Letters
"Dead Kurds'
Regarding the nonsense letter by Yahya Tekin (‘No ally of ours’ September 23), unquestionably there are some fascistic elements in the systematic structure of the Turkish government, specifically in its military wing. But calling “fascist” the current AKP government that has just allowed a referendum in its political system only showcases Tekin’s illogical political perception. Tekin gives a complete misinterpretation of events, in contrast to comrade Esen Uslu’s ‘Much to do about nothing’ (September 16).
The Kurdish movement is not a “Trojan horse in the communist movement in Turkey” as he claims. Looking at the family tree of communism in Turkey, however wrong they may have been politically and ideologically, it is impossible to list on paper all the Kurdish Marxist leaders and martyrs who sacrificed their entire lives for a communist future in Kurdistan, Turkey and the wider Middle East. The Kurdish independence movement gave birth to tens of communist and socialist organisations in that country. However, in return for all those sacrifices there wasn’t a genuine appreciation from Turkish ‘communists’, a simple practical recognition of the rights of the Kurdish nation to self-determination. What was on offer was the constant nationalistic and chauvinistic denouncement of Kurdish separatism or even autonomy within Turkey in the name of the ‘mass proletariat’. In consequence the majority of the left in Kurdistan began distancing themselves from the Turkish communist movement. The politics of Turkish communists is a disastrous one. Observing the political climate realistically, it is crystal clear that the left in Turkey has nothing to offer the Kurds apart from national chauvinism; even imperialism offered more in the case of the Kurdistan regional government in Iraq (KRG) than the ‘programmes’ of these so-called communist and socialist sects in Turkey and other occupied regions of Kurdistan.
In addition to that, it is an absolute act of foolishness to state that policies of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) have been welcomed by the ruling AKP. BDP previously was HADEP; when it was completely shut down it changed its name to Democratic Society Party (DTP). Once again declared illegal in December 2009, this time its Kurdish elected MPs and mayors were arrested en masse and imprisoned. The party is now BDP as the others are illegal. Isn’t it insanity for a communist to characterise government attacks on BDP as the latter being “welcomed and tolerated”, despite national oppression and repression of political freedom? I suppose when his kind of ‘communism’ rules, we then have to become “dead Kurds” again for the sake of the ‘mass proletariat’.
Tekin alleges that the Kurdish movement is contributing to US plans in Turkey as, in his view, the BDP demands separation from Turkey. Well the Kurds must have their basic democratic rights, as everyone else, to choose their own fate. But in reality, and unfortunately, BDP is not a separatist organisation - which is one of the central weaknesses of Kurdish politics in Turkey, similar to other Kurdish organisations in greater Kurdistan. So, I suggest you don’t worry for now, as BDP will not be dividing the fatherland - even though that is the will of the entire Kurdish nation. On the other hand, calling the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) “a gang of murderers” is the exact position of US imperialism and the European bourgeoisie on the struggle of this oppressed nation. PKK is listed as a terrorist organisation by the US, EU and Nato. Since Turkey joined, Nato practically waged war against them with its high tech military weapons. This is despite the use of phosphorous weapons and chemical gas on Turkey-Iraq borders - reported in the alternative and some less mainstream global media. Yet still the PKK proposes peace declarations one after another along with one-sided ceasefires. The party sent invited delegates to peace talks and in return the delegates received life sentences when they arrived in Turkey. Nevertheless, it has to be taken into account that it is quite difficult to consume the philosophy of the oppressed coherently when you are still a fist of Kemalist fascism. So who is inheriting pro-imperialist policies in the region? The BDP, which is attacked by the Turkish government on daily basis, and the ‘terrorist’ PKK that fights Nato? Or Tekin’s politics and those like him who Lenin once described as “chauvinists and lackeys of bloodstained and filthy imperialist monarchies”?
"Dead Kurds'
"Dead Kurds'
Careful
Mike Macnair (‘Disorientated establishment promoted popemania’, September 23) concludes that Cameron and the Tory press welcomed the papal visit and its irrationalist message as there is hope that by promoting an increased role of religion in politics, churches will take up the tasks of social solidarity that the state is about to dump. Further, it will lead to a new conservatism well to the right of Thatcher, with a new irrationalist political ideology.
Whilst I do not disagree with the idea that the right has tried, and will continue to try, to use religion to its advantage, it is important to remember that the Catholic church is not homogeneous and not all Catholics are conservatives. There are many in the Catholic church who rejected neoliberalism as a political ideology and who currently reject the budget cuts and the erosion of the welfare state. We should try and forge alliances with all those who want to fight the conservatives and the cuts, and be careful not to alienate potential allies with crude anti-Catholicism.
Careful
Careful
Coward
Rowan Williams is inconsistent. Although he says in he is willing to accept a gay celibate bishop, he blocked the appointment of the celibate gay cleric, Jeffrey John, as bishop of Reading.
This is what the archbishop of Canterbury told The Times: “To put it very simply, there’s no problem about a gay person who’s a bishop. It’s about the fact that there are traditionally, historically, standards that the clergy are expected to observe. So there’s always a question about the personal life of the clergy.”
Before he became archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan supported gay inclusion and equality. Now he victimises gay clergy like Jeffrey John and goes out of his way to retain within the Anglican communion some of the most hateful Christian homophobes in the world. In his calculation, church unity is more important than the human rights of lesbian and gay people. His attacks on pro-gay Anglicans have been far stronger than his muted criticisms of Anglican leaders who advocate discrimination against gay people.
An archbishop is supposed to be a moral leader. On gay human rights, Rowan is a follower. He’s an appeaser of homophobes. He’d never make similar compromises over racism within the church. Why the double standards?
Rowan is a deeply conflicted soul. He’s torn between his kind, liberal inner heart and a seemingly heartless collusion with Anglican advocates of anti-gay prejudice and discrimination. It is two-faced for him to believe one thing in private and say something different in public. He is not being true to himself. He’s allowed himself to become a prisoner of the conservative, homophobic Lambeth Palace mafia.
Rowan is speaking with a forked tongue on the issue of gay clergy and equality. He looks weak and cowardly compared to the inspired moral leadership against homophobia voiced by archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Coward
Coward
Inevitable
With regard to Angel Formoso’s letter (‘Long live Joe’. September 16), I would like to make the following brief observation.
The paradoxical nature of the victory of the socialist revolution in Russia made it inevitable that concessions such as the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty and the introduction of the New Economic Policy would have to be made to imperialism to buy time in the hope of revolution in Western Europe.
In a similar vein, for comrade Formoso to argue against the use of ex-Czarist army officers in the formation of the Red Army is theoretically skating on thin ice. Socialism develops and evolves out of capitalism. It is therefore natural enough - whether in an economic, military or administrative sense - for a revolution to take advantage of the expertise and technical advances made by capitalist development.
Failure to do so in this particular instance would almost certainly have led to defeat of the revolution at the hands of the invading counterrevolutionary forces during the civil war.
Inevitable
Inevitable
Growth
As the Labour Party Conference got under way in Manchester, deputy leader Harriet Harman was able to announce that more than 32,000 people had joined the party since the general election on May 6. Indeed, within a week of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition taking office, 10,000 had already joined. As things stand now, Labour Party membership has grown by over a fifth since Gordon Brown lost the election.
Of those who have joined Labour since May, around half are Labour supporters who have decided to join for the first time or to rejoin. Another 30% of those joining used to be supporters or possibly even members of the Liberal Democrats. Harman’s tally left around 20% of new members’ political origin unaccounted for. Since his election as leader, Ed Miliband reported that the party has been gaining one new member every minute.
Looking at the results of the election for Labour Party leader, there were 9,314 votes for Diane Abbott from party members and 25,938 from union members in their respective sections. Broadly, these votes are a measure of the left within the Labour Party. While she may have received some votes largely because she is a woman and/or because she is black, in the main what she garnered will have been from the left. This is especially so for the 562 party members and 4,594 union members who refused to give any second preference votes at all. It is arguable that these voters may represent a hard core of the left that sees the other four candidates in a similar way to that expressed in this paper (‘Vote preference one for Abbott ... and fuck the warmongering ex-ministers’ September 9 2010).
Whatever the interpretation of Abbott’s voters’ orientations, in the round they do represent within their ranks the bulk of the left. And it is this left that should be establishing a coordinated and fighting Marxist element within the Labour Party. The fact that over 25,000 trade unionists voted for her while only 9,314 party members did shows clearly one of the tasks for the future of the Labour left: those trade unionists need to be persuaded to join the Labour Party.
A left that can only muster a little over 7% of party members to vote for Abbott is poor, but it is still significant. However, a Labour left bolstered by the tens of thousands outside the party’s ranks who voted for her would not only be a force to be reckoned with: on present membership figures it could be a major current. Part of the struggle to build the working class element as the Marxist bloc within Labour has to include recruiting from among those on the left who as yet see no way to be effective as Marxists within the party. This is the dynamic whose functioning we need to grasp.
Of course, left support for Abbott in the trade unions may not be easily translated into a solid left within the Labour Party, let alone becoming its Marxist core overnight. No, Labour Party Marxists have to work hard within the party to convince numerous other members to cohere around a Marxist project. This needs patient and dedicated work by Labour Party comrades to convince those currently in its ranks, as well as outside, that a coming together of Labour Party Marxists is possible. If we can achieve this we shall see many on the left joining the party because they see it as a legitimate and worthwhile arena for struggle for working class ideology. It will become a right and proper place for Marxists in Britain to congregate.
Some comrades on the left are opposed in principle to joining and working in the Labour Party, though the objective principle in question remains elusive. It is as slippery as an eel. As far as the labour and working class movement in Britain is concerned, though, there should be no difference in our attitude as Marxists to working in any of its bodies.
Growth
Growth
Reactionary
Firstly, I confess admiration for the mental contortion required to assume that I do not like pictures of women or displays of female flesh because they might ‘cause’ male lust (Letters, September 16 and 23). I think nothing of the sort. Men’s sexuality is their own responsibility and is not ‘provoked’ by anything women do or don’t wear. I am also surprised by the misunderstanding of the term ‘fetishism’, especially since I pointed out this was meant in the same way that Karl Marx (of whom comrades may have heard) used the word in his idea of commodity fetishism.
Peter Manson might find John Berger’s Ways of seeing, a highly influential book, useful in considering representations of women as he approaches discussion of the visual arts from a socialist perspective. You say that this debate started about the burqa (Letters, September 9), but my original letter was not about the burqa. As it happens, my opinion on the French burqa ban is similar to yours, but this was not the subject of my letter. You also reach other conclusions which I find surprising; I already knew that communists want an end to the gulf between public and private spheres. I did say that the current public/private distinction is part of bourgeois society, so it would be remarkable if French republican ideals in the public sphere were anything more than tokenistic - like the laughable idea that Britain is a democracy. I didn’t think I had to spell it out.
My original letter (June 21) was about an issue of the Weekly Worker (June 14) that contained several examples of overt sexism. You seem to think I believe this to be a matter of chance but, in fact, I am perfectly well aware that it was the result of deliberate choice. That is the reason for my criticism, as you will see if you read the letter. I did make some helpful suggestions of possible alternatives - for example, a photograph contrasting the freedom of men to strip off and jump in a river with the forced covering of women in black burqas, or using a photo of a kerb-crawling man instead of a bit of a woman’s body to illustrate your article on prostitution. Consumers of the ‘sex’ industry are usually men; this very often also seems to be the case in those found guilty of violence against prostituted women. So a picture of such a man would admirably illustrate the actual, immediate source of women’s vulnerability. It is arguable that prostituted women are vulnerable to male violence as a direct consequence of the dynamics of prostitution itself. Since we are agreed that men’s sexual violence is neither natural nor inevitable, there must be another cause. Many readers would find your explanation interesting.
While I understand that you would be more comfortable debating women’s oppression on the familiar territory of the operation of the state or capitalism, that was not my intention. I wanted to discuss your choice of imagery and research material and the general lack of seriousness with which you approach the subject - in marked contrast to your discussion of other topics, including visual arts. Sadly, it seems that I am unusual in finding those articles politically interesting. Many of your recent contributors show a refreshing freedom from the traditional requirements of ever having read anything on the subject before adding their own opinion, based on the most ignorant, reactionary and bigoted views available.
I am, of course, grateful for the guidance on what should and should not form the correct parameters of debate on women’s oppression. It has been suggested that this oppression could include being told what to think by those with no previous interest, experience or education in the subject. There is a marked contrast between the response to this debate and the deafening silence greeting the attempts to justify the shooting of his ex-partner by a man with a history of domestic violence and the sexual assault of an eight-year-old girl. It would also be interesting to consider what the reaction to an equivalent debate on racism would be.
It seems that many of your contributors believe themselves to be making an original contribution to this debate. Sadly, we have a long history of “attempts to create defensiveness through trivialisation ... the first gambit which greets threatening arguments” (Nina Power, ‘The woman, animalised’, The Guardian, September 24). It is unfortunate that you seem content to allow your paper to be used in the promotion of such reactionary views.
Reactionary
Reactionary
Chauvinists
James Turley (‘Slow death of Cuban “socialism”’, September 23) may have missed our initial contribution on the changes in Cuba; it was posted on our website on September 22, the day before his article appeared. He will now be able to read that and a more extended analysis in the latest issue of Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!, which will be available by the time this letter is published, as will those readers who want to get a real understanding of the processes taking place in Cuba at the present time.
Although these articles specifically address the likes of Rory Carroll of The Guardian, they also deal with the points that Turley himself raises, since, in common with virtually all Trotskyists in Britain, these reactionary bourgeois journalists are amongst the sources he will have used to write his piece. He finds, if I recall rightly, Cuban sources to be tainted - a convenient bit of chauvinism to cover for the absence of original thought. And, anyway, will there be any real difference in the coverage of these changes between the Weekly Worker, Socialist Worker, The Socialist, Workers’ Liberty and Socialist Resistance? I think not; they will all drink at the poisoned well called Samuel Farber, where they do not use the likes of Carroll.
However, what I want to deal with are not so much the specifics about Cuba as the more general questions of socialism, imperialism and revolution. The first is Turley’s statement that we (the Revolutionary Communist Group) “were lured away from Trotskyism by the revolutionary excitement surrounding Cuba and national liberation movements.” No, we were lured away by the utterly reactionary positions that Trotskyists had in relation to the Irish liberation struggle, and then in relation to the anti-apartheid struggle, and then in relation to the Labour Party. We understood, through our political work and by our reading of Lenin, that the essence of building a revolutionary movement in this country is anti-imperialism and that there can be no question of building a socialist movement unless we oppose social imperialists all along the line (Imperialism and the split in socialism). It was a rediscovery of those of Lenin’s positions which the British Trotskyists reject: on imperialism; on the division of the world into oppressed and oppressor nations; on the right of nations of self-determination; on the material basis for a split in the working class in imperialist nations; on the different tasks facing the working class in oppressor and oppressed nations.
You see, when the chips are down, the Trotskyists - and I, of course, include the Weekly Worker in this category - line up with the imperialist Labour Party and perform some sickening intellectual contortions in order to do so. We saw this in the drivel written by Alex John with its puerile headline (‘Vote preference one for Abbott … and fuck warmongering ex-ministers’, September 9), where, like the SWP, he cites Lenin’s description of Labour as a bourgeois workers’ party and when, like the SWP, he, as a member of the CPGB, completely rejects Lenin’s position on the material basis of opportunism. Talk about illusions: the idea that there are socialists in the Labour Party, not just common or garden opportunists with a ready socialist phrase for the gullible Trotskyists; the belief that it has a working class base when, nearly 25 years ago, Whitty reported that 60% of its members had a degree or equivalent, and that before the Blair levy of the 1990s and the membership slump of the last 10 years; the notion that communists do not want to destroy the Labour Party - of course we do, just as Lenin wanted to destroy the Mensheviks. This article is just reactionary guff - but with a purpose because, of course, the Weekly Worker likes to keep in with ‘comrade’ John McDonnell. I hope that your readers appreciate the way in which the Weekly Worker fawns over this utterly backward nonentity and reserves its bile for revolutionaries who have changed history and who continue to do so. Does anyone seriously imagine that Chavez will turn out like Batista, as Turley suggests? Only a wretched died-in-the-wool reactionary British Trotskyist could even think of making the comparison.
The Weekly Worker (like the SWP, AWL, SPEW, etc) sets a very different standard for revolutionary movements in the oppressed nations from that they apply to themselves in imperialist Britain. Here it is okay to support a racist, imperialist anti-working class party led by war criminals in a general election - but, when it comes to the Bolivarian revolution, or the Cuban revolution, nothing is ever good enough for our Trotskyists. Because popular meetings in Cuba do not call for the overthrow of socialism, or decide they should give up because there isn’t socialism elsewhere, Turley has to dismiss this: “carefully monitored forms of public participation in politics are unthreatening enough to be allowed.” Rory Carroll would be proud of such a line. You can try to dignify this by calling it Trotskyism; I call it by its real name - chauvinism.
And we see it time and again: when revolutionaries rush on ahead in the oppressed nations, there are the great British Trotkysists who have built absolutely nothing saying ‘you cannot do this, the revolution has to be international, you have to wait for us’. And when the revolutionary movements don’t wait - well, there is no fury like a British Trotskyist scorned. Out comes permanent revolution, the impossibility of building socialism in one country, Stalinist this, petty bourgeois that. In reality, it means that British Trotskyists never support any revolutionary movement anywhere because they are such wretched doctrinaires.
The other point we realised when we ‘turned away’ from Trotskyism was that it had a material basis in the class relations of British imperialism. Its backward ideas express the interests of a petty bourgeois stratum whose privileged position depends on British imperialism’s parasitic relationship to the rest of the world. That is why they instinctively oppose revolutionary movements (with suitably radical phrases, of course) which might upset the relationship, declaring that they can’t possibly or indeed shouldn’t win, and endorse the Labour Party whose raison d’être is defending British imperialism.
Turning to the situation in Cuba: no, we don’t think it will be a “harder sell” since, as materialists, we understand the difficulties in moving towards socialism and can see the honesty and openness with which the Cuban communists deal with them. They have no blueprint; there is very little historical experience they can draw on. Instead they have to steadily build up the cultural level of the Cuban people to ensure that they can strengthen the democratic processes that they have in place; they have to seek allies internationally as a defence against US imperialism and its ruthless economic blockade; and they have to deal with the serious economic problems they face through a constant dialogue with the people. They cannot wait until the revolution spreads to “strategically important sections of the advanced capitalist world” because, if they have to wait for the Trotskyists, they will have to wait forever.
So, James Turley and the Weekly Worker, you can have your racist, imperialist, anti-working class Labour Party with all its mythical left workers, with its comrade John McDonnells and its Diane Abbotts, and you can have all your comrade Trotskyists. We will gladly take Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, the Cuban and Bolivarian revolutions, whatever difficulties they face, and know that we are on the side of the overwhelming majority of revolutionaries and communists in the world in keeping to this choice.
Chauvinists
Chauvinists
Slander
The idea that Hugo Chavez is like Batista is nothing less than bizarre. US imperialism supported Batista, who didn’t nationalise things out of fear of CIA assassination attempts and US military action.
Sometimes there’s too much paranoia about army officers, especially Third World army officers. Chavez is merely following the footsteps of the Julius Caesar of people’s history (not gentlemen’s history), armed with a combinative programme derived from Proudhon’s cooperatives and communal power, Lassalle’s ‘state aid’ over economistic ‘self-help’ as a means of agitating for political action, and Bismarck’s social welfare (plus social conservatism on the video games front).
The recent failure of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela to obtain a two-thirds legislative majority points to one conclusion: the need for a multi-party system that is managed towards a deliberalised, radicalised, substantively populist and leftwing orientation.
I just hope this failure won’t hamper efforts to form a new international, something to which Batista never committed.
Slander
Slander
Cuba
James Turley’s article on Cuba states that “Socialism is enabled by the extension of democratic planning through the commanding heights of the economy, under a radically democratic political regime. Under those circumstances - so Marxists wager - the mom-and-pop petty bourgeois enterprise will simply be unable to compete, and will quietly be absorbed into the mainstream economy.”
If I were a mom ’n’ pop enterprise, I would view with suspicion the prospect of ‘quiet absorption’. Is the Weekly Worker seriously suggesting that fish and chip shops would be absorbed into a state monopoly serving regulation fish suppers? That shoe repairers become the fifth emergency service? That hairdressers are replaced by that familiar schoolyard jibe - the council haircut?
In fact absorption is already taking place under capitalism. McDonald’s is squeezing the greasy spoons, butchers shops have disappeared and been replaced by butchers behind the meat counter at Morrisons. Pubs cannot compete with supermarkets and are closing at the rate of one per day. A good demand would be to regulate breweries to sell pub beer at equitable prices and to lift the anti-democratic smoking ban which has sharply hit trade.
We should not, of course, campaign against the expansion of Tesco where there is perceived demand. Despite the hectoring of Jamie Oliver, working class families will always plump for cheap chicken. But we should support the opportunity for small enterprises to operate on a fairer footing as cheap credit for small businesses is a burning issue right now.
The movements of the petty bourgeoisie can never be substituted for the lead role of a revolutionary party amongst the advanced layers of the working class (though, of course, the Pabloite centrism that infected the Trotskyist movement after World War II collapsed into this method). However, a strong part of the programme aimed at the petty bourgeoisie can win over elements and prevent this class being won to fascism. Already, Griffin is speaking of the ‘banksters’.
Cuba
Cuba