Letters

Critical support

Jim Grant’s letter cries out for further clarification. There are many of us on the left that have no problem in being critical of the reactionary leaders of anti-imperialist forces. Where we differ from the CPGB is that our support for oppressed nations is not conditional on the nature of their leadership.

In economic disputes the CPGB does not have trouble with this. Whilst it touched on Arthur Scargill being a small criminal, a Stalinist and a “red-brown” reactionary, it did not make support for the miners dependant on them getting a different leadership.

I suppose it is possible to ignore past ‘revolutionary’ leaders, instead concentrating on Capital’s underlying philosophy and only being fair and decent to the ‘working class’ and not ‘peoples’. However, this economic reading cannot be principled, although the ironic thing is that the actual people fighting against oppressor nations are mostly working class. The so-called ‘workers’ movement’ often consists of a few middle class people who appease and collude with the oppressor nation and don’t take up arms in a military situation.

Critical support
Critical support

Scots unity

Until very recently the existence of the Scottish Socialist Party had been a beacon of hope not only for the Scottish working classes, but also for leftwing socialist militants throughout the rest of the UK. It had led the way in mapping a realistic path out of the sectarian ghetto that has passed for leftwing party politics since Militant were driven from the Labour Party by the servants of capital; and the CPGB imploded.

When, after much hard work, the Scottish comrades founded the SSP and took its programme to the electorate, they proved what many had been claiming for decades: that working class people will respond at the ballot box to progressive politics if they believe the party offering it up is genuine in its commitment to the class and a real player in the political process, and not just a bunch of mockney revolutionaries or single-issue propagandists.

Thus the SSP were able to build a support base that eventually materialised into a dynamic political force which managed to attain six members of the Scottish parliament. The presence of these MSPs allowed the SSP to use the parliamentary assembly as a platform to spread socialist politics throughout Scotland. In the process they helped many victims of neoliberal economics via constituency surgeries, which in itself helped to spread the word of socialism. For the first time in decades, the presence of dynamic SSP socialists like Tommy Sheridan and others forced the media to take note of socialist politics.

Then disaster struck and the SSP imploded. With the full results of the May 3 Scottish parliamentary elections now in, the fall-out from the events which took place back in 2006 and before have finally struck home with shocking reality.

I am not going to go over old ground and re-analyse the reasons that led up to the split within the SSP, out of which two separate socialist organisations emerged. As far as working class people are concerned, it will serve no purpose. In any case, if there is a piece of land that has been continuously ploughed over, yet to this day remains fallow, it is this. It is enough to write that the SSP and Solidarity came into being, both targeting the same section of the electorate and without a political difference worth any salt between them. Understandably the Scottish working class wanted neither of them, not least because since the implosion the memberships of both parties have spent much of their time throwing personal insults and brickbats at each other, often using the harshest of language. This is almost always based on personality clashes, not political differences that might resonate with the Scottish working class.

It is time to reflect on what has been lost and to recognise that the SSP originally came into being by the joint efforts of many comrades and left organisations and the only viable option open to the left is to return to the comradeship and sensible compromises that enabled this to occur.

The alternative to this is there for all to see: a return to the political ghetto, or being eaten up whole by George Galloway’s Respect party, which is already eyeing up Solidarity, much as private equity asset-strippers did to Boots the chemists. If nothing changes, a majority of the SSP membership may well decide to bolt for Alex
Salmond’s Scottish National Party.

Scots unity
Scots unity

CNWP and democracy

The Socialist Alliance had a full discussion on the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party conference at its meeting in Birmingham on May 5. The SA has fully supported the CNWP from the onset and we agreed to submit two resolutions. The first relates to the draft 10-point charter, or provisional programme, and the second to the membership of the campaign.

There is an embarrassing gap in the proposed charter. It completely ignores the question of democracy. It has nothing to say about unaccountable government, the failure of parliament, the House of Lords, civil liberties, proportional representation, the unwritten constitution, freedom of information, MPs on an average wage, or the position of England, Scotland and Wales or the future of Northern Ireland.

The SA’s first motion is “For a democratic republic - a radical extension of democracy, including all representatives elected by proportional representation and subject to recall and paid the average wage”.

Democracy is not an optional extra. Without democracy, working people are excluded from power. With full democracy, working people can govern the country, run their own trade unions and local communities and decide what policies they want to implement. We need a democracy for the millions, not the millionaires.

The SA amendment to the charter does not answer all democratic issues. It is not intended to. At this stage the draft charter points recognise particular issues, such as racism, the environment or withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. Passing our motion would show that the CNWP acknowledges there is a problem of democracy. It would be a declaration of intent, showing the CNWP intends to put the question of democracy at the heart of the new party as one of its priorities.

The second motion concerns membership. It says: “As a general principle, this meeting calls for: (a) the implementation of an individual membership structure; (b) the affiliation of all left groups which demonstrate genuine support for the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party, irrespective of size, this entitling them to one representative on the steering committee.”

In discussion at the SA meeting it was felt that the time is right to start to make the moves from a campaign to the early forms of a new party. Whilst accepting that this process will be gradual, the SA believes that independent socialists should become part of the campaign and able to influence its progress. Hence we call for an individual membership structure. The SA also believes that the CNWP should be as inclusive as possible. To broaden out the campaign we are calling for all supportive left groups to gain representation on affiliation.

On past experience the Socialist Party, which will have the majority of votes, has shown little or no interest in democracy. It seems likely the amendment on democracy will be voted down. The second amendment may have more chance, but so far the SP seems disinclined to support it.

CNWP and democracy
CNWP and democracy

Higher truth

Your review of 300 would have strengthened its thesis if it had compared the film with its early 1960s forerunner 300 Spartans (‘Propaganda and ideology’, April 26). Then the enemy was not Iran or islam, but ‘international communism’ and the good guys were all clean-cut democrats. Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, this film ends with an acknowledgement to the Royal Hellenic Army - which only a few years later implemented the colonels’ coup, with the backing of the US, to save the free world.

In the same world, Greek democracy and ‘western civilisation’ owed its survival to the most brutal, militaristic and repressive of the Greek states. In this sense, 300 expresses a higher truth than that argued in the article. The main disappointment is that, with all the millions of dollars and modern technology, Hollywood did not come up with something more historically accurate than the 60s version in terms of costumes, locations and general Weltanschauung, instead of something obviously geared to merchandising and computer games.

Higher truth

Muddled

In response to Phil Kent’s letter on property forms (May 3), I liken him to Max Shachtman because, morally outraged at the Moscow trials, he concluded that the Soviet Union was ‘state capitalist’ and therefore not worth defending against Hitler’s Germany. In Shachtman’s eyes, there was no difference between Hitler and Stalin, for their methods were identical. Of course, Shachtman never addressed the fact that Hitler and Stalin were arch-enemies, defending counterposed property forms.

Phil babbles: “I believe in a minimum-maximum [read minimum] programme, in which workers fight to maximise their power and control within the state that rules over them (whatever form it takes) in order to develop themselves into the world ruling class.” Notice that Phil doesn’t address socialist revolution, but rather some kind of gradual process in which the working class somehow manages to develop itself into a “world ruling class”. Not a word about the role of a Leninist communist party, politically independent of the capitalist class, intersecting the class struggle at critical junctures.

Muddled
Muddled

And again

Jim Grant complains that I avoided admitting that David Isaacson was correct in his reply to me and I should have conceded defeat (Letters, May 3). Okay, I concede - David was correct on a number of secondary details. Instead of addressing those secondary issues, I chose to ‘boil it down’ to the small matter of the central question of the debate and I make no apology for doing so.

Jim comes up with a bizarre analogy that sheds no light whatsoever on the discussion. A much better analogy would be a fascist attempt to seize power in a parliamentary democracy. The bourgeoisie and its armed forces split evenly into supporters of the fascist coup and opponents of it. The workers’ movement is not yet in a position to take power, but has significant forces that could alter the outcome of this conflict. Jim would no doubt agree that a defeat for the fascists is preferable to a defeat for the bourgeois parliamentarians. Would Jim argue that the working class should “refuse to side with the small criminal against the big criminal” in this hypothetical case? And if he is for a bloc with the bourgeoisie who are fighting the fascist coup, then why doesn’t the same logic apply to the threatened imperialist attack on Iran?

Jim also complains that I am being “snarky” by describing the CPGB’s position of neutrality by the working class in a conflict between US imperialism and the Iranian regime as anti-Marxist. Actually, it is merely a scientific description of the CPGB’s position. The Marxist understanding of the imperialist epoch was developed by Lenin and the other leaders of the revolutionary Comintern, and that includes what to do in conflicts between imperialist and non-imperialist capitalist states. The CPGB disagrees with the position of these giants of our movement, which is, of course, the CPGB’s prerogative. But they should be prepared to accept that by doing so they are taking an anti-Marxist position unless they can convince people that Conrad and company actually know more about Marxism than the historic leaders of our movement. I suspect that outside the membership of the tiny CPGB sectlet this is not a widely held view.

I also repeat my question to members of the Campaign for a Marxist Party - do you agree with the CPGB’s anti-Marxist position on this question and, if not, are you willing to place yourself under their discipline (as the majority in the CMP) to further this line in anti-war actions?

And again

Collapsed bridge

Dave Brown and Dave Craig (Letters, May 3) respond in different ways to my April 26 letter, but the substance of the point is the same: we are still to treat the victory of the Russian Revolution as evidence for the truth of the arguments of Lenin and Trotsky, without regard to the rest of the evidence of the calamitous 20th century.

Dave Craig’s response is simply not serious. I laid out positive arguments on the strategic questions, using both ‘the classics’ and the historical evidence, in an 11-part series last year. I have spent three articles recently responding to comrade Craig. Then his substantive response is to charge me with “the revival or promotion of Bukharin’s left-rightism”. In this situation it is not down to me to prove that Bukharin was correct (which would, anyhow, be a caricature of what I have argued). It is down to him to prove that Bukharin was wrong in ways which amount to more than the undoubted fact that Lenin disagreed with Bukharin. In the light of comrade Craig’s letter, I maintain without hesitation the claim that his method is dogmatic-theological.

Dave Brown argues that the victory of the revolution in 1917-21 is separable from the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy at some later date. He has perhaps forgotten that Lenin already characterised the regime as a workers’ state “with bureaucratic deformations” in 1920.

But let us allow for the purposes of argument that comrade Brown is right that there are “different historical periods” involved (I think it is plainly wrong). We build a new bridge, with engineering brilliance and unusual economy of materials. It is celebrated all over the world. Ten years later it falls down in high winds. Whatever our moral judgment of the choices made in building the bridge, the collapse 10 years later is relevant to whether we should repeat them.

As to Trotsky’s explanation of Stalinism - “the rise of the bureaucracy as a parasitic caste upon the Soviet working class” - it is necessary to assess Trotsky’s explanation as a whole: ie, including the prediction that the Soviet working class was capable of overthrowing the bureaucracy (“political revolution”, and that objective dynamics would force the bureaucracy to split left-right (“faction of Butenko” and “faction of Reiss”). These predictions were falsified not by the fall of the regimes, but by the complete absence of any objective dynamic towards working class political action and “political revolution” under the Stalinist regimes. That is, any tendency towards the working class taking power itself, as opposed to episodic strikes, and working class political support to pro-capitalist movements (Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Poland 1980).

Collapsed bridge
Collapsed bridge

Spiked

It was with some interest that I read David Broder’s letter on the CPGB’s Red Platform (May 3). David is a talented and serious young man, whose contribution to our letters page is worthy of reply, although I will leave the Red Party debacle for another day.

Of course, I should declare an interest. Along with Manny Neira, I was the founder of the Red Platform, though I remained within the CPGB’s ranks and did not join the Red Party (David chooses not to mention this). It is, therefore, pleasing to hear David now endorse the argument that I remember making to him subsequently - that it was completely irresponsible of other Red Platformers to desert the CPGB in the manner they did. A fight was taking place within the party and Manny and co simply ran away.

Not that I’m a bitter man. In politics one tends to learn lessons the hard way and, in any case, some of the arguments that the Red Platform made left their mark on the CPGB - for example, that Respect was a popular front, an argument that was then contested by the party majority.

Which doesn’t mean, with the benefit of hindsight, that all the positions of Red Platform were correct. They weren’t. Indeed, perhaps in a different way, David would concur. I could hardly imagine an Alliance for Workers’ Liberty member giving republicanism the prominence we gave it as a demand.

Yet my distaste at the time with the manner of the comrades’ exit was also to do with their fundamental dishonesty. Let’s leave aside the nonsense the Red Party espoused that democratic centralism inevitably leads to violations of party democracy. Instead let’s just deal with the facts.

Never let it be said that I am slavishly devoted to the Provisional Central Committee. However, they were extraordinarily generous in the rights they gave to the Red Platform - a weekly column, hours of debate in party meetings, a slot at Communist University, even when the rest of the platform had jumped ship.

True, they did suspend our column during the week of the 2004 European elections. True, one member of the PCC completely lost the plot and thought Red Platform was an imperialist conspiracy.

However, it is not true there was a ‘suspension of faction rights’, as David claims. This never happened. The truth is that David, Manny and Jeremy simply voluntarily gave up their factional rights, the suspension of the column being a smokescreen.

I think David now accepts this, although he still talks about our faction rights having been ‘undermined’. He and the rest of the Red Party crew did the undermining, not PCC members Jack Conrad, Peter Manson or Mark Fischer.

By way of analogy, let us imagine that a hypothetical group of members in another left group take issue with the party majority. Let’s say it is over the leadership’s refusal to call for imperialist troops to leave Iraq now. What does the resolute minority do to contest this first-campist error?

They, of course, demand of their leaders - let’s call them Sean and Martin - their right to platform/factional rights. Martin’s a bit unsure, but Sean nods his head and says, ‘That’s your right, comrades - it is the duty of communists to fights for their positions.’

‘By the way,’ Sean adds, ‘it is our duty not to hide this fight from the readership of our newspaper’ (let’s call it Solidarity). And, to cap it all, Sean offers the anti-imperialist faction a weekly column in the paper (until Martin reminds him the paper only comes out fortnightly at best).

You see, David, whilst you have learnt something subsequently about how healthy CPGB democracy is (not perfect, I admit), you still have some lessons to learn about the struggle for open democracy in the ranks of the AWL today. It’s some time since I read about your battle with the AWL majority over Iraq.

Have you been spiked? Or have you, Daniel and co quit this battle prematurely? I hope not. Good luck!

Spiked
Spiked

Smug arrogance

I doubt that readers are interested in how two people can have different memories of the same, fairly insignificant series of events, but since David Broder feels the need to ‘correct’ me in the pages of the Weekly Worker, I am obliged to do the same.

David, now as then, is preoccupied with the faction rights of the Red Platform and how the decision was taken not to publish one of the ‘Seeing red’ columns. I have to say this was never a particular concern of mine. As far as I am concerned, the Weekly Worker is controlled by the CPGB’s Provisional Central Committee and they make editorial decisions in accordance with their tactical concerns, which can be criticised at members’ aggregates after the event. Not how I would do things, but that’s how Leninist publications work, surely?

I was more concerned with the decision that was taken to critically support Respect, and what it revealed about the CPGB and Leninist politics, rather than how that decision was made. Most people can see that Respect is bollocks: an opportunistic attempt by a bunch of self-serving politicians to try and get themselves voted into the petty corridors of power.

The vast majority of the membership saw this too, yet the decision was taken to ‘critically support’ it in order to get a foot in the door and influence the people around Respect. This meant openly arguing that Respect was worth being in and trying to persuade other people to vote for it and join it.

I was not comfortable with this: it seemed dishonest, arrogant and bossy. For the first time I began to seriously question whether or not I actually agreed with Leninist politics. In retrospect it marked the beginning of my rejection of democratic centralism: there are some things I am prepared to do or not do even, if the whole of the rest of the world disagrees with me, let alone the narrow majority of a small political group.

David says that we should have stayed in the CPGB and fought to win the majority to our position, which is what the CPGB argued at the time. I disagree. In retrospect I was growing disenchanted with Leninism as a political method. To stay in an avowedly Leninist organisation, stamp my feet and insist that they stopped being Leninist would be daft. It only makes sense if you subscribe to the (Leninist) position that there should be one, all-powerful vanguard party. I don’t.

Smug arrogance

Home truths

Although John Smithee is sometimes derided for the letters he writes to the Weekly Worker, his concerns about the housing market do reveal a truth. The current fashion in housing is the buy-to-let market, and in London this has had the effect of driving up house prices, which are now out of reach of even a skilled worker.

Although it may have reached its peak, young city workers with money to burn are looking for other investment opportunities. For example, it was pointed out in a recent edition of Farming today on Radio 4 that these city workers are now buying up large tracks of land and renting them back to farmers and agricultural workers.

This appears to be a part of trend in financial circles. For example, there was the Glazer takeover of Manchester United, which saddled the club with debt. But what happens when these companies and individuals get into financial trouble? The obvious answer is to raise the rent for whatever they own.

Home truths

Election tactics

Comrade Jean-Michel Edwin argues that the left in France was correct to recommend - as it did in its overwhelming majority - a vote for the French ‘Blair’, Ségolène Royal, as the lesser evil, compared to the French ‘Thatcher’, Nicolas Sarkozy.

There is nothing unprincipled per se in choosing the lesser evil and exceptionally we may be forced to do just that because of the weakness of the independent forces of the working class. But I do not believe that the second round of France’s presidential elections was such an occasion.

Firstly, it never looked likely that Royal would be able to beat Sarkozy - the first round results clearly demonstrated that the right could count on far more support than the left, even if every vote of the defeated left candidates had been transferred to her. The likelihood of a Sarkozy victory was not in itself a reason to refuse to support Royal, but the left should have taken this probable outcome into account when drawing up its tactics. In other words, how would a recommendation to vote Royal advance the cause of the working class if she lost?

It was already known that the left’s unconditional support would allow her to move further right - the votes of the Parti Communiste Français and the far left were secure, so Royal was obviously going to concentrate her appeal for votes on the centre and soft right.

Furthermore, this rightwing momentum will now be carried forward into next month’s elections to the national assembly - Royal’s 47% is viewed by the Parti Socialiste leaders as a reasonable result and they will hardly be looking to reposition themselves further to the left. On the contrary, they will claim that a PS government is achievable - so long as workers ‘vote useful’ from the first round and forget about the PCF, Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire and Lutte Ouvrière … In short, the left’s misguided recommendation has helped strengthen the PS right and therefore the establishment as a whole.

Secondly, comrade Edwin’s argument that a Royal administration would be a “government elected ‘by default’, following the defeat of the hard right” does not stand up to examination. Exactly the same case was made for supporting Jacques Chirac against Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002. It was said that an overwhelming vote “against Le Pen” would leave Chirac ‘without a mandate’ or even make him a ‘prisoner of the left’. What a joke! Because of the nature of bourgeois politics, every government elected relies on a large number of ‘negative’ votes - votes against other parties - but this does not stop them pushing through their own programme.

What can prevent them implementing anti-working class policies is mass mobilisation, and any government - of right or left - must take into account working class combativity. Comrade Edwin’s belief that Royal would be more susceptible than Sarkozy in this regard is simply wrong. The question the left should have asked was: ‘What tactic is most likely to encourage working class combativity?’ An unconditional vote for Royal was never going to achieve that.

What about a boycott, as advocated by one or two small groups? In 2002 an active boycott (not ‘abstention’) of the second round was definitely the most appropriate tactic. Hundreds of thousands had been mobilised onto the streets and could have been won not only to oppose Le Pen, but the whole, undemocratic Fifth Republic system, where the electorate was expected to choose between ‘a fascist and a thief’ who, between them, had only won the support of a quarter of all those entitled to vote. The left should have demanded the cancellation of the second round and sought to promote the fight for a democratic Sixth Republic led by the working class.

In 2007, however, there was no mass mobilisation and it would have been much more difficult to challenge the legitimacy of the first round - especially after the very high turnout. A call for a boycott could be nothing other than a recommendation for passive abstention.

In my opinion, the defeated left candidates should have offered conditional support to Royal. In other words, the PCF, LCR, LO, etc would urge their supporters to vote PS in the second round only if she agreed a set of minimum demands: for example, hands off the 35-hour week, stop the attack on pensions, no more privatisations, for genuine democratisation of French and EU institutions.

Of course, Royal would almost certainly have refused such conditions, in which case the left would have withheld its votes. True, Sarkozy could have won by a bigger majority, but the far left would have been strengthened prior to the legislative elections. More importantly, workers would have been encouraged to fight for their own independent interests and their combativity raised, irrespective of who won.

Election tactics
Election tactics