Letters

Labour dues

John McDonnell has claimed his unsuccessful Labour party leadership campaign has nevertheless achieved a “huge amount” (Morning Star May 19). Specifically, “We’ve recruited a whole new generation of young socialists and won back those who have long since given up hope.” In other words, the prospect of having a socialist to vote for may have slowed down the decline in Labour Party membership.

A friend of mine who didn’t bother to renew his Labour Party membership two years ago recently received a letter from the party inviting him to rejoin so that he could take part in the leadership election next month. Unfortunately for the Labour Party treasury, he received this letter the day after McDonnell failed to gain enough support even to enter the contest, thus leaving the road open for a coronation, rather than a democratic choice for any party member.

I suppose some leftwingers might still be tempted to rejoin by the prospect of voting for Jon Cruddas as deputy leader. If I was a cynic I might suspect that the Labour leadership might want Cruddas to be elected to this role in order to give leftist party members the illusion that their point of view is represented, and so motivate them to keep paying their membership dues.

Labour dues
Labour dues

Alternative

Thousands of disabled workers face the dole after Remploy announced it will close 43 factories. Remploy is being changed from manufacturing to an employment agency for disabled people.

It seems New Labour believe their rhetoric when they say that there are opportunities for disabled people to get jobs with mainstream employers. Yet three million of the 5.5 million economically inactive adults in the UK are claimants of sickness and disability-related benefits, usually in the form of incapacity benefit (IB).

Towards the end of 2008 all claimants of IB will have to face at least one and as many as six work-focused interviews at their local job centre. The political reaction of such claimants will be explosive - the pressure put on them to compete for jobs with economic migrants will push them into the arms of the BNP. This has already happened in Barking and Dagenham, where many white working class people have been parked on IB in order to massage the unemployment figures.

In my view, the only way to stop IB claimants from turning to the BNP, when faced with work-focused interviews, is for communists to stand in elections again. To leave the electoral field clear for the BNP is a dereliction of one’s duty as communists to offer an electoral alternative to sick and disabled people.

Alternative
Alternative

Fine words

In his article ‘Defeat was fault of enemy machine guns’ (May 25), Mike Macnair argues that, for Marxists, “What is central is to pose a strategic alternative to the nationalist, bureaucratic-statist and class-collaborationist policy of the trade union, social democratic and ‘official communist’ bureaucracies. And this, in turn, has to be a policy of (1) class-political independence both from the capitalist and petty-proprietor parties and from the state; (2) radical democracy both in the state and in the working class movement: that is, the subordination of the managers, officials and leaders to the ranks; and (3) the international unity in action of the working class movement, not at some future date, but under capitalism.”

Fine words indeed, but how do they relate to the actual politics of the CPGB? (1) Remember the ‘Maximise the vote for Respect’ slogan, which promoted class-collaborationist politics? (2) Just how long have Jack Conrad and Mark Fischer been on the CPGB leadership and who would think they were in any way subordinate to the ranks? Other members of the Provisional Central Committee may come and go, but these two bureaucrats have ruled this little sect for going on 20 years now! (3) The CPGB’s nationalist fetishism, which sees them refuse to unite in the same organisation as their co-thinkers who happen to live outside the geographical boundaries of formal British state rule.

It would seem that Mike’s fine words are just that - words. In practice the CPGB fall well short of anything approximating to Marxist politics.

Fine words

Sore thumb

Macnair’s Menshevik method stands out like a sore thumb. No wonder he doesn’t take Lenin or Trotsky’s views of the Russian Revolution as a guide; he prefers Martov, Kautsky and Luxemburg.

So here we have the old argument that Lenin and co substituted the ‘undemocratic’ Bolshevik Party for the masses (too bad it included peasants) and made an isolated revolution in Russia when they should have stayed abroad and built an international party.

But not only did Lenin and Trotsky critique social democracy and Menshevism/Stalinism: they did over Luxemburg, Kautsky and Martov as well. Why? Because they were all Mensheviks in essence. They all condemned the Russian Revolution as premature and did little to build a revolutionary party to lead the German insurrection to victory.

Only Lenin and Trotsky had the capacity to realise that the international revolution does not start internationally, but nationally, yet cannot be completed nationally, only internationally.

The reason that the Russian and German revolutions were not united in victory was not the betrayal of social democrats or open Mensheviks like Martov, but the betrayal of the ‘centrists’, Luxemburg and Kautsky, who failed to turn the Spartacists into a Bolshevik party in time.

What Macnair can’t understand is that in a revolutionary crisis such as World War I only revolution or counterrevolution were on the agenda. The centre only held to prepare the counterrevolution. If the revolutionary party didn’t lead workers to historic victory, then the fascists would ultimately impose the historic defeat.

Those who cannot fight for revolution end up serving the counterrevolution. These are the lessons that we have to learn to prepare for the next revolutionary crisis.

Sore thumb
Sore thumb

Non-imperialist

Abram, who refers to himself as a Marxist, writes: “Neo-imperialism [he refers to the Iranian theocracy as neo-imperialist] is the period of genocide against all the oppressed peoples and nations resisting its world system” (Letters, May 25).

Abram, your moralistic groaning notwithstanding, imperialism has a precise definition, which is the large-scale export of capital to foreign countries in order to exploit their labour forces and monopolise their markets. The end goal is always repatriation of earned capital. Countries go imperialist when their own markets are saturated, and the productive forces burst across national borders lest they stagnate.

Abram uses the term ‘neo-imperialism’ in much the same way as Shachtman used the term ‘state capitalism’ - as a way of avoiding taking sides militarily. Iran is scarcely an imperialist country, even though it is true that theocratic movements episodically serve the interests of imperialism by their anti-communist nature.

Non-imperialist
Non-imperialist

US opposition

I just want to say to the Iranian people that there are a large number of us in the United States who, being lied to by a tyrannical administration, actually oppose any attack on Iran.

Please know that there are Americans who do not wish to go to war with anyone for the motives professed, although in secret, by greedy politicians and that there is an activist movement in this country seeking to return reason and logic to our political process.

US opposition

Mild abuse

Apologies to David Broder (Letters, May 25). He is quite right. I re-read his letter of May 3 and he had described my refusal to join the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty as “ridiculous” rather than “foolish”. Turning to David’s more substantive points, I had answered his earlier letter more fully, but not all of my reply was published in the Weekly Worker, which I am sure was due to lack of space (May 17). My unedited reply can be read at http://redstarcommando.blogspot.com. However, in all fairness, I should expand on my criticisms of the internal culture of the AWL and like-minded groups.

Having never been a member of the AWL, I do not have first-hand experience of how members behave in internal discussions, and so I admit I am not the best person to make this argument. However, I have spoken to former members of the AWL whose words I trust, I have been involved in discussions where members of the AWL were present and I have read Solidarity. I also have some experience of having been a member of another Leninist group.

In my opinion, the way in which members of the AWL and other far-left groups conduct themselves in arguments is at its worst unhealthy and harmful. The example that springs to mind involving the AWL was the dispute in the pages of the Weekly Worker over the abolition of the age of consent and the related article in Solidarity entitled ‘Crazies of the world unite’ (May 16 2003), which concluded: “There are probably one or two sane people left in the CPGB. Why do they let the nutters set the tone … of the organisation?”

This is not to say that members of the AWL are the only people who do this, or that all members of the AWL behave like this all the time. Members of the CPGB gave as good as they got in that rather sorry affair. My point is that such language is endemic in the culture of the far left. I have witnessed brutal, sustained and concerted verbal attacks on people or groups who simply have a different opinion. The people on the other side of the argument are ridiculed and dehumanised and their opinions distorted. Even the general tone of most rhetoric on the left is arrogant and didactic: I am right, you are wrong and you should do what I say. In any other context, such behaviour would justifiably be described as bullying.

Anyone who has spent any length of time around the left can recognise this kind of discourse. Even if we refrain from joining in, at best most of us are guilty of staying silent when we witness this abuse. I admit that I share the blame. We all do if we are honest. What is necessary in my opinion is for people to admit that it exists and that it is a problem!

Given that David and I both personally know people whose comrades have caused them considerable emotional distress, it is a little disappointing that rather than acknowledging the issue he rather facetiously talks about Sean Matgamna “geeing [him] up to insult” me. Of course that is not what I imagine happens. My point is that this is an issue about the culture of the far left. We do not need overt instruction to indulge in insults: we conform to the norms of those around us.

David’s letters are reasonably polite, but what he says still follows the usual rules of discourse for the far left. For example, David states that “we were … wrong to leave the CPGB …” (my emphasis, May 3). This is his opinion and one that is not shared by the rest of us who left the CPGB, and yet he has no hesitation in using the collective ‘we’ and making that judgement on our behalf.

Similarly, while joining the AWL was evidently the right decision for David, it was most definitely not for the rest of us in the Red Party; yet he is still not satisfied with the explanations that we gave at the time or subsequently.

Mild abuse
Mild abuse

Wild abuse

In the debate over the legacy of the Red Party/Red Star on your letters pages over the last few weeks, Jeremy Butler has shown himself ‘the bigger man’ in his ability to see and address the politics rather than the personalities involved (always an issue in small group politics). For the record, the rest of the Red Star group are less generous in our memory of David Broder.

He was (and is) a self-important, privileged tosser whose idea of communist debate was to declaim to us all on the importance of the Leninist vanguard (himself) with his public school blazer in one hand and a bottle of poncey, overpriced foreign lager in the other. In other words, a typical Leninist.

We are well rid of the little wanker.

Wild abuse

Real battler

Philip Ferguson refers to James Connolly being “obstructed” in his “understanding of the need for a revolutionary party” by his adherence to the policy of revolutionary syndicalism (‘Coherent strategy’, May 25). However, Connolly’s syndicalism was not some sort of confused aberration which, had he rid himself of it, would have led to a clear-eyed understanding of the need for a vanguard party.

For instance, this quote from his Socialism made easy pamphlet: “The fight for the conquest of the political state is not the battle; it is only the echo of the battle. The real battle is the battle being fought out every day for the power to control industry and the gauge of the progress of that battle is not to be found in the number of votes making the cross beneath the symbol of a political party, but in the number of these workers who enrol themselves in an industrial organisation with the definite purpose of making themselves masters of the industrial equipment of society.”

This is in line with the strategy of the International Workers of the World, for instance, of which Connolly was a supporter. His revolutionary syndicalism was of a piece with his socialist ideals and he advocated the necessity of struggling on every front to bring about the desired outcome of a socialist republic in Ireland. The notion of a revolutionary party being the most important element of that was not a major part of his system.

He has been proved right, in my opinion, since revolutionary vanguard parties have not been spectacularly successful in bringing about such a desirable outcome anywhere at all thus far. The problem I believe is the ‘vanguard’ bit.

Connolly again: “The development of the fighting spirit is of more importance than the creation of the theoretically perfect organisation; indeed, the most theoretically perfect organisation may, because of its very perfection and vastness, be of the greatest possible danger to the revolutionary movement if it tends, or is used, to repress and curb the spirit of comradeship in the rank and file.”

Real battler

Comprehensive

John Smithee’s letter (May 25) correctly identifies the reason David Cameron has ditched grammar schools. The knowledge-based economy cannot afford to be selective, no matter how much that might upset diehard old Tories.

Anyway, even if all grammar and private (or public) schools were abolished tomorrow, the result would not be truly comprehensive. There is such a focus on academic success and privilege that those students who, for all manner of reasons, do not engage with the education system become forgotten or, worse, shunned as they can adversely affect a school’s league table standing.

The reality is that the knowledge-based economy actually requires a training regime working to specific targets with trainers, rather than teachers, working to preordained schemes, following unified planning schedules. Exam results become units of production, with teachers expected to meet quotas. Ofsted serves to ensure production targets are met. The annual furore about standards obscures the actuality, which is that the present system is as it is to meet the requirements of British capitalism.

A really comprehensive system of education would involve very unequal provision, in that each student’s individual needs would be identified and, as far as possible, met. In the context of education, the Marxist maxim, ‘From each according to ability, to each according to need’, demands varied provision. That this presently involves disparity of status and earning power is determined by capitalism, and that cannot be overcome by simply fiddling with the types of schools available.

While capitalism exists, so will inequality. Education cannot be exempted from this, however sincere the reforms or reformists.

Comprehensive
Comprehensive