Letters

Workers’ organisation

Earlier this year the Labour Party formally renounced its commitment to the working class. Unashamedly, New Labour proclaims itself to be a party of, and for, the middle classes.

The entire working class is now without even the veneer of political representation. As a consequence, the political vacuum already in existence will be magnified.

Inevitably, the vacuum will be filled. Somebody will address the concerns and aspirations of working people. That someone will come either from the right or from the left.

We believe that it is the duty of those who maintain a loyalty to the working class to take the necessary steps now, to ensure that a successful challenge to Labour comes - only from the left.

It follows that in order to deny the right a free run it will be necessary to set up a new independent working class organisation. To discuss this proposal a meeting has been arranged. Representatives of your organisation are invited.

Red Action National Council
London

Ambiguities

Comrade Steve Kay is being very generous indeed when he writes, “The followers of Trotsky did not think World War II lost its imperialist colouring once Hitler attacked the USSR” (Weekly Worker 97).

If only! The Trotskyites’ conduct during World War II was very inconsistent, with some steadfastly maintaining a clear position of revolutionary defeatism (and this should be recognised as such), while others acted as the ‘leftwing’ - or ‘left’ conscience - of democratic imperialism, peddling some version of the lesser-of-two-evils approach.

This is hardly surprising, as Trotsky’s last writings contain many ambiguities and contradictions, held together in places by an altogether dubious methodology. Any communist who treated Trotsky’s works as a “sacred text” would indeed find themselves in troubled waters very quickly, their revolutionary soul pulled first in one direction and then in another. This is, of course, what happened during World War II and is there for all those with eyes to see, even if Longman’s 1990 Communist and Marxist Parties of the World says otherwise.

The fact that the world communist movement sank into the opportunist mire and embraced the forces of democratic imperialism does not make this any less true. It just proves that both the ‘official communist’ and the Trotskyite movements hardly came out of the war smelling of Leninist roses. As a consequence bourgeois ideology strengthened its grip over the workers’ movement.

I find it a bit odd that comrade Steve Kay seems to think “the Stalinists” got it right during World War II, when he contrasts their approach to the Trotskyites. Yes, “the Stalinists” certainly abandoned revolutionary defeatism, if not the basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism itself. Personally, I do not think that was a good thing.

We should continue to ruthlessly criticise ‘official communism’ and Trotskyism’s record during this period. As we know, neither have a mass following any more (if indeed they ever did) and we in the Communist Party are currently attempting, in many ways, to rebuild the communist movement anew. This means learning from our mistakes and finding the correct approach. I am sure comrade Kay would agree with this sentiment.

Danny Hammill
South London

Footnote

I do not think that the letter by Phil Kent and Mark Fischer (Weekly Worker 98) about the latest of Tom Cowan’s circulars was a useful one. In my opinion it can only shroud the issues in the debate around Party unity, rather than clarify them.

It adds no new content, but rehashes old arguments in less detail than previously. It hangs on to the agenda of the ‘Independent Communists’, as if we are reluctant to let it go. It addresses an audience which is much less than the readership of the Weekly Worker. It ignores the real developments we are having with external factions of the SWP, which are making Cowan and his friends irrelevant.

If anatomical metaphors are in vogue, then the Cowan argument is now no more than an appendix. In short the letter was obscure, irrelevant and too damned long.

Steve Riley
North London