Letters

Name change?

Reading back your comments on the AWL and Zionism, I hate how the only sensible commentary nowadays is by communists (‘Party notes’, September 17 2003). You should change your name or something.

Name change?
Name change?

More equal

All too often we hear people saying, ‘Communism is OK in theory, but it just doesn’t work.’ Well I recently saw that George Lloyd Matthews, lately deceased stalwart of our glorious movement, left £748,712 in his will. It fucking well worked for him!

We should be shouting facts like these from the rooftops, shouldn’t we? Or am I missing something? Perhaps he was a bit more equal than the likes of me. Ah well, must work harder.

More equal
More equal

Kenyan socialism

Kenyans have ended the year with another pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist government led by dictator Mwai Kibai. Millions of Kenyans are faced with starvation yet Ksh300 billion of public funds stashed away in foreign bank accounts during Moi’s 24-year rule have not been recovered. In fact well known looters still hold cabinet positions. Kibaki continues to consult Moi in times of crisis instead of taking him to court for political, economic and human rights crimes against the Kenyan people.

Corruption continues unabated while workers suffer under starvation wages, and millions of young people drop out of school, college, university and other bogus educational institutions to join the swelling army of unemployed. In 2005, prices of consumer commodities continued to rise, exploitation of workers and the poor by greedy capitalists intensified and the country’s natural resources remained in the hands of multinational companies which repatriate wealth from Kenya to imperialist countries.

In 2005, privatisation of state enterprises as a result of imperialist pressure led to retrenchment for thousands of workers and the suffering of thousands of families whose breadwinners were suddenly rendered unemployed.

However, 2005 also saw thousands of workers taking independent strike action, many of which were defeated due to lack of political support. In the case of nurses, the government responded by sacking them en masse. Not a single political party supported demands for any group of workers who went on strike.

The situation will not change in 2006, because workers do not have their own party that can support their demands, especially on the issue of a minimum living wage for all workers or better working conditions.

The position of the Kenya Scandinavia Democratic Movement (Kesdemo) is not just to support striking workers resisting the system, but also to call for a nationwide strike at an appropriate time as a way of bringing down the government so that a socialist state can be installed in Kenya. There has been no money to address the social and economic crisis facing the country and this is how the situation will remain in 2006 if capitalism is not overthrown in our country.

In 2005 officially at least 39 Kenyans starved to death, and 2.5 million were facing starvation, especially in North Eastern Province, due to lack of rain. If Kenya had a socialist government, the president’s salary would be the first to be cut from Ksh2 million to under Ksh100,000 and you can imagine what will happen to MPs’ salaries - and the amount of taxpayers’ money that will be saved and diverted to purchase drugs for hospitals, build roads and invest in other social services. This is what socialism is all about and the message is very simple.

From the point of view of Kesdemo, the struggle must be advanced from the ‘ethnic level’ to the ‘class/ideological level’. There are only two tribes in Kenya - the Rich and the Poor.

Socialists have already seized power in countries like Venezuela and Bolivia, countries where workers and other oppressed layers have refused to buy the anti-socialist propaganda weaved through the capitalist media and other propaganda institutions. Within a very short period of time, the government of president Hugo Chávez has seized control of the country’s oil wealth and the people of Venezuela have begun to benefit. In Kenya, revenues from tea, coffee, flowers, tourism, etc are not being pumped back into social services to improve the lives of citizens, but are being siphoned by local and international capitalists.

Kesdemo will continue to struggle for socialism in Kenya. During 2006, the war between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots, will, most likely, intensify and Kesdemo will be there on the side of workers, peasants, students, the unemployed and all the oppressed people of Kenya.

Kenyan socialism
Kenyan socialism

Czech bans

We are writing to inform you of the latest attack of the Czech Republic state - against the Communist Union of Youth (KSM) and against the communist movement in general.

The ministry of interior has sent a warning, in which it impugns the status of the KSM as a civic association under the pretext that its goals interfere with an area restricted to activities of political parties that is, according to the interpretation of the home office of the Czech Republic, excluded from the intervention of civic associations. Nevertheless the KSM does not differ in this area from the field of action of other youth political organisations like Young Conservatives, Young Social Democrats, Young Christian Democrats, etc. Thus it is obvious that this attack against the KSM is politically motivated. It is an obvious attempt to restrain our freedom of association, trying to coerce the KSM into renouncing its political programme, communist identity, goals and theoretical basis in Marx, Engels and Lenin: that is, Marxism as a whole.

The home office threatened to make the KSM illegal by December 31. This would without any doubt set a precedent whereby the same argument could be used against other civic associations. The home office also aims to attack the parliamentary Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM).

This attack is just the climax of a long-running anti-communist campaign that has increased in intensity this year. Among its manifestations was, for example, a petition titled “Let’s abolish the communists”, aiming to pass a law that would criminalise communist ideas, the communist movement and the word ‘communist’ as such. This bill simultaneously puts communism and its ideas on the same level as fascism and its crimes. This has been already passed in the senate and will now be discussed in the house of deputies. The house of deputies has passed a new penal code, according to which it is a criminal act to approve of and/or deny Nazi and so-called communist crimes.

It is necessary to emphasise that the attack against the KSM is an attack against the whole communist movement in the Czech Republic, and therefore also against the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, which the state has not so far dared to attack directly; it does so indirectly by attacking the Communist Union of Youth. The closeness between the Communist Party, which is today one of the strongest parliamentary political parties in the Czech Republic and one of the strongest communist parties in Europe, and the KSM was shown by the attendance of the president of the KSCM at the recent 7th Congress of the KSM, when he expressed the wish that “people who have passed through the ranks of the KSM provide new blood for the KSCM”.

Czech bans
Czech bans

Nuclear silence

The left in general has identified the problems with nuclear power in a capitalist society, such as safety, finance, waste management and the links to the arms industry, and this is well documented. But there has been an absence of debate around whether nuclear power should be part of the energy mix in a socialist programme.

Largely the left has been and continues to be against the use of nuclear power, and this has resulted in a stifling of debate. The left in Britain is, though, tailing public opinion for all it is worth. A recent ICM poll for The Guardian (December 27) found that 48% of people oppose expanding nuclear energy, while only 45% support it.

However, public opinion and the left both start from the same point: an absence of knowledge around the issue. The unthinking left naturally assumes it ought to oppose nuclear energy (whereas public opinion is guided by whatever are the exigencies of the state and media at the time). This reluctance to consider nuclear power seriously is damaging to the movement in considering both future energy needs and carbon emissions resulting from other power sources.

Once again reactionary elements are heard, as Blair rethinks his attitude to the nuclear question. Therefore any dissenting voice that wants to raise the merest possibility that nuclear power has any merits is vituperatively condemned as a capitalist lap dog by the anti-capitalist reactionary unthinking hordes who swallow the myth-makers’ party line (this unthinking trend is now sadly common among the left in Britain today - look at the Socialist Workers Party foot soldiers as they march to the tune of Rees, German and Nineham).

For example, Chris Nineham’s woefully unsuccessful Socialist Review - apparently the source of a heated dispute on the central committee, but due to be axed after this month’s conference and transformed into a monthly Socialist Worker supplement - frequently carries articles on the environment (eg, ‘Ecology against capitalism: nuclear reaction’, July-August 2005). But such pieces all too often read like press statements issued by Friends of the Earth.

Even in the SWP’s Pre-conference bulletin No2  there are six references to their favourite allies, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace (November 2005).

The point here is not to examine the arguments for or against nuclear power and leave it at that, but to examine the arguments for or against nuclear power as part of a socialist programme. But the bias and one-sided arguments are a reflection of the failure of the biggest left of Labour groupings, not least the SWP.

The strategic objectives of Marxism have been lost amongst the anti-nuclear lobbying and the language of Marxism has been replaced by the language of environmentalism. The materialist, scientific language that is required to analyse nuclear power has been replaced by the language (including body language) of reactionary anti-capitalists. These elements and tendencies have more in common with the anarchism and radicalism of the late 70s and early 80s, when the cold war was at its height.

With the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, the cold war is no longer with us (although, of course, a one-sided ‘arms race’ remains).

The association of nuclear weapons with nuclear power does not play such a high profile as it once did and it is only with America’s ‘axis of evil’ - countries such as Iran and North Korea - that the nuclear power-nuclear weapons nexus really registers.

The starting point has to be, what role should nuclear power play in a socialist programme and what are the minimum demands that have to be placed on the nuclear industry in a capitalist society?

Nuclear silence
Nuclear silence

White paper

The aim of Ruth Kelly’s new white paper on education is to introduce free-market competition as the answer to poor schools. As new work and pensions minister John Hutton told the neoliberal Brookings Institute in Washington in October, “We needed to drive greater challenge into the system … opening up these monolithic structures from across the private, voluntary and social enterprise sector” (The Guardian October 25).

Seventy-two Labour backbenchers have criticised the proposals and have now signed up to the Alternative White Paper campaign group. As a result Tony Blair is totally reliant on Tory votes to get his proposals through the Commons. The Alternative White Paper group’s central concern is “the proposed development of a body of self-regulating schools without an effective system of accountability or measures to ensure that the interests of all pupils are protected and advanced. Without the measures proposed in this paper there is a serious risk of delivering enhanced choice only for some, and reduced or restricted choice for others. Disadvantaged pupils may be losers rather than gainers from the new policy” (Alternative white paper December 15).

Any attempts to privatise, be it the minds of our children (in any shape or form), the school buildings or play areas in our schools must be fully resisted. Private sponsors could be private companies like Microsoft for example who already sponsor 100 specialist schools. The head of citizenship for Microsoft UK, Stephen Uden stated: “Trusts provide opportunities for a much deeper level of business involvement than there is in specialist schools. That doesn’t mean we’ll be telling the school how to run its affairs. Our experience in specialist schools is that they value the time and expertise our staff can give”(TES October 28).

Faith-based sponsors are also keen to get in on the act. Already, according to Socialist Review, the Vardy foundation teaches creationism at its school in Gateshead (December).

The rebel MPs are to be supported for their refusal to toe the party line on matters of such importance. Their concerns and criticism are well founded and it is hoped they will assist in building a massive national campaign of action, led by the unions and aimed at forcing the government to retreat.

However, the left must go further and stress that any break-up of the comprehensive system, be it along religious grounds or by private companies, is a threat to potential working class unity. In response to this attack, the left must clearly argue for a properly funded, national, secular, comprehensive education system.

At the end of the day we want working class kids of all ethnic backgrounds to learn and play together - paving the way for greater understanding and building solidarity links both in the here and now and for the future.

White paper
White paper

Wales Bill

Call me cynical if you wish, but the earth failed to move for me after Peter Hain and Rhodri Morgan announced the new Government of Wales Bill at the Welsh assembly on December 9 last year.

Secretary of state for Wales Hain has already described the bill as a “red letter day for devolution”, which “will put to bed the constitutional question in Wales for a generation”. Quite! The bill is supposed to answer criticisms about the democratic deficit within Wales, but the changes it would introduce are hardly likely to re-invigorate an assembly already dubbed a “glorified county council”.

At the moment, the assembly has the power only to develop and implement policy within such areas as agriculture, education, health, tourism and the Welsh language (and a few minor reforms it has managed to achieve, like free bus passes for the elderly and cheaper prescription charges, have already been overshadowed by, for example, a worsening crisis in healthcare and a failure to address democratic issues such as those associated with Welsh).

The assembly currently has to seek approval from Westminster for any legislative changes. In other words, ‘democracy’ lies with London, not Cardiff. Of course, we are led to believe that the new bill will change that situation. Apparently the new law would enable it to seek approval from Westminster and then get on with the job itself, so to speak.

Self-determination remains a fundamental democratic question, which needs to be taken seriously. As the CPGB says in its draft programme, “Every historically constituted people should be able to freely determine its own destiny.” In Wales that can only be realised with the demand for a Welsh parliament with full powers and the fight for full democracy up to and including the right to secede.

But we are not nationalists. While we support the right of Wales to secede, we would oppose the exercise of that right. We wish to see the maximum unity between all workers in Britain, whether they be in Wales, Scotland or England, in opposition to the constitutional monarchy and the system of capital that lies behind it.

It is in the interests of the British working class to fight for the right of self-determination to be enshrined within a federal republic of Wales, Scotland and England.

Wales Bill
Wales Bill

Tory aid

The recent news that Bob Geldof is to advise the Conservative Party on tackling global poverty should make it even clearer that Geldof’s politics are utterly contradictory and utopian.

Geldof, whose personal wealth amounts to an estimated £30 million, is being used by the Conservatives for their opportunistic electoralism.

Charity-mongering, the zenith of which is represented by Geldof, represents a Trojan horse of petty bourgeois ideas into the workers’ movement. The idea that by selling a few wristbands and having some pop stars perform will change the world is fundamentally mistaken. The extreme contradictions of capitalism are not something chosen by the capitalists, but intrinsic in its nature as an exploitative international system. As a result, trying to ‘patch up’ capitalism is a dead-end road.

The genuine bottom-up belief in wanting to eradicate poverty represents a basic humanism, which must be given flesh by a rounded Marxist programme for human liberation. Instead, the Make Poverty History movement has no real programme for today’s problems as a result of having being appropriated from above, a process aided by Geldof’s politics.

Tory aid
Tory aid

Far-fetched

I am not a member of the Socialist Workers Party or the CPGB, but a more social democratic approach is needed. One cannot solve any of today’s social problems with far-fetched dogmatic resolutions.

At least the SWP and Respect are working within their communities to solve problems using democratic methods. The CPGB is not committed to any such solutions, even when it is given an open door to do so.

Far-fetched
Far-fetched

Conscience call

The government’s insincere and unbelievable denial of complicity in rendition flights and procedures resembles the ‘hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil’ of the three ‘wise’ monkeys.

In order for what Blair, Straw and their cronies are saying to ring true, or be believed by a rational mind, the world would have to be a different place and human existence a different phenomenon than it is.

It is an understatement to accuse the government of ‘lying’; there is no power in human language to describe such dishonesty and duplicity, and such cruel effective support for torture.

The question that follows is, what person of integrity can hold a Labour Party card with a clear conscience?

Conscience call
Conscience call

No strings

Within a week of the tsunami that struck Asia last Boxing Day, the British public had raised over £70 million for the appeal run by the Disasters Emergency Committee. A year on and we have witnessed millions marching in Edinburgh to Make Poverty History and Britney Spears auctioning clothes to raise funds for hurricane victims in New Orleans. While none of these efforts are to be dismissed, government-sponsored charities are not the solution - more is needed.

This time last year, Eddie Ford wrote that aftermaths of disasters such as the Asian tsunami expose the “inefficiency, disorganisation and corruption of the state in poor countries” (Weekly Worker January 6 2005). This was also seen to be true of the state in the world’s most powerful country when hurricane Katrina hit. The poor were trapped in New Orleans after failed evacuations and left either to drown in their homes or fester in the Superdome. Natural disasters will always affect the poor more than their exploiters. Charity and aid efforts then rub salt into the wounds by distinguishing between rich and poor with their allocation of money and resources.

So we should take care not to submit ourselves to the charity culture that engulfs us at these times and remember where our well-meaning donations end up. Non-governmental organisations distribute money in such a way that it can only ever reinforce the power structures that keep so much of the world’s population in poverty and dependence.

Positive solutions to human devastation, whether natural or man-made, lie in the development of genuinely democratic organisations. All aid must be open to scrutiny and organisations must be transparent and accountable. Twelve months on and Eddie Ford’s demands still stand - when it comes to aid, “there should be no strings, no trade for aid deals, no kickbacks, no corruption”.

No strings
No strings

Drop homophobia

It is sad to see the leader of the muslim community attacking the gay community. We share a parallel experience of prejudice and discrimination. Victimisation of muslim people is wrong, and so too is the victimisation of gay people. Instead of sowing division and promoting homophobia, the Muslim Council of Britain should be working with gay organisations to challenge the twin evils of homophobia and islamophobia.

MCB leader Sir Iqbal Sacranie told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme on January 3 that homosexuality is “harmful” and “not acceptable”. He suggested it was immoral and spread disease. Implying that being gay is a sickness, he said homosexuality is linked to “other illnesses and diseases”.

The MCB has long campaigned in support of discrimination against lesbians and gay men. On every recent gay human rights issue, the MCB has campaigned in favour of discrimination. It opposed an equal age of consent, partnership rights for same-sex couples and the outlawing of homophobic discrimination in the workplace. The MCB also backed the retention of section 28 and a ban on gay couples fostering or adopting children.

While demanding rights for muslims, the MCB wants to deny rights to lesbian and gay people - both muslim and non-muslim. It sees no double standard or inconsistency in its selective approach to human rights. Outrage has written to Sir Iqbal several times, urging dialogue to explore our common interest in defending the human rights of both our communities. We suggested working together to eradicate the twin hatreds of islamophobia and homophobia. Sir Iqbal never replied to our letters.

Outrage recognises the shared humanity of all people everywhere. We endorse the MCB’s concern about the abuse of muslims in Palestine, Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq and in Britain. But our solidarity with muslims has been repaid with only hostility and prejudice from the MCB.

Tolerance is a two-way street. How can the MCB expect to secure respect for muslims when it shows such obvious disrespect to other people because of their sexual orientation?

Drop homophobia
Drop homophobia

Strange logic

Phil Kent (Letters, December 15) is desperately seeking to throw mud at Respect and myself to excuse his organisation’s uncritical parroting of the islamophobic propaganda of the likes of Peter Tatchell and other pro-imperialist types who now constitute a virulent rightwing element within the gay-activist milieu - people who now consider their own ruling class to be an ally and a potential agent of ‘gay liberation’ around the world. The ‘pink man’s burden’ as one sharp-tongued left critic of Tatchell recently noted.

Phil implies that both Respect and myself in some way regard homosexuality as an “abomination”, but manages to quote neither myself nor anyone else in Respect arguing in favour of any such view. In fact, Respect policy, unanimously approved, says the opposite. But that doesn’t stop Phil making such insinuations to cover up for the fact that the CPGB’s bloc partners in smearing Respect as homophobic are supporters of the very occupation of Iraq that the CPGB purports to oppose.

For Phil, to even mention the fact that there is BNP-type bigotry against muslims and other immigrants in the gay-activist milieu is to imply that all gays are somehow racist and reactionary. So to say that a particular cat is grey is to imply that all cats are grey. Strange logic, which I can only conjecture reflects something of the comrade’s own subconscious view on these matters.

If this is the quality of the ‘left opposition’ that the CPGB is seeking to build in Respect, then all I can say is that it is pretty miserable.

I would also note that the CPGB is proposing that the denizens of the ‘refounded Socialist Alliance’ abandon their isolationism and join it in seeking to build such a ‘left opposition’. I wonder if this invitation extends to the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty? Given that the AWL, like the CPGB’s other bloc partner, Peter Tatchell, tacitly supports the imperialist occupation of Iraq and bitterly denounces the demand for ‘troops out now’, can we therefore take it that these putative ‘left’ oppositionists will bring their own distinctive approach to such questions in this endeavour? This is not an abstract question, as in the unlikely event that the CPGB were to manage to persuade the AWL to become involved in such a bloc within Respect, the AWL would considerably outnumber the CPGB and its fellow travellers.

Of course, pigs may fly first. But it does indicate the warped nature of the CPGB’s conception of ‘left’ and ‘right’. For the CPGB, social chauvinists and supporters of imperialist occupation are ‘left critics’ of Respect. In reality, an opposition run around this kind of axis within Respect on the central questions of the historical period - the ‘war on terror’ and the new imperialist colonialism - would be a rightwing, implicitly pro-imperialist opposition.

Strange logic
Strange logic

What's in a name?

The last issue of the Weekly Worker (December 15) included a letter from a Rudolf Rocker.

If that is the person’s real name then apologies for this letter. But if the writer is using it as a pseudonym it is fairly presumptuous, given that the anarchist writer, Rudolf Rocker, only died in 1958 and his son, Fermin Rocker, died just over a year ago. Rudolf’s grandson lives in London.

Several of Rudolf Rocker’s books are in print. We were pleased to re-issue The London years, a memoir of his days in the Jewish anarchist movement in London prior to World War I. There is currently an exhibition of Fermin’s artwork at the Chambers Gallery. It runs until January 20 and is well worth a visit - many of the subjects of the paintings are drawn from Fermin’s past and his memories of anarchist and labour movements here and in the USA.

What's in a name?
What's in a name?

Ever thankful

I think that Sachin Sharma misses the point in his response to Dave Douglass (Letters, December 8).

The ‘qualitative’ element in Dave Douglass’s argument arises from the profound differences for workers between the potential outcomes of World War I and World War II. In the first case, workers had no ‘objective’ interests at all in the result of an inter-imperialist war. But, whatever the reasons for the triumph of Nazism in Germany, the situation was crucially different in World War II. To put it simply, if the Nazis had won then there would be no Jewish people alive today in Britain (and probably in Australia, New Zealand and Canada too). There would be no people of African, Asian or Caribbean descent alive in Britain; no gays, lesbians, or handicapped people. There would be no social democrats, communists, anarchists or trade unionists. No Sachin Sharma or me either.

Sachin argues: “If workers fight fascism they should not do so under the leadership of the bourgeoisie.” Well, for British workers this was hardly a choice in World War II. If they did not fight under bourgeois leadership then they did not fight at all (as some chose not to do). But to all those who did, and with due recognition of the major role that the Red Army played in the military defeat of Nazism, I am ever thankful. I would rather live in a bourgeois democracy than have died in a Nazi hell.

Ever thankful
Ever thankful