insofar as it confuses the opponents of Zionism and brings comfort to its supporters, let us not be modest, Martin. Of course your support for imperialism is direct. It’s just that you are not able to muster many forces!
I am a Jewish anti-Zionist who has had to face not merely the hostility of Zionists, who accused myself and others of ‘self-hatred’ (just as the Nazis accused anti-fascist Germans of being anti-national), but also thuggery, the breaking up of meetings and accusations of ‘anti-semitism’. All this we can accept and fight, but treachery from those who called themselves Marxists but who aided those who justified war crimes against the Palestinians is unforgivable. The explanation for SO/AWL’s position is no different from that of social democrats in World War I. When chauvinism is in the air, it is always easier to side with your own ruling class than the oppressed in another country.
It is little wonder that, having gone out of its way to find excuses for the bigots of Ulster loyalism (who also had a national identity, according to the AWL - kicking catholics) and Zionism, that AWL is now finding reasons why the United States and Britain should stay in Iraq. To protect the workers’ movement no less! Is it any wonder that, with socialists like these, Arabs should find the attractions of political islam more to their taste?
The tragedy is that Martin Thomas doesn’t understand that the history of imperialism is one of divide and rule and that, far from reining back the murderous attacks of islam on Iraq’s worker parties, it makes it ever more likely that the islamic parties will continue to grow in strength.
Imperialist AWL
Imperialist AWL
All Zionist?
Roland Rance in his witty note is presumably asking that the post-1945 ethnic-cleansing of Palestine be termed ‘Zionist/imperialist colonisation’, as opposed to “Jewish/imperialist” - telling us that he as a Jew has not benefited from this conspiracy yet (Letters, September 9). The implication is that the millions of Jews now occupying Palestine must obviously all be Zionists, and that no Jews in the rest of the world get any benefit or comfort at all from the building of the state of Israel into an enormous military power and the most dollar-aided country on earth.
That anyone can have such naive delusions would be slightly more credible if Roland Rance could be heard denouncing the foundation of the state of Israel and all its works.
All Zionist?
All Zionist?
Abolish family
“ ... a revolutionary world of workers’ states is the only long-term guarantee of real human enlightenment on all the rotten discriminations still prevalent in an insecure, class-divided society” - Royston Bull, has it down correctly (Letters, September 2).
Single-issue politics are but a manifestation of left reformism, for they flow from the fallacious proposition that capitalism can somehow be reformed to eliminate the terrible injustices that are inevitably part and parcel of the society that the system has produced. Intolerance against gay people has its roots within the nuclear family - the basic building-block of capitalism - and until the nuclear family has been replaced by a higher social unit reflecting the building of socialism, which can only occur in the wake of a socialist revolution, these backward anti-gay attitudes will persist, for they are learned within the family.
A successful socialist revolution would necessitate that the nuclear family receive no legal protection, and that social collectives be encouraged and aided by a state and government of, by and for the working class. The key to the elimination of social oppression is inextricably tied to the overthrow of the profit system (capitalism) and its replacement by a system of economic and social collectivism. In short, the power of the working class.
Abolish family
Abolish family
The other 9/11
Last week saw the 31st anniversary of the ‘other 9/11’. On the morning of Tuesday September 11 1973, two jets launched a deadly attack on the presidential palace of La Moneda in the heart of Santiago, Chile. A military coup led by Augusto Pinochet ousted the presidency of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected socialist head of state. Thousands of Allende supporters were rounded up, detained, tortured and murdered.
During the previous three years the US helped destabilise the country. They cancelled loans and aid to the elected government of Chile, but re-armed its military. CIA manipulation was rife. When Allende was elected, Henry Kissinger had said: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.” He meant it. Democracy would not be allowed to interfere with American interests.
Both September 11 events were tragic, but let us not forget the many thousands of people who were tortured and murdered in Chile in the interests of capitalism.
The other 9/11
The other 9/11
imperialism
Mike Macnair’s reply to my letter suggests his grasp of psychology is little better than his grasp of Marxism (Letters, September 9). Quite how Tourette’s syndrome or Sean Matgamna’s alleged “original Healyism” are relevant to our differences on imperialism is beyond me - but then flights of fantasy also characterised his original articles.
Macnair says he would happily engage with us if only we wrote a serious critique of his views. How very “non-sectarian” of him. Except that he has just expended 15,000 words over three issues of the Weekly Worker without actually writing a serious critique of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s understanding of imperialism or indeed of earlier Marxist theories. Little wonder we feel exasperated at yet another CPGB hatchet job dressed up as a scholarly contribution.
Macnair said in his original piece that our analysis is “a pretty clear break with the programmatic positions of the tradition from which the AWL originally came”. He says this includes “the Trotskyist variant of communism”, the Comintern and “Lenin’s theory of imperialism”. Our alleged heresy is pointing out that imperialism can have progressive consequences, such as the creation of working classes.
Even from the selection of quotations in my letter it is clear that all the classical Marxists understood imperialism in this way - in their major and minor works - not simply their “casual comments”, as he puts it. This is not theology - it is necessary to represent the views of earlier Marxists accurately before building on their insights and/or criticising them - something Macnair has simply failed to do.
Macnair says I “conflate” the classical Marxists, “paying no attention whatever to the differences between these views”. But this misses the point, since they did share common assumptions on the nature of imperialism and the AWL does not simply conflate them in our articles (see, for example, Workers’ Liberty February 1996).
Macnair says: “The AWL would be a lot more scientific if they admitted openly that it is necessary to correct the errors of the classic authors on imperialism which led to the failure of prediction in the 1940s-50s.” But this is precisely what we have said in developing the idea of the ‘imperialism of free trade’ - the form taken by imperialism since 1945. This is something Macnair would know if he had bothered to read even a small sample of our publications.
And what alternative does Macnair present in his articles? An account of capitalist decline with little substance, some superficial remarks about the state, a dubious analogy depicting the relations between the most powerful states and the recycling of dependency theories. This is hardly an advance. In fact it is much like the kind of mechanical application of Lenin we’ve been trying to go beyond.
The political conclusions Macnair draws from his view of imperialism are also clear. On Iraq he offers purely verbal support to the Iraqi working class, whilst emphasising exactly the kind of facile anti-imperialism that implicitly promotes the islamist ‘resistance’ to the occupation in the name of a mangled ‘Leninist’ defeatism. The CPGB ludicrously goes so far as to propose that the newly emerging labour movement form an alliance with the fundamentalists - a proposal that, if it were ever put into practice, would surely cut the throat of independent working class politics in Iraq.
If these are the results of his investigation, then nothing has been achieved.
imperialism
imperialism
Beslan
I have nothing but praise for your article about the Beslan massacre (‘Putin follows in the bloody footsteps of Stalin and the tsars’, September 9). I fail to understand what the Chechens hoped to achieve by committing this terrible act. They have only lost supporters of their cause for national liberation and in the unlikely event that Chechnya gains independence suicide bombers and the like will not live to see their region free from Russian oppression.
On the US presidential election, since a vote for the American Libertarian Party would be a wasted one, I call for a boycott. The left may say they will vote for Kerry. Sure, he is the lesser of two evils, but that doesn’t mean you have to vote for him. As far as I am concerned, Kerry is to Bush as Tony Blair is to Michael Howard.
Beslan
Beslan