Letters

Past his peak

It's quite obvious from Andrew Northall's letter, that the comrade presently lacks energy-awareness in general and awareness about peak oil in particular (April 7). Firstly, according to Andrew, I am well on the road to non-Marxism, which he equates with non-communism. This is because I have the temerity to criticise Marx. As far as I am concerned, sharing the same goal as Marx - ie, communism - does not oblige me to support all, or indeed, any of Marx's theories. Therefore to imply that criticism of Marx leads to non-communism is nonsense, since the idea of communism in the working class movement preceded Marx.

Andrew also says I used to be with him in defending the success and achievements of the Soviet Union. I can't see how anything has changed here. I continue to defend anything which was positive in the Soviet experience, while opposing anything which was negative. This is why I describe myself as a critical supporter of the Stalinist regime.

Like all Marxists, Andrew bases his communism exclusively on material abundance. He says that without abundance it would not be possible to meet the needs of the people. There will be the scourge of scarcity, an elite and the state. I am all for abundance, but I am not going to define communism in this way, because not only is the concept relative and related to population size, but also the Marxist definition of communism as abundance misleads people into believing that people will always behave badly in its absence and the corollary is they will behave well where there is abundance. Such a view is in keeping with the Marxist idea that communism comes from the productive forces, whereas I would argue that real communism comes from ideology and culture.

Andrew says that he remains unconvinced by "Tony's outlandish 'peak oil' theory". Any half-informed person knows that the theory is the view of leading geologists who have worked within the oil industry, such as the father of peak oil theory, Marion King Hubbert, and adherents like Colin Campbell, Kenneth Deffeyes and many others. If Andrew thinks I am obsessed with the issue it is because, like most Marxists at present, he hasn't considered the significance of industrial capitalism built on abundant, cheap oil supplies, the production of which is now stagnating before entering permanent decline. Peak oil means the end of capitalism, a process which will begin with increasing austerity. Now there is no way back for capitalism. That is why we can dispense with Paul Smith's Marxist phrases that the crisis "poses the possibility not only of recovery, but also of decline and termination of the system" (Weekly Worker March 3).

What we will be faced with is not decline and termination, but rather sudden collapse, which, by the way, started in 2008, when oil prices reaching $147 per barrel, triggering the financial crisis and a freezing up of credit. Unfortunately, the Marxist movement remains in the past, unaware that capitalism cannot be saved this time round by war or fascism.

Past his peak
Past his peak

Unimaginative

I haven't had the opportunity yet to read Ian Isaac's book about the miners' strike, but I certainly intend to. Although I have never worked in the coal industry, like most people in south Wales I have ancestors who did (my great uncle was SO Davies, a former vice-president of the South Wales Miners Federation and later MP for Merthyr).

As an active member of the Labour Party I was very keen to get involved in the dispute, so I joined the Cardiff Miners Support Group (I think I may have met Dave Douglass briefly when he attended one of our meetings. He refused to drink our local beer because he claimed it contained animal extracts. Obviously a man of principle!). The support group was run by and large by Trots from all the disparate groups (the only ones missing were Militant, who in their usual sectarian way would only operate in areas where they were in the majority: eg, Maesteg and Caerphilly.

The one issue which separated me more than any other from the prevailing Trotskyist view was their fetish for mass picketing. This again was the main reason I started to become disillusioned with Arthur Scargill (apart from the fact that I have always been suspicious of people who refer to them themselves in the third person). What Scargill should have realised early on in the strike was that there was not going to be another Saltley Gate - Thatcher was not going to allow it.

After Scargill refused to let South Wales, Scotland and Yorkshire come to agreement with the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation over coal usage, the only action that prevented any movement of coal into a steel plant was when the miners peacefully (although illegally) occupied the cranes at Port Talbot docks. But, when I suggested at the support group that the miners should adopt the tactics of Greenham Common rather than be smashed to pieces at Orgreave, I was viewed as some sort of heretic.

Scargill was derelict in his duties towards the miners when he either ignored the fact or failed to realise that Thatcher would go to any lengths to fulfil her political agenda (remember the Falklands). He should have considered more imaginative and intelligent ways of prosecuting the strike than sending massed ranks of unarmed miners up against a well paid, well armed army of paramilitary thugs.

Unimaginative
Unimaginative

Unfair

I was reading an old Weekly Worker article by Harry Paterson that talks about comrade Roy Davies ('For democratic centralism', special supplement, March 23 2000). It states: "Again, it is no coincidence that the comrade responsible for this reformist rubbish is Roy Davies, a comrade, I am informed, who has also rejected the revolutionary party."

My father gave his all to Militant, he gave up his marriage and children to fight for the 'revolutionary party', so to say that he "rejected" it is unfair. He should be commended for his undying support, not lambasted for it.

My father would be disgusted with me that I wrote this, and possibly rather angry, but he was a faithful servant to the Socialist Party, no matter how it ended. I am proud of what my father did in the name of his beliefs.

Unfair
Unfair

No street party

A number of very misleading, inaccurate and possibly defamatory claims about Republic have been made by or on behalf of Camden council concerning our 'Not the royal wedding' street party. This has all the appearances of a smear campaign against us and we are demanding a full retraction from the council.

Camden has suggested that it has "offered" Republic Lincoln's Inn Fields as an alternative venue for the party. In fact, Camden has merely invited Republic to apply to hold the party there, which would incur upfront costs of more than £3,000. The council has made it clear that if objections were received this application could also be vetoed.

A Camden spokesperson told The Guardian yesterday that Republic has not submitted an event management plan. In fact, we submitted an event management plan last month, which was subsequently accepted by both the council and Camden borough police. The same spokesperson told The Guardian there were "significant concerns from the police about the potential for disorder". In fact, the police have no concerns about our event and have not objected to it. This has been confirmed in writing by Camden borough police.

In an emailed statement councillor Sue Vincent, cabinet member for environment, drew a link between Republic's street party and the "anarchic behaviour of the cuts march". This is entirely without foundation and potentially defamatory.

There is no evidence of widespread opposition to the party, as Camden has claimed. The council has received a total of three formal objections to the party. By contrast, Republic has carried out consultation with the local community - to the satisfaction of Camden council - which was generally very positive.

No street party
No street party

Banker revolts

Let me tell you a little story. One of my close friends lives in Cairo. We keep in contact with each other using Skype and mobile phones. She is fairly well off, I suppose, even by western standards.

During the revolution, she was on the barricades defending her neighbourhood from the thugs that the regime set loose. She had armed herself with a broom, while other members of her family had molotovs, sticks and even a gun. While not intellectually being a revolutionary, events had made her into one.

This is an important point. Revolutions create revolutionaries out of ordinary people. She now wants to return to that sort of taking events into her own hands, because the regime is not acting quickly enough. She is talking about ordinary people taking power out of the hands of the state (the army and police), which is quite radical for her, as she used to be a bank manager. Revolution has its own internal logic.

The conditions are getting riper for a genuine socialist revolution. Of course, what is needed is a party to focus that anger and aspiration. I'm sure there are many millions of Egyptians thinking the same as her. It was good that you interviewed Mohammed Hamama ('Unity across the Arab world', March 31). A revolutionary party is crucial - not only in Egypt, but here in the UK.

Debate within a revolutionary party is also crucial. It saddens me that the British left splinter and fracture. When at work, what tends to happen is that workmates argue amongst themselves and have different views, but we all defend each other against the boss. Having different opinions is healthy, because we learn from each other. Just imagine if Mr Smith in accounts decided to form his own anti-boss enclave and slagged off any workmate who did not believe that his favourite football team was the only one worth supporting and resorted to fisticuffs to prove it. This is how the British left seem to me.

Don't misunderstand - I am all for rigorous analysis and debate. I also agree to differ with no bitterness. We all have a common enemy. The seeds of unity must be sown now. The Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Party, CPGB and others need to coalesce around a common set of goals and ideas. These ideas must be socialist, class politics, and none of the 'movementism' that has been around in the last 10 years or so.

The world is crying out for an alternative leadership. We should take inspiration from Egypt.

Banker revolts
Banker revolts

Al Jazeera

Thank you for being open in publishing views and arguments different from the majority view of your group. You are right in recognising that the only conditions of debate consistent with a movement for communism are those encouraging comrades to express themselves.

Please let comrade Moshé Machover know that Al Jazeera didn't originate in a joint venture with the BBC ('The long road to the Arab revolution', March 31). A joint venture does figure, as does the BBC, but it's a little different.

A Saudi satellite company, Orbit, asked the BBC to televise for the first time in Arabic the world service news. Orbit broadcast this from October 1994 until April 1996, when it pulled the plug because it found the content objectionable.

Two hundred and fifty experts (journos, producers, administrators, technicians) were looking for work and Al-Jazeera picked up almost half of them. Six months later, Al Jazeera hit the ether (see H Miles Al Jazeera London 2005, pp30-34).

Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera

Neutral

I totally agree with the need to state the truth about all camps engaged in the Libyan revolt: namely that none of them is any better from the point of view of the international working class ('No united front with Gaddafi', April 7).

It is, of course, also true that there will never be a pure proletarian revolution, and the description of the anti-Gaddafi forces as all-out reactionaries is one-sided. Fortunately, the international revolutionary forces are so weak that they would be well advised not to do much more than to explain the above truth to the world. But I wonder what it ought to do if it was strong enough to give any meaningful material support.

It is quite obvious that there can be no question of the Libyan oppositional masses in the east of that country being able to topple the disgusting Gaddafi regime on the basis of their own strength. So to whom would the international revolutionaries send their weapons or whatever else if they could? Does comrade James Turley really propose lending material support to the nuclei of armed opposition forces there, whose ideology might not be representative of the majority of the people in the region, let alone those in the whole of Libya, but whose impact would in any case prevail, given that they are organised and armed? I am, of course, speaking of the forces identified by even the international bourgeois press as pro-al Qa'eda or, to be more general, 'Islamist', 'royalist' or whatever, but certainly not progressive even in bourgeois terms.

If I'm not mistaken, the only way at present to topple the Gaddafi regime is by the active military involvement of the imperialist powers - something we most certainly do not favour, not least because it is plain that this is diametrically opposed to any sort of power to the Libyan masses. It seems to me that any material support given to the oppositional forces able to use it would put us into the imperialist camp at this time. Apart from the fact that Gaddafi doesn't need any, supporting him would only be a very short-term 'anti-imperialist' action - a tactical move that would blemish our political identity for a long time. So why not stay neutral?

Neutral
Neutral

Wrong

There are a number of things wrong with James Turley's article. Firstly, he says: "... our project is doomed if it is not international, and thus does not tackle in a principled, democratic and consistent way the malign consequences of the division of the world into competing states. Supporting imperialism is one, particularly harmful, error in this regard - because imperialism thinks and operates internationally itself."

But how is it possible for 'imperialism' to think internationally? Imperialism is in fact the social relation that is capital, raised to a global level. Like capitalism, it involves a number of discrete but dialectically intertwined phenomena - enterprises, classes, parties, states, bureaucracies, governments, etc. But, just like capitalism, all of these parts, whilst comprising the whole, do so via contradiction. The social relation itself is defined by the continual resolution of these contradictions. In fact, the social relation is to be understood not as a thing, but as a process.

So it is equally true to say that many capitalists within this system do not think or operate internationally. Whilst politicians may well do so and attempt to frame solutions to the contradictions that arise within the system on the basis of international institutions, those same politicians need to address the concerns of their own electorates and therefore the needs of the narrower economic concerns of their particular state. It should be clear that this cannot constitute some kind of single consciousness going under the name 'imperialism' and acting as a single will.

James then says that there is an argument going back to Trotskyism that, where a non-imperialist state is attacked by an imperialist state, it is necessary to form a united front with the former against the latter. There is no basis for this approach in Trotsky's writings. James quotes him on Abyssinia as the classic source for this approach. In fact, Trotsky's argument in relation to a hypothetical attack on a fascist Brazil by a democratic Britain is the clearer, more often cited argument. Trotsky argues that in such a situation communists would support Brazil against Britain because a victory for Britain would likely only result in the installation of another fascist dictator more to Britain's liking and to Brazil being doubly oppressed. A victory for Brazil would both weaken Britain and strengthen the forces of the workers in Brazil.

But there is nothing in Trotsky's argument here that suggests a 'united front'. Far from it. In fact, it was Trotsky who had done most of the work for the early Comintern in relation to the united front. It was a tactic to be used between two mass working class parties, each with a similar level of support within the class. He could not have proposed a united front with such a state for the obvious reason that it is neither a party nor working class!

To argue that a tactical alliance in action is possible is something completely different. It is no different from Lenin's argument about entering into such alliances with alien class forces in the context of the democratic revolution. But, just as Lenin argued in that context that 'extreme revolutionary opposition' had to be adopted to such forces, so too does this apply to Trotsky's position. That is why Trotsky opposed the Stalinist position in relation to the Chinese revolution in the 1920s. He argued that the communists in China had to support the KMT in opposing Japanese imperialism. Given that the KMT had access to weapons, they should even be prepared to accept weapons from it in order to fight. But he argued it was necessary to maintain strict organisational and political separation from them, precisely because they represented the class enemy, and would turn on the communists and revolutionary workers and peasants, which, of course, they did.

In fact, this whole argument is inextricably tied by its methodology to many other basic principles of communist strategy. For example, it is the same methodology that lies behind Lenin's idea of revolutionary defeatism and, more clearly, Trotsky's proletarian military policy. The former did not mean acting to physically assist the military campaign of the enemy, but meant continuing to undertake revolutionary activity against your own ruling class, even if that meant the possibility of military defeat.

Extending that to the conditions of World War II, Trotsky argued that, although Marxists had to oppose the war, the reality was that without revolution the war would happen and workers would go to fight. He argued that, just as Bolsheviks had done in World War I, communists would have to try to become the best soldiers to win respect from their comrades and thereby attempt to put themselves in the best position to continue to oppose the war, and to work towards turning it into a civil war against the bosses. It is also the same methodology that Trotsky used in relation to defence of the USSR. Revolutionaries had to continue to struggle against Stalinism but, if the USSR was attacked by imperialist powers, then they would defend it. But they would defend it in the same way he had outlined in relation to China. They would maintain their own organisational and political independence; they would argue that the Stalinists were incapable of organising an effective defence, and they would seek to split away sections of the bureaucracy, and win over the workers for a political revolution.

Consequently, in relation to his Brazilian example, there is no suggestion from Trotsky that supporting the state had anything to do with supporting the regime, any more than supporting the USSR against an imperialist attack had anything to do with supporting the Stalinist regime. On the contrary, the war was an opportunity to expose the reactionary nature of those regimes, and to win the workers away from them! There could be no question of giving political support. Nor could there be any question of the communists advocating merging the forces of the workers with the regime or other classes. And on that, Trotsky was doing nothing more than the Comintern had agreed in relation to the Theses on the national and colonial questions.

It is from this perspective that the most dangerous element of James's argument is apparent. He argues that, although the rebel forces do contain many reactionary forces - Islamists, tribalists, former regime hatchet men and so on - and has indeed been guilty of pogroms, then this is also true of Gaddafi's regime. But this is a false argument on many levels.

Firstly, the fact that the 'rebels' are a lesser evil compared to the regime is not in itself an indication that they are progressive. It certainly is not a reason for communists to throw in their lot with them. But even if it were true, then in the face of an imperialist attack on the country, communists still have to support the state, whilst continuing to mobilise the workers to oppose both imperialism and the Gaddafi regime.

But it clearly is not true, as James says, that, "As such, despite the reactionary forces involved (which by no means are defining it), the mere fact of a rebellion is a positive, progressive development." The regime of the shah was reactionary, but if anything the rebellion of the Khomeiniites, and certainly the regime established by it, was even more reactionary! In fact, there have been numerous examples of reactionary regimes that faced opposition from even more reactionary groups. That is why in the Theses on the national and colonial questions we find the following:

"second, the need for a struggle against the clergy and other influential reactionary and medieval elements in backward countries;

"third, the need to combat pan-Islamism and similar trends, which strive to combine the liberation movement against European and American imperialism with an attempt to strengthen the positions of the khans, landowners, mullahs, etc …;

"fifth, the need for a determined struggle against attempts to give a communist colouring to bourgeois-democratic liberation trends in the backward countries; the Communist International should support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only [emphasis added] on condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not only in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special tasks: ie, those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations. The Communist International must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in the colonial and backward countries, but should not merge with it, and should under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is in its most embryonic form."

Lenin argued that if any of these forces refused to allow the communists to organise the workers and peasants on a revolutionary basis, then they should be treated as enemies like the Second International.

Communists should be very wary of simply jumping at the outbreak of fighting in Libya and assuming that this is just another manifestation of some Arab revolution sweeping across the region. As Lenin said, the truth is always concrete, and the facts in Libya suggest that this is something completely different from what has happened in Egypt. In fact, even the upheavals in Bahrain are not the same as in Egypt because of the factor of the division between an oppressing Sunni minority and oppressed Shia majority, let alone the factor of Iranian involvement in that process. The reality of Libya is more the outbreak of a civil war, with complex bases. Communists should be wary of simply taking sides in that civil war that could mean being in opposition to workers in Tripoli and other parts of the country, who might oppose Gaddafi, but even more fear the rebels.

Our job is not to pick sides, but to advance the cause of the Libyan workers. Our job is not to act as cheerleaders for rebels simply on the basis of them possibly being a 'lesser evil', but to advance a communist programme around which we attempt to mobilise the working class.

Wrong
Wrong