Letters

Workers’ bans

Mike Macnair ignores the essence of the national question. National self-determination is not something that the European nations can glorify in themselves but then deny to the countries they oppress. Of course they can try, and like Israel they have been known to do it by occupying and displacing existing national peoples. But sooner or later they will be thrown out.

So why is Israel any different? It needs to be thrown out of Palestine. Those Israelis who can choose to live in a future united Palestine have more rights than those that were driven out and they have the power to resist the Zionist state from the inside.

Did we reject a total workers’ ban on South Africa because the bosses imposed a few boycotts? Did we shame ourselves into partial bans merely to liberate the Bantustans? No. A total workers’ ban on Israel should be directed at the Zionist state machine and its imperialist backers to overthrow that state, not merely to pressure it to return to the pre-1967 border.

This petty bourgeois compromise is a reactionary utopia. It is reactionary because it accords Israel the same national rights as Palestine: ie, it doesn’t recognise national oppression. It is utopian because, lacking the class unity of Palestinian and Israeli workers, it cannot produce a secular and non-racist republic. Meanwhile, as many partial workers’ bans and boycotts as possible, focused on specific oppressive aspects of the Zionist state, are to be welcomed.

Workers’ bans

Rule of law

Tony Greenstein defends his article in response to my recent letter with characteristic analogous reasoning and tangential argument. He complains that trade unions are controlled by the state, but, regarding the failed boycott of Israel, even in a socialist society, trade unions would presumably support academic freedom and equal opportunities; they would be free to discuss, but they would also have to live within the rule of law.

It’s only a political elite, like the Stalinist bureaucracy, that could abrogate socialist legality. And with a boycott of Israel who would decide who was to lose their job, studentship or medical research programme - the same self-serving political elite? The boycott of Israel assumes collective guilt for the problems that the Palestinian leadership has refused or been unable to resolve because their priority has been to destroy Israel rather than negotiate a two-state solution, which has been on the table many times. The Hamas control of Gaza has led to an existential threat to Israeli so, regrettably, civil liberties are eaten into by the security problem; but when Israel is recognised by Hamas, normal relations could be sustainable. But once again Tony Greenstein puts the cart before the horse.

The false analogy of apartheid forgets that in Israel anyone can stand for elections and Israeli Arabs have better human rights than in any Arab state, which is not comparable with South Africa under white only rule. And Mr Greenstein’s idea of Israel as a colonial state forgets that socialist movements in the past set up ‘colonies’ in, for example, America (Owen) and Russia (Serge, Tolstoy) and the Zionist left shared this mindset. They were motivated not by imperialism (grabbing raw materials and foreign markets), but by the need to flee pogroms and (yes) idealism. Greenstein ignores these important historical and political differentiations.

Thus, fundamentalists from all sides of the spectrum (those for a greater Israel versus those for a Palestinian state) will have to compromise or face defeat because the two-state solution remains the only realistic proposal for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which the moral and political integrity of each side wins and the chance for future cooperation between the two states can be achieved.

Rule of law

Treacherous

I looked at the statement, “The Tehran regime is not an anti-imperialist force in any meaningful sense”, in the motion to the Stop the War Coalition conference.

This is pure nonsense. All it really states is the subliminal sectarianism that ‘only a socialist-led working class’ can provide opposition to imperialism. The next sentence should read: “Iran does not provide arms to the Iraqi resistance.” That would have been more relevant to stopping the war.

US imperialism might want to privatise the 70% state-owned economy of Iran, it might want Iran’s oil and natural gas reserves, or whatever, but the US administration has set about making it easier to use nuclear weapons. What it may want is a testing ground. When the US president looks for permission to pre-emptively nuke Iran, I have to consider this a threat dangerous not only to Iran, but to the world.

We are talking about a truly insane idea that is too gruesome to penetrate most of our realities. It goes beyond US support for Pol Pot. The political nature of Iran is moot to this consideration. That’s why I insist that solidarity with those suffering injustices in Iran should be a separate campaign and not be an anti-war campaign platform that merely echoes imperialist justifications for genocide. It sort of defeats the purpose - no to war but yes to war.

It is shameful that at a time when we should be highlighting US torturers the UK has a military alliance with that country. It is outlandish and treacherous to the anti-imperialist cause not to defend the target nation against the aggressor nations with as much forcefulness as possible. Iran’s political make-up, like all colonies or neo-colonies, should not be dealt with within the same breath. There is a big difference between potential genocide and local oppression. Also, suggesting that the US threat is a US/Iran conspiracy is churlish and politically indecent.

When is the CPGB going to get back to its Leninist roots and uncompromisingly combat the populist puritanism of the modern left which embraces both tokenism and economism?

Treacherous

Oxymoron

John Wight says that the term ‘reactionary anti-imperialism’ is an “oxymoron, if ever there was one”. He appears to substitute inter-capitalist rivalry for the class war and approvingly supports the rise and strengthening of a national capitalist class. How does such confused analysis act in the interests of the international working class?

Lenin’s anti-imperialism theory made the struggle in the world not one between an international working class and an international capitalist class, but between imperialist and anti-imperialist states. The international class struggle which socialism preached was replaced by a doctrine which preached an international struggle between states.

According to Lenin’s theory, imperialist countries, such as today’s USA, deprived of their superprofits, would no longer be able to bribe their workers with social reforms and higher wages; the workers would therefore turn away from reformism and embrace revolution. Uh huh - and pigs might fly!

Instead, ‘socialism’ has become associated with militant nationalism rather than with the working class internationalism it had originally been. The political struggle is now to be seen as a struggle not between the working class and the capitalist class, but as a struggle of all patriotic elements - workers, peasants and capitalists together - against a handful of traitorous, unpatriotic elements who would have sold out to foreign imperialists.

Reactionary anti-imperialism indeed and not a truer word said.

Oxymoron

Answer me

My letter of August 30 contained a direct question to James Turley, a member of the CPGB’s youth organisation. Up until that time James had been forthright about replying to me, in these pages, on the UK Left Network e-list and in personal emails. Then all of a sudden there was silence. Now James is clearly still politically active, as he has written elsewhere in this journal and in your youth paper, so it seems that some political censorship, either personally on himself or externally applied, is at work.

I repeat my question in the hope of a reply from James or any other CPGB supporter who can explain away the contradiction in James’s position. This is, after all, a fairly central question for the CPGB at this time, so achieving some political clarity on it would be useful.

James and I had a discussion on UK Left Network about what the response of communists should be to an attack on Iran by imperialism. At the end of that discussion we agreed on the following two points: that ‘The main enemy is at home’ is not an appropriate slogan to use in Iran when the imperialist attack comes; and that the Iranian working class would have a greater enemy in the form of the US-UK imperialist invaders and that the independently organised workers should bloc with any other forces, including the regime, to the extent that those other forces also fight that greater enemy.

I noted that James is, correctly, not politically on the side of the Iranian regime in any way and therefore asked what exactly the nature of this bloc is?

It seems clear to me that James must be arguing for a military bloc with the Iranian regime if they fight back against an imperialist attack. I certainly hope that he is not for giving them any political support and therefore cheerleading and whitewashing them like the Socialist Workers Party does.

I remain hopeful that he can provide some clarification.

Answer me

Sycophants

All socialists should rejoice at the news of the expulsion of Galloway’s three sycophants from the SWP. It is to be hoped that this marks a genuine left turn, bringing the party back to serious class-struggle politics and foreshadowing a break with the misogynist, homophobic, corrupt, narcissistic, authoritarian, Stalinist/neo-Ba’athist demagogue and his jihadi and careerist, petty bourgeois, communalist allies.

However, it must be emphasised that it was Rees and German who were ultimately responsible for these wasted years - not Wrack, Hoveman and Ovenden, who clearly took the ‘There is no god but Galloway’ line a bit too literally, especially when John Rees ceased to be his prophet.

Once again, in the face of the death agony of Respect, the key task of all socialists is to regroup in a broad, multi-tendency, class-struggle party, uniting militant trade unionists, NHS campaigners, defenders of council housing, pensioners’ activists, environmentalists, feminists, LGBT activists, anti-racist campaigners and as many left groups as possible, so that we are never caught off guard by snap general elections and other Brownite machinations.

Sycophants

Proud

I joined the Al Quds rally as well. I seem to have been at a totally different event to Tatchell. What a sad, bizarre person he is.

I must stress how proud I am to stand alongside my muslim, Palestinian and Iranian friends - unlike Tatchell and his minority fetishes.

Victory to the resistance!

Proud

Better bet

Carey Davies claims that the recent revival of Conservative fortunes poses a threat to the left. Really? How much of a threat?

The chief fault of the article is the solution it advocates: Marxist ‘unity’ and a ditching of any ‘reformism’. Well, look around you. Is the UK ready for a full-blown Marxist programme? I don’t think so. Do we see capitalism on the verge of collapse? Well, not in many (or enough) places, I’m afraid. Capitalism looks fairly safe, for now.

In that context ‘reformism’ looks a better bet. Even within the present system, inequality can be reduced and the income of workers increased. That will stop workers voting Tory and us getting something even worse.

Labour remains the best hope for working people. Demanding what is (at the moment) impossible helps nobody.

Better bet

My round

If I am living in “never-never land”, where, may I ask, is Jim Dymond living? Hogarth’s Gin Alley?

My comments on today’s fractured society have nothing to do with David Cameron ( I imagine he lives in a leafy middle class suburb), but are drawn from my observations of life in a block of council flats and my activity as a tenants’ association secretary. I joined the Young Communist League not long after the Cuban missile crisis. I thought the Americans were bullies intimidating their small neighbour, which was trying to build socialism. I wanted to stop the threat of nuclear war and I thought that socialism was the only way of doing this. I still do. And I’m sure that communists were not opposed to solidarity between generations. One of my best friends was a founding member of the Communist Party, but was expelled in the 1940s.

Again my comments on lager are drawn from my own experience. I have had neighbours knocking on my door at 8am begging for the price of a can because they have the alcoholic shakes. Why, Jim, do people drink themselves into stupidity, boosting capitalist profits in the process? Do such people have the ability to fight for the freedom of their class? John Bridge advocates a ban on drinking at meetings. Perhaps it is a principle that should be extended to the whole of working class life. For years, socialist discussions were fuelled by endless cups of tea. Maybe it is a tradition that should be revived.

In the west people are better housed and clad than they were 50 years ago, although much working class housing and clothing is of inferior quality. Better fed? I much preferred my grandmother’s cooking - which by Wednesday would be more pearl barley and potatoes than anything else and sometimes would consist of latkes with mashed potatoes - to today’s convenience foods and takeaways. A mixture of lager and kebabs puked up by the drunk does not improve the quality of our streets.

Capitalism is a society rotten with decay. Do we wallow in that decay like pigs or do we stand up like human beings and fight in a disciplined way for a world where working people are at last truly free?

My round

IRSP politics

Mark Kevson asks, why support the Irish Republican Socialist Party, given it is “minuscule” and has little support among the Irish working class (Letters, October 11)?

Well, it is not for communists in Britain to advise, let along tell, the Irish people to whom they should lend their political support. But surely it is politics which counts, rather than numbers? Otherwise, we should all of us just give up now! But, of course, we all know from history that those advocating liberation and emancipation always start off as small, sect-like minorities, before building and developing strength, before ultimately becoming irresistible and irreversible majorities.

My understanding is that the IRSP stands for national liberation and socialist revolution in Ireland, expressed as three fundamental objectives:

l The end of partition and the reunification of the island of Ireland, with the complete removal of the British political and military occupation in the north;

l The ending of British/European imperialist domination over the whole of existing divided Ireland;

l And the common ownership and control of the whole of the resources of Ireland by the working people of Ireland, for the benefit of the working people of Ireland.

That is, for the working people of Ireland to be united, sovereign, independent, self-determining, and to exist as equals and in peace with the peoples of Britain, Europe and the world.

Further, the IRSP argues that all three fundamental objectives are dialectically interconnected, interdependent and reinforcing: ie, all must be progressed together, as part of an integrated and coherent revolutionary political and military strategy.

As to the INLA, my understanding is that the organisation is currently on cessation, accepting that the votes in the referenda - on both sides of the partition border - on the Good Friday agreement meant there was currently no political basis for a military campaign. This does not, of course, equate to IRSP/INLA support for the GFA, which, on the contrary, represents a defeat for republicanism and socialism.

I struggle to think how any decent and principled socialist or communist could disagree with any of the above ...

IRSP politics
IRSP politics