Letters

In with a bullet

I found John Doyle’s missive to be completely out of order.

He suggests that paedophilia might be accepted in the future. I fail to see how “minor sexual acts with underage youngsters” can be equated with sexual relationships between consenting adults, whether straight or gay. If such acts are “quite harmless” in the majority of cases, why is it that the trauma they cause is well documented and extremely painful to those concerned?

Is Doyle happy with, or accepting of, the abuse of children by adults and the abuse of the social, political and trust relationships that occur because paedophiles are breaking some “social code” and are part of some sort of poor, offended-against, “despised sexual minority”?

His ill-advised letter is attempting to somehow excuse these appalling crimes in a progressive paper, thinking that he may receive a welcome from a liberal readership. Wrong. The best communist response to this kind of crap is a bullet to the head - and good riddance to another pointless parasite.

In with a bullet

Under siege

Neo-Nazi, Christian fundamentalist and extreme nationalist protesters terrorised participants at a gay pride rally in the Latvian capital, Riga, on July 22.

Private armed guards were drafted in to provide security, after the Latvian police repeatedly failed to halt the aggression of a homophobic mob. The rally in the Reval Hotel was under siege all day by protesters from the anti-gay ‘No Pride’ movement. They roamed the streets outside the hotel, looking for gays and lesbians to attack. Anyone who looked gay was liable to abuse and assault, even passing tourists. The police seemed to stand back and let them terrorise people with impunity.

Justifying a ban on the pride rally on public order grounds, the city authorities said they had received threats of serious, organised violence by homophobic religious, nationalist and fascist groups. They claim Riga Pride is the ‘biggest security risk’ to the country since Latvia won its independence from the Soviet Union.

This explanation does not stand up. Latvia was able to guarantee security for president Bush’s visit. It is guaranteeing security for the queen’s forthcoming state visit and for the Nato summit later this year. If Latvia can do so for these high-risk events, then it is nonsense to suggest the police cannot protect 200 gay pride marchers.

Under siege
Under siege

Critical matter

Mike Macnair is right to argue the necessity of going back over strategic debates of the past in order to effectively address strategy now. He is opposed to “echoing uncritically one or another side of the old debates, as often occurs with the left today” (‘Republican democracy and revolutionary patience’, June 15).

However, in the same contribution, regarding one of these debates, Macnair uncritically asserts: “The first and foremost lesson of the ‘short 20th century’ is the impossibility of socialism in a single country.”

Lenin’s argument - that the first stages of the world revolution would see the victory of socialism in several or even in one country went uncontested until Trotsky chose to define his opposition on this point. Lenin’s theory was that “Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country taken singly” (VI Lenin Selected Works Vol 5).

In the post-Lenin period, Stalin made this the starting point for defending the revolution from those perceived as doom-mongers. Trotsky opposed Lenin’s theory of how the world revolutionary process would work, and was even able to misinform a section of the vanguard that it was Stalin who was the real author of the theory in 1924, rather than Lenin.

One of the reasons why people such as Macnair oppose Lenin on this matter is because they have an incorrect understanding of what socialism is. First, they fail to see that socialism in one or several countries is part of the world revolutionary process. In essence, therefore, Macnair is, on this issue, expressing unadulterated Trotskyism. Second, it is important to stress that socialism is also a transitional society between capitalism and communism, with both positive and negative features to begin with.

A transitional society can go forward, or backward to capitalism. Preventing this latter development requires a constant struggle against concealed bourgeois elements in the party, state and the cultural apparatus generally. This means a struggle with the representatives of the bourgeois elements in the Communist Party leadership and other institutions.

It is also not surprising that from Trotskyism Macnair finds it so easy to revert to Menshevism and Kautskyism with the argument that “taking the power in any single country, unless the workers’ party is on the verge of at least a continental majority, is likely to lead to disaster”. As the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun. In refurbishing these old opportunist arguments, Macnair can hardly claim to represent an advance on Leninism.

Critical matter
Critical matter

Marxist party

Mike Macnair writes that “the idea of a Marxist party which will begin with the forces represented by Critique, New Interventions and the Democratic Socialist Alliance to address the broad masses is hopeless”.

This is dishonest polemic. Critique issued a bold call for a Marxist party and asked for sponsors for their conference. The DSA and New Interventions supported the call and the CPGB and others were expected to follow so we could begin the process of building a Marxist party.

However, for Mike Macnair the starting point for his support for the call is an attendance at the November conference of, say, 2,000 or 3,000, which just happens to be the estimated membership of the SWP. In other words he is not supporting Critique because he is saying the only way forward to a Marxist party is to reform the SWP or relate to the SWP membership, where most of the Marxists are, even if Respect is heading in the opposite direction to the route to a Marxist party.

His arbitrary and unrealistic position undermines the points he makes about party democracy being essential in his series of articles on strategy. A Marxist party and Marxist cadre cannot be built without this democratic culture. But the SWP has not had this for nearly 40 years! If the SWP is where all the Marxists are, then party democracy is not essential but a luxury we can manage without.

I should add that there were far less than 2,000 to 3,000 members of the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP for most of its history prior to 1914. At the 1912 conference, when they finally split with the Mensheviks, Lenin had less than 20 Bolsheviks in attendance.

There is a crying need for a Marxist party with a democratic culture. If the CPGB call for a Marxist party is meaningful and not just a piety then the organisation should support the conference and encourage others to do so as the first practical steps towards a democratic Marxist party.

Marxist party
Marxist party

I dare you

In reference to your recent debate on a new Marxist party, why don’t all the ‘anti-sectarian’ sects such as the CPGB, Critique, Democratic Socialist Alliance and the Revolutionary Democratic Group (maybe even the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty as well) actually form a unified, multi-tendency, Marxist party?

Rather than telling everyone else on the left to do it, why not set an example? Show the rest of the left just how successful it can be. A democratic, multi-tendency party, and an open and democratic weekly party paper. I dare you!

I dare you
I dare you

Eyeing the fire

In an idle moment, I recently picked up Harry Ratner’s Reluctant revolutionary: memoirs of a Trotskyist 1936-1960. Chapter 12 starts with this interesting insight: “According to Marxist theory, all class struggle stems from the basic conflict between workers and capitalists at the point of production - the factory, the coal mine or building site - where the struggle over the appropriation of the surplus value created by the worker takes place” (p148).

A sincere, militant, subjectively revolutionary, but narrowly economistic approach that characteristically blighted the politics of the advanced elements of our class in the 20th century. However, good to see the banner of this discredited trend is still proudly held aloft for the 21st century by the AWL, a wretchedly economistic group now circling the first camp, hungrily eyeing the fire.

Take, for instance, the slant of Martin Thomas - the organisation’s stodgy centre - on the crisis in the Scottish Socialist Party. Essentially, the comrade wags his finger that it is time for all sections of the SSP to “be more specific” (Now there’s a slogan). The SSP’s “trade union and workplace activity should be greatly strengthened”. And to be really specific, “working class-oriented and internationalist campaigns like No Sweat and Iraq Union Solidarity should be taken up in a much more active way”. OK, so an important part of the SSP’s healing process consists of supporting a few AWL-favoured campaigns. Yeah, that’ll work. Top advice …

The key for Martin, though, is “a turn towards more serious trade union work [which] will, we believe, force a reconsideration of the SSP’s nationalist drift. Serious trade union work cannot be done without linking up with socialists in the unions in England and Wales, since all the major unions cover the whole of Britain or of the British Isles. No ‘Scottish-only’ policy will suffice” (Solidarity June 22).

There you go. Nationalism can be effectively countered by consistent trade unionism, the be-all and end-all of these comrades’ understanding of ‘working class politics’.

Eyeing the fire

Workers Power

I clarified my differences with Workers Power in the 1980s. I did not believe in using deliberate deception against working class people, masquerading an artificial pretence that the whole group agreed. I did not find it essential and wise for a ‘communist’ group to make out they all thought exactly the same!

I failed to see how bans on openness (and honest self-revelation) could help develop possible regroupment. Any restriction on how we communicate would also affect how we think. (The CPGB just assumes communication and activity are opposites in its ‘democratic centralism’!)

Jon Blake’s distinction between “middle class liberation” and the “lack of consistent and successful workers’ struggles” speaks volumes (Letters, July 13). The middle class people are deemed able to think. Working class people are similar to Pavlovian dogs in not being capable of reflecting on liberty and thinking about politics.

Workers Power
Workers Power

Big impact

I was saddened to learn of the death of comrade Ted Grant on July 20.

I only met Grant once, at Militant’s Mentmore Terrace headquarters in the spring of 1981. However, his writings and political analysis have had a big impact on my political education ever since I joined the Labour Party Young Socialists in 1979.

Grant’s legacy is two oil-slick internationals in the form of the Committee for a Workers’ International and the International Marxist Tendency.

With the explosion of personal debt in the Anglo-Saxon countries, together with the associated property bubble, Grant’s predictions of a slump may eventually be proved right.

Big impact
Big impact

Left to fester

The leadership of the Linkspartei.PDS and Wahlalternative Arbeit und Soziale Gerechtigkeit (WASG) in Germany have adopted the ‘principles’ of a programme prior to the merger of the two organisations in the new Left Party, according to the paper of “the socialists in the WASG”, Solidarität. The monthly paper of Sozialistische Alternative, German section of the Committee for a Workers’ International, carries a report in its July issue of the launch of the ‘Principles of a new left’, which was fronted by Oskar Lafontaine.

The key question of participation in governments is not addressed, so that the current problems of the Linkspartei.PDS (L.PDS), part of governing anti-working class coalitions in Berlin and in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommen, are left to fester.

Lafontaine seems to be opposed to the line of the L.PDS, and apparently also of the leadership of the WASG, and at the presentation he referred to the ‘Potsdamer Dreieck’ principles of the old (post-German Democratic Republic) PDS, which stated that the new party should only take up government posts if it benefits the working class. There should be no privatisations and no job cuts, which, Lafontaine said, would be enough to ensure the end of the current governmental participation (of the L.PDS).

PDS leader Gregor Gysi was asked by a journalist whether the current coalitions should be terminated in view of the adoption of the new ‘principles’, but he just gave a variant of his usual ambiguous answer and basically said that at least the L.PDS in coalition (as the junior partner of the SPD) is better than the CDU or FDP!

The question of property is touched on in the ‘Principles’, with the demand that key areas of the economy be transferred to (some unspecified variant of) public ownership, and also prominent are demands for the strengthening of the ‘anti-cartel’ laws, along with positive references to the ‘Scandinavian economic model’.

So it seems that the ‘principles’ of the proposed new party fail to deal with any key aspect of German or international society, but instead can act as an opportunist flag of convenience for the different forces within it - for the L.PDS to mask with left rhetoric its participation in attacks on the working class; for Lafontaine to enhance his left credentials, while continuing to represent a safe pair of hands for the bourgeois order; for the ‘left’ forces within the WASG (it looks like the SAV/CWI are on their way out) to exert a bit of ‘mass’ pressure - even if the working class ends up being attacked.

Left to fester

War reasons

‘Everything’s up for sale!’ This is the cry of bourgeois governments throughout the world, as they fulfil their central role of facilitating the accumulation of capital. But when this cry became universal is a question raised by the Weekly Worker article on whether Iran under the mullahs is worse than Iraq under Saddam (‘Friend or foe’, July 13).

Despite the usual reply of more enlightened lefts that it began with the collapse of the Stalinist states, actually this would have been a prerequisite for the socialist democratisation of those post-capitalist societies. Rather it began with the brutal onslaught of US and associated imperialisms against Saddam’s Iraq, in which some 80% of the (relatively advanced) economy, oil-wealth-based, was state-owned.

The overwhelming political reason for the attack was to stamp US imperialist dominance on the world, post-USSR. The economic reasons for bourgeois decisions always play a part also - masses of potential capital investment, plus of course a huge market, equalling huge returns, with all of the expenditure preparing the way for this being provided by the government. Iraq was ideal, because of the high state expenditure under Saddam’s Ba’ath regime.

None of this is to excuse the brutality of the Saddam government, but perhaps today it is better to compare this (let us never forget) US-sponsored animal with the current treatment of Iraqis by his master and now judge, the US beast itself.

War reasons
War reasons

Unitary state

I have long pondered over how the CPGB can argue for the politically incoherent slogan of ‘Two nations, two secular states’. Peter Manson, in an article the majority of which I have no disagreement with, has confirmed that it is ill thought-out and indeed has but a fleeting connection with reality.

Yes, it is true that the Socialist Workers Party has, judging by its opposition to the motion by Roland Rance at the Respect conference, junked the call for a democratic, secular state. But rather than seizing with both hands the opportunity of politically embarrassing them, the CPGB adopts a half-baked position in between the SWP and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. Talk about having the worst of both worlds!

The problem with Pete Manson’s analysis is that the conflict in Palestine/Lebanon has nothing to do with a clash of national rights. If that were the case, then separation or peaceful unity would not be that difficult to achieve. It is precisely because the cause of the problem is settler colonialism - the domination of one group by another - that there is no solution along the lines suggested by Pete Manson.

‘Left’ Zionists such as AWL and Poale Zion argue that the cause of the conflict lies in irreconcilable hatreds, of the type that were once posited in southern Africa. Their solution is separation or apartheid, in the form of bantustanisation. It is another theoretical construct which ignores the question of Zionism, the apartheid wall and the presence of half a million settlers on the West Bank.

The Zionist movement, which is still alive and kicking, sought to create a Jewish state in a land which was 90% Palestinian. They sought to create a Jewish economy from which the Palestinians were expelled, as a precursor to their expulsion from the state - in short ethnic cleansing. There was nothing ‘national’ in all of this. It was a political programme which they carried out which is still as valid today as it was 90 years ago. Even today 93% of Israeli land is barred to even Israeli Arabs.

The right of self-determination, including the right to form a state, is the right of all oppressed nations. The concept of self-determination is meaningless for those nations or groups which are oppressors. The problem is not self-determination, but their domination and oppression of others. In the context of Palestine, what inspires the continuous barbarities of the Israeli state is not ‘national’ rights or expression, but the need to preserve their role as a strategic ally of the United States and the west. Granting the right to a ‘Jewish’ secular state (a contradiction if ever there was one) is in effect a demand for a continuation of the Zionist state. What defines Israeli Jewish identity but the oppression of the other and the domination of the region? Materially it is enormously beneficial to all sections of Israeli Jewish society.

If you want to see a secular state in Palestine, as opposed to a Jewish and a muslim state, then, like in South Africa, it has to be unitary, secular and - yes - democratic. Anything else is just paying lip service to secularism.

Unitary state
Unitary state

Under duress

In putting forward the CPGB’s idea for ‘Two nations, two secular states’, Peter Manson, without any attempt at substantiation, dismisses the idea of ‘one nation, one secular state’ as being reactionary and based on “the future oppression of Israeli Jews” (Weekly Worker July 20).

The CPGB’s two-nation approach simply means that, in return for agreeing to a secular status for their colonial state, which has been carved by the most horrendous force out of Palestine, the Israeli settlers will be rewarded with the future of that state being guaranteed. Of course, the Israelis will have to give back a bit of their more recent land robberies and the present victims of the Zionist ‘ethnic cleansing’ from 1948 will be permitted to return, although not to their forebears’ homes and land. Best of all, the US/UK imperialist strategy and economic interests will be assured.

It is a nonsense for Peter Manson to argue that Palestinian national aspirations can only be attained through the recognition that the Israeli nation has a right to exist. Palestinian national aspirations will be emasculated by any two-nation deal wrung from the Palestinians under the duress of occupation.

Palestinian national aspirations will only be attained in a single state within the original territory of Palestine, where Arab and Jew can live together in peace.

Under duress

Loss of faith

In his reply to my letter, Tony Greenstein lets the cat out of the bag. “Yes,” he says, “I want the state of Israel to be destroyed”.

Greenstein’s argument begins with his desire to destroy Israel and then works backwards. It is sadly typical of the level of debate that it is seen to be sufficient to discredit another person’s argument: first, by association (the AWL, the Fabians, Blair, Bush and so on) and, second, by the logic that ‘our enemy’s enemy is our friend’.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union most of the left has lost all faith in the working class and progressive forces in society and has found new ‘allies’ in the camps of academic ‘postmodernism’, third-worldism and reactionary anti-imperialism (SWP and so on).

Hence for Greenstein, the ‘two-state solution’ for the Arab-Israeli conflict is unacceptable because Blair, Bush and Olmert support it. Yet Peter Manson also wrote supportively on exactly this policy in the same edition of the Weekly Worker (although his description of the Israeli state as “terrorist” tangentially points to the legitimate criticism of proportionality while overlooking the fact that Hamas/Hezbollah launch their missiles at Israel from residential areas of Gaza/Lebanon).

Greenstein has ideologically collapsed into a reactionary alliance with islamism. To oppose reactionary anti-imperialism means to support a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians.

Loss of faith

Irish unity

Liam O Ruairc’s review of Ruairi Ó Brádaigh’s biography makes interesting reading (‘Soldier of the legion of the rearguard’, July 20). But his assertion that the claim of Ó Brádaigh’s Republican Sinn Féin to be “the actual legitimate government of all Ireland” gives him a logical consistency over his critics contains a lacuna, admittedly from outside legalistic logic: namely, that reality says otherwise.

As Liam points out, “Republican Sinn Féin is a marginal organisation existing on the fringes of Irish politics”, while Gerry Adams is at its centre and is engaging with the masses. The faithful few like Ó Brádaigh are left “keeping the flame alive” and in practice waiting for the return of the armed struggle.

It is hardly surprising that mainstream nationalists put state power above socialism. It isn’t Adams who is trying to “ride a horse in two different directions”: it is Ó Brádaigh. Socialism is not containable within nationalism. They pull in different directions and in the end only one can prevail.

“The book shows that Ruairi Ó Brádaigh” was “not a military extremist hostile to peace”, writes Liam. He says that Ó Brádaigh was behind many of the political initiatives associated with Sinn Féin, but it was Adams that broke with absentionism and reaped the political rewards. Which only goes to show why ‘abstentionist’ republicanism collapses repeatedly, once armed struggle is no longer the predominant political mode.

After all, if it is acceptable to stand for election to the enemy’s parliament, why is it unprincipled to actually take up your seat if elected? The best guarantee against our representatives selling out is not the refusal to use parliament for fear of being tainted, but the ability of our working class organisations to hold them to account and if necessary recall them. I would argue that the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary intervention in the tsarist dumas proves that it is possible to use the most undemocratic of parliaments in an effective and principled way - and that Ireland’s experience proves how necessary it is.

I know Liam disagrees with the CPGB’s programme for a united, federal Ireland, where a British-Irish province can exercise self-determination, but he seems to be in favour of the kind of “federal solution” proposed by Ó Brádaigh in the 1970s. He is obviously much more familiar with its proposals than I am, but weren’t the protestants to be mostly contained within a nine-county Ulster province, where they would actually be a minority? In other words, an exercise in deception that would in no way “guarantee minority rights” and, what is more, would fool no one.

If Ó Brádaigh was serious about not wanting “to bomb a million protestants into a ‘united Ireland’” - ie, if he favoured winning their consent - there would have to be a genuine mechanism to allow that consent (without which workers’ unity cannot be achieved) to be denied as well as granted.

Irish unity
Irish unity