Letters

No surrender

I do not agree that “Resignations are surrender” or that they are an “admission of defeat”, as John Masters says in his letter (February 18).

I resigned from the Socialist Workers Party in 2001 after 12 years and the reason for doing so was essentially the same as cited by most comrades who have left. The SWP is fundamentally an undemocratic organisation. Over the period of my membership (the 1990s), internal debate was increasingly minimal. It is not just the absence of a formal process of factionalising that is to blame, but the fact that the average member is actively discouraged from involvement in the decision-making process. Conferences are stage-managed; decisions are taken in secret by the central committee and, irrespective of the commitment and work ethos of comrades in the organisation, failure to be on-message leads to a process of isolation from internal structures.

The term ‘leading comrade’ often refers to two types of people. Those, like comrade German, who have been on the central committee for 30 years and see it as their god-given right; and naive, often new comrades, who are groomed by the leadership. The ultimate sanction of expulsion is used all too frequently, although as an individual member it would be hard to be aware of this. The level of control-freakery, both within the organisation and associated ‘fronts’, is bizarre. The sectarian attitude of the SWP towards other activists is damaging to the movement as whole.

I am friends with a number of ex-SWP comrades, some of whom have left for reasons as strange as being made to feel “too working class”, although in general it is often the sense of being used. Some of the above comrades have become inactive, although this is not true of everybody. They continue to attend conferences, demonstrations, get involved with local campaigns and even occasionally join other, smaller, socialist or anarchist organisations. The point is that they have not left the SWP for selfish reasons, but rather out of a complete sense of frustration with the SWP as an organisation.

The question John needs to ask himself is whether the SWP (and indeed other left organisations) can be reformulated or whether a new start is needed. As it happens, I am also friends with some comrades who are still party members, some since as long ago as the 1960s, but who are often inactive and justify their subs by saying that there is no other worthy socialist organisation. Sometimes children are a good excuse as well!

Which is better - being honestly outside the party or unhappily within?

No surrender
No surrender

Blacklisted

When the Information Commissioners Office sent me a copy of the 49-page file held on me by the Consulting Association (CA), I have to admit that even I, as a very experienced, case-hardened, old trade union militant, was taken aback to see how much information they had on me, and the extent to which I was spied upon.

Serious anger is one of the main emotions I’m experiencing at present. However, I’m also very concerned, although not surprised, at the comment in Phil Chamberlain’s excellent Guardian article, ‘Boys from the blacklist’: “One effect of the release of files has been to question how far some union officials were involved in supplying details to the Consulting Association” (November 21 2009).

In 1996, Dominic Hehir, the full-time official of the construction workers’ union, Ucatt, took me to the high court in an attempt to silence me and those I represented in Ucatt. He was unsuccessful because my supporters and I refused to be silenced. At the time, the then general secretary did not try to stop or even to oppose Hehir.

Furthermore, an ex-Ucatt executive council member, John Flavin, set up a company to advise building employers not long after he was voted off the EC in 1995. Despite this, he continued to be a member of Ucatt, and still is to my knowledge. Quite a few members, including the Northampton branch, protested to the general secretary and the EC about this. Not so much a building employers’ mole as a big bloody big elephant in the room!

Therefore, it would be no surprise to learn that some Ucatt officials could have been supplying information on me and others to the building employers, blacklisters and who knows who else. It is absolutely loathsome and repugnant in the extreme that there could be people in Ucatt, and perhaps other unions, who could resort to such treachery and sink to the depths alluded to in the Guardian article.

It looks as if one, two or more of these beings could be among the many names blacked out by the ICO on my file. Perhaps I should apply for the names of any union officials amongst these to be revealed using the civil laws on discovery. I’d also like to see the file the state has on me.

Whatever happens, there should be an investigation into this case. This should involve blacklisted construction worker trade unionists, and MPs, academics and investigative journalists with records of sympathy for the trade union and workers’ movement. If anybody is found guilty, they should be drummed out of our movement in disgrace.

The blacklist is an economic, social and political prison. I have served a life sentence and other workers continue to be imprisoned. In cases like my own, the blacklist effectively takes the form of house arrest because of its effect on a person’s social life. My wife was also deeply affected and badly scarred. More often that not, she was forced to financially support me and our two children on her low wage as a care worker. All of this is the direct result of the building employers deliberately using the blacklist, time and again, to deny me the right to work and to earn a living.

Not content to kill (some would say murder) and maim on unsafe construction sites, and to super-exploit workers through subcontracting on low wages, they blacklist those who dare to try to do something about this. Through the blacklist, the employers deny us the right to organise. As a punishment and a warning to other workers they rob us of the right to earn a wage and to provide for ourselves and our families. This is criminal behaviour and the employers responsible should be treated as criminals. The heads of the blacklisting construction companies named in the ICO’s exposure of the CA should be jailed - no ifs, no buts.

There is some talk of court cases and compensation. Building employers must owe me hundreds of thousands for wages I lost, whilst they kept me in their economic and social prison. I am in favour of using the industrial tribunals to get some compensation. However, this on its own will not put a stop to blacklisting in construction. Surely the main objective of any campaign must be to get rid of this vile, anti-democratic and inhuman practice once and for all.

The campaign for justice must be taken all the way to the European Court of Human Rights. I ask Ucatt to get myself and other blacklisted construction workers the best civil and human rights lawyer to help us to do this. I also ask that Ucatt-sponsored MPs, and others known to be sympathetic, are made aware of my case, and bring it up in the House of Commons. I am willing to participate in a campaign by Ucatt against the blacklist and all that this entails.

This is the first time the existence of the blacklist has been proven. The companies and those they blacklisted have been named and made public by the ICO. We must not fritter away this unique opportunity to tackle and stop the practice. It cannot just be left to those who will weep copious tears and make sweeping statements of opposition in public, but in reality will do nothing effective to get real justice, or stop the blacklist being imposed on other site workers and trade unionists in the future.

We call on blacklisted workers in Ucatt and other construction trade unions, as well as other unions, sympathetic political organisations and MPs, to form a united front campaign to outlaw the blacklist once and for all. We must use every means at our disposal, especially calling upon construction union members and site workers to take industrial action wherever the blacklist is in operation.

Blacklisted
Blacklisted

Him as well

Hillel Ticktin writes: “The standard Menshevik interpretation of the USSR was that it was state capitalist.”

This was an interpretation also held by Lenin.

Him as well
Him as well

Blind alley

David Broder says that “The lack of real workers’ unity across the continent and across different parts of the UK is not a facet of our rulers’ petty squabbles in Brussels” (Letters, February 25). This seems to be the crux of the difference between us.

Does David believe that the division of the international capitalist political system into a couple of hundred separate states - and Europe into some dozens of states - poses no barrier to the formation of international working class unity? Isn’t nationalism - the ideology that accompanies those states - an important tool for the capitalist class in securing the loyalty of the working class to one or other capitalist state?

And hasn’t the international system of states constrained working class unity for very practical reasons? David will concede that working class organisations, whether trade unions, bourgeois workers’ parties or would-be revolutionary parties, tend to be structured along national lines - the many ‘oil slick’ internationals to which David refers notwithstanding.

There is an easy explanation. It is the actions of states that primarily determine the political environment within which the working class operates. It makes sense for the working class to attempt to place itself on a level playing field with each state it confronts by organising nationally. Separate organisation by socialists in Scotland means that in Britain the most advanced militants of the working class have fallen below even the level of organisation historically achieved in the struggle with the actually existing British state.

Of course, we encourage the formation of links with workers’ organisations in other countries. David can take it from me that when I quoted him as saying that “we” should form links with Bolivia, the workers’ movement was the only “we” I meant. But we should not underestimate the difficulty of building a movement that can take common action on an international scale - while acknowledging it as the overwhelmingly vital task for communists in this century.

In these circumstances, we have to take our opportunities as we find them. The capitalist project of European integration - riven though it is with contradictions - is one such opportunity. When Strasbourg and Brussels issue laws and regulations that have a direct effect on the conditions of workers from Glasgow to Athens, the case for building organisations of the working class that match the degree of capitalist coordination becomes unanswerable.

European workers’ organisations should not restrict themselves to economic struggles with the capitalist class of Europe. They must take up political and democratic demands - for the abolition of the undemocratic and unaccountable institutions that currently make up the European Union, and for a unitary people’s assembly. Democracy is a powerful weapon in the workers’ armoury.

David says that building workers’ unity in Europe that is as effective as that of the capitalists is not plausible. In that case, the communist project of building workers’ unity on a large enough scale to make a global revolution is not ‘plausible’. The alternative strategy, endorsed by the Commune, of breaking up existing capitalist states to create geographic units that are sufficiently bite-sized for workers’ organisation lacking in ambition to tackle is a dangerous and very likely reactionary blind alley.

Blind alley
Blind alley

Tax loopholes

Revelations in the media about top Tory donor Lord Ashcroft being a non-domicile and therefore avoiding paying tax on his overseas earnings reminded me of what should be one of the main demands of socialists - close all tax loopholes and tax havens! The hypocrisy of Gordon Brown going to the G20 calling for the closure of tax havens when the UK is itself a tax haven was astounding!

A Tusc demand I wholeheartedly welcome is “Bring banks and finance institutions into genuine public ownership under democratic control, instead of giving huge handouts to the very capitalists who caused the crisis”. I do, however, criticise the Socialist Party call for “compensation on the basis of proven need” - instead of many court cases, I’d call for compensation only to pension schemes. If we warn small investors first, they only have themselves to blame if they keep investing in bank shares.

Tax loopholes
Tax loopholes

Colonist

So Adam Richmond believes that it is appropriate to expel Falkland Islanders in the interest of the “sovereignty of Argentina” and because of the “illegitimacy of Britain’s claim” (Letters, February 25).

Leaving aside the ludicrousness of someone writing to a Marxist paper to defend the bourgeois conception of sovereignty, I might note that it is as well that his logic is not turned upon his own location, as surely the claim of the United States to California is even less legitimate, based as it is upon an illegal land grab from Mexico - whose claim is similarly illegitimate.

Pack your bags, Mr Richmond. You too are a mere colonist and must yield to the sovereignty of the displaced first nations.

Colonist
Colonist

Urgent

Under the guise of a book review of Robert Service’s crass and anti-communist Trotsky: a biography, Hillel Ticktin has managed to completely misrepresent Leon Trotsky’s views on the nature of Stalinism, whilst at the same time suggesting he was also for a social revolution in the USSR up until the time of his assassination (‘In defence of Leon Trotsky’, February 25).

If that’s a ‘defence of Trotskyism’ from a supposed Marxist, we could only recoil in horror at what a modern Marxist’s ‘attack’ might include. Clearly, Service’s biography of Trotsky is penned by a self-declared anti-communist whose paymaster’s credo is free enterprise - ie, the Hoover Institute, ably assisted by the research facilities of the archives of Harvard University and Moscow. That book is easily identifiable as having an agenda to rubbish Leon Trotsky by salaciously damning his life’s work and suggesting all manner of suppositions as to why Trotsky was likely to outdo Stalin in mass murder, given the chance. The agenda of the Services of this world is as transparently venal as is their class masters, but for Ticktin to rewrite Trotsky in a grammatically incoherent and false way is inexcusable. The prominence given to the reviewer by the Weekly Worker also damns the editorial judgement in my estimation. There are so many passages that are abbreviated on complex questions that I wonder why they are included in the first place. Obfuscation has seldom ever been so mis-sold as good-coin reasoning.

For example: “Trotsky did not expect the USSR to last so long nor that it would come to an end so easily, so messily and so unsuccessfully. He did say that it could not last in its Stalinist form. He did not understand the nature of the Soviet Union that came into being in the 30s, but then nobody did or probably could have done so. He was always behind the curve of its degeneration. That, again, is understandable, in that he was an optimist, like all revolutionaries.”

If its end was ‘easy’, how could it be ‘messy’, and where does ‘unsuccessfully’ apply in the context of 1991? Are we to think Trotsky might have suggested that a film of February to October 1917 would be run backwards? Precisely when did materialist Marxism ever profess to be ahead of the curve of history - ie, know what was definitely going to happen historically on the morrow or next century? Ticktin writes as in mysticism. Dialectically arrived at notions, based on tangible, concrete concepts, can suggest prognoses of many kinds, but to proffer the fault of non-prognosis on mistaken revolutionary optimism is stretching the abilities of Marxism beyond its greatest exponents.

He also writes: “It is unfortunate that some in the Trotskyist movement have taken his words as dogma. Trotsky was not himself dogmatic, for he is not clear whether the USSR was planned, says that the nature of the USSR is undetermined, and concedes that a social as well as a political revolution is required.”

So Lenin, Trotsky and the workers and peasants woke up one day and, by chance, found that their hoped-for dreams had been realised in a revolutionary country of a strange mongrel pedigree, whereby they knew not what they’d done or the problems they may encounter. Please, Ticktin, please.

So Trotsky is a complete sceptic and idealist who made a Red Army and a revolution he didn’t understand and proceeded to defend the socialised means of production for every day of his miserable life. Then one fine morning he said, ‘Let’s have another social and political revolution - start from scratch again. A Fourth International sounds a good name.’ I’m embarrassed to write that.

“Trotsky himself should not be lumbered with the simple formula that planning plus nationalisation makes for a workers’ state, which has then to be critically defended. Service, however, appears as an upside-down dogmatic Trotskyist, as he tries to portray Trotsky as simply insisting on the concept of a workers’ state and always wanting to defend the USSR.”

Insofar as the socialised property relations in the USSR were to the credit of the world’s revolutionary struggle, Trotsky defended them unconditionally. Insofar as Stalin defended those socialised property relations against imperialism, he defended him too, whilst conditionally calling for political reform during the Left Opposition period, but thereafter a root and branch political revolution (after the 1933 debacle in Germany) against the deepening degeneracy of Stalinism, which strangled the revolutionary foundations of the Comintern.

“Trotsky’s initial analysis of Stalinism has stood the test of time - as the seizure of power by the social layer controlling the bureaucracy. That gave them control of the surplus product. Marx, of course, talked of the form of the extraction of the surplus product being crucial. Trotsky was pointing to it, but he did not go any further. Once he lost his historic role, he was no longer in touch with history itself, and his pronouncements reflected that fact.”

How does one lose one’s “historic role” by not being in power? Were Marx and Engels devoid of a historic role too?

Whether Mr Hillel H Ticktin is prepared to revisit a few books and really read them I’m not sure, but if readers of the Weekly Worker want clarification on the standpoint of Trotsky, may I insist on The revolution betrayed and In defence of Marxism - urgently.

Urgent
Urgent

Fighting Harman

Recently a number of socialists in south London met to discuss whether there should be a Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidate against Peckham MP Harriet Harman. A number of issues came up. What was the purpose of having a campaign? Did we have the resources to finance it? What should be our attitude to the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s plans to stand Jill Mountford as an AWL candidate? After considering some of these issues it was agreed there would be another meeting where we would decide what to do.

Afterwards I came to the following conclusions. First, the left must unite and fight for a programme of political, social and economic reform against Labour, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats. The gaping hole in the politics of the left is its failure to champion the fight for democratic parliamentary and political reform.

The Westminster parliament is the only means through which working people can hope to change the laws and taxes which affect them. This is why we take the election very seriously. But we have no illusions that parliament is anything but a major barrier to change. The struggle for working class political representation and the radical reform of parliament are bound together.

Because of its failure to grasp the importance of democracy the socialist movement had failed to provide political leadership for the people in general and the working class in particular. We urgently need to build a different kind of workers’ movement like the Chartists that can fight for radical political change. This message has to be put over at every opportunity, not least at election time.

However, we have to relate to the socialist and working class movement as it is and not just how we would like it to be. So the second conclusion was that we must try to unite the socialist movement, warts and all. We need one socialist candidate to unite behind and one organisation to work through. I am therefore in favour of a Tusc candidate in Southwark. It shows the socialist movement is ready to fight the capitalist parties. It is also a declaration that socialists want unity and are ready to fight alongside trade unionists for common aims.

At the present time the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition is the only possible vehicle for socialist unity. Of course its programme reflects the failure of the left on political democracy previously identified. We have to fight to change its policy on parliament. It still has a culture of Labourism rather than Chartism. Nevertheless, a socialist unity candidate is better politically than one group standing on its own. Hence the best situation in Southwark would be one Tusc candidate standing against Labour’s deputy leader.

Consequently I decided I had to offer to be a candidate for a Tusc campaign. Of course, I am not the only comrade or even the best comrade who could stand. I recognise that the AWL have already been out campaigning with their candidate. So I am in favour of the AWL being part of a Tusc campaign and would stand down in favour of Jill Mountford if she would become the Tusc candidate. At least there should be negotiations. I realise this point might make me unpopular with the very people who might select me as their candidate, so the possibility of me replacing Ms Harman as MP has already died a death! But at least comrades will understand that becoming an MP is not my main priority.

Reform cannot come from within a thoroughly corrupted parliamentary system. It can only come from outside by a mass democratic movement and mass action. The people must impose themselves on parliament and subject it to their sovereign authority. The aim of our election campaign is not so much to gather votes, but to organise a political movement of the working class and win recruits for a great crusade for democratic political and social change.

Fighting Harman
Fighting Harman

In between

I would share John Robinson’s concern that the CPGB’s Draft programme is too conservative on the question of democracy, but I would be less sanguine than him on the virtues of soviets (Letters, February 25).

The programme takes a stand for republicanism and calls for the abolition both of the monarchy and the presidential prime minister. This places it entirely on the ground of bourgeois republicanism. Within European bourgeois states, there is no politically significant distinction between monarchies like the UK, Denmark or Sweden on the one hand, and republics like Italy, France or Ireland on the other. It cannot be said that republics have a significant advantage for the workers’ movement over monarchies.

This is because in a deeper sense they are all monarchies, with governments headed by one man or woman. Our real recent monarchs have been called Margaret, Tony and Gordon, not Elizabeth.

If the programme was seriously democratic it would not be calling for the abolition of the presidential prime minister. To do what - replace them with an elected president? Instead it would call for the abolition of the executive branch, or all ministers of the crown. Instead the civil service would be made answerable to parliamentary committees.

A further sign of its timidity is the identification of democracy with a proportional representation voting system for parliament rather than calling for direct democracy: direct popular legislation and the selection of parliament at random from the population. As I have argued earlier, the class character of the institution is not going to change so long as it is made up of an elected political class.

The call for a militia and an armed people rather than a professional army is an old and good democratic objective. But the idea that a militia will have to be organised spontaneously by the working class in opposition to the state conflates two quite different strategies without committing itself to either.

Can a capitalist state allow militias and the arming of the people? Obviously, yes, in some cases. Famously, it is a constitutional right in the USA and the Swiss have a militia system, as in effect does Israel. So in principle it is a realisable objective to have a system of national defence based on universal military training of both sexes with service in the militia following a period of national service. This would be a modern variant of the Prussian military system that Engels defended as being in the working class interest. That would be a classic social democratic approach, which ensured that the militia was well trained and well armed. The call for election of officers fits in with this.

The other approach is the Maoist one of forming a people’s army that would contend directly for power. This has been and is the approach of several communist parties in Asia. The call for a militia in the programme is ambiguous between the Engels and the Mao approaches.

In between
In between

Misunderstood

Benjamin Hill has misunderstood the purpose of the CPGB’s Draft programme (Letters, February 25).

He states that the introductory text is “hilarious” because it implies that the current CPGB “claims to be the same CPGB as the one established in 1920 and talks in all its grandeur as if it still has a big membership”.

We make no such claim. If comrade Hill were to turn to p11 of each issue of the Weekly Worker he would find the following: “The Provisional Central Committee organises members of the Communist Party, but there exists no real Communist Party today. There are many so-called ‘parties’ on the left. In reality they are confessional sects …” (‘What we fight for’, second bullet point).

The very first bullet point reads: “Our central aim is the organisation of communists, revolutionary socialists and all politically advanced workers into a Communist Party …” This, by the way, also answers comrade Hill’s point about there being no mention in the Draft programme of “leftist unity”. We are for the coming together of all the left groups around a Marxist programme on the basis of democratic centralism and we support all objective moves in that direction.

The absence of a Communist Party explains why the document we have published is called a draft programme. Should this redrafted version be agreed by current CPGB members later this year, it will represent the proposals we would eventually put before a congress to re-establish such a party. No doubt other groups would propose a different programme.

The fact that we are nowhere near the stage when a Communist Party can be relaunched does not remove the obligation on genuine communists to draw up a programme. It is actually a central part of the campaign to reforge that party.

Misunderstood
Misunderstood