Letters
Degradation
Comrade Jim Moody (Letters, February 5) does not seem to have got the point of my review of Slumdog millionaire (‘No escape for the millions’, January 29).
It is not that the film does not highlight the poverty and oppression suffered by the Indian masses - it does. Nor that the film departs from the storyline of the book upon which it is based - no problem there. The point is that the author’s message has been deliberately toned down and diverted as a direct result of the commercial interests of Hollywood film studios and Celador, the makers of Who wants to be a millionaire?
Jim says the film is not escapist. I agree and said so in the review - it falls between the “two stools” of escapism and social commentary (which are, of course, virtual polar opposites). But surely Jim has noticed how the film is marketed? Through posters extolling it as “the feel-good film of the decade”, alongside a representation of a smiling slum escapee and his leggy girlfriend, clad in a tiny tunic, while the TV glitter falls all around the winner of Millionaire. This scene of “pure escapism” does not appear in the film, by the way.
Personally I feel that the degradation of art by commercial considerations is worthy of comment.
Alan Fox
London
Degradation
Degradation
Half-baked
Ted North makes the bold claim that “The role of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) in Spain demonstrates the failure of anarchism.” Surely, this is jumping the gun a little bit?
The anarchists, he says, were “badly organised and/or undemocratic” (which one, exactly?) His analysis is typical of state-socialists: the anarchists could not (and cannot) lead a successful revolution due to their “(mis)leadership”, and their failure in Spain was due to their “acquiescence on the question of state power”. As a Marxist, the correct road to follow, in North’s opinion, is presumably one of centralisation, with what he calls “extreme democracy and proletarian internationalism”.
But what exactly are the benefits of centralisation? Is it not true that the early Bolshevik regime was just as unorganised - perhaps more so - than the CNT, who were, like the Bolsheviks, engaged in struggle against the forces of reaction; this despite the latter group’s adherence to Lenin’s democratic centralism? (Perhaps Lenin would say that the Bolshevik disorder was more ‘mature’ than the ‘infantile disorder’ of the anarchists?)
Anarchists could here make a similarly simplistic and half-baked analysis. They could quote Trotsky: “First the party substitutes itself for the class; then the party apparatus substitutes itself for the party; then the central committee substitutes itself for the apparatus; finally, a single dictator substitutes himself for the central committee”; and this will happen again and again. Is this the definite failure of state-socialism? And North has the audacity to say that Iain McKay’s “level of analysis does not rise above sticking two fingers up”!
I imagine Marxists would reply to the anarchists with something like ‘You have to look at the circumstances of the time’. Well, I would advise North to do the same when analysing the role of the anarchists in Spain before jumping to such a half-baked conclusion about the CNT.
Half-baked
Half-baked
Materialist
For David Lee’s information, Marxism is the creation of materialist thinkers, not religious idealists or people claiming to represent a particular racial or nationalist agenda (Letters, February 5).
Nor does the CPGB support Hamas. We are for a democratic, secular solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Not a Jewish state nor a Muslim one. Have you read anything we have written? Or for that matter, taken any notice of Israel’s actual policy towards the Palestinians? Which is to make life as difficult as possible for the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel is not trying to live in peace with its neighbours, but to drive them out.
Israel’s policies are a major reason for the development of Hamas and of Islamic fundamentalism generally. Their logic drives towards a bloodbath, not to reconciliation.
Materialist
Materialist
Bravo
David Lee notes the political collapse of the left into the arms of clerical fascism in their support for Hamas against the Israeli Defence Force. The rot has gone so far that reading the Morning Star or Socialist Worker would make one wonder how far these organisations are prepared to go to be the mouthpiece of Islamism. Hamas is not a socialist organisation, but an Islamist one.
Thus I pose two questions for socialists and communists: do you support socialist and communist parties in Israel and the coming Palestinian state; and, if so, how can these forces defeat Hamas? This must be the real focus of the democratic left. In supporting Hamas, the misleaderships of the confessional sects have already led to anti-semitic verbal, written and physical assaults on Jews and Jewish organisations in Europe - a boon for the fascists and a measure of the degeneration of the left and how far the ideological rot has gone.
It is obvious now that the confessional sects of the left are intellectually and morally bankrupt and the misleaders of 1968 have brought the left to a dead end. Just when the world is crying out for peace and socialism, the confessional sects of the left back clerical fascism in Gaza. Bravo!
Bravo
Bravo
Chauvinist
David Lee tells us he is ashamed that we communists stand on the side of the oppressed people of Palestine, who had their nation stripped away from them by the bourgeois League of Nations and United Nations. They did that in order to give us Jews our own permanent ghetto on the Red Sea at the insistence of the backward Zionists, who ran away from the true internationalist nature of the Jewish people.
Just why exactly do the chosen people of god himself need a nation-state? Surely the world is ours and we can settle anywhere we please without having to turn the star of David into a swastika and bomb babies in the still of the night because we can’t do something as simple as live in peace with our Islamic neighbours?
I’m being a bit cheeky with the use of my Jewish heritage here. After all, great-great-grandpa turned atheist in the 1890s under the influence of Marx, Darwin and Nietzsche. And we’ve been communists and heretics ever since (apart from a second cousin who joined the scientologists a few years back).
But I find Mr Lee’s pride in the Jewish origins of socialism really distasteful. Karl Marx may get all the glory for coming up with the ideas, but socialist theory was and is continually forged in practice by people of all nationalities and faiths. Significant political movements are not the making of a handful of ‘great’ individuals, even if they were Jews.
Finally, it has to be pointed out that Marx’s father had renounced Judaism, and that there are some who think Marx was an anti-semite, based upon their interpretations of his work On the Jewish question, and that he had great admiration for Charles Darwin and accepted evolution as fact.
So how do you reconcile being a proud racial chauvinist with being a communist, Mr Lee? Do you not believe that Palestinians have as much right to exist as any other nationality?
As for your lurid description of some of the less modern aspects of sharia law, you may want to consider that Islam shares a common history with Judaism, just as Christianity does. Given that Islam claims to be the truth in the traditions of those well known Jews, Abraham, Moses and Jesus of Nazareth, the original branch of what would become Islam was more than likely to have been influenced by the Jewish faith.
Chauvinist
Chauvinist
Misleading
Your report on the Convention of the Left says that “Participants from the Socialist Party and Socialist Fight went against the grain, saying we should not be calling for sanctions on Israel” (‘Convention party poopers’, January 29). This gives a very misleading impression of what was debated here.
Socialist Fight is opposed to academic boycotts and regards consumer boycotts as not only completely useless, but counterproductive. We favour workers’ sanctions - the working class via their trade unions and Labour Party branches and CLPs fighting to expel the Israeli national trade union centre, Histadrut, from the International Trade Union Confederation, blocking arms shipments to Israel, etc. We would strive through workers’ organisations to block all cooperation and trade with firms engaged in war industries and in the occupation, such as Eden Springs, which is involved in water extraction from the Golan Heights, or goods produced in occupied lands and labelled ‘Made in Israel’. But to say that mobilising workers to boycott Israeli products is a form of workers’ boycott because they make up the mass of consumers and will be the main targets for building the campaign, as comrade Tina from Permanent Revolution said on their website, is fundamentally wrong.
I will quote from a summer 1986 article, ‘Building solidarity’, in the old Permanent Revolution, which said: “Other activities have mobilised considerable energy, but remain based on the actions of isolated individuals and can never deliver the necessary blows to the apartheid regime. This applies to consumer boycotts and campaigns for picketing stores.” Sue Thomas was right then. And must we point out that the cross-class popular front methods of disinvestment and forming common fronts with the bosses against evil apartheid eased the way for Nelson Mandela to spring his neoliberal trap on the South African workers?
We are for a binational workers’ state in Israel/Palestine. Despite the 80% backing for the war, we also put our faith in the Israeli working class in revolution and the ability of a revolutionary party with the correct transitional method to forge the unity of Arab and Israeli workers, as has happened many times in the past, despite the best efforts of Histadrut.
We are opposed to all actions that target the Israeli nation without class differentiation, just as we are opposed to individual terror, suicide bombs and indiscriminate rocket firing (whilst not in any way denying the oppressed Palestinians the right to fight as they see fit). ‘Critical but unconditional support’ is the correct formulation.
The struggle in the Gaza workshop was part of the fight for class politics against the dreadful popular-frontism that dominated the CL meeting.
Misleading
Misleading
Shocking
The article on the National Union of Students governance review contained a shocking number of errors (‘Where now for student left?’, February 5).
Conference remains and delegates still have to be elected. Indeed, the protection for cross-campus ballot election of delegates is actually stronger than it was previously.
The national executive has been increased in size, not decreased, and the changes in this regard do not especially disadvantage the left at all.
The ‘block of 12’ part-time executive members is gone, but has been replaced by a block of 15. Five of these places are reserved for further education, so for the purpose of “frantic wheeler-dealing” and transfers, it is essentially a block of 10 and a block of five. The SWP will easily be elected to this, and it may well lead to an increase in NEC members for the far left. The issue for the left was that these are no longer paid positions, not that they had been electorally shut out.
The actual criticisms from the left largely centred round the new board of trustees and the new system of ‘zone conferences’. Regardless of my own views on these points, the fact that neither of these are mentioned in your article illustrates that you do not appear to have even read the views from your own side. The litany of errors clearly shows you have not actually looked at the constitution that was passed.
I had considered that reading a document was the normal thing to do before writing an entire published article on it, but I guess such reactionary standards are not required for the Weekly Worker.
Shocking
Shocking
Gaza solidarity
Hundreds of Manchester students have been occupying different university buildings for nine days. The occupations are part of a growing wave sweeping campuses across the world. In Manchester we have demanded practical aid for the people of Palestine, such as scholarships and help with promoting the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal.
The university management has tried several times to break us by closing off the occupation area, but this has always been met by hundreds of students taking to the streets to force the building open again.
At an extraordinary general meeting of the students union on Wednesday February 11, over a thousand students voted almost unanimously to back the occupation and the growing movement against the Israeli occupation and ethnic cleansing. Zionist students had unsuccessfully tried to filibuster the meeting by submitting 16 amendments and at one point calling for a vote of no confidence in their own chair,
On the same day, the Manchester Metropolitan University branch of the University and College Union organised an ‘anti-war teach-in’, attended by around 30 people and featuring speakers from a variety of organisations, including Stop the War Coalition and Hands Off the People of Iran. Moshé Machover (Hopi) spoke on Zionism and later addressed a meeting of around 70 students at the occupation, where he spoke about the situation in Gaza.
He was warmly received at both meetings and enthusiastically cheered at the occupation. Comrade Machover, together with another Hopi speaker, Yassamine Mather (who spoke on the Iranian revolution), shared a platform with Lindsey German. Anything is possible!
Gaza solidarity
Gaza solidarity
Polar
The www.britishwildcats.com website reflects the nationalist far-right intervention into the real crisis faced by all workers in Britain. Real fascist-type rhetoric and very deadly.
In contrast to the left polar opposite views you write about, I think that the Permanent Revolution group has a very good and balanced line on this important labour issue, which can be read at www.permanentrevolution.net/entry/2544.
Polar
Polar
Give me space
It would be easier to take Ted North’s letter (January 29) more seriously if it contained even a slight understanding of the Russian and Spanish revolutions or the limitations of space when writing letters.
He complains that my original letter did not contain “even a hint of criticism of anarchists”! As I was pointing out the errors of his article’s assertions about anarchism, this is unsurprising. Apparently, from my letter, “comrades who do not know the history of anarchism might think this school of thought had never made an incorrect prediction, let alone taken a mistaken action”. It seems that he expects anarchists to start every letter, no matter what the subject, with a mea culpa. Articles and letters would get lengthy if we all did that (particularly Leninists).
As to be expected, he raises the CNT in the Spanish revolution and how it “demonstrates the failure of anarchism”. Strangely, he fails to discuss, let alone mention, the objective circumstances facing the CNT in July 1936 and so we are left with ideological idealism at its worse (“the CNT’s acquiescence on the question of state power was fatal”) rather than serious analysis.
Ironically, he does complain that I ignore that “a brutal civil war, armed and funded by the imperialist powers, and the isolation of the revolution in an overwhelmingly peasant country” were “the primary factors in the revolution’s degeneration.” Yet, if he knew anything about the Russian Revolution, he would know that Bolshevik authoritarianism began before the start of the civil war, with a de facto party dictatorship in place within six weeks of the Czech legion revolt (as shown by the packing of the 5th All-Russian Congress of Soviets).
North proclaims that “a successful revolution” would see the creation of “an anarchist ‘state’ whose lack of organisation would lead to overthrow by internal or external forces”. Ignoring the ideological confusion this expresses, may I simply note that the Leninist state quickly became the dictatorship over the proletariat in order to repress popular opposition from the Russian working class. Strikes were crushed, and soviets were gerrymandered and disbanded to secure party power. By 1919, the “dictatorship of the party” was official dogma.
So, if the “bureaucracy embodied in Stalin” had “liquidated the very people who had led the 1917 revolution,” it was those “very people” who, from 1917 onwards, had “liquidated” every collective working class protest against their rule and ensured the creation of the bureaucracy by forming a centralised state and imposing one-man management in the workplace and the armed forces (ie, “liquidated” the revolution).
For North, the “modern CPGB” does not “dogmatically accept what passed for Marxism in the 20th century” and has shown its “willingness to rethink”. And yet the same old mistakes of the past (electioneering, vanguardism, statism) are all offered as if the 20th century had not happened. This can also be seen from the analysis of the failure of the Russian Revolution offered.
He notes my call for “popular organisations which can take the struggle onwards”, adding that we anarchists “can’t call this a party”. Except popular organisations (“such as federations of community and workplace assemblies”, to quote my letter) are precisely that - not a “party”. He exposes his ignorance of the Russian Revolution by writing anarchists oppose “organisational structures that are both democratic and effective (centralised)”. In reality, Leninists myths notwithstanding, the Bolshevik Party was effective as long as its members ignored the party hierarchy (that is, decentralised). This included Lenin, incidentally.
North proclaims that, whether we “like it or not, the anarchists do form a party. It’s just that they are very badly organised and/or undemocratic.” Undemocratic? Is self-managed organisation (“extreme democracy”, to use his words) undemocratic? As for “very badly organised”, well, what can I say? The constant refrain of Leninists is how “actually existing” Leninist parties are undemocratic and bureaucratic.
He asserts that I had suggested “nothing positive in relation to events in Greece”, which is not true (I noted the need to form workplace and community assemblies). However, my focus was simply pointing out the errors of his politics. He proclaims, again, that “only Marxism” can “guide the working class, and thus all of humanity, to genuine liberation”. Except, as my letter sketched, it has not - something he cares to ignore.
Apparently my “level of analysis does not rise above sticking two fingers up”. Sometimes that is what an article deserves, but need I point out again the space limitations on letters pages? He ends by saying that if I wish “to conduct a serious polemic, we are waiting”. Will I be provided with the appropriate space in the form of an article? Suffice to say, his smug comment that “it would be [his] pleasure to help dispel some myths” suggests the arrogance of someone who neither understands his old politics (being “a former anarchist”) nor his new politics.
Give me space
Give me space
Radical hat
James Turley thinks the response to the oil refinery dispute is to call for a Eurocentric trades union movement, shadowed by an EU-wide Communist Party (‘Critical support for wildcat strikes’, February 5). Sounds like more of the same. If we are going to pretend that they can unite themselves Europe-wide, we might as well dream that they will fight for better pay and conditions. Meanwhile, what happened to the rest of the planet?
Despite various attempts by the left to dress up the oil refinery dispute as something it was not, I have not seen one shred of evidence that this was an action undertaken to unify workers or to improve the lot of the ‘foreign’ workers, who are presumed to be working on below normal rates.
I leave aside the media portrayal, which has irrevocably stamped the strike as a chauvinist move in the eyes of the whole world. Whether we look at the slogans emanating from many of the strikers themselves or the unions’ talk of a ‘level playing field’ and ‘social dumping’, the episode has been wholly reactionary in content. Yet, workers are combative and much could have been achieved with principled leadership - exactly what was lacking from the unions and the left alike.
Despite being an unofficial strike, it seemed to have a high degree of involvement by the union structures, who used it to highlight their own concerns over legal rulings that hinder their right to combat wage-cutting in the contracting sector. It must be decades since the unions put up a fight against any such thing, and I can only think they are acting now to head off the growing restlessness of the workers in the face of the slump.
The left tended to treat this as a trade union action that just needed some different tactical input or more palatable slogans. Wrong. It was essentially a political move on a wholly false perspective. The unions were always joined at the hip with the Labourite tradition of national reformism, and were incapable of a challenge to the rule of capital. As Labour abandoned its old-style reformism, the unions became less and less viable as vehicles for improving conditions, and incapable of defending workers in an age of global economy. They remain wedded to the national base, defending its social partner. To the extent they are effective at all, they police the workers on behalf of capital. The left, which the CPGB is so keen to regroup, lacks any perspective to challenge this, and is thus left searching for a silver lining among the gathering clouds.
The turn to nationalism and protectionism by the unions and the remnants of the Labour left must be confronted by an internationalist perspective; otherwise workers will continue to fall prey to the backwardness of the official movement. Marxists should stand as Marxists and not as trade unionists with a radical hat.
Radical hat
Radical hat
Elephant room
James Turley provides a correct analysis of the line-up of class forces in the Lincolnshire refinery strikes. At the beginning, the Mail and Express were outdoing each other in support for the strike and attacking Mandelson from the right for opposing it. But Turley then goes on to explain the legitimate grievances of the strikers and ends up dismissing his own analysis contemptuously. The only “fly in the ointment” was the dominance of Brown’s ‘British jobs for British workers’ 2007 conference pledge, now “thrown back in [his] face”.
It was not a fly, but the elephant in the room, I would suggest. It was on the basis of ‘British jobs for British workers’ that the walkout happened. The Unite leadership then took this up locally and nationally. The chauvinist posters and placards had Unite slogans on them. The ‘compromise’ deal brokered by the Socialist Party’s Keith Gibson did not repudiate that slogan, although the strike committee apparently did condemn it in their speeches to the mass meetings. And, in the end, the inescapable moment of truth came: the strike was settled on the basis of ‘British jobs for British workers’ - 102 jobs out of 195, to be exact. Applicants are to be vetted by some type of union committee on the basis of their nationality before they get their jobs. The test of ‘Britishness’ was not specified.
This practice is of dubious legality and, as Derek Simpson says, there are similar issues ‘bubbling over’ in all the other sites that came out in support over the employment of ‘indigenous’ workers (he actually used the BNP’s favourite chauvinist word).
We have see the re-emergence of craft unionism, egged on and encouraged by Brown, the Mail and Express, and covered up by all those on the left who supported the strike but opposed the purpose for the strike. We even had some giving lectures on Marxist dialectics on why it was best for Gibson not to put the repudiation of ‘British jobs for British workers’ to the vote in case he lost, as he would have, and then it would have been obvious that the strike had to be opposed. See no evil.
Turley says: “The SP correctly calls for ‘union-controlled registering of unemployed and locally skilled union members, with nominating rights as work becomes available’. But it frames this in the context of Britain alone, not the EU as a whole - and thus in a way which risks feeding into the call for ‘British jobs’.” But how is this “correct”? It does not simply risk “feeding into the call for ‘British jobs’”; that is what it is in another guise. And the re-emergence of the ‘closed shop’, now so strongly demanded, is an appeal to be allowed to discriminate, as they did under this guise in the north of Ireland and in Fleet Street, and so on. The closed shop is one thing when it enforces 100% trade unionism; another when it enforces discrimination.
The British working class has suffered a serious blow. The demands for ‘British jobs for British workers’ will now grow by its success. Reaction has never been defeated by conciliation, but by steadfast opposition. There were such demands in France recently, immediately rejected by the CGT. That is what should have happened here, and then the strike could have been conducted on a very different basis. Now the election between Simpson and Hicks is on the basis of who has the biggest union jack.
Turley ludicrously concludes by saying: “The strikers have instinctively grasped the international implications of their actions.” Well, the Italian Northern League has also grasped it and is demanding the expulsion of British workers employed in Italy. And the Italian CGIL has also grasped it. They said: “What’s going on in Lincolnshire is one of the ugliest pages in the history of the trade union movement in these globalised times: English workers against Italian workers.” No principled trade unionist or socialist should have supported these chauvinist, xenophobic strikes. Being ‘British’ really was a precondition for celebrating this ‘victory’, which the SP are now holding meetings to do. No Italians need apply.
Elephant room
Elephant room