Letters

Stinks

The people who run the Socialist Workers Party bookshop called Bookmarks in central London are into censorship and it stinks.

We publish a magazine that any socialist would be interested in reading - indeed issue No2 is one of the few journals available in English that carries articles by the German group, Krisis, as well as the American scholar of Marx, Moishe Postone. Bookmarks refuse to stock our magazine. This is strange, considering we don’t allow fascists or racists to write for us, but do encourage debate about some old leftwing shibboleths, especially those to do with ‘class struggle’.

The draconian management at Bookmarks are letting down anyone engaged in an attempt to make sense of our world today. You may not agree with all the ideas contained in Principia Dialectica, but by remaining ignorant of the debates we raise you will certainly find it harder to win the arguments in the wider world - a world that has moved on considerably since Marx.

It’s a shame, because Bookmarks in the old days used to be a thriving socialist bookshop in the heart of north London - a real hub of debate and discussion, with a vast and exciting range of literature, always full up with people. With such a po-faced management team these days, it’s hardly surprising no-one goes there and is only kept alive by the party faithful digging deep week after week.

Stinks
Stinks

Always New

One of the speakers at the Cardiff Stop the War Coalition meeting on Sunday September 17 was Paul Flynn, Labour MP for Newport West.

Flynn considered that three main challenges face us: global warming, global trade, and what he termed “civil wars”. His main focus concentrated upon the situation in Afghanistan. He correctly described the Karzai regime as corrupt but seemed to offer an analysis which suggested that the regime was exploiting western imperialist powers to assert regional domination. Both the regionalist nature of this analysis and his reference to global trade and civil wars seemed to be attempts to reposition the cause of trade inequities and military conflicts away from global capitalism itself to more regional and/or localised sources.

When the meeting was opened up to questions, Flynn was asked whether Blair’s replacement by Gordon Brown would make any difference to the UK’s support for and involvement in US imperialist interventions. I suggested that the Labour Party had always had a compliant relationship to the US and that it would make no difference who led the party whilst it remained a purely reformist organisation, existing to manage capitalism and ameliorate its worst excesses.

In this sense, I asserted, Labour had always been New Labour, in that the party had always been unwilling to attack the source of those imperialist adventures he claims to reject: namely the capitalist system itself. Flynn rejected the idea that Labour had always been, in essence, New Labour, but had little else to say in response to my broader assertions.

Though Paul Flynn is to be congratulated on his voting record on the Iraq war, this encounter illustrated that there is no better way to be disarmed than for power itself to agree with you. Whilst Flynn and his colleagues agree that the war is illegal, that global warming is a serious problem, and that global trade is rigged in favour of the rich at the expense of the poor, he remains committed to a political organisation that is responsible for the maintenance of a system that is the root cause of the problems and inequities which he claims to abhor: namely capitalism itself.

Like the trade unions, the Labour Party is part of the problem. Both organisations function to mediate and cauterise dissent and crisis. The STWC can celebrate and exploit the support it enjoys from reformist politicians but, whilst the underlying system remains unchanged, their actions, activities and campaigns will only ever achieve short-term, temporary successes.

Always New
Always New

Stick to gossip

The Weekly Worker was never noted for its political acumen, but more as a gossip sheet of the left. However, it has surpassed itself this week - firstly by the peevish article by Mark Fischer on the SSP and Solidarity, dismissing them both as failures of personality politics.

Perhaps it should leave its Scottish reports to someone who knows something about Scotland - for example, I don’t agree with Nick Rogers, but at least he understands Scottish politics. Mark Fischer knows nothing other than his own anti-Scottish prejudices.

The Weekly Worker then compounds its political ignorance by giving John McDonnell’s doomed campaign for Labour leader front-page support. Anyone who knows anything about politics will tell you that John McDonnell won’t even get in the race because he will fail to get sufficient MPs to nominate him.

No wonder the CPGB stays a small, irrelevant organisation. My advice to the Weekly Worker is: stick to the gossip and forget the political analysis.

Stick to gossip

SSP last straw

I would like to respond to your article on the launch of Solidarity and in particular the reference made to myself and the miners.

You write: “Jim Walls, TGWU convenor for the opencast mining industry (representing 3,500 miners) …. concluded by pulling out of his pocket 100 application forms to join Solidarity from his members. Down from the 500 or so he had promised the SSP when he joined it earlier this year. And down even from the 300 he was offering Tommy Sheridan a few weeks ago. Nevertheless potentially a significant straw in the wind” (‘A tale of two rallies’, September 7).

Firstly, it is important to mention that the opencast miners in Scotland have only been organised as a collective for three and a half years now, before which the very mention of the words ‘trade union’ was all that was required to warrant instant dismissal. However, through much strife and countless daily struggles they have reached a stage that we should all applaud. A stage where they have secured a full and democratic bargaining unit for yearly wage claims; a stage where they have fully trained, fully recognised shop stewards; a stage where they have fully trained and very active safety reps; a stage where they have an abundance of environmentally trained representatives, with a remit which is primarily to protect the environment and the local communities, where most of the members abide with their families.

As a collective, this branch has moved from strength to strength and eventually, after much debate and deliberation, found the strength to break the political ties which bind so many in the entire movement.

Yes, I promised the Scottish Socialist Party 500 members, but this comment was made well before I knew of the bitter war which was all-encompassing of the party. As the democratically elected leader of the miners, I had to take the view that the SSP, in its present state, was not a healthy option for any of us - which was an extremely difficult stance to hold, as the pressures were mounting and the enemies gathering due to the manner in which we left, and then slated, the Labour Party. The pressure from the TGWU, the coal industry, the coal sector, the LP and from those who should know better was becoming unbearable. I suppose, in hindsight, the court case was the final straw ...

Yes, and once again I had failed. I only managed to recruit 100 members for Solidarity (104 actually on a recount), when I had told Rosemary and Tommy that there were 300 waiting in the wings to join the ranks. However, as trade unionists we must always have a reason and never an excuse. Therefore my reason was extremely simplistic - I only received the application forms two days before the launch of the Solidarity movement. In any language 104 was extremely pleasing, considering the time restraints.

Secondly, “A significant straw in the wind” - comrades, please advise me as to your meaning.

Finally, I am not concerned with any difference in opinions that we might or might not have, but would ask that the newly organised miners, their families and their friends receive your fullest support in every aspect of their daily struggles.

SSP last straw

Having a laugh

Mike Macnair unintentionally exposes all the duplicity at the heart of CPGB politics in his article, ‘Three political commitments’ (September 14).

Macnair has come up with an interesting term that he presents as the basis for membership of a Marxist party: “political commitment”. How would one judge it? I would argue on the basis of political actions rather than merely words. And on that basis the CPGB fails on two out of three of Macnair’s “political commitments”.

Firstly internationalism. The CPGB proudly defines itself as an exclusively British organisation and attacks every other organisation that attempts to organise internationally for the supposed crime of building “oil-slick internationals”.

Now it is true that organisations like the Committee for a Workers’ International (the largest group I’ve heard the CPGB use the term about) suffer from many political problems, but they do at least attempt to organise on an international basis. The CPGB’s attack exposes their talk of internationalism to be just that - talk.

Secondly, Macnair talks about a commitment to the political independence of the working class and yet he still continues to defend the CPGB’s political support to Respect. Indeed the Weekly Worker still urges workers to join this rotten, anti-working class project. In the last election the CPGB scribblers had to come up with the purposefully unclear designation of “working class politician” to justify calling for a vote to the most virulent purveyors of collaborationism within our class.

And if you peruse the CPGB’s motions to this year’s Respect conference you will look in vain for any mention of class, let alone for a trenchant defence of working class independence. Rather than drawing a hard line in opposition to the rotten, class-collaborationist leadership of Respect, the CPGB instead gives advice to these class traitors on how to make their organisation more democratic. “Political commitment to working class independence” - you’re having a laugh!

The failure on these two “political commitments” to the ABCs of Marxism thus makes all the ranting about democracy rather irrelevant.

Having a laugh

Hyenas

I very much welcome the decision of the CPGB aggregate to sponsor the November 4 conference to establish a Campaign for a Marxist Party. I also think that Mike Macnair’s articles on what sort of Marxist Party we want are very useful.

Last week Mike commented that I had not responded to his criticisms in spite of the fact that I had written the first draft of the Critique call for the conference. The reason I have not replied is that on the main points Mike makes I think I agree with him. My disagreements are on secondary points, as I see it, which are easily containable within a campaign.

If we were to take Mike’s three key points from last week and try genuinely to create a truly democratic Marxist Party, internationalist in outlook and independent from the state, we would be in relatively new territory. This has not been done in Britain over the last few decades in my experience.

It means a conscious building and maintenance of a new culture on the left, which in itself will be a skilful operation. There will be plenty of cynical hyenas waiting at their websites ready to type out their laughing obituaries.

It is this change in culture which concerns me - how to organise comrades into demanding democracy, internationalism and independence from the state within the left and workers’ movements and campaigns.

Hyenas
Hyenas

Economism

Comrade Macnair refers me to Marcel Liebman’s Leninism under Lenin, but I had already referred myself to this book - in 1975. Liebman puts forward a critical assessment of Lenin. For example, he does not recommend Lenin’s sectarianism and undemocratic methods during the 1907-09 period of reaction. In Liebman’s words, Lenin carried political intolerance to absurd lengths during this period.

Now many of Liebman’s points are shared by the cold war academy from their own political perspective, but that does not mean they are discredited. Many criticisms of Lenin can be dismissed by stating that, abstracted from their political context, they are shared by the cold war academy. This is precisely what Leninist dogmatism has done, making a critical assessment difficult.

Comrade Macnair also associates the criticism by the young Trotsky and Luxemburg of Lenin’s early organisational plans in What is to be done? and One step forward, two steps back with the cold war academy, who misused the points made by Trotsky and Luxemburg for their own ends. It is absurd to smear this revolutionary criticism in this way.

I agree with much of Mike’s criticism of the top-down centralism of the Bolsheviks between 1919 and 1923 - he shares Luxemburg’s fundamental criticism of Lenin’s early organisational proposals: there can be no transition to socialism without workers’ democracy. But many of these criticisms have been taken up by anti-Marxists to advocate the superiority of bourgeois democracy. This does nor discredit comrade Macnair’s points or associate him with cold war scribes.

Rather than demolishing straw comrades, he should address the points actually made. I did not write that democratising the standing army or winning union rights for soldiers are transitional demands. Indeed I referred to “the call to democratise the standing army, which is a reformist demand and, taken by itself, is a minimum demand”. But in the context of Mike’s call for the recallability and election of all state officials and the arming of the people the intention was to use that demand as a stepping stone to a workers’ militia to supersede capitalism. And he concedes the point, saying: “Of course, systematic implementation of the minimum programme as a whole would amount to the overthrow of capitalist rule.” In other words his minimum programme is transitional.

Finally Mike refers me to Lars T Lih and Lenin rediscovered. From what I have seen, there is a lot more complexity in the new translation, which will enrich our understanding. But does this new translation change the fundamentals of what is to be done about party and class? I am sceptical.

Take, for example, Lenin’s point on the essence of economism: “The economic struggle of the workers with the owners and the government, besides its immediate revolutionary significance, is also significant because it pushes the workers up against the issue of political rights” (pp732-33). But this is exactly what happened in 1905, as Luxemburg pointed out: “In a state in which every form and expression of the labour movement is forbidden, in which every strike is a political crime, it must logically follow that every economic struggle will become a political one.”

In 1905 small economic demands led to mass movements that then gave way to political initiative and there was often a dialectical interaction between the two.

Lenin’s one-sided polemic against the so-called economists is at odds with the view of Marx on the relationship between economics and politics. In a letter to Bolt in November 1871 he writes: “The political movement of the working class has as its ultimate object, of course, the conquest of political power of this class, and this naturally requires a previous organisation of the working class developed up to a certain point and arising precisely from its economic struggle.” Marx had argued in Capital that the struggle for the eight-hour day was the political movement, or the political economy, of the working class. In the letter to Bolt he clearly states that, when in this way the working class comes out as a class, the separate economic movements of the workers turn into a political movement.

Dogmatic repetition of Lenin’s one-sided polemic leads comrade Macnair to dismiss the Marxist perspective of workers’ councils and an alternative state based on the model of the Paris Commune as economism. But at least he is not insisting on a precondition for unity in a workers’ party as the acceptance of the democratic republic as the only road to socialism, as Steve Freeman did when he attempted to launch a new Socialist Alliance.

Economism
Economism