Letters

Biggest hurdle

There were around 40 people at the May 4 Tusc meeting in Cardiff. There was talk of Tusc being turned into a party by one of the four speakers, but somehow I did not believe it.

Others spoke of cuts in the public sector, which in Wales is a big deal, as about one in four jobs are in that department. Ross Saunders, Tusc candidate for Cardiff Central, spoke of how the fightback starts after May 6.

From my experience in the Socialist Alliance I suspect that Tusc may well disappear, and the left will shore up on all sides - which is a shame, because there were several left groups represented at the meeting. The biggest hurdle for the movement is how to join the disparate groups and trade unionists into a cohesive fighting force.

Biggest hurdle
Biggest hurdle

One country

I agree with Tony Clark that separating Marxists into distinct organisations according to outmoded ideological categories and believing that they must remain at each other’s throats till hell freezes over is not a basis for going forward (Letters, April 29). The only realistic approach is to unite communists on the basis proposed by the CPGB with its Draft programme. At the moment neither comrade Clark nor Paul Smith, to whom he was replying, would join such a party for sectarian reasons.

On the question of the Soviet Union I agree broadly with comrade Smith that Trotsky, although he made some mistakes, gave his life for communist internationalism and was a true working class revolutionary to the end. One of Trotsky’s mistakes was doggedly maintaining his description of the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers’ state. Trotskyists always defended the Soviet Union unconditionally because of this - a position which has bedevilled Trotskyism ever since. The question of the defence of the Soviet Union from imperialism did not depend on it being a ‘workers’ state’. It is not in the interest of the working class to allow imperialism any victories, but we support the right of the working class to overthrow any regime. Trotsky was for the overthrow of the bureaucracy, because he thought only the leadership needed replacing, not the new social revolution that was actually required.

Comrade Clark’s defence of socialism in one country and his claim that it derives from Lenin rest entirely on highly selective quotes, not on an analysis. Before the Soviet Union became isolated, no communist argued for a national road to communism - not Lenin, not Stalin. The socialist revolution would be international, replacing international capitalism with international socialism or going down to defeat in the attempt. Lenin wrote that Russia could supply the spark to ignite the revolution, but afterwards would play a subordinate role.

Initially the Bolsheviks held on desperately, banking on the international revolution to come. Much of what they did can only be excused on the grounds that they acted out of desperation. However, comrade Clark isn’t referring to this period, but to the relative stabilisation of the Soviet Union under a thoroughly bureaucratised party. One that executed tens of thousands of old Bolsheviks as traitors but still called itself Bolshevik.

Stalin introduced target-setting (called planning) which went hand in hand with the death of millions. Stalin and co called it primitive socialist accumulation. Of course, it wasn’t socialist nor was it democratic (although it claimed to be). How could it be? The working class was a minority and even they found themselves in permanent conflict with the party-state apparatus. Comrade Clark says that the Stalinite five-year plans were socialist in nature because they rested on the nationalisation of the means of production (despite the ruthless exploitation of the workers and peasants that went with it). Industrialisation eventually created a population that had a working class majority, but neither Stalin nor his successors ever trusted the working class enough to allow them to freely organise as a class. The ruling class as an exploited subject class! Why would we want to call this socialist?

Comrade Clark would say that Stalin was working towards genuine socialism. His successors let him down. But Stalin created and recreated the bureaucracy. Why is he not to blame for it? Was he really such an obdurate opponent of imperialism or did his attempts to do deals with imperialism mostly fail because the imperialists wouldn’t play? Except for World War II, of course, when the western allies supplied the Soviet Union with a huge amount of aid. And did Stalin use this opportunity to liberate the working class in eastern Europe or did he subordinate the region to his own chauvinistic agenda?

Trotskyism has degenerated into myopic sects, but ‘official’ communism, because it was vastly bigger and more influential than Trotskyism, has to take the blame for the low esteem in which communism is now held by the workers. It even affects comrade Clark, in that he believes that only an economic crash brought about by peak oil will motivate the workers out of desperation to embrace socialism. Apparently the working class will turn to socialism because it is slightly better than death. Whatever happened to the positive belief that only communism will produce a world of peace, plenty and fully rounded human development?

One country
One country

Left posers

Steve Wallis argues that “Socialists and communists should be pleased about the Liberal Democrat surge in the opinion polls” due to the parliamentary reforms that they promise and the fact that their manifesto appears to be marginally to the left of Brown’s Labour Party (Letters, April 29).

Comrade Wallis argues that proportional representation - which the Lib Dems support - would help far-left parties in future elections (it would also help far-right and all minority parties, although this is not to argue against it). Yes, proportional representation would be ‘better’ than the first-past-the-post system we currently have. However, this is missing the crucial problem facing the left in Britain today - namely, the left itself.

In order for us to be successful in any sense, the left must unite with itself. As the Weekly Worker has reported, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, where Socialist Workers Party members are not campaigning for Socialist Party candidates and vice versa, regardless of the fact that they are in the same coalition, provides a perfect example of the sectarian attitude we need to overcome if the left is to achieve anything. If united, the left has the ability to become a real force in parliamentary elections and society in general. In the absence of this, simply reforming the electoral system would make little to no difference to the left, as things currently stand.

The second mistake that comrade Wallis makes is in believing that the Lib Dems’ manifesto is to the left of that of the Labour Party. Whilst in many policy areas it may appear that way, in terms of the biggest problem facing most working class people in Britain today, their manifesto and their leader Nick Clegg promise a wave of “savage cuts”. This should be no surprise, given the history of the Liberal Democrats and Liberals before them from the old Whig party and their record of attacks on trade unions, especially under the Thatcher government during the miners’ strike.

Posing as left and anti-establishment has been easy for the Lib Dems under the current political scene (helped by the fact that the far left hardly registers). We should not endorse this posturing, but rather we should focus on what our class really needs to become a class for itself: an independent, mass Marxist party. Needless to say, the Liberal Democrats are not this, nor have they the potential to become it.

Left posers
Left posers

Not so chilling

Keith Rice appears to think we can ‘fight fascism’ by not telling the truth to the working class (Letters, April 22).

The comrade is annoyed by my article (‘The obligation and means to resist tyranny’, April 15) on the grounds that, while it “ostensibly” attacks the pacifism and reformism of left groups such as the Communist Party of Britain/Morning Star and the Socialist Party in England and Wales, in reality - or so he thinks - the article “serves” to lend the British National Party “respectability” and provide a “covert promotion” of Nick Griffin. According to comrade Rice, nothing “justifies” a leftwing publication giving such a “level of promotion” to the BNP, “no matter what Griffin’s views may or may not be”.

Why does Keith Rice believe that a Weekly Worker journalist is promoting the BNP? By “putting the case”, as he writes, that the left have “misrepresented” Griffin’s views on armed struggle. By arguing that the BNP leader’s “chilling” words about the people having the “right” and “duty” to use “physical force” against a “tyrannical government” - made to the journalist and prospective Liberal Democrat MP for Barking and Dagenham, Dominic Carman - were in fact not so chilling as they were made out to be by sections of the left. By accompanying the article, comrade Rice notes, with a picture of a “smiling Nick Griffin backed by a US flag”.

However, the plain and simple fact is that Griffin’s relatively anodyne (or so you would have thought for Marxists, as opposed to liberals) comments on the relationship between violence and politics were blatantly, if not cynically, “misrepresented” or distorted by the left. Quite self-evidently - so why not say so? To be even blunter still, the Morning Star, SPEW, Counterfire, etc, lied about what Nick Griffin actually said. So that his formally correct, albeit garbled, observation that the people have the “right”, or should have the right, to rebel or take up arms against an oppressive regime - taken from the US declaration of independence - became transformed tabloid-style into a sinister call, and justification, for “white” people to go on the rampage and “maim” and “blow things up”. Those are things that Nick Griffin never said.

Of course, given the BNP’s fascist, thuggish origins, we all know that, coming from someone like Nick Griffin, these words have a sinister side to them. He is no democrat and would doubtless have no compunction, under the right circumstances in the future, in deploying brutal violence against those of us on the left or indeed anyone deemed to be a threat to his interests and ambitions (the same goes for many other, more respectable bourgeois politicians. The point is, we must try to grasp what the BNP is now.)

Neither the BNP’s past nor a possible future transformation diminishes the fundamental truth of what he said to Carman, which is that people with a “genuine grievance”, and in a situation where the state “puts them down”, have the right to “do something which is outside the parliamentary system”. That doesn’t sound so dreadful to me, I have to confess.

But, as I said in my article, the left’s hysterical and dishonest reaction to Griffin on this matter just acts to expose the true reformist colours of groups like the CPB and SPEW - because they are effectively arguing that the working class does not have the “right” to resist oppression and tyranny (or to make revolution, for that matter). A dismal and self-defeating viewpoint, to which both Leon Trotsky and George Washington, it is safe to conclude, would strongly object. Far from serving to “undermine” the struggle against the far right, as comrade Rice thinks, pointing this out can only bolster our movement - seeing how the number one task for communists is to arm the working class with the programme needed to overthrow capitalism, for which democratic self-defence constitutes an absolutely essential element.

Furthermore, I would suggest to comrade Rice that a photo of Nick Griffin shaking the hand of a far-right nutter like Kyle Bristow of the virulently homophobic and ultra-reactionary Young Americans for Freedom is hardly conducive to someone hoping to project a ‘nice guy’ image - more like an acute embarrassment. Indeed, Bristow is such a crazy that he became too much to stomach even for many inside YAF. Thus, after a year and a half as chairman of the YAF chapter at Michigan State University, he was forced to resign, his political activities having become steadily more lunatic (to the extent that YAF at MSU became the first ever college organisation to be placed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of “hate groups”).

As the old saying almost goes, know thy enemy - and make them suffer when you can.

Not so chilling
Not so chilling