Letters

Anti-CMP tirade

Peter Manson’s article, ‘Where now for the CMP?’, is essentially a tirade against the Campaign for a Marxist Party (Weekly Worker May 31).

Comrade Manson claims that the CPGB is a campaign for a Marxist party and that he is against any duplication of efforts. This is, to say the least, crude - if comrade Manson actually shares the aims of the CMP, then the normal response would be to support the CMP and put forward positive proposals to build it. Instead we are treated to an attempt to run down the efforts of the CMP, a collection of what are basically insults and an attack on comrade Phil Sharpe, presumably as a means of identifying Phil’s positions with those of the CMP.

Contrary to comrade Manson’s sneers, the CMP has actually achieved a considerable amount in the few months since its foundation. The new organisation is the first honest effort (as opposed to sectarian manoeuvres like the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party, Respect, etc) to pull together the necessary forces for a new party that is desperately required. As such it was able to attract support from a series of existing initiatives, including the magazine New Interventions, supporters of Critique and even the CPGB. So the CMP started with some very significant members and so far has recruited members steadily across the country and not just CPGB members, as comrade Manson may think.

The CMP is clearly aimed at organising the largest section of the left in Britain - the comrades who are not in any of the groups - largely ex-members of one or other group. In contrast to the sterile environment of the larger groups, where officially thinking is only done at the top, the non-organised left is free to debate.

Contrary to comrade Manson’s allegation, none of us in the CMP ever put forward the notion of “hundreds of disillusioned leftists and ex-members of the revolutionary groups flocking back to the cause” (of course, comrade Manson dismisses the unorganised left as “flotsam and jetsam”). Instead we thought this would be a process which would take time to convince people that the CMP is honest and democratic.

As part of this the CMP has issued two editions of its Marxist Voice magazine. Strangely comrade Manson dismisses this as one edition and attempts to raise doubts that any more will appear. This despite the fact that he was informed at the Manchester day school and via email by our editor that the second issue is available. The importance of Marxist Voice has been the range of comrades writing for it and its effect in advertising the existence and aims of the CMP.

Then we get to some strange allegations - the article appears under a picture which purports to be Bakunin, and there is a mention of “anarcho-bureaucrats”, although no names or instances are put forward. The CMP is said to “lack any clear sense of direction” and be suffering “smaller and smaller numbers” attending. Again no evidence is put forward for this - in fact the encouraging thing about recent meetings both nationally and in Glasgow has been the attendance of new members and those interested in the CMP. We can only assume that this (along with most of the rest of the article) is a means of antagonising CMP comrades and raising the political temperature. We have to ask comrade Manson what his aim is in doing this.

Finally comrade Manson puts forward the idea that CMP members should convert themselves into sellers of the Weekly Worker, although, again strangely, any notion of accountability seems to be forgotten. Usually at least part of the editorial board is on offer in these things, but not this time, it seems. As a parting shot we get support for a motion to remove the accountability of office holders in the CMP itself.

It looks like the CMP conference on June 23 will once again host a useful debate - although we hope comrade Manson will have a positive attitude rather than the one we have in this article.

Anti-CMP tirade
Anti-CMP tirade

Misapprehension

I am sorry to disappoint Pete Manson and the CPGB, but I am not “about to undergo major heart surgery”, as reported in last week’s Weekly Worker. So I am not quite on my way out, as the article implied. Another point - there are two issues of Marxist Voice available, not one, as Pete stated. The June-July issue came out on May 26. But then why spoil a good story with accurate information?

And what a story! You open up the paper and read the headlines, “Where now for CMP?” and then “It has to go”. A Freudian slip or an attempt at dark humour? Staring from the page are the grisly features of Mikhail Bakunin - the Satan of the left to the god of Karl Marx. We are expected to believe that the CMP is infected with “anarcho-bureaucrats” who indulge in “petty manoeuvres”. No material evidence is produced for this horror, no names are named and no dialectical explanation given for the phenomenon.

We are expected to believe that “the flotsam and jetsam” of the CMP are dancing around naked in the woods under a full moon without the spiritual guidance and leadership of the PCC of the CPGB. To me the unsubstantiated accusation of Bakuninism is the equivalent of The Sun’s scare-mongering about paedophiles and terrorists - to frighten the faithful.

Pete complains about the inefficiencies and problems of the CMP after six months. An obvious response is that if the CPGB sponsors and supports the CMP they are part of the problem!

Pete complains about “the lumbering beast” that is the committee. No committee was elected in November. There was a list of suggested jobs put down on the agenda by myself and some comrades volunteered for those jobs. This is not a question of semantics: it is a question of method. Most of the time was taken up in discussing the political principles of the CMP. Very little time was used in discussing organisation or strategy. The CPGB put forward no resolution on strategy or organisation apart from the one on fusing the CMP with themselves. Since then the Weekly Worker has printed pages on programme for the CMP, but nothing on organisation and strategy, as far as I am aware. Their two resolutions for the June 23 conference do not mention organisation or strategy either.

Nevertheless the CPGB without putting forward practical proposals themselves reserve the right to criticise “the committee” which was never elected as such, and various comrades who have attempted to do things. They continue a disgraceful witch-hunt against Phil Sharpe who has had the temerity and tenacity to produce documents which they don’t agree with.

They accuse me of producing Marxist Voice “single-handedly”, which presumably makes me an anarcho-bureaucrat. I volunteered to produce the magazine in November - nobody else did. In MV No1 there were 13 contributors and 18 in MV No2. Nobody’s contribution has been left out. I see myself as a coordinator. Comrades Paul Smith in Glasgow and Chris Gray in London volunteered to gather articles. If and when more contributions come in and we go monthly then of course an editorial board will be needed. How does that make me a follower of Bakunin?

One could see the funny side of Pete Manson’s bad-tempered rant if it was an individual reaction after a night out on the tiles, but, given the CPGB’s commitment to democratic centralist discipline, one can only assume that this article represents a considered policy by the CPGB in relation to the CMP. Given the timing a few weeks before the CMP conference, it appears they wish to damage the CMP and to eliminate it as ‘a rival’. This is in the time-honoured fashion of the SWP and SP, “the sects” they claim to despise. It is the sectarian method of putting your own organisation before the building of a broader force.

The key point in the article is the statement, “The CPGB exists already as a campaign for a Marxist party.” Ergo - who needs the CMP? It has to go. I confess to “labouring under a misapprehension”, but not the one Pete mentions. I believed naively that the CPGB were genuine in their support for the CMP.

Misapprehension
Misapprehension

Uncomradely

Peter Manson’s report of the recent CMP day school in Manchester was rather like his ‘contribution’ to the debate: all irritation and no comradely political substance (‘Where now for CMP?’, May 31).

I do not know how he has the nerve to criticise the comrades who spoke from the floor of the meeting when his own Victor Meldrew-like moan was easily the worst contribution of the day, wandering away from the many points made about party and programme. He reserved most of his irritation for comrade Phil Sharpe, whom he holds responsible for the stagnation of the CMP. This is the same Phil Sharpe that Peter himself suggested as keynote speaker for the next CMP day school at the last committee meeting.

So what game is he playing? While he wants to denigrate unspecified comrades for promoting Phil’s ideas, as editor of the Weekly Worker Peter Manson prints pages and pages of Phil’s schema of ‘workers’ party does connect with the class’, ’Marxist party does not connect with the class’. Phil’s view is a minority view, but there seems to be some attempt to paint it as the majority view of non-CPGB members, so that the CPGB can charge in to save the campaign from itself.

From the outset, the CPGB has said that their own organisation was a campaign for a Marxist party. The implication of this could be - to use the uncomradely language of Peter Manson - that the little Napoleons who run the CPGB are seeking to absorb the campaign under their bureaucratic centralist CPGB rules rather than try to develop a broader-based Marxist unity.

Uncomradely
Uncomradely

Not good enough

At the CMP’s recent Manchester event, amid the stramash about whether or not ‘democratic’ centralism could meaningfully be distinguished from ‘bureaucratic’ centralism as a method of organisation, I found myself in the position of defending from the floor the conduct of Phil Sharpe regarding his proposed draft programme of recent notoriety. As the debate developed, and with the benefit of hindsight, I realised that some of my statements that day were unclear - contradictory even. So I write this letter in the hope of making myself clear.

First off, the ‘offending’ material. I repeat that, all caveats notwithstanding, I find Phil Sharpe’s work interesting; and that in the classic sense of stimulating me to think for myself, even if I do not agree with his ideas. I confess that I still cannot understand how Phil and his supporters can construe this work as a ‘draft programme’ per se. On this point I am simply confused, even if I agree that Phil does indeed raise issues at least as important to the ongoing debate as trying to decide which programmatic model from three or more generations past is adequate to present needs.

On this, I respectfully repeat to Phil the two suggestions I tried to make on that Saturday: (1) withdraw the phrase ‘draft programme’ from the title so as to make it clear to all concerned that this is a discussion document, which should silence your harshest critics and leave your actual ideas to stand for themselves; (2) separate your work into distinct parts and submit them to an editor so that they might be brought to a wider audience in the form of articles.

Meanwhile, I must reiterate my view that the CPGB’s outcry on this matter is tragicomedy of an all too familiar stripe. Let us review the course of events: (1) the Democratic Socialist Alliance submit their proposed draft programme to the inaugural conference of the CMP, where is it put aside with what must have been - to them - an utterly undue lack of ceremony; (2) undaunted, they present the CMP with an alternative would-be programmatic work authored by Phil Sharpe; (3) the proverbial shit hits the fan.

Now my point here is this: the conduct of the DSA comrades has been utterly exemplary in the short life of the CMP. Faced with the defeat, they took it on the chin, and came back with something different.

So what (again) if Phil Sharpe persists in his views about the workers’ party instead of the Marxist party? Does anyone really believe that these views are liable to carry the day in the CMP? I very much doubt it. And so what (again) about any other mistakes which I or others might choose to find in Phil Sharpe’s work?

A comradely discussion of these issues must surely prove more fruitful than harangues about a poorly chosen title and a stubbornly entrenched minority position.

Not good enough
Not good enough

Boneheaded

Having followed the debate over the CMP and the kind of party we need, I can’t help but feel both sides are flawed. Those who want nothing less than a Communist Party are being over-ambitious and in some respects are fetishising a form of organisation, placing it ahead of the needs of the communists at large - those needs being to re-establish the credibility of socialist values amongst the working class. On the other side, we have the ‘new workers’ party’ brigade, slightly less optimistic about what kind of party can be created, and willing to explore alternatives to Leninist organisational dogma.

Both sides have their flaws, but share one blind spot in common: any new organisation that can transcend and make obsolete the sects and the failed alliances and coalitions of recent years would be a step forward! I believe the CPGB needs to take a position of critical support for the creation of the Marxist party. Such an organisation is closer to the realm of the possible at present than the Communist Party, but also a crucial step forward that should not be stalled by boneheaded stubbornness.

Boneheaded

Self-analysis

As a Sinn Féin activist, I read with interest Anne Mc Shane’s piece on the Irish elections last week (‘Blow to Adam’s ambitions’, May 31). She is right that it was a very disappointing election for Sinn Féin and, in a broader sense, for other elements of the left, such as the Socialist Party and leftish independents.

I would like to correct one point though. Firstly, she suggests that the reason the alleged corruption of the taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, was not made an election issue by his political opponents can be laid at the notion of some sort of ‘gentleman’s agreement’. The reality, however, is almost more depressing.

When the most damaging revelations emerged late last year, that Ahern had taken money in extraordinarily dubious circumstances from a group of Manchester businessmen while a serving minister for finance, despite a full-scale assault from the establishment opposition, Ahern’s poll ratings, and those of his Fianna Fáil party, sky-rocketed, as Ahern used the break-up of his marriage to explain the turmoil of his financial records. In less than a week, Fianna Fáil was up five percent.

If Fine Gael and Labour, who have not won an election for decades now, thought attacking Ahern over corruption allegations would have won them votes, they would have done so. But all indications are that it has the reverse effect.

In terms of Sinn Féin’s performance, there was an element of being squeezed out by the unpalatable choice being presented to the electorate of Ahern or the challenger from the centre-right Fine Gael party as taoiseach. There also seems to have been a slight swing against the left.

But comrade Mc Shane is spot on when she makes the point that Sinn Féin’s all-Ireland and peace process rhetoric is not enough to win over swathes of the southern working class, who can hardly be blamed for wondering why, with one in five Irish people living in relative poverty, wages declining in proportion to profits and a taxation system now riven with service charges and stealth taxes, Sinn Féin puts so much effort into northern issues in a southern election.

For us as a party, a period of self-analysis is necessary, and an open debate within the party membership absolutely essential. Should this take place, and the mistakes of the recent election be rectified, the party will, I would argue, emerge all the stronger from this setback. It is in the interests of all on the Irish left that this take place.

Self-analysis
Self-analysis

Correction

I need to make one correction to my article, ‘Blow to Adam’s ambitions’, in last week’s paper.

I wrongly stated that this was the first time that anti-immigration candidates had stood in an Irish general election. The Immigration Control Platform, which stood in three seats this time, also stood two candidates in the 2002 election. Of course, they did not receive any significant vote on either occasion. But the point I make about this being a new phenomenon, and about resentment at having to emigrate turning into resentment against immigrants, remains the same.

Correction
Correction

Await bad times

The loss by Joe Higgins (Socialist Party TD) of his seat in the Irish parliament may lead Marxists to some pessimistic conclusions.

As the Socialist Party Ireland in its post-election analysis correctly says, “The economic situation is likely to change quickly and bring with it instability.” The southern Ireland economy, like all Anglo-Saxon countries, has experienced debt-fuelled bubble, mainly centred on the building of houses and flats. It is therefore necessary for Marxists to have a correct understanding of the period we are passing through.

Historical analogies can play a role in this. Tony Cliff, the late leader of the British Socialist Workers Party, incorrectly in my view described the political situation in the 1990s as “the 1930s but in slow motion”. Instead, I can see similarities between the political situation in 2007 in all the Anglo-Saxon countries with those present in the USA just before the 1929 Wall Street crash.

The big difference between 1929 and 2007 is that in 1929 it was share prices which were the vehicle for financial self-destruction, whereas in 2007 it is property prices. Mrs Thatcher’s ‘property-owning democracy’ has definitely had a political effect on the home-owning working class, not only in the UK, but also in southern Ireland.

Following the collapse in the ‘sub-prime’ mortgage market in late 2006-early 2007 property prices in the USA are falling, especially in Florida and Michigan. The two recent quarter-percent rises in interest rates by the Bank of England, with a further rise expected in August, will have an effect on property prices in the UK.

If the bursting of the financial bubble is delayed, Marxists must be prepared for similar election results in the UK as those which occurred in southern Ireland.

Await bad times
Await bad times

Bricks and mortar

Jim Moody’s treatment of the ‘Margaret Hodge question’ is welcome and timely (‘Not rabbit hutches, but houses fit for the revolutionary proletariat’, May 31).

It seems to be the only article on the left that can move beyond condemnations of Hodge and sagely pointing out capitalism’s role in producing a housing shortage into serious considerations of socialist housing policy beyond the crude ‘build more’ line. Of course, comrades, but build more what?

However, as a card-carrying modern architecture geek, I was particularly piqued by the introduction of the Karl Marx Hof and Bauhaus into the discussion. It is here that I hope to offer some clarifications.

The ideology of modern architecture is a very complicated one. The citation of the Bauhaus is interesting due to Walter Gropius’s necessarily brief involvement with the Arbeitsrät fur Kunst (Works Council for Art) during the German revolutionary period of 1918-19. One can perhaps conceive of the whole period of ‘high-modern’
architecture - from the International Exhibition of Modern Architecture in 1932 to, as legend (or rather the odious Charles Jencks) has it, the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in St Louis - as the irruption of the utopian-revolutionary spirit of such organisations into, and accommodation with, the rule of capital and its necessities after the great depression and especially World War II.

And utopian it is. The logic of the thought of a figure such a Le Corbusier, with his (in)famous quip about “machines for living in”, is that the architect’s job is not merely the organisation and production of built space, but the design of life as such. The ‘streets in the sky’ (shopping arcades and so on within large apartment complexes, advocated by Corbusier and his followers) approach can be seen as a direct manifestation of this impulse. It ties in, of course, with the general technocratic approach of the Keynesian consensus after the war. Economists in the treasury do their hocus pocus to keep us in growth; politicians negotiate the difficult path through a world dominated by the cold war; architects build your day-to-day life.

It is in this light that one should note that the modern architectural movement, in its role as a solution to social housing and so on, failed, famously and cataclysmically. An attempt to ‘build’ community cannot be made simply in brick and concrete. The ideology of function was always that - ideology, an imaginary relationship to  the thing itself: the buildings often simply weren’t functional, because the ‘functionality’ of a building is not in the last instance down to immaculate architecture, but is in fact a social category - it comes down to ongoing maintenance, to the resources allocated for building contracts and therefore the quality of the materials involved, to the provision of security and so on.

The reason communists have an answer to the housing shortage is because we acknowledge that it is not reducible either to the social-economic level of provision (eg, the Socialist Party in England and Wales almost delirious obsession with ‘cuts’, with solutions rightly described by comrade Moody as “rabbit hutches”) or the architectural project as such.

Bricks and mortar
Bricks and mortar

Fully cocked

While Jez Butler has maintained a serious approach in our debate on the Red Party’s legacy (for Jez’s full letter, read my blog: www.trotskyist.blog-spot.com), it is quite obvious that Darren Williams has a poor grip on the facts of the matter. His May 31 letter displays that he knows next to nothing about how much of a cock David Broder really is.

For a start, I get outrageously drunk all the time, with the result that I am constantly either volleying personal attacks against all and sundry, or forming revolutionary vanguard parties. Not only that, but it was me who shot JR - and, for that matter, I was Deep Throat.

Fully cocked
Fully cocked

Contradiction

What’s going on? One week we read Jeremy Butler complaining about personal insults by David Broder that the comrade never actually made, which Jeremy then extrapolates to a sweeping claim that “the culture of both the CPGB and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty not only condones but actively encourages its members to insult people they disagree with” (Letters, May 24).

Anyone reading his letter would imagine that Jeremy’s new political vehicle, the Red Star Commando blogging collective, must be an insult-free zone of impeccable manners and wholly constructive dialogue between comrades.

But then the next week we read Darren Williams, one of those very comrades in that collective, joining the fray and calling David, an ex-Red Star member himself, a “privileged tosser” and a “little wanker” (Letters, May 31).

Contradiction
Contradiction

Dictatorship

In an article entitled ‘Ten versus ten’ Comrade Jack Conrad puts forward 10 demands on behalf of the CPGB in reply to those proposed by the Socialist Party at the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party conference (Weekly Worker May 10).

One of the demands put forward by comrade Conrad is for the abolition of the monarchy and of the House of Lords. What is noteworthy here is the absence of any demand for the abolition of the House of Commons. It is therefore necessary to draw attention to the counterrevolutionary role of the Commons. Several points need to be made.

Firstly. Real power in Britain lies not with parliament, but with what has been referred to as ‘the state within the state’. This is composed of higher civil servants, the judiciary, high-ranking military officers, big industrialists and landowners and the largest banks. This ‘state within the state’ has no formal organisation. Nevertheless it ultimately determines the strategy and tactics of the capitalist class. If it were ever to feel that British capitalism was threatened by a leftwing majority in the House of Commons, it would certainly initiate a military coup similar to that which took place in Chile in 1973.

Secondly. The function of parliament is that of a political Punch and Judy show. Its purpose is to deceive workers that by putting a cross against a name every five years or so they have a say in the running of the country and hence of the world.

Thirdly. An incorrect view of the House of Commons conceals the fundamental Marxist thesis of the objectively revolutionary nature of the working class. As Lenin painstakingly pointed out, especially in his The proletarian revolution and the renegade Kautsky, the organs of struggle which are spontaneously formed by the working class must form the basis of the workers’ state and lead to the smashing of the capitalist state, including the House of Commons. A prime example is, of course, that of the soviets that arose in 1917. Also the councils of action formed in the British general strike of 1926.

Fourthly. The counterrevolutionary nature of the House of Commons need not prevent communists from utilising parliamentary (and local government) elections to put forward a communist policy. Recall Lenin’s advice to the British communists in Leftwing communism that they should participate in elections in order to convince workers of the superiority of soviets over parliament.

A further aspect of comrade Conrad’s article requires comment. Referring to the possibility of ecological destruction he writes: “Only the working class, the battle for extreme democracy and socialism offer humanity a viable alternative.” The key phrase here is “extreme democracy”. It needs to be clearly understood that the term can be very misleading. It is basic Marxism that the class struggle must lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Further, the dictatorship of the proletariat must be the basis for the building of a classless society.

Recall that Lenin writes somewhere that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the kernel of Marxism. He further writes in The proletarian revolution that soviet power represents the highest form of democracy for the working class. Thus the way forward is through its dictatorship against the capitalist class and democracy (in its soviets) for the working class. To write of “extreme democracy”, as comrade Conrad does, totally ignoring the necessity of proletarian dictatorship, is absolutely wrong.

Dictatorship
Dictatorship