Letters

Zionist Nazis

I have to agree with the analysis in comrade Greenstein’s letter (July 7). Israel is a racist settler state, an imperialist entity established on land stolen from the Palestinians. Look on the reverse side of the flag of Israel and you’ll see not the Star of David but the Nazi swastika; they are two sides of the very same coin. Indeed Adolf Hitler would have fully approved of the Zionist state of Israel if it meant removing Jewish people from Europe and transporting them to Palestine.

There is, of course, no question that the Nazi holocaust led directly to the establishment of the state of Israel and it is cited at every opportunity by the ‘Israelis’. No mention, of course, of why only Jews and not gays, gipsies, those with physical deformities or learning difficulties - all victims of the holocaust - got homelands: not that these other groups would have wanted them anyway. (We communists were fortunate to get socialist homelands, even if these did not last as long as the Jewish settler entity.)

The fact is those Jewish settlers - many from the UK and USA, where the holocaust didn’t occur - are in far more danger in Israel than they would be in their country of ethnic origin. This is because, like the British settlers in the Malvinas and other colonised nations, they are living on stolen land. This also applies, of course, to countries like the US, Australia and New Zealand, though ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population has resulted in the latter being marginalised.

Israel is indeed an artificial colonial entity surrounded by Arab states. Its racist nature is enshrined in its very existence as a ‘Jewish homeland’. It does not take a mathematician to see that the ‘right’ of all Jews to live in Israel is a non-starter, but it does explain the continual expansion of this fascist state. Hitler had a word for it: creating Lebensraum or ‘living space’.

All states should be secular and non-racist. So the ideal solution for Israel/Palestine would be a secular state, where people of all races, religions and those of no religious beliefs were all equal citizens with equal rights. That must be the goal - and ultimately a socialist Palestinian republic. Unfortunately, now that Israel exists as a separate state, we have to somehow contain and live with it, so a two-state solution may well be the only viable one in the near future.

Ultimately, all states based on race or religion - such as Israel, the Islamist republics and, of course, Britain, with its established church and unelected head of state, described as ‘defender of the faith’ - must give way to secular, socialist republics. In the meantime, we must look for practical compromise solutions, and the first step to a unitary, secular, socialist republic in Palestine/Israel may well be a two-state interim situation.

Zionist Nazis
Zionist Nazis

Magic away

Comrade Tony Greenstein tells us that “self-determination simply means the right to be free from national oppression”.

What he proposes amounts, in effect, to reversing the present situation, in which the Palestinian Arabs are an oppressed nation, by according to them the right to self-determination, but denying it to the Hebrew (Israeli Jewish) nation. However - by his own definition - the latter will then become an oppressed nation. (This is reminiscent of the apocryphal story about Khrushchev pointing the finger at Nixon: “In the US there is exploitation of man by man; in the USSR it is the other way around!”)

His argument for advocating this reversal is the arbitrary assertion that the essence of the Hebrew nation is forever fixed in the oppressive colonial Zionist mould and that therefore no alternative identity will ever be possible for it, even following the overthrow of Zionism. Thus he claims, in effect, that the Hebrew nation will be an oppressor so long as it exists, and will exist only so long as it is a Zionist oppressor. No evidence is produced for this prophesy. Putting the word ‘nation’ in scare quotes, as Tony insists on doing when applied to the Hebrew nation, is unlikely to magic it away when Zionism is defeated. There is, however, evidence to the contrary: even now there are a minority of Hebrews who would identify themselves as such and who are non-Zionists or anti-Zionists.

Tony claims that the perspective of socialist unification of the Arab east is “abstract”. But the boot is firmly on the other foot. His favourite slogan, calling for a “secular, democratic” unitary Palestine, is utterly abstract, because it is confined to the box of Palestine, created by imperialism, within which the Hebrew nation is by far the more powerful side. And, short of a socialist Arab unification, there is no possible means whereby the majority of that nation, its working class, might be induced to give up its dominance and overthrow Zionism.

Magic away
Magic away

Clapped-out

Yet another ‘Join the Labour Party and pull it left’ article that, as usual, fails to deal with the points continually made against this tired, failed tactic. I am referring, of course, to Michael Copestake’s ‘Bigger, better, more coordinated’ (July 7), in which he argues that the RMT and the FBU should rejoin the Labour Party and that unions such as PCS, NUT, UCU, etc should also affiliate in order somehow to bring the union barons under control and to make the Labour Party act for the working class.

He opened his article with the recognition that the June 30 action “may only have involved unaffiliated unions”. No explanation as to why no Labour-affiliated unions were part of that action, despite the TUC last September agreeing to mount coordinated action against the cuts. Despite Unite and Unison recently sounding off on how they will organise action and still, despite the support shown on June 30, not having fixed a date. Are Unison and Unite waiting to agree a separate shoddy deal with the government and abandon PCS, NUT, ATL and UCU? So, let’s recap: the only united action so far has been by unions not affiliated to Labour.

Comrade Copestake then highlights the “near universal expression of disapproval by workers at the rallies [in the major cities on June 30], including booing and jeering, whenever a speaker made mention of Ed Miliband and his slimy stance”. Ed Miliband won the Labour leadership contest due to the support of the trade unions and this is how he repays them? Peter Manson has previously bigged up Ed Miliband, making great play of his willingness to address the TUC anti-cuts demonstration of March 26 and his intention to address the Durham Miners Gala. Whoops - he didn’t address the gala after all!

Michael fails to explain why the barons in charge of unions already affiliated to the Labour Party have not been brought under rank and file control and, bizarrely, why this is more likely to happen if still more unions join the Labour Party.

The same unions did not support John McDonnell against Brown or in the subsequent leadership contest. Why not? John, far and away, is more in tune with trade union members attending the March 26 demonstration and those out on June 30 than Miliband or Ed Balls. As for stating unions outside the Labour Party have no influence on its leaders - clearly neither do the huge unions already affiliated.

Michael then says, as has Peter Manson, that “Labour leaders have always betrayed workers”, and adds: “because the union bureaucrats have allowed them to do so”. Excuse me? Such union barons always put the election of a Labour government first above organising strike action. They do not like organising strike action under a Tory government because that spoils Labour’s chances of getting elected and they will not organise action under a Labour government because that might allow the Tories back in! The most militant unions today are PCS and the RMT and it is no coincidence that they are not affiliated to the Labour Party.

Michael asserts that a Labour Party mark two will be just as bad as the current Labour Party. Well, that depends on what democratic procedures such a body has, compared with the carefully evolved anti-democratic procedures in use today that prevent rank-and-file Labour Party members having any real say over Labour Party policy and election manifestos.

Why hasn’t the TUC called more anti-cuts protests (ideally in all the major cities for people to attend locally that cannot spare the time to go to London and back)? It’s not as if March 26 was a huge flop - as I suspect they actually hoped would be the case, so they would have an excuse not to organise any more protests.
I will not be voting Labour at the next general election whilst they agree cuts are necessary. I do not support PCS affiliating to the Labour Party (most rank-and-file PCS activists are well against any such idea, being civil servants who were attacked by the last Labour government) and neither would my members. I want an explanation why a party winning the general election by a landslide in 1997 did so little for the working class and so much for the already super-rich?

Labour-affiliated trade unions have adopted the Labour Party’s conference controlling practices precisely to stop their own rank and file bringing union tops to account. Look at how Yunus Baksh was treated by his own union! Affiliating to Labour will just bring the better unions under their stifling control of ‘Don’t strike - just wait for another Labour government who will also attack you’.

Looking for an alternative to the Labour Party is far more political, far more involving of ordinary workers, in having to face fundamental questions about power in society, and who should have it and in whose interests, than the outdated, utterly failed ‘Join the Labour Party to pull it left’ diversion.

That the unions backed Ed Miliband instead of John McDonnell really says it all (did any of them ask their members, I wonder, or allow John the chance to address them in the union magazines? I think I can say they did not.

That Miliband and Balls believed media assertions that the public did not support the June 30 strikes, when the public we met on our picket lines overwhelmingly did support us, shows how utterly out of touch the Labour leadership are with ordinary people. We would not have seen the reality of that public support if we hadn’t taken strike action and tested this. Where was Gove’s army of parents taking over classes?

When your clapped-out old car keeps on breaking down, when it keeps on steering to the right as you try to get it to go left, there comes a point when it makes more sense to just get another - or invent a better mode of transport. Applying Michael’s logic would have us all still driving model T Fords in ‘whatever colour you like so long as it’s black’!

Mark Serwotka or Ed Miliband? Mark by a mile.

Clapped-out
Clapped-out

Classic

Michael Copestake wrote a report about the June 30 strikes and demonstrations that waxed lyrical about the need for unions to apply pressure within the Labour Party: “It goes without saying [sic] that next to no influence can be exerted on Miliband and the Labour leadership by non-affiliated unions, which is why there should be no more talk of disaffiliation.”

As an ex-official of the Fire Brigades Union, I could disagree with this comment on so many levels, it is difficult to know where to start. Most obviously, pressure can be exerted on the Labour Party from outside; after all, Labour still needs union members’ votes. Secondly, membership of the Labour Party presents little or no opportunity to exert effective influence. Unions like the FBU took the positions that they currently have on the Labour Party for good reasons, which were based on long, historic experience. The Labour Party, at both a local and at a national level, had proved entirely unmoved by FBU influence in many local disputes and most obviously in the national strikes in 1977 and 2002. It was the latter strike that led directly to the disaffiliation of the union. The red professor, Michael Copestake, clearly knows better than the majority of FBU members, because he tells them that they and the RMT should rejoin the Labour Party.

This amounts to breath-taking arrogance, when the position he presents is offered up without one substantial argument. So why has this line, to the right of an entire section of the UK working class, been adopted by the CPGB? Essentially, because of the earlier leftism adopted by the same organisation. Now we are told we must rejoin the Labour Party because in the past the CPGB has argued that there are no halfway houses and that the only relevant option is a Marxist party. Sorry, comrades, this is plain nonsense and it is similar to arguments put forward in the early 20th century by Fabians, who suggested that workers were best represented by applying pressure within the Liberal Party.

Fortunately, most trade unionists are not fools and are unlikely to be impressed by the appeal to join Labour under the leadership of the strike-opposing Mr Miliband. This latest example of CPGB line-dancing suggests that, for all the rhetoric about being different from other groups on the left, the CPGB still places agreement with the party’s current line above understanding the movements within the wider working class. A classic sign of sectarianism.

Classic
Classic

SPGB monks

The ongoing problem with the Socialist Party of Great Britain is that, like president Nixon of old, they are unable to chew gum and cross the road at the same time (Letters, July 7).

A socialist alternative to the current capitalist economic system is not an event which happens in a cataclysmic, instantaneous flash of energy, transforming the globe from one system to another. It’s also a simple matter of fact that the achievement of a global socialist system will not be achieved in time for tea and, unless you’re going to feed the kids on stories of the sugar candy mountain, you’d best have a strategy for putting food on the table right now.

Letting your family starve to death in an act of social and class abstentionism, rather than fighting for as high a wage as union power and your bargaining position can achieve, isn’t some fiery doctrine at all. Taking whatever the boss slings you across the table, without forming your workmates into a union and working class social unit to fight for collective standards, isn’t revolutionary either. Far from appearing as some form of shining light of socialist purity, your workmates are likely to consider you somewhat of a gaffer’s man. They will conclude that if you can’t fight for the tea break, they wouldn’t trust you leading the charge to the Bastille. Fighting for improvements in the standard of life, the rate of exploitation, standards of social existence now is not in any way counterposed to a revolutionary strategy to smash the capitalist system per se. Neither is this an “attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable contradictions of capitalism”.

What foolishness. ‘Fight for a living wage’ as a demand among low-paid workers in no way offers any support or endorsement for the wages system, as communist activists will make clear during the process of struggle. The fact is, we are not in a situation at this time, in this place, to fight for the ‘abolition of the wages system’ and the achievement of that demand sits at the other side of a different social system. Workers are quite capable of seeing the different strengths of the class and combining battles against greater impoverishment with longer-term aims of global common wealth and socialism. The SPGB’s Alan Johnstone counterposes these as two alternative options of consciousness, which, of course, they are not.

I am quite capable of arguing through unions for shorter hours, safer conditions and better wages, while advocating the abolition of the wages system. We can demand changes in conditions right now and solutions achievable right now, while advancing ideas of a global communist society which can’t be achieved until the balance of forces shifts irreversibly in our favour. Alan Johnstone, the SPGB and others, however, have drawn the conclusion that to argue for any improvements now is somehow in contradistinction to building the consciousness and the organisational forms needed to smash capitalism.

I just don’t see that. It puts me in mind of an old Jehovah’s Witness I worked with down the pit, who refused to pay into his miners’ pension because he was convinced the day of judgement would arrive before he reached retirement age and it was therefore a distraction from his religious endeavour. I can assure Alan that an hour off the working day, a day off the week and a bumper pay rise right now will not detract from the struggle for the whole shooting match. Quite the contrary, not letting the bastards take any more out of our bones and communities than we absolutely must concede, making them give way every time we have the edge and lessening the load, are demonstrations of workers’ power and class struggle.

Alan thinks it actually ‘delays’ socialism and the chance to make real change. I don’t follow that ‘logic’, if that’s what it is. It simply opts out of the struggles that are actually taking place; it certainly won’t earn you a place on the platform or the welfare club, at which you can seriously address alternatives to capitalism and how to get there. Neither do I think ‘reforms’ pave the way for revolution. Our standard of life and the terms we suffer under this system are questions of class survival and symptoms of our combativity, but they do not of themselves lead to revolutionary consciousness. The class war isn’t an academic exercise; it’s about real lives and real social hardship and conditions.

I do not wish to ‘reform’ capitalism; I wish to smash capitalism. But it’s not an ‘all or nothing’ struggle. There are moving frontiers of control and moving front lines. If you don’t know where they are or sit back impervious of the battles taking place in the here and now, it is no wonder the SPGB has remained like the monk on the hillside watching the world go by.

Incidentally, my Jehovah mate agreed to pay into the miners’ pension, which he now draws, and Jesus still hasn’t arrived, though he still waits at his gate each morning, a wee bit better off than he would have been.

Let me finish by commenting on Harley Filben’s report on the Marxism conference’s debate about what is and what isn’t a revolutionary situation (‘Marxism 2011: The situation is excellent …’, July 7). The Socialist Workers Party definition is extremely simple: any situation in which the ruling class loses control is a revolutionary situation. If it doesn’t lose control, it isn’t a revolutionary situation.

This means that every situation where the class is defeated was never a revolutionary situation or else they would have won. Anywhere where we win even for a short time must have been a revolutionary situation because the ruling class lost control!

Talk about being wise after the fact. What utter nonsense. Surely, a revolutionary situation is one in which there is the possibility and potential of the ruling class losing control? That we don’t always follow through, for any number of reasons, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a revolutionary situation; it simply means we blew it.

That being the case, May 1968 in France and 1926 in Britain were indeed revolutionary situations - defeated not so much by the strength and confidence of the other side, but treachery, poor organisation or timidity on our own.

SPGB monks
SPGB monks

Mughals

According to the bourgeois media in India, a corrupt government like that of the United Progressive Alliance has not been seen before.

Prime minister Manmohan Singh is unhappy about this because he wants to maintain the international view that his government is one of liberalism - in fact he is the main agent of international liberalism on Indian soil. The acceptance of corruption would mean that the rate of investment of foreign capital in our country would decrease. The UPA government would be blackened internationally.

In fact there is no contradiction between corruption and the interests of bourgeois liberalism. This circus of thieving, embezzlement, immorality and illegality is liberalism. Liberalism means supporting corruption. It means dishonest businessmen, corporate clans, bourgeois feudal politicians, bureaucrats who loot the national wealth. That’s why our prime minister is not interested in acting against corruption.

Poor Indians, move onto the offensive. The Mughals oppressed you, the British oppressed you, the whole of Europe oppressed you. Now your own country’s bourgeois feudalists are oppressing you, along with the international imperialists. Did you get economic independence? 80% of Indians earn below $1 a day. 

Mughals
Mughals

1-2-3-4

Holding a stall for the CPGB at Shoreditch’s 1-2-3-4 festival last Saturday made me sincerely appreciate the phrase, ‘market research’.

The Socialist Workers Party, whose comrades were present at last year’s event, wisely stayed away, along with their separate Right to Work and Unite Against Fascism identities. Therefore the only other ‘political’ stall was Greenpeace. ‘Greenpeace’ and ‘Red war’, as someone amusingly pointed out.

One potential contact we made was with an Italian comrade who is a member of the UK wing of a breakaway group from Rifondazione Comunista. He told us he was an advocate of European-wide left unity, away from political regionalism and sectarianism. I also spoke to a disillusioned SWP member who shared our disdain of the insular nature of the left.

1-2-3-4
1-2-3-4