Letters

Dots and crosses

In response to Dave Douglass (Letters, April 23), my previous letter was not picking up on the way miners expressed themselves (April 16). I was replying to his accusations against The Leninist.

On the face of it there is no difference between what The Leninist was saying and what he is saying. Namely, that there is nothing socialist about nationalisation under capitalism. Nationalisation under a non-capitalist or even anti-capitalist regime does not mean there is any degree of workers’ control and state ownership is not a mode of production. Socialism starts with the rule of the working class, not the rule of a vanguard.

Yet there must be a difference because Dave says there is. The only thing that he comes up with is his assertion that the mines were “our industry” (Letters, April 9), and so The Leninist’s assertion that the mines were most definitely not ours was negative and demeaning to the miners. Everyone working in the industry was aware that the bosses had to be defeated - The Leninist was just being gratuitously arrogant.

In fact it was directing its polemic not against the miners, but against the left. The Labour Party claimed that nationalisation meant putting industries under public control. The Stalinists claimed that the Soviet Union was socialist and developing progressively thanks to socialist property relations. Militant regarded nationalisation almost as a mode of production.

The Leninist did its best to tell the truth as they saw it, just as we do today. That is honest rather than arrogant. However, the truth is complicated, with lots of Ts to be crossed and Is to be dotted, but it is well within the capacity of the workers to understand. They will join in the debates of the left, choosing which ideas to make their own and which to discard, as indeed it has to be if the workers are to be the ruling class. Those that choose to simplify the issues so that ‘ordinary people’ can understand are the ones that patronise the workers and are the vanguardists.

The development of a democratic culture - an issue that the rest of the left only pays lip service to - is in fact essential for building a mass Communist Party and avoiding the creation of a top-down bureaucratic organisation which must inevitably be vanguardist. On this issue comrade Douglass is no different from the rest of the left - except anarchists disguise their contempt for democracy with the fatuous claim that the workers do not need structured organisation. But democracy demands structure - in particular a structured organisation that can be held to account by its members: a democratic party. To break with this is to break with Marxism.

Dots and crosses
Dots and crosses

Book plug

WRP explosion, my 1990 work on the Workers Revolutionary Party, is now available online at: www.scribd.com/people/documents/1544314-gerald-j-downing.

Its 13 chapters deal with the implosion of the WRP in 1985 and follow the developments, both internal and international, up to 1990, when the Preparatory Committee collapsed, the Workers International League departed and the Slaughter wing linked up with Varga and others to form the Stalinophobic Workers’ International to Refound the Fourth International.

I was in the Revolutionary Internationalist League International Committee at the time, so naturally the account reflects their politics. Nevertheless, I have little to retract from this political document. I hope it will assist in current regroupment efforts.

Book plug
Book plug

Race confusion

The nature of bourgeois society is such that the bourgeoisie is unable to rule consciously, collectively as a class. Capitalists are subject to the ‘coercive laws of competition’, and sections of the bourgeoisie are inevitably at loggerheads. The exercise of state power is necessarily ‘devolved’ to an apparatus distinct from the economic, which can govern in the interests of capitalism rather than particular capitalists. This is as true of autocratic, Bonapartist regimes as liberal ones. The bourgeois character of capitalist politics is almost always unconscious, knowable primarily through its success in reproducing itself.

This rather abstract and schematic point needs to be made at the outset if we are to properly identify Peter Manson’s confusions (‘Racism or nationalism’, May 7). Identifying the state as racist has never been simply in the nature of condemning governments that openly pursue racist policies, or even do so clandestinely. Governments, particularly in bourgeois constitutional regimes, tend to be highly contradictory on this score, even where they openly proclaim themselves racist or anti-racist.

Rather, we have to consider the effects of state policy in the social totality. With that in mind, we have to face the fact that anti-Muslim feeling, today, is thoroughly racialised - that bigoted remarks about suicide bombings are as likely to be made about ‘Pakis’ as Muslims. The effect of panic over fanatical Muslim terrorists has been to directly spur on racism proper in the general population.

And, of course, this is not the only contributing factor. Tightening immigration controls and obsessions over ‘Britishness’ and ‘British values’ have contributed to a climate of bilious chauvinism. The fact that it is not directly racist is as irrelevant as the fact that National Front propaganda in the 1970s concentrated on immigrants and ‘cultural preservation’ rather than on skin colour; it remained the case that, in areas where the NF was powerful, it was a bad idea to be black.

Comrade Manson seems unable to understand that the PC scrubbing-down of state propaganda has not lessened its racist effects. He also does not seem to acknowledge that the mere existence of borders as social obstacles to the free movement of people has always and will always breed fear and contempt of foreigners, and contempt of foreigners will always in turn be prone to racialisation.

To separate the vigorous pursuit of chauvinism from racism is not only profoundly undialectical; its logical political result is faith in the capitalist state, the view that racism is simply the province of ‘bad eggs’ whether in the state apparatus or society at large. Racism remains a significant excrescence of the bourgeois state, and it will take more than the routine mewling at the BNP from mainstream politicians to change that.

Race confusion
Race confusion

Cheap sub

If the working class in each country is told to wait until all the other countries first make a socialist revolution, then obviously world socialism is made impossible by this thinking. It sounds like a great rationalisation for sitting back in a coffee shop and waiting a few more hundred more years for conditions ‘to ripen’.

I agree that a socialist-communist society requires a world where the revolution has taken place in almost every country. But, as we all know, a socialist revolution does not automatically lead to a socialist society. A socialist revolution only begins a process that may take many years before actually reaching socialism - and which will face inevitable defeat without the world revolution. But we have to begin, even if there is a danger of defeat, which always exists.

I’m concerned that we are faced with cheap substitutes for socialism that ‘sound like’ and ‘talk like’ socialism, but are the political equivalent of junk food - lots of calories but no nutrition. There has been a revival of the ‘peaceful road to socialism’ because of the electoral victories of Chávez and others in Latin America. Somehow, the lessons of Chile and the overthrow of Allende have been forgotten. In every country there are Pinochets waiting for the right moment. Pinochet waited for three years before the coup and during that time fooled even Allende with a ‘progressive general’ act.

Unfortunately, many former guerrilla movements in Latin America have abandoned the armed struggle and accepted the ‘peaceful road’. The choice for these groups is between guerrillaism and reformism. Instead, I believe the real choice is between the revolution of the oppressed masses, as opposed to reformism. Guerrillaism is a tactic which in most cases has failed. But socialism is on the order of the day!

Cheap sub
Cheap sub

Not listening

I have to say that I found Dave Craig’s arguments for voting for the nationalist ‘No to EU, Yes to Democracy’ candidates from the RMT contrived (‘No2 EU-UK, yes to a European republic’, May 7).

No2EU is a reactionary national socialist organisation, as defined by its programme and by the national socialist ideology that stands behind its main driving force - the Stalinists. However much the Socialist Alliance tries to suggest that it is actually arguing for its own internationalist positions, it is made meaningless and is drowned out by the fact of calling then for a vote for candidates, an organisation and a programme that stands in complete opposition to that internationalism.

Dave Craig writes: “But only sectarians believe you cannot vote for working class candidates if you have criticisms of their political line. There are times when you should and times when you should not. It is important to work out which is which.” That argument is a sham. The reality is that this argument applies with ten thousand times the force for arguing not for a vote for the candidates standing on the national socialist programme of No2EU, but for voting for candidates standing for Labour!

As the report by Chris Stafford in the same edition of the Weekly Worker sets out (Letters, May 7), No2EU cannot in any shape or form be described as some kind of spontaneous creation of workers, or one that has even minimal support from ordinary workers. It is, and has been from the start, a bureaucratic Stalinist lash-up. The Labour Party might stand on a bourgeois programme, but even that is better than the reactionary national socialism of No2EU, which is barely distinguishable from the programme of the British National Party.

Where No2EU represents absolutely nothing in terms of the working class, certainly nothing progressive, Labour continues to be the party to which the vast majority of workers give their vote and affiliation. Whatever its faults and programme, the rank and file membership of that party, as opposed to its higher echelons, continues to be made up mostly of ordinary workers.

If the argument is to oppose the kind of sectarianism that the left in Britain has been so guilty of for over a hundred years, then stop trying to find reasons not to vote Labour, and instead begin to relate to ordinary workers - both those inside the Labour Party and all those millions who will be casting their votes for it.

Not listening
Not listening

Nasty

Frank Willis’s nasty little diatribe against me (Letters, May 7) is a good illustration of the behaviour and conduct of the sectarian ultra-left and illustrates why we are probably quite glad they haven’t joined in with us in broad progressive campaigns such as No2EU or the People’s Charter.

I think I argued quite clearly in favour of a world socialism and that the first stage in that process is to confront and defeat imperialism and capitalism on a European basis, given this is the way it is organised and operates where we happen to live and work (Letters, April 30). Given that the EU constitutes one of the three major pillars of world imperialism, the struggle against the EU and European imperialism becomes an inherent component of the world revolution and historic transition to communism.

My socialism is therefore thoroughly internationalist, indeed worldwide, in its outlook and conception. How on earth (excuse the pun) this can be interpreted as favouring the British capitalist state against the EU, and British capitalism against European, is completely beyond me. But, as one other rather nasty person once said, the bigger the lie, the more likely it is to be believed.

Where have I ever advocated giving additional, or indeed any, powers to that gerrymandered, truncated, hypocritical and corrupt bastardisation of democracy, the British House of Commons? I have not. Indeed, when I have written on the subject in the Weekly Worker, I have been clear that in the transition to a socialist society and a true democracy - ie, the rule of the majority - the capitalist state will need to be dismantled and destroyed and replaced by a completely new and thoroughly democratic proletarian state.

If I was pushed very hard to choose between a British capitalist state and a national socialist one, then, yes, I would support the latter. But I don’t think such a choice is ever likely to arise and it is no more than a theoretical abstraction. Modern capitalism and imperialism are completely international and worldwide and they can only be defeated and replaced on that basis.

Nasty
Nasty

Shake-up

Before I get on to discussing Jack Conrad’s defence of the Weekly Worker’s Andrew Murray cover (Letters, May 7), I do agree with him that figures such as Murray should be ridiculed and lampooned on every occasion, using all available means. I also heartily agree that Murray and the other Stop the War Coalition clowns are bureaucrats and bullshitters.

So what we have here is a problem of execution, given that I thought the cover in question was an awful piece of work. We can take with a pinch of salt, I think, Conrad’s picture of the Weekly Worker team intoxicated by their cocoa and fired up to emulate Duchamp and Heartfield. If it is true, all it proves is that great things can inspire an awful lot of shit.

For the life of me, I cannot see how sticking a pair of lips on Murray’s face and opening up his head to show his brain strengthens the impact of the cover and its overall message. Any latent symbolism was completely lost on me. Rather than opening up any kind of dialectic between a direct political message and complex imagery, this picture merely muddles the message through confusion.

Conrad implies the brain thing was meant to stress the small-mindedness of Murray. Actually, given that the brain does not look particularly small, this thrust is lost. But even then, surely the point is not that Murray is defective upstairs, but that he misuses his abilities in the cause of opportunism.

Childish images can be brutally effective, but the Weekly Worker cover resurrects them in their most banal form - remember at school when you could never resist scrawling on people’s faces in textbooks? Conrad should have gone the whole hog with this idea: Hitler moustache, glasses, penis on forehead, the whole nine.

And, to top it all off, we have a typeface that is generally only used by the composers of community newsletters to convince the outside world that their hidebound lives are marginally less desperate than in reality. Why did the lettering have to be ‘crazy’? Was the point that Murray is crazy? I’m baffled.

But this poor execution is hardly an isolated event. Much of the Weekly Worker’s page furniture is lacking. Letter titles often have no snap or wit, becoming mere ‘jam labels’ (Conrad’s letter is entitled ‘Front’: front what, comrades?). Headlines veer from plain dull to misleading (Comrade Manson’s article last week had the headline ‘Racism or nationalism’ - surely a missing question mark here?). Subheadings in articles, rather than breaking up text, often appear to be in some kind of competition to line up with each other and make the page as ugly and unworkable as possible, even breaking over two lines in some cases. Picture captions are largely forgettable. For example, the picture of Batman and Robin on Mike Macnair’s article in the April 30 issue (‘Budget spinning, not turning’) has the brief caption ‘Celebrites’. I’m not even sure that correcting the presumed typo would improve the meaning.

Criticising this kind of work is not to parade an empty professionalism; rather these are political tasks fundamentally bound up with presenting a message as sharply and effectively as possible. But the Weekly Worker team, judging by what they actually produce, treat these tasks as a mere routine, which has spilled over into routinism. From looking at the paper I can confidently predict that no-one is second-guessing and interrogating the various elements that make up the paper. It has begun to all feel very tired, comrades. Even the very high proofing standards of years gone by have begun to slip.

As an outsider, it looks to me that the CPGB really needs to get a grip on the paper by rigorously politicising all tasks in a general shake-up. Otherwise, even when there is a good political motive animating a layout idea (as with the Murray cover), you risk making a hash of it and letting your opponents off the hook.

Shake-up
Shake-up