Letters

Cretins

I still await a response to my letter where I exposed Phil Kent’s pathetic attempt to cover up for his emperor’s lack of Marxist clothing (Letters, December 14). But, perusing the letters in the latest issue, I must note that it would seem to me that Jim Padmore has made a completely principled decision in leaving the CPGB youth group. As he points out, the CPGB oppose all the central propositions of Marxism in practice - they are ‘communist’ in name only.

I was, however, surprised to see his reference to the CPGB position of defending free speech for fascists. It would seem that the CPGB’s ‘extreme democracy’ is just another version of liberal bourgeois democracy. The position of communists towards fascism is clear - no platform! Not calls on the bourgeois state to ban the fascists (that is just the Socialist Workers Party’s flip-side to the CPGB’s liberalism), but building a movement within the working class capable of physically confronting the fascists wherever they raise their heads.

I was also amazed to read your article on the Celebrity big brother scandal. While it is true that Jade Goody is hardly a hard-core fascist, she clearly expresses the latent racism that is unfortunately endemic in British society. Why you see the need to alibi her behaviour is beyond me. Presumably, as your article goes on to argue, it is because the CPGB think the British state’s so-called ‘institutional anti-racism’ is the real danger to ethnic minorities and the workers’ movement - what a bizarre world you cretins live in!

Cretins

Middle way

Nick Rogers (‘For democratic, republican self-government’, January 25) appears to have retracted somewhat his earlier opposition (‘A vital task’, November 23) to hierarchies of committees (known as ‘soviets’ in the USSR), which he had pointed out are “eminently open to bureaucratisation”. I welcomed that point in my letters (December 14 and January 11), in which I argued for proportional representation using the single transferable vote as the electoral system for choosing representatives in government.

Nick argued in his recent article that “any transformation of society led by the working class” would bring about many committees that would be centralised “with lower-level committees sending delegates to higher-level bodies”. He failed to explain how this would be replaced by his preferred option of “direct accountability of delegates and representatives at all levels to the mass of the working class (in their capacity as electors)”.

He also failed to explain how the right to recall high-level delegates would be exercised; it would clearly be impracticable to organise meetings of entire constituencies to recall MPs, unless of course only a small proportion of electors are interested, which doesn’t fit in with the idea of mass participation in politics that underlies most Marxists’ conceptions of socialism (and mine).

Nick rejects PR due to its incompatibility with the right of recall. However, in my first letter I proposed a method for the recall of an entire government “triggered by a petition signed by a fairly large proportion of the population”. Such a petition would be much more likely to arouse the interest of electors than trying to recall an individual representative, since the latter would have little effect unless the same measure was being carried out in many other places at about the same time.

Nick advocated the alternative vote electoral system, “in which preferences are transferred until one candidate enjoys a majority of votes”. After the last general election, some Labour Party figures expressed an interest in adopting AV for Westminster. It was actually estimated that Labour would have an even larger majority if that electoral system had been used! AV introduces a massive bias towards ‘middle of the road’ parties or candidates, since they are most likely to receive transfers. The chances of a socialist government being voted out of office would be high under AV, especially with the disillusionment that many working and middle class people would experience when they recognise that the electoral system is unfair.

Like most Marxists, Nick argued for the working class to take power. He failed to address the question of how much say the many middle class people who exist nowadays would have under his conception of socialism. I argue for a society under which everybody is in power, irrespective of class. My solution is a middle way (arguably the only middle way) between capitalism and a Marxist form of socialism, and would thus be more likely to be chosen by a majority of the electorate and retain the support of the electorate under elections by STV in a socialist society.

Middle way
Middle way

Iraqi women’s rights

We, a network of several Iraqi women’s rights organisations based in Iraq and the United Kingdom, want to draw your attention to the plight of Iraqi women’s human rights.

Almost four years of occupation, increasing violence, terror and instability have driven our society into chaos and total anarchy. While everyone suffers, women are paying a particularly high price. Lack of adequate healthcare, clean water and electricity, unemployment, abductions, rape, sex trafficking, honour killings, violence at the hands of occupation forces, islamist militias and insurgents, criminal gangs and families, as well as sectarian killings and targeted assassinations, terrorise the lives of thousands of women. Yet, despite all this, Iraqi women continue to struggle for freedom and equality.

Those of us who live in the UK share the pain and suffering of women inside Iraq. We remain in solidarity and sisterhood with them in these dark times and are marking International Women’s Day on March 8 as an expression of this solidarity with women’s struggles on the ground in Iraq.

This year’s International Women’s Day honours 100 years of the struggles and achievements of women all over the world. We are planning a set of activities in London to express our solidarity, reclaim the day and exert pressure on the current Iraqi government, as well as the United States and UK, to repeal article 41 of the new Iraqi constitution and give appropriate recognition to full equality between women and men regardless of ethnicity and religious background. This article replaces the present secular personal status law with islamic sharia law.

Therefore, we call upon all women’s organisations, political parties, non-governmental organisations, trade unions, charities and individual activists to sponsor our initiative and give moral, practical and political support to make these events a success.

Iraqi women’s rights
Iraqi women’s rights

Up for Cruddas

I have noticed that Jon Cruddas, the MP for Dagenham and Labour deputy leadership candidate, has recently been on the media circuit. He has written articles for The Guardian, has been on Radio 4’s Any questions, and has been interviewed by Adam Boulton on Sky news.

One of the reasons for Cruddas’s bid to become deputy leader, must be that he wants a high media profile to help him fight the British National Party in his Dagenham seat.

The BNP recently had hundreds of members helping to deliver 62,000 leaflets in the Dagenham constituency. There is a very high possibility that the BNP will get its first parliamentary seat if they can defeat Cruddas in the next general election. He has noted that the BNP are gaining widespread support from the white working class former Labour voters in his Dagenham constituency.

These former Labour voters are switching to the BNP because of the government’s refusal to build new council houses and a lack of permanent jobs in the area. I can fully understand why white working class people are turning to the BNP in Dagenham.

Up for Cruddas
Up for Cruddas

Blame leaders

In his article ‘Programmatic masks and transitional fleas’ Comrade Jack Conrad dismisses Trotsky’s Transitional programme as belonging to a previous period of history and hence not relevant to the world situation since the end of World War II (November 16 2006). In view of the importance of the Transitional programme to the history of the international working class movement comment on comrade Conrad’s position is necessary.

There are three aspects that have to be considered. Firstly, transitional demands. These Trotsky put forward in an attempt to raise the consciousness of the working class. They include such demands as that for a sliding scale of wages and that for public works. Most of them are not relevant today and therefore now represent an inessential aspect of the Transitional programme.

Secondly, the stagnation of productive forces. Clearly productivity has increased significantly since 1938, especially with such innovations as IT and biotechnology. However, the stagnation referred to by Trotsky should be regarded as relative. For this reason. The greatest of mankind’s productive forces is the working class itself. And capitalism still prevents the working class from using its enormous potential power to change the world. Throughout the world millions of workers are either unemployed or underemployed. Millions of others are engaged in work that does not benefit humanity. Others are driven through poverty to join the armed forces of different nations, thus facing the possibility of having to kill other workers in uniform. This relative stagnation therefore holds back the enormous potential inherent in mankind

Thirdly, the crisis of revolutionary leadership. This is undoubtedly the most important aspect and is as relevant today as it was in 1938. Indonesia 1965, France 1968, Chile 1973, Portugal 1974 … A number of other examples could be given. However, apart from empirical evidence, there are theoretical reasons why Trotsky’s conception of the crisis of revolutionary leadership remains valid.

Two basic theoretical assumptions should be taken as starting points. The first of these is that the working class is a revolutionary class by virtue of its objective situation in society. The second is that in Britain, as in many other countries, there exists a counterrevolutionary stratum of professional trade union officials who play the social role of preventing the working class from taking power.

In its Draft programme the CPGB formally acknowledges that the working class is a revolutionary class. Also that the trade union leaderships are wedded to a strategy of class collaboration. However, it is clear that these basic questions are not fully understood. Thus it is a matter of regret that a series of minimum demands are put forward that are hardly likely to inspire workers to overthrow the union bureaucracies that hold them back. These demands include one that employers should pay for immigrant workers to learn English and another that officers in the armed forces should be elected.

It is clear that for a genuine Communist Party to be built it is necessary to carry out a struggle against the trade union bureaucracies in such a way that the working class will become able to understand its truly revolutionary nature.

All communists in Britain would be well advised to study the work and development of the Japan Revolutionary Communist League. The present situation in Japan is that the ruling class is seeking to return to the pre-1945 Japanese form of fascism. This must necessarily entail the militarisation of the nation and the effective smashing of the trade unions. As might be expected, the trade union bureaucracies are capitulating to the ruling class. The JRCL is now engaged in a significant struggle to win the leadership of rank-and-file trade unionists and to smash the influence of the union bureaucracies. The revolutionary struggles of the JRCL are reflected in its English website: www.jrcl.org/enalishle-lb.htm.

Blame leaders
Blame leaders

Erfurt

The Erfurt programme of 1891 was split into minimum and maximum sections. The minimum programme was limited to demands obtainable within the framework of capitalism. When Engels critically supported Erfurt he hoped that the militant mass mobilisations needed to fight for these demands would lead to a decisive struggle against the capitalist state.

After Engels’s death the SPD rejected this perspective, adopting instead one of peaceful evolution in the present, combined with a notion of the inevitable final collapse of capitalism at some unspecified point in the distant future.

The opening phase of the imperialist epoch was a period of capitalist expansion and significant concessions were won by the working class. The leaders of social democracy were content to achieve piecemeal reforms whilst building up the strength of their parties and trade unions. The fight for reforms was totally outside any perspective of the working class taking power. This ‘final goal’ was confined to abstract propaganda and totally unconnected to day-to-day activity.

A chasm was opening up between theory and practice. Whilst the ‘Marxist centre’ led by Kautsky did its best to ignore this contradiction, Bernstein tried to resolve the question by arguing that the SPD should drop the maximum programme and present itself as a party of social reform. The ‘final goal’ was nothing.

The revolutionary Communist International resolutely broke with Second International Marxism. The transition from capitalism to socialism was not an objective process, but depended on the struggle between classes. The Comintern sought to develop a programme which could act as a bridge to facilitate the transition from the struggle within capitalism to the struggle against capitalism.

In 1922, the Comintern’s 4th Congress adopted the theses on tactics which addressed themselves to the task winning the majority of the working class and provided the framework for the action programmes developed by various communist parties. However, after the death of Lenin, Stalin and Bukharin advanced the reactionary theory of ‘socialism in one country’. The programme was reduced to an abstract document. The need to relate it to objective conditions was gone.

Ninety years after the October revolution the working class needs a new action programme. Every demand designed to meet the immediate needs of the masses should be linked to the struggle for power. The struggle for workers’ control, for the opening of the books, for the formation of factory committees, workers’ militias and workers’ councils all point towards the ability of the working class to run society.

Erfurt

Delusion

It is interesting to note that such rubbish as Hillel Ticktin’s ‘No more historical abortions’ is being flaunted as history (Weekly Worker December 14 2006).

The entire Soviet population did not work, the entire Soviet population remained pauperised, the medals in Olympics came from barrack socialism, the advance in nuclear technology, space science, theatre, films, drama were created through pulverisation. The Soviet victories in the Great War were eyewash - and all this is history!

This shows the extent of delusion the Trotskyite ‘scholar’ is suffering from. I pity him and prefer to remain a committed anti-Trotskyite. May Hitler bless him! Amen.

Delusion
Delusion

Religious freedom

I disagree with Jim Moody’s stand on the catholic adoption agencies. Either we believe that people have the right to hold and to practise their religion or we don’t. You can’t say people have religious freedom, but not the right to practise the tenets of their faith and beliefs. Like, yes you can be a catholic so long as you act as an atheist does. That’s not religious freedom.

Homosexual relationships and partnerships are not allowed under the set of values ascribed to Roman catholics. It follows from that that a catholic adoption agency is not going to place children under its charge with homosexual couples. Is anyone really surprised by that?

But why would a gay couple go to a catholic adoption agency in the first place, knowing full well that they are not going to assist them? They are not so much trying to adopt a baby, really, as making a big point that they do not like the catholic church’s position on gay relationships and want the law to ban that point of principle and stop them acting on it. It’s part of the Blair project to make us all do exactly what the state thinks we should do and not to do anything it doesn’t like. Like city centres the country over, we all must look and act exactly the same way.

Religious freedom
Religious freedom

Social realism

There is an important debate to be had about anti-racism, free speech and the demands that working class militants should make of the state. And about the social function of the state’s own anti-racist campaigns. But a precondition of that debate is that we recognise manifestations of racism when they reach out from our television set and slap us around the face.

Like the Channel Four chief executive, Eddie Ford equivocates about the evidence for the racist behaviour of Jade Goody, Danielle Lloyd and Jo O’Meara towards Shilpa Shetty on Celebrity big brother (‘Voting for Britain’, January 25). Come on, Eddie. Racism doesn’t just come sheathed in BNP knuckle-dusters, or screaming racist epithets - although “Shilpa Fuckawalla” and “Shilpa Poppadom” come pretty close to racist abuse. If deriding other cultures’ food, eating habits and cleanliness, and refusing to learn an easily pronounced name that just isn’t British enough, is not behaviour fed from the deep reservoir of British racism, then Eddie and I would appear not to inhabit the same society.

The fact is that imperialist assumptions of racial and cultural superiority still resonate in Britain. Whatever the cause of Goody, Lloyd and O’Meara’s dislike of Shetty, it is to these assumptions they turned when they sought to demean, humiliate and bully “the Indian”.

In this incident the Big brother franchise both excelled in its mission to encourage individualistic competitiveness and vicious personal backbiting - propaganda for capitalist morality, in other words - and qualified, for once, as biting social realism.

Social realism
Social realism

Arse talk

George Stobbart is, to be blunt, talking out of his arse.

There seems to be a bit of a myth about Communist Students being banned from the Socialist Youth Network. This is utter bollocks, because the ban quite clearly relates to, as George half correctly points out, Respect members. In this, it sort of follows Labour Representation Committee policy. But it doesn’t apply to CS members per se. Hey, if it had been pushed to a vote, then we’d have voted for CS members to join. But it wasn’t really about that, was it?

But, unfortunately for our George, he’s not on such a roll with other facts. The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty did indeed stand two candidates in Hackney Central ward on a Socialist Unity ticket - Janine Booth and Charlie McDonald, if I remember correctly. However, that was in the last set of elections, not the coming elections in May. If the comrades are intending to stand again, it’s news to me.

And the accusation that we’re ‘good little Labourites’ made me laugh - literally. Come on, comrade Stobbart, you’re going to have to do better than that. You can’t point out our independent electoral activities in Hackney (you also forgot the election campaign of our comrade, Pete Radcliff, in Nottingham East) and then accuse us of tailing the Labour Party. Do you not see the contradiction here? Consistency, comrade!

Of course, George is right to point out that we’re opposed to Respect and the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party. But not because we’re emotionally too attached to the Labour Party. It’s because they, as political formations, leave a lot to be desired, to say the very least. I could go on and on about Respect, but life is too short, and other AWL members have expressed our issues with Respect and the idea of working within it much better than I can. We, as an organisation, have criticised the CNWP too, but my main problem with it is that I, perhaps unlike comrade Stobbart, find it fairly difficult to engage with a piece of paper - and trust me, especially after a few ciders, I’ve tried. Because a piece of paper - or a petition - is exactly what the CNWP is.

Arse talk
Arse talk

Correction

The statement from the Communist Students executive regarding comrade Jim Padmore’s resignation from that body contained a factual error which I would like to correct.

The statement claims that Jim’s resignation letter (Letters, January 11) is “more or less the first we have heard of his concerns”. This is not entirely accurate, as Jim had telephoned me after reading the report on CS’s launch conference (‘CS conference debates way forward’, December 14). In this telephone call, Jim outlined a number of reservations he had about the CS project based upon the Weekly Worker report and stated that he was unsure as to whether he would take up his place on the executive.

However, the political argument still stands, and Jim’s latest argument does nothing to convince me why he cannot fight within CS, including on its executive, for his politics. He bemoans the fact that Tina Becker, “who, at the time, wasn’t even a student”, participated. Tina was enrolled on a course she was about to start. I find it absolutely ridiculous to suggest that someone in this position should not have been involved in the conference. Also, as Jim well knows, Mark Fischer was there in the capacity of an observer from a supporting organisation (the CPGB). It strikes me that Jim really is clutching at straws if he considers these facts as arguments for his non-involvement.

The political issues that Jim raises regarding the Marxist position on the state, theories of imperialism and how we fight fascism are not even issues upon which there is unanimity within the CPGB, let alone a line which has been forced upon CS.

On the question of fascism and how to fight it, we plan to initiate a debate in the forthcoming edition of Communist Student on this very issue. This will feature an article that Jim Padmore has written for us on this issue and a response from a CPGB comrade.

Having already read them, I can say that I have differences with both approaches. However, the last thing I intend to do is proclaim that “I’ve no interest in being linked to this kind of nonsense”, as Jim does in his latest letter. I will engage in the debate whilst building the organisation. I hope Jim decides to do the same.

Correction
Correction

No harm

I think Jim Moody misses the point in blaming Ruth Kelly’s religious beliefs for developments in Labour’s adoption and fostering policies (‘Some more equal than others’, January 25). She is in fact completely on message. The Labour Party is trying to build a nationalist, anti-working class, liberal consensus and is therefore very sensitive to religious groups that it wants to incorporate into the project. This does not mean that we should not be sensitive to religious sentiments too.

Jim perceives Ruth Kelly as an impossible choice for an equality minister because she does not believe in equality. But the question of adoption is not about equality; it is about competing freedoms. So her position is not so bizarre.

Underlying his position seems to be a belief that a minister who is critical of the policies she has to implement should not hold the office. This is a common view on the left, but if we were arguing about cabinet responsibility from the point of view of democratic centralism then we would expect her to express her honestly held opinions in public (not behind closed doors). We would also expect her to accept the democratic rights of the majority and remain in office. Programmatically, we have argued that minority views in the party should be represented at the top level in accordance with their weight in the party. They should not, of course, be slotted into jobs that humiliate them, but while they have the right to become the majority they have the duty to accept majority decisions, though not passively. Jim’s approach seems more in line with bureaucratic centralism.

As secularists we are for the separation of state and religion. So no subsidies or special favours for religions, but unless absolutely necessary no legal interference in their beliefs and practices either - criticism is quite another matter. Also, we should oppose all state interventions that are not channelled through democratically accountable organisations. Religious adoption agencies fail to pass muster on both counts. However, that should leave them free to minister to their own communities at their own expense.

Only the question does not end there. Individual catholics, muslims, Jews, protestants, hindus and even atheists are often bigoted. So what happens when these people apply for jobs in our democratically accountable adoption agencies? They may say they will not let their real views affect their judgement in any way because they need a job, but can you trust them? Aren’t you creating a situation where you can only employ avowed secularists? Wouldn’t it be more effective to employ people according to their openly expressed real opinions and then direct them to where they can do the most good and least harm? Might not this open approach create the best atmosphere to challenge their bigotry and change their attitudes?

Adoption and fostering is not a one-off intervention where you assess the client and drop off the child, but, particularly in the case of children with special needs, a relationship that continues for many years between the social workers, guardians and children. Some guardians and children will respond best to a secularist, but others will only feel at home with someone from their own cultural, religious background.

Jim argues forcefully that the catholic adoption agencies’ right to minister to their own community as they see fit should be taken away from them because their actions harm others, though it is difficult to see how placing children with married heterosexual couples harms anybody. The catholic church is not opposed to homosexual and single parents going elsewhere and are willing to direct the few homosexual and unmarried individuals who come to them for help on to adoption agencies that can help them. Jim exaggerates the degree of their bigotry and then extends it right across the board to prevent them from doing work that they are competent to do, all to fulfil an abstract liberal principle of equality before the law that isn’t actually being denied in practice.

No harm
No harm