Letters
Callinicos faction
February 8 was the turning point in the Socialist Workers Party crisis - the declaration of a faction, In Defence of Our Party (‘Defence’). Until then the Democratic Renewal platform, with China Miéville and Richard Seymour as spokesmen, had bravely made the first move, but it seemed they would probably amount to low-hanging fruit - no problem for the harvesting machine which is the undeclared permanent Callinicos faction. But Defence is quite a different proposition.
Defence’s founding statement is signed by 10 of the 50-strong national committee; three recent ex-central committee members; Pat Stack, the current chair of the disputes committee, and in that post when the seven heard the Martin Smith case; well-known writers and stalwarts like Ian Birchall, Colin Barker, Mike Gonzalez, Cathy Porter and Dave Renton; and notably a host of middle cadre, including key trade union fraction activists and other experienced members - crucial links between HQ, the branches and the SWP’s trade union work. The landscape has now been transformed.
The next day, the CC announced a conference to draw a line under it all - again. What does its statement reveal?
Firstly, the CC is politically weak. Its point 4 begins: “The CC does not accept the right to form factions outside the three-month pre-conference discussion period.” But two factions exist. What is the CC going to do about it? If it believes these are illegal then it has the duty to act. It did this with the Facebook Four, before conference - expelling them without a hearing, by email.
It could, if it were to be conciliatory, go to the disputes committee (with the chair and the two CC appointees stepping aside), and test its interpretation of the constitution. And this is the problem. The Defence founding statement included the whole of what the constitution has to say on factions (article 10). It did that because it knows factions are legal outside the three-month pre-conference period: it is simply that members have accepted the norm not to exercise that right.
The CC has decided not to act on this ‘indiscipline’. It has chosen to capitulate after verbally raging against the beast. This means, given what it says, it is behaving incoherently in not carrying out its duty to protect the party. But its inaction is rational because it recognises it is politically weak.
And let’s be frank: the occupants of the CC seats, through election by slate, act as a permanent faction, moreover an illegal one, as it is not a response to a policy or decision; which is why it is undeclared, secret. The CC is not occupied by servants of the membership, facilitators of their work. The fact that the Callinicos faction was elected into office shows how inadequate procedures and practices are within the SWP - hence the current widespread revolt.
Secondly, it is clear that voting for the March conference has a dire consequence for those CC members. There are three conditions of SWP membership, including that one “accepts its constitution” (article 2). In trying to have a conference without the three-month discussion period the CC has demonstrated that it does not accept the constitution. Announcing a March conference is acting beyond the powers available to the CC - any CC. In refusing to adhere to the constitution, to accept it, this group is using the CC to substitute itself for the membership, through their actions placing themselves outside the party.
The permanent Callinicos faction (undeclared) is semi-paralysed. It has its supporters everywhere, and many, many members with doubts about its management performance are prepared to circle the wagons in the face of the onslaught unleashed by the Daily Mail and others. It is using its control of the apparatus to bear down on members.
But there is some paralysis. Importantly, no disciplinary action has been taken against faction members - they are being subjected to bullying and more immediate retribution. The weekly Party Notes internal bulletin said nothing about Mark Bergfeld’s resignation or the two factions. Instead it carried the CC statement, but with this factionalising addition: “see below if you wish to support the statement”. So only one faction gets access to Party Notes. This is how the permanent Callinicos faction uses the apparatus as its personal property. It has appropriated the communal property for itself - privatised it, stolen it from the membership.
The CC says the purpose of the March conference is “to reaffirm the decisions of January’s conference and the NC, resolve recent debates, clarify some elements of the constitution and move the party forward” (point 10). So a plebiscite plus some things up the CC’s sleeve. I learnt a lot from my grandparents, who told me about Mussolini and Hitler, and the usage they made of plebiscites.
But what is wrong with groups of comrades putting forward their ideas, even resolutions? Human development has been based on voluntary association. Maybe some comrades want to get together to just discuss an idea, even a tactic or a strategy, without crafting a resolution. Others may want to change a policy or decision (as allowed in the SWP). Still others may want to change a theme of the party’s work, perhaps after many years of collective study. Or a strategy. Maybe even propose a programme, or at least its principles. Then there is the matter of longevity, of how long these associations should last: we can do better than just talk about temporary and permanent.
There is also the matter of where the discussions take place. The CC statement emphatically says: “Pre-conference discussion takes place in these aggregates, not branch meetings” (point 10). I wonder why that is? The constitution tells us: “… district aggregates are held where CC members present members with … an outline of party perspectives”. Those CC members are busy bees. Can’t have branches talking about all this without adequate supervision. Who knows what they may end up thinking - and doing? It is so paternalistic and controlling. Strangling.
Like the mafia, the CC statement ends with a generous offer: “The special conference must be the final word. We demand factions accept that - in practice, not words” (point 11). “Must”, “final”, “demand” - The message is clear: the permanent Callinicos faction is prepared to cull the membership.
That undeclared faction inherited a party structure unsuited to a healthy and efficient internal life. After the Respect experience it allowed some changes. But it finds continuous debate - shall we call it permanent debate? - impossible to live with if the party is to “move forward united” and “throw itself into the class struggle” (point 2). Differences need to be managed in institutions to make them productive and to help the organisation be healthy. That is normal in business and in civil society, and it is rational.
Professed revolutionary organisations are no different. Scientific socialists have nothing to fear from permanent debate - but that is not the case for the rulers of unhealthy organisations. The SWP membership deserve better, and they are showing they can do better.
Callinicos faction
Callinicos faction
Two questions
Without doubt, we are living through interesting times. And, no, I’m not referring to the extraordinary ongoing crisis of capital, though readers would be right to think so. On the contrary, developments within the SWP really are uncharted territory.
Nobody can accuse longstanding members of the organisation - ones that come from the generation before Alex Callinicos, such as Ian Birchall or Colin Barker - of being soft autonomists, not understanding democratic centralism, or having a degree of creeping feminism. No, it would appear we are witnessing the aristocracy of the International Socialist tradition beginning to link up with the party’s youth, who are, rightly, drawing critical conclusions opposing the central committee.
The question I ask to Weekly Worker readers though is twofold. Are we witnessing a democratic revival within the SWP? (Defence’s founding statement quoted direct from the SWP constitution to show they are within their party rights.) Should those outside the SWP consider joining to support the faction, as well as to push wider arguments regarding programme?
Two questions
Two questions
Branch flood
The unfolding crisis within the SWP has taken a new turn with the central committee’s response to the formation of the IDOP faction. Maintaining that factions can’t exist outside the pre-conference period, contrary to an honest study of the constitution, the CC has been forced to buckle under pressure due to the existence of high-profile signatories.
Following the February 3 meeting of the 50-member national committee, CC members toured the country arguing that the dispute surrounding ‘comrade Delta’ was now closed and that members should stop navel-gazing. How things change. Within a week, the CC had announced a special conference for March 10 - to ‘reaffirm’ the decisions of the January national conference.
This is a clear attack on the right of oppositionists to factionalise. To ensure maximum clarity, the SWP constitution explicitly states: “Three months before each conference the central committee opens a special pre-conference discussion in the organisation ... to discuss party work, raise questions and points of disagreements and collectively assess the party’s development.”
By failing to abide by its own constitution, it would appear there is a double standard on the part of the leadership. In a revolutionary party, freedom of criticism is not an optional extra, but a necessity in keeping the CC accountable. Apparently, the current CC disagrees, and has now gone into overdrive to isolate and crush dissenters.
Oppositionists should refuse to recognise conference. The attack on faction and pre-conference rights means it is illegitimate and unconstitutional. Those that have signed up to IDOP - and those that haven’t - need to flood branches with calls for a full pre-conference period.
Branch flood
Branch flood
Unsocialist
To be honest, I don’t think that Russia ever was a ‘workers’ state’. That could only be true if you accept the Bolsheviks’ claim to represent the working class. Which is another discussion. Besides, ‘workers’ state’ is a political, not an economic, designation.
If I understand Moshé Machover correctly, he is saying that in the 1920s Russia changed from being capitalist (even ‘state capitalist’, if you accept Lenin’s description of the New Economic Policy as the development of capitalism under the control of the Bolshevik government) into a new exploiting class society (Letters, February 7).
Fair enough, but in saying that during this period workers in Russia were reduced from being wage slaves to being industrial serfs, he is implying that what emerged there in 1928 was worse than capitalism. I can go along with this implication (though I would still say that post-1928 USSR was a form of capitalism and I still don’t see what fundamental change occurred in the situation of workers in state industries), but it rules out descriptions such as ‘bureaucratic socialism’ used by Jack Conrad. If it was worse than capitalism, then clearly it had nothing whatsoever to do with socialism.
Unsocialist
Unsocialist
Ney knickers
Jim Moody’s response (Letters, February 7) to my piece on the recent treasury sabotage of the Hatfield colliery clean-coal project (‘Walking away from CO2 commitment’, January 31) is full of rage, but short on actual substance. ‘All fur coats and ney knickers’, as we say up here.
The reason why the treasury plundered the clean-coal fund of its £1 billion prize was precisely because the scheme was ready to go now and they had spent the money. They had anticipated being able to restock the fund by the time any workable scheme was ready, but the Hatfield scheme was ready. After having won the competition, acknowledged by the European Commission as the best in Europe and probably the world, having been so acknowledged by the energy committee itself, it certainly wasn’t a question of any decades before it was ready to go. The site is cleared now, the construction was ready to go, the system was due to be up and operational within two or three years, with a predicted 7,000 jobs in construction and infrastructure supported by Yorkshire and Humberside TUC, as well as Doncaster council, who had made it a major investment programme. People were already lining up for jobs and we already had a union organising campaign in the pipeline. There really isn’t any question about whether it was coming off or not.
But on one thing we can now agree. Now that the plug has been pulled on the scheme, there will be no revival of the deep-mined coal industry in Britain. The difference is that Jim thinks that’s a good thing: I do not. Neither will that stop coal being burned here. As I said in my article, it runs at 30% of power supply off peak and 50% and more at peak. It just means that it’s mined in Russia or Columbia rather than here.
One wonders where Jim stands on the ongoing fight of the Spanish coal miners to save the industry they work in - a struggle which is currently facing news blackouts, but at this present time is experiencing underground occupations, sit-ins and growing rank-and-file anger against union leadership inaction. Presumably, for all the reasons he advances, the Spanish miners should be grateful they are being taken out of the pits and can look forward to the mountains and valleys of Asturias being covered in forests of wind turbines, while they sit on the dole. Jim apparently believes these wind turbine estates are produced by anarcho-hippy collectives, rather than the self-same energy companies whose motives he finds questionable in the case of clean-coal power stations. It’s not me who needs to wake up and smell the coffee, comrade.
The only real objection Jim makes is that CO2 might escape from the empty gas and oil wells, like oil did during the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Mechanically that particular kind of failure couldn’t happen, as the technique involved in regulating the release of oil isn’t the same as pumping down CO2 into an empty well. But, even if it was, the effect of the release of even a large amount of CO2 by accident is nothing like the release of millions upon millions of tons oil into the ocean. There would be nothing like a similar environmental impact. The CO2 would simply bubble through the water back to the atmosphere, as it currently does now from massive coal power stations worldwide.
The fact that the gas and the oil are still there after 180 million years of earth movement and fissures means that the strata didn’t leak; otherwise it would already have gone silly buggers. All that would happen here is that the CO2 goes back into that same chamber, which has been sound forever. A “fissure in the overlaying rock” to the depth we’re talking about is so unlikely, but, were it to happen, why would it simply affect the empty hole with the CO2 in it? Such a catastrophic and unlikely geological event would result potentially in the release of uncontrolled billions of gallons of gas and oil which haven’t been mined and pose a far bigger problem than the CO2 coming up again.
Release of quantities of CO2 through the bore hole, or more particularly through the lining of the bore hole, is remotely possible, but again tiny quantities in comparison with the huge and unchecked release of CO2 which occurs right now and will continue unless we take some steps to stop it happening. Carbon capture and storage (CCS), even with the potential of occasional accidental release, would release a tiny fraction of CO2 back into the atmosphere. Nothing compared to the hour-by-hour, day-by-day, decade-by-decade, which is not only happening now, but rising substantially year by year. Coupled with this, of course, we would need a full programme to stop the destruction of the earth’s forests and start to rebuild them, along with the earth’s capacity to absorb and displace CO2 naturally.
Jim and his ilk forget that CO2 from coal generation is only a part of the problem of man-made emissions. Meat consumption, desertification and forest destruction are at least equal to unchecked coal power, and a worldwide programme of CCS, coupled with one to redress these destructive features, would make practical sense right now.
The National Union of Mineworkers stands in favour of renewable energy as a long-term future of world energy demands. We support solar energy and geothermal, as well as national building and home insulation, and collective energy-use conservation and efficiency schemes. We want the world to use coal more efficiently and more environmentally responsibly, which is why we favour CCS. Coal will be used and increasingly so. That is simply a matter of fact, which must be faced. That being so, the question isn’t if, but how it will be burned. Jim doesn’t have a solution to this - just a demand not to do it; meantime the smoke goes up the chimney just the same.
If we’re serious about containing man-made impacts on climate change, we need to address what is actually happening and how to practically control it, not sit in splendid abstraction dreaming of what it should be. The working class isn’t going to be mobilised around such impractical hippy daydreams. Coal power is still 50% of the total world energy supply and essential, of course, for steel production. It will be burned.
What we are trying to do is ensure it is done in the most practical and environmentally friendly way modern technologies allow. That doesn’t mean these technologies are foolproof - nothing human beings do ever is - but we certainly have to address the problem.
Ney knickers
Ney knickers
Bravo
Every so often the Weekly Worker publishes articles of extraordinary insight and value. It is sometimes easy to miss these, especially given its extensive and exhaustive coverage of the travails affecting the SWP. I would like to commend and draw comrades’ attention to the recent articles by Yassamine Mather (‘Macho culture and the lessons we can learn from the Middle East’, January 17) and Lionel Sims (‘Reclaiming the dragon’, January 24).
Comrade Mather is an extraordinarily brave, experienced and impressive female communist fighter against vicious autocratic violence and repression. Her article was gripping and powerful in describing some of the real conditions of genuine revolutionary struggle. In covering some of the experience of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) and the Organisation of the Iranian People’s Fedayeen, comrade Mather provides a powerful analysis and explanation about how these two significant guerrilla organisations engaged in armed struggle managed to obtain greater equality between female and male fighters in practice. Her analysis is interesting in that she suggests these organisations’ separation from ‘normal’ patriarchal society created the partial basis at least for combating day-to-day sexism.
I can understand and appreciate that analysis, but I wonder what lessons and measures we can apply in conditions of struggle where revolutionary organisations are not so separate from the wider conditions in which we operate, and where our conception of revolutionary struggle is more focused on transforming and changing existing conditions and society, rather than its total overthrow?
Comrade Mather’s sharp and incisive comments and analysis, noting that the pressure on women to spend inordinate and unequal time on family, housework, childcare and appearance is a crucial aspect and function of the overall oppression of women, is compelling and worth all of us reflecting very seriously on. Her note that even working women spend many more hours on housework than the men they live with is probably correct and shaming to those of us who consider ourselves revolutionary and advocates of gender equality.
Without wanting to be prurient, I was unclear as to why the Fedayeen’s ban on sexual relations between comrades was apparently enforced so strictly? Speaking from the outside, surely sexual relations between members of an organisation committed in theory and practice to equality become less of a big deal, less a question of power relations and oppression, and much more, as they should be, a matter of recreation and physical and emotional release and pleasure.
I can see how sexual relations between comrades might give rise to jealousy in others, and personal tensions between comrades could prove fatal in combat situations, but I am not sure that was the point Yassamine was making. Rather than seek to curb and restrict sexual activity, I would have thought a progressive revolutionary organisation would see its freer exercise as an important component in establishing greater equality between the sexes, as presumably its mutual engagement would be on the basis of mutual desire and agreement.
Sexual desire and satisfaction should, surely, be removed from its current obsessive, commercialised treatment in today’s society of the spectacle, and become no more or less important than the daily need to eat, drink, be housed and be emotionally content. Freer and more open relationships between women and men would, presumably, point to the post-capitalist overcoming of the family, marriage and other bourgeois restrictions we would be in favour of.
Regarding Lionel Sim’s article, I have no idea if he is right in his analyses: that most creation myths are consistent across many religions and cultures; that they point to a transition between ‘hunter-gatherer’ societies to ‘pastoral/ownership’ societies; that ‘hunter-gatherer’ societies equate to what we term ‘primitive communism’ and ‘pastoral’ societies marked the emergence of class divisions and inequality; that women were once dominant in these pre-pastoral societies; that ‘hunter-gatherer societies’ and their modern existence do operate in conditions of abundance and therefore that ‘primitive communism’ operated in conditions of abundance; that in ‘primitive communism’, women effectively enforced and limited sexual access on the basis of their menstrual and the lunar cycle; that even in the biblical old texts there is right at the beginning of creation an alternative feisty, independent version of the ideal woman - Lilith as opposed to Eve. But it was a cracking article and an excellent and thought-provoking read.
Well done to the Weekly Worker on both counts!
Bravo
Bravo
Fight
There is much in Stan Keable’s critique of Owen Jones (‘Babies and bathwater’, February 7) that is correct and I support the theme - insofar as Jones is a typical left-talking social democrat opportunist who has a taste for what the ‘public’ identify in the capitalist coalition and parliamentarism in general.
However, the final paragraph of his piece leaves a serious question: “The struggle for democracy must be fought and won in all sections of the workers’ movement. In the revolutionary left organisations, in the trade unions and in the Labour Party, the bureaucracy must be made into servants, not masters.”
The ‘bureaucracy’ is not a passive factor in politics, either in the state in general or in the objective lives of workers and their perceived organisations. There are rightwing, centrist and leftwing bureaucrats - eg, the rightwing leadership of the Labour Party and many trades unions give support to the capitalist state directly, whilst centrists seek to keep a foot in both camps and the left cover for the centrists in the deceptive pursuit of an ideal - maximum unity toward an intangible popular front of bureaucrats. The master-versus-servant analogy for bureaucracy is simply wrong in this context - the left must to be told to fight the right wing of the state and consciously be replaced when they show they will not.
Fight
Fight
Collaboration
Developing anti-capitalist politics in the Teesside/Tees Valley area of the north-east has taken significant steps forward over recent months with almost embarrassingly positive collaboration breaking out between usual suspects, independent leftists and those relatively new to political activism.
Arising in semi-isolation on the eastern fringes of our sub-region, the small seaside town of Saltburn has witnessed the development of an anti-capitalist activist network developing a regular cycle of meetings and taking initial, faltering steps towards building a culture of activism in its micro-locality. Emerging from the homespun ‘4 People Not Profit’ human rights and global awareness events network, the group has begun to develop community newsletters, radical film nights, street activity and, quite organically, an interface where a range of Marxist, anarchist, environmentalist and non-defined activists have begun to find their way. Mutual learning and very much DIY in approach, the group’s fluid identity, emerging on its own terms, is viewed as a strength and, although its geographically enforced localism certainly has drawbacks, the consensus feeling is that of being part of an overwhelmingly positive experience.
Elsewhere a process of networking facilitated through social media (primarily Facebook) has placed a range of people in contact with each other. This has led to another interesting meeting point where pre-existing activists, musicians, artists and various other loosely defined leftists network. Increasingly, the logic of these associations points towards the developing of some form of political organisation/movement reflecting shared values and, perhaps, a growing libertarian-tinged anti-capitalist culture.
From within this creative atmosphere, several ideas have come to the fore. A new May Day initiative has been developed as an attempt to rally activists to celebrate May 1 in a more imaginative way. Significantly, the idea of marking May Day on May 1 itself has been warmly received and plans to develop a May Days (plural) festival, with activities spanning from the day itself through to the bank holiday weekend are underway. Already discussed has been the idea of producing a propaganda leaflet that reintroduces the local population to the ideas behind international workers’ day that will hopefully lead to its distribution in all the localities, inducting the Facebook cohort into non-screen activism. Beyond this, linking up a demonstration organised by the Public and Commercial Services Union, public meetings, art workshops, family picnics, film nights and radical rounders on the beach will all hopefully contribute to a positively celebrated May Day event and planting acorns of resistance.
Collaboration
Collaboration
SDP or not SDP?
Just a short note in response to Jack Conrad’s longstanding issue with the name of theSozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands(SPD). For years Jack has insisted on using the acronym ‘SDP’, as he did (twice) in his article last week (‘Programme and the programmeless’, February 7). The SDP is, of course, more associated with a 1980s rightwing split in the British Labour Party.
The paper’s editorial board also persistently fails to correct it, so maybe it has some meaning? I have no idea. Maybe someone could clarify?
SDP or not SDP?
SDP or not SDP?