Letters

No difference

Alan Johnstone wants to put us communists out of a job (Letters, November 25). Together with the rest of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, he believes that the working class do not need political leadership to overthrow capitalism.

This puts him and his group on the same level as the anarchists. Dialectically speaking, like the latter, Johnstone and the SPGB can only see the negative side of leadership and authority, never the positive side. Likewise, they only see the positive side of spontaneity, never the negative. Since Johnstone and the group of which he is a member appear to be opposed to all authority and leadership, and not only the counterrevolutionary variety, I fail to see what in essence differentiates the SPGB from the anarchist movement.

While we shouldn't worship authority or leadership, this doesn't mean that these things are all bad or negative. If workers can end capitalism without political leaders, as Johnstone claims, can he and the SPGB give us a convincing explanation why they have not already done so?

No difference
No difference

Bizarre

The Alan Johnstone quote from Pannekoek is very apposite if applied to the left groups which dominate the British left today. However, a socialist organisation that subordinates the working class to its own leadership clique does not deserve the name of 'party'. 'Sect' is a better description, whatever size it may reach.

I agree with comrade Johnstone that the job of a party is to educate the class to take power in its own name, but his view that the best thinkers in the class (designated as such by their ability to give good advice) should sit on their backsides and view the revolution from the sidelines is bizarre. Surely they have a duty to get involved in the organisation of the revolutionary process in as democratic a manner as the political situation allows and their administrative talents permit.

The SPGB's commitment to openness is admirable in the present circumstances, but in other times they could well be viewing the world through prison bars or from the grave. Can an organisation that cannot give good advice to itself be trusted to give good advice to the class about the essential coerciveness of power?

At the end of the day the Communist Party must organise the class to take and keep power, not just educate it. Possibly under conditions where the SPGB's democratic structure is impossible.

The Communist Party does not ask for power over the working class, but as a part of that class and answerable to it. As CPGBers we would wish to be a part of such a democratic, internationalist, mass party, firmly implanted in the European working class. This, not the SPGB's abstract democratic abstentionism, is the best guarantor of working class power.

Bizarre
Bizarre

What crisis?

I agree with the general thrust of Anne Mc Shane's article, in that we should reject any solutions based on nationalism ('No to nationalist response', November 25). However, I think that she is quite simply wrong when she says: "Ireland is a tiny part of a world capitalist economy in deep crisis. We are completely and totally bound up with this crisis. The reason the [European Union and International Monetary Fund] are so desperate to impose a bail-out is because our insolvency is contagious and has seriously destabilised the euro - with Portugal and Spain looking like they will be the next to experience economic failure."

There is no crisis in the world economy, deep or otherwise. Even within Europe, the economic crisis is limited to a few economies - though, were it to spread much wider, it would inevitably have much wider consequences. Germany, for example, is growing exceptionally strongly.

On a global level, the world's second largest economy is growing so fast that the Stalinist authorities in China have to take measures to try to moderate it! Most other Asian economies are also growing strongly. Brazil and other Latin American economies continue to do well, not just from supplying Asia with raw materials, but from their own industrialisation. On top of that, several African economies are now developing rapidly, partly as a result of being tied through bilateral agreements with China's growth.

Despite the blip in Dubai some months ago, the Middle East is also doing well economically. In fact, it is doing so well that Turkey has now turned its face away from the EU (which is also in response to the attitude of some EU countries) and towards the Middle East, where it sees the potential for expansion and investment in, for example, its neighbour, Iraq. Similarly, because of massive resources, central Asian economies such as Kazakhstan are continuing to develop, based strongly on a relationship with China and Russia.

Although the US economy faces problems, those problems are not the same as those encountered by weak European peripheral economies. And, unlike those economies, it has tools to remedy them. It has devalued its currency, pumped liquidity into the system and embarked on a sizeable fiscal stimulus.

Returning to Europe, as one trader put it on TV, although the debt problems of Ireland, Greece, and Portugal appear large in relation to their domestic economies, they are quite trivial in relation to the overall EU economy.

Were Spain to need bailing out to the same proportion of its GDP as Ireland, that would be significant, but if it required a smaller degree of support - say, half that of Ireland in percentage terms - it would be quite capable of coping with that through the existing means of financing. In reality, if the EU were to adopt the same kinds of measures as those already adopted by the US, and partly by the UK, of simply monetising the debt, then this crisis could be over and done with in short order. That will not happen other than under certain conditions.

Essentially, Germany, as Europe's banker, is saying, 'We will not play ball unless you agree to a much greater degree of centralisation of the EU' - something approaching the establishment of an EU state. Only when a much greater degree of central control of fiscal policy is agreed will Germany accept the kinds of measures which will end the crisis. The question then is whether a consensus can be won in other EU countries for greater centralisation. The demand that Ireland join Greece in giving up its economic sovereignty is a step down that road.

The bigger question will be whether other countries who cannot be similarly blackmailed will agree or whether they will have to be blown off in some major restructuring of the EU. Given that, whatever the nationalists of right and left believe, any states outside a major economic unit would effectively have their fate sealed.

It is likely that some backdoor negotiations to avoid such a scenario would fudge some kind of solution that takes Europe further down the road of a closer union. Marxists should not at all be disappointed if such a development came about.

What crisis?
What crisis?

Monstrous

Whilst power is being transferred slowly out of the national terrain into the hands of the unelected EU-IMF vultures, with only a quisling role assigned to the governments of Greece and Ireland (and soon Portugal and Spain), it is becoming clear that the project for a European Union with a single currency but 16 different governments is unravelling right before our eyes. No serious commentator believes it will survive in its present form.

The stage will arrive in the not too distant future, if it isn't actually here already, that the blood required by the vultures of the EU-IMF will no longer be able to be given. Bankruptcy and default of all foreign debts will occur. What does the Weekly Worker assume is going to happen next? That the euro will continue and that the nations of Europe will not fight against their erasure - as announced by Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, in a speech to the EU, when he stated that the nation-states are dead?

Where national sovereignty is threatened, economic decisions are passed to the control of unelected bureaucrats - historically Ireland voted 'no' in the Lisbon treaty referendum, but then had to vote 'yes' in a rerun. A rebellion starting on national terrain will be the next stage of political developments - the City of London has allegedly made loans to the tune of £150 billion and a default on these debts will mean it takes a hit. This will be a progressive outcome, shifting the balance away from the bloodsucking banksters back to the people.

In attacking the future nationalist response of the Irish people, the Weekly Worker appears to want these monstrous, usurious debts to be paid.

Monstrous
Monstrous

Inspiring

Over 1,500 students from schools, colleges and universities marched through Manchester as part of the second national day of action against the cuts in education and the rise in fees. The police presence was overwhelming, with groups of officers clustered all over the main campus, riot police were being held in reserve and a dozen or so mounted police trotting up and down Oxford Road. This was a clear show of force by the authorities, who seem intent on stamping on the student protests after the Millbank action. There were five arrests for seemingly innocuous incidents that were clearly exploited to justify such a large police presence. The demonstration set off in what was essentially a mobile kettle towards Manchester Metropolitan University, where more students joined the protest. Members of Manchester Communist Students marched together chanting "Who was right? Marx was right" and "One solution - revolution!" with students around them joining in.

As the demonstration went up Oxford Road, university staff and pensioners added to the numbers. The protest went around Manchester town hall and eventually to the cathedral, where the police decided to hold the march. Minor scuffles took place, resulting in a couple of arrests and some students being dragged away. When the police regrouped, the march was funnelled back down Oxford Road to the university.

There a large number of officers were waiting - about 200, plus around 15 police horses. They were fearful of a repeat of last week's blocking of Oxford Road and they proceeded to kettle the crowd. This was completely unnecessary, as the crowd was peaceful, and it made just made the police look silly. After a while they realised the pointlessness of their action and proceeded to let people out.

Three hundred from the crowd made their way to the join the occupation at Roscoe building, where they crammed in until there was nowhere left to sit. We listened to speeches including from a University and College Union rep (to chants of "Students and workers, unite and fight"), a year nine school student, who, to raptures of applause, spoke about school kids wanting to fight back. Unfortunately he said that at his school the doors and gates were blocked on police and management orders. The energy in the room was electric and for those who had spent four nights in the occupation not knowing what would result from their militancy it was inspiring to see such a large room full of people so dedicated to beating the cuts.

During the discussion a member of CS stood up and to thunderous cheer declared that the fight is not just against this current government, or the Labour government in waiting, but that this crisis is a crisis of capitalism and it is the system that is the real enemy we should be fighting. Up until that moment the real issue had been largely avoided by comrades in the anti-cuts campaign, who believe such principled politics risk alienating too many people - the disastrous opportunism of building the broadest possible movement by subordinating socialist politics to reformists and the rightwing.

The occupation is still going strong at Manchester and support from unions, academics and education staff has flooded in. It is clear we have the raw material, the anger and the support to build a movement to defeat the austerity drive. The fight is on to imbue these struggles with a programme committed to socialist revolution and working class rule.

Inspiring
Inspiring

Newcastle action

Students at the week-long Newcastle University occupation have stepped up their action in defence of education. As well as staging a sit-in at the King's Gate building on the university campus, which resulted in the finance building being temporarily closed, they have submitted an application to the department for education to turn their occupied space into a free school.

This non-violent direct action - the latest in a series against education cuts and soaring tuition fees - was a response to the vice-chancellor's refusal to meet the occupiers as a group in the occupied fine art building of the university.

Fifteen students marched into the new complex, mouths covered with tape, and lay in a line across the foyer. The group were symbolically gagged, as one of the students, Emily Clark, explained, "to show that we feel that our voices aren't being heard". They remained in the foyer for two hours despite requests from university management to leave the building, which had been shut down for the duration of the protest.

Masashi Stokoe, one of the students involved in the protest, said: "We haven't been able to speak to the vice -chancellor as a group democratically. He says we don't represent student opinion, but the wave of protests throughout the country recently suggest otherwise. Besides which we're supported by our democratically elected student union."

Jon Clark, a music student who was involved in the sit-down demonstration, summed up the overall mood of the protesters: "We are showing the management that we take the defence of education seriously. The occupation is not a glorified sleep-over - we are prepared to take action."

Newcastle action
Newcastle action