Letters
Got it wrong
There were three letters (January 26) on the issue of nationalism and the rightwing character named ‘VN Gelis’. I will respond to Gerry Downing because at least I understand his language and he wants to discuss the issues, even though I think he has it all wrong. Ray Rising’s letter is far more nuanced and would require a much longer response. As I consider VN Gelis to be somewhat outside the workers’ movement, he doesn’t deserve a response to his slander and lying accusations.
Gerry takes issue with what I wrote here: “It is globalisation, not nationalism, that is seeking to roll back the gains of the working class and is the cutting edge of the class struggle.” He writes as a prefix to this: “David Walters makes the following repudiation of Trotskyism”. Wow - really? From holding up what I consider a very orthodox Leninist position on imperialism, Gerry derives a ‘break with Trotskyism’. So let’s update this then. ‘Globalisation’, which is a kind of civil-society term used to describe imperialism, is nationalism and not an imperialist onslaught internationally through the European Union/euro zone, North American Free Trade Agreement, World Trade Organisation and a host of so-called ‘neoliberal’ structural adjustment programmes?
How is my statement at all inaccurate? I make zero identification with anything advocated by little Englander/BNP/VN Gelis types. What I noted is that, as workers’ militants, as Marxists, we should oppose every form of imperialist machination that seeks to make the working class pay for the crisis. This includes imperialist assaults on what hitherto had been, factually, sovereign nations. Not because of some abstract pro-capitalist loyalty to the ‘nation-state’, but understanding that such assaults through trade pacts, currency convention and political unions are designed for one purpose and one purpose alone: to destroy the gains of the working class that factually were won within those parameters.
I would love to see a struggle by the class across borders for a United Socialist States of Europe. But that is not the defensive strategy we can employ right now with regards to the real, living gains of our class paid for by struggle in the post-war era. The capitalists are using these liberal-sounding globalist terms to undo these gains. Where does Gerry stand on that? Because, as far as I’m concerned, anyone who doesn’t struggle against Europe, against the euro, against the WTO and Nafta (in my neck of the woods) and against these attacks is simply doing the work of the ‘alter-globaliser’ NGOs in trying to weaken the workers’ movement. The Greek working class is quite clear about where it stands on Europe; so should he be.
My organisation, Socialist Organiser, has been leading activists around full legalisation and in defence against the racist attacks on Latino immigrants in California. We reject the formalistic and mechanical position adopted by Gerry’s straw man, the Sparts. Every immigrant rights organisation in the US today that is not a tail end for the Democratic Party is opposed to Nafta. Nafta is what caused the huge crisis that has destroyed the traditional national economy in Mexico and driven millions of Mexican peasants and workers to the US. We organise conferences against these policies in Mexico and the United States, fully independent from the parties of the ruling class in both countries and from globalist NGOs and Soros-sponsored World Social Forum types who only want a ‘kinder, gentler Nafta’. Is opposing Nafta ‘nationalist’?
The defence of immigrant workers is sine qua non for any socialist. As part of the working class, they have every right to live and work where they want. That is part of the programme of the Fourth International and any communist organisation going back to the Socialist International before World War I. Daniel De Leon fought for this position at the 1904 congress of the Second International against rightwing socialists caught up in real national chauvinism. Defending immigrants means opposing imperialism in all its aspects, not just the ones that appear politically correct to you. It means opposing everything imperialism is trying to do.
Opposing the imperialist dismantling of the nation-state does not mean adapting to any sort of ‘great nation chauvinism’. It means, first and foremost, opposing the capitalist class that is pushing these attacks. When workers oppose the dismantling of a steel plant to ship it to another country, it is not because of ‘national chauvinism’, but rather it is exactly what it seems: an attempt to destroy union jobs and wages for the benefit of the capitalist moving the plant. It means recognising that the ruling class is in favour of breaking down borders so as to rewrite social welfare, social security, labour codes and healthcare laws. It means logically overthrowing one’s own bourgeoisie.
We cannot identify with any section of the capitalist class. Not even the small, incidental ones that, for their own narrow business reasons, support protectionism and tariffs and national chauvinism.
Gerry claims that “imperialism, under the guise of the nation-state, is called fascism”. Funny, I call it liberal democracy. It is only “fascism” when the imperialists are unable to use the misleaders of the working class to demobilise them, and the traditional forms of the democratic-bourgeois state no longer function as a bulwark against workers’ revolution. Not happening yet. I suggest this was just polemical excess on his part.
Got it wrong
Got it wrong
Nationalist?
Gerry Downing writes of myself: “Ludicrously he rejects nationalisation demands as reformist, seemingly unaware that ‘workers’ control’ can be added to make that demand a fight for workers’ power” (Letters, January 26).
What is ludicrous about this rejection? It was similarly rejected by Marx, Engels and Trotsky explicitly! Marx’s Critique of the Gotha programme was largely devoted to destroying Lassallean reformist ideas about calling upon the capitalist state to act in the workers’ interests through various forms of ‘state aid’ and, in it, he sets out exactly why tagging onto such calls the demand for ‘democratic control’ - out of a sense of shame - was what was ludicrous. It was those like Gerry who raise such demands, which delude the workers about the true nature of the capitalist state. Marx wrote in the Critique that their socialism was “only skin-deep” and that, in these demands to be placed upon the capitalist state, they only demonstrated that the working class was not the ruling class nor yet ready to rule. By contrast, in the same place, Marx writes that it was precisely the self-activity of the workers, independent of the bourgeoisie and their state, in setting up cooperatives, that was truly revolutionary. Similar statements can be found in Engels’ later letters to the German party opposing the calls being raised for nationalisation.
Take Engels’ criticism of the Erfurt programme, for instance, where he wrote opposing the demands for the setting up by the state of health and national insurance schemes. He writes: “These points demand that the following should be taken over by the state: (1) the bar, (2) medical services, (3) pharmaceutics, dentistry, midwifery, nursing, etc, etc, and later the demand is advanced that workers’ insurance become a state concern. Can all this be entrusted to Mr von Caprivi? [German chancellor after Bismarck] And is it compatible with the rejection of all state socialism, as stated above?” (www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1891/06/29.htm).
And, in the programme that Marx wrote for the First International, he says nothing about demands for nationalisation, but does advise the workers to establish cooperatives: “We recommend to the working men to embark in cooperative production rather than in cooperative stores. The latter touch but the surface of the present economical system; the former attacks its groundwork.”
There are, of course, many more such quotes from Marx and Engels. But the same message is provided by Trotsky too. In the Transitional programme, where Trotsky does raise demands for nationalisation, he at the same time is clear to point out that such demands, as with others, such as a workers’ government, can only be transitional demands leading towards revolutionary conclusions under certain circumstances - ie, in a situation which is already itself one of dual power or is pre-revolutionary. He makes that specifically clear in relation to the demand for the nationalisation of the banks, for example. Outside those conditions, these demands would indeed be nothing other than reformist demands, or else would amount to mere revolutionary phrase-mongering, to use Marx’s earlier term.
Here is what Trotsky says in relation to the demands for nationalisation and workers’ control: “It would, of course, be a disastrous error, an outright deception, to assert that the road to socialism passes, not through the proletarian revolution, but through nationalisation by the bourgeois state of various branches of industry and their transfer into the hands of the workers’ organisations.” And: “The workers need control not for platonic purposes, but in order to exert practical influence upon the production and commercial operations of the employers. This cannot, however, be attained unless the control, in one form or another, within such and such limits, is transformed into direct management. In a developed form, workers’ control thus implies a sort of economic dual power in the factory, the bank, commercial enterprise, and so forth.”
If the participation of the workers in the management of production is to be lasting, stable, ‘normal’, it must rest upon class-collaboration and not upon class struggle. Such a class-collaboration can be realised only through the upper strata of the trade unions and the capitalist associations. There have been not a few such experiments: ‘economic democracy’ in Germany, ‘Mondism’ in Britain, etc. Yet, in all these instances, it was not a case of workers’ control over capital, but of the subserviency of the labour bureaucracy to capital. Such subserviency, as experience shows, can last for a long time, depending on the patience of the proletariat.
Nationalist?
Nationalist?
Dancing
Gerry Downing clearly can tell us the theoretical configuration of how many little Trotskys can dance on the head of a Lenin (although Ray Rising says he can’t), but what he can’t do is translate what being a communist militant means in the day-to-day struggles of the working class. With 10,000 job losses threatened in Derbyshire at the railway carriage construction industry, the response of the CPGB and Workers Power was what? Nowt, an abstention, while Bough tells us that’s the way the cookie crumbles, it’s capitalism and there’s nowt we can do till the glorious day of the worldwide revolution. So is this communist leadership? Either ‘No comment’ or ‘Take it on the chin, lads. It’s dog eat dog and you just got eaten’.
To say that workers were right to fight for the jobs, and the struggle of the workers was dead right and had to be supported, doesn’t make me a bourgeois nationalist, you fools. My criticism of Peter Manson was around the abstention and lack of practical transitional demands to meet the crisis of work and poverty right now. Peter at least then came back and suggested the workers should have demanded nationalisation of the plant. I responded by adding ‘under workers’ control’ and elaborating what the rest of the class would need to do in response to this demand.
A work-in where production was maintained and vehicles demanded and used by ancillary workers, with workers taking control of the distribution of sales profits, for example, has nothing to do with ‘nationalism’. The struggle of the workers who live in Britain (I say this because many workers who worked in Derby and who work elsewhere on this island are not British workers but still demand defence of the jobs) isn’t de facto ‘nationalist’ because they happen on this island. What utter stupidity. But even supposing the workers had decided to throw their lot in with the company, should the firm (Canadian, by the way, not British) have threatened to pull out, and demand replacement contracts or whatever, this is not of itself some form of class-collaboration. The workers need to work to live; it’s the jobs they are trying to save, not the firm as such, and workers wouldn’t give a bugger at this stage who owned it, as long as their employment terms and contracts were protected.
For a communist, that isn’t the end of the story, of course, but standing with the workers is at least the start line. Pissing off round the corner in case some liberal, politically correct critic charged you with ‘nationalism’ because the existing contract had gone to Germany isn’t any way to prove the worth of self-declared communists. Neither is telling workers in Britain that they have to fall on their swords and accept the decision of the government to throw them on the dole.
Dancing
Dancing
Counterposition
There seems a tendency in this discussion to counterpose globalisation and nationalism. Though they seem to be in contradiction, there is also unity between these concepts.
The ideology of globalisation has not a lot of content. Its ideologues simply repeat phrases from Adam Smith. It’s not an ideology that excites anyone other than financial speculators. Globalisation is an economic process; nationalism is an ideology.
Nationalism today is non-functional as an economic policy. Hitler tried economic nationalism, but it required the invasion of bordering countries to absorb their raw materials and capital. Stalin tried economic nationalism in the former Soviet Union, but it was initially successful only by destroying the peasant economy. Nationalist politicians today still follow the rules of the global capitalist economy, while expressing anti-imperialism, which sometimes frightens investors.
However, nationalism as an ideology is extremely useful in deflecting the working class. It can be interpreted to mean almost anything. Nor does it require intelligence or even the knowledge of simple facts. Immigrants, Arabs, blacks can all be blamed. The globalising bourgeoisie thus can easily mask its world investments in nationalist rhetoric.
Counterposition
Counterposition
Templater
Paul B Smith asserts: “Workers had more freedoms in Nazi Germany than in Stalin’s Soviet Union” (‘Impediments to consciousness’, January 19). By this ‘logic’, the heroic resistance of the Soviet Union to fascism was a waste of time and it would surely have been better if the Nazis had won World War II.
Smith states the obvious: “There is an ongoing attempt to distort the history of the Bolshevik revolution.” In my view, the role of bourgeois intellectuals such as himself in pouring slime on each and every achievement of the international working class movement is part of this distortion.
The methodology is completely non-dialectical. Absolutely everything that happened under ‘Stalinism’ was negative. Conveniently, for Smith, “the period of Stalinism lasted from 1924 until 1991”. Lenin can be maintained as a ‘clean’ icon and ‘Stalinism’ carried on for nearly 40 years after Stalin’s death. This is equally convenient, as anything that Smith does not like can be subsumed under the generic concept of ‘Stalinism’.
The reality is that Smith, in his Kafkaesque world of ‘anti-Stalinism’, lacks all objectivity: history is templated and one hardly has to think.
Templater
Templater
PSC witch-hunt
Tony Greenstein’s piece, ‘No room for anti-Semites’ (Weekly Worker January 19), seems to have a lot in common with Tanya Gold’s comments in The Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’ (‘LSE Nazi games in context, January 16). Gold claims that “Anti-Semitic discourse is now mainstream and to say it all comes from the crimes of the Jewish state feels disingenuous and a denial of the past. Anti-Semitism is too old to sprout anew from nothing.”
Tony, a Palestine Solidarity Campaign member, will by Tania’s definition be regarded as “one of the leftwing anti-Semites [who] despise Israel, but are vocal on the crime of other oppressive countries”. Yet, Tony, like Ms Gold and the pro-Zionist camp, is bent on cleaning out PSC of any alleged holocaust deniers and anti-Semites. He claims: “It would be futile to deny that this has not caused major problems for PSC ... Up and down the country, individual branches have experienced problems … In Camden, Gill Kaffash was forced to step down as PSC secretary after her holocaust denial sympathies became clear.”
As a member of Camden PSC, I was appalled by the underhand way Camden PSC pushed Gill out of her post as secretary of the branch to which she dedicated more than five years of hard work - making good use of her organisational expertise and inspiring many PSC supporters. Gill has also spent long periods in Palestine, where she taught English and helped with establishing community facilities. Moreover, she was a member of the PSC executive for a number of years. Needless to say, I felt compelled to object to the branch’s intention of forcing Gill out of her post and sent my objections to the small forum which was about to take that decision. Yet they decided unanimously, on the basis of a previous resolution, to go ahead with their intended ‘coup’ - informing Gill of it in an email which was only copied to the members of the forum who took the decision rather than to the full email list of Camden PSC.
Since PSC does not seem to have an appeal mechanism, and the issue at hand was too important to ignore, Gill proposed a motion which stated that in the light of the pressure on PSC from accusations of anti-Semitism - which has led to expulsion of members on such alleged grounds - there is a need to “demonstrate the importance of agreement on the meaning of racism, anti-Jewish prejudice and Islamophobia, as used in the constitution”. Gill proposed a definition based on the Wikipedia dictionary.
As a member of Camden PSC who witnessed the unacceptable ad-hoc mechanisms by which Gill and other PSC members were pushed out of their posts, or membership, I seconded her motion, being aware (as Gill was) that the proposed definition is only a basis for debate, to be followed by building up a coherent policy. Unfortunately, there was not enough time at the January 21 AGM to discuss all the motions and Gill’s was remitted to the executive, who presumably will discuss it among themselves and inform the membership whether it had been adopted or not. Since it seems this discussion will be carried out behind closed doors, I feel compelled to make my seconder’s comments public. These were to refer to my strong views about PSC’s recent policies on alleged holocaust deniers. As a Jew and an Israeli-born citizen, I believe the following comments as a seconder to Gill’s motion should not be disregarded by PSC’s membership:
“I am greatly alarmed by obvious attempts to ‘clean out’ PSC of alleged anti-Semites and holocaust deniers. My grandparents and many close relatives perished in the holocaust. Yet I believe that I, like other fellow citizens, have the right and perhaps the duty to ask questions about the background, extent and procedures/means employed by the Nazis for exterminating millions of Jews and non-Jews and the stages which led to the ‘final solution’. I do not consider the holocaust a taboo subject, which, in my view, is virtually hijacked by Israel and the Jewish community. If my questions lead to challenging the official narrative of the holocaust - which is promoted aggressively by Israel in order to defend the creation and the policies of the Jewish state - then I stand to be called a holocaust denier ...
“Let me remind you that we owe a great deal to the Israeli new historians … who dared to challenge the Israeli national version of the so-called ‘war of independence’ and the steps which led to the Palestinian nakba. On the same principle, the Jewish scholar, Marc Ellis, has argued that the holocaust is not merely part of the past and should not be considered as if it was born in a vacuum - having no links to the present and future. In his words: ‘… To speak of the holocaust without confessing our sins towards the Palestinian people and seeking a real justice with them is a hypocrisy that debases us as Jews.’
“Marc Ellis, like Norman Finkelstein … has been hounded and vilified by the mainstream Jewish community. Is the PSC going to align with such forms of inquisition-style witch-hunt on the lines of the McCarthy era, when alleged ‘communists’ were hunted out in public? Are we going to implicitly offer support to the Israeli ‘holocaust promoters’, such as Matan Vilnai - the ex-deputy defence minister, who in February 2008 threatened Gaza with a bigger shoah (holocaust), and Dov Weisglass, an adviser to former Israeli prime minister Olmert - who considered putting Gazans on a ‘starvation diet’ in the aftermath of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza?
“By looking out for alleged, or imaginary, holocaust deniers and voting for a motion which makes it part of PSC’s official and publicly declared policy, we are placing ourselves on the same level of those who view PSC as an anti-Semitic organisation ...
“It is clear to me that PSC should avoid falling into the trap of employing an ambivalent and open-ended definition of anti-Semitism, or get engaged in an anti-holocaust denier campaign - which may stand the risk of conflating extreme criticism of Israel’s policies with, or view any attempt to revisit and challenge the narrative of the holocaust as, anti-Semitism …
“I would submit that the PSC … should add the following statement to the executive’s AGM motion 2 …: ‘Equally PSC should endeavour to combat attempts of (mis)using the holocaust in order to fend off criticism against Israel’s policies and in employing the holocaust’s emotive narrative for defending Israel’s racist actions and apartheid practices’.”
The AGM adopted the executive’s motion, which says that “any expression of racism or intolerance, or attempts to deny or minimise the holocaust, have no place in our movements. Such sentiments are abhorrent in their own right and can only detract from the building of a strong movement in support of the fundamental rights of the Palestinians.”
Thus, the witch-hunting and ‘cleaning out’ of alleged holocaust deniers has become now one of the core policies of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. This would no doubt have a significant impact on the work of PSC, the use of its resources and on its cohesion as a movement which is supposed to stand up against those who in the name of the holocaust justify the creation of a ‘Jewish state’ based on indefensible colonialism and racism against the Palestinian people.
It is not, however, too late to include my above-submitted lines (or a similar wording) in PSC’s mission statement, which is posted on its website.
PSC witch-hunt
PSC witch-hunt
Preacher man
Peter Manson’s criticisms of the Socialist Workers Party’s commitment to democracy would be much more convincing if the Weekly Worker got its own house in order (‘Muddle, passivity, conformity’, January 26).
The draft rules of the Weekly Worker group allow excessive powers to the Provisional Central Committee to dissolve party organisations, such as publications, minority groupings and, presumably, branches that are dominated by opponents and critics of the leadership. A standard rule for typical bureaucratic centralist groups.
As a long-term reader of your paper, I can’t remember the last time I read about a leadership election or you bringing in younger comrades, let alone a woman or BME comrade! Why is this? The Weekly Worker has to be one of the best of the left when it comes to democracy and debate, but still has so far to go. It would likely have more influence if it practised what it preached.
Preacher man
Preacher man
Bastard
On the critique of the SWP’s resolution, Peter Manson writes: “Human labour creates all surplus value under capitalism.” This isn’t accurate. Human labour-power in productive labour, be it manual or mental (and taking into account its technological, labour-saving equivalent), is the only non-natural source of value production.
I use the term, ‘value production’, because business management refers to value-added processes. It refers to concepts of ‘value’ without using the academic term, ‘surplus value’. Taking into account one other factor is flexible enough to take post-Keynesian criticisms of Marx’s labour theory of value (modern suggestions that machinery can add more lifetime product value than lifetime depreciation) with a grain of salt.
Speaking of Keynesianism, I’m quite disappointed that post-Keynesian economics and policies, as opposed to what they call ‘bastard Keynesianism’, were not discussed or criticised in the CPGB’s political economy event. I’m not sure how the term ‘nationalist’ easily applies to post-Keynesian policies.
Bastard
Bastard
Take time
I’m sorry if I mischaracterised Paul Anderson as a Stalinist (Letters, January 26), but most people who share his crude anti-imperialism think that, at worst, Stalin was 70% correct, 30% incorrect, just like Mao did. I would hope that Anderson is at least aware of the kinds of Marxists who share his views on anti-imperialism.
Despite ‘progress’ in admitting to Mugabe’s crimes, Anderson gives us a new whopper - that Saddam didn’t gas the Kurds. Anderson is now promoting Reagan-era state department propaganda in order to defend Saddam from ‘demonisation’. The Kurds were working with the Iranians; this point is hardly controversial. Even if you can make a reasonable-sounding claim that the Kurds were caught in the crossfire of Halabja poison gas attack, you really can’t ignore other massacres of Kurds during the Al-Anfal campaign of 1986-89. I use this last example because Anderson once again takes a simplistic view of a conflict and this time rather strangely from an imperialist source.
Anderson correctly believes that the National Transitional Council in Libya is a counterrevolutionary army loyal to western imperialism, but he doesn’t realise that the NTC was not the only source of opposition to Gaddafi. The rebels in Misrata rejected the NTC’s authority and so did the Berbers of the Nafusa mountains. The Berbers’ opposition to Gaddafi is obvious. They were subjected to Arabisation by the Gaddafi regime, with their mother tongue of Tamazight and their Berber culture banned in public. So, I ask Anderson, should the Berbers of Libya have just shut up and accepted their marginalisation under Gaddafi?
I would hope that next time a conflict such as this breaks out, Anderson takes time to analyse more than the press releases of the state department and the government of whatever regime Nato will be threatening. There is always something more to the story, with many different forces at work. That’s what Marxism teaches us.
Anderson is right to say, “regime change begins at home”, but it is pure arrogance for us here in the west to be dictating what the most progressive and appropriate regime for a third-world country is. This kind of thing only leads to accusations of Marxism having a Eurocentric bias.
Take time
Take time
The other SP
The Socialist Party is standing a candidate in the Lambeth and Southwark and Merton and Wandsworth constituencies in the elections for the Greater London Assembly on May 3.
The Socialist Party is the oldest party calling itself socialist in Britain, going back to 1904. It says that socialism, as a system based on common ownership and democratic control, where goods and services are produced to meet people’s needs instead of for profit, has never been tried (and certainly not in Russia or China) and can only come about democratically when a majority want it.
The other SP