Letters

Leftist criticism

It is disappointing that a supporter of the Party and a regular reader of our paper should so miss the point of the interview with Vic Turner.

I refer to the letter from Danny Hammil (Weekly Worker 90) which is an ill-conceived attack on a supporter of ours who is also a Labour Party councillor. It would be a little strange therefore if Vic did not identify with left Labourism, but the important point is that he also identifies with the Communist Party. I think his comments brought this out very well.

Danny, I think, needs to remember that our Party will be built by incorporating revolutionaries from all sorts of backgrounds and ideas. Many of these - I hope - will come from left Labourism. We, of course, have to win the battle for the correct revolutionary road, but when workers are moving in that direction communists must encourage that positive move and develop it rather than batter them with the disagreements that we may have.

Comrade Vic’s insight into the workings of the left in the Labour Party and his experience and reputation both as a councillor and trade union leader will be of tremendous benefit to the Party.

Our discussions and work with Vic Turner I hope will develop the ideas and practice of both Vic and the Party as a whole.

Lee-Anne Bates
North London

Tory fighter?

Willesden and Brent Chronicle (April 13) ran an article about Brent Tory councillor Carol Shaw facing disciplinary action for supporting Labour against axeing grants for nurseries.

The vote was claimed as a great victory and Carol approvingly quoted as saying that the budget was not her problem!

It is difficult to decide who is the biggest hypocrite here. A Tory whose party in government is slashing spending and increasing taxes on the working class. Or the Labour councillors proud of their vote to keep the nurseries open, but busy balancing the budget - ie slashing services. These are councillors who are part of a party which is cutting services and workers’ pay throughout the country wherever it is in power.

We should not be surprised though that the local rag has never bothered to publicise Brent Communist Party’s campaign against all cuts and all closures. Building a society actually fit for all to live is a bit too much to stomach for Labour, Tory or the Willesden and Brent Chronicle.

Louise Rush
Brent

Press hype

The press has gone into overdrive as usual over the NUT conference. This seems to be an annual occurrence either because of the lack of news over the Easter weekend or because of the increase of the left influence at conference which always sends the bourgeois press into palpitations.

The demonstration on Saturday which so frightened Blunkett and which McAvoy described as a “mob” consisted of less than 20 people and came nowhere near to Blunkett. He did not seem to be nearly as terrified as the press made out. He did not even mention the incident at a following fringe meeting, until questioned.

The increase in the left has always been a concern for the NUT leadership and they are no novices at red-baiting. But it is hardly surprising, when the union is doing nothing, that the vast majority of its members will not be interested in its activities.

The real point is that teachers up and down the country are angered by cuts in education, but lack any leadership from the unions to stage an effective fight. The press talk of mad left militants wanting revolution was in response to a ballot for a one day strike. Hardly barricade time.

The SWP did well to attack Blunkett; teachers (militant or otherwise) around the country shared their sentiment. The demonstrators must be defended against press, Labour and NUT red-baiting. But ‘Ditch Labour’ would perhaps have been a more appropriate slogan than ‘Sack the Tories’!

Julie Hart
Manchester

No freak

The suggestion that the five year plan was a “freak” is not one with which I agree. Soviet society was a natural progression - and regression - of social and economic relations within the isolated master socialist state -  the USSR - and its servant states in Eastern Europe (established for mainly military reasons) and Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea (supported by the USSR for their strategic military potential against both the USA and China).

The isolated socialist state was a workers’ state, even though it was administrated by a bureaucracy rather than democratic workers’ control. The bureaucracy was after all a product of the working class revolution in Russia 1917, and its initial fight to survive.

The economy of the world’s first isolated socialist state was post-capitalist - that is post-bourgeois capitalism - but it was not pre-socialist. It was the first step toward socialism, which only by the ending of the state’s isolation in the world, could go any further toward communism. So what of the soviet economy?

The soviet economy was workers’ state-capitalism. The USSR was a part of the world economy and the world economy is capitalist. The USSR, then, was a workers’ capitalism. If the isolated socialist state were to survive there would have to be profits made to fund the development of production in the USSR and raise workers’ living standards - or else suffer the defeat of the soviet government at the same time as giving leadership to the world revolutionary movement.

Unfortunately neither were sufficient profits made, and if there were, they were squandered by the bureaucratic caste, and the leadership of the world revolution was completely thrown out the window in favour of socialism in one country.

The bureaucratic administration made mistakes of which the two above are just a few. Bureaucracy will inevitably become a fetter on any isolated socialist state which will strengthen the return to bourgeois capitalism. Bureaucracy in any future workers’ state must be kept at a minimum and not allowed to grow into a beast as the soviet one did.

What the USSR shows us is that in the event of there not being a world revolution, all is not lost.

The USSR was not a freak or bastard social formation but a very genuine and troubled one indeed. That shows us some of the problems of organising a workers’ state - a task we hopefully will get to have a go at again, and should not be lightly dismissed.

Gary Salisbury
Hertfordshire