Letters

EDL and sects

Mike Pearn’s letter does in a roundabout way ask an important question: what is to be done against the English Defence League in the immediate future (April 1)?

I think it is essential that local communities, trade union bodies and socialist groups organise opposition, whether through demonstrations, pickets, meetings or leafleting. This should be done on a local level with the full involvement of those working class forces that oppose the EDL. We should seek where possible to present a socialist alternative, in the absence of which deprived and run-down working class communities look towards the far right.

What the majority of the left fail to grasp is that we also need to make clear that such demonstrations and actions are defensive and cannot smash fascism or the far right. We may drive them off the streets from time to time, but that will not make them or their politics go away.

We have seen the clear failure of Unite Against Fascism against the rise of the British National Party. Why? Because the left, in following UAF’s popular frontism, is not presenting political solutions beyond votes and marches against the ‘Nazis’. That is why CPGB members and supporters go out of their way to underline that we need to build a credible political force in working class communities and workplaces. The forging of a Communist Party that transcends the amateur sects that make up the left is the key task for communist militants today.

EDL and sects
EDL and sects

Heed ye

How disappointed I was when I read the article title ‘Misusing Marx and Engels’ (April 1) and learned how its author, Allan Armstrong, himself misuses Marx and Engels by declaring that they would have somehow supported the slogan ‘Internationalism from below’.

That Marx and Engels supported certain independence movements (yet also denounced many other nationalist movements such as that of the Slavs) is sometimes used to try to justify socialists today supporting the demands for independence.

Two points can be made. Firstly, what socialists should do in 2010 does not depend on what Marx or Engels may or may not have done in the 19th century. But, secondly and more importantly, the circumstances which led Marx to support some independence movements of his time no longer exist in today’s world.

After the failures of 1848, Marx pretty much dropped out of active politics and devoted more of his time to his studies. However, he later began actively to participate in political struggle within the First International. His strategy was the long-term one of preparing the working class to win political power for socialism. This involved Marx advocating various democratic and social reforms. This process was continually threatened by the three great feudal powers - Russia, Austria and Prussia. The bourgeois democratic victory over feudalism was far from complete, even in a rapidly industrialising Britain.

In these circumstances, Marx considered it necessary to support not only direct moves to extend political democracy, but also moves which he felt would weaken the feudal powers of Europe. He supported Polish independence as a means of weakening tsarist Russia. His support for Irish independence was for a similar reason. It would, he thought, weaken the position of the English landed aristocracy.

World War I destroyed the three great European feudal powers, making it no longer necessary for socialists to support moves to weaken them. Once industrial capitalist powers had come to dominate the world, and once a workable political democracy had been established in those states, then the task of socialists was to advocate socialism rather than democratic and social reforms. That is the position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Marx’s strategy was concerned with furthering the establishment of political democracy. It was not, as some think, an anticipation of Lenin’s theory of imperialism, according to which independence for colonies will help precipitate a socialist revolution in the imperialist countries. Nor was it, as Allan Armstrong would like us to believe, an early endorsement of ‘internationalism from below’. Marx clearly wrote of the independence movements helping to overthrow the remnants of feudalism, but not capitalism itself.

With regard to all nationalisms generally, I suggest that socialists heed Eugene Debs when he said: “I have no country to fight for; my country is the Earth, and I am a citizen of the world.”

Heed ye
Heed ye

Otherwise

The Other Campaign 2010 was initiated by Liverpool Solidarity Federation. The aim is to build a loose network of anti-capitalist, libertarian groups and individuals who believe that:

1. politics must be liberated from the rotten influence of politicians and bureaucrats. As individuals we must take back control over of our lives and not allow power to be exercised on our behalf.

2. the anti-working class agenda of our corrupt political elite (such as the imminent wave of public sector cuts) will not be defeated through the ballot box, but on the streets and picket lines.

To find out more or to add your organisation to the list of sponsors, please visit theothercampaign2010.wordpress.com.

Otherwise
Otherwise

Weak platforms

Comrade Sean Carter alleges that the CPGB’s criteria for offering critical support to left candidates in the May 6 general election are “flawed” (Letters, April 1).

However, comrade Carter does not understand what our position is. Our two conditions - opposition to all social spending cuts and support for the immediate withdrawal of all British troops from Afghanistan - are not placed on all left candidates. They are directed at Labour candidates only. The idea is to demonstrate that Labour remains a bourgeois workers’ party and these two conditions can be used as a rough guide for determining which of its candidates can be broadly considered on the workers’ side of the contradiction. Far from making a “call for a Labour vote in most places”, we expect that only a small proportion of the party’s left candidates will meet these two conditions. Our support for the candidates of the non-Labour, working class left is unconditional (although clearly they will be opposed to cuts and the occupation of Afghanistan in any case).

Comrade Carter states that it is “bizarre” to compare the left-Labourite election platform of Respect with that of leading Alliance for Workers’ Liberty member Jill Mountford. Now, nobody should conflate social-imperialism with left populism. But what I am arguing is that the left-Labourite programmes on which both Respect and the AWL are standing flow from economism: ie, a disdain for the Marxist programme of extreme democracy.

Comrade Carter insinuates that - given the CPGB’s record in Iranian solidarity work - we should withhold support from Respect candidates George Galloway and Abjol Miah on the grounds that they are (or may be, in Miah’s case) apologists for the Iranian theocratic regime. This misses a fundamental point. This is an election in Britain, where the main task is to oppose our ‘own’ UK ruling class. Devising special criteria to ensure we do not vote for labour movement politicians who are soft on oppressive regimes would reduce the list of supportable candidates virtually to nil. A good part of the left, from the ‘official’ communists to the Socialist Workers Party and orthodox Trotskyists, has traditionally apologised for Stalinist or reactionary anti-imperialist regimes. And presumably comrade Carter agrees with the AWL call for an unconditional Labour vote in the absence of a “socialist candidate”. Including for openly pro-war, pro-imperialist Labour candidates like Galloway’s Poplar and Canning Town New Labour opponent, Jim Fitzpatrick.

Moreover, principled Iranian solidarity is perfectly consistent with advocating a critical vote for those like Galloway, in spite of his fawning praise for the murderous regime. Our overriding duty as internationalists in the imperialist heartland of Great Britain is to ensure that we strain every sinew to oppose further sanctions and warmongering against Iran. Imperialist threats strengthen the hand of the regime and reduce working class combativity in that country.

I agree with comrade Carter that our electoral tactics must be aimed at advancing “the immediate interests of the working class”. However, given the moribund state of our movement, we are talking about “advancing” in millimetres. Ditto in terms of “the unity of Marxists as Marxists”. Nobody on the far left is running a Marxist campaign calling for the unity of revolutionaries - and most certainly not the AWL.

Comrade Sean argues that Jill Mountford’s manifesto stands out compared to those like Miah’s. After all, she is standing for a “workers’ government accountable to the labour movement”. That is just an empty slogan. Who is going to form this “workers’ government”? The one Jill Mountford has in mind would “cut arms spending” and withdraw troops from Afghanistan, where they have probably done “more harm than good”.

Comrade Carter claims that, while Miah is a “populist religious communalist”, not even the AWL has accused him “or anyone else in Respect of being open clerical fascists”. Actually the latest issue of Solidarity talks of the SWP going through “a decade of alliance with Islamic clerical fascists” (‘What we think’, April 1). My point in calling for a critical vote for Miah is that he is standing on the bog-standard, left Labourite shopping list which the left sees as axiomatic.

There are differences, of course. The AWL call for a minimum wage of £9.50/hour, whereas Respect calls for £8. Miah unequivocally and unambiguously demands imperialist troop withdrawal. The AWL does not. Both are examples of what comrade Carter calls “weak but inoffensive platforms”.

Weak platforms
Weak platforms

No SWP veto

I have noted your comments on my intention to stand as the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidate for Bermondsey (‘Socialists in trade union clothing’, April 1), where the contest between the main capitalist parties has in the past been won by Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat sitting MP. The BNP is also running a candidate.

There have been various versions of the truth in relation to my candidacy. I have not been refused by Tusc, as there hasn’t been a meeting of the steering committee that can decide such matters since early March. The absolute deadline is April 20, when nomination papers have to be submitted. As I am standing as a trade unionist and socialist, this has undermined the campaign and made it much more difficult. I am having to spend time and energy in a battle with people who should be supporting me.

Let me also correct what was been said about support from my union branch. I am neither supported nor opposed by them, because there has been no quorate meeting of the branch committee, but I do have the support of a majority - originally it was seven out of nine. Of the two SWP members, one supported me and the other did not.

Your article says that Martin Smith had vetoed or opposed my candidature. But I don’t think this is true. There was no vote by a Tusc meeting or email and therefore no veto by Martin Smith. What is true is that the SWP member who did support me originally has now changed sides. It is ironic that he said he would support me if I was the Tusc candidate and has subsequently acted to undermine that possibility. Both SWP members are now singing from the same song sheet. A local member of Respect told me the SWP local organiser is saying the same thing. They are opposing my candidature on the grounds that I don’t have sufficient support among trade unionists and socialists despite the fact that over 50 members from three different unions (Unison, UCU and GMB) have supported my candidature.

A letter from Clive Heemskerk of Tusc to the Socialist Alliance says: “An elected officer of his South Bank University UCU trade union branch, for example, has informed me of concerns that an ill-prepared election campaign would not aid the branch in its developing battle with the university management.

Suffice to say, the elected union officer mentioned is an SWP member. He does not have the branch authority to intervene in that way. I have not claimed the branch has supported my candidature. No doubt some support Simon Hughes MP - including, I now think, the SWP. But the branch has not decided to support Simon Hughes and oppose my candidature. It has not called on its officers to intervene with Tusc in this way.

No SWP veto
No SWP veto

On scum

Caitriona Rylance will certainly find no end of snide references to low-life thugs in the rightwing press (Letters, April 1).

But that’s not the only source of opprobrium such people face; Marx and Engels famously, or perhaps infamously, referred to “the ‘dangerous class’, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society” in the Communist manifesto, and that work’s prediction that this ‘dangerous class’ - the lumpenproletariat - tended to play “the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue” was apparently confirmed by its role in Louis Napoleon’s counterrevolution a few years later.

It is clear that there are large, properly lumpen elements in the English Defence League, as well as members of the working class. But Marxists, we should remember, are not interested in the working class because we are sentimentally inclined - like classic Hollywood films - to root for the underdog, but rather for the leadership it can offer to society as a whole in ‘what needs to be done’ - the reorganisation of society through the destruction of capitalism.

The ‘worker’ elements of the EDL are the least fertile ground in the class as a whole for our message. The most atomised sections of the working class can find, in the EDL (and in the absence of a serious left), a strange and distorted model of collective action, which is under the leadership quite obviously of the petty bourgeoisie, but that means they are organised on the EDL’s terms - racism, hysterical anti-leftism - rather than anything amenable to us; the fact that they are organised at all, meanwhile, means they are ‘harder’ than your average atomised worker to crack.

There is a classic anti-German slogan which says that all nation-states should be abolished - Germany first, and Israel last. So it is, in a sense, with us and the proletariat - there are certainly wavering elements in the fascist milieu, but they are not large, and we are unlikely to see large-scale splits from that direction into ours. We are organised around the task of winning leadership of the class, which means an orientation to the best organised sections of it (organised on a class basis).

That - if we get it right - will produce a powerful pole of attraction with the words ‘working class’ stamped all over it. Eventually, that will peel off ‘all by itself’ (ie, through the consequent concerted activity of the organised proletariat) the wavering elements of the EDL types. The vanguard first, and the arrière garde last - those are our priorities; especially when the workers’ organisations remain, even in their current parlous state, numerically and structurally stronger than the extreme right.

So is this all elitism? Not really; elitism would be to consider these knuckleheads to be born knuckleheads, with activity along the lines of the EDL as their immutable destiny. The reactionary press has every interest in forgetting that these people have been made into idiots by the successive waves of attacks on workers’ organisations and deproletarianisation that have characterised the last 30 years, particularly during the Thatcher years. It is not a matter of ‘law and order’ - the cops are no better, and in fact we probably have less traction over them than the most lumpen football casual in the EDL. The Black Panthers, for all their faults, had some success in drawing the declassed into revolutionary struggle, and we should not rule it out for all time - that would be elitist.

Facts are stubborn things, however - although, but for some circumstance already buried by the passage of time, some EDL members may indeed have been our “strongest class fighters”, right now they are enemies. I certainly know young comrades in London who have been at the wrong end of an EDL assault in the street - and not on any provocative demo either. Local mass mobilisations for community defence (rather than bussing predominantly student leftists up and down the country) are our main weapon against them for the time being - not agitational material. Meanwhile, the patient work of making our side halfway appealing goes on.

On scum
On scum