Letters

Review

The Weekly Worker contained some effective and useful commentary last week.

I think the International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction should explain in detail why they consider current left organisations “treacherous” (Letters, November 18). This would enable the CPGB to explain why it is not more actively asserting its role during this crisis.

Indeed, as Heather Downs remarks in another letter, given the nature of the current period, it is surprising that the Weekly Worker doesn’t give more coverage to it. Does the CPGB merely consider this yet another crisis of capital, of which there have been many and there will be many more? But, as the ILTF seem to intimate, the CPGB needs to answer quite when is the right time for a more serious intervention? If not now, when?

As Eddie Ford outlines, we are experiencing one of the most savage and well-organised attacks on the working class for decades - possibly more significant than during the 1980s (‘Blaming unemployed for sin of unemployment’). But, with regard to Iain Duncan Smith, we need to note the extent to which religion - and by inference, the ideological state apparatus of organised religion - is here being press-ganged into legitimating this brutal, ideologically driven programme. The extent of Rowan Williams’ attack on the government is to remark that its policies are worrying.

I was pleased that James Turley largely refused to address the issue of violence during the demonstration (‘After Millbank: the way forward’). As many commentators have remarked, any violence in this context pales into insignificance when compared to that perpetrated by capital in the form of imperialist interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan on a daily basis, the violence about to be unleashed upon welfare and benefit claimants and the killing of Ian Tomlinson by the Met at last year’s G20 demonstration.

But, as Tom Cat remarked in his letter, given the behaviour of the British state, it’s surprising there was not more violence at Tory HQ. And Tom Cat seems to offer some advice to new recruits on how this might be more effectively pursued. With that in mind, I’d also recommend the Red Army Faction’s The urban guerrilla concept, which is available from Amazon UK.

Review
Review

Sane camp

It is good of Dave Douglass to defend the drinking of alcohol in the spirit it is meant to be taken - namely in excess - against those who want to impose legal regulations on our merriment. But his letter leaves the impression that, so long as his right to get “bladdered” is protected, he does not care if other kinds of drug-users are criminalised.

It is in the nature of excess that it produces anti-social behaviour at times and if the excess is repeated too often or in an extreme way the consequences can be very serious for the perpetrator and all those who know them. The answer is to socialise drug-taking in a happy, secure atmosphere. There needs to be a culture around drug-taking that encourages social and epicurean responsibility. Dave’s competitive challenge to Dr David Nutt that they should lock themselves in a room with more than ample supplies of heroin and brown ale and a loaded revolver is not the kind of drug culture I would recommend.

But Dr Nutt is correct: alcohol is more dangerous than heroin because more people will always take it for the very reasons Dave points out. Therefore, we should take alcohol and tobacco very seriously because they are so popular.

The government’s attitude is to increase penalties and price. But take drink-driving - it is now socially unacceptable. Public opinion, which includes the drivers who drink, has more force than the law. Smokers regularly troop outside to smoke. Again it isn’t really the law, but their sense of responsibility, that makes the system work.

Leaving aside the government’s determinedly irrational attitude to drugs like marijuana, cocaine and heroin can be taken in ways that do not destroy the user. But, that apart, making them illegal is not working. A better outcome to drug addiction can always be accomplished through a medical-cum-social approach than through punishment. Illegalising drugs has created massive criminal enterprises that are arguably killing more people than the taking of the drugs themselves. Many working class youth see drug trading, with good reason, as the only way out of poverty. Criminalising drug taking is clearly anti-working class.

Dr Nutt and his colleagues at times encourage the legislator camp with their rhetoric but for the most part they are in the camp of the sane.

Sane camp
Sane camp

Left bands

In response to Paul Botley (Letters, November 18), I would advise readers looking for some good current music with semi-anarchistic social commentary to check out The King Blues, fronted by Johnnie ‘Itch’ Fox, Jamie Jazz and the now departed Fruitbag. Songs like ‘Let’s hang the landlord’, ‘The streets are ours’, ‘Blood on my hands’ and ‘The sound of revolt’ come from two great albums - Under the fog and Save the world, get the girl.

Lines like “We have the right to choose between Labour and Tory, just like we have the right to choose between Coke and Pepsi” will go down well with those of you not in the Labour Party. My favourite (I’ve got the T-shirt with it on) is: “Going to war to prevent war was the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard.”

Sonic Boom Six are another great band. A bit less accessible, but some great songs like ‘Sounds of the revolution’, ‘Through the eyes of a child’ and ‘While you were sleeping’.

Both of these bands are variously termed ‘acoustic punk/ska’. You can see them for about £8 at your local venue. It’s the first music I’ve really got into since the demise of new wave and punk.

Left bands
Left bands

Kettled

Having joined the November 24 student demo in central London and found myself kettled for seven hours, I must say that this was exactly the kind of direct action that disheartens and demoralises people. The police had a pathetically easy time rounding us up - not just thanks to the SWP, who announced they were going to occupy the Lib Dem HQ. Because it was an illegal demo, the police didn’t even need the excuse of one of their vans being trashed (which was parked in the middle of the march, with people jumping on it in no time).

There were hardly any stewards and they had no control over anything. The only people in control were the police (who were not particularly violent, just very arsy and patronising).

There were a lot of very cold, very fucked off people who probably won’t be going to anything like this any time soon. It felt like an utter defeat.

November 24 really underlines the point that these types of ‘direct actions’ are counterproductive. The same could have easily happened two weeks ago.

Kettled
Kettled

Housekeepers

Jeff Steel’s letter raises an interesting point about the role of political parties or, more accurately, the non-role of them, and he use a quote from Anton Pannekoek to support his argument (November 18). May I counter with another?

Pannekoek, writing in the magazine Modern Socialism, said: “The belief in parties is the main reason for the impotence of the working class ... because a party is an organisation that aims to lead and control the workers.” But he qualified this statement: “If ... persons with the same fundamental conceptions [regarding socialism] unite for the discussion of practical steps and seek clarification through discussion and propagandise their conclusions, such groups might be called parties, but they would be parties in an entirely different sense from those of today.”

I would suggest the model in keeping with Pannekoek’s ideal would be the Socialist Party of Great Britain and that it was not parties per se that had failed, but the form all parties had taken as groups of persons seeking power above the worker.

As a matter of political principle, the SPGB holds no secret meetings. All its meetings, including those of its executive committee, are open to the public (all EC minutes are available on the web as proof of our commitment to openness and democracy). In keeping with the tenet that working class emancipation necessarily excludes the role of political leadership, the SPGB is a leaderless political party, whose executive committee is solely for housekeeping and administrative duties and cannot determine policy or even submit resolutions to conference. All conference decisions have to be ratified by a referendum of the whole membership. The general secretary has no position of power or authority over any other member, being just a dogsbody, and despite some very charismatic writers and speakers in the past, no personality has held undue influence over the SPGB.

The SPGB does not ask for power, but exists to educate the working class itself into taking it. Pannekoek wished workers’ political parties to be “organs of the self-enlightenment of the working class by means of which the workers find their way to freedom” and “means of propaganda and enlightenment”.

Because the establishment of socialism depends upon an understanding of the necessary social changes by a majority of the population, these changes cannot be left to parties acting apart from or above the workers. The workers cannot vote for socialism, as they do for reformist parties. and then go home or to work and carry on as usual.

Housekeepers
Housekeepers

Ship of fools

Of course, Jeff Steel is correct: the left does chase votes when they stand in elections. But that is not the real problem. Elections are a rough guide to our popularity in society and the results only prove that most people do not take the left seriously. But they take no more notice of the groups that do not stand in elections.

The far left is irrelevant in most working class people’s view because its policies are crap. Which is just as true of those that do not stand in elections. Without a different strategic direction unity will only produce a ship of fools. But one larger ship of fools would still be better than a myriad of little dinghies. Not least because the very act of unity requires the ‘fools’ to think outside their received prejudices. Those that believe in standing in elections and those that do not should aim at creating a single organisation with an internal democratic structure which has the power to decide whether to stand in elections or not. Similarly all other questions of political practice that are controversial.

The belief in parties is not what makes the working class politically impotent. The problem is the opposite. It is the bureaucratic nature of far-left groups and their sectarian beliefs and practices that make them useless for revolution.

Standing in elections is a way of opposing the “corrupt and dysfunctional system”. It does not have to build “illusions”. On the other hand, not standing in elections can mean relying on spontaneous anger and the heroic (but often misguided deeds) of secretive cliques.

Ship of fools
Ship of fools