Letters

Myth making

Heather Downs, dividing as ever the world into feminists and the carriers of misogynistic ideology, takes me to task for daring to suggest that half of Britain is not dominated by gangs of men engaged in the systematic abuse of young girls (Letters, May 24).

As usual, she is on something of a ‘hair trigger’, which is to say that she does not appear to have read the article very closely before declaring herself up in arms. Hence, she throws all kinds of statistics around, neatly undermining them all by recycling this bunkum about thousands upon thousands of women being ‘trafficked into prostitution’ - statistics which typically see the widest possible, worst-case projections of researchers presented as objective fact.

Sex trafficking is defined under the 2003 Sexual Offences Act as the movement of any sex worker to any other country under any circumstances - a great many of whom will not be under direct coercion, but the rather more mundane compulsion of economic circumstances (like most prostitution, then). The story of the sex trafficking scandal is how we got from an ‘initial figure’ of 71 women who were confirmed as having been trafficked into the sex trade against their will in 2000 to an initial and avowedly speculative worst-case estimate by two academics of 1,420, to that estimate being taken for fact, to it being wildly inflated - under the influence of dubious advocacy groups, some ‘feminist’ and others evangelical-Christian - to an ‘upper bound’ figure of 3,812, to a ‘conservative estimate’ of 4,000, to an entirely made up 25,000 in the mouth of Denis MacShane in 2007.

Bringing MacShane, the hard-right Blairite, into this makes clear what was actually going on - the propagation of this myth is part and parcel of the reactionary attacks on immigration as such. A certain trend in feminism has been acting as a group of useful idiots for evangelical anti-sex religious groups at least since Catharine MacKinnon’s successful attempt to get the Canadian Supreme Court to ratify an anti-porn precedent in the province of Manitoba, which subsequently led - quelle surprise! - to prosecutions against the lesbian S&M skin-sheet Bad attitude. By leaping on the trafficking scandal, these same people then put themselves at the service of British chauvinism. The moral of the story: the road to hell is paved with advocacy research.

“A certain trend in feminism”, I say above, and in the article I refer to “a certain sort of feminist”. In comrade Downs’s letter, it has mysteriously become “feminism (of any variety)”. Let me be clear: there is a trend in liberal, ‘radical’ feminism which elevates violence against women from being merely a political problem to being the political problem, around which all other activity is to revolve.

Such elements find violence everywhere - firstly in pornography (“pornography does not cause violence against women,” said Andrea Dworkin; “pornography is violence against women”), then in the sex trade more generally, then in outliers of the sex trade (lads’ mags). All these things are reduced to sexual violence, and thus all the demands coming out of this end up being for state repression, for all the fulminations about police fumbling of rape cases and such. Cultural problems become matters for police action. As an ironic side consequence, women - in the sex trade especially - become characterised in large numbers as helpless victims.

I do not care that such people self-describe as feminist ‘progressives’ - their politics are deeply reactionary, and do absolutely nothing for women, least of all at the sharp end of the sex trade, where women have always known the frightening consequences of the further criminalisation of their work.

This is the political character of Julie Bindel; and I take all the figures she, and others like her, recycle - particularly after the trafficking scandal - with a generous pinch of salt. None of this means that rape is not under-reported and so on, still less that the women’s question has been ‘solved’: simply that the refusal to take every new bit of scandal-mongering from reactionary violence-feminists at face value does not mark one out as a card-carrying hater of women.

Such people increasingly act in a cultish manner, as can be glimpsed in the refusal of admission to transgendered people to an upcoming radical feminist conference in London. After all, when one wants repression of the sex trade on the basis of wild distortions, why not then consider (as some influential organisers of this conference do) ‘penis-in-vagina’ sex itself male violence? And from there, why not consider those at odds with their biological sex an attack on the sovereignty of women, traitors to the sisterhood in the one case and male interlopers in the other? Alliances with evangelical Christians, Canadian Tory judges, Blairite immigration alarmists and now, for all intents and purposes, sexually conservative transphobes - by liberal feminists’ friends shall ye know them.

Myth making
Myth making

Not so

I want to thank Mike Macnair for trying to deal with what was, in part, my resignation from the CPGB, in his article ‘End the cycle of splits’ (May 24). It was an interesting article and I learnt a lot from it. The opinions that, I assume, are being ascribed to me are, however, false.

Mike writes: “In essence, the comrades share the view that the project of the Anti-Capitalist Initiative is more promising than the CPGB’s project”. I don’t.

“Our criticisms of Simon Hardy and his co-thinkers for walking out of Workers Power may have played a role in comrades’ decisions to resign themselves”. They didn’t.

“… without ever grasping that our democratic practice and rejection of the system of sects is inextricably linked to our rejection of the left’s ‘activist’ practice and our rejection of its left-economist concept of revolution”. I did grasp this.

“The comrades continued to work and think in the frame of the ‘activist’ practice”. I didn’t and I don’t.

“But to argue for turning CPGB into something more like Permanent Revolution”. I have never done that and I am not interested in doing that.

“The left-economist, ‘activist’ model which has led them out of the CPGB”. It did not and I do not subscribe to this ‘model’.

I don’t know that I have said or written anything to suggest I hold any of these opinions. If I have, then I have either been unclear or I have been misunderstood. I certainly did not, however, hint at any of this in my resignation letter. In fact, very little of what I actually wrote in that letter has been dealt with here.

I do, however, accept some responsibility for these misrepresentations, as I readily admit that I did not forthrightly argue what I thought about the work of the CPGB, about its methods, about how it furthers the project, about its approach to the far left and the advanced sections of the workers’ movement. And I tried, in my resignation letter, to explain why I, at least, thought that to be the case - the atmosphere, the culture and the way we organised within the CPGB.

I wonder, however, why, if Mike did not know my opinions, he chose to construct them for me instead of listening to the two things that I did say clearly: “I have always tried to be open and honest - if you want to know what I think or what I am doing, then please just ask me … If any comrades want to discuss my resignation or anything that I have brought up in this email, please get in touch and I will take the time to talk with you.”

Choosing to tell me what I actually think (but I assume have not yet realised myself?) instead of taking up an open invitation to discuss it with me is not treating me, or the difficulties that led me to resign, in any kind of serious way. In any case, though, the offer still stands.

I am sorry that I was not confident enough, tough enough, thick-skinned enough - whatever - to have been a positive influence in the organisation. And I am also sorry that, in assigning all the failures to promote a democratic organisation to me and none to the majority, Mike appears to have accepted very little of what was written, in earnest, in my resignation letter.

Not so
Not so

Get over it!

Mike Macnair says of Chris Strafford, who has recently left the CPGB: “from quite an early date he began to take political direction from Manchester Permanent Revolution comrades as the basis of criticisms of the line of the PCC and CPGB majority.”

This is a complete fabrication. Permanent Revolution has never given any “political direction” to Chris Strafford. We don’t, unlike the CPGB, run agents in other people’s organisations; we leave that kind of thing to toy Bolsheviks.

All this frenzy over the Anti-Capitalist Initiative in the Weekly Worker, and now outright fabrications, has only one source: the loss of members by a failing sect.

Get over it!

Get over it!
Get over it!

The graduate

Mike Macnair writes: “we do not ask comrades to pass exams on it (or on Marxist political economy, as was rumoured, perhaps falsely, of the 1970s Revolutionary Communist Group) in order to join”.

I came across the RCG in the 1970s and can assure readers that, after much study of Marx’s critique of political economy, I eventually took the exams and squeezed in with 95%. This was by no means the highest score for the year in question.

The graduate
The graduate

Soft on Occupy

It was encouraging to see London Occupy activists symbolically linking up with the workers’ movement by participating in the May 1 demonstration. Their ‘impromptu’ protests targeting high street outlets that participate in the government’s ‘workfare’ scheme on the same day, likewise, were a step up from their calling upon an ill-defined ‘democracy’ to act against the ‘worst’ finance capitalists.

Perhaps it is beginning to dawn on some of these activists that capital and the bourgeois state are necessarily in cahoots. In the United States, Occupy protests seem to have positively breathed some life into the somnambulant labour movement, embarrassing trade union leaders into tailing Occupy to some extent. Again, this is a progress when compared to Democracy Real Ya and the Indignados in 2011, who were known to ask trade unionists to leave their camps.

In the Weekly Worker, a lot has been said about the way Occupy organises. I agree that its structureless ‘horizontalism’ repeats the worst errors of the 1960s-70s ‘countercultural left’ and that its distrust of vaguely defined ‘authority’ and ‘leaders’ leaves it vulnerable to the worst kind of authoritarianism and misleadership. However, the politics of Occupy have been left largely unexplored - possibly because we have been operating under the presumption that its political outlook amounts to no more than a few anti-finance platitudes. I would argue that the latter are an expression of a broader, petty bourgeois anti-capitalist ideology (as opposed to doctrine) that dominates the Occupy movement and that can be traced all the way back to Proudhon. Even if we leave the rather more sinister 20th century manifestations of this ideology aside so as to avoid invoking guilt by association, it is crucial to criticise this and demonstrate why it is entirely insufficient even for its very limited stated purposes.

When investigating last summer’s Occupy prototype, the Spanish Real Democracy movement, I argued that, rather than “grumpily standing on the sidelines”, it is imperative for communists to engage with such spontaneous anti-capitalist movements (‘Tahrir Square comes to Madrid’ Weekly Worker June 2 2011). What communists can offer Real Democracy, Occupy and other such elemental movements, is, as I suggested while invoking the words of Karl Kautsky, to “give voice to their various concerns within the framework of a comprehensive theory”. Indeed, it is up to communists to forcefully argue for the need for the working class to take power in order to overcome capitalism and liberate humanity. In other words, our approach needs to be the exact opposite of that of the Anti-Capitalist Initiative, which dreams of attracting a mass movement by lowering its political level to the most backward elements ‘out there’.

A critique of Occupy’s ‘Global Mayday manifesto’ (http://anticapitalists.org/2012/05/11/occupys-global-mayday-manifesto), would be a good place for us to start. In fairness, the list of demands contained in this document is more than the SWP has ever produced in terms of a programme. It also gives an interesting insight into the Occupy ideology. Predictably, the responses from the ex-Workers Power youth in ACI have so far been disgracefully soft.

Soft on Occupy
Soft on Occupy

Panderers

John Galt (Letters, May 24) takes me to task for crowing about the Socialist Party of Great Britain result (Letters, May 17). Surprisingly enough, I too can do arithmetic and am perfectly aware that 98% did not vote for the SPGB. But that wasn’t really the point, was it?

Ever since the SPGB was founded, our position that a socialist party should campaign solely on the maximum programme of socialism has been challenged. The Social Democratic Federation, the Independent Labour Party, Labour and Communist parties, and Trotskyist groups of all the variants of the Fourth International have claimed the necessity to offer the electorate a list of immediate palliatives and, in the case of Trotskyism, those needn’t even require to be achievable.

At one time, dissent among socialists was not so much about the nature of socialism, but about the best way of achieving it. There used to be a consensus among those calling themselves socialists as to what socialism meant. At that time, socialists and their organisations did not offer reform policies as an end in themselves, but rather as strategies that would lead to the eventual overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. The SPGB opposed this view, arguing that leading the working class along the path of reform was not equipping them for their historical revolutionary role, but was in fact reinforcing the contrary idea that capitalism could be made to function in the interests of the class it exploited.

We, indeed, must square up to our tasks seriously. But if past lessons are not learned, then the same mistakes will continue to be committed and the debate centred not upon the socialist objective, but what menu of palatable reforms to present at elections. If socialism isn’t treated as an immediacy, there will be no mass audience for it. Those with party policies that are deemed to possess a realistic possibility of being implemented will continue to acquire the workers’ votes and socialism will forever be abandoned as a viable option. To be sure, as John Galt says, the votes for ourselves and the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition were “pathetically small”, but the SPGB result indicates that the Tusc strategy of pandering to the electorate does not lead to any more votes than our so-called hard-line ‘impossiblism’.

Panderers
Panderers

Twin peaks

Tony Clark says: “But the world upon which Kondratiev based his theory is in the process of disappearing. It was one of cheap, abundant energy and other resources, readily available to a relatively small number of industrially developed countries. It is important to mention this because it is not usually understood that capitalism can only thrive when only a few countries are industrially advanced” (Letters, May 10).

The reason it is not generally understood is because it’s not true. The very opposite is the case. Within the national economy, it is development and industrialisation in one sphere which is both dependent upon and stimulates development and industrialisation in the rest of the economy. The same law applies on an international scale. As Lenin and Trotsky understood in relation to the USSR, for example, the development of Soviet agriculture was itself dependent upon the development of Soviet industry. That was Marx’s great insight - as against the Malthusians, whose views Tony Clark peddles today.

And, of course, as Marx demonstrates, it is not just agriculture to which this law of development applies, but all such extractive industries. That is why these kinds of industrial development, and the revolutionising of the forces of production, through the rapid development of science and technology (which speeded up in the last part of the 20th century and has accelerated once again as part of the new long-wave boom), have not only made the use of existing resources more efficient, but have created whole new forms of synthetic materials to replace natural products, have revolutionised the output of existing natural products, facilitated the cheapening of these products, made it possible to extract sources and reserves of them, which previously would not have been economic, as well as facilitating the recycling of already extracted and used resources.

It is precisely this kind of development, which is facilitating the rapid growth of African economies, not just as sources of primary resources - Africa is set to become the world’s bread basket in coming decades, as agricultural production is developed on an industrial scale - but increasingly as industrialised economies too. The same is already true of Latin America.

But the same tendency can be seen in relation to natural gas. Tony Clark is factually incorrect when he says, “for a start, US gas production peaked around 1973 and the global peak for gas will be only a few years after world peak oil.” Quite the opposite is the case. In fact, the example of US natural gas proves Marx’s point both in relation to the Malthusians and in relation to the long wave. It did appear to be the case that US peak gas had been reached in 1973. Proven reserves from that point remained flat until the start of the new long-wave boom in 1999. But in the last 10 years they have more than doubled. The reason proven reserves have risen is that the pressure of demand has brought forward new technological developments such as horizontal drilling and ‘fracking’. US natural gas prices have fallen from more than $10 in 2008, to a 10-year low of just $2 now, based on the huge reserves of shale gas that have been discovered.

According to the US Energy Information Service, at current levels of consumption, even the existing proven reserves of natural gas would be enough to last 92 years. National Geographic also comments: “Natural gas is now flowing so fast into US pipelines that the big question seems to be what to do with it all … With about two-thirds of US states thought to hold natural gas reserves, many take president Barack Obama seriously when he calls the United States the ‘Saudi Arabia of natural gas’.”

But, of course, it is not just the US that has massive reserves of natural gas. In fact, scientists are finding that reserves of natural gas exist almost everywhere, and frequently in very large quantities. What is more, whilst Tony Clark points out that “one barrel of oil contains the energy equivalent of 8.6 years of labour-power working intensively”, what he fails to point out is that natural gas is both one of the most environmentally friendly fossil fuels, and is so because of its efficiency in generating energy.

So his comment that “what is often overlooked is that [methane] is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide” is irrelevant, because if we can access this seabed methane (natural gas), not only will we remove the potential for a natural disaster due to its greenhouse potential, but in burning that methane we will turn it into less potent greenhouse gases (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane#Combustion, which also demonstrates the greater effectiveness of burning this methane to power vehicles, etc, than the current use of petroleum).

A look at development in Africa shows once again the operation of the law of combined and uneven development, as rapid industrial and agricultural change is being effected using the latest techniques, which in turn means development can proceed more rapidly, with less demands being placed on resources to achieve it. For example, the development of the internet and mobile technologies means that demands for transport and other forms of communication infrastructure are massively reduced.

Twin peaks
Twin peaks

Zero questions

I’d like to thank David Douglass for his considered review of my book Tommy Sheridan: from hero to zero? A political biography (‘Fall of an icon’, May 24). There are two small points I’d like to make.

The first is that the title does contain a question mark. This is important because the book does not decide in advance that Tommy has gone from a hero to a zero (short-hand terms for longer tracts of political analysis). Indeed, I conclude that Tommy is certainly no longer just a ‘hero’. Rather, he has become and will remain both hero and zero - ‘hero’ to many for what he did before 2004, ‘zero’ for what he did after 2004. Both stand together and need to be recognised for their coexistence.

The second is that there is no proof - as of yet - that Tommy’s phone was hacked. Glenn Mulcaire had Tommy’s details in his notebook, but this is not tantamount to hacking itself. Indeed, it is curious that if Tommy has evidence of his phone being hacked he has not made it public and neither has he sued News International. This issue is important, as is his part in what I argue in the book to be a strategy of fabrication. In other words, a smokescreen for what he did and to curry political support for himself.

This relates to the central thesis of the biography: namely, that Tommy sought to protect his crucial public persona of honesty and integrity - built up before 2004 - by his actions after 2004. So the thesis was that Tommy created a very successful public persona by which to convey his politics. And it is this which explains his subsequent actions.

Finally, I leave the issue of the criticism of moralising for a subsequent debate.

Zero questions
Zero questions

Pub talk

I’ve just read comrade Hunter’s criticism (Letters, May 10) of what he sees as the failures of Paul Demarty’s article on the Norway massacre (‘Crisis and creeping despair’, April 26). The following may help address his central questions.

Hunter’s assumption that Norway had a fixed fairly settled population with little racial diversity is a popular perception and was largely true until the mid-1960s. After that time the state decided the population needed to expand and opened up immigration. At this particular time eastern Europe wasn’t allowing its citizens to leave, and most British and Irish emigration was to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and America. Migration was suspended during the mid-1970s and started up again in the 1980s, and I believe it is still being welcomed from across the globe currently.

In 2000, the country had 8.9% immigrant inhabitants, 23% of those living in Oslo. Muslims at that time composed 2.5%-3% of the total population. Many of the Iraqi and Bosnian migrants are asylum-seekers from conflicts in those countries. Half of all Norwegian Muslims live in Oslo - this is about 10% of that population - the majority of whom come from Pakistan. Incidentally, 1,000 of the Muslim population are noted as having being ‘converted’ non-Muslims, presumably of the traditional ‘Nordic stock’ variety.

Would such information have been useful in the article? Personally I think so, and I can see how your average punter at large would have wondered about it - and done so without them being Nazis or Islamophobes, by the way. This is the kind of conversation many of us have at work or down the pub most days of the week.

Pub talk
Pub talk

Censorship

For years, German leftwing critics of Israeli occupation politics and Israeli imperialist wars (dressed up as the ‘war on terror’) have been threatened, censored and in some cases even physically attacked.

Now the agitation against critical lefts has reached a new level: Laika Verlag, a publisher in Hamburg, has been excluded from participation in the Linke Buchtage, a ‘left’ book fair being held in Berlin from June 15 to 17. Upon the publisher’s inquiry, a spokesman for the organisers claimed “political reasons”: in 2011 Laika Verlag had published a book entitled Mitternacht auf der Marvi Marmara (‘Midnight on the Marvi Marmara’). The book contained reports and reflections from roughly 50 authors - among them many Israelis and Palestinians - on the attempt by the Gaza flotilla to run the blockade imposed by Israel, as well as critical views on the attack of the Israeli navy on the ships, during which nine passengers were killed.

In recent years, more and more former anti-capitalist leftwing structures, parties and foundations, as well as the German media, have neutralised themselves politically. They have been colonised by neo-conservative and other bourgeois rightists, who appear in the guise of antideutsche Linke (anti-German lefts) or ideologiekritiker (critics of ideology). Obviously the Linke Buchtage are next in line. A constructive debate with the organisers is not possible. They act under cover of anonymity and refuse to enter any discussion over their decision, which is beyond the pale.

The expulsion of Laika Verlag from the Linke Buchtage is one more attempt to silence international leftwing voices against occupation, war and oppression. We will not accept this. The time has come to take a stand. We call for a boycott of the Linke Buchtage.

Censorship
Censorship

Charisma veto

In relation to comrade Ben Lewis’s remark about Trotsky breaking the rules, that action was unacceptable, I’m afraid (Letters, May 24). Breaking unity in action by calling for a separate demonstration after ‘freedom of discussion’ resolved upon some party-organised demonstration is amateurism. This is far different from airing out publicly various differences in opinion after a resolution. This incident, comrade Mike Macnair noted, led directly to Trotsky’s justified expulsion.

Second, as an update to comrade Tina Becker’s article, ‘Split looming in Die Linke’ (May 24), Oskar Lafontaine has backed down, and there is some momentum for Katja Kipping and Katharina Schwabedissen to co-chair the party. The former is a bit of a coalitionist when it comes to the Greens and the latter is a radical anti-capitalist. This might be the bureaucratic solution, going along with the suggestion of Dietmar Bartsch becoming the federal secretary once more and Lafontaine becoming parliamentary (co-) chair again.

Charisma veto
Charisma veto