Letters

Nuclear tinderbox

Jacob Richter’s defence of the Iranian regime’s ‘right’ to nuclear weapons is in fact a profoundly anti-working class position (Letters, December 9).

Marxists need to oppose any bourgeois state having such weapons of mass destruction, imperialist or otherwise. The language and discourse of ‘rights’ is not a trap we should fall into - particularly on the question of WMDs - otherwise we get into a form of cod liberalism which says, ‘Doesn’t Iran have the right to nukes?’ and ‘Doesn’t Israel have the right to defend itself?’ (the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s position). Both ‘rights’ are framed within the context of the world imperialist order - ie, not a very good starting point!

There is a bit of truth in his argument that mutually assured destruction acts as a disincentive to war between nuclear powers, at least in the medium term. But it means that, when war does happen - and, as Marxists, we know this to be inevitable - the chances of them being used are much increased. He is also guilty of glossing over the truth when he says that “Nuclear weapons are purely external deterrents”. Do Hiroshima and Nagasaki ring any bells? In fact, they can be and have been used as offensive weapons when seen as a quicker option for the nation using them than a protracted air, sea and ground campaign.

I agree with him that any workers’ state would immediately disavow use of such weapons (excepting very specific and far-fetched scenarios, like a counterrevolutionary US fleet steaming towards Europe). But, if we would never wish to use them, why should we support reactionary governments like that of Iran having this capability? All it would be is a propaganda coup for Ahmadinejad, bolstering the position of his regime and making the Middle East even more of a tinderbox than it already is. As for the idea that those who favour disarmament have encouraged the development of the latest, gigantic conventional bombs by the US and Russia, this is nonsense. Both powers are always looking for ways to create more destruction.

Richter’s demand that we also support Iran’s right to currently non-existent electromagnetic and anti-matter weapons does, I’m afraid, seem to point to a rather childish attitude on this question - although this is not ultra-leftism, but rightism masquerading as support for self-determination. Ask people on the streets of Tehran what they think of Ahmadinejad having his finger on the button, and I can’t imagine many being happy about the idea. Certainly the revolutionary left in Iran is opposed to nukes.

A far better defence against imperialist assault would be an armed and conscious people.

Nuclear tinderbox
Nuclear tinderbox

Kurds protest

Opposition to the December 12 ‘protest law’ imposed by the Kurdish coalition government (KRG) in the north east of Iraq offers a new chance for the Kurdish left and communists to come together and lead the people in united action, as they used to do. The thousand-strong march through Sulaimanyah city on December 18 has echoed around the region, leading to smaller local protests in other Kurdish towns and villages, and bigger protests can be expected.

Opposition fractions mustered 42 MPs to vote against the new law, but the dominant coalition of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (PDK) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) won a narrow victory with 52 votes, following a secret debate in the Kurdish parliament. Leaked documents show that people can only protest when they are “permitted to do so by the Kurdish police forces at least 48 hours before any sort of aggregation takes place in public areas”. So the Kurdish public can only demonstrate, protest and rally when it is in the interests of the government, and when told to do so by the authorities.

The law was approved on December 12 by KRG president Masoud Barzani, general secretary of the PDK, despite a mass campaign across the region urging him not to implement this undemocratic measure. A national campaign, ‘President - do not sign it’, was set up by the ‘December 12’ group. This quickly expanded, receiving support from 15 other Kurdish civil society organisations and developed into a united front now called the Network to Defend Public Rights and Freedom. But the president ignored the public’s demands.

The government claims that the law is there to “control anarchy”, and it is “striving to get the public to follow the rule of law like other democratic countries in the world”. In a sense they are right: in a ‘democratic’ country - like Britain - anti-trade union laws are used against the unions and the public. The Kurdish left and the Kurdistan Communist Party must use this comparison to expose the KRG as merely a puppet of imperialism, which is in power on behalf of international capital.

Kurds protest
Kurds protest

Irish solidarity

The Irish Republican Prisoners Support Group are having a Bloody Sunday anniversary meeting on January 31 to support political status for Irish Republican prisoners and it has come under threat from the far right.

Because we refuse to be intimidated by these threats, we have decided to appeal to the labour movement and to Unite Against Fascism for protection on the night. Martin Og Meehan of Republican Network for Unity is a confirmed speaker and other high-profile speakers have been invited.

We have long understood that it is only a matter of time before the far-right English Defence League and British National Party begins to attack meetings of the workers’ movement and anti-imperialist solidarity groups. We must not let them gain confidence by a victory here.

The event is being held at 7pm on Monday January 31 in Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1. Please contact us by emailing irpsgroup@gmail.com or by telephoning Gerry Downing on 07951 156588 to discuss what is needed and make arrangements for the night.

Irish solidarity
Irish solidarity

Distortion

Tony Clark credits me with the “grossest falsification of Marxist history to date” (Letters, December 16). That’s quite an accomplishment in a short letter to a newspaper!

Clark refuses to come to a sympathetic understanding of the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s attitude to leadership. That’s up to him. But for the rest of us it should be an easy matter to comprehend. The SPGB understands that working class people are quite capable of making up their own minds about their struggles and actions, and making their own decisions. Once workers have realised that they must take political action to end capitalism and establish socialism, then they will have to organise as a political party to do this for themselves. In other words, “The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.”

This used to be a commonly understood Marxian socialist principle until Leninism came along and converted it into: ‘The emancipation of the working class cannot possibly be the act of the working class itself, which is why we need a leadership of professional revolutionaries to act on its behalf.’

Call us old-fashioned, but we prefer the Marxian original to the Leninist distortion.

Distortion
Distortion

Witless leaders

The complaints of the many splinter groups of the left arise from disappointments and discouragements at their lack of results, despite their sincere and dedicated activism. One important factor is their feeling of being ‘leaders’ and ‘professional revolutionaries’. The careerists and cadres are forever taking credit for organising the workers. It is as though they were taking credit for the rising of the sun, forgetting their basic Marxism that it is not ideas that make material conditions, but material conditions that give rise to ideas.

Tony Clark and his ilk, instead of standing clearly for socialism, have aped official Labourism, seeking to influence non-socialist workers through tactical manipulation rather than convince them to change their minds. They argue that the ‘united front’ provides an opportunity for ‘revolutionaries’ to discuss and convert reformists and that the immediate aim of the ‘united front’ is to provide the most effective fighting organisation for both reformists and revolutionaries. Vanguardists accept the notion that the workers are incapable of developing socialist consciousness, and so the ‘revolutionaries’ have to work with reformists in order to influence them and draw off the active workers into their own ranks. That there is an ‘uneven consciousness’ among workers that necessitates the need for leaders and for an organisation that can bring it together with non-socialist workers in the name of immediate given ends, be those organisations trade unions or anti-cuts alliances.

The reality is that any sort of success involves hiding the disagreements between their constituent organisations, specifically about means and motives. They succeed by making demands that are supported by significant numbers of workers, meaning that any ‘revolutionary’ content will be buried into the need for immediate victory. As such, it is small ‘c’ conservative, taking political consciousness as it is found and seeking to manipulate rather than change it. Such a tactic, however, affords the ‘left’ an opportunity to extend their influence. As a tiny minority, they get to work with organisations which can more easily attract members and can thus be part of campaigns and struggles that reach out well beyond the tiny numbers of political activists in any given situation. But the relevant fact remains that, despite providing all this assistance, the ‘revolutionaries’ are incapable of taking these campaigns further than the bulk of the members are willing to accept.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, however, argue that minorities cannot simply take control of movements and mould and wield them to their own ends. Without agreement about what it is and where it is going, leaders and led will invariably split off in different directions. We say that since we are capable, as workers, of understanding and wanting socialism, we cannot see any reason why our fellow workers cannot do likewise. The job of socialists in the here and now is to openly and honestly state the case rather than trying to wheedle and manoeuvre to win a supposed ‘influence’ that is more illusory than real.

Marx believed that, as the workers gained more experience of the class struggle and the workings of capitalism, it would become more consciously socialist and democratically organised by the workers themselves. The emergence of socialist understanding out of the experience of the workers could thus be said to be ‘spontaneous’ in the sense that it would require no intervention by people outside the working class to bring it about. Socialist propaganda and agitation would indeed be necessary, but would come to be carried out by workers themselves, whose socialist ideas would have been derived from an interpretation of their class experience of capitalism. The end result would be an independent movement of the socialist-minded and democratically organised working class aimed at winning control of political power in order to abolish capitalism. As Marx and Engels put it in the Communist manifesto, “The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.”

One of the great strengths of the SPGB is our opposition to leadership and our commitment to democratic practices, so, whatever weaknesses or mistaken views we hold or get accused of by Tony Clarke, they cannot be imposed upon others with possible worse consequences. Can he claim the same for his own political pedigree?

The validity of the SPGB’s ideas will either be accepted or rejected by discussion and debate, verified by actual concrete developments on the ground. The SPGB are not going to take the workers to where they neither know where they are going nor, most likely, want to go. This contrasts with those who seek to substitute the party for the class or who see the party as a vanguard which must undertake alone the task of leading the witless masses forward.

Witless leaders
Witless leaders

Low numbers

A rather interesting book Master of the house: Stalin and his inner circle was published in 2009 by Oleg V Khlevniuk, a senior research fellow at the state archive of the Russian Federation. This was part of the Yale Hoover series on Stalin, Stalinism and the cold war, so we can see where it is coming from. The book is based on meticulous research using previously unavailable documents in the Soviet archives and focuses on the inner workings, power struggles and personal rivalries within the politburo in the 1930s.

Although inevitably and inherently anti-Soviet, anti-Stalin and anti-communist, Khlevniuk’s work is fascinating, as it no longer has cold war axes to grind and in its exhaustively detailed and relatively objective study and analysis of the evidence actually debunks a number of the key myths and conspiracy theories which appear to have been deliberately fabricated around the Stalin period, especially around the crucial class struggles in the 1930s.

Khlevniuk argues that all the evidence now confirms that the so-called “great terror of 1937-38” should be seen as a series of centralised, planned, mass operations, carried out on the basis of politburo decisions aimed at destroying “anti-Soviet elements” and “counterrevolutionary national contingents”, and that the explicit and deliberate objective in the context of growing international tensions and the threat of imminent war from Germany and Japan was the liquidation of the fascist “fifth column”. Khlevniuk states this was the reason why the majority of those arrested - around 700,000 - were shot.

Executions on that scale had not been seen before in the Soviet Union, nor since - ie, this was a highly exceptional period. 700,000 is certainly a lot and inevitably a number of innocent people died. But as a proportion of the total population, this is relatively very low, and certainly not justifying claims of a “war on the whole people”. And, as we know, by the time of actual war, no fascist fifth column existed in the Soviet Union.

In analysing the victims of the mass operations, Khlevniuk shows that the vast majority were so-called “people of the past”, “members of the pre-revolutionary elite (nobility, government officials, military officers and industrialists”, targeting those elements most irreconcilable to the regime and susceptible to involvement in counterrevolutionary and espionage activities.

Khlevniuk argues convincingly that by the time of the February 1934 17th Party Congress (the ‘Congress of Victors’) the Stalin team had emerged victorious and dominant from its five-year “struggle with society”, had established that collectivisation and accelerated industrialisation were here to stay, and that even the most loosely organised party oppositions had been destroyed.

The end of 1933 saw a new period of genuine consolidation, moderation and liberalisation, and a deliberate desire by the regime to make peace with segments of the population who were “socially close”. This involved the reorientation of many economic, social and punitive policies, including the extension of voting rights to many who had lost these as “alien elements” and steps which limited repressive measures and rehabilitated hundreds of thousands who had been tried in preceding years. Leaders of opposition groups, such as Zinoviev, Kamenev and Preobrazhensky, were readmitted to party membership.

Khlevniuk argues that the evidence shows the more moderate course was also shaped by foreign policy considerations - ie, in response to the growing threats of German fascism from the west and Japan in the east. As early as 1933, Stalin was seeking allies among the western democracies, to create mutual defence pacts with France and the United States in particular. To support these processes it was important to promote signals of “normalcy”, “stability” and to “showcase the democratic achievements of Soviet power”.

This meticulous and impressive study of Soviet politics and realities of power in the 1930s comprehensively debunks the cold war and Trotskyist conspiracy theory and mythology that the murder of Kirov and the subsequent mass operations of 1937-38 represented some form of bloody seizure of power, an internal coup d’etat by a Stalin faction, and a subsequent terror war against the whole people, killing tens of millions, due to an insane bloodlust and/or to hold onto power.

On the contrary, Soviet power had largely been consolidated and the main battles won by 1933, the Stalin team were in unrivalled command, their opponents defeated and scattered, and the united, Stalin-led politburo was implementing a more moderate course to further strengthen and boost the standing and reputation of Soviet power internationally.

The numbers executed between 1937 and 1938 were in the hundreds of thousands, not the tens of millions beloved and peddled by cold war and anti-Soviet practitioners, and the great majority were guilty.

Low numbers
Low numbers