06.07.2011

Marxism 2011: Fringe benefits

Leo Godwin reports on two successful and well attended CPGB meetings

The Marxism fringe, organised by the CPGB, produced two well attended sessions of thought-provoking debate. Comrades from a variety of organisations joined us at the University of London Union to add their experiences and opinions to those of the platform speakers. On the Saturday, Mark Fischer of the CPGB and David Broder (the Commune) spoke on the culture of the left in Britain and, at the second meeting, Israeli socialist Moshé Machover gave his analysis of the ‘Arab awakening’.

The first session, entitled ‘The left: what a way to organise!’, kicked off with Mark Fischer’s description of his own undemocratic expulsion from the Young Communist League in the 1980s. The stifling atmosphere of the YCL was typical of many groups, where expulsions, bans on associating with members of other left organisations and a condescending attitude towards members and readers of the party press are endemic. The position of Marx and Engels was that the communist revolution must be “the conscious act of the majority”, said comrade Fischer, and yet much of the left acts as though it can be carried through by an unaccountable clique. Workers must become “a sophisticated political class that understands the nuances of the different debates, the different trends within the workers’ movement and grasps the nuances of high-level politics. If we don’t have a class like that then we don’t have socialism.”

David Broder’s exposition went into the thought processes within the left groups. He talked of how appeals to personal loyalty can be used to disrupt internal democratic debate and how a long history of defeats and marginalisation has led to a fear of self-criticism and the manufacturing of urgency and super-optimism to persuade members that it was necessary to go for immediate action for its own sake rather than engage in careful discussion and arrive at informed strategic decisions: “Our movement has been through 90 years of defeat and degeneration, and the culture of the left reflects that. We need a longer-term vision of the kind of society we wish to create and our organisational practice should reflect that.”

What followed was a lively debate on the role of the party, the balance between democracy and action, theory and practice and the relationship between the party and the wider working class. Comrades from several different tendencies participated.

Moshé Machover’s talk on the Arab awakening the following evening produced another wide-ranging debate. While comrade Machover warned that it was unlikely there would be thorough-going change in the short term, the recent upsurge erupting across the Arab world will retrospectively be seen as a “momentous turning point”, he predicted. He stated that these events are the opening scenes in a drama that will unfold over the coming years. However, although the regimes in Egypt and Tunisia have been “decapitated”, thanks to the mass mobilisations and the lack of will to defend the heads of state on the part of the military, the people still have the bulk of the ruling class to contend with. Even so, the removal of Ben Ali and Mubarak constitutes a real step forward.

On the other hand, “I would regard the situation in Libya as a failed revolution, because the revolutionary forces no longer have control of the revolutionary process,” he went on. Because Gaddafi’s forces were stronger than them, the opposition movement turned to the west for support and rapidly lost control. Comrade Machover described the underlying feeling of solidarity and desire for Arab unity within the revolutionary movements - this is certainly brought out by Al Jazeera’s coverage. Left-inclined journalists and presenters at the channel consciously employ the term, ‘Arab awakening’ - the title of a seminal 1938 book by George Antonius.

After describing the history of working class and democratic struggles in the region, as well as imperialist interference and the colonial nature of Zionism, comrade Machover went on to give his view of the relationship of the Arab awakening to the Israel-Palestine conflict: “In the case of the Palestinians, their strength lies is being part of the wider Arab nation. The only prospect for solving this conflict is that of unification with the Arab world, which can change the balance of power.”

Again a lively debate followed, with comrades questioning, among other things, the extent of Arab sentiment as a driving force for unification, whether it was a concession to Arab nationalism, and the role of the working class. Other important threads in the debate included the fate of minorities such as the Kurds and the Berbers, and the rights of the Hebrew or Israeli Jewish people.

Over the two meetings, comrades from the Socialist Workers Party, Workers Fight, International Bolshevik Tendency, Socialist Party of Great Britain, the US Platypus group, the Commune and, of course, the CPGB made contributions to the debate. The Marxism fringe provided a taste of what can be expected at next month’s Communist University.