Letters

Only racists

Nick Rogers’ article is a typical example of ultra-leftism when it comes to bourgeois elections, which turns ‘No vote for bourgeois parties or candidates’ from a tactic into principle (‘No vote for Obama’, October 30). According to the ultra-leftist view, workers or communists must never choose between bourgeois parties or candidates.

Luckily, the majority of workers usually ignore the sectarian advice of these wiseacres. In the majority of cases, workers do not need to choose between bourgeois candidates, but in some cases they do and should make a choice based on certain specific situations. It is clear that the recent presidential election in the US was such a case. If this is not understood due to blindness, it means that the Hitlers and the Le Pens, etc, can walk into power with the aid of the ultra-left communists.

Supporting a vote for Obama, America’s first black presidential candidate with a serious chance to win, in this particular election and at this time, was semi-progressive, considering the historical background of America, because voting for Obama contained an important anti-racist component, while at the same time it helps those who want to develop an anti-imperialist movement, to show that colour or sex makes no difference when it comes to class politics.

I imagine that only professional racists and far right would have backed the ‘No vote for Obama’ line.

Only racists
Only racists

Old trick

Tony Clark’s suggestion that Paul Flewers “soft-soaps” the Nazi regime is an old trick of apologists for Stalinism. I have read nothing from Paul which would even suggest this.

The fact is that the Soviet regime formed a pact with Nazi Germany, which divided up Poland and other territories. Stalin’s faith in his pact with Hitler lasted till Operation Barbarossa was actually underway. Not only did Stalin try to become part of Hitler’s alliance with Japan and Italy, but the Soviet regime actually deported German communists back into the clutch of the Nazis, whilst not even attempting to secure the release of those who had already been incarcerated in the concentration camps.

Much as Tony Clark might not like it, the fact is that the Soviet Union was a state based on terror and did indeed compare badly to western democracies. Clark mentions lynchings in the United States, but even if we accept that up to 10,000 people were so murdered, then that is a tiny proportion of the numbers killed and tortured in Stalin’s Russia. Since Paul Flewers was comparing capitalist democracies at that time with the USSR it is unsurprising that he doesn’t bring into the equation the slave trade or indeed Pol Pot!

Socialists rightly supported the Soviet Union against Hitler’s Germany. Not because of the appalling regime in the USSR, but in spite of it. It was the existence, in however deformed a way, of a socialised economy that meant socialists applauded the defeat of the Nazis. However, it was precisely the dictatorship of Stalin (not the proletariat) that was responsible for the catastrophic mistakes that led to the death of millions of Soviet troops. No preparations had been made for Hitler’s breaking of the pact. Likewise Stalin and his henchmen bear the major responsibility for the triumph of German fascism in the first place with their absurd ‘third period’, whereby the SPD were termed social-fascists.

Perhaps Stalinists and their apologists like Tony Clark might ask themselves why, not only did the Soviet Union and its satellites collapse but why it is that in eastern Europe and Russia the communist parties to this day have alienated people from socialism and communism. But, then again, maybe Tony Clark is going to provide us with some sophistry as to why today’s Russian Communist Party is engaged in a de facto red-brown alliance with Russian fascists.

Only in Tony Clark’s fantasy world can the term ‘tolerant’ be applied to Stalin!

Old trick
Old trick

Lessons

I see that Dan Read and Dave Isaacson still fail to learn the lessons of history and are still stuck in full 1905 Bolshevik mode (‘Old wine, new bottles’, November 6).

Faced with the potential for a united front of all radicals in education, they still seek to impose a Marxist programme on it. They complain that other Leninists are “opposing our attempts to force the Marxists in the room to openly come out as such”, as the “conference then went on to vote down our attempt to fill this formulation with concrete meaning - ie, by committing the new student grouping to the ideas of Marxism.” There “is no desire for [Another Education Is Possible] to become a vibrant, democratic student organisation”, they assert.

Yet Read and Isaacson also have no such desire, for they want it to become a Leninist student organisation. Can they not see that if their amendment “on the need for a Marxist programme” was passed then all non-Marxists would be automatically excluded from the organisation? They moan that “incredibly, in a room full of self-proclaimed Marxists, the [Education Not for Sale] comrade who spoke won a round of applause for stating that he was ‘not a Marxist’.” If they got their way, that comrade (and others like him) would not only not be a Marxist: he would not be a member!

I’m all for political tendencies “seeking to win [others] to their politics” and despair at attempts to “dumb down our politics” for the sake of recruiting. However, I fail to see how turning a united front into yet another Leninist sect will help this - unless, of course, it is to exclude anarchists and other libertarian socialists from winning others to our ideas within it.

Then there is the question of what ‘Marxist’ programme this would be, given how divided the Marxist sects are (as they note, the left “cannot even unite around these insufficient and vague politics”). Assuming that the various sects could agree on such a programme, where does that leave those who do not confuse state ownership with socialisation? So I object to the identification of a “Marxist programme” as a “programme for socialism”. I agree it is “the masses that we want to win to socialism”, but I would suggest that what the CPGB, like Lenin’s Communist Party, considers to be “socialism” would not be what anarchists, the Socialist Party of Great Britain and others would consider as such. But I guess our opinions would not matter in any CPGB-approved organisation as, by definition, we would not be in it because we would not subscribe to its “Marxist programme”.

Finally, I see that Read and Isaacson desire “a programme capable of providing the leadership we need”. I assume that they are speaking for themselves with that “we”, as I know few anarchists who think we need “leadership” of the kind suggested by would-be Bolsheviks. As with the soviets in 1905, we consider attempts to impose party programmes on popular organisations as a hindrance to the task of changing society.

Lessons
Lessons

Two tactics

The editorial introduction disparaging “halfway house left unity”, which was added to my article last week, suggests that CPGB comrades either have not understood my argument or have deliberately misrepresented it (‘The communist fight for one party’, November 6). Considering it must be the former and not the latter, I will try to clarify it.

It is not an argument between communist party versus halfway house party. All communists must be in favour of one communist party for the world working class. We are not in favour of a variety of national communist parties. This is an argument between Trotskyist internationalism and Stalinist nationalism. I stand four square with Trotskyism for an international party. Comrades may argue for a very democratic Stalinist party. But, to quote somebody famous, ‘You can put lipstick on a pig and it’s still a pig’.

The second set of differences are over how we fight left reformism in the working class movement in the UK. The correct communist tactic is to make the left reformists an offer they can’t refuse. I described this as an “historic compromise” made in the interests of working class unity. This crisis of capitalism makes this demand urgent. The communists must propose immediately to the left reformists a republican socialist party to unite the left.

Workers will then understand the problem of unity is not caused by the sectarian theories and activities of the communists. The demand for a republican socialist party is an offer the left reformists cannot refuse, except at a high price. There are three reasons why they might refuse a joint party with communists.

The first reason is that the left reformists are themselves sectarians who are against unity with communists. The second is their half-hearted, vacillating, inconsistent and cowardly attitude to democracy and the democratic rights of the people. They claim to be republican, but run away from it.

The third reason is because of the failure of the communists themselves to put the reformists on the spot. Most communists have opportunistically adapted to Labourism. They are just as half-hearted, vacillating and inconsistent on democracy. The opposite side of opportunistic Labourism is communist left sectarianism. Opportunism and sectarianism are two sides of the same rotten politics.

Consequently communists are politically incapable of putting forward an offer the left reformists can’t refuse. Happy times for the left reformists. They only have a politically useless bunch of communists before them.

Where in this mess does the CPGB stand? The CPGB tactics are to oppose a joint party as an unprincipled compromise. Hence the “halfway house” slogan. But the CPGB doesn’t like the impression given to workers that it has a sectarian policy. So the CPGB says if the reformists set up a party then the CPGB will follow them. So we have sectarianism backed up by tailism.

Two tactics
Two tactics

Multipolar

Many on the left argue that things have not changed. Chomsky, Zinn, Petras and Ticktin have all claimed that the US is in firm control and see the rising multipolar alternative as merely an historical aside of some sort.

Nor do they provide any perspective of US imperialist decline, in favour of the somewhat distant, quasi-religious, revolutionary potential of the proletariat. They see nothing progressive in the shifting ground of world power relations and a replacement as merely ‘old boss bad, new boss bad’. Yet this is entirely a misreading of what has been happening since the end of the cold war, and the rise and fall of US triumphalism.

The financial crisis, which had been fermenting for some time, had its roots in the thrashing of western industry. Yet the real significance of this weakening of imperialism is that US ability to maintain itself as a military force has been undermined, not only in two wasteful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but through losing all credibility as a world leader. This on a political level has brought powers that previously tiptoed around the United States onto the world stage. The playground bully has been stood up to, with Russia over Georgia and the missile shield, China giving interest-free loans to African countries, and even Zimbabwe managing to resist western ploys for regime change.

Far more a threat to US power than the nascent forces of world revolution is the drift away from neoliberalism that has seen Russia and China discuss ways to decouple from the US dollar. France and Germany have stalled the bailout process, with Sarkozy pushing towards direct regulation of the banks.

The multipolar power that is emerging is a post-imperialist bloc. This historical turn is reminiscent of Lenin’s vision of a union of ‘free and equal’ nations within the world. If not socialist, at least free from imperialism.

The nightmare of the 20th century - the cold war between two historical anomalies, asymmetric ‘socialism’ and unipolar imperialism - has a resolution in bringing human evolution itself onto a path more in tune with the course of the renaissance, the enlightenment and all that emerged out of the dark ages to embolden man with hope. Not just from old Europe that swallowed up the world’s cultures, but a new path towards free, indigenous development, so as to make real steps towards a world revolution, unafraid of the might of the US and the dollar.

Multipolar
Multipolar

Pointer

Comrade David Douglass defends the Red Army Faction (Letters, November 6). As revolutionaries, we should naturally sympathise with the RAF, even while we need to oppose their strategy.

But then comrade Douglas suggests that it is the role of revolutionary organisations to take up weapons and apparently to emulate the RAF. Even today in Latin America there are groups who hold similar positions that result in the occasional kidnapping and bank robbery, but this does not advance the struggle of the working class as a whole.

I believe the revolutionary party is analogous to the ‘point man’ used in battle in most armies. The point man does not fight. He goes ahead of the troops to see what is ahead, where the enemy is and how strong they are, and reports back to his side in preparing an attack. The point man is not a general, deciding for the army how to fight. He is usually a private. Similarly, the revolutionary party needs to go ahead of the class in order to warn and prepare the class for the battles coming in the future, without deciding for the working class how to fight.

The ‘left’ throughout the world is full of generals. But we need instead point men for the future class war, which is imminent, even if we are just privates.

Pointer
Pointer

Blame game

To my mind Tony Clark seems to be arguing against himself (Letters, November 6).

Objectively you can’t blame Joseph Stalin for the political counterrevolution of the 1920s. He was only the embodiment of the bureaucracy that came to the fore. If Stalin hadn’t been there it would have been someone else: as a person he didn’t go out of his way to lead the revolution down a blind alley.

Equally so you can’t blame Trotsky. Tony rightly points out that Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolshevik Party were united on the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat with the peasantry having only a supporting role. Furthermore there was no disagreement between Lenin and Trotsky over the theory of uneven development and the possibility of socialism in one country. Trotsky (like Lenin) had been stressing the limits of socialist development in backward countries for years and linking any success with the European revolution.

Regarding the banning of factions, Trotsky did indeed (correctly) support that. However, in 1921 there was still a very real possibility of a European revolution, which ultimately was the main focus of the Bolsheviks. Strict party discipline therefore was essential to maintain party unity, with regard to encouraging revolution in Europe. Nevertheless by the mid-1920s circumstances were very different. With the prospects of European revolution receding, the ban on factions was being cynically manipulated by the triumvirate to stifle debate over the future direction of the party. Appointed party secretaries generated opinion, in an atmosphere which didn’t encourage rank and file members to hold or express their own thoughts.

Trotsky was by this time fighting on the other side of the fence, arguing for the restoration of factions in order to promote debate, encourage inner-party democracy and reinvigorate the masses.

Finally concerning Trotsky’s expulsion from the party. As a committed Marxist he could do nothing else but oppose the party and government that had degenerated into the rule of a single leader. By 1927 there was no room for Leninists inside the Soviet Communist Party.

Blame game
Blame game

Monster

It is often said that if one is in a hole then it is best to stop digging. So, while Andrew Northall has gone on from defending Stalin’s purges to condemning “permissive PC liberalism”, he has handed Tony Clark his shovel, no doubt, in order for him to bury me and my co-thinkers (Letters, November 6). However, all the dynamic duo have done is to succeed in digging a deeper grave for their cause.

Yes, say messrs Northall and Clark, Stalin did some naughty things, if only to a “minuscule” proportion of the Soviet population, but look at capitalism …

I am not a novice in this business; I’ve been a Marxist for 30 years. I do not need telling that capitalism has been responsible for all manner of atrocities, particularly in its colonialist and imperialist adventures. The slave trade and the intentional massacres of indigenous people in America and Australia were barbarities of the first order. Then there was World War I, with its 10 million deaths; World War II, with its 50 million deaths, including Hitler’s holocaust and the first use of atomic weapons (I shall draw a discreet veil across the Daily Worker’s support for that last act); the Korean and Vietnam wars; the continuing policies that lead to deprivation and starvation. The death toll of capitalism is vast. I have no intention of “soft-soaping” such things.

However, just because capitalism has a murderous history and indeed present, that is no reason to exculpate Stalinism. But that is precisely what our Stalin fan club is trying to do. The tragedy of Stalinism was not merely its hefty human cost, but that its atrocities were carried out in the name of human liberation. Do our Stalinist friends not understand the damage that this has done to the cause of socialism?

Clark’s letter also raises an issue that goes beyond the matter of Stalin’s crimes, and that is the question of how a socialist regime should deal with political dissent. I am not saying, in the way that cold warriors (and indeed some Stalinists) do, that there was a direct ineluctable course from the Bolsheviks’ bureaucratic dealing with socialist opponents after the October revolution to Stalin’s great terror and the Moscow trials. The Bolsheviks needed, as any socialist regime would, to defend their regime against counterrevolution. But their inability to deal politically with leftwing dissent both outwith and later within their party once they had taken power left a disconcerting precedent, one which unscrupulous and paranoid types such as Stalin could use for frightful purposes.

Mistakes made by the Bolsheviks after 1917 cannot be undone. We are stuck with the reality that the regime set up by the sole successful workers’ revolution had become a totalitarian monster within two decades. But we can learn from the Bolsheviks’ mistakes and, if there are no ready-made formulae that can satisfactorily deal with dissent within the ranks of an organisation and amongst different leftwing groups and individuals and as a result strengthen the whole movement, then at least we can start to deal with our own disagreements in a comradely, intelligent and constructive manner.

The recent debate on the Middle East between the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty shows how far we are from adopting such an approach.

Monster
Monster

Book burner

It is very strange to be denounced in the pages of the Weekly Worker for having agreed to read a book. But that is the gist of the denunciation of me in the article by Tony Greenstein (‘Anti-semitic conspiracist’, November 6).

I am denounced for agreeing to read The Jewish century by Yuri Slezkine. I’m sorry to disappoint the readers of the Weekly Worker, but I cannot do a review right now because I have not finished reading it. I can say that what I have read of it provides some interesting insights and theorisation on the historical background to the rise of anti-semitism in the 19th and 20th centuries. It also provides some useful insights into parallel forms of bigotry around the world against peoples such as Armenians, overseas Chinese in south-east Asia and also against gypsies.

Tony Greenstein thinks that there is something discreditable about agreeing to read this book. He does not explain exactly why. His sole reason for saying it is discreditable is that it was recommended by the Israeli jazz musician, Gilad Atzmon. When I agreed to read it, I did some research, and discovered that Yuri Slezkine is a highly regarded Jewish author and professor at Princeton University in the US. Someone else discovered this too, and posted the following pedigree of the book on Tony Greenstein’s blog:

“Winner of the 2005 National Jewish Book award; Ronald S Lauder Award in Eastern European Studies, Jewish Book Council; 2005 Wayne S Vucinich Book Award, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies; 2004 Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Religion, Association of American Publishers.”

Embarrassed by the pedigree of Yuri Slezkine’s book, which was posted by someone using the name ‘Sensei Disgustible’, Greenstein promptly deleted the posting. This reminds me of the kind of petty falsification associated with the Stalinists, who removed inconvenient information (and pictures of individuals) from the historical record.

This pedigree completely debunks Greenstein’s scandalous and bizarre innuendo that anyone who agrees to read this book is in some way guilty of a breach of socialist ethics. His is a totalitarian method. Has the Weekly Worker, in publishing this article, now changed its mind and decided that the fatwa against Salman Rushdie for The Satanic verses was correct after all?

As was pointed out by commentators on Greenstein’s blog, Yuri Slezkine is also the author of a number of other books, including In the shadow of the revolution: life stories of Russian women from 1917 to the Second World War and Arctic mirrors: Russia and the small peoples of the north, not to mention Between heaven and hell: the myth of Siberia in Russian culture. Does Greenstein, or for that matter the editor of the Weekly Worker, think it discreditable to read these also?

This bizarre denunciation is typical of Greenstein, whose campaign against the Socialist Workers Party for refusing to treat Atzmon as a Nazi allies him with the worst racist, totalitarian Zionists, and amounts to witch-hunting the SWP itself. Atzmon is a confused and idiosyncratic Jewish thinker with a one-sided take on Jewish identity that should indeed be criticised (rationally), but who also seems to be motivated primarily by disgust at the crimes of his own (Israeli) government and ruling class against the Palestinians. Greenstein believes that not only should Atzmon be denounced as a Nazi, but that anyone on the left who disagrees with that characterisation should be effectively slandered as pro-Nazi and anti-semitic too.

Greenstein’s ‘polemic’ here implies that Slezkine’s books should be burned just because Atzmon recommended reading one of them. Doesn’t that remind you of what the Nazis used to do?

Book burner
Book burner