Letters

SPD model

David Taylor is, I’m afraid, part of the soup of Stalinist thinking from which communism needs to escape (Letters, January 29).

Lenin’s model for communist organisation was not the infallible dictatorship of an elite, imposing “full agreement on definite aims”, but the German SPD - a mass, working class, democratic party, in which various Marxist tendencies argued out policy in front of the working class and put their views to the vote. That gave the majority the right to specify action and the minority the duty to support that action, but also the right of criticism.

Moreover, the SPD organised sporting, cultural and social events within the class. It strove to serve and represent a working class that was conscious of its own interests and capable of expressing its own views. The aim was to enable the working class to act as a ruling class.

The idea was that if workers are told the truth they will both understand it and act upon it. So the party criticised sundry viewpoints, both from within the working class and from outside it, from a rational and scientific viewpoint rather than sweep ideas under the carpet.

So, yes, a communist party does differ radically from a bourgeois party. History demonstrates that this kind of model is not infallible, but it is the only approach that puts the working class in control.

SPD model
SPD model

Unity?

Revo, the youth front of Workers Power, has circulated a call for a “national student coordination” which highlights the significance of the wave of student occupations in solidarity with the people of Gaza, the broadening out to other political issues which is both necessary and beginning to occur, and the deepening recession which means a likely prospect of “increases in education cuts, student unemployment and poverty, even racism and war”.

In all of this we agree with you, comrades. These are significant times and they cry out for a serious response from the left. However, whilst you mention some of its most noticeable recent symptoms, you do not mention what is the defining feature of the period we are entering into - that capitalism as a system is in its most profound crisis since the 1930s. Indeed your statement does not even mention the word ‘capitalism’, let alone the positive revolutionary socialist alternative that we must fight for.

You claim that all of these factors “point to the need for the networks of activists formed around the Gaza movement to form a national coordination to bring all our struggles to the next level”. While we would not be against such a move, we have to point out that what all this really points out “the need for” is a united revolutionary Communist Party, and a united revolutionary communist student organisation.

This is not an issue which we can put off until some undefined point in the future. It is an urgent necessity now! Without such an organisation and the level of revolutionary unity that it entails any activist networks that are set up will be unable to put up the fight that our class - the working class - needs.

You hope to base this coordination on “the networks formed around the Gaza occupations”, the existing left student groups, “anti-war groups and many other student societies”. But nowhere do you mention what political basis you seek to found this coordination upon. It is as though the prime issue for you is who is involved, not why. Of course, both are important. An activist network based upon any politics would be pretty worthless (except perhaps as a recruiting ground for a sect) unless it involved enough people to put up a serious fight. But for revolutionary socialists the politics upon which any activist network is based are hardly unimportant - they are central to what it will go on to do. So why is there no mention of what politics you want this coordination to be based on?

We are sure that you see this coordination as being significantly different from other student ‘networks’ which have been set up, such as Education Not for Sale and Another Education is Possible. But we can see little real difference between them, and neither will the majority of students. Certainly, without laying down a clear political marker any new activist network will struggle to come to much. It will be unlikely to get off the ground at all without the involvement of the larger left groups, but just as in other networks they will be out to dominate it and use it for their own sectarian advantage. Either they would succeed or the network would be consumed by a crippling stalemate. If you fail to get them on board, the most you could hope for is a Revo-plus (in terms of numbers) on a substantially sub-Revo political platform, if your current failure to raise a political basis for such a network is anything to go by.

We are convinced that there are no short cuts. The fight for the revolutionary unity that is necessary to provide effective action is a tough one. But it cannot be dodged. Not if we are to remain true to our goal of communism. We can only win revolutionary unity with a hard fought political struggle against the sectarian and opportunist ideas which predominate in today’s left. This requires a sharp, polemical intervention into the left that wins you few friends in the short term. But it is nonetheless vital. Without recognising where the left is today and accounting for its past we cannot move forward. This does not mean a shirking of our duties regarding the class struggle.

Communists must always be at the centre of the struggles of our class. But we do not seek to deceive advanced workers through concealing the differences and divisions amongst the left (including within our own organisations). Not least because these debates are not the private property of the left, but concern the working class as a whole. If our class is to become a class for itself, able to make revolution and lead society, then it cannot be mollycoddled: it must master the debates of the left, not have them hidden from it.

In absolute contrast to the stultifying regime of Workers Power, where political differences can only be expressed internally, Lenin insisted that the working class have full access to the political debates of the Bolsheviks in order that they may educate themselves to a position where they were capable of leading the fight for the emancipation of humanity. And all of this in a situation far more dangerous and repressive than that which we find ourselves in today.

If an activist network or student coordination is to be of any use today, it must as a priority make itself a centre for the thoroughgoing discussion of differences on the left. Not in the form of some abstract debating society. But as a forum which directly connects these debates with what we need - revolutionary unity in a Communist Party.

For our part, we accept your invitation to attend a national meeting provisionally dated April 18. We wonder why we were not invited to the meeting on February 7 which drew up this statement. Who was present? We have made clear the kind of orientation we think the student left needs to be making. However, we are practically alone on the left in this view at present. Just because we view proposals and forms such as activist networks and the coordination you call for as insufficient, and at present unviable in a successful form, this does not mean that we will absent ourselves from the discussions and forms that exist and are thrown up. It must be said that this proposal is very reminiscent of Workers Power’s flawed call regarding local social forums.

It is positive that various left groups have been able to cooperate enough to organise the free education demonstration for February 25, but this process has not been without problems and the politics upon which it is based are insufficient.

We do not think it is likely that these groups will be able to work together constructively in a permanent loose network or student coordination at this point in time. For the reasons we state above we view your proposal as being insufficient and will not put our name to it. We will attend the proposed national meeting, and consider involving ourselves further based upon what happens at that meeting and between now and then. We hope that you accept these criticisms in the comradely spirit in which they are aimed and that you seriously consider the issue of forging revolutionary unity on the basis of Marxism.

“Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists and opponents and distorters of Marxism” (VI Lenin, ‘On unity’, 1914).

Unity?
Unity?

Half again

Enso White is wrong with his comment on the American revolution (Letters, February 5). The “historical period” that the comrade writes about was not one that somehow limited revolutionary change (as the comrade appears to imply), but actually provided the conditions that were favourable for a radical democratic settlement rather than the sop settlement contained within the constitution.

The vision of government based on principles fought for by Philadelphia’s mechanics was echoed by other politically engaged and radical sections of society. These included a widened suffrage, equalisation of representation, unicameral legislatures, overhauled judiciaries and a seemingly endless list of egalitarian demands, including the right to choose the political decision-makers from outside the upper classes to all positions of authority.

That American society got popular elections for the House of Representatives only - where the qualifications for standing were based on property holdings, where the president was voted for by electors chosen by the state legislatures and where supreme court judges were appointed by the president - was a world apart from the vision of government fought for by these radical sections of society.

The constitutional settlement thus hardly represented a “half democracy” - far from it. I repeat: to describe it in terms other than a sop, and a huge one at that, would be generous, to say the least.

Half again
Half again

Student arrests

Mohammad Pourabdollah and Alireza Davoudi, two supporters of Students for Equality and Freedom in Iran (SEF), have been arrested.

On the morning of February 12 2009, the forces of the regime arrested Mohammad Pourabdollah in a brutal attack on his house in Tehran. He has been kept in Evin Prison since then. There is no recent news from his situation and he has had no contact with his family. Mohammad, a chemical engineering student at the University of Tehran, was one of the 50 SEF students who were arrested last year following Students Day celebrations.

Alireza Davoudi was taken from his home in Isfahan by regime forces and transferred to an unknown place. He a well known student activist at the University of Isfahan who was arrested last spring and subjected to physical and mental torture.

SEF students in Iran would ask all social movement activists to pass on the news of these arrests and help raise awareness of the student movement in Iran.

Student arrests
Student arrests

Secular Europe

One hundred protesters marched to the Italian embassy in London on Saturday February 14, in solidarity with a simultaneous 30,000-strong demonstration in Rome. Protesters in both cities were demanding that the Italian government cease appeasing the Vatican and stop giving it special legal and political privileges.

The rally at the Italian embassy in London was addressed by Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society, Bob Churchill of the British Humanist Association, Marco Tranchino of the Central London Humanist Group and myself. The London marchers carried placards with the slogans: “For a secular Europe. Vatican out!” and “No to Vatican. Stop pope’s bigotry.”

The demonstration demanded that the Vatican stop abusing its power to oppose human rights. We also want the Italian government to cease kow-towing to the pope’s theocratic agenda. Our aim is a secular Europe, where people are free to practise their faith, but where no religion has privileged legal status and unique access to political power and influence.

We are appalled by the pope’s repeated attacks on the rights of women and gay people and by his wilful opposition to life-saving condom provision. The Italian government too often allows itself to be bullied by the Vatican, on issues such as same-sex civil marriage and sex education in schools.

Officially part of the United Nations, the Vatican’s observer-state status allows it to influence UN debates on issues, such as birth control, abortion and homosexuality. No other faith has this privileged status, access and influence at the UN. Last December, the Vatican opposed a UN statement calling for the decriminalisation of homosexuality worldwide and for gay people to be protected against discrimination and violence.

The Vatican does not shrink from using threats and intimidation to enforce its will. In a bid to keep Catholic MPs in line with papal policy opposing gay equality, the Vatican has threatened to excommunicate any Catholic legislator who votes for same-sex civil unions.

The Pope encourages us to view women as inferior to men by barring them from the priesthood and by stating that the two genders are naturally different and that women are biologically inclined for a more mothering and domestic role in life. In many Catholic countries, women who have had a divorce or abortion, and women who are living as single parents, tend to suffer religious-inspired stigma and discrimination.

If Catholics suffer discrimination I will be the first to defend them. Equally, when the pope supports discrimination against women and gay people I will be the first to oppose him. That is the difference between me and the pope. I oppose all discrimination, including against Catholics. He supports sexist and homophobic discrimination whenever it suits his intolerant interpretation of the Christian faith.

Secular Europe
Secular Europe

SP love affair

It was notable that in editing my letter in last week’s Weekly Worker a paragraph that was omitted pointed out that the outcome of the Lindsey strike (reserving 102 jobs for local - ie, British - workers, as against the Italians who would have had them) showed its true character.

The strike was not aimed at improving conditions for the Italian workers or developing Europe-wide unity. I added that the Socialist Party intervention had aided this negative outcome by proposing the local lists.

James Turley in his follow-up article recites and approves the demands that were put forward by the strike committee. This includes the local lists, probably the only listed demand to be actually implemented. He also goes out of his way to praise the Socialist Party for its role, even though its representative was influential in pressing for a rejection of the original offer of 60 jobs for British workers, in order to secure the ‘improved’ figure of 102 (just over half of what the BNP would have wanted). Thus piggy-backing on the SP, the position of CPGB slides from “critical support despite nationalism” to enthusiastic support for a bankrupt and rather scabby strategy of conciliating reaction.

Mesmerised by the prospect of workers in struggle, the SP slide into bad politics, stemming from an orientation to trade union structures and Labourite traditions. Is this a glimpse of what the SP’s ‘new workers’ party’ would look like?

The strike started over job allocation on national lines and finished over the same issue. You can tack on as many slogans about international links and wage agreements as you like - they are just cosmetic.

I don’t argue that we should have simply told workers to go quietly back to work, but there was more to do than to add a few, more palatable, slogans and then pretend things were better than they really were. A fundamental challenge is needed to the underlying nationalist politics of almost the entire labour movement, whether expressed crudely as ‘British jobs for British workers’ or the more genteel call for a “level playing field” pushed by the unions.

The negative effects of the strike will be felt for a long time. Meanwhile, is the CPGB dreaming of a new relationship with SP? It could be a one-sided love affair.

SP love affair
SP love affair