Letters

Billionaires

Nick Rogers make a fundamental error either out of ignorance or as part of the CPGB campaign of misrepresentation (‘Desperate stratagems', November 13). The principle question for communists is the fight for an international revolutionary democratic communist party. All communists in the world should support this and all bourgeois and their allies oppose it. Nick has placed himself in the latter camp. At least a few billionaires will agree with the ‘Marxist’ opposition to such a party.

Billionaires
Billionaires

Leninist sect

I would take James Turley’s assertions more seriously if he spelt my name correctly (Letters, November 20). This suggests that he did not bother to understand my point, but rather went into full-blown auto-response mode.

He claims that I seem “to be in politics for all the wrong reasons”, as the “point of a campaigning organisation is to fight for its aims and - who knows? - achieve them”. Quite true, but irrelevant to the point I was making. He states that an organisation “needs a programme which is capable of fulfilling those aims”. Again, as true as it is irrelevant to my argument.

Apparently, for me, “the point of a programme is instead to massage the fragile egos of all the weird and wonderful types who happen to sign up”. I’m not sure where I implied that, as I clearly did not state it nor suggest that democracy “means anarchists being left to their anarchism, Trots to Trotskyism and so on”. This, he states, “is the most profoundly anti-democratic vision imaginable for an organisation”. Whether this is true or not is irrelevant, as it (again) totally ignores my point: namely that united fronts should not make belief in a specific programme mandatory for joining. If Turley thinks such a group should have a ‘Marxist’ programme, then fine, but it is not a mass student organisation - it is a Leninist sect.

He goes on to state that democracy “requires majority decision-making on stuff that matters - strategy, tactics, programme - otherwise the membership have no power”. Quite, so why pre-empt that decision-making by demanding the organisation subscribe to a ‘Marxist’ programme? But, clearly, a united front is not desired. He pronounces that the “fact that anarchists object to a Marxist programme cannot change the fact that a Marxist programme is basically necessary for ‘another education’. If anarchists disagree, let them polemicise and put forward their own programmes.” Yet, by definition, we cannot within the afflicted group, as it has been lumbered with a programme which will exclude all non-‘Marxists’ from it.

As I repeatedly argued, and Turley repeatedly ignored, demanding that a united front starts with a specific (‘Marxist’) programme means that it is not that at all - it is a Leninist sect. Instead of addressing my real argument, he invents one for me and then runs with it. Nice for his ego, I’m sure, but it does not convince.

He ends by asserting that “the ‘leave me alone!’ attitude is ethically antithetical to working class activity”. How strange. I’m working class, yet my union does not have a ‘Marxist’ programme. I wonder how many members we would have if it did? So, not imposing a specific ideological programme on organisations is commonplace in working class activity (eg, the soviets of 1905).

Programmes should come from struggle, not be imposed at the start. Ironically, he states that “we should be beating it out of people (metaphorically speaking)”. I simply note that the Bolsheviks (once in power) did (literally) beat autonomous working class organisations out of people by, for example, disbanding any soviets which elected non-Bolshevik majorities in 1918.

Turley ends by stating, “politics is serious business, comrade.” Yes, I agree. It is a shame that his reply failed to address the issues I raised. This suggests a lack of seriousness on his part.

Leninist sect
Leninist sect

Opportunity

Much has been said about the leaking of an apparent British National Party membership list of some 12,801 persons, including a lord, a lady, some doctors and reverends, as well as many a Mr and Mrs. It seems that the membership is around 80% male.

That is, if this is indeed a membership list, and not a list merely of people who expressed an interest, intermingled with full members of the party. The source of the leak, reputedly a disgruntled ex-employee who, although wanting to get some revenge on his former friends, perhaps padded out the list with a contact list or two so as not make the BNP seem a small organisation and to spread some alarm about its size amongst the left.

It is reported that there has been a rash of naughtiness on the part of some anti-BNP elements, making nuisance phone calls to people on the list and even reports of a fire-bombing taking place. I would like to urge comrades to take a less violent or juvenile approach, and take the opportunity to send these BNP supporters something to read instead, in the hope that it may catch their attention. The BNP has gained some support amongst disgruntled Labour voters and the white working class - something that the left hasn’t connected to with any success. This list may contain the names of councillors and activists recognisable from May’s local elections, but it is also a list of opportunity - the opportunity to address a number of politically curious people.

Opportunity
Opportunity

No apology

According to Tony Greenstein, my suggestion (in agreement with Andrew Northall) that Paul Flewers had “soft-soaped” the Nazi regime is an old trick by apologists for Stalinism.

The point is that millions of Jewish people - men, women, and children - were stripped naked and herded into industrialised gas chambers and murdered. But, when Flewers compared the Soviet regime to the Nazi regime, the former came out worse, on the grounds that more people were arrested in the Soviet Union than under the Nazis. Flewers doesn’t see the moral difference between deliberate mass murder as a state policy and deaths brought about mostly by incorrect policies. I am not going to apologise for any crimes committed by the Soviet regime, because a more liberal development was possible and no doubt Trotsky’s ruthless suppression of the Kronstadt uprising help to undermine this.

In his latest letter Flewers argues that the regime established by the 1917 revolution “had become a totalitarian monster within two decades” (November 13). The choice of words is very important. “Monster” was not a word used by Flewers to describe the Nazis, if my memory serves me correctly. Yet, comrade Greenstein sees no soft-soaping of Nazism here. Thankfully, and to his credit, Flewers has now decided to take a more balanced view. This was also, correctly, noted by Comrade Northall.

While the Soviet Union did become totalitarian to some degree, this was the political form taken to defend the gains made by the revolution. Given the background of the Soviet regime and the conspiracies against the revolution, no-one should be surprised by this “totalitarian” development, although this has been exaggerated by anti-communists. The truth is that it was the inability of the centre to establish the degree of control it sought which seems to have characterised the Soviet regime.

Opposing any tendency to soft-soap Nazism as the basis of critiquing the Soviet regime is important, especially when British Nazism is engaged in a campaign to make itself more respectable to the voters. This campaign seems to have had some success, with even some leftists falling for the fascist ruse that the BNP is no longer Nazi. It seems that some people on the left are unaware of the fascist ‘hiding our Nazism until we get into power’ strategy.

What should be of concern is that those people who are being deceived by the Nazis are the same people who are in the front line when it comes to a one-sided criticism of Stalin and the Soviet regime.

No apology
No apology

Stageist

Apparently, Jack Conrad is outlining the “communist programme” for Palestine (‘Beyond Zionism’, November 20). Really? Two secular states? His programme is full of incredibly tenuous comparisons (apparently, if you’re not ‘two-state’, then you wouldn’t have advocated Irish independence in the 19th century) and, in many ways, offers solutions that are not solutions at all.

Comrade Conrad argues that we need to fight to “overcome national antagonisms”. Of course. But he then goes on to argue that to do this, there should be two separate states. How does that overcome national antagonisms? Surely, that is just going to exacerbate them. But, then again, there will be full national minority rights in each state, so Palestinians can live in the Israeli Jewish state and vice versa. So why are they being separated again?

Conrad also discusses the agency of change, without fully explaining his own view. He attacks the Socialist Workers Party for apparently relying on anti-working class forces, so let’s take it that he sees the Palestinian and Israeli working classes as the agency. So the working classes in the region have built solidarity through struggle and have collectively overthrown the Zionist state. He argues that they should then fight for two democratic secular states. Why? If the working classes have come to such a point, to such strength, as to have overthrown the Zionist state, why would they then fight for a democratic solution only? Apparently, because they can only “look forward to the eventual unity of the two peoples”.

A nice little democratic stage then. No, comrade, if the working classes have successfully overthrown the Zionist state, in what must be described as a revolution, then they would have to make the revolution permanent, and fight to extend it throughout the Middle East, to Egypt, Syria, Jordan and so on. The struggle against Zionism would move into the struggle for socialism. That would be the only way to protect the gains they had made.

While this may sound far-fetched, in reality it has more chance of success than the “realistic, progressive and humane programme” that Conrad advocates. He talks of the huge hold of Zionism on the Israeli masses and the growing influence of fundamentalist Islam on the Palestinians. So what ideology, what struggle, will ultimately break them from these reactionary paths? Socialism - not the abstract formulations of two democratic states (not that abstract, of course, since Conrad goes to great lengths in outlining exactly where everyone is going to live).

Surely, the programme of revolutionary communists must be for a single, secular, binational workers’ state of Palestine, as part of a socialist federation of the Middle East. It is workers’ struggle and revolution that will heal national antagonisms, that will finally break the catastrophic hold of Zionism and bring peace to the region.

This is far removed from the solutions advocated by Jack Conrad. By arguing for democratic rather than socialist solutions, his approach smacks of stageism, and therefore, worryingly, Stalinism. His “communist programme” offers no real solutions at all.

Stageist
Stageist

Coprologist

Jack Conrad, the Weekly Worker’s resident coprologist, to adapt his own term, treats us to a meandering exposition of his views on Israel/Palestine. Travelling via the holocaust, the British left and Gerry Healy, we arrive at Alex Callinicos, who for no obvious reason is taken both as the authority on why a single (Palestinian) state is not an option and as a starting point for Conrad’s own view that a two-state solution can work.

He acknowledges that the two-state project is being promoted by Blair and the imperialists in order to pacify the region in their own interests, but expounds his own “democratic” variant. This relies on progressive Israelis and progressive Palestinians recognising each other’s national rights. He does not mention whether these are completely new political forces or include the conciliators among the existing Palestinian and Israeli elites. He already has his own views on where the borders would be drawn, but otherwise his scheme is perfectly compatible with the Blair project.

Having followed, up to a point, the argument between the CPGB and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, I concluded that Sean Matgamna’s main problem was that he had lost sight of the independent role of the working class and was focused almost exclusively on conflicting rights to self-determination. Conrad has much the same problem. He ignores the possibility of a united working class fighting for equality, and socialism even, within a shared state.

The objective for Marxists is to foster the unity and independent role of the working class; national rights are subordinate to that. Nationalism, including its religious variants, is closely linked to the interests of propertied classes.

Imperialists are seeking to broker or impose the two-state project through deals with the various nationalist cliques. Conrad, under the influence of democratic illusions, seems willing to act as freelance cartographer. There is little hope of progress of any sort without a challenge to both the Zionist and the Palestinian rulers. With any armchair dreaming about rearranging boundaries, there is always the awkward question of who is going to do it. If it is not the working class, it will be the ruling class doing things their way.

Coprologist
Coprologist

Victim

I was disturbed to read that Dave Spencer felt he and other Democratic Socialist Alliance comrades in the Campaign for a Marxist Party had been subjected to “personal abuse” by Jack Conrad (Letters, November 20). I, for one, could never condone such behaviour; it is uncomradely and risks undermining efforts to develop unity among the Marxist left.

Reading the examples provided by Dave, however, I found it difficult to see how they related to any definition of “personal abuse” that I’ve ever seen. Is it really “personal abuse” to state that someone is “in favour of a ‘halfway house party’”? Even if that claim is wholly inaccurate, it’s hardly an egregious insult. However, comrade Phil Sharpe’s proposals for the CMP programme, heavily promoted by the DSA, seem pretty close to what I’d call a “halfway house”, even if Dave dislikes that particular terminology.

He continues: “Nobody wanted to promote the SA’s People before profit programme [and] nobody suggested contesting elections”. If that’s the case, why then does the DSA website refer to “the DSA proposal that PBP can serve as a template for the democratic development, in dialogue with the struggles of the working class, of the programme of a new working class party for socialism”? Didn’t John Pearson propose precisely such a “template” for the CMP? And didn’t Dave himself put forward a motion to last year’s CMP conference referring to participation in the next general election? Even if I and Jack Conrad were mistaken on both counts, I fail to see how the act of making such statements can be considered either “personal” or “abuse”.

This isn’t the first letter Dave has written on this theme. There have been a number in the last year or two, including a quite frankly ridiculous series in which Dave interpreted Jack’s reasonable view that comrades shouldn’t drink alcohol, even modest amounts, during a serious political meeting as a personal accusation of drunkenness on his part. It was, of course, no such thing.

Looking in the Weekly Worker archives, moreover, I spotted a letter Dave wrote five years ago (March 20 2003) making similar accusations of personal abuse, lies and suchlike against Gerry Byrne, then an Alliance for Workers’ Liberty member, which left her equally perplexed (March 27 2003).

I would respectfully suggest that the comrade spends some time reflecting on how he responds to political criticism. Having one’s views criticised may sometimes be difficult, but it’s not the same as being personally abused. And someone who says things you disagree with is not necessarily a liar. Continually playing the victim is not a good way of developing political debate - not at least if you want people to take you seriously.

Victim
Victim