Letters

Prioritise

I found the report on the latest CPGB aggregate most interesting (‘New Labour terminal crisis demands radical rethink’, June 5).

The CPGB should give priority to work with Hands Off the People of Iran and Communist Students over the coming period. Whilst any developments in the Labour left and the Communist Party of Britain should be regularly reported, work within New Labour should be given a back seat.

As the discussion at the aggregate made clear, it will be necessary for communists to rebuild working class consciousness, including through standing in elections. The work that led to the recent affiliation of Aslef and PCS to Hopi should be repeated in each and every TUC-affiliated trade union.

Hopi work will enable communists to introduce high politics and internationalism to the most advanced activists of such basic working class organisations. It can also be developed worldwide, given the large online readership of the Weekly Worker in the Anglo-Saxon countries, especially the US.

Prioritise
Prioritise

Careful now

David Douglass speculates about the fear of the “insurgency in Ulster ... meet[ing] up with militant trade unionism here” (Letters, June 5).

Of course, the so-called insurgency met up with militant trades unionism - not in Britain, but in Ulster itself in the form of the Ulster Workers’ Council, which put an end to power-sharing.

Be careful what you wish for, David.

Careful now
Careful now

Stalinists

The May 29 Weekly Worker was most interesting - in particular comrade Mike Macnair’s response to comrade Tony Clark over Stalinism and comrade Jack Conrad’s recollections of France 1968.

Mike stated that “the proletariat as a class can only maintain control of its own organisations (trade unions, parties, states) by freedom to organise collectively for particular goals within them”. When comrade John Pearson organised for the goals of a broad organisation within the CPGB, he was speedily expelled.

After the 1968 events some revolutionary comrades maintained that there could have been a revolution in France, if only there had been a revolutionary leadership. If only. By 1968, Stalinist leaders in the various western communist parties had long either been expelled or demoted. In particular, comrades Marty and Villon were booted out of the PCF in 1954.

Stalinists
Stalinists

Right warning

I am enclosing a contribution towards the Weekly Worker fighting fund because this is one of the few papers on the left which appears to be moving towards open debate and open-minded discourse.

But it has to be said that the dogma of political correctness sometimes triumphs over Marxist humanism. It would appear that the terms ‘homophobia’ and ‘islamophobia’ are bandied about without being questioned as shameful attempts to silence critics by labelling them as having a psychiatric illness. This type of verbal abuse has no place in socialist politics and socialist democracy.

It is probably the case that 95% of the population is heterosexual and, while they will be persuaded to be tolerant of homosexuals, etc, they may never agree that it is an acceptable lifestyle for society to encourage. This is something Marxists should seriously consider when lecturing the working class - otherwise when you come to power those who think otherwise would be persecuted and repressed and subject to imprisonment and corrective institutions (the Stalinist USSR) again!

The grievances of the English working class must be explained and understood and not condemned out of hand as ‘racist’, especially when poor working class communities are struggling over the eroding value of their incomes and scarce resources being rationed and withheld by the state. Preaching ‘no immigration controls’ as the answer to ‘white racism’ is a gift to the far right, the Tories and New Labour. They will simply point to what happened in South Africa recently, when the destitute shantytown immigrants were attacked by the suburban South African sub-proletariat.

And is it serious to argue for no borders when criminal gangs and drug-dealers, and all kinds of criminal gangsters, want to come and go and, no doubt, apply for social housing and welfare? The fact is that Britain offers welfare support and one, two or five million extra unemployed benefit-seekers would simply provoke a lurch to the right amongst those British communities taking the credit crisis on the chin.

The irresponsibility of the left in limiting itself to strikes, militancy, shouting loudest on demonstrations, selling newspapers and recruiting students (1970s) is now coupled with political correctness (1980s, 1990s, etc) as a pathetic substitute for developing a politics relevant to the early 21st century. The key mistake since 1968 has been to reject the European working class for all kinds of substitutes - usually third world dictatorships, whose human rights records were worse than that of the Stalinist Soviet Union. Every day one sees the majority of the European working class further retreating because no-one is interested in them except as fodder at election time, and as ‘dead wood’ when it comes to replacing them in the competitive struggle for jobs and downsizing.

The Weekly Worker has also pandered to the worst kind of leftwing anti-semitism in certain articles, ostensibly arguing against ‘Zionism’, but the hatred of Israel simmers underneath and occasionally boils over into ‘Yes, I want to destroy Israel’ type statements. To me it does not matter if this is accompanied by the qualification, ‘Yes, but I’m a Marxist’. It serves well the reactionary pseudo-‘anti-imperialism’ of Arab nationa1ists and their allies. It is too simplistic and plays into the hands of the far right. Thus ultra-leftism appears to the outsider as a point in a circle joining it with fascism and Nazism.

This is another example of the poverty of political development of the Marxist left. That such arguments should still have to take place since anti-semitism was rekindled and used by Stalin and the Soviet Union as a ploy to garner favour with the Arab world against America, turning the Marxist left in Europe into the pawns and cheerleaders of Russian chauvinism and anti-semitism masquerading as radical politics. Too bad the generation of 1968 has not grown up enough to realise it was conned and did not have the critical insight to question their hatred of Israel and all things Zionist.

Right warning
Right warning

Same mistake

‘Stages or combined tasks?’ was an interesting piece by Torab Saleth, who rightly picks the central weakness of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution (June 5). The concept of transition between two revolutions, even when made permanent, is still within the same theoretical space as revolution by stages. This is precisely where the confusion in Trotsky’s theory lies.

All three wings of Russian social democracy made the same mistake of starting from the same Darwinist methodology common in the Second International of calling the revolution a bourgeois one simply because Russia had not yet had one. When it became obvious that the bourgeoisie does not want a bourgeois democratic revolution, then revolutionaries had to make up theories of revolution by stages, transitions between two revolutions or a growing over of one to another to confront this reality.

Same mistake
Same mistake

Lessons of 68

I am continuing to read with interest your various assessments of the May 68 political landscape. Mike Macnair’s piece on the politics of the Mandelistas and the International Marxist Group, and in passing some of the other Trotskyist factions, being the latest of these.

More than 50% of his article deals with the dominant ideological underpinnings of the Trotskyist (and much of the rest of the) left’s platform for action and intervention. I think that description is a fair grasp on where many of us stood at that time. Given the thrust of world events of which we were an active part, I don’t think that analysis was such a bad go at making sense of it all.

Mike seems to have missed the point, however, that for the Posadists a different imperative was at work, resulting from their belief in the inevitability of the nuclear war, and their urging of the ‘workers’ states’ to launch a pre-emptive strike against imperialism, He also seems to have the mistaken view that we didn’t make a differentiation between struggles for socialism/communism, workers’ political power and broadly nationalist wars of independence.

If this is the case then he’s wrong. I’m sure he knows of the interminable arguments we had about the differences between ‘supporting’ and ‘defending’ various revolutions and anti-imperialist struggles. While we concluded that most anti-imperialist, nationalist struggles were progressive, and that they would invariably open up the class struggle directly, we also recognised struggles which were more advanced and fighting for some form of socialist independence against all forms of capitalism, native or international.

The Vietnamese in our view were fighting to achieve a socialist society regardless of misleaders and bureaucrats. These were our comrades taking part in a fight we supported. Nationalist wars of independence against imperialism were, yes, progressive, but not necessarily class-on-class wars as such, at that stage (no, we didn’t believe the process had to go through stages).

Mike tells us these ideas have been “disproved”. I think actually what happened is that the process was defeated, in the same way that Marx’s proposition on the terminal crisis of capitalism was defeated - not because either of them was wrong, but that the other side can see what’s happening too and take steps to disarm the process.

The article contains the obligatory reference to the need to build a mass communist party. Mike seems to quote the Socialist Labour League/Workers Revolutionary Party as being more right than the IMG on this issue. But the IMG and others correctly were not trying to re-invent the wheel or class struggle or become Moses. The workers were already engaging in bold, militant and revolutionary actions in their own organisations and communities; they didn’t need some self-declared ‘leadership’ telling them what to do. Our role was to impel the whole process forward and be part of it, not to stand at the side of the road as it marched by, furiously trying to start a new, shiny model march.

So we come to the critical conclusion. It seems to be that the circumstances of 68 and the politics and perspectives of 68 are not applicable today. That, should ‘the left’ proceed from the mistaken view that we are in the conditions of 68, we would be making profound mistakes. That such futures as we sought then are not on the agenda now. That’s right, comrade, but who says they are? This is like some straw man academic thesis, which is set up just for purpose of knocking it down.

I’m at a total loss to recognise much of Mike’s assessment of where we are today by contrast to then. Events have surely changed, and for the worse, but not in the way he describes. Loyalty to the nation-state by the mass unions? Support for ‘lesser evilism’ in conventional politics rather than class-based perspectives in unions?

I don’t see that - there was far more loyalty to the nation-state or the national interest in the 70s (Backing Britain, Callaghan’s social contract, wage restraint, etc). Nobody is into that guff these days. More and more unions are disaffiliating from New Labour and fewer and fewer workers are joining it, or voting for it precisely because it doesn’t represent their own, much higher levels of class consciousness. Mass abstentions from all the political parties are the marked feature of today’s parliamentary and council elections - not through apathy, but because of class-consciousness.

It’s true the unions are not anywhere as militant today as they were in the 60s and 70s, but again that is due to a host of defeats and enforced social engineering of the workforce via mass closures, anti-union laws and loss of strategically placed industries. The remaining ‘soft’ sections of union organisation tend not to have the same class combativity and industrial culture as their big brothers of the 70s, but that doesn’t have anything to do with incorporation or any of that rubbish.

The only way is up, however, and we do have to restart rebuilding basic class self-defence organisations, unions, shop stewards groups and alliances. This process is made more difficult by mass European immigration into low-paid, unprotected, superexploited areas of the economy for a variety of reasons. It’s meant to be that way - that’s why its happening, Poles and other workers weren’t brought here en masse because the British state felt sorry for them, but to drive down wages and expectations and break up entrenched working class communities with traditions and class histories. The divisions are part of the bonus as far as the employers are concerned.

This and the resentment by British workers is nothing to do with some reactionary throwback, though. It’s just a particularly difficult hurdle which the employers have thrown down and over which we much jump. Building joint unions and joint solidarity action and class respect in these circumstances does make rapid advance and even wage militancy that much harder, but that’s the way the class struggle develops.

I get the vague impression that Mike is saying the problems of the present are a result of false perspectives of the past. If that is the case then I totally disagree, except insofar as it was the progressive and successful forward movements of the 60s and 70s which prompted the counter-offensive of the employers and state. We weren’t strong enough and quick enough to organise against this, but we didn’t have Mike’s benefit of hindsight.

I wish Mike would tell us what we should have done, other than build a (successful) mass workers’ party - remembering, of course, we had countless mass workers’ parties being built. Trouble was, the workers didn’t want to join them, because they hadn’t built them.

Seems to me you have the same problem today, Mike. Let’s see how you handle it.

Lessons of 68
Lessons of 68

Naive

Chris Strafford (Letters, June 5) fails to understand my letter (May 29) - just as he also, I fear, fails to understand the consequences of his own politics.

It is true that I did not go with my own proposals at the Reclaim the Campus conference. This was simply due to the fact that Daniel Randall of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty had already put forward a platform that was more or less my “vision for the student movement”. I believe, whether it is “elitist” or not, that we are not going to convince a vast proportion of the student movement of revolutionary ideas at this time. Why? Because there is no mass of active students beyond our own ranks of left activists. Communist Students apparently thinks that by forwarding copious amounts of propaganda for Marxism they will win over the student population. How?

What is first needed is a student movement. This can be achieved around the issues, which are ever increasing, of spiralling tuition fees, attacks on the very nature and power of student unions, a remote and ineffective NUS, and attacks on the general standard of living, whether as spiralling costs or poor student housing. It may take time, but students can be mobilised around these issues.

The purpose of Education Not for Sale is to try and give these fights a wider political character from the outset by placing them in the context of imperialist wars, attacks on other public services, the increasing polarisation of communities, increasing levels of poverty and environmental degradation - namely capitalism. Shouting ‘Marxism’ at students is not going to build a movement. Students need to be convinced we need “radical social change”.

This is not to say that Marxism is for “the anointed few”. I would welcome, indeed encourage, ideological debate within the network, whether as Marxist socialism, eco-socialism, anarchism or whatever.

What I objected to was forcing an acceptance of Marxism as a condition of entry. Beyond this part of their proposals, CS themselves came with no other concrete demands or aims for ENS - just vague ramblings about changes to the NUS and a demand for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Before we get to the revolution, beyond shouting ‘Marxism’ from the rooftops, what are students supposed to fight for?

Nor do I claim that ENS is a revolutionary organisation. It is a network of activists to coordinate their struggles on campuses. Not just already active leftists but those students who want to fight on bread and butter issues affecting them. This is why I wished ENS to be a loose network. When the student population has become more active, when the movement begins to have confidence in itself, then the situation will need addressing. I do not think that a revolutionary organisation can lack any structure or be based on consensus decision-making. Its networks must be nationwide and even be part of an international network. But these must be federalised, not centralised. It is naive to claim the revolutionary anarchist movement needs no structure.

But comrade Strafford is himself naive. By using various titbits of history, he seeks to dismiss anarchism as an “immature trend” and an “inevitable failure”. He is right that anarchists have failed in the past, but history has hardly been kind to communist parties. He is also right that Marxism has won anarchists to its banner - he himself as an anarcho-syndicalist and member of the Solidarity Federation betrayed his libertarianism by joining the ranks of the Leninists. But anarchism and libertarian communism has also won adherents from those who have witnessed the inevitable degradation of communist parties once they have achieved power in the name of the working class.

If Strafford honestly believes that a hierarchal Communist Party claiming to be the vanguard of the working class, its leaders, its “most advanced elements”, with a leadership that considers itself the vanguard of the vanguard, is not “elitist”, or that when in power it would actually lead the masses to a “stateless society of general human freedom”, then he is naive. A Communist Party when in power would be an obstacle to this aim, not a facilitator of it.

David Douglass quite rightly says that we must expect that “our leaders will betray us” (Letters, June 5). This is why revolutionary organisations must work, organise and agitate within the working class, but not lead it. A leadership by the few of the many will always lead to the power of the few over the many.

“Genuine liberation can only come through the self-activity of the working class on a mass scale” (‘Aims and principles’, Anarchist Federation). Not when it is led, not through a vanguard, but through itself. Comrade Strafford used to believe this, but, if he believes that the movement “needs a Communist Party”, then he no longer does - not in reality, whatever pretensions the CPGB have.

Strafford quite rightly (we at least agree on this) proclaims that propaganda by the deed “should have died a death in our movement a long time ago”. Well, quite frankly, comrade, so should communist parties.

Naive
Naive

Nice rant

Chris Strafford’s letter illustrates well the baseless arrogance that afflicts Leninism. He suggests that “Robbie Folkard’s letter is a good illustration of why Marxists should not be scared of putting forward Marxism” and so fails to understand the basic point being made. Sure, Leninists could turn ENS into a new little ideologically pure sect, but it would hardly be a united front working to change society. He reminds me of the Bolsheviks who, faced with the soviets in 1905, proclaimed that they had to accept the social democratic platform and then disband - and were, rightly, ignored.

Somewhat contradictorily, Strafford claims that “anarchists came with no vision for the student movement, no proposals and, quite frankly, no politics. The project of building a movement for radical social change needs more than a loose anti-capitalist network. Lots of anarchists recognise that.” However, we also recognise that movements develop their own proposals and politics based on free debate which do not exactly match even the most ideologically correct platform expounded by a few well-read Leninists. Even the mistakes of any serious movement are better than the most perfect decrees of the most enlightened central committee.

Strafford asserts that the “history of the anarchist movement is one of tailism, be it to the bourgeoisie or to sections of the workers’ movement”. That would explain why anarchists were the first to raise the ideas of mandated and recallable delegates, workers’ councils, direct action, the modern general strike, workers’ control and a whole host of positions Marxists belatedly came to only after they were applied in struggle by libertarian-influenced workers. He falsely proclaims that anarchism has “an inability to arm the working class with the necessary organisation and ideas to achieve workers’ power”. In fact, our vision of a federation of workers’ councils is one Marxists came to pay lip service to in 1917 - although, in reality, it was just a cover for party power.

He claims that Marxism has won “workers from anarchism and other immature trends within the workers’ movement time and time again”. Yet before 1917 it was anarchism that won workers away from the first Marxist movement - social democracy had become as reformist as Bakunin predicted. The apparent success of the Bolshevik revolution reversed that position, certainly, but only because the reality of Lenin’s regime was not well known. When libertarian workers did become aware of this, they overwhelmingly rejected the Bolshevik myth. Sadly for Stafford, few working class people nowadays will dismiss the facts as bourgeois propaganda as many, unfortunately, did then.

Stafford quotes Engels to show how the “anarchist followers of Bakunin discredited themselves”. Suffice to say, Engels is hardly a reliable source on anarchism, attributing ideas to Bakunin he never held. He fails to note Engels’ recommendation to the Spanish workers: namely “to attack the state” by sending representatives to parliament. History was not kind to that strategy, nor (to quote Engels) the notion that “our party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat”. Does the CPGB not mock the Socialist Party of Great Britain for holding this quintessential Marxist position?

Strafford states that when “in practice the anarchists set about revolutionary change, the inevitable failure of their enterprises usually leads to workers abandoning anarchism and moving towards something else”. Somewhat ironically, this “inevitable failure” has hardly been “inevitable,” given how the Communist Party imposed its counterrevolutionary role by state violence in both Russia and Spain. Until then, the revolutions had been remarkably successful. As for the “early period of the Russian Revolution”, does Stafford mean when the Bolsheviks opposed the protests that led to the February revolution? Or would it be their “tailism” in the support for the factory committees, and their subsequent support of one-man management once in power? I would suggest that the Russian Revolution is a prime example of why we should not allow a Communist Party to take power, given how quickly the soviets became a fig leaf for party power (overnight, in fact, before becoming one for party dictatorship within a year).

I do find it ironic to read how “the task of communists is to ensure that the working class acts independently to achieve the necessary hegemony for revolution” when, in practice, this obviously means following the party line (or, to use Strafford’s words, “win[ning] the working class to a Marxist programme”). And party dictatorship was praised by leading Bolsheviks precisely because it overcame any non-party approved ‘independence’ by the workers.

I also found it amusing to read Strafford berate an anarchist for not understanding what direct action is. We do not need to be told it is “not sporadic stunts taken by a few activists; that is elitist”. The arrogance is staggering, given that anarchists have been advocating direct action (strikes, occupations, boycotts and so on) since at least Bakunin. But why let the facts get in the way of a nice rant?

Ending, I would like to reiterate that it seems Strafford is making the same errors of 1905. Yes, like the Bolsheviks then, the communists “came openly and honestly. We did not hide or water down our politics for sectarian gain”. The soviets, rightly, rejected the notion that they “should unashamedly fight for Marxism”. Maybe in 12 years’ time, he may have an opportunity to reconsider his position. Unfortunately for him, what happened subsequently in Russia is too well known (at least outside Leninist circles) to suggest that we will be stupid enough to repeat history as Strafford does.

Nice rant
Nice rant