Letters
Hard off
I am always interested in reading Robbie Rix’s weekly fighting fund column. I was therefore very interested to learn that only 500 hard copies of the Weekly Worker are printed each week for distribution to subscribers and sellers alike (‘Thanks for the flurry’, October 7).
Like all papers of the revolutionary left, and also most sections of the capitalist press, hard copies of newspapers are like loss leaders in a supermarket. I have done much research into the future of the newspaper industry, including reading the media section of The Guardian website each week. Just as the future of hard copies of books looks very bleak, especially with the advent of Amazon’s Kindle reader, the same applies to hard copies of newspapers. After much thought, but without access to the accounts of the Weekly Worker, I have concluded that it should move to a digital-only format. However, a hard copy of the Weekly Worker could still be printed for sale if, for example, there was a national TUC anti-cuts demo or even a 24-hour general strike.
The money saved by moving the Weekly Worker to a digital-only format would be substantial, and could be used belatedly to modernise and update the CPGB website. At the same time, the money saved could go to employ more full-timers and also to produce a large range of books and pamphlets.
A good example of this is the ‘World Socialist Web Site’, which is able to have articles in many languages, as well as producing numerous books and pamphlets. Another example is the Socialist Worker newspaper in the USA, which two years ago moved from a weekly to a fortnightly hard copy. The money saved by this move was substantial and allowed for the modernisation of its website, including daily updates produced by the employment of extra full-timers.
For too long the CPGB Provisional Central Committee has talked about the modernisation of the CPGB website. The move to a digital-only format would be a major step towards turning all this talk into practice.
Hard off
Hard off
Sarcasm
Can Eddie Ford tell us where the low paid who pay prescription charges can sign up in solidarity with those earning £44,000 pa who might lose their £14 a week universal child benefit?
Sarcasm
Sarcasm
What pace?
I stand corrected by comrade Pete McLaren (Letters, October 7) to my article ‘Dead men’s shoes’. He better expresses his own views in his own words.
In my defence it was not out of malicious intent. I innocently interpreted the phrase “pace of progress” as meaning “going nowhere” - an interpretation which was encouraged when he said that he feared that activists might start drifting back to the Labour Party unless the CNWP raised its profile by becoming a party project with a constitution. This was precisely the subject of his motion.
His Socialist Alliance may have got agreement to debate its motion at the next conference, the date of which is likely to be postponed according to Dave Nellist. So, not really a high priority for the Socialist Party. Dave Nellist guessed that five years was a reasonable time for the party to come into being. In the meantime the CNWP is to remain a top-down project of SPEW. In this light, SA member Dave Church’s view that your motion would be debated and then forgotten sounds very plausible to me.
On a point of information, I attended only as an observer and did not vote - though I welcomed your motion drawing the CNWP’s attention to the need for democracy. Unfortunately, I felt the plea fell on cloth ears.
What pace?
What pace?
Decolonise
Moshé Machover writes: “Peace will be an outcome of liberation, not its starting point” (‘Why I am not an Israeli peace activist’, October 7). I agree. However, he does not define liberation.
In an essay on my website, ‘This piece is not about peace’, I write about ‘decolonisation’ instead of liberation. I propose the complete decolonisation of Palestine, the Zionist colonists going back to where they or their parents came from. In my eyes, that is the only form of real liberation. I would like to suggest that Mr Machover reads it. I am quite curious about how he would react.
Decolonise
Decolonise
Misreading
In his response to my article (‘Tea Party: rumblings on the frenzied right’, September 30), Arthur Bough seems to have difficulty with the idea that the wrath of the Tea Partiers is directed against politicians, and not the capitalist class for which they act (Letters, October 7).
But, surely, Arthur understands that the notion of the state as an instrument of class power, which we as Marxists take for granted, is one that bourgeois ideology is determined to deny and the duplicity of bourgeois politics is designed to conceal. If the majority of people in the United States and Europe don’t grasp the connection between politics and class power, is it any surprise that the Tea Partiers don’t get it? Politicians, in their eyes, do not serve the ruling class. Since they are the ones who make political decisions, they are the ruling class.
Arthur also seems to insist on a strict line of demarcation between ruling class and rightwing middle class politics. He says that the tax reductions and severe spending cuts that Tea Party advocate are exclusively middle class preoccupations; that big capital has no interest in either reducing the government budget or lowering taxes; and that the Republican establishment, which represents big capital, is doing everything in its power to thwart the Tea Party.
These assertions are not empirically supported. Arthur must have heard about the great upward income shift that has been going on in the US since the 70s. Is he unaware that one of its main levers was revision of federal tax codes in favour of the wealthy? The tax on the top tier of income earners was over 90% during the 1960s. It is now 35%. But, despite all the loopholes and tax shelters at their disposal, the top one percent of income earners still supply nearly 37% of total federal tax receipts. These people - most of them too wealthy to be counted as middle class - would like to see their tax share brought as close to zero as possible. This is why tax cutting has been a principal slogan of the entire Republican Party, not just its rightwing, since the ‘Reagan revolution’ of 30 years ago, and has been embraced to one degree or another by most leading Democrats. Currently, congressional Republicans are blocking Obama’s proposal to extend general Bush-era tax reductions because the president proposes to restore pre-reduction rates for families with an income in excess of $250,000 a year. The Democrats appear to be caving in to Republican pressure.
Even further removed from reality is Arthur’s claim that the capitalist class is not serious about slashing government budgets. He says this at a time when austerity has become the explicit programme not only of the American ruling class, but of virtually all western powers. Are David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, George Papandreou and Jose Zapatero, backed by the European Central Bank’s Jean-Claude Trichet and the International Monetary Fund’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn, all play acting? What would be their motive for doing so? Granted, there are tactical differences among states, like the one that surfaced at the G20 summit in Toronto this past June. But the Obama administration, while arguing for greater temporary fiscal stimulus, has set its sights on public education and social security, leaving no doubt as to long term goals. Moreover, granted that the ruling class does not favour cuts that weaken its core repressive and war-fighting capabilities. But, unthreatened by the Soviet bloc or strong working-class movements, and faced by deepening deficits, capitalist classes and states have clearly reached a consensus under which current levels of social provision are viewed as expenses they neither want nor can afford. They are taking advantage of the present crisis to impose their will. The European Union, with its public spending limits and central bank, puts a powerful new weapon in their hands.
As for Arthur’s contention that the Republican establishment is united in opposition to the Tea Party, the truth is not so simple. While a number of Republican bigwigs, from New York’s billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg to California’s governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, are clearly worried by the Tea Party’s sudden rise, others, like former House of Representatives speaker Newt Gingrich and a number of prominent Republican senators, are mouthing its slogans. The so-called moderates are not disconcerted by the movement’s opposition to ‘big government’ (ie, social spending), long a mainstream Republican hobby horse. Support for spending cuts is a basis for convergence between big capital and more comfortable middle class layers; not, as Arthur seems to think, a source of friction between the two. What frightens some Republicans is the movement’s lunatic and racialist overtones, which could scare off independent voters and permanently estrange the party from Latinos. The attitude of the Republican leadership to the Tea Party is, at any rate, still much too fluid to be grasped by Arthur Bough’s overly neat parsing of political reality.
Finally, I think Arthur is a bit too hasty to draw analogies between the Tea Party and European fascisms of the last century. I have said in one of my articles (‘Tea Party Tempest’, March 18) that the movement cannot simply be reduced to bourgeois reaction, and that it contains some of the same social-psychological elements as fascism. But we should not, on the other hand, ignore the deep capitalist pockets from which the Tea Party draws a political influence out of proportion to its numbers. Moreover, one can understand why the German petty bourgeoisie, after living through rapid industrialisation, defeat in a world war, crippling reparations, a territorial seizure by France, astronomical inflation and years of class struggle verging on civil war, became more than a trifle unhinged. What sent the Tea Partiers into paroxysms the summer before last, however, was the impending passage of Obama’s health care bill - an event hardly comparable with German interwar trauma, the Tea Party’s penchant for florid exaggeration notwithstanding. In addition, surveys have shown that Tea Partiers are not by and large among the worst afflicted by the country’s hard economic times. History contains many unforeseen twists. But present indications are that the Tea Party are a relatively privileged lot, more disposed to fulminating than fighting in the streets.
Misreading
Misreading
Get stuck in
Whilst the CPGB’s central argument that we need a single and democratic communist party holds some validity, they are completely unstuck as to how such an organisation can be achieved - never mind whether its foundations already exist today. I want to argue for a serious approach rather than one based on a sceptical attitude towards getting involved in the actual class struggle, be it yesterday, today or tomorrow.
No-one can deny that those in the Socialist Workers Party have been at the fore of struggle for years - that is, of course, unless you are an abject sectarian moron! One only has to look at their role in Unite Against Fascism, Stop the War Coalition, Globalise Resistance and Right to Work, not to mention workplaces up and down Britain, and university campuses from the deep south of England and all the way back to the north of the north in Scotland.
Needless to say, such an approach means the ‘Cliffites’ - a supposedly bad thing - as I have heard all too many Communist Students and CPGB members refer to them, are known to be the best fighters among many and, as a result, have at times recruited in substantial numbers.
Communist Students and the CPGB, on the other hand, would much rather spend their time telling us how bad the Iranian regime is. Is it just me who is fed up of hearing this song?
That aside, though, the CPGB’s persistent and ridiculous claim that the SWP is completely undemocratic and therefore cannot stand in the real Marxist tradition is completely unfounded. One must look at what democratic centralism is in practice and Lenin’s writings on the petty bourgeois elements who are obsessed with ‘freedom of speech’ and ever further ‘democratic’ rights. Come on, comrades, do you not think it is time to get your fingers out and get your hands dirty?
While it is true that any revolutionary party can only be built in the pre-revolutionary period, it only arises when we are in that revolutionary period. In the short term, that means building resistance to the Tory and Lib Dem coalition of cutters at every given opportunity. But, more importantly, revolutionaries must actually stand side by side with the proletarian class and actually argue whatever line it is on the pickets and in meetings. In the here and now, practically that means getting down to picket lines, attempting to link up the struggles and getting to meetings wherever opportunities arise. Such an approach can only make revolutionary ideas stronger and shift the struggle to where it can actually end up.
Although the CPGB and Communist Students do go to the odd picket here and there, I haven’t seen them at any since the postal dispute last winter, if I remember correctly. Then again, the CPGB and Communist Students would rather critique just the SWP and other revolutionaries from the sidelines, without actually getting stuck in where and when it really matters. Good luck anyway, comrades, but how about making time for some serious left unity in building such a revolutionary party?
Get stuck in
Get stuck in
Petty bourgeois
Bob Clough, a member of the Revolutionary Communist Group, criticises those ‘socialists’ in Britain who promote the Labour Party as any sort of progressive organisation (Letters, September 30). In his book, Labour: a party fit for imperialism, Clough comprehensively documents how the Labour Party has, historically, always acted in the interests of imperialism. Events such as the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan over the last period have amply confirmed Clough’s analysis. It is not a question of this or that particular policy: the Labour Party is inherently a pro-imperialist organisation.
Clough also points out that the record of the left in Britain leaves a lot to be desired in terms of supporting anti-imperialist struggles. However, there is a difference between supporting anti-imperialist struggles and tail-ending and acting as an apologist for them. The RCG have acted as apologists for groupings such as the African National Congress, ludicrously defending the totally corrupt Winnie Mandela, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, the USSR under Gorbachev and Cuba. It needs to be noted that the Cubans have never had any illusions that Cuba was ‘socialist’; it is the RCG itself that pushes this line.
By the way, the RCG is rather selective about who receives their much vaunted support. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Vietnam and China are not among those favoured - as they are with, for example, the CPGB-ML - presumably because all of these countries experienced massive imperialist attack and, unlike Cuba, actually underwent socialist revolutions and are therefore not as acceptable to the petty bourgeois and student milieu to which the RCG appeals.
On the other hand, Clough wants to invent progressives to support, such as the ‘Bolivarian revolution’ and Hugo Chavez. For those of us who imagined that the term ‘revolution’ should be confined to those situations where the working class, or at least a grouping claiming to represent them, has gained state power, there has been no revolution in Bolivia. Chavez represents a Bonapartist faction of the military who are at the moment leftist but subject to no real control by the masses.
Clough reminds us that the progressive policies of Chavez are to be welcomed but what we have here is a military regime operating above the working masses. It appears extremely unlikely that Chavez or his heirs could end up operating as a stooge of imperialism, like Batista. But stranger things have happened, such as the Soviet nomenklatura deciding that they wanted to be capitalist owners. The real point is, what can stop this? Certainly not the working class or the peasantry in Venuezuela, as they have no direct input into the regime’s policies.
In his letter, Clough says: “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.”
Granted, but how come that the RCG, some of whose membership are highly paid and definitely occupy a privileged position dependent on British imperialism, remain ‘pure’? Perhaps constantly reading Lenin enables them to occupy this contradictory position, whilst sermonising to everyone else. The fact is that the RCG, and certainly its leadership, is drawn from the petty bourgeoisie. Given that this is also true of the rest of the left, it would hardly be worth mentioning. However, with the type of analysis that the RCG promotes, it does become entirely relevant.
Petty bourgeois
Petty bourgeois
Refresh
I would just like to thank Stuart Randle for what was, I am sure, a genuine attempt to correct what he saw as Chris Strafford’s ‘factual inaccuracies’ on the Manchester anti-cuts campaign. Unfortunately his letter did no such thing. It was a very loose interpretation of ‘factual accuracy’. If he is committed to the task of accurate reporting, then I am sure he will find the following account to be both useful and in accordance with the truth.
To begin, Stuart’s claim that there were “almost 40 students” is untrue. 24 students is not almost 40. If I remember correctly, Stuart was not actually at this meeting so perhaps he ought to review his sources. Pedantic, maybe, but this claim to a colossal 40 students forms the backbone of his argument. Last year we had a campaign that was “committed to free education, working with the unions and run on a democratic basis” (this is not a ‘fallacy’ by the way and simply calling it one proves nothing). However, according to his letter, the group was a failure as it attracted “only actually existing socialists”. As far as I can tell, the logic is that if the campaign ditches these previous political commitments it will attract the masses - the campaign has done this and you have, of course, been vindicated by your 40 people. Great success.
If you would look back to the previous campaign, the first meetings (called on the day) attracted the same number of people, if not slightly more. These included Liberal Democrats (not exactly actually existing socialists, are they?), course reps, Fuse FM and ‘Reclaim the Uni’ activists. It did not “fail to build a single event or demonstration” as it built for an EAN demonstration at MMU, it submitted a motion to a GM and it organised a day school (perhaps you might remember the debacle between EAN and the union executive over organising this?). It was by no means an excellent campaign, but it was significantly better than the de-politicised campaign we have now.
As for the question of the democratic operation of the group - one which is to Stuart apparently, ‘abstract’ - the group has been run, since its first meeting, on a weak form of consensus-decision making. When (at the first meeting) I asked if we could discuss the political focus of the group and its position on free education, I was met with the reply, “we can’t discuss that because we would never reach consensus” from our campaigns officer. This is the central point that underlies the group; we cannot discuss our strategies, our positions or our politics because we would not be able to reach consensus and so the group would get stuck in deadlock. Debate is shut down from the off - we are not even allowed to question the founding idea of the group (that “we are only about HE cuts”). You are right on one thing though, the majority of people in the group don’t support consensus decision making. The majority of people in the group are socialists and ought to be consistent democrats. Continuing to operate under this form of consensus, then, is bizarre. To raise the issue of instituting majority decision making, so that those involved can actually express their politics and decide how their campaign is run, seemed obvious.
Communist Students are (believe it or not) perfectly aware of our limitations. We aren’t the biggest or the most influential group in that campaign; the SWP are. So why, then, did we raise the issue of using majority decision making when we would never be able to have a majority? Because it was the right thing to do - it gives the democratic space for disagreements and the free operation of ideas. The more important question, however, is why did Stuart resist the adoption of majority decision making (which is exactly what the SWP did – “we are working fine as we are, we haven’t had any disagreements”)? There is only one reasonable answer to this question. He did it to appease the minority (as he rightly points out) who do believe in consensus decision making - the union bureaucracy.
Perhaps it would do some good to reflect on SWP conduct in last year’s campaign. Stuart did not seem to think the question of democracy was so unimportant then. In fact, when some members of the Union executive protested at us taking a vote on free education, they were met with the rhetorical question: “do you mind if we vote without you then?” I wonder if you can remember who said that? Or more importantly, whose side of the argument you were on when we insisted that the campaign be run on majority decision making? And when we finally got our vote on free education, as I am sure Stuart will remember, he voted in favour of the group adopting a position in support of free education (naturally).
Which brings me to my next point. Apparently, this year “the only debate” Stuart has opposed us on is discussing democracy. Not true. What did Stuart say this time round when we suggested the group adopt a position in support of free education? He argued against it - according to one of his own comrades: “I agree with free education but when I am here, that is not what this is about”. A pretty serious (but understandable) omission from the letter.
Finally, Stuart is correct to point out that we worked together on the motion for the general meeting, which adopted positions supporting workers strike action, student occupations and taking a line against all cuts, not just those to higher education. This was good work, which I was surprised with, as when I had argued the week before that we adopt a position on these three exact same issues, I was told by one of his comrades (again!): “We don’t need to discuss these things. We are all here because we agree on anti-cuts - that is what matters”. He was, of course, true to his word. We do not need to discuss these things we should just push them through a ‘working group’ of four people instead. Democracy at its best.
Refresh
Refresh
Poor form
I didn’t attend the anti-cuts meeting mentioned in Stuart Randle’s letter last week or read comrade Strafford’s report on it yet so I shan’t comment on that matter. However, I object to is comrade Randle’s factual inaccuracies in describing what he viewed to be the “final straw”. As a member of Communist Students, I personally put up the posters to which he objects around Manchester Metropolitan University and not once did we cover over any existing poster, let alone any Action Palestine posters.
The title of the poster was “Stalinism is anti-communism” and it advertised one of the introductory meetings that CS is holding, which are open to all and where CS will explain why we as communists have no respect for Stalin. This addressed a common misconception among many new students and those new to socialism. If the comrade had taken the minimal time required actually to read the poster before criticising it, he would not have been able to assume that it was ‘uncritical’.
Moreover, writing that I, as a member of CS, am “lying deep in the gutter” is wholly uncalled for - especially considering that I have never even made his acquaintance. Poor form, comrade Rolf, poor form.
Poor form
Poor form
Staring
I welcome Manchester Socialist Worker Student Society member Stuart Randle’s letter (October 7) to our free and open communist paper. His letter underlines the Weekly Worker’s commitment to be a space for any debate and any discussion. For a communist paper to give political opponents such an opening to attack our politics, our actions and members is alien and scary to so much of the left.
Our approach in Communist Students is no different. On Tuesday October 5, 22 people packed out our small meeting room at the University of Manchester Students’ Union to listen to CS explain why we oppose Stalinism, and what our alternative is. At this meeting, members of the Revolutionäre Sozialistische Organisation, the Commune, the SWP, the Socialist Party, the CPGB and students of no affiliation discussed the legacy of Stalinism on the international communist movement. We debated freely and comradely; there were no accusations of Stalinism for putting up anti-Stalinist posters and no over-the-top language when making points. It was, for me and many with whom I spoke afterwards, one of the best and most educational meetings we have attended for a very long time.
The pre-meeting controversy about plastering posters with Stalin’s face across two campuses did not get aired, and that was because it is wrong to say we put such posters up uncritically. The poster was titled ‘Stalinism is anti-communism’ and had the description “A debate and discussion on Stalinism, what it was and why we oppose it”. Readers can see this poster on the picture section of CS’s Facebook group.
The Manchester branch of CS has been at the heart of campus struggles and campaigns since we were established. We have supported and are constantly in awe of the work done by activists in Action Palestine. Our comrades worked with them in the occupation against the bombing of Gaza, and we will do so again in the future. No member of CS would consciously do anything to damage the campaign or its events.
Stuart Randle is correct about one thing: Communist Students are looking at the stars. More than this, however, our project is about getting our movement out of the gutter, and moving towards our goal of socialist revolution.
Staring
Staring