Letters

Secularism

Last week comrade Steve White stated he was worried about accusations of Islamophobia being “thrown about if anyone is critical of Islam” (Letters, June 27).

He referred to his earlier letter to Socialist Worker, which remains unpublished, but was printed in the Weekly Worker (June 20). In that letter he criticised SW for stating that “Islamophobic nationalists” were injecting their poison into the Taksim Square movement. He argued that “the so-called nationalists are in the main pro-secular workers who are against religious control, not Islamophobic. They are not spreading poison, but organising against the government.”

He also referred to my article and criticised my use of the term without supporting “a pro-secular agenda, that allows religious freedom to exist (until it withers away, hopefully), in the struggle against neoliberalism”. He concluded that “we need to be able to criticise [Islam] without being called Islamophobes”.

The same undertone on Islamophobia was also apparent in what comrade Eddie Ford wrote in his article criticising the Socialist Workers Party’s interpretation of the events in Turkey (‘Battle for secularism’, June 13).

I believe comrade White underestimates the role “Islamophobic nationalists” play in Turkish politics, and inadvertently assigns them a secular political agenda. In Turkish politics, Islamophobic nationalism has never had a secular agenda. Secularism was supposed to be one of the six guiding principles - or ‘six arrows’ - of the Republican People’s Party formed by Atatürk and, since then, the Kemalist ideology. The others were ‘republicanism’, ‘populism’, ‘nationalism’, ‘statism’ and ‘revolutionism’.

However, those principles were nothing but lip-service, or veils covering the true nature of Atatürk’s rule, which was to maintain the sultanate in the form of a life-long and unchallengeable presidency. After his death, his second-in-command became president, and he promptly assumed the title of ‘national chief’, in line with the Nazis, and ruled until the end of World War II.

The era between independence in 1923 and the first multi-party elections in 1946 has been referred to using the euphemism, ‘single-party rule’, which was actually the rule of the iron fist that crushed all opposition, be it religious or secular. In that era the Dersim province of the Ottoman empire was renamed after an expeditionary force had massacred and deported Alevi Kurds. The name opted for was ‘Tunceli’, meaning ‘bronze fist’ in Turkish - a reminder to Alevi Kurds that the state was ready to crush any attempted opposition.

In 1924, right after independence, one of the first laws promulgated created the department of religious affairs as a body of the state. The second body created by the same law was the general staff of the armed forces. And the first appointed chief of general staff reigned over the army until 1944.

The department of religious affairs was from its inception designed to shape and control the Sunni majority, and to crush the influence of the Istanbul-based old guard of religious leaders, who had enjoyed a sort of independence beyond the intervention of the Sultan’s government. It was also orientated to exclude all Christians, Jews and Alevis from public life.

The first appointed head of religious affairs was the former mufti of Ankara, who issued an edict refusing the ruling of the Istanbul-based Sheik al-Islam, who had given the execution of prominent nationalist officers his blessing. He remained in that post until 1941. Since then, the head of religious affairs and the chief of general staff have been mainstays of the Turkish regime, be it in ‘normal’ times or during periods of martial law. Those periods total 25 years on and off - which means that one-third of the republic’s existence has been under martial law.

That was the essence of the tutelage of the secular military and civilian bureaucracy, which, of course, stemmed from Ottoman and even earlier Byzantine traditions. Whenever that tutelage was shaken, religiosity was immediately brought out of vault, dusted down and brought forth to be displayed in public. However, the central bureaucracy of the department of religious affairs has never allowed the emergence of any Sunni or Shafi’i sect to challenge its rule - it imposes tight control over thousands of mosques, imams, muftis and religious schools.

Now the ‘Islamophobic nationalists’ of Turkey are hankering after those days. Islamophobic nationalism has been providing justification for an army intervention to overthrow the ‘Islamist’ - that is, popularly elected - government. Islamophobic nationalism has been so successful, it has quite a number of followers within left circles. I exclude the sleazy ex-Maoist Workers Party, which is now an openly national-socialist movement, demonstrating for the release of generals who had plotted a coup, and speaking out against Kurds and Armenians. They support Kemalist ‘secularism’ and vehemently oppose the government.

Many other Turkish left organisations, to varying degrees, pursue policies against the Islamisation of public life at the hands of the AKP government. Their actions run in parallel to Republican People’s Party policies, although they deny supporting that party. That backward-looking interpretation of secularism also forms part of “Islamophobic nationalism” in Turkey.

The national-flag waving crowd of Republican People’s Party supporters and other Islamophobic nationalists did indeed attempt to take over the leadership of the Taksim Square revolt. They failed, but that does not mean the danger they posed has passed.

Just two days ago, a peaceful demonstration in Lice county, Diyarbak?r province, was fired upon, with one person killed and several others wounded. Once more Taksim Square was filled with demonstrators supporting Kurdish demands for justice and peace. The Islamophobic nationalists, who equated Kurdish demands with ‘narcoterrorism’, again attempted to join the demonstration, but were sidelined.

They continue to act in this way, since their own agenda can only be achieved through injecting their poison into the popular revolt. But the younger generation will learn from their own experience how to distance themselves from those tendencies.

Comrades in Britain should, of course, feel free to criticise Islam. When they speak about Turkey, however, they should pay more attention to the details of the country’s political history.

Secularism
Secularism

Psychiatric

Steve White’s letter about ‘Islamophobia’ makes some insightful observations about how the left has branded itself with a psychiatric label used by Islamists and their sympathisers to silence debate and criticism, and shut down academic freedom in the colleges and universities. A ‘phobia’ is an irrational fear of something.

The left is based on a rational response to religion and obscurantism, emerging in its scientific form (Engels’ Socialism: utopian and scientific) from modernity and the enlightenment. The use of this term against a rational approach to solving the world’s major problems - democratic socialism - is to consign rational politics to the dustbin for religious obscurantism and, let us be clear, in Islam, a theocratic state, sharia law, etc. In Turkey they are still learning that it is a human right not only to practise a religion, but also to be against religion. This is also what theists and atheists would practise in a democratic, secular state, should one prevail in Turkey, and other Islamic societies.

What comrade White observes regarding the state of the left is that it has accommodated to Islamism since the failure of the left in the Middle East following the Iranian revolution of 1979. But if we look back, we can find some essays about the left and its response to Islamism which could serve as guides for the left today: for example, the excellent critical analysis of Islamism by Salah Jaber (International Marxist Review Vol 2, No3, summer 1987). He wrote: “Islamic fundamentalism is one of the most dangerous enemies of the revolutionary proletariat. It is absolutely and under all circumstances necessary to combat its ‘reactionary and medieval influence’ as the ‘Theses on the national and colonial question’ adopted by the Second Congress of the Communist International states ...”

But here is the challenge: who on the left today is brave enough in the face of accusations of ‘Islamophobia’ to publish such a critical (Marxist) analysis of Islamism in today’s climate of retreat? To their credit, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and the CPGB have led the way on this issue.

Psychiatric
Psychiatric

Class heritage

Follonsby miners lodge banner, perhaps the most radical union banner in post-Chartist history, has the added distinction of being permanently displayed in the assembly room at Lingey House primary school in Wardley, near the site of Follonsby colliery.

Normally, it is the less controversial reverse side of the banner, which depicts ‘The sunshine of liberty’ - an early vision of moderate socialism, showing happy children at a modern school, in health, education and justice - which is displayed. A theme which the school banner updated with a futuristic space school, though still lit by a miner’s lamp.

The last of the Follonsby banners, drafted in 1962, normally hangs on display in the Gateshead city council chambers at the Civic Centre, but I had the opportunity to borrow it back again for our local Wardley community gala, so I could display all three of the banners. I took the opportunity to give a lecture to the students. Granted just 15 minutes of precious school time, and not wishing to be too overtly political in a primary school, I confined myself largely to the making of the banners, the early struggles of the miners and what our union was all about.

During questions, though, the children imposed their own agenda. What was the significance of the symbols (the hammer and sickle)? What did they stand for? So a quick discussion on the make-up of the Russian working class, the peasantry and the proletariat, and the origins of the red star and the rising new dawn.

Who was this bloke, Lenin? OK, four minutes on the Russian Revolution, Lenin, the Bolsheviks and the founding of the Comintern. So why this was this Russian on the banner and what did the local miners think about that? Who was the soldier (James Connolly), the “old bloke” (Kier Hardie) and did Lenin and the others agree with his party? Bliddy hell, start at the beginning then: the First International, Kier Hardie, the birth of the Independent Labour Party, World War I, opposition to the war, the Russian Revolution, the birth of the communist parties and CPGB, affiliation to the Labour Party, then proscription.

The teachers indicated time up, but there was still a forest of hands. OK, one more - why were they all painted out and by whom? What did the new people painted on believe in? Time was up, but a disappointed student shouted anyway: “So what was it like after their revolution?” Next time, next time, I promise.

I was stunned by the overwhelming interest and quality of political questions and the huge swathe of history opened up by them, certainly as good as any student body at a university I have spoken at.

The Lenin banner has been on display in the main hall since 2011. There are 600 students, but thus far not a single parent has raised an objection, and many students and parents have been proud to march with the banners, reclaiming them as a part of their living class heritage - as they will do again this year at the Durham Miners Gala on July 13.

Class heritage
Class heritage

Marxist box

Gugliemo Carchedi’s Behind the crisis: Marx’s dialectics of value and knowledge and Mike Macnair’s review of it have at least one thing in common (‘What drives capital’s global crisis?’, and 'Method and dialectic'). Both Carchedi and Macnair remain firmly within the Marxist box. Like all Marxists, they confine themselves to explaining the present state of capitalism in terms of the Marxist theory of crisis.

When Tony Blair, on the right wing of the Labour Party, said Marxism was obsolete dogma he wasn’t too far wrong, although this in no way justifies him trying to break the Labour Party from any idea of socialism. I am prepared to argue that the legacy of Marxism is contradictory. On the one side, Marxism stood for a scientific approach to the study of society, but, on the other hand, Marxism’s theory of religion, which I believe to be wrong, fomented an attitude which undermined the struggle for socialism and contributed to totalitarianism where it came to power.

So let me go beyond dogma and try to answer Macnair’s question, ‘What drives capital’s global crisis?’ First of all, one of the reasons why modern society is different from all previous societies is that it is based, at present, on non-renewable energy - primarily coal, oil and gas. Indeed, it was cheap fossil fuels that gave rise to modern capitalism. Energy is needed to run society - we all know this. Therefore, any economic theory which does not take this into consideration, and show how cheap, non-renewable energy led to the rise of modern capitalism cannot be treated as a fully scientific theory.

To answer Macnair’s question, it is necessary to understand that the global economy is based on oil and fossil fuels in general. The International Energy Agency, after years of opposing the peak oil argument, recently changed tack and now says global conventional oil production peaked around 2005. In 2008, which saw the real start of the present crisis, oil prices surged to $147 per barrel and this was widely reported in the media. What most of the media ignored, though, was that the price for coal went up $200 per tonne. A recession was inevitable.

Because modern capitalism grew out of cheap, abundant energy, you don’t have to be Einstein to see what this will mean for the global economy, with world oil production entering the peak zone. Cheap energy is the foundation of economic growth for capitalism, so, as the world begins the transition to expensive energy, growth becomes increasingly unsustainable. Peak oil is leading to the world economy flatlining. The political fallout from all this is already making itself felt.

Marxist box
Marxist box

Vanguarding

I wish to comment on the concept of left unity, highlighted by the recent Left Unity conference. I write as a supporter of the Japan Revolutionary Communist League.

All communists have to start from the objective situation confronting us. In Britain, as in many other countries, the working class, as the revolutionary class, is held back by the trade union and labour bureaucracies, who, because of their privileged positions, have a vested interest in maintaining capitalism. The key question facing communists is therefore how to break the hold of these bureaucracies on the working class.

We should recall that, on many occasions in the past, militant workers have risen up in struggles only to be sold out by their leaders. Our concrete tasks are therefore those of intervening in class struggles in such a way as to break the stifling hold of these bureaucracies.

This in fact has been done, and is still being done, in Japan. Comrades of the Japan Revolutionary Communist League enter into or initiate various class struggles. In these struggles they gather round them those workers who are prepared to fight. They organise these into what are termed ‘fractions’. Fractions, therefore, by their very existence, weaken the hold of the bureaucracies on the working class.

More than this, however, takes place. Parallel to the setting up of fractions, comrades of the JRCL also set up study circles in Marxism, to which fraction members are invited. The best of these are recruited to the JRCL.

From these events in Japan an important lesson can be drawn. This is that the necessary vanguard party should be built, not through any ‘left unity’, but by communists entering into and leading class struggles. In other words, as the vanguard party carries out a regeneration of the working class movement on class-struggle lines, so it builds itself.

It can be stated with confidence that the results achieved so far by the JRCL show the absolute superiority of their method of the building of a vanguard party. These comrades have shown themselves able to build deep and extensive roots in the Japanese working class. Their international influence is growing. In July 2012 they were able to hold a rally in Tokyo attended by 170,000 people. This was followed by a similar rally in Okinawa attended by 100,000.

Thus the task of communists must be, not to prioritise the unity of left parties and groups, but to ‘unite’ with workers in struggle in order to provide them with the necessary leadership to break the hold of the trade union and labour bureaucracies.

It would be useful here to consider the words of Marx and Engels. In the Communist manifesto they write that communists should strive to be “on the one hand, … that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, [to] have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding … the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.”

It is clear that the vanguard party must be “that section [of the working class] which pushes forward all others”. But the vanguard party must be, first and foremost, one that enables the working class to free itself from the trade union and labour bureaucracies. Also, it must have a clear understanding of the counterrevolutionary nature of the latter.

Vanguarding
Vanguarding